Quiet Invasion(75)

“Please, sit down.” Bowerman gestured toward the empty chair as Michael reached him. “Mind if I go ahead?” he nodded at his lunch—soup, fresh bread, a cup of rich chai, spiced Indian tea that Margot at Salon Blu imported.

“Please. I’m actually going to meet my wife for lunch right after this.”

“You two have kids?” asked Bowerman, breaking apart his small loaf of sourdough bread and spreading it thickly with butter.

“Two boys,” said Michael, going with the conversation and not bothering to mention that Bowerman surely knew this from reading Michael’s files. “You?”

Bowerman shook his head. “Not yet.” He bit into the bread, chewed, and swallowed. “This is good. I didn’t expect such good food, or so much space.” He gestured with the bread. “I’ve only been to Small Step on Luna, and on Mars once. I got used to the idea that colonies are cramped.”

Michael noticed Bowerman did not say where he’d been on Mars. “Our one real luxury,” he said, repeating the stock phrase.

“So.” Bowerman put the bread down and picked up his soup spoon. “How can I help you?”

Good question. Michael hesitated. He’d made up his mind to do this while he was behind his desk, but now that he faced Bowerman, he had trouble putting the words together. He was about to tell the U.N. there might be a problem aboard Venera. Venera was a colony, and the U.N. looked for excuses to make life difficult for colonies. That was a fact. What if Michael was about to give them such an excuse?

Bowerman wasn’t looking at him. He concentrated on his soup, making little appreciative slurping noises as he ate. I could get up and leave. I could invent something small and leave, go tell Helen what’s going on, and let her handle it. I could do that.

“One of the investigative team has raised a question about the validity of the Discovery.”

Bowerman paused and set his spoon down. “Oh?” The syllable could have meant anything from “Oh, really?” to “Only one?”

Going to make me say it, aren’t you? Okay, I’d do the same if I were you. “We investigated this exact question extensively when the Discovery first came to our attention. I assume you saw the reports?”

Bowerman’s gaze turned sharp. Michael had his full attention now. “They looked thorough. Do you think you missed something?”

Michael sighed. He appreciated the lack of judgment in Bowerman’s voice. Just one pro talking to another. Anybody could miss something. It happened. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But if a fraud accusation is going to be made, that isn’t good enough. I have to know.”

Bowerman nodded soberly. “How can we help?”

Michael studied his fingertips. The scent of beef and tomatoes reached him from Bowerman’s soup and his stomach rumbled. “If this is a fraud, it cost money,” he said slowly. “And Venera was running on a wing, a prayer, and short credit. If somebody did this, they got money from somewhere.”

“Or shuffled it from somewhere,” said Bowerman quietly.

Michael just nodded.

“Who could do that?”

“Most easily?” Michael didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see Bowerman’s eyes, weighing, calculating, running ahead with different scenarios to see how each of them might fit. “I could. Ben Godwin or Helen Failia. After us, the department heads.”

“But Dr. Failia is in charge of base finance, isn’t she?”

Michael nodded again. Helen had kept that position for herself. She raised the money, she counted the money, she divvied the money up. It was no small task, but she would not delegate it. Occasionally, Michael suspected Helen did not want to admit she was not entirely in control of this city of ten thousand.

Bowerman was silent for a long time. “All right. I’ll call down to Earth and start a trace on the incoming funds for, say, the year before the Discovery’s announcement. Will that do?” Now Michael looked up. Bowerman’s face was understanding but not pitying, which he also appreciated. “How quiet can you keep this?”

“I’ll do my best,” he shrugged. “But I have to tell my boss.”

“Who will have to tell the Venus work group?”

Bowerman nodded one more time. “But trust me, they will not want to let this out until they’re sure. There’ve been a lot of speeches made about your Discovery, and nobody’s going to want to look like they bought vaporware. We’ll sell it as double-checking your facts. Just doing our job.” He smiled thinly. “Everybody knows we don’t trust your kind.”