“More of Boutin is coming out,” Robbins said. “But much of it seems to be in personality. I’ve read Private Dirac’s psychological profile; up to now he’s been something of a passive character. Things happened to him rather than him making them happen. And for the first week or so he was with us he was like that. But over the last three weeks he’s been becoming more assertive and more directed. And that’s more in line with who Boutin was, psychologically speaking.”
“So he’s becoming more like Boutin. Fine,” Szilard said. “But is he remembering anything?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Robbins said. “There’s very little memory coming back. What’s coming back is mostly about his family life, not his work. We’ll run him recordings of Boutin making voice notes of his projects and he’ll listen to them blankly. Show him a picture of Boutin’s little girl, and he gets twitchy for a minute, and then he’ll tell you about what was going on in the picture. It’s frustrating.”
Szilard chewed for a moment, thinking. Robbins took advantage of the pause to enjoy his water. It wasn’t quite as refreshing as he’d previously suggested.
“The memories of his little girl don’t lead to any tangential memories coming up?” Szilard asked.
“Sometimes,” Robbins said. “A picture of Boutin and his daughter at some research base he was stationed at reminded him of some of the work he’d been doing there. Some early research on consciousness buffering, before he came back to Phoenix Station and started working on it using the technology we’d gotten from the Consu. But he didn’t remember anything useful, in terms of why Boutin would decide to turn traitor.”
“Show him another picture of Boutin’s daughter,” Szilard said.
“We showed him all we could find,” Robbins said. “There aren’t that many. And there aren’t any of her physical things around—no toys or drawings or anything like that.”
“Why not?” Szilard asked.
Robbins shrugged. “She died before Boutin came back to Phoenix Station,” he said. “I guess he didn’t want to bring her things with him.”
“Now that’s interesting,” Szilard said. His eyes looked like they were focused on something at a distance, a sign he was reading something off his BrainPal.
“What?” Robbins said.
“I pulled Boutin’s file while you were talking,” Szilard said. “Boutin’s a colonial, but his work for the Colonial Union required him to be stationed at Military Research facilities. The last place he worked before coming here was at Covell Research Station. Ever hear of it?”
“It sounds familiar,” Robbins said. “But I can’t place it.”
“Says it was a zero-g-capable research facility,” Szilard said. “They did some biomedical work, which is why Boutin was there, but it was mostly weapons and navigation systems. This is interesting: The station was actually positioned directly above a planetary ring system. It was just a klick above the ring plane. Used the ring debris to test their close-quarter navigation systems.”
Now Robbins got it. Rocky planets with ring systems were rare, and ones with human colonies rarer still. Most colonists preferred not to live where stadium-sized chunks of falling rock plunging through the atmosphere were a common occurrence rather than a once-in-a-millennium sort of thing. One with a Military Research station orbiting overhead—that was pretty singular.
“Omagh,” Robbins said.
“Omagh,” Szilard agreed. “Which we no longer own. We could never prove that the Obin originally attacked the colony or the station. It’s possible the Rraey attacked the colony, and then the Obin attacked them when they were weakened from fighting us and before they could be reinforced. Which is one reason we never went to war with them over it. But we know they decided to claim the system for their own pretty damn quickly, before we could mount a force to take it back.”
“And Boutin’s daughter was on the colony,” Robbins said.
“She was on the station, from what the casualty lists say,” Szilard said, sending over the list for Robbins to view. “It was a large station. It would have had family quarters.”
“Jesus,” Robbins said.
“You know,” Szilard said, casually, forking the last bite of steak into his mouth, “when Covell Station was attacked, it wasn’t entirely destroyed. In fact, we have reliable data that suggest the station is largely intact.”
“Okay,” Robbins said.
“Including the family quarters.”
“Oh, okay,” Robbins said, the light coming on. “I can already tell you I don’t like where this is going.”
“You said that Dirac’s memory responds most strongly to stress and sensory input,” Szilard said. “Taking him to the place where his daughter died—and where all her physical things are likely to be—would qualify as a significant sensory input.”
“There is the minor problem that the system is now owned and patrolled by the Obin,” Robbins said.
Szilard shrugged. “That’s where the stress comes in,” he said. He set his utensils into the “done” position on his plate and pushed it away from him.