The Cause of Death Read online

  Marta had custom-designed the scan-scope's gene manipulation system herself, and built most of it by hand. She knew the limitations of the system as well as anyone. It was an excellent machine, but if the project had to rely on manual tagging--let alone manual decryption--they'd never get done. Even with Georg working alongside her, there was infinitely more work than two operators could do. And, of course, Georg was not working alongside her. She glanced at the other scan-scope, and the vacant operator's chair in front of it. It was hard to imagine any circumstances under which he would be there again.

  From behind her came the sound of a crash and a thud and a sort of rattling gallop. "Mommy? School session's over! Aren't you finished yet?"

  Marta turned around to see her eight-year-old daughter in the corridor, standing in the doorway of the lab, breathless from running. Marta smiled. "Just closing down now, Moira," she said. "Give me just a minute. Did you remember to shut down the tutoring system properly?"

  "Yes, Mommy," Moira said in a tone of exaggerated impatience. She fidgeted in the doorway for a moment, looked down at the floor for a moment, then asked, "Are we going back to Thelm's Keep soon?"

  Marta shut her eyes for a moment to master her frustration. The child asked the same question every day. "I told you, Moira. Not for a while. I don't know how long."

  Georg and Marta had shuttled back and forth between the science labs on Lesser Western Continent and Thelm's Keep on Largest Continent for the last few months, towing Moira along with them. But after the Thelm's three eldest sons died, and Georg tried to escape, and things got distinctly ugly between the Thelm and the High Thelek, Marta had found lots of good reasons to stay on Lesser Western. There had even been rumors--reliable rumors--that the High Thelek was going to challenge the Thelm himself to a duel. It seemed safer to be far away from the political storms. "I know it's not as exciting here as at Thelm's Keep," Marta said.

  "It's lonely. There aren't even Pavlat kids to play with here--and Pavlat kids aren't all that much fun, anyway. Will there be humans moving in here soon, now that the barracks are nearly done?"

  "That's the plan," Marta said. But would the plan ever happen? In theory, they were just about at the point in the work where they would be ready to shift over from pilot programs and testing to full-scale operations. Hundreds of genetic technicians and cryptographers and other specialists had already been recruited, and were literally waiting for the call--but with Georg under arrest, Marta didn't see how that call could go out.

  But Moira wasn't bothered by any of that. There was a plan. It would work. More humans would come. They would bring their kids. She wouldn't be lonely anymore. Short, simple, straightforward. And Marta didn't see how to explain about the complicated parts. Starting with how Daddy had been arrested and convicted and might never see them again. "It'll all work out, I'm sure," Marta said, feeling not the least bit sure of anything.

  "Good," said Moira. "I hope they hurry up."

  "For right now, I have just a couple of more things to do, so you go and play for just a bit, all right?"

  "Okay. I'll go over to the high-bay and say hello to Allabex and Cinnabex. Meet you there!"

  "I'm not sure they'll want to be disturbed just now--" But Moira had already vanished from sight. Another slightly quieter crash signaled that Moira had already bounced through the main door to the outside, and the nearby high-bay lab.

  Well, that was her daughter. Marta looked at the empty chair next to her again. Their daughter. Very much his daughter, for it was easy to see a lot of Georg in Moira.

  Georg. Georg, captured while trying to escape. Georg, moldering away in the Thelm's Keep, in the city of Thelm's Keep. Georg, on the other side of this weary planet of Reqwar, determined that his death should do some good if his life no longer could.

  Marta accepted those choices, even, as a staunch member of Pax Humana herself, agreed with them, and believed she would have made them herself. But even so, it was hard for her not to feel a jolt of resentment. She even indulged in a moment's sinful fantasy of all that could have been theirs--could have been hers--if Georg had been willing to submit, to obey the custom.

  But no. Best not to think on that. Marta reached up to the chain around her neck and the Pax Humana pendant that hung from it, the outstretched hand of Peace, Help, and Hope. All three were in short supply on Reqwar. And the Devil himself knew how harshly they had all been punished for trying to bring in fresh supplies of them.

  * * *

  Three or four Reqwar workers were putting the finishing touches on a barracks building as Marta came outside into the cool pearly-grey light of an overcast afternoon. Reclamation Genetics, Inc. had set up its main labs in the central plains of the Lesser Western Continent, half a world away from Thelm's Keep and Thelmhome and Thelm's This and Thelm's That on Largest Continent. But they were in roughly the same latitude, and the climates were broadly similar. The weather in one place was just as dismal as in the other.

  Reclamation Genetics had taken over the site of an abandoned manor home. None of the original structures had been in good enough condition to use, and all of them had been demolished. The trees surrounding the grounds of the old manor were still there, though they looked wan, sickly, and faded--as did nearly all the vines and creeper and trees and grasses within eyeshot. The dying plants added a gloomy air to the appearance of the lab compound--quite appropriate, given the situation.

  The work-ending bell chimed, and the Reqwar Pavlat workers instantly started putting away their tools. One of them was assembling a wall section, and not only stopped halfway through getting the fastener in, but literally stopped his power-hammer in midstroke.

  Marta tried to keep her annoyance from boiling over. They were, after all, lucky to get that much work out of the Reqwar Pavs. Not only were Pavlat's Medical Restriction Laws strict enough to forbid any Pavlat from working on the actual genetic decryption work--it had taken a special dispensation from the Thelm himself to allow local Pavlats merely to do construction work on buildings related to genetic engineering. It was bad enough that all the edicts and restrictions were irrational and close on suicidal. But it was far worse to see that the workers they had fought so hard to get were mainly concerned with doing the absolute minimum labor possible under the terms of their contracts. Whose planet are we trying to save, anyway? Marta stalked away from the building site.

  The scene that greeted her in the high-bay lab building did little to improve her temper. The high-bay lab had been built in part to house large and outsized items that needed to be sheltered from the elements--but mainly it was there to house the Stannlar themselves--for the two of them, Allabex and Cinnabex, definitely qualified as outsized.

  A Stannlar Consortium consisted of thousands of smaller creatures that lived together inside the tough, translucent exomuscular skin that gave a Consortium's main body its distinctive, if ever-changing, appearance. At present both Stannlar were in their more or less default shape: a streamlined teardrop two meters tall, three meters across, and five meters long from the tip of the bulging forward sense cluster to the guard talon on the base of the pointed tail. Allabex was currently an attractive translucent green, while her split-clone twin was an intense opaque blue.

  The exoskin was itself a living being, and did more than just hold all of a Consortium's local biological, electronic, and bioelectronic components together. It provided protection from the outside environment, supported various embedded sensing and communications organs and components, and managed locomotion, among other things.

  A Stannlar could swap various living sensory organs and electromechanical sensors in and out of its sensing cluster, but both Cinnabex and Allabex were wearing a fairly conventional array at the moment: two pair of black button eyes, a pair of trumpet-shaped ears that could swivel, widen, and contract as needed, olfactory bulbs nestled under the ear-stalks, and a bright red oval sound-making membrane--in effect a living loudspeaker--set into where the forehead would have been, if the forward s
ense cluster had actually been a head.

  A conventionally configured Stannlar Consortium resembles a giant slug, but that was an extremely misleading comparison. One annoyed Consortium heard the slug comparison one time too many and observed that the average human came a lot closer than a Consortium ever did to leaving a trail of slimy debris in its wake.

  Stannlar reproduced only rarely, and generally did so by a split-clone process--though other procedures were possible. But there was something else about Stannlar that most humans found more disconcerting then how they reproduced. They were far more put off by the Stannlars' semi-independent subcomponents, the ones capable of exiting and reentering the main body of the creature. They came in all sorts of shapes and appearances, but tended toward bright colors and rounded forms. Some walked, some slithered, some hopped, and some even rolled. Some were biological, some robotic, and some combined the two. They resembled nothing so much as so many bath toys come to life.

  Stannlar subcomponents were absolutely central to the whole plan to decrypt and reset the genetic kill switches in the various life-forms on Reqwar. Once their various researches had collected enough data both about the decrypt algorithms and the proper methods for counteracting and resetting the genetic kill switches, Cinnabex and Allabex would, in effect, turn themselves into living factories, manufacturing subcomponents capable of independent existence, and capable of duplicating themselves through split-cloning, and bearing in their bodies organs that would produce the kill-switch reset organisms appropriate to a given environment.

  The subcomponents would be shipped all over the planet, into every ecological zone. They would multiply, and deliver the resets where they were needed--in part by being bred to tempt the palate of carefully selected species that would serve to spread the reset organisms further. The independent components and the reset organisms would have their own kill switches, of course. The sixteenth generation of the components would be incapable of split-cloning, and would simply die out--or be gobbled up--after a time. Similar processes would be built into the reset organisms.

  Some humans had been known to run screaming from the sight of Stannlar subcomponents emerging from a Stannlar's body, going about their independent duties, then returning, but Marta was used to all that. What made her lose her temper was the sight of Moira crouched over a sort of toy farm made out of bits of old packing cases and spare parts. Six or seven subcomponents were corralled into it, inside a miniature paddock. The subs were diligently trying to escape and get back to work, but Moira was catching them and putting back the ones that got too close to getting away.

  Neither Stannlar was making the slightest effort to get Moira to stop. Either the subs were out on low-priority tasks, or else one or both of the Stannlar had sent the subs out with the express purpose of entertaining Moira so she wouldn't bother them.

  But that was beside the point, and Marta was furious.

  "Moira! Let those subs get back to work this instant! You know perfectly well you're not supposed to bother Allabex and Cinnabex when they're working!"

  "But Mommy--"

  "Really, colleague Marta, it is all right--" Allabex began, her voice booming a bit at first before she adjusted her speech membrane properly.

  "No it isn't!" Marta snapped. "Moira! Outside! Now!"

  "But--"

  "Now!"

  Moira scowled, then shrugged, turned, and ran outside.

  "Marta," said Cinnabex, shifting about to face her sensory cluster direct at the human, "Allabex released those subcomponents specifically for Moira to play with."

  "Moira shouldn't be disturbing your work by asking you to make games for her, or interfering with components that have other duties."

  "She--she didn't ask," Allabex said. "I released them and prepared the little holding area for them before she arrived."

  Marta opened her mouth--and forced herself to close it again before she said something unwise. There was something so absurd about it all. Her husband arrested, recaptured after escaping, convicted, and condemned. The whole project--and likely the fate of this planet--imperiled. The endless delays in getting their facilities up and running. Labor problems. Contract problems. Technical glitches. All that, and much more, had been stress that she could handle, if only just barely.

  And then she had to go and snap--because she saw her daughter playing with the subs--and it turned out that she, herself, Marta, was in the wrong. It was frustrating, humiliating. She felt like a fool for being so angry--but she was angry all the same.

  She glared at Allabex, then at Cinnabex. Her hands balled into fists. All the waiting, all the fear, all the uncertainty of the past days seemed to bubble up inside her, eager to burst out. "Now I'll have to go apologize to Moira," she said, barely managing to control the frustration in her voice. She turned and walked out of the high-bay, in search of her daughter.

  * * *

  The two Stannlar watched the human female Marta Hertzmann depart, then turned to face each other. They communicated, using a pseudoetheric frequency, rather than by means of anything as awkward as speech centers.

  Cinnabex began: "You are more skilled than I at dealing with humans. You must go to her at once and speak the things that are required."

  Allabex: "That would not be wise. Better to wait a brief time period for her emotional intensity to diminish."

  Cinnabex: "My detectors show that an aircar with an official designation of the type used by couriers is on an approach vector. It is likely we are about to receive an update on Georg's case. We must obtain Marta's consent to send the agreed message before she receives this latest report."

  Allabex: "I confirm the aircar's approach. But you assume that the courier will bring bad news."

  Cinnabex: "Has there been any other sort since we arrived on this benighted planet? I will leave it to your judgment how long to wait until Marta Hertzmann will be rational enough for the needed conversation--but do not delay a moment longer than you must. Obtain her agreement before the courier's news injects additional variables that might alter the case."

  Allabex: "I signal reluctant agreement."

  Allabex summoned in all of her subcomponents--including the playthings she had generated for Moira--and settled in to wait for the length of time she had computed as appropriate.

  * * *

  Shortly thereafter, Allabex found herself moving about the grounds of the lab complex next to a moody and largely silent Marta Hertzmann. "There is no change in his status, then, friend Marta?" Allabex asked, once she judged that the silence had lasted long enough.

  "No! Why should there be? How could there be, when he hasn't changed his mind, and the Pavlats haven't changed theirs?"

  That would appear to be one of the questions that Marta Herztmann asked without expecting an answer. "I see," said Allabex. Her English-language module advised her that this was an appropriate neutral response meaning "I understand," frequently used by humans when they did not understand at all.

  "The situation cannot remain as it is, friend Marta," Allabex went on. "And, I would submit, it is incumbent upon us to change it, as I greatly doubt the Thelm's people will do so."

  "That much is obvious," Marta said. "The next obvious point is that we have precious few options for changing it."

  Georg could fulfill his obligation as the eldest son of the Thelm, Allabex told herself, but she dared not make that suggestion to Marta again. Allabex--ten times Marta's size, twenty times her weight, all but indestructible, all but immortal, felt greatly intimidated by Marta's temper, her outbursts, her passionate anger.

  "Moira!" Marta called out. "Settle down! And don't get so far ahead." Moira was her usual fifty meters in front, and showing no more signs than usual of needing to settle down. It had not taken Allabex long to note that Marta tended to speak harshly to her child whenever she herself was upset.

  "She'll be all right," Allabex said reassuringly. "There is nothing dangerous up ahead."

  "That's not the point," Marta said.
"She needs to know to obey me, for when there is something dangerous."

  Why should Moira rely on the danger-sensing skill of a being that has gotten her into a situation this perilous? Allabex asked herself.

  Moira turned around and raced back toward them. The little girl laughed as she ran, but even someone as nonhuman as Allabex could tell there was something forced about the laughter.

  She pitied Moira, and even felt something approaching empathy for the little girl. From her studies, she knew that human children, given the chance, were herd animals. But Moira Hertzmann had grown up shuttling from one off-planet project to another, on worlds at the far fringes of human civilization, with almost no human contact beyond her parents, let alone with any other children.

  Her loneliness even drove her to try to recruit Allabex, of all beings, as a playmate. It had been humbling indeed to discover that thousands of years of personal and stored experience, effortless access to infinities of information, left Allabex wholly incompetent to manage imaginary tea parties or travel via nonexistent propulsion systems to entirely notional planets where events that contravened physical law were easily accommodated as being caused by magic.

  Moira stopped a meter or two in front of her mother and Allabex and stood up straight, holding her hands behind her back. "Can I saddle up, Allabex?" Moira asked. "Please?"

  "Not again, Moira," her mother protested, with a sidelong glance at Allabex.

  "It's all right, Marta," the Stannlar said. It was one of her best child-entertaining tricks. She lowered her body to the ground, and set one section of exomuscle shifting, rippling, re-forming itself into a set of child-sized steps, leading to a newly created saddle-shaped depression about midway along Allabex's length. She extruded two knoblike handles, just forward of the saddle, for the little girl to hold on to. Moira scrambled up and plopped herself down into the saddle almost before it had finished forming.