The Cause of Death Read online

  "Now Allabex and I were just going for a nice, quiet walk," said Marta. "Don't start wheedling for her to gallop with you or anything. Just a nice, gentle ride this time, all right?"

  "All right, Mother," said Moira, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

  It occurred to Allabex that Marta was more likely to control her temper with Moira close enough to listen. Allabex decided to take advantage of the girl's presence and risk returning to the subject at hand.

  "Getting back to what we were discussing," she said, "we are agreed that things cannot stay as they are, that the Thelm's people are not going to alter the situation, and that it is therefore up to us to alter it."

  "I suppose that's all true," Marta conceded, with none too good a grace.

  "Then the only issue is how we are to change things. Perhaps merely shifting location would be something useful." In other words, it would be a very fine idea to get yourself and your child off-planet before things go utterly wrong.

  "We're staying here," Marta said, her voice hard and flat, ending all possible discussion. "We are going to go on with our work."

  "It is impossible for us to go on with our work with Georg in his current situation," Allabex replied, trying to make her voice just as firm. "Leaving aside the fact that, should he gain power, the High Thelek would like nothing better than to be rid of us. Even ignoring the great inconvenience to Cinnabex and myself if our present bodies were destroyed, there are other issues. We require not only Georg's expertise and experience to do the research work itself, we also need his legally binding approval in order to get funds released, to disburse payments, to order equipment, and so forth. We are not even clear whether Stannlar law, human law, or Reqwar Pavlat Thelm-word would apply to the case--and plainly it would be unwise to risk any appeal to the Thelm's justice at this juncture. Furthermore--"

  "All right!" Marta snapped. She paused, and then spoke again, in a tone of voice that was more tired, more sorrowful than Allabex had ever heard from her. "All right. Your point is taken. The Reqwar Pavlat will not move. Georg will not move. I will not move. But someone must move, and soon, if we are to avoid absolute disaster and the wreck of all our work."

  "Then we must continue our search for an outside force, of some sort, that will break up the present impasse." Allabex chose not to tell her of the Kendari agent that she had confirmed was working with the High Thelek. She saw no reason to inflame the situation further until it was absolutely necessary.

  "I agree," said Marta. "But I haven't the slightest idea where to start."

  "I think I do," said Allabex. "I think it is time to contact Pax Humana and reverse your previous instruction advising them not to attempt any intervention." Indeed, it is long past time. Allabex had never fully understood why Marta had insisted that the PH not involve itself. She had given her reasons, but Allabex did not find them convincing. "I grant that, as members of PH, you and Georg must be most careful to avoid involving them in a dispute over a mere business venture. But I would submit that is now moot. An innocent man--a man who is a member of Pax Humana, and who represents all that is best, most noble--" and, perhaps, most foolish and foolhardy "--about the organization is facing execution. Even if, as seems likely, it would embroil us all in a whole series of legal and political controversies, those controversies, and the publicity they would produce, offer us the best chance of breaking things open, of forcing the other parties to modify their positions."

  Marta frowned, even scowled, then, at last, nodded. "All right," she said. "I've been holding on, hoping for something to change. I agree that bringing PH in will cause no end of turmoil. But now, short of a miracle dropping out of the sky, Pax Humana is the only chance we have."

  "Agreed," said Allabex, far from happy to have won her argument. Allabex dreaded the Paxers. They were sure to create endless trouble. Georg had once said the Paxers worked from the heart, not the head, reacting with emotion, not with rationality or logic. Also according to Georg, the PH tended to listen closely to themselves and not much to anyone else. A request for help or a warning or a query from an outsider was likely to be ignored or explained away. A call for help from a member would be regarded in an altogether different light. If Marta sent a message, Pax Humana HQ would listen and respond--indeed, they would likely overreact.

  Allabex couldn't help but wonder if the Paxers would all be like Georg, or, perhaps, all like Marta--a most alarming idea.

  "If I have your final consent, then," Allabex said to Marta, "I will use my internal signaling system for the job and contact the Reqwar QuickBeam sender."

  Marta grunted in a noncommittal fashion. "I take it you have already composed a suitable message?" she asked, seemingly taking offense at Allabex being prepared ahead of time.

  But Marta would have to try harder than that to pick a fight. "Yes I have," Allabex said placidly. "A brief and factual report of the full situation, requesting assistance in your name." She quite deliberately did not offer to let Marta review it.

  Marta did not respond for a moment, but Allabex resisted the urge to ask again. Silence, she judged, would be more effective.

  It took a few seconds, but at last Marta gave in. "Very well," she said at last. "Send it."

  "I shall," Allabex said. She stopped walking, both to allow her to concentrate more fully on the task, and also to make it easier for her internal signaler to lock on to the appropriate relays. She had just started to bring the signaler online when Cinnabex linked to her on a pseudoetheric link.

  Cinnabex: "Alert! Data scan from incoming aircar shows it is military. Transponder data request refused. Identity, affiliation, and mission of person or persons aboard unknown. Vehicle appears to be bypassing landing field and going for direct vertical landing near your location. Intention uncertain."

  Allabex: "Alert received. Sending thanks for warning."

  Was the attack they had long feared finally about to come? Had the High Thelek and his allies finally tired of their indirect approaches?

  "What is it?" Marta asked, noticing the shift in Allabex's stance. Even Moira sensed that it was a serious moment. She slid down off Allabex without any need to be prompted. Marta took her by the hand, and repeated her question. "What is it?"

  Allabex did not answer at once. Instead she swiveled about on her base and reared up her fore end slightly to give her long-range tracking sensors a better look at the incoming vehicle.

  "Allabex," Moira said, her high child's voice plainly worried. "Why won't you tell us what it is?"

  There! She had a lock on it. Coming in fast and hard--but not all that fast. The course did not seem to be following any attack pattern Allabex could recognize. No. The pilot was just trying to get to his destination and land quickly. "My apologies to you both. I had to concentrate my attention for a brief time. There is an aircar approaching. It should be visible to you in a few moments. It appears to be military, but I judge that it is not likely to be a threat."

  "How can you tell it's no threat?"

  "Because we are still standing here alive and talking," Allabex replied. "The weapons that are usually carried on that vehicle could have destroyed us already." Allabex was still attending mainly to the task of tracking the vehicle, and it was far too late before she realized her words were not likely to comfort a nervous human mother. "Apologies for putting that too plainly," she said hurriedly.

  By then she had a full scanning lock on the vehicle. Its weapon systems were not only inactive, but quite ostentatiously "cold," rigged in such a way that even a basic and hurried scan could establish the car's weapons were not functional.

  "There it is!" Moira said excitedly, pointing at the sky.

  "I see it," said Marta.

  Almost at the exact moment the aircar became visible to human eyes, it began to decelerate violently, coming to an abrupt halt in midair about a kilometer away. It hovered there a moment, hanging silent in the sky, before sidling downward and forward. It sprouted a set of landing jacks and set down about three
hundred meters away from them. A hatch opened. A Pavlat stepped out--a tall male. Allabex recognized him as Unitmaster Laloyk Darsteel of the Thelm's Guard.

  Darsteel was old enough to be called a "surviving" male, past the age when it was socially required of him to engage in reckless and dangerous sports or military service. He was tall, even for a Reqwar Pavlat, wiry and muscular. His bluish-grey body skin and light brown facial skin both had the slightly glossy texture that spoke of good health and well-being. He was dressed in a one-piece red-and-grey flight suit that must have been custom-tailored for him. Everything about him was smooth, clean, elegant, precise. It was obvious from the expression on his face that something important had happened.

  Marta stood beside Moira, watching Darsteel approach, but Allabex moved forward to meet him and, not incidentally, to hear what he had to say out of Marta's earshot.

  "There's a new development," Darsteel said, as soon as Allabex was close enough for normal conversation.

  "Please," said Allabex. "Tell me at once." In other words, tell me before you tell Marta, in the event that she is upset by the news. It was often useful to have at least a few seconds to think before Marta had a chance to wade into a situation.

  Darsteel glanced past Allabex at Marta, and gestured assent. "My office received a routine confirmation of a report sent to the Thelm's chief of staff. The Thelm's message to the human government agency has received a reply--in the form of a ship with two lawkeepers aboard. They are en route now."

  That was news that would require more than a few moments to consider, but one response was obvious. Allabex erased the message for Pax Humana from the send queue and powered down her internal signaler. Perhaps there would be no need to send for Pax Humana. Perhaps these lawkeepers would break the deadlock.

  How would Marta take the news? Allabex did not turn around but instead opened a set of rear-facing eyes to look at her. It was clear that Darsteel's arrival had upset her. Allabex watched as Marta knelt and seemed to try to calm Moira--who had been perfectly all right until that moment. Moira immediately burst into tears.

  It seemed an apt metaphor for what Allabex feared from the Paxers: good intentions that caused far more harm than good. If these lawkeepers did nothing else, they had given Allabex an excuse for not summoning Pax Humana, and that was certainly something.

  "Let us hope these lawkeepers can find a way to resolve the situation, then," said Allabex. "Only a few moments ago, Marta Hertzmann said our only hope would be a miracle dropping from the sky. Perhaps that is exactly what these human officers will be."

  Darsteel flattened his ears back and frowned. "A pretty thought, Stannlar Allabex. But if we know they are coming, soon so will everyone else." He looked toward the sky, as if searching for the human lawkeepers--or for those who would most assuredly hunt them. He shook his head in worry. "The real miracle will be if they survive long enough to land."

  SEVENBROX

  Brox 231, Senior Inquirist of the Kendari Inquiries Service, activated the door controls and the hidden panel slid open. He felt remarkably silly, being reduced to the use of concealed doors and secret passageways, but such was the way of things on Reqwar--especially when living under the High Thelek's roof.

  Before he went through, Brox paused a moment to double-check the misdirection gear, and thrummed his tail against the floor in a satisfied sort of way. Rather than recording his clandestine departure, the monitoring devices aimed at Brox's suite would be transmitting a convincing view of Brox sprawled out in his sleep-sling, snoring loudly. The watchers would be treated to a dull and quite noisy night's observation.

  Brox trotted through the panel and turned around to make sure it closed properly behind him. The corridor was narrow, and a tight squeeze for a long-tailed, long-necked, four-legged being like a Kendari.

  When standing or walking, a Kendari was about ninety centimeters high at the shoulder, and about two and a half meters long. One well-known xenophobic human had once described a Kendari as a cougar's body and legs spliced to a shortened kangaroo's tail, an overbrained wolf's head, and a pair of chimp arms sprouting from the base of the neck, all of it covered in reddish-brown body felt. But Kendari were powerful and graceful beings, not collections of cobbled-together parts.

  Even so, contending with stairs, ramps, corners, chairs, tables, and tall, narrow secret passageways designed for elongated bipeds was a dreadful nuisance. But Brox had been in among the Reqwar Pavlat long enough that he had stopped noticing such aggravations.

  Brox came to the end of the corridor and came face-to-face with a blank concrete wall. He did nothing but simply stand there and wait. After a few moments, the concrete slab slid silently to one side, and Brox stepped through into what appeared to be--and in point of fact was--a disused storeroom, normally reached through a door in the wall opposite.

  Nostawniek, his Pavlat contact, was there, waiting for him. "Greeting to you, oh noble Brox 231 of the Kendari," Nostawniek said as he fanned his ears wide and flattened them, and then made a low and sweeping bow. They were the formal Reqwar Pavlat words and gestures of greeting to a person of great seniority, status, and rank. Only the wry look in Nostawniek's eye revealed that he was mocking the very manners he was displaying to perfection.

  As a professional intelligence officer, Brox viewed the hidden meeting place and the concealed doors and secret passageways as too clever, too elaborate. Brox had simply instructed Nostawniek to set up a way for the two of them to meet without being seen. He hadn't expected the Pavlat to get creative. But then, Nostawniek wasn't an intelligence professional. He was a gifted amateur who sincerely believed that making the High Thelek the Thelm was the best thing for Reqwar, and that backing the Kendari in general and Brox 231 in particular was the best way to do it.

  Nostawniek was a Pavlat, but not, as he made sure everyone knew, not a Reqwar Pavlat. He had been born and raised on the Pavlavian home world, and it was only the accidents of fate--and several failed business ventures--that had stranded him on Reqwar. He was on the short side for a Reqwar male, a trifle over two meters tall, with a stocky, well-fed frame that was likewise unusual. He was dressed in the dusky blue-and-brown formal tunic of a high-ranking servant in the High Thelek's service--which was one of the things he was. He was also Brox's well-connected--and well-paid--informant.

  "Greetings," Brox said wearily, as tired of Nostawniek's jokes about court etiquette as he was of the etiquette itself. "Have you got it?"

  "Right down to business, then?" Nostawniek asked.

  "If you would," Brox said. "It's been a long day." They're all long days here.

  "And you would like to do a bit of authentic sleeping, rather than letting your misdirection generator do it for you. Very well," Nostawniek said. "Understandable. Here it is." He produced a data wafer and handed it to Brox. "A complete and authenticated--and quite unauthorized--copy of the full report on the accident. And note that I refer to an 'accident' and not 'incident' or 'event.' But see for yourself."

  Nostawniek set up a portable data display system, then stepped out of the way to let Brox insert the data wafer and work the controls himself. "I've set it up to show the general view first," said Nostawniek.

  Brox stepped up to the system and activated it. The display panel came to life and showed a flatview video sequence of an aircar flying through a canyon, the images apparently shot from the forward-view camera of an aircar just behind the lead vehicle. The aircar on-screen flitted between the rock outcropping, twisting and rolling as it soared past spires of stone, closer and closer to the canyon walls.

  And then it got too close. It crashed, slammed into a jutting ledge of rock, exploded in a blue-white fireball. The trailing aircar, the one taking the pictures, veered off at the last possible moment, barely escaping destruction.

  "Flight recorder data," Nostawniek said, and brought up another display. He pointed at one particular spike of data. "A gust of wind at just the wrong moment," he said. "That's all. Irvtuk didn't allow any margin fo
r the wind shifting--and he paid for it."

  "I need to see more," Brox said.

  "Of course," said Nostawniek. "This is important. You have to be sure."

  That was beyond question. All three birth-sons of Lantrall, the Thelm of all Reqwar, had died in one crash--a fact that was just too remarkably convenient for too many people--especially for the High Thelek. The problem was that it was suspiciously tidy. Brox had to make twice sure and thrice sure and double sure again that it had been an accident.

  Brox felt a certain ambivalence, a certain mild regret, that the Thelm's three birth-sons had died, but he couldn't work up any more emotion than that. They only mattered because they were the heirs to the Thelmship. None of the three had been particularly likable or talented in any way. It was very sad that individuals had died prematurely; but these particular individuals weren't really anything much, no more than careless playboys, really. In the end, they didn't matter at all, aside from the fact that their absence created a void, and a political crisis.

  Furthermore, they had lived and died in a culture that expected, almost required, young males to prove themselves by taking great risks. Getting themselves killed was, more or less, no more than what was expected of them. Brox studied the data in every detail, Nostawniek walking him through it all. The flight recorders, the pattern of damage to the aircar, the eyewitness accounts all agreed. Luck be praised, the evidence was absolutely irrefutable. It was pure pilot error. Irvtuk had been a fool, and misjudged a wind gust, which threw the aircar into a canyon wall. It was a freak accident that simply could not have been prearranged. End of story. "I am satisfied," Brox said at last. "The High Thelek has, perhaps, been guilty of many things, but he is innocent of the deaths of the Thelm's sons. We must see to it that multiple copies of this evidence are preserved so as to refute any conspiracy theory that pops up in the years to come."