Iterations and other stories (collection)

“Good, good. A crime to waste such raw talent. You also have a particular aptitude for mathematics. That’s often paired with musical ability, of course, so no surprises there. Your visual memory is slightly better than average, although your ability to do rote memorization is slightly worse. You would make a good long-distance runner, but..

I motioned for Suze to hit the fast-forward button; it seemed like a typical soothsaying, although I’d review it in depth later, if need be. Poor Dale fidgeted up and down in quadruple speed for a time, then Suze released the button.

“Now,” said Skye’s voice, “the bad news.” I made an impressed face at Suze; she’d stopped speeding along at precisely the right moment. “I’m afraid there’s a lot of it. Nothing devastating, but still lots of little things. You will begin to lose your hair around your twenty-seventh birthday, and it will begin to gray by the time you’re thirty-two. By the age of forty, you will be almost completely bald, and what’s left at that point will be half brown and half gray.

“On a less frivolous note, you’ll also be prone to gaining weight, starting at about age thirty-three—and you’ll put on half a kilo a year for each of the following thirty years if you’re not careful; by the time you’re in your mid-fifties, that will pose a significant health hazard. You’re also highly likely to develop adult-onset diabetes. Now, yes, that can be cured, but the cure is expensive, and you’ll have to pay for it—so either keep your weight down, which will help stave off its onset, or start saving now for the operation…”

I shrugged. Nothing worth killing a man over. Suze fast-for-warded the tape some more.

“—and that’s it,” concluded Skye. “You now know everything significant that’s coded into your DNA. Use this information wisely, and you should have a long, happy, healthy life.”

Dale thanked Skye, took a printout of the information he’d just heard, and left. The recording stopped. It had been too much to hope for. Whoever killed Skye Hissock had come in after young Dale had departed. He was still our obvious first suspect, but unless there was something awful in the parts of the genetic reading we’d fast-forwarded over, there didn’t seem to be any motive for him to kill his soothsayer. And besides, this Dale had a high IQ, Skye had said. Only an idiot would think there was any sense in shooting the messenger.

After we’d finished watching the recording, I did an analysis of the actual blaster burn. No fun, that: standing over the open top of Skye’s torso. Most of the blood vessels had been cauterized by the charge. Still, blasters were only manufactured in two places I knew of—Tokyo, on Earth, and New Monty. If the one used here had been made on New Monty, we’d be out of luck, but one of Earth’s countless laws required all blasters to leave a characteristic EM signature, so they could be traced to their registered owners, and—

Good: it was an Earth-made blaster. I recorded the signature, then used my compad to relay it to The Cop Shop. If Raymond Chen could find some time between stuffing his face, he’d send an FTL message to Earth and check the pattern— assuming, of course, that the Jeffies don’t scramble the message just for kicks. Meanwhile, I told Suze to go over Hissock’s client list, while I started checking out his family—fact is, even though it doesn’t make much genetic sense, most people are killed by their own relatives.

Skye Hissock had been fifty-one. He’d been a soothsayer for twenty-three years, ever since finishing his Ph.D. in genetics. He was unmarried, and both his parents were long dead. But he did have a brother named Rodger. Rodger was married to Rebecca Connolly, and they had two children, Glen, who, like Dale in Skye’s recording, had just turned eighteen, and Billy, who was eight.

There are no inheritance taxes in Mendelia, of course, so barring a will to the contrary, Hissock’s estate would pass immediately to his brother. Normally, that’d be a good motive for murder, but Rodger Hissock and Rebecca Connolly were already quite rich: they owned a controlling interest in the company that operated Mendelia’s atmosphere-recycling plant.

I decided to start my interviews with Rodger. Not only had brothers been killing each other since Cain wasted Abel, but the DNA-scanning lock on Skye’s private inner office was programmed to recognize only four people—Skye himself; his office cleaner, who Suze was going to talk to; another soothsayer named Jennifer Halasz, who sometimes took Skye’s patients for him when he was on vacation (and who had called in the murder, having stopped by apparently to meet Skye for coffee); and dear brother Rodger. Rodger lived in Wheel Four, and worked in One.