Final Inquiries Read online

  "Three, I couldn't call my normal liaison officer. She was lying dead on the floor at my feet. I could call in Saint Brox--but he doesn't like me too much, and the deader is his girlfriend. That might make him a little extra angry at me--plus it also makes him a pretty good suspect. Four, the ambassador is my direct superior, it's blindingly obvious right off the bat that this thing is going to mushroom into as big a deal as it has--and I'm supposed to advise him first in an emergency. Something that might blow the doors off the Pentam negotiations and maybe start a war ought to go into that category. Good enough reasons?"

  "Good enough," Wolfson said evenly. "And that answer gets all those very reasonable reasons on the record right away, instead of leaving the point hanging for six months until the board of inquiry or whatever. So you call the ambassador. How does that conversation go?"

  "The ambassador can be a little--well, not slow on the uptake, but sometimes if he doesn't like the news, you have to give it to him more than once. It took a minute or two for him to really understand what I was telling him."

  "What, exactly, did you tell him?"

  "As much as I knew, which wasn't much. That Emelza 401 was dead, sprawled out on the floor of the main ops room. He asked me 'are you sure?' two or three different times, and I kept telling him yes, I was. I think he was hoping it would all be a misunderstanding. If he kept double-checking enough times, somehow Emelza would wake up and that would be that. Finally I convinced him that I wasn't mistaken. Then he got decisive. He ordered me to leave everything untouched, to do nothing else but get out of the joint ops center and meet him at the entrance. He said he was going to call the Kendari whatzit--whatever they call him instead of ambassador."

  "The diplomatic xenologist."

  "Yeah. Him. So our ambassador cut comm with me. I stood up, went through the inner and outer blast doors, locking up behind me, and waited there at the human-side entrance for the ambassador."

  "Did you photograph the corpse or the crime scene? Do any sort of crime scene work at all?"

  "No. I didn't have a camera, or any other equipment with me, and even if I had, the ambassador gave me a direct order to get out of there at once. Once I was out of the ops center, it was sealed off--at least from our side."

  "And that's it." Her voice was flat, hard, unconvinced.

  "That's it. I know it doesn't seem like much, but you and I have spent about ten times longer talking about my finding the body than it took for it to happen."

  "All right," she said. "We're done. At least with that topic. Let's play a new game. Let's say that we all totally agree that you didn't do it. So now we're not interrogator and sort-of-suspect. Now it's agent to agent. Talking shop. Who did it? You've been locked up here with nothing to do but think about it. What's your theory?"

  "Zamprohna," Frank said instantly. "I have been thinking about it, a lot. Maybe not him, personally, but maybe one or two--or three or four--of his true believers." This time, he didn't care if he sounded eager. He was eager. If she was pumping him for information, trying to get him to make a slip, so be it. There were things she needed to hear from an agent with local knowledge and experience. She obviously knew it herself.

  "Why him?"

  "Look, all the info I have is from that thirty seconds over the body," said Frank. "You probably know more. I hope you know more. But from what I know, it's not just that Emelza was killed. It's how she was killed, and where. She died from ingesting a substance associated with humans, and literally right in the middle of the building that symbolized cooperation with humans. It's a cold-blooded attempt to bust up not just the Pentam deal, but any shot at human-Kendari cooperation."

  "I thought you didn't like aliens that much yourself."

  "I don't. I really don't like the Kendari. I've cleaned up after a few fights with them. But there's such a thing as dealing with the available reality. They exist. We have to live with that. What are we going to do? Kill them all to give ourselves lebensraum? My family was on the receiving end of that a zillion years back in World War II. Most people these days barely know what the Nazis were. Good. Better than our deciding to imitate them." He fiddled with his empty coffee mug. "Bet you're surprised to hear me talk like that, huh?"

  "Not so surprised as you might think, Frank. But go on. Why Zamprohna?"

  "It could have been one of the other xenophobe groups, but Zamprohna's got the biggest group, the most money, the loudest voice, and the shadiest past of all of them. And he's got thirty or forty of his people with him--including some guys I won't call goons, because they're too smooth for that. Ex-military. Special Forces types. They could know how our security works, what our procedures are, that sort of thing. Heck, they could be the ones screwing up our entry key systems. Getting us used to not trusting it could be part of softening us up so they could pull this stunt. Those guys are good. I think probably three or four of them working together could bypass our security, get in there, do the job, and get out."

  "Three or four team members making it look like one person did it?" asked Wolfson. "Maybe. It would make a few impossible-looking details easier to arrange. Plus Zamprohna doesn't like the BSI any more than we like him. If they could blow up human-Kendari cooperation, making it look like one of our guys did it would just be the icing on the cake."

  Aside from breakfast and coffee, the hints in those words were the first things Hannah Wolfson had given away since she came through the door. She stared at him thoughtfully for about the count of five. "All right, then," she said. "You might want to be ready for us to have another little chat--on the off chance that I just happen to think of some tiny little detail in your story that doesn't exactly make perfect sense. But one last not-quite-leading question. It might seem a little strange, but bear with me."

  She reached into her pocket and dumped a pile of pens and pencils and markers and so on out on the table. "I tried to grab one of each kind I found in the main embassy BSI office," she said. "And please notice I've had them in my pocket and touched them and so on if you're afraid of my trying to get your prints on something incriminating. You don't even have to touch them. Just point. If you remember--what kind of marker did you use to write on the bottom of your mug?"

  Frank looked at Hannah, not at the pens. "I hope it looks like I'm staring at you and wondering if you're nuts," he said. "Because that's the expression I'm trying for."

  "You're about the third or fourth person I've asked to indulge me this morning," said Hannah. "And I'm asking very nicely. Very nicely. And I hope it looks like I'm staring you straight in the eye, and telling you that I'm trying to save your life--because that's the expression--and the goal--I'm trying for."

  They locked eyes for a count of ten, a count of twenty, before Frank looked down, looked away, looked anywhere but at her. He shifted his eyes to the clutter of pens on the table, and grabbed at one, very deliberately touching it, holding it, making all the fingerprints anyone might want. If she's inviting me to demonstrate how little I trust her, why play along? "This kind," he said. "That's the kind I use to mark stuff."

  Wolfson snatched up that pen, let the camera have a good look at it, then stuffed it in her shirt pocket right next to the camera. The rest she scooped up and dumped on the tray. She gathered up his plate, his eating utensils, hooked his coffee mug through the handle with one finger, and got them all back on the tray as well. She stuffed her datapad in her pocket, picked up the tray, and stood.

  "Thanks, Frank," she said. "Thanks for everything. It's been great." She turned and headed for the door. She paused, a bit theatrically, just as the door slid open. "Oh--by the way," she said. "Stay clear of the joint ops center, and your own office. But other than that--you're free to go." And she turned back, and walked out, and the door slid shut behind her.

  Frank gave it the count of ten before he exhaled in a long, drawn-out sigh of relief. Well, he had thought he knew how to play interrogation. That was, beyond doubt, the most polite, most friendly, most respectful working-over he had
ever gotten. Like being skinned alive during a massage.

  Thank God she's on our side, Frank thought.

  But that only brought him up face-to-face with one more uncomfortable question. What about you, Frank? he asked himself. Whose side are you on, exactly?

  SIXTEEN

  ENGINEERING RESPONSE

  Jamie scraped the tamper-detecting tape off the door to Chief Engineer Subramanian's stateroom, entered the unlock code into the keypad--and didn't get any further than that on his own.

  The door slid open, and a young, very tall, very thin, eager-looking man with South Asian features was looking down at him. "Greetings!" he said. "Please, please do come in."

  Jamie stepped in cautiously and looked around the tiny stateroom, half-expecting the real chief engineer to be tucked away somewhere. This fellow looked too young to be chief of anything. "Ah, you're Dr. Subramanian?"

  "Yes, yes, that's right. Of course. Otherwise, why would I be in his room?" Subramanian asked as he pulled out a chair for the visitor and gestured him into it. "And you're the BSI agent they sent the Eminent Concordance to fetch. Am I right?"

  "Ah, yes you are." Jamie also felt as if he had to think back to the flight. So much had gone on since then that it seemed like something that had happened long ago. "Is there, ah, somewhere I could set this down?"

  "What? Oh, yes, of course." Subramanian cleared books and paperwork off the cabin's tiny worktable, and Jamie set down the tray. "Ah, breakfast! So very kind of you. Will you join me?"

  "Ah, no, thanks. I've already eaten. But you please go ahead."

  "Oh, I will--in a moment. Please, be seated."

  Jamie got himself a chair, and reflected this was the most enthusiastic interrogation subject he had ever met. "I suppose you know why I am here," he said.

  "Oh, yes indeed," he said, reaching out for the teapot to pour himself a cup. "I've been here waiting like--like a child whose birthday party is about to start. I have been so eager to get my present."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "My present. Well, of course not mine, really. Ours. For all of us." Subramanian suddenly looked worried, alarmed. "You do, ah, have something for me, don't you? That is why you came."

  "Ah, I'm, ah, sorry, Dr. Subramanian. I really don't know what you mean. I'm here to question you about what happened two nights ago."

  "What? Oh dear. This is terrible." He looked down at the table, pulled his hand back from his teacup, then looked up at Jamie. "But I have read your standard operations manual. I have looked into the history. I know what equipment is supposed to be in your Ready-To-Go duffel. The whole reason your service has RTG duffels is to provide a cover story for Operation Paw Washer. In fact, if you look into the history, Paw Washer is half the reason there is the BSI. The whole Bureau is really just there as a cover story for Paw Washer."

  Jamie was starting to feel distinctly alarmed. "Ah, Dr. Subramanian," he said slowly. "I don't know anything about anybody in charge of washing paws. I really have no idea what you're talking about."

  "You don't know about Paw Washer? You didn't activate the device? I thought you were trained and trained and trained to activate it whenever you were in the vicinity of advanced xeno technology."

  And then the light went on. "Oh!" Jamie said. "The gimmick. The gadget in the lining of the duffel bag."

  "Yes--the Passive Wide-Spectrum Sensor Recorder. PWSSR, pronounced Paw Washer."

  "I've heard that one pronounced a little differently," said Jamie.

  "Which is why the program is called Paw Washer," Subramanian said primly. "There is no need for anything rude or unpleasant. But you may call it whatever you like if you turned it on when you went aboard the Eminent Concordance. Did you?"

  "Now I understand you," said Jamie. "That bit about the BSI just being a cover story threw me off. Yes, I activated it. I made a big deal about needing to get rations and clothes out of my RTG bag, and punched the stud to activate the system. I think my partner activated hers as well. She looked at me kind of funny when I insisted on getting things from my bag--but then she did the same herself. We were being observed at the time, and I couldn't ask her about it--and we've been kind of busy since."

  "Your partner? There are two of you here?"

  "That's right."

  "So we have a shot at two recordings. That is excellent news. You have done very well."

  "Ah, Dr. Subramanian--I haven't really done anything about this case yet. We're just getting started."

  "The case? Oh, yes, the murder of that Kendari woman. Most unfortunate. But we must not be distracted by side issues."

  "I think I just have been," said Jamie. "Listen, there's a lot I have to do today. How about we talk about Paw Washer and get that out of the way--and then we go on to this little matter of a murder that seems to have touched off an interstellar incident, okay?"

  "Very well. That seems entirely fair." Subramanian nodded, paused for a second, and then spoke again, very eagerly. "Can you give me the two PWSSR units today?"

  "I doubt it," said Jamie. "As I said, we're kind of busy--and the embassy compound isn't exactly a secure area at the moment. And, ah, you seem to know all about the gadget--a lot more than I do--but there's also a whole security procedure I'm required to follow before I turn over the recording to you."

  "Yes. Yes, you're quite right. That is true," said Subramanian. "Well, it's not as if I could do a full analysis of the data with the equipment I have here in this cabin. The main thing is that we have the data. It will tell us a great deal."

  "Um, it will--if it worked. I pushed the stud and pulled back the tab twice, just the way the training said to do--but I have no idea at all if it worked. It didn't beep or light up an indicator or anything."

  "Of course it didn't! It's a passive system. That's the whole and entire point. And you needn't worry. Those units are built to the maximum possible standards of reliability. If you did the activation sequence properly--and it certainly sounds as if you did--then there is nothing to worry about. We'll have one--perhaps two--complete wide-spectrum recordings of a complete flight sequence of the Eminent Concordance."

  Jamie had a feeling that Hannah and Commander Kelly would be surprised to learn that the Bureau of Special Investigations existed for the sole purpose of providing a plausible excuse for humans to carry around duffel bags with concealed recording equipment, but he did have at least a sketchy understanding of Operation Paw Washer, even if he had never heard of it by that name. The idea was simple: to record all the changes in various local field strengths and power levels produced by advanced xeno technology: everything from simple electromagnetic field strengths to the really esoteric stuff involved in transit-jump technology, in the hopes of using that data to help humans reverse-engineer some advanced gear of their own.

  Jamie had the impression that more than BSI agents and their RTG duffel bags were involved in the program. He also had not the faintest idea if the program had produced any results at all. It wasn't the sort of thing you were supposed to ask too many questions about. But, on the other hand, his job was to ask questions. "Does this sort of thing do any good?" he asked.

  "Oh, my, yes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the data you and your partner collected shaves a solid year off our efforts to catch up with Vixa shipbuilding technology."

  "Gee, great. So we'll get there in ninety-nine hundred and ninety-nine years instead."

  "What? Goodness no. Our projections are that there will be a human-built ship of comparable speed and power within forty years--at the very worst case, within our lifetimes."

  "Are you crazy? Do you know the size of that ship?" Jamie asked.

  "Deadweight, ninety-five percent of it," Subramanian said dismissively. "More than ninety-five. You are assuming that you need something that size in order to go that fast. Quite the opposite. Nearly all of the structure of that vehicle consists of excessive shielding, hyperredundant safety systems, and so on. And that whole business of shunting the command sphere about
--none of that actually contributes to the power or speed of the ship. It just adds mass that requires bigger engines and more power. Eliminate all that nonsense, and you can get the same payload and the same performance in a vehicle that's only a small fraction of the size."

  "So why did the Vixa build the Eminent Concordance so big?"

  "Oh, several reasons, I think. One, to impress the neighbors. Two, because they've done it that way for the last few thousand years. I'm certain the Concordance was based on plans that are older than, say, the human invention of writing. If it's not broken, why fix it? Three, I am not sure their specialists fully understand their own technology anymore--and they are intensely conservative. They would not be confident of any modification. Four, what they have does what they want it to do. Why would they need anything better? But those points are all almost side issues. The primary reason is their absolutely overwhelming demand for safety."

  "What's wrong with being safe?"

  "When it rains, you might hold an umbrella over your head. But would you carry a lightning rod, and work out some complex scheme to see to it that it was continuously grounded? A Vixan spacecraft designer would think you should. He might want you to do it even when it wasn't raining. Except he'd prefer to encapsulate you fully for further protection, and I expect he'd want to put some armor plate around you in case the wind blew down some sort of debris. He'd develop a sort of armored car for you--and he might decide to make it an aircar, so you could fly above the weather. And of course, that would mean you'd need acceleration compensators and a pressurized cabin.

  "But the whole point was to let you take a walk--so the Vixan engineer would include a treadmill, and, in order to provide you with the visual experience of the walk, he'd provide wraparound video screens, receiving real-time feeds sent from a remote robotic unit that was following the route on the ground you would have taken if you had walked. I am barely exaggerating. That is the sort of approach the Vixa take. The goal of a Vixan spacecraft engineer is to keep the occupants safer than they would be staying at home. So where you and I might use an umbrella--which is really for comfort rather than safety--they would likely build an armored aircar."