Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  "What? That crowd? The Three? Hmmph. Early phase of the French Revolution, I'd say. Pre-Committee of Public Safety. Not the Jacobins, and definitely not the commissars."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought. But why?"

  Jamie frowned and thought it over. "Power vacuum," he said at last. "If I'm reading this right, the crisis was caused by a power vacuum. Not ideology, not a violent overthrow. They're just the guys who happen to be standing around in the right place when everything falls apart. The weird part here is that, as best I can see, the power vacuum was caused by the fact that the absence of government didn't matter for a long, long time. Then there was a sudden need for security, control--for government--after a zillion years of nothing changing and therefore no need for central control of anything. Then, pow!, a crisis hits and they need government all of a sudden. These guys get the job of putting things back together, and find out they like being in charge. They don't want things the way they were, or maybe they realize or at least believe it's not possible to put things back the way they were, but they'd like to stabilize things the way they are now, since they're in charge."

  "Good luck with that one, with the French Rev as a model," Hannah said with a yawn. "But I think you're right. They've just about got things settled back down. They've established the new order. They want to keep it that way, and they don't want to take a chance on anything that might upset the very delicate balance. Especially since the new order has them in charge, as fate, or destiny, or the will of the people, or God himself, clearly intended."

  "God in this case being the tin-plated potted palm?"

  "Hmm. Maybe. I was just talking in general terms. The guys in charge always find a way to convince themselves that they got the job by divine right. But what was a Xenoatric doing there?"

  "Maybe they just like having them around," said Jamie. "Or at least Tom and Dick did. I'm not so sure about Harry."

  In other words, Jamie was circling back around to speculating on what Fallogon was up to. So was Hannah--but she needed to take a break first. "Agreed, once again. But that skates us right back onto thin ice. Later we can play charades and scribbles all you want. After lunch."

  "Do you think they're going to drag us back for another session of twenty questions?" Jamie asked.

  "You know as much as I do about what happens next. We ought to rest up in the meantime. I'm going to shut my eyes for a little while before we eat. You ought to take a break as well."

  "Yeah, but I'm too keyed up. Trying to think about what comes next--and trying not to think about it."

  "I know exactly what you mean," said Hannah. "But I'm going to try not thinking about it with my eyes shut." She stood up, kicked her clunky, sensible shoes off, hung her jacket on the back of her chair, and went over to her bed.

  She slipped between the covers, closed her eyes, and let her worries run through her mind. Problem one: They had not yet been on-planet a full day, but already the cover story was taking over all of their time and attention. It was something she had dreaded from the outset but had never been able to find a way around. How would they string along the needless investigation into how the Irene Adler had disappeared and still find time and ways to track down any existing clues to where the decrypt key was hidden--and to how, exactly, Trevor Wilcox had died?

  No. Not how he died. How he was murdered. Trevor Wilcox, after all, had died of old age in his early twenties. Something had triggered that--and triggered it shortly after he met with this Hallaben character, the head of research into the causes of old age. And that something had to have come from a world currently obsessed over the question of life extension, and what might well be the deliberate suppression of a life-extension treatment.

  Hannah felt there was a very strong possibility that the message they were trying to decrypt was in fact connected to that treatment--or maybe was the treatment itself. It was hard not to wonder if Trip Wilcox had been killed in order to keep the treatment quiet. It was all murky, all circumstantial, but everything pointed toward the same conclusion: Wilcox had been murdered.

  And that meant finding a murderer. The good news was that was something she was good at. Something she had done before. Something she would very much like to do again.

  It gave her something to look forward to. And somehow, that was enough to help her drift off to sleep.

  Jamie sat at the table, watching Hannah doze off. If patience was a job skill for a BSI agent, so was the ability to catch forty winks at a moment's notice. Usually, he was much better at it than Hannah. There had been plenty of times he had managed to sleep, only to awake and find her deeply annoyed at him for being able to drop off anywhere, anytime. This time, the shoe was on the other foot.

  He knew why, too. Put very simply, he called the dead man "Trevor" and Hannah called him "Wilcox." He was taking it all personally--probably too personally. There were endless ways that could wind up causing problems. Excessive identification with the victim could make an investigator squeamish about medical evidence, make him too eager for vengeance, cause him to idealize the victim to the point where the investigator could not or would not be able to recognize a character flaw that might have a bearing on the case.

  But Jamie couldn't help himself. It was too easy to look into the mirror and see someone very much like Trevor Wilcox. A shift in the transit schedule, some little hiccup that might have gotten Jamie into an earlier training class, and Trevor Wilcox into a later one, and it might well have been Special Agents Wilcox and Wolfson investigating the mysterious death of Jamie Mendez.

  It wasn't a far jump from there to the question of how well he, Jamie, would have dealt with the situation. Faced with the crisis that had confronted Trevor Wilcox, would he have done so well? Would he have kept his eye on his mission, his duty, to anywhere near the same degree?

  He would like to believe so, but there was no way to know--and Jamie was honest enough with himself to have doubts. The best Jamie could do was to make use of Trevor's efforts, and work with the clues, the tools, the leads that he had left behind. But while that might be the best he could do, it certainly didn't seem good enough.

  He sighed and pulled out his investigator's notebook. Standard security rules said he had to destroy the page he had written in the trial room, the one with the list of items they'd want, because it also contained his comments to Hannah in BSI shorthand. First, though, he had to check the page and make sure there wasn't anything else on it that he might actually need.

  He paused before he opened the notebook and studied it for a moment. There had been a niggling detail worrying at the back of his mind, and it chose that moment to make its way to his conscious attention. There was something not quite right about the notebooks they had been using. Something subtle, something fleeting and odd. And it was only the new notebooks that seemed a bit off. Once he had used one for a while, it seemed all right. But once the last pages of it had been used, and he reached for a new one, he got that same feeling again.

  He flipped open the notebook. Just one or two items that might be marginally useful. He quickly copied them to another page, then folded over the page with the shorthand on it, and tore it out of the book.

  He reached for the mini-destruct oven, and was about to feed the page to it, when he remembered that he had seen the CHAMBER FULL light blinking earlier, meaning that he would have to empty it before using it again. But the CHAMBER FULL light was no longer on. The oven felt significantly lighter, and there were tiny wisps of ash stuck to it on the outside. Obviously, Hannah had already emptied it. He fed the folded page to it, and leaned back in his chair, wondering what to do next, what he could do that would be quiet enough to let Hannah sleep.

  But then he stopped and frowned. There was suddenly something else at the back of his mind, another hint, another clue, that wasn't merely niggling at his consciousness. It was practically shouting at him. Something big and important. Something, he sensed, just at the edge of revealing itself to him. He froze, stock-still, afraid to mov
e, afraid to breathe, even afraid to think for fear of scaring away whatever it was that his sub-consciousness had spotted.

  It was close. As close as the table in front of him, and the notebook and the chair with Hannah's jacket draped over it, close as the dead man whose last mission they were trying to complete.

  Close as--

  BLAAAT!

  Jamie jumped twenty centimeters in the air. Hannah sat bolt upright. "What in the hell was that?" she demanded. "An alert? An alarm?"

  Jamie cursed silently to himself and stood up. The clue was gone, whatever it was, suddenly far off, as far off as the slumbering Irene Adler, waiting for them in the dark and distant reaches of the Metran star system. "It was the doorbell," he said grimly. "Or at least the Metrannan equivalent. Apparently they're not merely half-blind in the blue end of the spectrum. They must be half-deaf as well."

  He stood up and went to the hatch. He didn't need to bother opening it himself. It came open, and their old friend the guard was there. He thrust a datacard forward toward Jamie and spoke in his extremely limited Lesser Trade Speech. "Here. You take. Clothing rules are there. We collect you at time shown. Take you there, back. Is all."

  "Now what?" Hannah asked, getting up out of the bed and rubbing her face. "And what do we have to wear? Tennis outfits? Clown suits?"

  It took Jamie a moment to navigate his way through the information on the datacard. It seemed to be phrased in language that was halfway between a formal invitation and a legal summons, even more so than most documents written in Greater Trade Writing. "You were close on that last guess," he said.

  "What? How many costumes do they think we can pack?"

  "Well, take it as good news or bad news, but we did pack these costumes. It's a formal dinner. Black tie. Everyone from this morning in attendance, plus about forty more. No one we've ever heard of."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "I wish I was," he said, handing her the datacard. "I hate wearing a tuxedo. It makes me feel like a funeral director or a wedding usher."

  "Technically, I don't think black tie means tuxedo, exactly."

  "Be that as it may, this says that a tuxedo is what I'm supposed to wear. An evening gown for you."

  "Great. I always wanted to play intergalactic dress-up." She studied the card further. "'A formal and public dinner.' I think that means it's for public consumption, for people to watch, not that the public is invited. Propaganda."

  "What propaganda value do we have? We're a couple of cops from a no-account Younger Race."

  "Agreed. Next to zero value. But it's what they've got. And we don't know what other rumors are flying out there. If something about Trevor or his mission got out--for example, that he was murdered--maybe they figure that showing two more human cops will send some sort of signal, prove the story false. We wouldn't be there for all to see, having a swell time at their splendid dinner party, if we had the slightest fear that our hosts had him killed."

  "Suppose we did have the slightest fear of just that? Or maybe a bit more than that much fear?"

  "Watch what you say, Jamie," Hannah said, pointing to her eyes and ears.

  "Let 'em hear it," he growled. "With the paranoia we saw on display this morning, they'd have to realize that we'd wonder about that possibility."

  "That may be," said Hannah. "But it doesn't mean they'll appreciate hearing it."

  "What I don't understand is the big turnaround. This morning they were practically accusing us of fiendish plots against the state--and tonight we're the guests of honor."

  "Sounds to me like we've been cleared of all suspicion," Hannah said, casually reaching across the table for Jamie's notebook. "Whatever that business with the repair compound and the Metrannan rations was supposed to be, they decided it wasn't true." She scribbled a quick line or two in the notebook, handed it to him, and watched him read it.

  "once they decided 2 b-leve we didn't no wht msg ws--& tht msg was truly lost 4 good--then we wr no threat."

  Jamie signed back. How could the message be a threat to them?

  "r u kidding? they hv jst barely regained stability. all is delic8. Moe, Larry + Curly cn't feel secure. anything tht czs change s threat. longer lives change everything + they just got big dose of how much fun change can b."

  "Okay," said Jamie out loud, "so there's a reason I didn't go into politics."

  "Actually, you did," said Hannah. "That's the other reason we're going to this dinner, no matter what we think."

  "'Other' reason? What's the first reason?"

  "The gun to our heads," she said. "We have to do what they say. We're prisoners, to all intents and purposes--but we're prisoners with a mission to accomplish. The 'other' reason is that we need to remember we're not just cops--we're an odd breed of diplomat as well. We're out here to protect and improve the standing of the human race. And sometimes that means getting what we need comes ahead of doing what we want. For example that means having dinner with people who aren't our best friends--while pretending that they are."

  "Okay. Point taken. But I still wish I could skip the tuxedo."

  "Come on," she said. "Let's crack open the suitcases. It's going to take us forever to get dressed and ready for this one."

  By the time she had his tie straightened and his cummerbund adjusted, Hannah had to admit that Jamie cleaned up even better than she had thought. "Very sharp," she said. "Very stylish."

  "Very stiff and uncomfortable," Jamie growled, pulling at his collar. "And very hard to pack all the portable gizmos and gear in the jacket, no matter how many pockets the BSI tailor put in."

  "You've got it easy," Hannah reminded him, gesturing toward her full-length burgundy-colored evening gown. "See any pockets on this little number?"

  "You've got your handbag. And isn't there a jacket that goes with that gown?"

  "A jacket I'm supposed to remove as soon as I arrive."

  "The Metrannans might not know that."

  "Or they might," Hannah said, "and be so hugely insulted by it they decide to hold another little show trial. It doesn't make much sense to jump in and out of these little outfits all day long because our hosts take clothes so seriously--then start hoping they won't notice when we don't wear them properly. Besides, the jacket that goes with this gown wouldn't do much to conceal a shoulder holster. Which leaves me with the handbag to carry everything, and it doesn't even have a shoulder strap, which means I only have one hand free in an emergency."

  "Okay, when it comes to performing our professional duties, your clothes are worse than mine. But you look very nice. The gown suits you."

  Hannah smiled. "Well, it took you long enough. But when you did come out with a compliment, it was actually coherent, polite, and even sounded sincere. We'll get you trained for polite society yet. Maybe the next nice girl you meet won't flee in terror."

  "You're not going to start trying to set me up again when we get back--if we get back--to HQ, are you?"

  "No comment," Hannah said, in a very motherly tone of voice that spoke volumes. She watched as Jamie stepped to the table and started tucking his weapons and comm gear and other compact field equipment into the pockets of his tux. Maybe they weren't being watched as closely as they had thought. They hadn't spotted any cameras yet, though given how small even human spycams could be, that meant nothing at all.

  "Something else I noticed about this crowd. Have you noticed they haven't once checked to see if we were packing heat?" Hannah asked. Neither of them had spoken the words "gun" or "weapon" since arriving on-planet and Hannah saw no reason to start.

  "That's the fun thing about talking for realtime security," said Jamie. "I get to hear you use all that tough-guy slang. But yeah. I did notice that. I assumed we'd have to check it all at the door as soon as we arrived at Free Orbit Station. But they never even asked. No scanners that I've noticed either. Any theories?"

  "Maybe they're all very new at this police state business, and not all that good at it yet. Maybe their snoopers can't spot our to
ys because they're so crude and primitive. Maybe they're short of personnel. Maybe they've already disabled or counteracted everything we've got in some weird Elder Race way that we won't even know about until it's too late. I could probably think of about a dozen other reasons--but I wouldn't want to get too specific while they're listening in. Let's just enjoy the good times while they last."

  "These are the good times?" Jamie shifted to sign language. New topic: We urgently need to find a way to chat with Taranarak in private. She knows a lot, and she's eager to talk. I don't think we're going to get anywhere at all unless we manage that.

  Hannah signed back. I agree. One hundred percent. But unless you've got some bright idea, we'll just have to watch for our chances. Taranarak is no fool. She knows the situation better than we do, and has had more time to think it through. She's probably already figured out she's going to have to be the one to make it happen.

  "Or are the good times just about to start?" Jamie asked, resuming the spoken conversation and pretending that the signed exchange hadn't happened. He peered through the transparent top of their gondola and gestured toward the house Taranarak had emerged from earlier. "I think it's party time."

  Even in the gloomy, red-tinged light of an evening on Metran, they could see that Taranarak was dressed in spectacular fashion, in a garment somewhere in form between a cloak and a gown in colors as iridescent as a peacock in full display, with a matching headdress of elaborate design. She moved with silent dignity between the guard that preceded her and the one that followed, needing nothing but her pride and bearing to turn them into a guard of honor, rather than a prisoner's escort.

  "That's a slightly different look than she had on this morning," said Jamie. "I think it's a fair guess she's going to the same party we are."

  "Sooner or later," said Hannah, "this might all make sense, but so far I can't see it. Just looking at how chewed up the land is around her house, and the obvious damage to her house itself, it looks as if she was in some sort of really heavy-duty house arrest. My guess is that they've just eased up on her a lot--maybe because we showed up. But the ease-up can't be to make her look good in front of us, because they left so much evidence around that they were hard on her, plus they've still got goons all over the place and the end of the street sealed off--then they plunk us down right next to her so we have to see it all. And then they wheel her in to sit like the prisoner in the dock this morning--but tonight she's off to a public ball. Do you have a theory that covers all the known facts, Agent Mendez? Because I sure don't."