Final Inquiries Read online

  "No," said Kelly, obviously very unhappy. "Because I don't know myself."

  "Security is very tight," said Brox.

  "So you know what the assignment is?" asked Jamie.

  "Oh, yes," said Brox. "However, I am authorized to say very little at this time. I am permitted to say that I have been given the task of conducting Final Inquiries regarding an incident that has just taken place."

  Hannah crossed her arms and let out a low whistle. "Final Inquiries" was what the Kendari Inquiries Service called a death investigation. But no one launched Final Inquiries if the victim had died at home in advanced old age in his, her, or its sleep. It was obvious that Brox wasn't supposed to come out and say it was a murder investigation, but apparently it was all right for him to give very broad hints.

  Brox went on. "I can tell you that it was the humans involved in the negotiations who suggested we keep the circle of knowledgeable personnel as tight as possible. They were the ones who suggested the tightly controlled brief in the interests of not endangering any more beings than necessary."

  "But it was deemed necessary to endanger Special Agent Mendez and me?"

  "Regrettably, yes. I must refrain from saying more. Explaining the form of the danger in question would in and of itself release potentially dangerous information."

  "I don't like this," said Kelly. "In fact, let's just say that's one of the great understatements of the year. But my orders were very clear, very specific, and very emphatic. It's you two they want, and it is you two that they're going to get." She checked her pocket comm. "Good. Kosolov and the Quartermaster's Office are both reporting task complete. We're clear to go."

  "Wait a second," Jamie protested. "You mean, that's the briefing? We're done? We can't even go back to our desks?"

  "Right on all counts, Agent Mendez," said Kelly. "There's no time, there's no more information anyway, and now that you know as much as you do, the more we keep you two out of sight, the better. And that goes double for our guests. Maybe triple. So you're leaving. Now."

  She turned, opened the door behind her, and led the way down the corridor. Brox trotted along behind her. The simulant stomped along behind Brox, struggling to keep its balance and working hard to keep up with him. It somehow gave the impression that it was traveling blind, navigating mostly by luck. Hannah and Jamie brought up the rear, neither of them eager to get too close to the simulant. Part of it was simply the desire to avoid collision with the clumsy simulant--but that was far from all of it.

  Hannah's subconscious had already decided the sim was not an intelligent being, but instead a thing, an object. It was a machine, like a bicycle, a computer, or a coat hook. There was no need to treat it with the respect due to an Elder Race xeno. But it wasn't that simple. Echoes, whispers, of the old Frankenstein story flitted about in her memory as she watched the awkward, lumbering thing moving ahead of them. She wasn't so sure how much the sim would facilitate communications--but it was going to do just fine at giving them nightmares.

  Kelly was taking them on a roundabout route through the maze of corridors that made up BSI's orbiting headquarters, no doubt doing her best to keep their two unusual guests out of sight. She was leading them at a brisk enough pace that Hannah nearly missed one or two turns. At last, Kelly hustled them all into an elevator. The simulant walked straight into the back of the elevator car and stopped, with its face--or where its face would have been--right up against the rear wall. All three humans, and Brox as well, managed to find ways to get as far away from it as possible.

  They reached the docking-bay deck and the elevator doors opened. They got off--the simulant simply walking in reverse rather than turning around first. We're going to be cooped up in a starship with this thing for a week? Hannah asked herself as she watched it do a sort of three-point turn before following along behind Brox.

  That was the usual routine, at any rate. Get the briefing, rush like hell for the docking bay, and boost off to the crime scene, who knows how many light-years away. The only snag was that the journey from one star system to another took days, sometimes weeks. That was the reason for the hurried departure. You had to hurry, precisely because the trip would take so long.

  But this time, Commander Kelly was taking things to an extreme. No briefing at all. No time to gather data or ask any questions. Only as they arrived at Docking Bay 27 did it dawn on Hannah that Bay 27 wasn't even big enough to service the Sherlock-class ships, the smallest interstellar craft the BSI used.

  No briefing and no starship, either, Hannah realized with a shock as they entered the bay and saw the vehicle in it. She had heard Kelly talk about it, but it hadn't really registered. They were going aboard a jeep-tug, a pocket-sized vehicle made for the interorbit transfers of cargo or personnel. It was designed so its interior could be configured to carry any needed combination of cargo and people. At the moment, it was rigged with four human passenger chairs, and a sort of couch or pad for Brox. A collection of gear and supplies was stowed in the back, held down by cargo netting. Kelly was already climbing aboard the little craft.

  "Hold it a second," said Jamie, standing in the docking bay and peering through the hatch of the jeep-tug. "Ah, ma'am? Commander Kelly? You're going on this mission?"

  Kelly looked startled. "Me? No. No, of course not. I'm going to chauffeur you to your long-distance ride. That way we don't have to waste time or take chances by briefing a pilot. Come on. Get aboard."

  Brox was already halfway up the ramp. Jamie and Hannah followed him inside, sat down, and strapped in. The simulant paused at the base of the ramp, standing stock-still for a moment. Then it very deliberately leaned forward at its ankles--or at least where its ankles would be--before heading up the ramp, adjusting its internal balance to compensate for moving up a ramp. It clomped aboard, straightened up, then paused and seemed to consider the sight of Hannah and Jamie seated in the forward pair of passenger seats. It then shifted to look forward at Commander Kelly in the pilot's seat.

  It shuffled awkwardly toward the second pair of passenger seats and positioned itself so it was standing, facing forward, directly in front of the starboard seat. It paused for a moment again, then abruptly folded itself at the knees and waist and dropped heavily into the seat.

  Brox laid himself down on his cushioning pad and strapped himself in. "You will observe that our new friend is already adapting to human behaviors. Although it has no visible eyes, it has started to point its face at things it needs to look at. And I am fairly certain that is the first time it has ever actually sat in any sort of human chair or seat or bench."

  "How exciting," said Jamie. "Our little android is all grown-up."

  "I suppose that's nice to know," Hannah said. "Though I don't see what good it does us."

  "Not a great deal--yet. But it would be worth bearing in mind that our friend is changing, developing--and doing it rapidly. You would be wise not to take it for granted or underestimate it."

  "So noted," said Hannah. Brox had a point. The simulant was, in effect, learning to move like a human being, to act like a human being. And the more it moved like a human, the more likely they were to accept it, ignore it, perhaps even speak openly in front of it. They would have to assume it was capable of remembering or recording vision and sound and could transmit it or play it back later for its masters.

  "Time to get moving, people," said Kelly. "I'm going to close the hatch. Everyone strapped in? I mean, except for the simulant?"

  "We're all secure. What about the sim?" Jamie asked. "Should I try to latch its belts? It's just got those flipper things where its hands should be. I don't think it could work the mechanism, even if we managed to give it the idea."

  "No," said Kelly. "It would probably just sit there passively if you tried--but it might have some sort of hair-trigger self-defense programming. Get too close and it might go nuts on us. I'll just fly us nice and easy. With a little luck, it won't need a seat belt. Besides, it looks like it would be pretty hard to damage. Here we go. Seali
ng the hatch."

  The ramp retracted, the hatch swung itself to and sealed itself, and Kelly cast the little craft off from the side of the Center Transit Station. She moved them slowly away, piloting with the self-conscious precision of a senior officer who was not only out of practice but also nervous about making a spectacular mistake in front of subordinates and visitors.

  Hannah had one thing at least figured out. The normal procedure would have been for them to board a BSI interstellar-capable ship from one of the docking bays and depart directly for their transit-jump point. But Brox 231 must have come from somewhere, on some sort of ship--presumably his own. And if Kelly had been a little twitchy about having a Kendari Inquirist in the BSI Bullpen, she no doubt would have been ten times as unhappy to have a Kendari Inquiry Service starship docking to BSI HQ. Brox must have left his ship in a parking orbit and come to the station on this or some other jeep-tug.

  But Hannah didn't even know for sure that Brox had arrived via starship. There were Kendari installations on Center, the planet that Center Transit Station orbited. They might be about to dock with some sort of ground-to-orbit vehicle.

  The jeep-tug boosted away from the station. Hannah checked the time. "Well, that's a new personal record for me," she said. "We're departing forty-two minutes after the completion of briefing."

  "What briefing?" Jamie asked. "We haven't been told anything."

  "All right," said Hannah. "Two personal records. Fastest departure, and departure with the least information."

  "The second one is going to be tough to break," Jamie said sourly. "How can you get less than zero?" He swiveled around in his seat to look back toward Brox. "What more do you know that you can tell us?"

  "I know a great deal more," said Brox. "In fact, it's safe to say that I know all there is to know at this stage. But I cannot tell you any of it--or even tell you why I cannot tell you. There was no time to work out a nuanced agreement that considered how much or how little information I could give out, or how much detail I could provide."

  "All or nothing, huh?" Jamie said.

  "Can you at least tell us when you'll be able to say more?" Hannah asked.

  "No. Absurd, of course, but there it is. There simply was no chance to work out how I should respond to any such perfectly sensible questions. In fact, I was specifically instructed to make the most literal-minded possible interpretation of the agreement."

  It was obvious that there wasn't any point in asking with whom Brox had negotiated, or when, or where. Hannah gave up--and shook her head to Jamie when he opened his mouth to prod further. No point in pushing Brox too far and getting him feeling put-upon and out of sorts before the case had even begun.

  The only viewports on the jeep-tug were at the forward end, in the pilot's station, and Hannah couldn't see a great deal. She turned her head to look forward and peek over Kelly's shoulder through the pilot's viewport.

  At first there was very little to see besides the background of stars rolling past as the jeep-tug came about to its new heading. Then the lateral movement stopped, and the stars stood still in the viewport. One bright dot of silvery light, right in the center of the field of view, seemed larger than the others. It had to be the ship that they were heading toward. Hannah was mildly surprised that she was able to spot it with her naked eye so easily. It must either be awfully close to Center Transit Station--a lot closer than they usually permitted uncleared ships--or else it had to be big. She craned her neck around to check Kelly's nav display and gasped. Very, very big. For it to be visible at their present range, the ship would have to be at least as big as Center Transit Station itself, and CTS was something like a kilometer across.

  "Caught you peeking, Hannah," Kelly said, glancing over her shoulder. "That's enough backseat driving for now."

  "Ah, yes, ma'am. Sorry."

  "Don't apologize. I want my Senior Special Agents to be inquisitive. But I'm under some to-be-taken-literally orders myself. However, now that we're all safely aboard and clear of the Station, I can tell you a few things that aren't covered by those orders--information from sources other than those covered by the keep-quiet orders."

  Kelly checked her controls, locked them, then swiveled around in her seat to face her passengers. "Seems that about three hours ago, Center System Defense Command got a QuickBeam message from a certain party, a trusted party, on Tifinda, the Vixan home world. All sorts of authenticators and encryption sequences and so on, to prove it was from who it claimed to be from, and warning us that a very big, very fast ship was about to arrive, and that it was not, repeat not, an attack. The message included coordinates for the ship's arrival in system and flight-path data for its transit through the system to planetary orbit around Center.

  "It was obvious that there was some sort of mistake, as the data showed that the ship would arrive about five times closer to CenterStar than any possible transit point, and showed the ship accelerating to more than ninety percent of the speed of light just about instantaneously, heading straight for the planet Center, then stopping dead, decelerating to orbital velocity in less than a heartbeat.

  "Then, sure enough, a ship arrived exactly at the predicted, utterly impossible, coordinates and flew right down the middle of the couldn't-be-right flight path--and, to make a long story short, it's the ship you see straight ahead of us. If not for the warning message from the certain party, Center System Defense Command would have--and should have--opened fire. My guess is that there were plenty of twitchy fingers near the triggers even with the warning." Kelly frowned thoughtfully. "It's damned lucky they didn't fire. Their weapons probably couldn't have hit anything moving that fast anyway, but just shooting at that ship could have made things about six times worse than they already are."

  "More than six times worse, I assure you, Commander Kelly," said Brox. "It would likely have meant war with the--ah, owners of that ship. That war would not have lasted long, or gone well for you. It was likely lucky for my people as well. In my opinion, at least, whatever advantage there might have been for us Kendari, if humanity were eliminated, it could only have been short-term. It would have been a question of where and when, not if, there would be a flash-point incident for us as well."

  That was a bit of cold-blooded analysis that Hannah could have done without hearing.

  "You, ah, used the past tense there," said Jamie. "So if Defense Command had taken a potshot at that ship earlier today, humanity would already have been eliminated?"

  "Oh, no. Not yet. Not so quickly. It would likely take the Elder Races almost a quarter of an Earth year, at the very least. But, as I said, that would do us Kendari little good if they next turned their attention toward us--and the odds of some peripheral incident or another getting out of hand and causing that would be very high indeed. Or else some Elder Race species might just decide on its own that getting rid of one Younger Race species was really just a good start--and why not wipe out both of the dreary little nuisances, so long as they were at it?"

  Jamie furrowed his eyebrows. "So you believe it's likely that both of our species avoided extinction this morning, and nobody knows about it?"

  "A few beings know about it," said Brox, "and one can never be certain what would have happened, but yes, that is essentially the case."

  "Well, no point, and no time, to worry about it now," said Hannah. She pointed out the viewport. "The Kendari don't have ships like that. Up until five minutes ago, I'd have said nobody does. Where did it come from?"

  "It's a Vixan ship," said Kelly. "And nobody knew about it--except the Defense Command--until it showed up. Apparently, they don't use it much. They can't afford to. Requires too much energy expenditure. Too expensive to operate, except in emergencies."

  "A ship the Vixa can't afford to fly?" Hannah asked. "Ouch." Both the Younger Races, humans and Kendari alike, had, over the years, come to assume that the myriad Elder Races had the technology to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.

  In a way, even the apparent exceptions
proved the rule. The Reqwar Pavlat might be incapable of decrypting genetic kill switches--but only because they had deliberately renounced whole fields of knowledge in deference to their traditions. And it was not that the Metrans were unable to extend their own life spans, so much as that they so firmly believed it was impossible that they did not try--and once they did try, they succeeded.

  And even those were examples of cultures that were unwilling to alter themselves--not unable. The belief in Elder Race omnipotence had more to do with outward-looking technology--physics, power generation, transportation, speed, manufacturing. The idea that any such thing might be difficult or expensive for any Elder Race species was startling, but for the Vixa, it was only more so.

  If there was a superpower among the Elder Races, it would have to be the Vixa. Their ships, their machines, their cities, were the gleaming exemplars of what humans, at least, expected of a race of all-powerful aliens. The idea that any sort of spacecraft would be difficult for them to afford was daunting enough. That someone, presumably the Vixa themselves, had dispatched a Kendari aboard such a ship, and sent it to collect not just a couple of BSI agents, but, specifically and by name, Senior Special Agent Hannah Wolfson and Special Agent James Mendez, went well into the overwhelming and intimidating range.

  The ship out there was getting closer--and larger. Hannah watched as it grew from a point of light to a fat dot to a featureless golden sphere, gleaming in the darkness. It was obvious that she had grossly underestimated its size. It was far, far bigger than any such paltry object as Center Transit Station. Some objects that size were classified as minor planets.

  No one aboard the jeep-tug spoke as the Vixan ship swelled in the viewport, and filled it completely. There, at last, at its center, there was a tiny flicker of movement as an access hatch irised open. "Second time today I've had to fly into that little hole," Kelly grumbled as she swung her seat around, locked it down, and concentrated on her controls.