Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  There was a loud cartoonish pop as the air in the tunnel formed by the two docking hatches suddenly escaped into space, gently pushing the two ships apart. Hannah gave the smallest of taps to the attitude jets and pushed the Sholto clear of the Adler.

  "Okay, we're clear," said Hannah. "You can unstrap."

  Jamie did so and scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck to get a better look at the Irene Adler as the Bartholomew Sholto backed away from her. "Well," he said. "So much for the idea of taking advantage of all that extra search time because we brought her with us. We looked everywhere. It wasn't there. But it has to be there."

  "Agreed on all counts," said Hannah. "For all the time we spent, all we bought was a whole lot of nothing. And I'm starting to worry that we're going to get another dose of the same down on Metran. What could anyone down there tell us that would help us find where Trevor hid it?"

  "That's the first time you've called him by his first name."

  "Hmmmph. You're right. It is. I knew you were a bad influence. Come on, we've got an hour to kill before it's time to relight our engines. Let's grab some dinner."

  FOURTEEN

  NEW IS OLD

  Learned Searcher Taranarak rose from her sleeping pad and prepared to start the next day of her endless house arrest. "Preventive detention" had shifted smoothly into "Protective detention" without any intervening step. What difference was there between being locked up because she might harm others and because others might harm her--especially since both claims were little more than implausible excuses?

  She no longer bothered to count the days, or check if the security shutters had been removed from her doors and windows overnight. She no longer had any illusions that her jailers would suddenly come to realize that confining her made no sense, accomplished nothing, and likely was counterproductive to their goal of keeping the situation quiet. After all, the armed guards around her house and the sealing of all its entrances were a plainly visible sign to all that not only was something seriously wrong, but that it involved Taranarak; it was but a simple jump from there to guess that it involved geriatrics. Under the circumstances, even the Order Bureaucrats should not have been surprised to see the crowds that gathered outside.

  Taranarak shuffled through what had become her new normal morning routine, scarcely noticing the jarring incongruities anymore. She washed, she dressed, she knocked at the steel shutter at the rear door, waited for it to open, and exchanged yesterday's empty receptacles and her other trash for a parcel containing her food and other necessities for the day. She exchanged a few pleasantries with the guard who made the delivery, put the food away, prepared and ate her morning meal, cleared up afterward, then went to sit in her great room and resume her work: her searches into what Hallaben had learned.

  Other than the fact that she had rearranged her furniture so that she did not face the massive featureless grey shutter covering her view window, nothing had changed about the room where she spent most of her days, and that, in a strange way, was comforting. Almost daily, she actually caught herself fretting that something would happen to alter the routine, to change what she had now grown used to.

  Those moments told her a great deal about herself, and about her people, and the truths she learned were not comfortable to face. Bulwark of Constancy and the Unseen Race were not the only ones who feared change.

  Taranarak looked down at her study materials and came to herself with a start. She realized that she had moved through her entire morning routine not merely on automatic but almost unconsciously. She had to think, really think, in order to recall what she had said to the guard who delivered her food that morning, and for the life of her she could not remember what sort of meal she had prepared, eaten, and then cleared away.

  What could she remember? She shut her forward and rearward eyes and asked herself, what, exactly, she had been studying--what document, what data. It was a major effort of will and mind to recall.

  She remembered what she had learned, what she had accomplished, what she wished to do. All that was clear and sharp in her mind. But remembering the actions themselves was another matter. And it was not merely the utter sameness of each day that made it hard to recall what this day was like. It was, she knew, a compulsion deep inside her, inside all of her people to make each day the same, to keep things unchanged, to tell themselves that things were best as they were, that anything new was unsuitable, wrong, dangerous.

  There were cases of Metrannans successfully running businesses for years on end, of Metrannans operating space facilities, who later were found to have no conscious memory of doing the job in question.

  When taken to excess, it was even a recognized psychiatric syndrome--"the normal desire for everyday life to be predictable, taken to an extreme." To Taranarak's thinking, the half-approving way the illness was described in and of itself demonstrated just how deeply the illness was embedded in Metrannan culture.

  Taranarak stood up and resolutely faced the great grey slab of blank nothingness that hid the view of the city from her. What she saw was not any sort of "new" normal. It was not acceptable. She might be required to endure house arrest, but she dared not get used to it, grow comfortable with it, even come to enjoy it. There was a point beyond which she must not cooperate with it or with those who imposed it.

  There was a familiar banging and clanking at the main door of her home. Taranarak knew what that meant. The back door was for delivery of provisions. The front door was for comings and goings. The distinction was already absolute, unquestioned. And there was only one place to which she was ever taken. The Order Council had summoned her again. Once again, no doubt, she would face the same weary questioning. Always, it was the same. Have you succeeded? No. Have you made meaningful additional progress? No. Do you believe it is worth continuing the effort? Yes.

  Perhaps they found that repetitive ritual comforting as well. All was well so long as the answers were always the same.

  Taranarak walked to the hallway and glared at the still-sealed door. The Order Bureaucracy hadn't exactly installed a sophisticated security system. It would still take them several minutes to get the shutter clear and the door open. She went to put on appropriate dress, collect her things, and be ready when they were.

  Taranarak stared out the viewport. The same flight path over the same city. No fires were burning at the moment, but there were a few new broken windows, and a few more repairs under way, a few more signs of ruin, a few more of renewal. Strange how even civil disorder had somehow been transformed into something normal, accepted, made routine, institutionalized. She would almost be prepared to believe the small and murky rebel group negotiated the upcoming schedule of attacks with the Order Bureaucracy. Neither side would be able to abide making the chaos too chaotic.

  Or perhaps she was merely projecting her own experience onto what she was seeing out the window, indulging in another familiar Metrannan psychological impulse, the desire to make things all the same, to fit all into one pattern. The Order Council was temporizing, playing both sides against the middle with her, and therefore she was assuming it would do the same with the rebels--if "rebels" was not too grand a term for what was merely a frustrated mob. That, too, was part of the pattern. Reifying things, sticking understandable labels on mysteries, then assuming that the label was all one needed to know.

  Taranarak knew few of the details other than what the officers who held her would tell her, or what the Order Council let slip during their interviews with her, and what she could see through the windows of the aircars as she was flown back and forth. From what she could gather, nothing had yet reached the level of those first riots; but there had been repeated disturbances, and even the periods of relative calm were unsettled and anxious.

  It was as if the long-suppressed desire for extended life spans had broken free--and dragged something else out of the shell with it: an anger that had been held in check for so many generations that no one had even known it was there.

  Taranar
ak had been astonished to learn from casual side comments in the Order Council that there had been several assaults on visitors from other worlds--and even one incident wherein one of the Unseen People had been threatened in a public place. If, even in their state of fear and denial, they had to admit to such things, what worse things had happened? What else were they still unwilling to face?

  Am I watching myself go mad, or my society, or both? They flew past the Enclave of the Unseen, and she gazed sympathetically down at its empty streets. If the Metrannans were failing so miserably to deal with change, how must it be for the Unseen?

  But she had to focus her thoughts on the Order Council. They wanted her to continue her efforts to recover Hallaben's work and had provided her with the study materials she needed.

  At the same time, she could see a trend of conversation in her last few visits. They were looking for reasons that meant they could not, should not, would not release the treatment. They seemed almost relieved every time they brought her in and she had to report that she had made no further progress. Even the promise of long life for themselves was not enough to tempt them to turn their world upside down.

  The aircar landed in the same spot in the courtyard as the first time she had been summoned. The courtyard, however, was a very different place. All the temporary improvised barricades and protections had been replaced by grim permanent barriers. All the wreckage had been cleared away and a wider perimeter established, turning what had once been a lively public plaza in the center of the city into a sealed-off and controlled military staging area, as orderly, lifeless, and soulless as the grey security shutters bolted to Taranarak's house.

  The guards led her along the familiar way, past the quietly bustling semipermanent command post in the ground floor, up the elevator, and back to the same room in which she had met the same three Order Bureaucrats as before--and there, once again, fulfilling whatever unexplained function, was Bulwark of Constancy, standing silent and motionless as a devotional statue. The only indication that it was alive was a slight swiveling of its eyestalks toward Taranarak.

  But not all was the same. Taranarak realized that the great window that dominated the room had been set to full opaque, to the same lifeless grey as the shutters on her house. They were voluntarily blocking out the same view they did not wish her to see. She could understand why they would wish to hide the view and be hidden from it. For what they would have seen was a city wracked by repeated waves of upheaval--upheaval they had been unable to prevent, control, or end.

  But the three Bureaucrats before her seemed, if anything, busy and content--alert, rested, even happy. They had found their new routine, their way to make disaster a normal part of the everyday world, a way to pretend that everything was the way it had always been and always would be. Change was wrong, and bad. Pretend hard enough that nothing had changed, and all will be well. Pretend that this is how it has always been, that we have always done things this way, and there will be no need to fear. Pretend the world is ordered and rational, that all is as it should be, and none need admit they have gone insane.

  Taranarak stared at the three Order Bureaucrats, Yalananav, Fallogon, and Tigmin, and felt certain she saw madness in all their faces.

  "Greetings, Learned Searcher," said Tigmin.

  Interesting, thought Taranarak. It used to be Yalananav who spoke first, who served as first among equals for this triumvirate, Tigmin who followed him, and Fallogon who sat in silence. But now perhaps the weakest of them holds sway.

  "Greetings to you, Bureaucrat Tigmin, and to your associates," she replied. It was a perfectly respectful way to address them, at least in principle. But the slightly fretful looks on the faces of Yalananav and Fallogon told her, every bit as much as Tigmin's pleased expression, that she had scored a point. "Why am I summoned to your presence today? I have no further progress to report at this time."

  "Nor did we expect you to have made progress," said Tigmin, a new and wry edge to his voice. "And while we thank you for your report, we did not invite you here for the purpose of delivering it. There has been a--development."

  "A development of what kind?"

  Tigmin looked unhappy, and shifted his posture. "One of an unexpected nature. One that will require you to--shall we say, assist us--in a different manner. It will require you to indulge in a form of deception for the common good."

  "What--what sort of deception?"

  "Quite simple. We will pretend to set you free, and you will pretend to be free, for the duration."

  "Excuse me, but for the duration of what?"

  "Of a visit we are expecting." Yalananav pretended to consult a document in front of him. "There is a small and primitive spacecraft--hardly large enough to be dignified by the term 'starship'--currently inbound for Metran from its jump arrival point. It's from that Younger Race species--humans, I believe they are called--with which Hallaben and Bulwark of Constancy had some dealings."

  Taranarak felt the fists of her strongwork hands clench up, and her rearward eyes snapped open of their own accord. She fought for a moment until she had her danger reflex under control, and then spoke in as calm a voice as she could. "Humans have come to Metran many times," she said. "It is not the most common of events, but nor is it wildly rare."

  "Oh, yes, quite, quite," Yalananav said. "But the interesting thing here is that a signal from the ship identifies it as from the, ah--'Bureau of Special Investigations' that provided the courier during the incident sometime back."

  "Yes, yes, I remember," Taranarak said. All their careful and indirect inquiries to the humans had led to the same conclusion: The courier was long overdue and must be presumed lost. Whatever documents he was carrying must be considered lost as well. What had changed to bring the BSI here? But Yalananav seemed to be expecting a further reply. "I grant the contact from that organization is of interest," she said, "but it does not follow that their arrival concerns us in any way. They are likely here on an entirely different matter."

  "Ah. That is where you are incorrect," said Yalananav. "Perhaps dangerously so. I hope for your sake that it was not a deliberate error. But the plain fact of the matter is that these humans have specifically asked for you. Or rather, for Hallaben, your predecessor."

  Yalananav looked up at Taranarak with a baleful expression. "He's dead, of course, so the duty is yours. See that you don't end up the way he did."

  FIFTEEN

  UP IS DOWN

  Whoever had done the general intelligence report on Metran hadn't wasted any time trying to learn the local names for buildings, structures, and so on. That was, perhaps, understandable, given the difficulties that human tongues had with the Metrannan language, but it did take the poetry out of things. It seemed especially true of the Grand Elevator. The terms for its various components were accurate enough, but not quite in keeping with the heroic scale of a Space Elevator. It was as if the Mona Lisa had been labeled "Portrait of Unknown Female Subject" or the Coliseum in Rome were called "Ruin of Obsolete Mass-Entertainment Structure."

  But, as Hannah pointed out to Jamie, gen-intell reports weren't supposed to be poetry. They were supposed to tell you what you needed to stay alive.

  The Bartholomew Sholto cut her engines and came to a dead stop relative to what the intell reports called the Free Orbit Level Station of the Grand Elevator, five kilometers ahead of it in orbit. Hannah sat in the pilot's seat, Jamie standing behind her left shoulder. Even at five kilometers' distance, the massive structure that was Free Orbit Level Station took up nearly the entire field of view--and it was merely part of the Grand Elevator.

  Free Orbit Level Station resembled a giant rimless plate, roughly three kilometers in diameter, with the concave side facing the planet's surface. Gravity generators provided normal gravity over as much of the inner surface as was convenient at any given moment. At the center of the Main Field was Free Orbit Level Station Nexus itself, in effect a small domed city, with the cable clusters running through it.

  The orbit
-side end of the Elevator was parked over the equator of Metran, in an exact stationary orbit. The shaft of the Elevator dove straight down to the far-distant surface of the planet, a massive pillar of impossible length and impossible strength, seemingly supporting the weight of the Free Orbit Station Level, and, thousands of kilometers farther out, Counterweight Level Station as well.

  That was illusion, of course. The connection to the ground was not a tower or any kind of rigid structure. It was a tether, a cluster of cables, and the Free Orbit Station Level was in fact in orbit, with no more need to be supported than the Moon needed to be held on a string to keep it in place around the Earth. The cable cluster merely provided a physical connection with the ground, a path along which the Grand Elevator's cars could travel back and forth to the surface of the planet.

  The cable cluster leading to Counterweight Station served a similar purpose to the cable to groundside. Counterweight Level Station mainly consisted of a small asteroid tethered to the Grand Elevator in order to balance the weight of the groundside cable, thus lifting the center of gravity of the Elevator as a whole up to Free Orbit Level's altitude.

  Far below, at the equator of Metran and invisibly far away, stood Groundside Station, atop an artificial mountain built for the specific purpose of supporting the Station high enough to get clear of the thickest part of the sensible atmosphere.

  The huge structure moved passengers and cargo back and forth between space and the planet's surface with the greatest possible efficiency. An Elevator car would leave the planet's surface, riding its cable, moving through the lower and upper atmosphere at relatively low velocities of no more than a few hundred kilometers an hour, and then accelerate to a speed of several thousand kilometers an hour once it reached space. It would race up the tens of thousands of kilometers to Free Orbit Station, riding on super-high-efficiency electric motors, with no need for pilots or navigation or orbital computation or course corrections or fuel tanks. The cars could even recover a large fraction of the energy used to lift them by regenerative braking on the return trip.