The Cause of Death Read online

The Thelm, lost in his thoughts, looked up sharply, an irritated expression on his face, quickly covered by a kindly smile that was not entirely real. "Stay calm, wife of my son. Of course we will pursue other possibilities. As Lawkeeper Mendez points out, even he has had next to no time at all to think this through. There may well be other ways, other places. But time is short." He looked back at Jamie, and his expression grew serious again. "If--if--we were to do this thing, many things would have to be accomplished first. Legal arrangements, announcements to the public--that side of the business--leave all that to me."

  "Yes, noble Thelm," said Jamie.

  Hannah frowned. Don't worry, Jamie. The Thelm will also take care of browbeating Georg into saying yes, and then browbeating him into taking his family along. It will be harder--much harder--to bully Marta into going along with it, but I'll bet he can do that, too.

  "Very good," the Thelm was saying. "I promise there will still be work enough for you to do. I assume you would have to contact your government, make whatever arrangements are required at this Penitence place for new arrivals, get various approvals."

  And now, somehow, suddenly, we aren't his allies anymore. We're his subordinates, his staff, Hannah thought, then spoke out loud. "That would be the start of it." Maybe the paperwork angle would be the way to stop this thing. Emphasize those difficulties as well. "Frankly, honored Thelm, I doubt all the arrangements could be made in four days' time--especially if we have to work through QuickBeam messages, and all the time-zone changes between here and the various offices and departments that would be involved."

  "No, I understand all that. But if we--if you--could make a start on all that, a good, substantial start, then I believe that would be enough to bring before the Court of High Crime and arrange a stay of execution. And, of course, Georg would have to be held in custody, once the remainder of the time period allowed for his killing me had expired . . ." The Thelm was lost in thought again for a moment. Hannah felt as if she were watching a master game player studying his board, considering how best to move his pieces--what to sacrifice and what to protect.

  Then he came back to himself, just as the car was approaching the Keep. "Pardon me," he said. "There is suddenly a great deal to think about. I would be most appreciative, Lawkeeper Mendez, Lawkeeper Wolfson, if you could get started on making those arrangements--on a contingency basis, of course. And, needless to say, if you, Lawkeeper Mendez--if any of you--come up with a better solution, come to me, personally, with it--at any time of day or night."

  But Hannah could see, clear as day, that his mind was made up. The contingency was already reality, as far as the Thelm was concerned. He would make it happen. In his mind, it had already happened. He was probably running through possible candidates for his designated heir.

  The car drew to a halt in the courtyard of the Keep, and instantly a guard had the door open and the Thelm was out of the car and being escorted inside.

  Hannah, Jamie, Marta, and Zahida got out of the car and watched the Thelm walk toward the main ceremonial entrance of his Keep.

  "You shouldn't have given him that idea," said Zahida to Jamie. "Now he'll latch on to it, and never let go. I know exile. I know how hard it is, how little choice even a 'voluntary' exile really has. But now that the Thelm is focused on it, even if someone comes up with another idea, another solution--he'll want to stay with this one. No matter who gets hurt."

  Hannah looked at Zahida, and was startled by the anger in her face as she watched her Thelm retreat into his Keep. "No matter who," she said again.

  The ornate doors swung open ahead of the Thelm. He stepped through them, and they swung shut again, with a low, solid boom that echoed across the courtyard.

  The Thelm was back in his Keep.

  NINETEENDEATH

  The two agents were alone. Hannah looked around their quarters in the Keep with the eye of a practiced traveler, seeing what sort of place she'd be calling home for the next little while. "Well," she said at last, "whatever else has gone wrong today, at least our accommodations have improved." Jamie didn't answer. He just slumped in a chair and stared at nothing at all.

  Hannah ignored him for the moment. If he felt bad, he should, and she was in no mood to play cheerleader. Instead, she indulged herself in a brief exploration of their apartments.

  There was a large common room, a proper washroom, and, best of all, two small but private bedrooms. The main room was large, with polished stone walls and heavy planked-wood floors, and high, arched ceilings. There was only one tiny window per room, each about eighty centimeters high by forty wide, almost too high to look out of. The window had sturdy steel bars, too narrow to get through, set into the interior sides of the window frames. Skillful interior lighting kept the rooms from feeling claustrophobic despite the small windows. The rooms were appointed with quite credible human-style furniture; more or less real chairs, tables, and beds. Everything was a copy of a copy of a copy, but that didn't matter.

  A late supper had been waiting for them in the common room when they arrived, plates filled with better food than anything they had seen thus far on Reqwar. However, neither of them was in much of a mood to enjoy a good meal. Hannah sat down to eat regardless. Jamie took his cue from her and started in as well. They ate in silence. Hannah forced her food down out of a sense of duty, because agents in the field ate when they could, because they never knew when the next meal might come. Jamie seemed to be eating with about the same attitude. The two of them worked through the food in front of them without saying anything much.

  But Hannah knew she had some other duties beside keeping herself fed--such as a duty to herself and to the mission to say what had to be said. It couldn't be avoided any longer. She finished eating, set down her utensils, and leaned back in her chair. "Zahida was right," she said. "You should never have given the Thelm the idea of using Penitence."

  "I know," Jamie said quietly. "It was a mistake. A huge mistake. I knew it was the wrong move before I was finished saying I had an idea--but it was already too late by then."

  Hannah felt a brief and irrational annoyance at Jamie for denying her the argument she was all set to have with him. She was sorely tempted to pick the fight anyway, just so she could give him a good yelling-at. Stars and Space knew he deserved it. But it could accomplish nothing--and would almost certainly interfere with their ability to deal with the situation. Better to be cold, analytic, brutally logical. "You fouled up," she said. "Hugely. Massively. I'm not going to try to make it look pretty to you, now, or in the mission report--if we live long enough to file one. You've done very well, otherwise, on this mission. But you could have just created a disaster. Interstellar incident stuff. It's going to take some really good work, from both of us--plus a run of luck--in order to undo the damage this has done."

  "I know," Jamie said. "I know."

  She resisted the temptation to beat on him harder. There was too much at stake. "So what do we do now?" she asked. She looked down at her utensil. It wasn't quite a fork, but it served as one--but you had to be careful with it, or the side-pointing prongs would stab you on the inside of your mouth. And what the devil were the side-pointing prongs for, anyway? So many things were like that here--almost, but not quite, like what you expected--and the differences could easily turn around and bite you.

  "I don't know," Jamie replied. "It would be nice if at least one of us could dream up another way out. Is there any other place in human-controlled space where you can go in, but can't ever get out? A place not as bad as Penitence?"

  Hannah laughed bitterly. "That sounds like a straight line for a joke about whatever city or town you don't like much. But no. I don't think there is. That's what makes Penitence a semiplausible solution, if you don't think about it too hard," she said. "It's a real one-way trip. No one has ever come back. If we can give the Thelm that part of it, some other way than exile to a penal colony, then he'd be glad to forget Penitence."

  "Death's the only guaranteed one-way trip that I can thin
k of just at the moment," said Jamie.

  But would it have to be Georg's death? asked a nasty little voice in the base of Hannah's skull. She didn't want to listen to such ideas. She stood up from the table, collected her plate, and carried it to the small gallery to one side of the common room. "Oh, well," she said. "They wanted us to pull a rabbit out of our hats, and you did. It's just a mangy, ugly, bad-tempered rabbit, that's all."

  "So let's hope we can reach in again and pull out a nicer-looking specimen--is that it?" Jamie asked ruefully.

  "Best suggestion I can come up with right now," Hannah said. She knew she ought to yell at Jamie more, and longer--but they were both exhausted, and anyway, she doubted he could feel much worse about things than he already did. "I suggest we get some sleep and start trying to come up with our nicer-looking rabbit tomorrow. It's been a long day. Let's see what we come up with in the morning."

  "All right," said Jamie. "I'm too tired to think straight anyway--and that looked a lot like a regular human-style bed in my room. I'm going to sleep on the problem."

  "Good," said Hannah. "But do me a favor. If you come up with any other brilliant suggestions, clear them with me first, okay?"

  Jamie's face reddened, and he nodded, his eyes cast down. "Okay," he said, "I promise I will. Believe me, I'm not going to pull that stunt twice."

  "Then let's both go get some sleep," said Hannah. "I'll finish tearing your head off in the morning."

  * * *

  Immediately after Georg Hertzmann made his farewells, Allabex and Cinnabex secured all entrances to the warehouse, recalled their subcomponents, completed all short-term tasks and interim backups, then ended all other volitional activity in order to consult with each other intensively.

  Allabex: "Events are moving to a crisis. The arrival of the two human investigators has acted as a catalyst."

  Cinnabex: "Things would be happening rapidly even if they had not arrived. Georg Hertzmann either must fulfill his obligations within four days, or else be put to death. Events would move to a climax even without the agents."

  Allabex: "Granted. Nonetheless, they have already altered events significantly, to the point where we have no reliable basis for prediction."

  Cinnabex: "I do not concur. While short-term events are difficult to predict, there is no longer any plausible medium-term scenario in which Georg Hertzmann returns to work with us. Our project will therefore likely lose the political support, the technical expertise, and the human business contacts that he provided. Further, it will be far more difficult to recruit the human technicians upon which our plans rely. It is also increasingly likely that we will lose the contribution made by Marta Hertzmann. However, as her part in the project is nearly complete, this is not as significant an issue."

  Allabex: "[Pause]. You are correct. My analysis focused far too much on the short term, and on the fates of individuals."

  Allabex: "Without the benefits that Georg Hertzmann could bring to the project, it cannot succeed as currently planned. If he is killed, then I believe it highly probably that our own continuities of existence could be endangered. Furthermore, there is increased stress on and danger to the terrestrial ecosystem with every passing moment. Soon it will reach the point of irretrievable failure--if it has not done so already. Irrational beings might blame us for the failure--and there is no shortage of irrational beings here. I believe we must commence our emergency plan at once. We must act now and not wait until the Hertzmanns are removed from the scene and we ourselves are in peril."

  Allabex: "[Pause]. [Pause]. I signal most reluctant concurrence."

  Cinnabex: "Let us begin at once."

  * * *

  Jamie got between the covers in his nearly-like-a-regular bed, and found himself staring at the ceiling.

  His almost offhand suggestion was likely to uproot an entire family, sentence them all to life in a hellish place, and perhaps change the course of history on Reqwar. It was terrifying that a few words from a glorified police officer could change things that much. Might some future careless choice or act of his, something he never even thought again of afterward, perhaps wasn't even aware of doing--change everything for some group of total strangers and innocents?

  Maybe Pax Humana's ideas about nonviolence didn't go far enough. Maybe noninterference would be safer. Or even nonaction. Sit still, do nothing, say nothing, take no chances, take no blame, let someone else deal with the mess. Absurd and impossible, of course, but quite an attractive idea to Jamie at the moment. He left it at that as exhaustion won its fight with worry, and he dropped off to sleep.

  * * *

  Half an hour after getting to bed, Hannah relearned something she knew all too well already. Life was completely unfair. She could tell by the low, peaceful snores coming from the other small bedroom that Jamie, guilty of causing all sorts of trouble, was deeply and completely asleep, while she, guilty of nothing at all, was utterly and irrevocably awake.

  She cursed silently to herself. As long as I'm awake, I might as well start paying for Jamie's sins. She had been staring at the ceiling, mentally drafting a signal to BSI HQ, trying to find an acceptable way of asking if they could please make a reservation for two adults and one child on Penitence. She might as well get up and do it for real. She toyed, for a moment, with the idea of making Jamie draft the request himself in the morning. But somehow, forcing Jamie to write the thing, even forcing him to do long-distance battle with the bureaucrats, didn't really seem quite in proportion with little Moira Hertzmann's having to spend the rest of her life in a living hell like Penitence. Such a trifling punishment wouldn't fit the crime. It would do worse--it would trivialize the crime. Besides, this was the sort of drafting she was better at than he was. She got back out of bed and got to work.

  * * *

  A few minutes later she was standing in the small galley area of the main room, getting some coffee made while she mentally struggled to find some way to say what needed to be said. The devil of it was that what the Thelm had said was all true--if the cost of saving a world from climate collapse was the exile of three people to an unpleasant situation, then surely that was an equitable bargain. But what if Georg wasn't willing to cooperate? The assumption inherent in Jamie's idea was that he would be a willing sacrificial lamb. And Jamie's idea had been to send him, alone. Georg Hertzmann might be willing to accept that, in order to save Reqwar from the Thelek, and from the Kendari's inept genetic engineering. But what if, instead of one man nobly and willingly sacrificing himself, they had to pack off three unwilling, violently protesting victims? How would that play on Reqwar? Or on Earth, or Center? Or with Pax Humana?

  And, of course, they only had the word of the Kendari's competitors that Kendari-hired gene engineers would fail. Hannah had been up against the Kendari enough times to know they played rough, and played to win, enough to know that she didn't much like them--but that didn't mean they were bad at genetic decryption.

  For that matter, Jamie's idea assumed that the human-Stannlar collaboration could or would go forward without Georg's presence. Suppose the work simply couldn't go on without him? Or what if the Stannlar could do the work, but refused to do so if their partner was exiled?

  There seemed no end to the holes in Jamie's clever little solution. All of those flaws, and more, would occur to her superiors as soon as their signal arrived. She and Jamie would have to be prepared with answers for all of them. It was going to be a long slog ahead, and an uncertain result.

  The coffee was finished. She poured herself a cup and went to the window, reaching through the iron bars to undo the catch on the glass window outside. She swung the window open to get some air into the room. It was a cool, crisp night, the air full of fitful breezes that seemed to rush up out of nowhere, promise to do great things, then vanish before they accomplished much of anything.

  She took a sip of her coffee--and frowned at the flavor. No, not the flavor. The flavor was all right--it was the aroma of the coffee that was off. It smelled overcook
ed, even badly burned. No. Worse than that. Like burned wood and plastic--

  With a start, she realized that the smell wasn't coming from the coffee at all, but from the open window, the tendrils of wind-carried smoke whipping past the window.

  Smoke! In the instant she realized what must be happening, an alarm began to hoot, letting off a bloodcurdling mechanical scream that made most human-made alarms seem like background noise. She rushed for the door of Jamie's room to roust him out--but the alarm had done the job of waking him. The bedroom door swung open and Jamie stumbled out, carrying his shoes and still pulling his pants back on.

  "Fire!" Hannah cried out, before he had the chance to ask what the alarm was. "Fire somewhere close. We've got to get out of here."

  The main lighting died just as they stepped out into the corridor, leaving the two of them stumbling forward as best they could until a set of lurid green emergency lights kicked in. Hannah spotted a flashing sign just ahead, and decided it must lead toward the exit. She went that way, Jamie behind her, with the wisps of smoke in the corridor growing thicker and heavier, minute by minute.

  They literally bumped into one frightened Pavlat, and soon encountered a crowd of them--servants of the Keep, technicians, specialists, all of them headed in a fast and orderly way toward the exit. Hannah was surprised by just how many Pavlats had been in the Keep to start with.

  They merged into the stream of foot traffic and allowed themselves to be carried along by it. Hannah reached out and grabbed Jamie's arm hard, determined that the two of them not be separated in the crowd.

  Then suddenly, they were outside, in the night and the dark, with the wind whipping by them, and the sharp cold air stinging their skin. The main lights were out, but more emergency lighting was powered up outside, providing just enough illumination to guide them well clear of the Keep.

  Smoke and flame billowed out of the windows of one of the Keep's upper stories, throwing an angry yellow-red light on the crowd below. The steady green emergency lighting and the flickering, leaping reds and oranges of the fire seemed to do battle with each other as one, then the other colored the crowd, the landscape, the night.