Powers of Detection

Powers of Detection Page 16

by Dana Stabenow

  “You would have if I’d turned up dead. Especially if they’d done it in such a way to suggest that, rather than waiting to be handed the painting, they’d stolen it from us.”

  Sergei stopped like he’d walked into a wall. “Chyort! Stolen it back, then used it to make peace. With your blood. Damn straight I would have talked. I would have blackened their reputation until they couldn’t stand under the weight of it.”

  “And the talks would be undermined by doubt, maybe just enough to break them.”

  Sergei started swearing again, alternating between Russian and English, until Wren was certain that she could see blue current sparking and shimmering in front of his mouth.

  “We’re going to have to do something about them using us like that,” she said thoughtfully, almost to herself. “Bad for business, otherwise . . .”

  -

  Sergei had called the dinner date, his voice on the answering machine filled with such glee she could only imagine the retainer he’d managed to con out of someone. She wasn’t in the mood to party, her brain still filled with the annoyance of having been tricked into getting involved in politics, not to mention the attempt on her life, but dinner was dinner was dinner, especially if Sergei was buying. She threw herself into the shower, grabbed the first summer-weight dress she could find that wasn’t wrinkled, and threw it on. Things had changed enough in their relationship over the past year that she slicked on lipstick and mascara, and tied her hair up in a looked-more-complicated-than-it-was knot before heading out the door. Not that any of that was going to turn her into a raving beauty, but Sergei appreciated the effort. And she appreciated his appreciation.

  They were regulars at Marianna’s, to the point where Callie, the waitress, didn’t even bother getting up to show her to their table. Of course, it wasn’t that large a place, either. She could see Sergei sitting in the back the moment she walked in. And he was grinning like he was about to choke on wee yellow feathers.

  “You’re scaring me. What?”

  “I had a little chat with an old friend of mine who was shocked, shocked to hear that criminals had their hands on any part of the ‘Fabulous Finds.’ A few hours later, this job came in. Since we are, after all, the only team who could pull something like this off . . .”

  He slid a piece of paper across the table to her. She picked it up, noting first the weight of the paper, then the fact that it was letterhead stationery; and then her mind took in the words, and she started to laugh as Sergei called Callie over to open the wine.

  “The Meadows Museum board would like to make use of your services to retrieve a painting that went missing from our premises on the night of July 14 . . .”

  Getting paid to take back what they took in the first place, and undercut any attempt the organization might make to go ahead with their plan anyway.

  “I love this job,” Wren said, raising her glass.

  “To karma,” Sergei agreed. “To karma, and the joy of being the boot that gives it a kick in the ass. Zdorov’ye!”

  The Death of Clickclickwhistle

  MIKE DOOGAN

  “Is it dead?”

  Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon looked around for the speaker, but the hallway outside the delegates’ quarters was empty. Even in a small, busy spaceship, the crew was giving the alien diplomats a wide berth.

  “Up here, mudfoot,” the voice said.

  Gordon looked up. A pale, thin young man was standing on what was, to Gordon, the ceiling, his left hand wrapped around a gripfast to keep himself from floating away.

  “Is it dead?” he asked again.

  Gordon shrugged. “How can I tell if it’s dead if I don’t know what it is?”

  The man sighed, flipped himself off the ceiling, tumbled through the zero gravity to another gripfast, and oriented himself with Gordon.

  “Mudfoots,” he said to the air. Then, to Gordon, “It’s in contact with the deck, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead raising his voice, and saying, “Computer, is the object on the deck near the location of my voice an organic?”

  “It is,” a voice drawled out of the air, “if you mean the other object besides Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon of the Federated Planets’ Corps Diplomatique.”

  Gordon laughed. “I guess starspawn don’t know everything,” he said to the young man.

  “Probationary Intern Gordon,” the voice drawled, “name-calling with ship’s fourth officer John Carter isn’t really an occupation for a member of the Corps Diplomatique. You humans should get along better, whatever your superficial differences.”

  Gordon recognized the justice of the computer’s rebuke. His command of diplomacy wasn’t all that it should have been. He’d only graduated from the academy at Alpha Cen six months before, and this was his first real assignment.

  The sentient races were having a big powwow on Rigel A1101, called Ricketts by the humans who lived there. Protocol prevented any extraterrestial ships from approaching the inner system that held Ricketts, so the Chuck Yeager had been assigned, along with a dozen other ships, to meet the arriving interstellar vessels, pick up their legations, and ferry them to Ricketts. This was hardly a plum assignment, so the Brahmins had assigned the lowest-ranking and least-well-connected diplos to the ships.

  Gordon looked at the young man hanging in front of him. He’s one of the reasons I don’t like spaceflight, he thought. So at ease in zero G, and so superior about it. Look at his uniform. Plain gray silk without an insignia on it. How does anyone tell who’s an officer out here?

  His own uniform, the uniform of a very junior diplomat, was a thousand times nicer. Rainbow bodysuit, lavender cloak and spats, yellow gloves and boots. He might be short and dark and even a trifle plump from an endless round of practice state dinners, but compared to the other young man, who was long and pale from years of no-gravity spaceflight, he looked like a million credits.

  Say what you want about the Corps Diplomatique, he thought, we know how to dress. Even if the magnetics he needed to keep from floating away in zero gravity did ruin the drape of his cloak.

  “You are quite correct, Computer,” the young diplomat said aloud, bowing slightly to the ship’s officer. “Can you tell me how this object got here?”

  The object, somehow thoroughly anchored to the deck, was an oval, thicker in the middle than at the ends, its surface divided into segments by snaky lines. To Gordon, it looked like the shell of an earth tortoise with the leg and head holes filled in.

  “I can,” the voice drawled. “It was rolled out the hatchway leading to the diplomats’ quarters. I’ll show you.”

  The air in front of the two humans congealed into a replica of the hallway. The hatch opened, and the object rolled out on its side, wavered and fell, ever so slowly, to the deck, where it remained.

  “Attila the Hun!” Gordon said. “If it came out of the diplomats’ quarters, it’s my problem. Computer, can you tell us who moved it here?”

  “No can do. Before any of the alien species came aboard the captain ordered me not to snoop in their quarters. Something about diplomatic immunity.”

  More likely worried about the Xtees bringing bug detectors and catching him red-handed, the young diplomat thought. Gordon looked at the object on the deck. “Computer, we didn’t take on any aliens that look like this, did we?”

  It was Fourth Officer Carter who answered.

  “We took on thirteen species, all oxygen breathers, none of which looked like that.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “But one that coul
d. It’s a Husker.”

  Gordon snorted. “That’s no Husker, starspawn, “he said, flipping his cape so that the synthmaterial rippled. “They’re eight feet tall, and they have all those arms, or fronds, or whatever they are.”

  “Which one of us was it that smoked spatial geometries, mudfoot?” the ship’s officer asked. “Oh, that’s right. It was me. That’s a Husker.”

  The Huskers were a recent contact. They were from a system in Clarke’s Cloud, a raft of stars in toward the center of the universe. Or so they said. They called their home star “the sun” and their home planet “Earth,” just like every other sentient species, which drove the translation program crazy. It also made it hard to locate their home planet. They were officially designated Unknown Origin 37s. But they looked like nothing so much as walking—sort of—talking—after a fashion—stalks of corn. So it didn’t take fifteen minutes after first contact for some wag to hang the nickname on them.

  The young diplomat opened his mouth to argue, but the computer interrupted. “Fourth Officer Carter is right. Look.”

  A full-grown Husker appeared in the air in front of Gordon’s nose, then folded itself slowly this way and that until what was left was an object like the one on the deck.

  “Vlad the Impaler!” Gordon said. “How am I going to explain this to Second Assistant Undersecretary Tulk?”

  “Who’s that?” Carter asked.

  “My boss in the Corps Diplomatique,” Gordon said.

  “Aren’t you going to have to explain it to the chief Husker first?”

  Gordon’s answer was cut off by a throat-clearing noise.

  “Actually, fellas,” the computer said, “there’s a more pressing problem.”

  “What’s that?” the young diplomat snapped. “And why in the name of Jeffrey Dahmer do you talk like that?”

  The computer’s drawl sounded aggrieved. “There’s no need to keep using foul language,” it said. “This is the authentic dialect of pilots from time immemorial, and is thought to have started with the mid-twentieth-century test pilot this ship is named for.”

  There were several loud sniffs, followed by silence.

  “Whatever you do, don’t irritate the computer,” the ship’s officer said. “The HAL 2750s are touchy as a hair trigger, and if it gets a case of the sulks, we won’t be able to get anything out of it for hours.”

  “Ted Bundy!” Gordon said. “You mean I’ve got to apologize to a machine?”

  Carter nodded.

  The young diplomat thought about refusing, but he was in a tight spot and needed all the help he could get. So he sucked in a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry, Computer. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “Thanks for that handsome apology, Probationary Intern Gordon,” the computer said. “I’m pleased as punch you gave it, because I’ve got something important to tell you. The internal temperature of the object near you that we believe to be an Unknown Origin 37 has been rising steadily.”

  The two men looked at one another.

  “Uh, computer,” Carter said. “What is the significance of this information?”

  “Why, Fourth Officer Carter, I’m surprised at you,” the computer said. “Given your physics studies, you should know what happens when heat builds up in a self-contained vessel.”

  “Jack the Ripper,” Carter said, “the thing’s going to explode.”

  “Explode?” Gordon said. “It isn’t bad enough one of my diplomats is dead, it’s got to explode, too? How do you think that’s going to look on my record?”

  “Computer,” the ship’s officer said, “can you tell me what the force of this explosion will be?”

  The computer displayed some numbers in front of Carter, who gave a low whistle.

  “We’ve got to get that thing out of here before it goes off,” he said, “which will be when, Computer?”

  “Thirty-three minutes,” the computer said.

  The young diplomat turned, grabbed the edge of the Unknown Origin 37, and heaved. Nothing happened.

  He looked at Carter, who wasn’t exactly rushing to help.

  “It’s stuck to the deck,” he said. “Can’t you give me a hand?”

  “Not a lot of muscle to lend,” the ship’s officer said. “Haven’t been spending much time at gravity recently. But I’ve got something better. Computer, have engineering send us a couple of hands and their decking tools. Tell them it’s an emergency.”

  In a matter of minutes, two young men who didn’t look very different from Carter turned up. Unlike him, however, they were wearing powered exoskeletons.

  “Subengineers Seamus Harper and James Scott,” one of them said. “What’s the trouble?”

  “This object,” the ship’s officer said, “is going to explode in about half an hour.”

  “Twenty-eight minutes,” the computer said.

  “Okay, twenty-eight minutes,” Carter said. “The explosion is likely to be powerful enough to be inconvenient.”

  “You want us to disarm it?” one of the engineers asked.

  “Can’t,” Carter said. “It’s organic. Biological. For some reason it’s building up heat. Enough heat and ka-blooie.”

  “Roger that,” the other engineer said. “We’ll just pull up the deck plate it’s hooked to and carry it . . . well, what do you want us to do with it?”

  “Space it, and fast,” Carter said.

  “Hold on,” the young diplomat said. His normally dark complexion had turned almost as white as those of the ship’s crew. “You can’t just space a diplomat from another species. There will be letters of protest. Speeches in the all-creatures assembly. There might even be an exchange of notes!”

  “And just what do you think will happen,” the ship’s officer asked amiably, “if this thing explodes and damages some more of the Xtees?”

  Gordon thought about that. Finally, he said, “Go ahead and get rid of it.”

  The two subengineers slapped screwdriver tips onto the end of their power arms and began unbolting the deck section. As they worked, Gordon took out his hushphone and spoke into it for a few minutes.

  “Shouldn’t you go confer, or whatever it is you do, with the Husker delegation?” Carter asked, after the young diplomat ended his communication.

  “I thought about that,” Gordon said. “But I don’t want to be haggling with a diplomat many grades my senior over this. Enough time would pass for a hundred of these things to go off before I got anywhere.”

  Carter gave him a considering look. “Well, at least you’re not completely stupid,” the ship’s officer said. “My old granny always told me it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

  “Besides,” Gordon said, “I just sent a laser burst to the office on Ricketts. Maybe I’ll hear from Tulk before I have to meet with the Unknown Origin 37s.”

  Carter laughed.

  “Not likely,” he said. “Bureaucrats are the same everywhere. Nobody on Ricketts is going to want to touch this mess for fear they’ll get some on them.”

  The two men watched the engineers take up bolts. When they had finished, they fitted their power arms with grapples, pulled up the section of deck containing what was perhaps a dead Husker, and prepared to carry it off.

 
“Couldn’t we just stick that in a stasis tube until we figure out something better?” the young diplomat asked.

  The two engineers looked at one another.

  “Not enough time to modify one, even if we knew how,” one of them said.

  “But if you’re worried about spacing this,” the other said, “well, if we could get it open and vent the heat, we wouldn’t have to.”

  They looked at one another again.

  “Electrical charge,” one said.

  “Low voltage should do it,” said the other.

  The ship’s officer cleared his throat.

  “I said space it,” he said.

  “Yes, but then you would, wouldn’t you,” said one of them. “You’re not an engineer.”

  The two of them moved off, balancing the deck plate between them.

  “Computer,” Carter said, “maybe it would be a good idea if you kept an eye on those two. Say, an on-command display?”

  “Right you are, Fourth Officer Carter,” the computer said.

  Carter looked at Gordon, and said, “You’re the diplomat. Now what?”

  Gordon gave a theatrical sigh. There wasn’t any help for it but to start taking his medicine. He could see the end of the career he’d just started staring him right in the eye.

  “Now, I guess I’ll have to go talk to the Unknown Origin 37 delegation and see if I can find out what happened,” he said. “We’re just assuming that this is a dead member of the delegation, after all. Would you like to come along?”

  “Love to,” the ship’s officer said. “Just let me get a power suit. And, Computer, why don’t you join us? I’ll explain it to the captain.”

  Carter was back in a few minutes wearing an exoskeleton, and the two of them proceeded to the hatchway.

  “I don’t know what your experience with other species is,” the young diplomat said, “but we have some in this group that are a bit exotic by human standards.”

 

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