Final Inquiries Read online

  It was a huge breach of those standards for the Vixa to require these simulants to accompany them on this mission, and into Kendari and human sovereign territory. Legally, the spot of ground he was on was, for most purposes, to be treated as if it were physically part of the planet Kendal. If he walked three meters to the BSI side of the main room, legally speaking, he'd be on Earth--or possibly Center. He was a little fuzzy on that detail.

  What he did understand was that the cartoon version of diplomatic immunity--a drunken ambassador running over five people in the host country's capital, and not being punished for it--wasn't the reality. Diplomats and embassies weren't supposed to be immune from the law, or above it. The whole idea was that they were to be governed by the laws of their home governments. That was why this case wasn't being investigated by Vixan cops. And an embassy was supposed to be a place of safety, sanctuary, privacy. Access to it should be completely under the control of the embassy itself, with no reference to the host government.

  Of course, nothing in life was absolute. There were practical limits and exceptions to that principle, and the rules had been broken many times by both host and guest governments. But the rules were there because they had to be there. Without such protections, every ambassador, every diplomat, was little more than a volunteer hostage, controlled by the whim of his or her hosts--with his or her opposite number the obvious target for reprisal by the folks back home. When one side or the other started playing that game--and it happened from time to time--relations between the two governments rapidly ground to a halt. Diplomats had to be safe. Embassies had to be extraterritorial, or else the whole system would collapse. The principle was universal because it was so basic, so fundamental.

  And yet here were these two simulants, given the run of the Kendari/human joint operations center, and, apparently, both embassy compounds. The Vixa would have had to force that down the throats of the two ambassadors. It must have been the subject of huge protests, big arguments, complicated negotiations.

  And for what? So a pair of rubber-faced copies of the real investigators could sit at the edge of the room and stare blankly at nothing at all. Why cause so much ill will for so little gain? It didn't make sense.

  The inescapable conclusion was that the simulants were there for some other reason. But what the devil could it be?

  He decided to try one more thing. The simulants had picked up Lesser Trade very rapidly. So fast that Jamie figured that it had been preprogrammed in them, but that the programming was latent in some way. It was in there, stored away, but it had to be activated, in something like the way a simulant apparently had to be near to and observing a subject before it started mimicking it. At a guess, hearing Lesser Trade spoken stimulated the memory centers that held the language, causing them to activate and feed their language skills to the simulant's brain, or its central processor, or whatever it had.

  Maybe English was in there in some sort of latent state as well. If the Vixa had gone to all the trouble to create a human simulant, they should have had the sense to include some sort of language module that would enable it to talk with humans--or listen in on them.

  They had spoken some English in the simulants' presence. Maybe enough to stimulate at least limited activation of that module, if it was there.

  It was guess upon guess upon guess. But if he were right, the simulants would have only limited English skills, and they likely wouldn't be programmed with pat answers for everything. Maybe a little truth would come out, if he got lucky.

  "I ask again," he said, speaking in slow and careful English. "I urge you to answer fully. What are you here to observe?"

  Jamie was facing the humanoid sim, his own fun-house mirror image, but it was the Kendarian who replied. "We here to watch you investigate go bad, fail," he said. "Then the Eminent can stop Pentam tal--"

  The simulant's voice cut off suddenly, and he froze into immobility.

  "My--my--my colleague has said too much and spoken in error," the humanoid said in Lesser Trade, stuttering, and his voice oddly wooden at first, then smoothing out. "He is being reset."

  Jamie nodded, feeling a bit wooden and stuttery himself. The simulant had a point. That was too much. Way too much. There were days, and this was one of them, when he felt as if he could do with a reset himself.

  Hannah's first impression of Ambassador Stabmacher was Ichabod Crane with perfect manners--but it took only a minute to realize that Stabmacher was canny enough to use his angular physique and boyish gawkiness as a social tool, a way to put others at ease--and to guide them in the way he wanted to go.

  By the time they reached the compartment where the medical officer was under voluntary confinement, Hannah realized that Stabmacher had already drawn her in. She felt like a member of the team, his team, ready to go forward and do what needed to be done.

  It took some real skills to pull off that style of leadership, and Hannah couldn't help but admire him. But she had to keep her distance. As even Grand Vixan Zeeraum had understood, Stabmacher needed her, and Jamie, exactly because they weren't on his team. Conflicting allegiances would do none of them any good.

  They reached the med officer's cabin. Hannah pressed the annunciator button but got no answer. She looked to the ambassador, but he merely shrugged and smiled, obviously amused rather than worried. She pressed the button again, and then pounded loudly on the metal hatch with the flat of her hand. "Dr. Zhen?" she called. "Are you there?"

  "Of course I'm here," said a muffled voice through the hatch. It would seem Dr. Zhen couldn't be bothered with using the intercom. "I'm sealed in with tamper strips on the door. Where else would I be? Give me a second."

  Hannah looked again at Stabmacher, but he had gone all poker-faced. She set to work peeling off the tamper strips, and just barely got done when the hatch slid open without warning.

  Hannah hadn't really given much thought as to what to expect of the M.O., beyond the cliched idea that embassy doctors and civilian shipboard doctors were usually washed-up old wrecks marking time until retirement. But any trace of that idea went away the moment the hatch opened. "What in the world is going on now?" said the pigtailed woman who opened the door.

  Hannah's first impression was of an Asian Dorothy Gale, complete with pigtails, there in the thick of it, doing her best to deal with everything the land of Oz could throw at her. She was black-haired and olive-skinned, and her oval face seemed to fall into an open and frank expression that made her look perpetually surprised. She was dressed in pale blue surgical scrubs. She seemed very young, very determined, very sure of herself--but with a fragility, a sense of uncertainty as well. "We're here to collect you for the exam. The examination and removal of the remains," Hannah said.

  "Oh, right," said the other woman. "I'm sorry. I was taking a nap. Sometimes I'm a little woozy if I get awakened suddenly. And I'm bad on names. Who are you?"

  "Dr. Zhen Chi, allow me to present Senior Special Agent Hannah Wolfson," said the ambassador, who was making no effort at all to mask his amusement, even as he went through the very proper forms of introduction. "Agent Wolfson, Dr. Zhen."

  "You can skip the 'Dr. Zhen' stuff. Just call me Zhen Chi or Zhen. Everyone does. I prefer it. Lemme grab my bag." She stepped back into the compartment, collected a medical kit, and stepped back out. "Let's go."

  The ambassador led the way, with the two women walking side by side behind him. "Forgive the personal question," said Hannah, "but how in the world did you manage to fall that soundly asleep in the time since we got the exam arrangements worked out?"

  "Force of habit that I picked up in med school and my internship," said Zhen Chi. "If you're just sitting and waiting, doze if you can, because you probably won't have the chance later. It's almost a job skill. Sorry if I was rude making you wait like that."

  "Oh I wasn't offended," said Hannah. "I was jealous. It's a job skill for BSI agents too--and you're better at it than I am."

  Minutes later they were back on the human side of the joint
operations center. Jamie was still there, the simulants standing alongside him, almost as if the two of them had been in conversation. Hannah looked at him and got a raised eyebrow and a shrug in return. She had spent enough case time with Jamie to read that pretty clearly: Something interesting had come up, but he couldn't tell her now.

  Almost at the same time, the Kendari contingent arrived, led in by Brox, who got straight to the point. "I present Diplomatic Xenologist Flexdal 2092 and Medical Technist Remdex 290, as per our agreement."

  Ambassador Stabmacher spoke, recapping the agreement for the benefit of the various recording devices that would bear witness that Flexdal had agreed to the arrangements, but Hannah tuned him out.

  She studied the newly arrived Kendari instead, to try and get some sense of how they felt about the situation. But either she wasn't all that good at reading Kendari emotional reactions, or else the medical technist and the xenologists had the makings of excellent poker players.

  She tuned back in to what the ambassador was saying just as he was concluding. "To sum up, in deference to your medical technist's far greater experience with Kendari medical matters, Technist Remdex will perform the postmortem exam and removal of tissue and fluid samples, while our medical officer and the BSI agents--and you and I--serve as witnesses."

  "Agreed," said Flexdal. He turned to Remdex. "You will proceed."

  "I act as instructed," said Remdex in a tone of voice that suggested Remdex wasn't happy about the situation.

  But then, thought Hannah, who is?

  The obvious next step was to deal with the coffee mug. After subjecting it to endless additional photography from every angle, including extreme close-ups, they were ready to pick it up and move it.

  There was only one thing slightly unusual about the cup. The word "Milk" had been written in some sort of indelible marker across the base of it--at a guess, to remind whoever made the coffee what that person liked in his brew. The lettering was verging on the dim and fading, as if the cup had been washed many times since it had been marked. The BSI logo on the side was still new, all bright and shiny. It had some sort of protective overcoating, though that overcoating seemed just to have been very slightly roughened. Jamie noticed one other thing--that something about the lettering seemed to bother, even worry, Hannah.

  After a certain amount of dreary debate, it was agreed that the Kendari could have the main part of the cup, while the humans had to settle for the chip--but each side was allowed to run a sterile swab on the interior surface of the other's piece--then run a second swab to be held by the possessors of the piece.

  As bickering between cops from two jurisdictions went, it was actually pretty tame. They got the coffee mug and all the related items into sealed containers and duly labeled and witnessed in fairly short order.

  Then came the far tougher, far grimmer job of dealing with the body itself. Jamie was not in the least bit sorry to step back and let the medical specialists deal with that part of the job.

  Jamie stood as patiently as he could, watching the watchers watch, trying his best to learn something from the procedure, if nothing else, something about Kendari procedure that might come in handy on some future case. The exam went on with the endless attention to detail that such matters required. Given the utterly obvious cause of death, it almost seemed pointless for Remdex to be as compulsively thorough as he was. But the body of a murder victim was a document that could likely only be read once. The processes of decay, and the very action of examining the body, could degrade, conceal, or completely destroy some vital piece of evidence. You had to get every bit of information out the first time, because there might not be a second.

  Unless, of course, the obvious answer was the correct answer, and the whole rigmarole was a complete waste of time. But you never knew that until later. So Remdex carefully removed samples of Emelza 401's body felt and circulatory fluid, took swab samples of her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. He carefully examined her feet and tail--Jamie had no idea why. Zhen Chi watched Remdex's every move and assisted him as best she could, handing him sample containers and sealing them once they were filled. They took three samples of each type--one for the Kendari, one for the humans, and one to be sealed away and preserved to provide a reference point in case of future disputes.

  Brox, in theory, was supposed to be one of the official witnesses, but he hung well back from the proceedings, staying inside his own workstall on the southeast corner of the room. It was plain that no one on the Kendari side of the job was going to reproach him for that, and Jamie certainly had no desire to intrude. Nor, he felt sure, did any of the other humans. There were enough layers of observation and evidence protection that the investigation team could spare him the sight of his own espoused's field postmortem.

  The simulants, on the other hand, were very much front and center, carefully observing the whole procedure--though Jamie was not at all certain why, or for whom, they were watching.

  "I am think we are done," Remdex announced at last, speaking rather sketchy Lesser Trade Speech, arching his long neck up and stretching it back and forth to get the kinks out. "Now we ready place body in holding container, place in freeze place." The Kendari had decided to clear out some sort of food-storage freezer to hold the remains for the time being. "Is you agree, Med-Tech Chi?"

  Zhen Chi glared at Remdex and Jamie grimaced. It was obvious that Remdex's grasp of Lesser Trade Speech was pretty weak--weak enough that deliberately making a clumsy rhyme out of Zhen Chi's name was well beyond his powers. But it was obvious that Zhen Chi was annoyed by it all the same.

  "Oh, yes, Med-Tech Remdex," said Zhen Chi. "We are all the way done. Get her into a body bag and pop her into the freezer whenever you like."

  "I like do move now," said Remdex, his attention on the body and completely unaware that he had given offense. "But first request additional images of that," he said, and pointed to the right shoulder area of the body.

  "Of what?" Jamie asked. He hadn't noticed anything special in that area. He looked at Hannah, but she just frowned and shook her head. Neither had she.

  "At that," said Remdex. "Is very clear now. All developed." He grabbed a pocket light and held it low and pointed across the surface of the body, so as to produce stronger and more distinct shadows.

  Hannah drew in her breath in shock, surprise. "How the hell did we miss that?" she asked.

  "I don't know," said Jamie. "I haven't the least idea in the world." But he did know, immediately, that something had gone very, very wrong. They couldn't have missed something that obvious. But it was just as obvious that they had.

  There, in the shoulder area, was a rumpled series of indentations, almost as if the dead Kendari's flesh was soft clay that someone had poked at.

  Someone who had poked at the body with one finger, then two, then pushed at it with the whole hand, leaving behind a well-formed, absolutely clear handprint. The print of a left hand.

  A human left hand.

  NINE

  INTERVIEW WITH AN AMBASSADOR

  "You can check for yourself, Ambassador," said the younger, male Special Agent, reaching across his desk to hand him a datapad.

  Ambassador Stabmacher took pride in his ability to remember names and faces, but it had been a damnably hard couple of days, with far too little rest, let alone sleep. Mendez, that was it. The ambassador accepted the datapad and resisted the temptation to toss it to one side, unexamined. He could at least retain his skill in managing his temper.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied the images carefully, then glanced out the window at the compound, and at the embassy ship, thirty meters away. They were meeting in his formal office, and it was a distinct relief to get out of his ship-side quarters and get some elbow room. No doubt the rest of the embassy staff was itching to get out as well. He realized that his thoughts had wandered, and forced his concentration back to the images.

  "Those are from our cameras and Brox's as well," said Mendez. "No chance of the photos being r
etouched."

  "And I quite agree that there is no sign of the finger marks or the handprint," the ambassador agreed. "But I hardly think that improves the situation. If the handprint wasn't there when you took those photos at the start of the crime scene examinations, it must have been created during the time when the corpse was continuously under watch. Under your watch. Possibly during the period you were there by yourself while Inquirist Brox and Senior Special Agent Wolfson"--there! Her name he had remembered without effort--"were collecting the rest of us."

  Mendez stood uncomfortably and shifted from one foot to the other. "Sir, I can't say that my eyes never left the body. They did. But it's impossible, absolutely impossible, that someone came in, poked at the corpse, then left the room without my noticing it. And, ah, for what it is worth, I wasn't exactly alone, sir. There were the two simulants, the human and Kendari ones, there the whole--"

  "No!" Stabmacher almost bellowed, loud enough that he almost frightened himself. "It's bad enough, humiliating enough that we have been required to tolerate those--those things having virtually free range of the compound. I will not allow them to become witnesses, or active participants of any sort, in the investigation."

  "We take your point, sir," said Special Agent Wolfson. "But witnesses or not, we can't lay this on Mendez. And that's not me defending him. It's plain common sense. No remotely competent human being could have missed someone coming in and poking at the corpse, then sneaking out. I think we're only focusing on the time period when he was alone with the body because it's even more improbable it could have happened while Brox and I were there--or when we returned with you and the others. It couldn't have happened when we were all there, and therefore it must have been when it was just Mendez. But he'd have to be deaf and blind to miss such a thing. It couldn't have happened when he was alone on watch, either. There must be some other explanation."