The Quiet Pools by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Author:Michael P. Kube-McDowell [Kube-McDowell, Michael P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, High Tech, Fiction
ISBN: 9780743493048
Publisher: I Books
Published: 1990-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

the greater good…'

The murder of Malena Graham was news that would not wait for morning, and so it was a short night for many in the Project family.

Hiroko Sasaki, on Takara to receive a deficiency report from the supervisory circle and tour the nearly completed Memphis, went directly from her suite to the transportation office to arrange a shuttle home.

Still wearing his striped pajamas, Edgar Donovan settled in his office node and began calling contacts in the media, even as he monitored the first fragmentary reports on Newstime and the black traffic on the private corporate net.

A shattered Thomas Tidwell, receiving special handling from Houston corpsec, shed his Thomas Grimes persona and fled to the quiet security of Halfwhistle by means of a corporate screamer.

Sleepy-eyed morale counselors and group dynamicists, huddled in a Building H conference room, debated whether to hold the pioneers over until the shock had been absorbed or to empty Noonerville early.

An unlucky senior facilitator headed for Virginia with an insurance check and the vain hope of shaping the Graham family's public posture.

And Mikhail Dryke, heart-weary and discouraged, came back to Houston from Prainha, feeling as though it were a pilgrimage of futility. Too late, again too late. In the two hours and forty minutes between the flash alert and Dryke's Celestron touching down on the complex's runway, both the primary and secondary reasons for that journey had evaporated.

The first, of locating Graham's killer, disappeared when Rangers from the Beaumont post forced down a Ford Firefly a few kilometers short of the Louisiana border, arresting one Evan Eric Silverman. The second, of determining whether Silverman had known Graham's status, vanished when he confessed—no, boasted—in his first interview that he had killed a colonist, calling Malena a "traitor" and himself a "martyr."

On hearing the latter, Dryke's fury was matched only by his feeling of impotence. It had been obvious for months that the pioneers were at risk from the more radical Homeworlders—if not, then why were their identities and movements so conscientiously concealed? Dryke had urged repeatedly that the training centers be made closed campuses. But he had been overruled by assorted management types, Sasaki included, for reasons which had nothing to do with security.

Better to make it unnecessary for them to leave than to forbid them, he was told. Better that they see the center as a refuge, not a prison—their fellows as friends, not inmates. Better that they choose to turn their back on a world that they've decided for themselves is unfriendly. Better for morale. Better for solidarity. Better for everyone.

Except Malena Graham.

By midmorning, when Dryke reached the Beaumont post, it was already clear that so far as Allied Transcon was concerned, the murder of Malena Graham was a public relations disaster.

Here was the grieving family standing in front of their home, a sobbing Mother Caroline declaring, "Our girl was stolen from us. We never wanted her to go," and Father Jack bitterly denouncing Allied Transcon for negligence—as if Graham had been some sort of teenage overnight camper.

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