Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  She stood up and made her way up the ladder and looked at the main display and shut off the alert. "It's the Stability, all right," she announced, raising her voice a bit to be heard on the lower deck, and speaking in Lesser Trade. "She's here a lot sooner than we expected, way ahead of schedule, and she's at a lot closer range than we figured. We're fine for the moment, but we've got to get busy pretty quick."

  Jamie looked up to Hannah and tapped his finger on the note from Trevor. "Hannah, we have to deal with this. Now."

  "I agree. But we're going to have to find time for both problems," she said, trying to sound a lot calmer than she really was. Probably Jamie was doing the same. "Hang on, I'm coming down." She climbed down the ladder again and sat back down at the table, doing her best to seem calm, dispassionate, and professional. She doubted she was fooling anybody.

  Hannah turned to Jamie and spoke in English. "We're on the clock, but there's something we have to decide before we go any further. We have to decide what to do about Taranarak. Do we trust her or not? I think the odds against her being a plant have just kept getting longer--and I don't think it much matters anymore. If there's something in her clothes or gear or whatever that can give Constancy a directional fix, we can't do anything about it anyway--and I think it's too late for anything we say to do Constancy any good even if it is listening somehow--and I very much doubt that our Unseen friend is listening. I think we might as well brief Taranarak now."

  "I agree," said Jamie.

  "What is going on?" Taranarak asked in Lesser Trade, her voice betraying her fear.

  "A lot of things," said Hannah. "Constancy's ship, the Stability, is out there. We can track her because we saw her transit-jump entry, and because she's just lit her engines and we can detect her thrust plume. Our nav system is doing that now. And our nav system ought to be able to keep a pretty fair track on her by dead reckoning between burns, but we won't be able to see her directly unless her main thrusters are lit.

  "Our nav system knows where we are, and knows where the Sholto is and where the booster is, and we've all matched velocities. It's very unlikely that the Stability has spotted any of our vehicles yet, even though she has better detectors than we do. We're pretty sure that she can't detect our ships unless they light their engines or transmit a signal. But the second any of our vehicles do any of those things, Constancy will be able to track them and shoot at them and kill them. We're going to play it as safe as we can by keeping all our systems powered down as much as possible so as to give Constancy less chance to detect us."

  "So we just sit here and hide until we run out of food, or air?" Taranarak asked.

  "No," said Hannah. "Jamie has worked out a plan that involves the booster and the Sholto. It ought to at least give us a fighting chance of escaping. The risks are high, but we're doing our best to reduce them."

  "But our primary mission is to get the decrypt key back to Center," Jamie said. "Surviving would be very nice, and we'd very much like to do it--but sending the key by laser or radio signal would do just as well as physically delivering an object that has the key on it. We intend to keep searching for the key. If we find it, making sure the key code gets back to Center is going to take priority over our own survival."

  "And finding this"--Hannah tapped at the handwritten message--"makes our job even more difficult. It seems very likely that it contains puzzles and jokes that serve as clues that will tell us where the key is. So we have to play two very serious games at the same time--hiding from Constancy while trying to lure it into a trap, and at the same time trying to solve this charming little puzzle. And if we do find what we're looking for, and it's a choice between survival and BSI HQ on Center getting the decryption key--well, you understand."

  "I understand, and I completely agree. But I doubt I can help with either problem," Taranarak said unhappily.

  "I think you're wrong about that," said Hannah. "This note was hidden in a way that made it easier for humans to find than Metrannans--but even so, we just barely managed to find it. If the decrypt key is still hidden on this ship, it's hidden so as to make it harder for Metrannans to spot it than for humans. You might be a big help with that." She turned and looked to Jamie. "But right now, this second, I need you to come look at the tactical plot."

  "We're going to be up and down this ladder all day long," Jamie grumbled, following after her.

  "Well, you'd better get used to it," said Hannah.

  Jamie dropped into the pilot's seat and pulled up the navigation plot display. "Well, it could be a lot worse," he said, after studying it for a moment. "Our three ships are deployed pretty well. It would be better if they were farther apart, or not flying in formation with each other, just to make things harder on Constancy, but stuff like that would make things too much harder for us, too. We just don't have the tools to manage a tactical situation that complicated. The Stability is more or less in the center of our triangle, closest to the booster.

  "The Stability hasn't matched velocities with our ships, of course, because Constancy doesn't know where they are, but she's moving in more or less the same direction but somewhat faster. She's going to pass through our formation, approximately at its center, in about an hour. The Stability's going to be between us and Center from there on in, which means that Constancy would almost certainly intercept any signals sent between BSI HQ and us--so we'd better not send any signals."

  "We weren't planning on it anyway," said Hannah. "That's why we sent our call for help when we did. So what happens now?"

  "Well, we've made our move by not moving," said Jamie. "We didn't do the normal post-transit-jump thing and immediately start our braking maneuvers. If Constancy was counting on tracking us on braking thrust, it's out of luck. It's got two choices. Constancy can search the entire volume of space we might be in, or it can leave the ship's engines off and wait, and call our bluff, force us to light our engines.

  "We're moving at a helluva fast clip, and we're going to have to start braking sooner or later, or else we're going to blow right through the system and never come back. If we don't light our engines soon, we won't be able to stop in time. But the Stability's got more powerful engines, and more stored power. She can wait longer--and for that matter, she could blow through one side of the Center System and out the other and Constancy wouldn't care--it's not trying to get to Center. What all that boils down to is that it can wait us out.

  "Except we're on our turf now. It has to know we might have called for help already. And in fact we're not planning to do a braking run. We're counting on getting rescued. And Constancy ought to have seen that possibility. For all it knows, there could be a pair of heavy cruisers headed this way right now. They could blow the Stability out of space and rescue us with no fuss or bother. On the other hand, it also might be aware that one or both of our ships is awfully short of stored propulsion power. It doesn't know about the booster, and it can't know for sure which of the two ships it knows about we're on--and it can't rule out that we might have crews on both ships."

  "Okay, now that you've got my head swimming, what happens next? Is Constancy going to just sit there and wait for us to blink first and fire our engines?"

  "What I'm hoping is that Constancy's head is swimming. My guess is that it launched after us with no better plan than squashing us like bugs when it caught us. Now it's in over its head. I doubt Constancy realizes how difficult a thorough search of a volume of space this big can be--and as time goes by, and the possible trajectories we might be on expand, the search volume is only going to get bigger. The Stability will have to fly through a volume of space, scanning as she goes, and then stop, move over, and scan the next sector. And on top of everything else, of course, even if Constancy manages to kill us, it has to think about making its escape afterward, and that creates a whole new set of complications."

  "Any chance it might just decide to give up and go home?" Hannah asked.

  "If you had sat next to Constancy at that dinner, you wouldn't bother to
ask that question," Jamie said with a shudder.

  "Well, it sounds to me as if just sitting tight and waiting for us to blink first and start our braking run would be the more rational strategy for Constancy to follow."

  "Maybe," said Jamie. "But it was mad enough to be spitting rivets before we left, and it's had a lot of time to get more frustrated since. My guess is that it goes for the active search." He stood up and punched a series of commands into his datapad so its main display would show a lower-resolution repeater display of the nav status screen. "For now, all we can do is sit tight. So we might as well go back down to the lower deck, keep Taranarak company, and start staring at Trevor's crossword puzzle clues."

  Twenty minutes later, Jamie had learned very little from the clues, other than that he didn't like crossword puzzles very much. "Maybe it's something else disguised as puzzle clues," he said. "Maybe we're supposed to read the first letters of each sentence, or the last letters, or the capitalized letters, or something."

  "Or maybe we should do what I suggested a while ago just to be polite and to keep Taranarak happy," Hannah said. "Maybe we should ask her about a few things in this." She shifted over to Lesser Trade. "Taranarak--it would be utterly hopeless to try and translate this message as it stands. But there is something I have just noticed in it. In my dealing with the Elder Races, I have often encountered beings who tell me how young I am, or how young the human race is. They do this when they wish to be insulting, or intimidating. However, that is not true of Metrannans, is it?"

  "I do not understand."

  "Would it be rude to tell a Metrannan he or she was, or seemed, young?"

  "Not in the least," she said.

  "But it would be terribly insulting to make any mention of a Metrannan being or seeming old, would it not?"

  "Oh, far worse than insulting. It would be dreadfully rude--especially coming from a being from another race who was of about the same age but could expect to live twice as long."

  "That is as much as I thought," said Hannah, and shifted back to English. "Okay, that's a start. That first sentence--'To good old, Hallaben to see back half of insult twice.' If your idea was right, and we were supposed to read one element of it, like capitalized letters, then all the other elements would be meaningless, and you'd just toss them in anywhere to make the message look like real prose. But if this is supposed to be like a crossword clue, then everything in a clue is supposed to mean something--including the punctuation and commas. Since calling a Metrannan 'good old This-or-that' is about as deadly as an insult gets, that made me think 'for good old' followed by a comma is supposed to stand by itself, a separate phrase inside the clue-sentence. But what does the phrase mean?"

  "Wait a sec," said Jamie. "Suppose 'To good old' means 'to get to good aging'--long life? To achieve it? But what's the 'back half of an insult'?"

  "No, no," said Hannah excitedly. "Think crosswords. Not 'an insult'--the word 'insult.' Letter by letter, the back half is 'ult.' Syllable by syllable, it's 'sult.' Twice?"

  "Sult-sult?" Jamie frowned. "No! Sult repeated! Sult and result. So it means 'To cause good aging--long life--show the results to Hallaben.'"

  "And it's got to mean the results of the message itself. It's got to. Unless it leads to another puzzle that leads to a puzzle that leads to a puzzle that leads to the decrypt key. In which case I'll start a research project to bring Trevor Wilcox III back to life just so I can strangle him."

  "No. I want in. You can hold him down and I'll beat him with a shovel. But I don't think Trevor would dare get that cute. 'To age well, show the thing this helps you find to Hallaben.' Translation: This message will tell you where the decrypt key is."

  "Good," said Hannah. "Good! But I think it's also saying in a sort of sideways way that the clues point to each other. There's going to be layers to this."

  Taranarak spoke in Lesser Trade. "Excuse me," she said, "but your datapad seems to be indicating something."

  Jamie snatched it up and looked at it. "That's for sure," he said. He looked to Hannah. "I think the party is about to start," he said. "Constancy is on the move."

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SEEK AND HIDE

  Taranarak watched as the two humans scrambled back up that infuriating ladder to the flight deck. It was not only disconcerting to see them move that way, it was becoming downright mortifying. There were plainly any number of things that humans--crude, half-civilized, oh-so-Younger-Race humans--could do far more easily than Metrannans. Things that went far beyond climbing ladders or dealing with shifting gravity fields. Things like being able to stand up to the Unseen Race, and, indeed, all the Elder and Eldest Races. Improvising, taking risks, trying things that had not been done before.

  Nor was it that they were unafraid. Even across the gulf between her race's gestural signaling and that of humans, it was easy to see just how scared Mendez and Wolfson were. And yet they pressed on.

  It struck her that she was, in that very moment, witnessing a battle between the Youngest and one of the Eldest known surviving sentient races in the Galaxy. Age versus youth. It was inspiring, in a way. But, regardless of who won this confrontation, the way they were fighting it told her volumes. Perhaps the Elder Races might have a lot more to be worried about than they realized.

  "I was beginning to think Constancy had decided to go for the sit-and-wait strategy," Jamie admitted as he studied the nav plot. "That would be a nice play-it-safe way to go. Custom-made for an Elder Race attitude. But the Stability has lit her engines. She's definitely moving into position for an active pattern search. And pow! The Stability's active detection system just lit up. Big, bright, and powerful, that's for sure. Better than I thought she'd have. But it's like Constancy just switched on a really powerful searchlight. If it manages to get close enough and point it directly at us, it'll see us for sure. But exactly because it's so powerful, we can see the Stability from way far away, no matter which direction the detector is pointed."

  "So we can see Constancy better, but it'll be able to search faster than we figured," said Hannah.

  "Right. And, sooner or later, depending on what search pattern it chooses and how that pattern interacts with dumb luck, it'll find the booster, the Sholto--and us. Maybe not in that order. We might have to play our next card a little sooner than I thought."

  "Anything more you can do? Anything more you need to see?"

  "Not right now. It's going to be a while before the Stability shifts course into the next leg of her search pattern. That'll tell us a lot."

  "Then let's get back to the puzzle."

  "'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor grant of bank officer.'" Hannah read out loud. "There's an inspiring quote to live by."

  "Wait a second," Jamie said. "Read it aloud again."

  "'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor grant of bank officer.' What are you hearing?"

  "Different words than I see when I read it on paper," said Jamie. studying the paper. "At least in the first part of the sentence, every word is a pun and a misspelling of some other word. 'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor.' Hmmm. Lemme see."

  He scrawled out the nonsense phrase, then wrote another version directly under it.

  "'When Her mutt sighted no more'? No. Wait a second. 'When hermit sighted no more!' Something happens when you can't see a hermit anymore?"

  "Not exactly," said Hannah. "Keep on misspelling and punning. "Bank officers don't give grants--they make loans. 'Grant of bank officer' is a loan--but make that alone. 'When a Hermit is sighted, the hermit is no longer alone.' And maybe--maybe--the capitalization of 'Her' makes it seem likely that the hermit is special or important and/or female."

  "Or else 'Her mutt' might mean 'her dog,' or it might even be a pun inside a pun--Hermit's her-mutt. The female hermit's dog, or the hermit's female dog," Jamie said. "This is starting to make my brain hurt. Maybe it's 'When the female hermit sights her dog, she is no longer alone.' That actually almost makes sense."

  "Wait a second!" Hannah said. "I think I can make the next
part make absolute sense. 'Ungreen leeks hate this conic section.' More puns and misspelling. The kind of leek that isn't green is a leak, l-e-a-k. And if I were an ambitious leak that wanted to accomplish something, what I would hate would be the thing that stops me--a patch."

  "And we found out the hard way that the leak patches used aboard the Sherlock-class are round--they're circles."

  "Perfectly valid conic section there. Good! And let's not forget one of the patches was missing."

  "I think we're getting warm," said Jamie enthusiastically.

  "What have you found?" said Taranarak in Lesser Trade. "Your voices and faces seem to show happiness and excitement. What have you found?"

  Jamie opened his mouth to tell her, then shut it again. "I regret to say that, when you look at it all together, we haven't found much at all. Translated to Lesser Trade Speech, what we have so far would be something like 'Show the results of this riddle to Hallaben if you want long life. If a female person who lives alone is seen by her pet, she is no longer alone. Leaks do not like round patches.'"

  Taranarak was silent for a moment. "I am starting to wonder if perhaps you are all insane," she said.

  "In a way, that's the idea, Taranarak," said Hannah with a weary smile. "Trevor's ship, this ship, had just been searched by xenos, and he was very much afraid that it would be boarded again after he died. He wanted us to be able to find the decrypt key, but not you, if you see what I mean. So he worked out a way of setting down clues that would be impossible for an outsider to understand--and just barely possible for one of us."

  "I'm going to take a break from crosswords and check on the deranged alien who's trying to kill us all," said Jamie. "The Stability should have dropped into her search pattern by now."