Final Inquiries Read online

  "I hate umbrellas. I wear a hat when it rains--if it's raining really hard."

  "Don't tell the Vixa. You'd scare them to death."

  "I sure wouldn't want to do that. They've been so neighborly and everything. But you've just told me why they overbuild. That doesn't mean we can catch up with them any time soon."

  "True enough. One is not directly connected to the other. There is a psychological element, which you have just demonstrated. You assume that we could never catch up with them in any reasonable amount of time. Let us just say that sort of attitude doesn't make us catch up faster." Subramanian shrugged. "On the other hand, there are many who believe that the survival of the human race requires us to keep very, very quiet about any advances we might make. The last thing we want to do is appear to be a threat before we are able to defend ourselves."

  "Yeah," said Jamie with feeling. "I've been deep inside that argument, believe me. So what you're saying is that we're making a great deal more progress than we let on?"

  "Oh, I would never suggest such a thing directly," Subramanian said with a smile. "You must draw your own conclusions. But Paw Washer is part of a larger whole. We are learning. And there does not seem to be any fundamental reason why we must settle for merely pulling even with the Elder Races. It would appear that there are technologies far beyond what they have, and not so far out of reach.

  "And I will make one other suggestion. There are two circumstances that make our situation unusual, if not unique. One is that we emerged into interstellar civilization more or less at the same moment as the Kendari, giving us someone to compete against. Competition also speeds up technical progress. As does the other circumstance. For various reasons, both we and the Kendari have come to know that other 'Younger Races' have popped up from time to time--and then been wiped out--apparently, because one or more of the Elder Races did feel threatened. Fear is also an excellent motivator."

  Jamie nodded absently. Strange for a man who was full of such enthusiasms to scare you to death. But perhaps more to the point, Subramanian had completely derailed what was supposed to be an interrogation--or at least supposed to look like one. "All very interesting," he said. And it occurred to him too late that they were going to have to suppress the sound on the pocket camera's recording and blur Subramanian's voice enough to prevent lip-reading before they shared it with the Kendari. "But I came here to discuss a different subject--your movements two nights ago."

  "Ah. Yes. Of course. Quite simple, really. I ate an early dinner at the Snack Shack--where else is there to eat? I got there just about at 1900 hours, then walked across the compound with the ambassador. We went straight to his office to discuss repair and upgrade schedules. We were still there when the call from Milkowski came in."

  Jamie worked through times in his head as fast as he could. If Subramanian arrived at about 1900, and you stretched "about" to mean, say, 1910 or 1915 hours, he might have a problem. Medical Technist Remdex had given forty-four minutes before 1950, or 1906 hours, as the earliest plausible time for the murder. Time enough to do the deed, then hurry across the compound and make an appearance at the Snack Shack, if need be. In short, Subramanian didn't have an alibi for the entire period of interest. "You heard the call?" he asked. "You heard what was said?"

  "N-n-no, not exactly," Subramanian replied. "I heard the ambassador's words of course, and I could recognize Milkowski's voice, but I couldn't quite catch the words he was speaking."

  "You couldn't understand the words but you recognized the voice?" It was a commonplace occurrence, of course, but Jamie put a tone of disbelief in his voice. Better to see now how confident Subramanian's identification was rather than find him backpedaling later.

  "Oh, yes, I'm quite sure. And the ambassador addressed him by name. No doubt about it."

  "Then what?"

  "The ambassador spoke with Milkowski for about a minute or so, and became more and more agitated. He said something like 'that's terrible. Are you sure?' He listened, then said 'get out of there and meet me at the entrance' or something close to that and cut the connection. The ambassador stood up, apologized, excused himself rather hurriedly, and left me alone in his office."

  "What did you do?"

  "I wasn't sure what to do. I decided I didn't feel comfortable alone in his office--it's supposed to be a secure location--so I got up and left, making sure that all the doors locked after me. I went downstairs and saw there was a crowd starting to gather outside the joint ops center, so I went over there. The rumors were already flying. One Kendari was dead, they were all dead, they were sealing the joint ops center because there was poison gas in it, all sorts of things. It was plain only the ambassador and Milkowski really knew anything."

  Jamie concluded that he had reached the end of any useful statement from Subramanian. He quickly established that the rest of his account of the events outside the joint ops center matched what the ambassador had to say, and what Jamie had already heard from other witnesses. Subramanian answered everything clearly and fully and seemed quite eager to cooperate.

  There was only one other angle Jamie needed to cover, and the chief engineer was the guy to talk to about it. "We'd know a lot more about this case if we had reliable data on who was going in and out of the various buildings that night," said Jamie. "What about your entry-log system? We need the data off it."

  "You're welcome to it," said Subramanian. "But it's going to be garbage in, garbage out. We're in a sealed system here already, behind the compound walls. We've got mechanical and electronic locks on all the secured areas--it's very hard to get into where you shouldn't want to go. All the people here know exactly what they are and are not cleared to see. They understand how high the stakes are, and they take it all very seriously. Plus, there are only twenty or so of us. We all know each other. We're all locked in here together, for the most part. All of that adds hugely to security, as I am sure you know--but it also has the odd effect of degrading certain security systems--like entry-log systems. The systems are supposed to read the ID tags that everyone is supposed to wear at all times. But many people don't always wear them--because we don't need ID tags with so few people. The ambassador is wise enough not to bear down too hard on that rule."

  "Why is that such a good rule to ignore?"

  "People in this confined a space can become rather twitchy about their personal space and their privacy--precisely because those are scarce commodities here. Everyone knows everyone, everyone knows everyone else's schedule. A tracking system that watches your every move, that could tell the ambassador that you're taking a longer break than you should at the Snack Shack, that you're in the same room as someone else's spouse after hours--well, that could lead to real trouble."

  "So, for the sake of morale, people aren't tracked at all times."

  "That's a large part of it. But another point is that the system simply doesn't work all that well. Two or more people walking through the same door at the same time can confuse the readers. If Person A forgets his badge and Person B sees him through the window, gets up, and lets him in, the system could read that event as B leaving and immediately returning, and not record A at all. You get the idea. And there's one more element--the damned simulants. They're alive, in some sense--but they also pack all sorts of electronics and other gadgetry. And they seem to scramble the entry-log sensors, along with some other systems."

  "So let me guess. The system wasn't doing much good anyway, and it was throwing out all sorts of false positives and false negatives and crashing and you had other things to do--"

  "So we have not bothered to do full maintenance on it for months," Subramanian said.

  "That's not very convenient for us, right at the moment."

  "No, not at all," said Subramanian with a surprisingly wicked smile. "And it's also rather inconvenient for the Kendari who died. But very helpful to the last person to meet her, don't you think?"

  It certainly was, thought Jamie. But he wasn't about to share his thoughts on that sub
ject with the chief engineer. "I think that about covers the main points," he said, ignoring Subramanian's last remark. "But let's run over a few details before we wrap up."

  Jamie walked Subramanian through the rest of what he had seen and done that night, from the lockdown to the moment when Subramanian had confined himself, then confirmed the details of the ambassador's escorting him to more comfortable quarters once Stabmacher himself was let out. Nothing new in any of it, but they had to follow procedure. When they were done, he said his good-byes and left the embassy ship, carrying the tray with the remains of Subramanian's meal on it. The chief engineer had been relentlessly cooperative, but Jamie didn't learn anything new from any of it. Which was not to say that Subramanian hadn't left him with a great deal to think about. Things weren't always quite the way they seemed.

  Hannah set the tray for her next interview and headed back to the embassy ship. She was starting to feel a little more optimistic. Having a probable time of death, and a narrow range of possible times of death made it far easier to run the interrogations.

  Hannah had no hard proof, but she felt morally certain that the murderer must have been present at the time of the crime.

  This was no typical poisoning case, something deadly slipped into the victim's food or drink hours or days before. In a case like that, death could happen long after the killer was far away.

  But if the humans were trained and trained and trained again to keep caffeine away from Kendari, the Kendari were trained just as hard to avoid the stuff. That had to be doubly, triply true for a Kendari Inquiries Service Inquirist who had been assigned and trained to work with humans.

  Hannah simply could not believe that a Kendari would willingly drink caffeine, any more than a human would willingly drink gasoline. It was known to be such a painful death that even a suicidal Kendari would avoid caffeine.

  If suicide was excluded, and there was no plausible way for a Kendari to drink a caffeine-based beverage accidentally, what was left was somehow, someone compelling Emelza, forcing her to drink the stuff--at gunpoint, perhaps. Hannah was willing to bet a lot that the killer was present at the time of Emelza 401's death.

  Hannah knew that she was playing a tricky game, trying to make some things happen fast while getting others to happen as gradually as she could. But if she was right about a couple of vital details, providing room-service breakfast to the embassy staff might be the fastest possible way to move slowly toward solving the case rapidly.

  A glance at the personnel files told Hannah that, if Milkowski fit one stereotype for the sort of BSI agent that would find him-or herself posted off to duty at a remote embassy, Joginder Singh and Maria Farrell fit just as snugly into the other: first-tour agents, young, eager, ambitious--and more likely than not to have finished in the bottom half of their training class. The higher-scoring new agents--for example a certain James Mendez--were cherry-picked by the Bullpen, or some other high-prestige posting.

  Hannah decided to play the game a bit differently with the two baby agents--not exactly playing them off against each other but something close to that. She visited Singh in his cabin, then Farrell in hers. Instead of asking each about his or her own movements and knowledge, she asked each about the other's--and confirmed a good deal of what the ambassador and Milkowski had said--though there were a few details regarding the video surveillance that might be worth running by Jamie.

  Having heard what each had to say about the other's movements in private, and knowing something about the habits and living patterns of young and idealistic BSI agents a long way from home, Hannah decided that she might learn more faster if she next talked to them both at the same time--especially as it was clear that both of them were thrilled to be talking, in person, to the one and only Senior Special Agent Hannah Wolfson.

  Hannah didn't usually have a great deal of time to spend on hero-worshipping subordinates, but under the circumstances, she was willing to grit her teeth and take it--so long as they didn't try to get talking about her old cases, or ask her what Commander Kelly was really like.

  She and Jamie had drawn the partition across the center of the Snack Shack. She had assigned the left-hand side of the building to Jamie, and taken over the more private right-hand side for her own purposes. She could hear muffled voices from the other side as Jamie talked yet another embassy worker through the events of the night in question.

  Meanwhile, she had the baby agents over on her side. It hadn't taken a whole lot of prompting to get Singh and Farrell in there, chattering away over tea, coffee, and doughnuts Hannah had pilfered from the stockroom.

  Hannah was very frankly dreading what Catering Chief Vargas was going to have to say to her about raiding his pantry. It might well be that they were going to have another murder on their hands, once he was released from confinement--and she wouldn't be around to help Jamie to investigate that one. But, after all, food was important in an outpost like this. Offering the troops a few special treats might make them more cooperative, get her some information she wouldn't get otherwise. So she had decided to risk the wrath of Vargas--but had also decided to spring him as close to the end of the job as she could.

  "So," Hannah said brightly, "glad to get out of your cabins, I'll bet."

  "And then some," said Farrell as she added honey to her tea. "It's bad enough being cooped up inside the compound most of the time--being stuck in that dinky little cabin was ten times worse."

  Hannah considered Maria Farrell thoughtfully. She had jet-black hair and milk-white skin, and dazzling blue eyes framed in a remarkably expressive oval face. She was small and delicate-looking enough that Hannah was surprised that she passed the BSI physical. And, most interestingly, she had the small hands and feet to go with the rest of her body.

  "So you don't get out much," Hannah suggested. "Not much chance to tour around, take in the sights?"

  Singh chuckled. "What sights?" he asked as he poured himself more coffee.

  It wasn't anything more than a vague first impression, but Singh struck Hannah as being more grounded, more sensible than Farrell--altogether more likely to hang in there long enough to reach the rank of Senior Special Agent--but he was going to face some other problems along the way.

  Round-faced and round-bodied, he was going to bump up against the BSI weight-height ratio limit very soon if he didn't lay off the doughnuts. He wore the turban of a Sikh, and his kirpan, his sheathed ceremonial dagger, was held around his waist by a gatra, the special cloth belt used to hold it. He had managed a fairly credible beard for one so young, and it did help make him look more mature--but there was still something about him--perhaps his deep and soulful eyes--that made him look awkwardly youthful, puppy-doggish.

  "All those gorgeous domes in that big beautiful city, for one," said Hannah. "It must be like walking through a world full of giant Easter eggs to go through the Grand Warren."

  "You mean Oakland-on-Tifinda?" Farrell asked.

  "Um, you've lost me," said Hannah.

  "Maria's just showing off," said Singh. "American writer from way back--Stein, or Stone, or something, wrote about some city called Oakland and said 'there's no there there.' That's sort of the standard joke about the Great Warren."

  "It looks fancy enough from here," said Hannah.

  "Yeah, really impressive conduits," said Singh.

  "I still don't follow you."

  "The place is totally utilitarian--at least the parts we've been allowed to see. Everything clean, well made, well organized, well kept--but nothing there that doesn't have to be there. All the streets in a given sector look exactly the same. There aren't any shops, or stores, or museums, or theaters, or parks. Just living units, sanitation centers, distribution centers. No restaurants--not that we'd dare eat the food--but instead just sort of giant cafeterias issuing standard food from centralized kitchens."

  "Yeah, it's a lot of fun," said Farrell, propping her hand on her chin. "But that's all the Nines and Twelves--the worker bees--get, and, at least so far as
we can tell, that's all they want."

  "Ah," said Hannah. "I get it. I almost forgot they're a hive-living species."

  "It's sure hard to forget about around here," said Farrell. "Anyway, Joginder and I shouldn't complain. We get out and around a lot more than most of the staff does."

  "You're the security detail," said Hannah.

  "Right. Whenever the Vixa want to haul in the ambassador and tell him 'no' we tag along," said Farrell. She frowned for a moment. "And oh, boy! That's supposed to happen later today! We're going to have to get ready fast."

  "No we're not," Singh said unhappily. "Are we, Senior Special Agent Wolfson?"

  "Call me Hannah--or just Agent Wolfson if using my first name seems a bit too much. And no, you're not going to have to get ready. All the embassy BSI agents are relieved of all duties until this is cleared up."

  "I thought that was going to happen," Singh said sadly. He looked to Farrell. "Face it, Maria--we're cops, and a rival cop died in our precinct. We're suspects. We have to be."

  "But we didn't do it!"

  "Fine," said Singh. "Prove that, and we can get back to work."

  Hannah nodded sympathetically. "And until we do prove you innocent--or, better still, prove somebody else guilty--Special Agent Mendez and I have to run this investigation and at least take a shot at handling the duties of three local BSI agents."

  "Well, two and half, anyway," muttered Agent Farrell.

  "Who's the half?" Hannah asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  "Let's just say Maria and I could both tell you how many days, hours, and minutes it is until Agent Milkowski retires," said Singh. "We've heard him tell us often enough. He's actually rigged a countdown display on his desk showing how much time he's got left. And Maria's got a point--he spends so much time on retirement planning and how to reinvest his pension that it cuts into his productivity. And it's not great for morale to have someone wandering around the compound telling everyone that he can't wait to leave. The joke around the embassy is that they'll throw a party for him right before he leaves--and a party for everyone else right after."