Jamie spoke, nodding toward Brox and Xenologist Flexdal. "My guess is that they chose to favor the Kendari because, well, you are just a bit more orderly than we are. You tend to like things in nice straight lines, and you work as a group more easily than humans. And, two other points. You have more legs than we do, and while the underlying Kendari body plan is utterly different from that of the Vixa, you move a lot more like Vixa than a pack of strangely balanced bipeds do. That made you just that little bit more similar to them."
"More slender reeds," the ambassador objected.
"There's more. Our embassy's deputy chief of mission was sent home for medical treatment. Our ambassador had no one with him of roughly similar rank when he went to the meetings. The BSI security detail didn't count. The Vixa saw the detail as being what it was--the precise equivalent of their escort groups. The BSI agents didn't provide security--they provided status. But in certain cases, a smaller escort can confer greater status on a Grand Vixa than a larger one, and it seems escorts that are roughly your size also enhance your status. Xenologist Flexdal, you and your assistant were escorted by two Inquiries Service agents that were about his size. We had one lone--and very tall--diplomat escorted by three fairly short BSI agents. It would be subtle, perhaps even subconscious--but it added up to the Vixa instinctively reading the Kendari as being of slightly higher status than humans."
"And we played up to that," Brox admitted. "And why not? It seemed a reasonable way to curry favor with our hosts, who stood in judgment over us."
"There were more than just clues to hint at our lower status. We were also unknowingly sending clues showing scrambled status that must have confused them--and given them a low opinion of us. The simulants--and whoever was watching through them--saw Jamie and me yelling at our ambassador and Zhen Chi about that whole Kendari rigor mortis issue. But we were from an external and superior hierarchy, so we had that right. At that time, we acted as if we were their superiors. We gave them orders as to how to turn over the evidence." She turned and looked directly at Stabmacher. "Then they saw us treat you, Mr. Ambassador and Zhen Chi--your subordinate--as if the two of you were both equally subordinate to us, which would reduce your status in their eyes, Mr. Ambassador. Later they saw us acting as your escorts. We permitted ourselves to be treated as being in the same status level as the simulants and the escort castes after seeming to show we outranked you. Your superiors were willing to be disgraced, and to act as your subordinates. It probably was dreadfully offensive to them."
"I want to circle back a bit," said the ambassador. "Senior Agent Wolfson. You're suggesting that the simulants were put here for the sole purpose of insulting and annoying us?"
"I spent a lot of time while we were holed up in the joint ops center thinking about all the angles on the simulants and the Vixan biocastes and so forth. I started seeing a lot of interesting second-and third-and fourth-order effects, on both sides, caused by mutual misunderstanding. If you look for it, you'll see a pattern of the Vixa tending to do a thing for multiple small reasons, rather than one big reason. But yes, insulting and annoying us was a goal. Secondary functions, but from the Vixa point of view, quite useful ones. After all, they were trying to generate tension. That said, most likely, the simulants were mainly meant to observe. No one paid them much mind on that account, as you all quite rightly assumed that the Vixa had far more effective and efficient means of spying on us.
"My theory, and it is only a sketchy one, is that the simulants were also intended to imitate us, to simulate us for the benefit of the Vixa themselves. They hoped that, if the simulants became similar enough to us, that they would be able, on some level, to serve as guides, explain us to the Vixa who controlled them. However, the Vixa weren't anywhere near as good at that as they thought.
"But I think there might have been another psychological effect, one that colored a lot of what happened, in ways that not even the Vixa expected--or even consciously noticed. Our people hated the simulants from the start, but they gritted their teeth and endured them. The embassy staff tolerated them so as to avoid insulting their hosts."
"That's about right."
"But the superior may kill the inferior at any time," said Hannah. "In a species that has multiple natural and engineered castes, many of which aren't really sentient, that rule makes a certain cold-blooded sense. The nonsentient castes are viewed as being somewhere between tools and work animals--and there are lots of them, and as best I can see, each worker caste consists of effectively identical clones. They're all the same, and any vestigial survival instinct was bred or engineered out of them long ago. If you have to kill ten or twenty of them in order to get your dinner on time, so be it. There's plenty more where they came from, they won't even mind dying, and you'll get your dinner without any significant cost or harm to you."
"What are you saying?" the ambassador asked.
"That by not killing the simulants the first time they caused trouble, we were failing to assert our superiority over them. In Vixa eyes, we were equating ourselves with the simulants. And that certainly made the Vixa our superiors."
"I should have done more than just obey orders under protest," said the ambassador. "I should have refused the simulants, point-blank."
"And I should have done the same," said Flexdal.
"Ah, not exactly on point," said Jamie, "but I've been thinking about the groups representing the various humans and Kendari fringe groups that the Vixa brought in. I think they were here for the opposite, the converse, of that same reason. This is just a dumb junior cop guessing, but the Vixa have at least a rough general idea that neither of our societies has castes, that everyone is more or less equal to everyone else. Okay, I know the ten thousand ways that isn't true--but it's a lot truer for both our peoples than it is for them. Humans are all at least supposed to be equal before the law, even if we don't reach the ideal."
"I don't quite see what you're getting at," said Hannah.
"The Vixa must have as much trouble dealing with the subtleties of our more-or-less-but-not-exactly equality as we have understanding and dealing with their biocastes. They brought in a whole mob of politically active humans and Kendari who were, as best they could see, the equals of you diplomats. You represented all of humanity, and Zamprohna represented his brand of the Keep Earth Flat society. But all the Vixa could see were the representatives. On a gut level, an instinctive level, they might have asked, What's the difference? That would tend to depress their view of our status as well."
"But there's another part to that," said Brox, almost eagerly. "The Vixan castes operate on the consensus of the hierarchy. We keep coming back to that. There's a strong pressure to agree with each other, especially with the people who outrank you. Both our species have that impulse too, of course--but the Vixa have it a thousand times more."
"So they brought in representatives of external groups to put pressure on us," said Flexdal. "But they deliberately brought in groups with wildly divergent opinions to make it impossible for us to fully bow to that pressure. We could and did tolerate that, but the Vixa couldn't have. In short, they brought in our own people in hopes of driving us mad."
"We should have refused something besides the simulants," said Stabmacher. "We should have refused to continue the negotiations with all those damned delegations present."
"There's one other huge and fundamental difference of perspective in all this," said Hannah. "We all thought they wanted to make Emelza's death look like a suicide. The concept of suicide must be alien to Vixa. Individuals are expendable in service to the whole. Death of a Grand Vixan isn't the death of an individual, either. It represents the collapse of the entire household devoted to caring for the Grand Vixa. Suddenly the other castes have no home, no purpose, no leader. It never would have entered their minds to stage a suicide. They wouldn't really know what one was."
"And if the superior can kill the inferior at any time, murder isn't such a big deal either," said Jamie. "There are economic reasons not
to do it. You might have to pay compensation, and that can run into real money after a while. But killing someone else's escort Nines wouldn't be considered that serious an offense. Probably the Vixa had experts and advisors who assured them we would react very strongly to the apparent murder of Emelza 401--but that was just expert talk. My guess is that the Zeeraums and Kragshmals of the hierarchy never quite understood what all the fuss was about. They never really had an emotional understanding of why the humans and Kendari were so upset."
"They are quite alien to us, aren't they?" asked Flexdal. He pulled his head back in puzzled surprise. "And I think I just meant both our peoples when I said 'us.' That's rather disconcerting, in a way."
"That's the way I felt the first time I did it," Brox said.
"That brings me to something I was thinking about while we were in that bunker," said Jamie. He stood up, to face the group, looking very young and unsure of himself--but going on ahead anyway.
"What would that be?" Stabmacher asked.
"Well, I'm no diplomat," said Jamie. "But just an idea. A thought. It couldn't hurt to listen, sir."
"Go on," said the ambassador, as he leaned back on the bench and looked out across the ruins of what had been and would be his embassy.
"From what you've been saying, without the Vixa trying to sabotage everything, the negotiations for Pentam ought to move forward pretty smoothly."
"Negotiations rarely run smoothly," said the ambassador. "But go on."
"Share the Pentam System, but don't divvy up the Pentam planets," said Jamie. "Leave one of them--well, leave it fallow. Whatever the word would be. Leave it alone for now. Save it for later. Just settle one of the worlds--and don't build separate Kendari and human cities, either. Build one city. One place that can--that can be a sort of giant joint operations center. A place where we're forced to work together. Where we can learn to work together."
No one spoke for a while. The sun was setting. The reddish dirt caught the gathering twilight and seemed to glow with color.
"I like that," the ambassador said at last. "Even putting the high and noble purposes to one side, it would actually be a far more practical solution. No duplication of effort, building two of everything--and if we're right in each other's laps--though of course Kendari don't have laps--it would be a great deal easier to keep an eye on each other. That in itself would help build trust. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the start of a potential alliance--but it would give us a huge head start on finding ways to work together, find the interests we have in common. What do you think, Xenologist Flexdal?"
"I think it will never work," Flexdal replied, rising up off his haunches. "We'll never get along. We'll never understand that we are natural allies, not natural enemies. We'll never see that we have far more in common with each other than with any of the Elder Races--or that they have far more reason to suppress us both than either of us has to harm the other. It will never work--unless we all fight like fury to make it work."
He paused, and stamped his rearfeet and forefeet, and twitched his tail. "But I like it as well. And if--if--it can be made to work--then I think it's just possible that the Elder Races will have to get used to having both of us around, after all."
"I've always liked your ideas, Jamie," said Hannah. "Well, maybe not every single one of them. But this one, I could definitely get behind."
"Forgive me for indulging in a bit of sentiment," said Brox, "but I believe that Emelza 401 would have liked it as well. She was coming to enjoy working with humans."
Jamie Mendez looked down at the ground and kicked away just a bit more wreckage, clearing the way for just that little bit more of something new to go in its place. He looked up at all of them, and smiled at Brox 231, his enemy, his friend, his colleague. "Well," he said, "if the Xenologist is right, and the Elder Races will have to get used to both of us--then maybe we'd better get started on getting used to each other."
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROGER MACBRIDE ALLEN was born on September 26, 1957, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is the author of twenty-two science fiction novels, a modest number of short stories, and two nonfiction books. His wife, Eleanore Fox, is a member of the United States Foreign Service. They married in 1994. They were posted to Brasilia, Brazil, from 1995 to 1997, and to Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 2002. Their first son, Matthew Thomas Allen, was born on November 12, 1998. In September 2002 they began a three-year posting to Leipzig, Germany, where their second son, James Maury Allen, was born on April 27, 2004. They returned to the Washington area in the summer of 2005, and live in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Learn more about the author at www.rmallen.net, or visit www.bsi-starside.com for the latest on the BSI Starside series.
NOVELS BY
Roger MacBride Allen
The Torch of Honor
Rogue Powers
Orphan of Creation
The Modular Man*
The War Machine (with David Drake)
Supernova (with Eric Kotani)
Farside Cannon
The Ring of Charon
The Shattered Sphere
Caliban
Inferno
Utopia
Ambush at Corellia*
Assault at Selonia*
Showdown at Centerpoint*
The Game of Worlds
The Depths of Time*
The Ocean of Years*
The Shores of Tomorrow*
BSI: Starside: The Cause of Death*
BSI: Starside: Death Sentence*
BSI: Starside: Final Inquiries*
NONFICTION
A Quick Guide to
Book-on-Demand Printing
The First Book of Hazel: A Quick Guide to the
Hazel Internet Merchandizing System
*Published by Bantam Books
BSI: STARSIDE: FINAL INQUIRIES
A Bantam Spectra Book / March 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright (c) 2008 by Roger MacBride Allen
* * *
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks and Spectra and the portrayal of a boxed "s" are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
* * *
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90463-5
v3.0
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
WELCOME TO CIVILIZATION
ONE NEED TO KNOW
TWO POWER AND SPEED
THREE THE PLANETS ON THE TABLE
FOUR SHOUTS OF SILENCE
FIVE ESCORTS
SIX SNACK TIME
SEVEN THE LAST DUTY
EIGHT DOCUMENT OF DEATH
NINE INTERVIEW WITH AN AMBASSADOR
TEN IN THE DARK
ELEVEN SUSPECT BEHAVIOR
TWELVE CAFFEINATED SOCIOLOGY
THIRTEEN BAD IMPRESSIONS
FOURTEEN THE LAND OF MIRRORS
FIFTEEN COLLEAGUES
SIXTEEN ENGINEERING RESPONSE
SEVENTEEN HOME AND AWAY
EIGHTEEN DIRTY MUGS
NINETEEN DUSTOFF
TWENTY DUNGEON
TWENTY-ONE DISCUSSION
TWENTY-TWO DISSECTION
TWENTY-THREE DEADLINE
TWENTY-FOUR DEPARTURE
TWENTY-FIVE UNDERGROUND CELL
TWENTY-SIX FINAL INQUIRIES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ROGER MACBRIDE ALLEN
COPYRIGHT
&nbs
p;
Final Inquiries Page 36
