Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  She bent her four knees in unison, a movement that, in her culture, was meant to express agreement more than submission. Taranarak's actual emotional state, however, might have been better described as weary toleration combined with frustration, though it would be unwise in the extreme to express anything like that to one of the Unseen.

  "By all moral, philosophical, and cultural measures, you are no doubt correct, and I of course agree with you," Taranarak lied, "but right or wrong, change is forced upon us."

  And change was not only absolutely essential for their mutual survival, not only a good thing, but an absolute moral imperative. However, one did not voice such opinions to the Unseen. "It infects, it spreads, like one of the illnesses in the Old Stories."

  "The illnesses never touched our kind, but only yours--and they were stopped," replied Bulwark of Constancy. "And thanks to the unchanging determination of my people, they have never returned to harm your people." Bulwark of Constancy gestured with its upper-left and lower-right expressive mandibles, indicating dismissal of a poor analogy.

  "I beg your pardon," Taranarak said. For a supposedly changeless being, Constancy was being--what was the delicious human word that Trevor of geneline Wilcox had used? Crotchety! That was it. Bulwark was being most unusually crotchety and fussy. But, of course, the mere existence of humans and Kendari, the fact that the Young Races must be dealt with at all, even if only as a mere trivial inconvenience, was a massive affront to the whole worldview of the Unseen Race. It was unfortunate that she had been forced to bring such matters to the attention of Bulwark of Constancy. "I did not wish to offend."

  "Nor have you--yet. But it is desired that you proceed with your report and conclude with all deliberate dispatch."

  "Very well," said Taranarak. "It is my opinion that the danger can only grow worse as the level of uncertainty grows. There is growing awareness, among many factions, that there is--or at least was--a treatment that can...alter matters." She dared not say anything more explicit than that for fear of offending Constancy.

  "It is wrong to alter matters. As a matter of simple logic, it is plain that any change could only be for the worse, because circumstances and conditions remain optimal, as they have been for a significant part of a standard galactic rotation."

  Not optimal for everyone, Taranarak thought. For the Unseen, perhaps, but not for Metrannans. "Wrong or right does not enter into it," she said. "The knowledge that there is--or even that there might be--a way to change matters is in and of itself destabilizing the situation." She hesitated. "Whatever we might think of change in general, or how this change might affect our society--our civilization--it is beyond any empirical dispute that this change might well have the potential to provide the deepest and most profound benefit to some individual Metrannans." Practically all individual Metrannans.

  "That is of no importance, as the benefits would be short-term at best. The instabilities induced by societal change would more than cancel out any transient and individual benefit."

  But if it benefits all individuals, how can it possibly be harmful to Metran society? But she knew the answer to that one. It was plain to see how a change so huge, so far-ranging, if left unmanaged, could upend things utterly and send Metran society spiraling into catastrophe and disaster. It was cursedly annoying to agree with Constancy, but Taranarak had to concede, even to herself, that this change might well be good for each individual, but wrong for society as a whole, dreadfully wrong--if it were not handled properly. "All your points are, of course, valid," she said. "But it would be a mistake to argue in absolutes, and a further mistake to believe that all circumstances are subject to our control."

  Bulwark of Constancy set itself bolt upright and ceased all motion. It held itself frozen in an utterly neutral posture that indicated a complete absence of reaction or emotional response. But, of course, that was entirely deceptive, a mere first-level reading of Constancy's gestural signaling. What it really meant was that Constancy was so offended, so enraged, that it was refusing to signal its emotions at all.

  Taranarak suppressed her own emotional signaling. The proper reaction to Constancy's not-actually-neutral posture would have been shock, dismay, fear, consternation, shame. It would do no good at all to let Constancy know that what she was really feeling was weary resignation.

  It was plain that Bulwark of Constancy would have no more to say that day--and perhaps not for many more days. "I beg your forgiveness," she said, "and, unless you object, I shall now withdraw."

  Bulwark of Constancy lived up to its name, and remained motionless with all the admirable constancy of a statue carved in stone. Taranarak made the obligatory gestures of respect and farewell, and withdrew from the chamber, careful that she never presented the back of her head or her rearward eyes to Constancy.

  She got outside the structure and exhaled with relief. She had done her best. She had shown all due respect to Bulwark of Constancy, and, by extension, to all the Unseen Race. That ritual complete, she was free to move on to the next step in the process, without fear of accusation of disrespectful or inharmonious behavior toward the Unseen.

  Bulwark of Constancy's quarters were very near the center of the Enclave. Taranarak set off walking toward the exit, and her own laboratory, just outside the western limit of the Enclave. She did not so much as glance at the low, graceful, rounded structures, or their subtle, muted, slowly shifting colors. Nor did she take much notice of the Metrannan city of bold spires and gleaming towers that surrounded the Unseen Enclave on all sides. Those were everyday sights, and of no immediate interest.

  What went on in those ancient minds? she asked herself. Why are the Unseen the way they are? For far from the first time, and, no doubt, for far from the last, Taranarak wished that she could see, really see, the beings inside the exoskeletons, and not merely look on the perfect mechanical carapace that encased them.

  Trevor of Wilcox had said that to human eyes, the carapaces of an Unseen Being resembled a clawless upright lobster that had been stuck on top of ostrich legs, then spray-painted in metallic colors. The imagery had made little sense to her until he showed her some pictures from his ship's very limited reference web, but the tone of what he said was instantly clear. To him, the carapaces of the Unseen were, somehow, simultaneously alarming and absurd. To Taranarak, and to all Metrannans, they were admirable, handsome, graceful, a pinnacle of good design and good taste, perfectly designed mobile life-support systems.

  The problem was that the carapaces also concealed the being inside, not only from sight, but from all scientific inquiry. She had researched the point as far as she dared, but the literature said almost nothing about what was inside the carapaces.

  She had found precisely seven accounts of Metrannans who had, by whatever means, seen something of the interior of a Unseen Being's carapace. Three contained no information other than the bald fact that someone had seen something, and the others contradicted each other in almost every detail.

  It also seemed highly improbable to her that the seven occasions she had found referenced were the only sightings in all the endless years. No doubt many other accounts and reports of sightings had been expurgated from the records. But they were all she had to go on--and they provided so little data that speculation could be allowed to run all but unchecked.

  There were four general classes of theory about what was inside the carapaces. One was that they were in fact superior artificial replacements for the natural carapaces evolved by the ancestor species of the Unseen.

  Another was what Trevor of Wilcox had called the "hermit crab" theory--that the Unseen were actually smaller creatures that climbed in and out of the metallic casings, treating them more like vehicles to be operated rather than as integral parts of their own bodies. Or perhaps they stayed in them permanently, wearing a particular carapace continuously for years or decades at a time until it wore out.

  A third was that the Unseen themselves were not in fact inside the carapaces, but were elsewhere, and
operating the carapaces by some form of remote control.

  The fourth was that the Unseen were formerly biological beings, but had gradually made the transition to being wholly robotic life-forms; the carapaces were the Unseen beings, and the Unseen were in fact there for all to see.

  There were endless variations on all these ideas, and any number of theories as to why exactly the Unseen were determined to remain so--but it was unseemly, and unhelpful, to dwell on such matters.

  Taranarak had dealt with the Unseen for all of her life, as had many Metrannans. She was used to such mysteries. They had remained unresolved for generations before she was born and would likely stay that way until long after her death. Usually, she was able to accept that fact--but somehow, this was not a usual day.

  She reached the boundary of the Enclave, and crossed the unguarded border with the greater city outside. She turned and looked back the way she had come, really seeing the Enclave for the first time that day. Her own research had told her a lot--perhaps too much--about what it had once been like. The earliest records showed that there had been an Enclave here, even then--but in those early days, it was the city of the Unseen that had all but surrounded the tiny Metrannan village. Generation by generation, lifetime by lifetime, the Metrannan presence had grown, and that of the Unseen had shrunk.

  One repair, one adjustment, one removal, one rebuilding at a time, at a pace too slow for any but the longest-lived beings to witness directly, the grand city of the Unseen People had shrunk, been slowly swallowed up by the burgeoning Metrannan metropolis. The very quiet, very cautious research done at Taranarak's request had demonstrated conclusively that the Unseen Enclave--and the planet-wide population of the Unseen--had been shrinking at a steady if all-but-imperceptible rate for thousands of years. If the trend merely continued along the same curve, then the Unseen would be extinct on Metran, perhaps within the lifetime of Taranarak's great-great-grandchildren--perhaps even that of her great-grandchildren.

  No wonder the Unseen feared change.

  Taranarak was so entirely lost in thought that she was not even aware of the four officers from the Bureaucracy of Order standing in her path until she was almost on top of them. By the time she did see them, it was of course far too late to escape. The Bureaucracy of Order, after all, had a great deal of practice arresting radicals, dangerous dissidents, and anyone else who was a threat to the established system of stability and order. It was only in the moment that the other officers closed in behind her, sealing off any chance of escape, that she realized that those words were a precise and accurate list of what she had become without even trying.

  Change, she suddenly realized, was even more infectious than she had thought.

  SIX

  ONE IS TWO

  The technicians cleared out. Hannah strapped herself into the pilot's chair on the Sholto's upper deck, while Jamie used the fold-down acceleration chair on the lower deck, and the combined vehicle that was the Adler and the Sholto undocked from the BSI HQ Docking Complex. The Sholto's main engines and the booster stage came to life and launched the ships out toward the perimeter of CenterStar's planetary system at a constant ten gravities acceleration. The spec sheets for the Sherlock-class said fifteen gees would be safe with the ships docked nose to nose, but Hannah wanted a fat safety margin, and Jamie did not argue.

  "So," Jamie asked as they secured the ship from initial boost, "which job do you want to avoid first? Researching the case or searching the Adler?"

  "Well," Hannah replied, climbing down the rope ladder to the lower deck, "we're going to have to do both at once after a while. But maybe we can get some better idea of what, exactly, we're looking for if we study up on the case first." She pulled out a folding work chair from a compartment next to the air lock and sat down facing Jamie in his acceleration couch.

  Jamie readjusted the acceleration chair, raising the back support so he sat upright. "Or else," he said, "we find the decrypt key five minutes after we start searching the Adler so we can abort the rest of the mission and head for the barn right away. We could get the key back to HQ, then go out and investigate what happened to Special Agent Wilcox without that job being a cover story."

  "That's possible, I suppose," Hannah said. "We might find it in a hurry. But our people have done two searches of the ship's interior already. Short of going over every surface with a microscope and a scanner, I don't know what we can do that hasn't been done. And I don't believe the scanner and scope approach is the way to go."

  "Yeah, that's pretty much what you said to Gunther," said Jamie. "Why not? A microdot is so easy to hide and so hard to find. Why wouldn't Special Agent Wilcox have gone that way?"

  "For starters, because the equipment to make a microdot isn't usually carried aboard a Sherlock-class. Granted, that doesn't mean she didn't carry one. We can check the manifest for the Adler's last trip, and see if one's listed--though of course things get aboard ship without being on the manifest. But if there were a microdot generator aboard when the ship was recovered, Gunther's team would have spotted it. Of course, Wilcox could have brought the dot generator aboard without manifesting it, or obtained it on Metrannan, made a microdot, and then jettisoned the generator to hide the fact that he was making microdots--but that seems unlikely."

  "You haven't convinced me yet."

  "Well, consider this: microdots are just one possibility. Wilcox might have used some other system to make the decrypt key very small. A strand of encoded DNA deliberately left behind on his toothbrush. Micro-etched dots and dashes burned onto one length of monofilament thread sewn into the padding on the pilot's chair. Techniques that would produce a message platform so small that a scan for a microdot might miss them altogether. So small that we couldn't prove absolutely prove he didn't go the micro-message route unless and until BSI HQ decides to disassemble the Adler and go over each piece by hand with every kind of scanner and microscope on the market. Which is why I very much doubt Wilcox would have done it that way."

  "I don't quite see your point."

  "It's trade craft and doctrine stuff. A microdot is a concealment technique you use only when you're confident that you will be the one to recover the message, or else if you're confident you'll be able to tell your people where to find it without the bad guys listening in. Wilcox couldn't be sure that he would survive long enough to recover the key, and knew he had no reliable way of telling us--telling BSI--anything privately.

  "We haven't gone over the logs in fine-tooth-comb detail yet, but a few things jump out. It sure looks like Wilcox was boarded--and knew that he might be boarded before it happened. Maybe he figured that out an hour before, maybe a couple of days before he was visited. And he knew that he was dying. Dying of old age in his twenties. He would have no way of knowing how long he would live. Would his illness progress at a steady state? Would it slow, or accelerate? Was there one particular organ that would be more vulnerable to the effect and give out sooner?"

  Jamie thought it over for a moment. "So you're saying he probably had to hide the key because of the boarding party, and he had to know he probably wouldn't make it back to base."

  "Which is another way of saying he had to hide it where the boarding party wouldn't find it--but we would." Hannah gestured up at the Adler, literally hanging over their heads. "If I have this figured right, whatever it is, whatever form it takes, however it is recorded, the decrypt key is concealed on that ship in such a way that humans could find it, but xenos couldn't."

  "Hmmm. I guess that all makes sense," said Jamie. "But where he had it hidden for the boarding party might not be where it is now. He could have been forced to stash it somewhere in a hurry before the boarding party came on board, then might have taken the time to conceal it more thoroughly once they were gone."

  "That seems plausible," Hannah agreed. "And take it a step further. He couldn't know for sure the xenos wouldn't just wait for him to die, then reboard the ship to search at their leisure."

  Jamie looked startled.
"How do we know that isn't exactly what did happen?" he asked. "Maybe the Metrannans did wait for him to die, came aboard, found the decrypt key, and took it away. The reason Gunther and his team couldn't find the key was that it was already gone."

  "You're not making me feel better," Hannah said. "But you have made up my mind about your first question. I say we hit the paperwork first, at least for a while. We should do a first pass that might at least help us whittle down the possibilities."

  "Makes sense to me," said Jamie. "We might even find out something about what Special Agent Wilcox was supposed to be doing, what his mission was."

  "I've got to admit I'm just a teeny bit curious about that War-Starter designation," said Hannah. "It'd be nice to know what that was about."

  "What?" Jamie asked in mock horror. "And ruin the surprise?"

  Hannah laughed. "Absolutely," she said, "even if it gets some xenos upset. Let's go to work."

  METRANNANS--Native to the planet Metran (see reference). Physical description: There are eight limbs in all: four legs and four manipulating (e.g. nonlocomotive) arms. The legs are short, set close together, and arranged directly under the vertical torso. The typical upright stance of a Metrannan roughly resembles that of a standing human. Height is about one and a quarter to one and a half meters. The skin is covered by scales on all the body except for the hands, feet, and face. Scale coloration varies by individual, and ranges from light blue to pink, but seems to have no social or other significance.

  The four arms are arranged with one "strongwork" pair positioned as with human arms, and a smaller "closework" set, better for fine manipulation, set at a position roughly analogous to the human rib cage. The hands consist of four mutually opposable fingers.