CYCLE B | Book 7
Echo of Footfalls
PREVIEW | Echo of Footfalls
"Data sets are always incomplete and replete with errors." Xiu Shuxian had learned this adage from her boss at Argo Navis, Hans Eric Ramm. She was Eric's personal assistant, and her primary job, he once explained to her, was to improve the data sets he had at his disposal.
Xiu was now trying to improve three of these. The name attached to the first one was Kari LaMarca, who was now out visiting the ranch owned by Dag Tanager, a very able man Eric would like to enter into a partnership with. Also out at the ranch was Dag Tanager's son Bobby, an attractive young man who was smitten with Kari. Was Kari smitten with him? If she was a normal woman, the answer was probably yes. Xiu was smitten with Bobby herself.
Before she went out to the ranch, Kari had convinced herself that she knew the identity of the man who murdered Gina Vasari. The killer was Toby Pritchard; Kari referred to him as a creepozoid. Was Kari right in her judgement? If not, who was the real killer? This was a question Eric very much wanted an answer to. Gina was a woman Eric had employed at the time of her death, and his Viking code of honour demanded that the killer face justice.
Next on Xiu's list was Dag Tanager. His actions, as regards Kari, were inexplicable. Why had he invited her to go to Lucerna and find out what happened to some of the work Gina had been doing at the time of her death, her effort to produce a new biography of the Arctic explorer Samuel Hearne? It was an assignment that, to Eric's way of thinking, made no sense, particularly given the fact that Tanager's company, Tavco, was essentially bankrupt; paying Kari's wages and expenses was dumb.
The third individual on Xiu's list was Malory Ballantyne. Eric believed that Kari was in love with Malory, and that Kari had supplied him some crucial data that Eric very much wanted to possess.
Thinking about all this, Xiu was painfully aware that data sets are indeed incomplete.
