Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,27
myself against the back of the elevator. It trundles down two floors and then opens. I stare at the pair in the lobby, assessing them.
They stare back, and none of us blink until the elevator doors close.
The secutores were Roman gladiators, back in the day. They fought in the Grecian style—sword or spear and shield. I knew the techniques as readily as I knew how to breathe.
Those two aren't lawyers.
* * *
One of the things I had Rupert at the bank procure for me was a pay-as-you-go phone. It's as cheap and disposable as they get, but it has a working phone number. I leave the hospital and find a judiciously situated internet café within line of sight of the P wing. I do a quick search for Secutores with a couple other key words and am not surprised at what I find. I do a bit of reading, which only serves to amuse me.
They have no idea who the secutores really were. Still, the name serves its purpose.
I open another tab and click through the website of The Independent until I find an email address for the journalist—Ralph Abernathy—who wrote the articles about the Cetacean Liberty. I have to sign up for a free webmail service and that takes longer than I'd like, but I finally get a screen where I can send an email. I title it “Secutores,” and keep the note brief. “Why does the Royal Adelaide Hospital not have any patients from the Cetacean Liberty? And why are there men from Secutores Security hanging around the burn ward if there are no patients?”
I sign it with my new cell phone number, hit send, and wander over to the counter and order a cup of herb tea.
Fifteen minutes later my phone rings. “It's the wrong time of year to be fishing,” says a male voice when I answer.
“Same could be said for whaling,” I reply.
He's quiet for a minute. “There's no story here,” he says.
“No? Then why did you call me?” I ask.
“I'm recording this call,” he says. “I'll be sending a copy to my editor immediately after we're done.”
“Okay,” I say.
He's a little put off when I don't offer anything else, and after another long silence, he clears his throat. “So, ah, why did you send me that email?”
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Who?”
“The survivors.”
“What survivors?”
I hang up the phone. This game is silly, and I don't really have time for it, but I don't have any other leads.
I have never been very good at investigative work; I have always had a different role in field work. It's always been that way, even before I became an Arcadian. I was the one who read the signs in the wind and the waves, who listened to bird song, and who saw the patterns in viscera. After lying with Mother, she showed me I no longer needed those skills; she wanted me for other reasons. I was happy to oblige her and my new family. I became tooth and claw—a sword for Arcadia. Being polite and knowing how to ask questions were not part of my requisite skill set.
Mere, though, is good at this sort of thing. During the time I had been watching her, I'd seen her play a version of this with a number of contacts. Her trick was always to play hard to get, to suggest she knew more than she did, and to get them to come to her.
As I wait for Ralph to get with the game, I recall the first time we had seen Mere on the Cetacean Liberty. The rest of the team had played her game so readily.
My phone rings again. “Give me something,” he says.
“Kyodo Kujira,” I reply. “Your turn.”
“Not yet,” Ralph says. “What's your connection?”
“One of Kyodo Kujira's vessels was a harpoon boat with a name that translates to Cherry Blossom.”
“Was,” he says, picking up on my verb tense.
“I know what happened to it.”
He breathes heavily into the phone, and I hear the distant sound of his fingers hitting keys on a laptop. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “Not on the phone, though.”
“Of course not,” I reply. I glance over at the café's counter and read him the name that runs across the top of the reader board behind the counter. “I look like any other hipster in here, but older. And I'm drinking tea.”
“Very Colonial of you.”
“Old habits,” I reply. “I know what you look like. The paper very conveniently posts a picture next to your articles.”