Final Inquiries Read online

  Stabmacher stood absolutely stock-still for the count of ten, of twenty, his arms straight down at his sides, his hands balled into fists, with no motion other than his chest rising and falling as he breathed, his nostrils flaring, the blinking of his eyes. And the simulant echoed all of them perfectly. The only flaw was that its rubbery, mannequin-like face couldn't manage much in the way of expressions. The Vixa don't have faces, Hannah told herself. They wouldn't know how important facial expressions are to us. She kicked herself mentally for being distracted by minutiae at such a time. Everything, everything hung in the balance in that moment. She knew, with utter certainty, that they could all die in the next few seconds if Stabmacher got this one wrong.

  "I refuse. On behalf of and in the name of the human race, I absolutely refuse," he said in a cold, controlled voice, still staring straight ahead at the thing that stared back at him, mocking him, echoing his words.

  "My colleague!" Flexdal called out. "I was not consulted. I had no part in it. I learned of it as you did!"

  "I believe you, my colleague," Stabmacher said. "You and I have always treated each other as well-respected enemies, worthy adversaries. This insult is not your way."

  "This is no insult!" Zeeraum growled, speaking for the first time. "This is an excellent solution that will let us move forward."

  Stabmacher did not move. "I speak now to those who are viewing this outside, or recording it, or witnessing it here, beside me. On my honor as a human and a diplomat, never have I heard any complaint from any Grand Vixan concerning the so-called problem this nonsense is intended to solve. It is a sham, an empty claim."

  The simulant continued to echo every word, speaking as loudly and clearly as Stabmacher, a puppet speaking the words of the man its masters sought to control.

  Stabmacher ignored it and spoke. "Were I to accept this humiliation, I cannot even guess what would follow--but some humiliation, some trick, some fraud would be next. Those who actually control the simulacrum would put their words, not mine, in its mouth. I would be told to remain at the embassy, and participate from there, without being able to witness directly what my puppet was doing in my name, but against my will. Or perhaps our generous hosts would conclude that there was no need to negotiate at all, and they would merely dictate the solution to the puppet--and make puppets of us all. No proper agreement could be made in those circumstances, and no agreement made could be respected or upheld. No. I refuse. Humanity refuses." He turned his head slightly, to look directly at Zeeraum. "Turn that thing off, remove the inner dome, remove your guards, and permit my access to my proper place. Now."

  "This will not be done."

  "Then we shall depart. If my conditions are not met, there will be no further negotiations on the matter of Pentam at any time in the future."

  "Then your opportunity to state your claim is forfeit!"

  Stabmacher laughed, but the sound that came out was closer to a snarl. "It is plain now that our opportunity was forfeit long ago. Forfeit, fraudulent, and as bankrupt as these talks." He paused, and then spoke in a louder voice, the voice of a proclamation, not a speech. "All simulants and simulacra are henceforth banned from the Embassy of Humanity to the Grand Warren of Tifinda. None will be permitted to enter. Those who attempt to enter the embassy or interfere with the personnel or the business of the embassy will be subject to destruction without warning. This policy is effective immediately. Wolfson! Mendez! We're going." He began to turn toward the door.

  "You will remain!" Kragshmal roared.

  "Either open that door and permit our departure," said Ambassador Berndt Stabmacher, in a calm, cold voice, "or kill us now."

  That did it, so far as Hannah was concerned. "Weapons out!" she called, but Jamie was a heartbeat ahead of her. She pulled her sidearm with one hand and keyed her commlink with the other. "Wolfson to Groppe! Static Dustoff One! Now, now, now!" She left the comm keyed open so Groppe could hear. "Jamie! Cover the rear!"

  "On it!" Jamie called.

  The Stabmacher simulant seemed to have frozen up, or been shut down, and the guards at the base of the ramp--and the two Grand Vixa--were nearly as motionless. Flexdal and Brox were both standing, and Brox seemed to be shouting something, but Hannah couldn't understand him.

  The other simulants were standing up, moving. Jamie covered them with his sidearm and placed the ambassador at his back. He started backpedaling up the ramp, watching the simulants, glancing behind himself every few seconds.

  Hannah concentrated on her end of things. If there was any sort of manual door control, she couldn't see it and there wasn't time to play games and ask nicely.

  "Ambassador! Shield your face! I'm going to shoot the door!"

  "Do it!" he called. "Get us out of here!"

  Hannah raised her weapon, set it to shotgun mode, pointed it at the center of the irised-shut door, and fired.

  NINETEEN

  DUSTOFF

  The noise of the blast was fantastic. The dome seemed to echo and reinforce it endlessly. Jamie felt as if his head had been rung like a bell. The air was suddenly full of dust and smoke, and just as suddenly, it all rushed out the gap where the door had been. Now there was just an ugly torn-out gap two meters across, the remains of the irising mechanism shriveling around the edges.

  Hannah was guiding Stabmacher through the opening. Jamie could hear the whistling roar of the aircar coming in on emergency power. He put his back to all that and covered the dome interior with his sidearm. Zeeraum and Kragshmal were bellowing something unpleasant, Flexdal had dropped under the table, and Brox was standing, watching, worried--but calm.

  None of them had changed position. None of them were following. But the five simulants in the chairs had moved--and they were moving plenty, straight for him, walking stiffly, awkwardly, with no attempt to imitate the gaits and postures of their originals. Without the body language and the mannerisms, they suddenly looked a lot less like their originals--and a lot more menacing.

  Hannah and the ambassador were outside. Jamie retreated upward, toward the hole where the door had been, the simulants moving steadily for him. "Time to get moving," he said to himself, and ducked out through the opening.

  The aircar was almost directly overhead, and coming in so fast Jamie had to fight the urge to dive for cover. The mob outside was equally spooked. Groppe had to abort her first landing attempt for fear of crushing the humans who were scrambling to get out of her way. She sidled over about twenty meters and came down again, landing gear down and doors open as she bounced to a touchdown.

  Hannah wasn't playing nice. She grabbed the ambassador by the collar of his coat and hauled him forward, dragging him forward when he wasn't moving fast enough. She reached the access ramp and half threw him on board. She turned back to Jamie and shouted, "Let's get out of here!"

  Jamie was inclined to agree--but the simulants were still coming. He jogged backwards toward the aircar, keeping his gun trained on them.

  He was only a step or two from the aircar when a figure suddenly broke from the mob and started running toward him. Jamie turned, aimed, and was within an eyeblink of firing when he recognized Zamprohna. For a flickering moment, he was tempted to shoot anyway, but he fought down the idea. Zamprohna was shouting something, waving his arms, wildly agitated. Jamie realized the man probably had no idea what was going on. "My daughter!" Jamie heard him yell. "What have you done with my daughter!"

  Zamprohna grabbed his arm, pulled at him, completely ignoring everything else. There wasn't time to sort things out, and Jamie needed to get clear. He folded his elbow in and rammed it into Zamprohna's gut. The man gasped in shock and collapsed onto the landing ramp as the Farrell simulant grabbed for his legs. Hannah appeared and lunged for Zamprohna, pulled him aboard, threw him to the deck--and then gut-punched him herself. He jerked upward, dropped backwards, banged his head against the deck, and went limp. "If we live, I'll apologize to him later," Hannah shouted. "Now get aboard!"

  Jamie scrambled up--and felt anot
her set of hands on his arm. It was Farrell's simulant, grabbing at him.

  "Kill it!" Stabmacher yelled.

  Jamie didn't argue. He twisted away from the simulant's grasp, kicked it hard in the chest to push it back, and dialed into shotgun mode, all in one movement. He lifted his gun and fired point-blank at the thing's head. The blast was nearly as loud as the one inside the dome. It took the simulant's head clean off, or rather the fleshlike material pretending to be the head. Underneath was what looked like a steel skull held up by a plastic neck embedded in the main body of the creature. That was all. No blood, no flesh, no bones, no nothing.

  The loss of its head didn't seem to bother the thing at all. It just kept coming, moving for him, reaching out blindly--or maybe not so blindly. He saw something sharp peeking out from the sleeve of one arm. Simulants are just modified Vixan escort-caste Sixes, he reminded himself. And Vixa have a lot of eyes. The head's a fake. Just two arms fused together and re-formed into a head shape.

  "The gut! The central body!" Hannah shouted.

  Jamie shifted his aim and fired again, right at the little potbelly that had always seemed to be out of place. The shotgun tore off the simulant's simulated flesh and ripped into the digestive chamber concealed underneath. The simulant toppled over. There was another blast, over his shoulder, as Hannah fired at the Milkowski simulant, toppling it over. Jamie chose another target, aimed and fired--and didn't realize until his target had dropped that he had just shot his own simulant, blasted his own double.

  But Jamie didn't have time to think about that. The aircar lifted off, the ramp door swinging up and shut as it boosted, and there was plenty happening on board.

  "Frau Groppe!" Stabmacher was saying. "Direct course, standard speed, for the embassy. Follow all rules while we are in the dome. Do not violate traffic rules. Give them no excuse to attack us. Attempt normal departure of government and city domes. Once through, go to emergency speed. I'm betting they won't try to stop us--but be ready to hedge that bet. Contact the embassy. Order standby prep for immediate evacuation. Sensitive materials ready for destruction, and the embassy ship Kofi Annan ready for boost."

  "Yes, sir," she called out through the open door of the pilot's compartment. "Sir, a reminder that I am our only qualified pilot for the embassy ship."

  "I am very well aware of that, Frau Groppe. You worry about that once we're back in the compound. Send the order. And if you would be so good, emphasize that this is standby for destruct and evac. Let's make sure no one starts pouring igniter fluid just yet."

  Stabmacher turned to Hannah and Jamie and shook his head. "Well," he said. "It would appear you two have a ringside seat on a first-class diplomatic disaster."

  "The disaster wasn't of your making, sir. You had no choice," said Hannah. "You did the right thing."

  "You think so? Perhaps you can be a witness when they convene the review board. They do tend to convene them when an ambassador orders an embassy evacuation--or hands a strategic two-habitable-planet system to the Kendari."

  "The fix was in, sir. They were either going to humiliate us, then give it to Flexdal--or watch us refuse humiliation and do just the same."

  "I agree," said Stabmacher. "But there are a lot of armchair diplomats who won't see it that way if they can gain some political points by blaming me. That one, for example," he said, gesturing toward Zamprohna. "What is he doing here, anyway?"

  "My fault, sir," said Jamie. "He came for me the same time the simulants did. I had to sucker punch him to get my weapon clear--"

  "And then I hauled him aboard to make sure Mendez had a clear shot," said Hannah. "So call it my fault."

  "How about we compromise and call it his fault?" the ambassador suggested. "Maybe we'll be able to make some sense of it when he comes to."

  "Sir, we are coming up on the access port for the main government dome. How am I to proceed if they refuse to allow us to exit?"

  "How are they going to play this?" Stabmacher asked himself. "Kragshmal doesn't have everything his own way, because if he did, we'd all be dead by now. But he's still Preeminent Director, apparently, so he's got some control. The real question is do the rules say he can or cannot close the portal?"

  "I thought Kragshmal said he was some kind of householder of the Preeminent Director," Jamie said.

  "And it's just barely possible he is merely that. We may never know for sure. They do keep the name of the P.D. very quiet. But it's not at all uncommon for the P.D. to pretend to be his own assistant, so he can go out and do things, be involved, rather than stay sealed away in the residence all the time. I think Kragshmal wants to get rid of us, kill us if possible, merely throw us out if that's all he can get away with. The insults today were very carefully chosen. A species that lets its meals ferment in its mouth and smells of rotting meat doesn't usually go around complaining of other species' fragrance. The interesting question right now is, did I respond properly, or was there something in what I said or did that was improper, and will give Kragshmal the right to detain us, or kill us? The dome-access control points would be convenient places to do the Director's bidding."

  Stabmacher made his decision. "We were entitled to defend ourselves at the conference dome. We are not entitled to damage their installations without permission. Slow down and await normal exit approval, Frau Groppe. Don't attempt a crash-through or other emergency move without my explicit approval. We have followed the rules, and we are alive. We will continue to follow the rules."

  And then, thought Jamie, we will find out if we continue to stay alive.

  "Milkowski! Wake up!"

  Frank Milkowski coughed, grumbled, and rolled over.

  "Frank!" It was Farrell, grabbing at his shoulder, shaking him. "We need you!"

  "Huh? Wha?" He sat up in bed, coughed again, and blinked. He checked his watch. He must have been out for about an hour or so. "What is it?" he asked. "Leave me alone!"

  "Believe me, we'd like to," Singh replied, with a glance around the disordered room and the bottle lying on its side on the floor. "But we can't. The ambassador is at the meet with the Vixa, and we just had flash traffic in. It's bioscan-locked for head of security only. Your retina-scan or the ambassador's."

  That woke him up. Things had to be plenty hairy for anyone to send a message that rated bioscan status. The bioscan locks were automatically inserted by the embassy's own communications system on any message flagged with appropriate and sufficient security tags. He swung his legs out of bed and stood up. He was in his boxer shorts and nothing else, but that didn't matter. "Gimme," he said, holding his hand out blindly, not really seeing anything. Something big had gone wrong. That was for sure. Singh handed him the retinal-scanner-equipped datapad. He was about to put the scanner up to his eye when he hesitated.

  "Wait a second," he said. "Didn't anyone reprogram the comm system? Why is this on me? Wasn't I relieved of duty?"

  "Would have been," said Farrell.

  "Maybe should have been," Singh put in. "But it's on you. Wolfson stood up for you. And Mendez too. They thought you still had something left."

  Do I? he asked himself. Almost without thinking, he put his eye to the scanner. A heartbeat later, the unit beeped approvingly, and the decrypted message appeared on the datapad's main screen.

  He read it, allowing the others to read over his shoulder. Shock gave way to fear as he read--but then anger shoved them both out of the way. "They're hanging us out to dry," he said. "Setting it up so it's nice and legal to kill us all, if they feel like it."

  And suddenly, somehow, in that moment, the anger dropped away too. Anger and fear would be what distracted them, got them killed. What this situation needed was coldhearted, clearheaded thinking. Organization. Quick, sharp decision-making.

  Frank sat back down on the bed and worked it through. Suddenly he realized that he did have something left--or more likely that he had, in that moment, just gotten it back. He knew exactly what needed to happen.

  "All right," he said in a voi
ce that was deeper, stronger, more sure than it had been in a long time. "This is what we're going to do."

  The aircar had come to a halt in midair, maybe ten meters away from the dome portal. Everyone held their breath, not sure what they would do--or could do--if it stayed buttoned up. But then it irised open, and Frau Groppe piloted them smoothly through it--and, a minute or two later, the main city dome portal as well.

  "We are clear of the city," said the ambassador. "Speed and heading at your discretion, Frau Groppe."

  She immediately started accelerating, up to and beyond all the local speed limits. Jamie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Frau Groppe shouted. "Ambassador! I'm tracking an aircar right behind us. Same course, same heading, same altitude--and speed. And we're at emergency."

  "Now what the devil?"

  Jamie scrambled back into the aft compartment and took a look through the viewport. "It's a Kendari aircar! It must be Flexdal and Brox--"

  "Something coming through on comm channel seven!" Groppe shouted. "Putting it on the overhead!"

  "--o hostile intent. Repeat. This is Kendari embassy aircar, Brox 231 speaking. We are not in pursuit. Repeat, we are not in pursuit, but performing emergency return to our own embassy. We have no hostile intent. Do you copy?"

  Hannah scrambled over to the middeck comm center and patched herself in. "This is human embassy aircar. We copy and acknowledge no hostile intent. What happened?"

  "No comment on this feed. Brox out."

  Three alert buttons on the comm system picked that moment to flash. "Ambassador!" Hannah called out. "We're getting your-eyes-only traffic from the embassy."

  "The hell with that," said the ambassador, standing up and making his way over to her. "We don't have time to play around with procedure. Open the message file yourself. Groppe! How far out are we?"

  "Twenty kilometers. Estimate four minutes to landing. Higher speed might cause Vixa security or the embassies we have to overfly to activate their defenses."