“Are you forgetting I have diplomatic immunity from your Phiddian laws? My delegation will be informed immediately of this outrage.”
“Your delegation has just waived your diplomatic rights and is considering its own charges against you. We have asserted our jurisdiction and will be interrogating you about certain matters along with our colleagues from the Guild.”
“I have done nothing against Phiddi.”
“There is the little matter of several illegal Phiddian operatives, now deceased, that you seem to have had contact with. Delegate Macdougal is preparing to turn over certain documents. That will do for beginners. Save your protests for the official hearing.”
They got down to interrogating her right away. No physical torture or sensory bombardment, as she might expect on Earth or its colonies. In fact, she had a comfortable chair, an unopened bottle of water and a sparkling clean glass, and both human and Phiddian legal counsel. The hearing room was softly lit and perfectly air conditioned for human beings, though her Phiddian questioners were more heavily swathed in clothes than usual and the robots obviously didn't care what the temperature was. Presently, Ayan'we and the old Talinian delegate took seats in the back of the room to observe.
Erica was astonished that they confronted her right away with a vast array of evidence. They definitely had the goods on her, delivered and thoroughly explained by one of Chester's aides that she had always taken for an obedient and clumsy toady. There were audio recordings of her meeting with the Gropers Four well before the abduction of Quatilla and video of her during an interview with Tashto discussing the equipment used to nab Torghh. There was also a stack of documents she had never seen or heard about alleging her contact with a variety of nefarious alien organizations. They're not only giving them real secret evidence they collected to set me up for the fall. They're actually fabricating stuff to add to the guilt. They're making it impossible for me to defend myself and discrediting any accusations I can make against them. Why? Why? Why?
She was about to find out. Ramatoulaye and KC announced the interrogation was officially ended. Erica had of course denied everything and refused to admit anything, but couldn't make much headway with the third rule of human intelligence – making counter-accusations – since the material assembled against her had been so new and overwhelming. She was prepared to get up and leave when the interrogators dismissed the lawyers and told her to sit down again. Puzzled, she complied. KC explained that while the formal hearing was over, they were giving Erica the chance to mitigate an eventual sentence by cooperating with the investigation of a related intelligence matter.
“What can you tell us about a message you sent several days ago through coded channels, a message that might have been labeled Mu?”
“You should be aware that I am not authorized to speak about any coded messages that were sent by anyone.”
“We realize that, but it appears that this particular communication involved military details that may constitute acts of war banned by, among other agreements, the treaties just ratified.” Ramatoulaye smiled and added, “Does that help jog your memory? You must know that this matter could reach far beyond normal criminal matters and nullify any considerations of diplomatic or ordinary military service, placing you in the category of a spy plotting against the defense of Phiddi and other worlds. Don't you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I send many messages as part of my job and frankly can't remember anything called Mu or anything else in code, for that matter. But tell me this: if this supposed message was in a secret code, how is it that you can charge it involves military matters? I suspect you are simply lying to get me to admit to guilt.”
KC focused sensors on her and responded, “I don't think we will do any harm in sharing with you something that will soon be made known to all delegations and has already been shared with other choice connections. Our Kael visitors are unusually proficient in codes and managed to intercept and almost completely decipher this Message Mu. They maintain that it concerns the mobilization, dispatch and coordination of human military resources from various points in the zone to certain points in space is such a way as to attack a certain location. A raid, a coup, a war, call it what you will. Responses are under way as we speak. There may certainly be loss of life, civilian as well as military, if hostilities break out. You might stand to be condemned both as a spy and a war criminal.”
For a second, Erica considered spilling everything. After all, there was very little room for her to bargain and nothing much left to lose. She was going to be the scapegoat, no matter what transpired. It was only some shred of pride or defiance that prevented her from owning up to the conspiracies that she was really involved with. Silence was the one comfort and the one negotiating chip she had left. The interrogators did not berate her or try to break her down. They just confined her to her quarters, now rendered totally inescapable, and invited her to use the communicator if she changed her mind about talking at any time at all.
As Erica left the hearing room, she felt a melancholy disconnect with the world around her, a sense of inevitability about her downfall. She harbored no desire to hear the disposition of her case tomorrow, so assured was she of an eventual guilty verdict. She could not even bother to torture herself with the faint hope of exoneration. The evidence presented against her had proved far too deep and damning for even the most dimwitted of jurors or judges to believe in her innocence. She slowly began to follow her security detail back to her room with a weary gait that would have reminded an observer of sleepwalking, but she heard a sudden yell from someone calling to her that shocked her out of her torpor. She turned around and saw Ayan’we rushing up to her.
“So, you’ve come to dance on my grave. Did you enjoy watching them rip me apart back in that courtroom? I hope you did, because that’s the last you’ll ever see of me,” Erica said.
“I’m not here to take pleasure in your suffering. The only question I have for you is – why are you so willing to inflict suffering on others for the sake of your own advancemen?”
“You really don’t know us humans very well, do you? Doesn’t a Forlani ever feel a desire to conquer the world, to gain authority and status above others? Or do all of you just spend your entire lives in these matrilines, content with whatever fate society has predetermined for you?”
“We’re far more familiar with the selfishness of ambitious individuals than you think,” Ayan’we said, remembering Tays’she’s schemes. “You remind me of someone I knew once back on Forlan.”
“And what did these Forlani accomplish?” Erica snarled, quickly becoming disgusted with the whole Forlani race. “Did they ever gain a position of authority in a major corporation? Did the board ever tell them that they’d be remembered forever if they gave their life for the advancement of their company’s interest? How does your species feel about those people that your corporations work to the bone and throw away once the best part of their career is over?”
“We have no corporations. Most Forlani do not believe that the only objective in their life should be the accumulation of status and wealth. We believe that living our life to honor the mahäme is the highest glory of existence, and to believe differently is selfish, wasteful. However, many of us fail to live up to these ideals.”
“What about you? Haven’t you ever felt like gaining power and authority over the rest of them? What have those egalitarian ideals done for you or your career?”
“For now, recovering Doctor Torghh and my sister is enough of an achievement for me. I am sure it will be looked on favorably on Forlan, and perhaps I will be promoted to a position of greater authority. Perhaps another Forlani will be chosen instead. Either way, as long as I continue to perform well, I will be allowed to continue in my career of pursuing knowledge, and that’s the life I truly value.”
“Ah, so it’s your career now. I’ve done my research on your species. Forlani women are supposed to value the status of motherhood above all else. Your own mother,
Entara, always seemed to me to think that way. But you…you don’t seem in any hurry to leave that career of yours behind.”
“What exactly are you implying?”
“You’re more like me than you realize, you arrogant little alien. For all your talk about sisterhood and matrilines, you’re an aberrant member of your species. You destroyed the career and the life of a woman who was more your sister than anyone back on Forlan, and for what? So you can get a pat on the back and some damn alien Girl Scout merit badge? The only thing life brings us is endless struggle, and you’ll find out soon enough that it’s no different for you.”
“Your life is endless struggle because you chose it to be so. You wanted that position in Hyperion and believed that it was worth anything – even ruining a peace conference and sparking an interplanetary war. And after being so willing to condemn untold millions to misery and death, now you beg for sympathy? You truly have no shame.”
“Shame? No one has ever gotten a damn thing from shame! I believed in achievement and the advancement of the human race! You destroyed all my good work for the sake of a chunk of silicon and a bunch of xenophobic lizards who’d sooner kill you than talk to you! I’m the evil one in your eyes because I opposed that?! You Forlani will be a bunch of arrogant assholes to the day your planet’s sun finally dies. If you don’t heed my words your species deserves the miserable fate it will no doubt receive.”
“I’d rather the Forlani not follow you down that dark path of yours. Your aggression has brought you nothing but isolation and sadness. I don’t think you can even be reasoned with anymore. You’ve become so lost in self-absorption. Goodbye, Erica Duquesne. Take pride in the life you have lived if you can,” Ayan’we said.
“Get lost,” Erica snarled as Ayan’we walked away from her. “Crow in triumph, you miserable failure of a Forlani woman, for ruining my life! See what it gets you! Damn you, Ayan’we!”
Erica stared at Ayan’we's face as she left. There was no visible emotion, no sadness or anxiety reflected in her red Forlani eyes or purple facial muscles as she walked away.
Erica felt powerless, her authority and influence dissolved in the acrid ruins of her life. Perhaps that inability to rattle Ayan’we was a reflection of her own inevitable downfall. Is this the end of a woman who once felt so confident that she could challenge the universe to advance her own career? Erica pondered.
After the guards removed the mitten cuffs from her hands, Erica slowly walked back into the small personal room she had been allowed during her time on Transfer Varess. She was still shocked at how quickly the end had come for her. During the inquest, the remaining Hyperion employees had been all too willing to turn on her, revealing her role in the scheme to abduct Doctor Torghh. Even Anthony—the one who was supposedly outside the company officially—had been all too willing to reveal the painstaking details of that scheme, and to fabricate more, before he unceremoniously left. This was the true face of Hyperion, the company she had sacrificed so much for—cowardly rats that would run and squeal at the first sign of danger, glorified mercenaries with no ideals of loyalty or honor. Officially the future wouldstart to become clearer tomorrow, but Erica was absolutely certain that it would be a little longer before judges put voice to it. Thank God I can still enjoy a few moments of privacy, she thought.
Her tiny chamber, so much smaller than the office suite on Earth that she used to work in, was decidedly the worse for wear after the authorities had been through it. Clothes had been haphazardly tossed on the bed and papers left strewn across the desk, signs that investigators had been searching for evidence pertaining to the investigation. It mattered little to her at this point; they already possessed more than enough evidence to put her away for the rest of her life, if there was to be a life. Erica still felt depressed as she looked at the disheveled room, its disorder connected in her mind to the ruin of her career. She noticed that the answering machine on the telephone was flashing red, indicating that someone had sent her a message while she had been under interrogation. She sat down on the chair beside it and slowly pressed the button, dreading the news she suspected she would hear.
“Erica Duquesne”, the electronic voice said in a flat, lifeless drone, “this message is to inform you that your employment with the Hyperion Corporation is immediately terminated. Your conduct has been deemed inappropriate of the standards expected of employees of this corporation, and you are not recommended for any financial aid or assistance in the trial or any legal matters thereafter. Your severance package will be forfeited according to the terms stipulated in your contract. You are no longer allowed on any properties or building owned or administered by the Hyperion Corporation. If you have any further problems, please text us and expect a response in no less than two Earth weeks.”
That was it. Years of climbing the steep mountain that was the Hyperion corporate hierarchy, all ended in an impersonal phone call by an automated voice system while she was away. The company was too cheap and craven to even bother sending her a written notice. There would be no mention of all she had accomplished for the company in her years of service, nor would there ever be a mention that the mission on Transfer Varess had been the idea of her superiors. She had only the loneliness of punishment and failure to look forward to.
Inside the desk she had brought with her from Earth—one of the few personal possessions she had been able to fit into her chamber—there was a small, locked compartment, only a few inches wide. Erica straightened a paper clip and pushed it into the lock, slowly and deliberately turning the clip in the mechanism until she heard a soft click. She watched as a small, bright yellow pill rolled out into her hand. This nondescript pill, which could have been almost any type of medication, was in fact Erica’s personal poison capsule, and her only remaining avenue of escape from the miserable wreckage of her existence.
She quickly popped the pill into her mouth, her throat tingling with the anticipation of death as the capsule slid downward. I wonder what old Bill Hollingsworth was thinking when he died, she thought. Did he realize how pointless it was to give your entire life to Hyperion? Did he have regrets that there was so little freedom from corporate demands and dictates in his life? Maybe I’ll see you again soon, she thought as she waited alone for the darkness to come over her.
9
T he crowds at Transfer Varess had begun to diminish as the visiting dignitaries began to crowd into the ships departing for their home worlds. There was a solemn, almost melancholy ambience to the station that reminded Torghh of an old nature documentary on honeybee colony collapse he had casually viewed in between his work cycles one day. Torghh was struck by one particular image from that film: the empty, barren passages of the dead colony, free of the noise and buzzing of the bees that had once dwelt there. Transfer Varess had not truly reached this desiccated state; various maintenance drones and Powls still whirred and skittered through its hallways, and a relatively small crew of Phiddians stayed on to operate the higher functions of the station. Yet Torghh couldn’t help but be reminded of the empty beehive, and had a sense of finality to his stay on the station; Transfer Varess, too, was now an empty thing of the past to him, a place of dark memories and disturbing experiences.
“What are your plans now?” Rack asked Torghh, breaking his state of tranquil melancholy. Rack had come across to Torghh as being overly anxious, as if he wanted to leave Transfer Varess quickly and be done with the place, putting it out of his mind as rapidly as possible. Torghh could not understand why Rack was so quick to leave the station; why not linger on the memories and experiences a few moments longer, sift through the data in search of some potential solutions to problems not yet encountered? But he did not question his colleague, for such respect had been earned from his rescue that he no longer believed it productive to doubt his motives.
“I have informed the Guild of your accomplishments here on Transfer Varess. They have taken note of your performance and recommended that I offer you a position working with me on my next a
ssignment. Perhaps you would be interested in this task?”
“I am always interested in new opportunities, however I would like to know what this next assignment is before I agree to accept it,” Rack said. Excellent, Torghh thought. He isn’t so anxious to leave that he lost his curiosity about the nature of his work yet. Perhaps, even after the strife he endured on Transfer Varess, he can succeed at the new task the Robotic Guild has given me.
“The Guild has ordered me to go the planet Corlatis to deal with a severe outbreak of disease. A recent, highly virulent plague has emerged from one of the planet’s major cities and has begun to occur on all major continents. The planet has sent forth a request for as many skilled doctors and geneticists as it can get to deal with the outbreak, and the Guild has recommend my assistance there to help. I need an impeccable colleague with superior focus to assist me in dealing with this disease.”
“This plague sounds somewhat familiar,” said Rack. “Recently, Earth had a severe disease outbreak which killed much of its population and has left the planet in a precarious state. Could this outbreak be related to the one on Earth?”
“There is some suspicion of this – the area where the plague originated was one where goods traded from other planets were stored, but the pathogen itself is poorly understood. While we are on Corlatis, I would like you to conduct research on the pestilence and its genetic properties. You could be an invaluable resource in understanding the nature of the spread and how it can be contained.”
“I believe that the genetic research and microbiology required for this assignment will be incredibly difficult. Why do you believe me a superior choice for this assignment to other members of the Robotics Guild?”
“Because you told me of the battle inside your mind, the struggle with the thing you called Emm. Such a thing was so disturbing, so counterintuitive to the nature of our duties as Guild members, that the average Guild robot would have been driven to illogical confusion and been forced to shut down at least temporarily as an act of mercy. To have struggled through such a terrible experience and maintained your grip on reality is a sign that I can rely on you more than any of my other colleagues in the Guild. Perhaps it also indicates that you are innovative and clever enough to find a solution to this dangerous problem as well.”
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