The Third Claw of God

by Adam-Troy Castro

  “Such as?”

  “It has to do with the way the Bettelhine succession works. Traditionally, every member of the Inner Family has always assumed leadership of some of their enterprises, the various research and development divisions being considered especially large plums. The stakes are greater than you can imagine. There is no way that Jason, with his checkered past and those years in absentia when he could have been under the control of Juje alone knows what unsavory parties, would ever have been trusted as being free of outside influence. Under normal circumstances, his relatives would certainly welcome him back as a beloved brother and son, but never again as somebody with a future in any part of the corporation that really mattered. They’d have to be insane to risk it. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then explain why Philip, a Bettelhine traditionalist whose business model is best summarized as more of the same, who should be first in line for command on the entire corporation, has been forced out of at least four major subdivisions in the last two years, with more and more of his responsibilities being handed over to this partnership of Jason and Jelaine. Explain why Hans Bettelhine has been spending an increasing percentage of his work hours in the company of Jason and Jelaine—as well as, it seems, this wild card Bocaian. Explain why, at a point in its history when its fortunes are as secure as they’ve ever been, the corporation has not expanded, as you would expect, but rather consolidated its resources, a process that has included terminating longstanding commitments to the production of war materials for at least a dozen raging brushfires on Confederate worlds. Explain why they’ve been shifting their investments to the reconstruction of crumbling infrastructure or worlds laid waste by their policies. Explain why this family, which has forged a munitions empire, seems to be laying the groundwork for a total abandonment of its prior business model. Explain to me what they’re retooling for. And then explain why, on top of that, they would now offer a olive branch to me, a woman they’ve tried to kill seven times.”

  I remembered another conversation, from earlier in the evening. “Jelaine was talking about her brother earlier. She told me, ‘A changed man can change his family, and what his family stands for.’”

  “She said something like that to me too,” Dejah said. “And it would be truly wonderful to believe it, because it’s just too tempting to embrace the story of a poor, angst-ridden rich boy who discovered that the little people suffer, and who returns to his position of power only to bend all his wealth to the betterment of mankind. But dynasties as established as the Bettelhines just don’t work that way. They have procedures in place to make sure that no changes that radical ever take place. It’s one of the reasons they always have so many children: so that whenever one offspring or another develops a social conscience and starts talking about the dismantling of everything that’s made the family powerful—as happens every couple of generations, since guilt has always been endemic among the rich—the rest of the Family is in place to stop them before they do permanent damage.”

  Paakth-Doy looked fascinated. “Stop them how?”

  “Any number of ways short of assassination, if that’s what you’re thinking. Usually, they just make sure the offending youngsters are shunted into positions like labor relations that carry the trappings of power but don’t really affect the direction of the business. In more extreme cases, the youthful idealists are bought out and sent somewhere offworld, to work with refugees or operate relief agencies, or otherwise exercise their moral qualities to their heart’s content, also without ever again making a decision that changes anything. At the absolute worst extremity, they can even be declared incompetent and subjected to exile, either internal or external. You’d be surprised both by how many outcast Bettelhines live in other systems under assumed names, and how many of the more secluded Bettelhine estates down on Xana are occupied by cousins, or whatever, who are provided everything they could possibly want except the freedom to change things. But to believe that an Inner Family Bettelhine like Jason could possibly return from some offworld hellhole like this place Deriflys, where my intelligence alleges that he found himself, and just out of charisma and empathy for the suffering of others succeed in changing an institution that has existed for centuries…that’s just way too good to be true. Unless there’s something else going on.”

  I asked her. “And so your ‘reasons for special concern’ are—?”

  “—that sooner or later the other shoe has to drop.”

  It was more or less the way I’d figured things, but Dejah’s take gave it even more urgency. These were people who had already contributed to more human suffering, on a grander scale, than any one family in the history of Mankind; it was tempting to think of any change of course for them as good news, but could there ever be good news where the Bettelhines were concerned? Was it not more likely that we were seeing a different shade of bad?

  I was about to ask Dejah another question when Mendez cried out, “What the devil are you doing, you? No, dammit, no!”

  I deactivated the hiss screen and rushed to his side, closely followed by Dejah, Paakth-Doy, and Skye. For a moment I didn’t know what he was looking at. Then I saw that the image on the screen had changed. It was no longer dominated by the curves of the Stanley but by the black void above us. The Stanley itself had retreated to the point where its running lights were just a bright spot, so far up the cable by now that it might have been just another star. Even farther above us, the thin line known as Layabout blinked a constant tattoo, on and off, on and off, like a distant lighthouse mocking castaways adrift without any further means of traveling the storm-tossed kilometers remaining between them and land.

  Dejah said, “What’s the Stanley doing all the way up there?”

  Mendez grimaced. “I don’t know, madam. It went from a full stop to a full-speed retreat, shimmying up that cable so fast it was like we were on fire and it was afraid of being burned. It’s now…wait. It’s slowing down. Stopping. Full stop, one kilometer above us. And holding. This doesn’t make any sense. What do they think they’re doing? Abandoning us?”

  There followed a ten-second pause while the four of us tried to figure it out.

  I got it first, but I happened to see it strike Dejah as well, and she was the first to say what we were both thinking, her disgust matching his and adding a nice, healthy dollop of fear for good measure. “No. If I’m right, it’ll stay there, observing us from that safe distance. Within the hour there’ll probably be another one a kilometer below us, courtesy of the security people at the ground station. We’ll also see some orbital vehicles, before long. But none will get any closer. Not until somebody on their negotiating team or aboard this carriage finds a way out of this.”

  “Out of what?” he demanded.

  The Porrinyards got it. I could tell because that’s when Skye’s eyes registered shock, fear, anger, and finally disgust. I could only wonder whether their shared feelings were as obvious on Oscin’s face, and how that look would then affect the composure of the people still remaining on the parlor deck. Whatever happened, the mood up there would be dark indeed by the time we got around to joining them.

  I said, “This is a hostage situation.”

  “Or a quarantine,” Dejah said.

  12

  PHILIP, EXCLUDED

  P hilip Bettelhine sat with his face in his hands, his rigid manner now fully given way to the dazed retreat of a man whose foundations had turned to sand beneath him. “I don’t understand,” he said. “This should be impossible.”

  I don’t think he was speaking to me but to the universe in general, a structure that, having proved the invulnerability of the Bettelhines a fraud, might have also been planning to jettison gravity, relativity, and thermodynamics as well. Whatever veneer of defiance he’d displayed earlier, when it was still possible to place hope in the prospect of a rescue from the support systems his family had paid for, had crumbled with this latest blow. He was too strong a man not to bounce back, but this wa
s his nadir. This was when he’d be most vulnerable.

  I asked him, “Why would it be impossible, sir?”

  “I…don’t understand.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Every human society since the beginning of the industrial revolution has known its anarchists, its saboteurs, its terrorists. The more we advance, the greater the stakes, the easier it becomes for mal-contents to knock over our sand castles. Why would this be impossible? Why would this not happen?”

  His eyes were red-rimmed, his tone petulant. “It just…shouldn’t be able to.”

  “Again: Why not? Why would you have security if you didn’t have at least the possibility of criminals?”

  “We have criminals,” he said, as if clinging to this one fact. “We have prisons.”

  “Certainly. That’s a human society down there. I’m willing to bet you have any number of run-of-the-mill thieves, rapists, murderers, and sociopaths; in fact, I’m sure that Farley over there cannot be your only pederast, though he’s certainly one too many. But how come you’re so shaken by the revelation that you may have more than that? After all, you have thousands, maybe millions, of people directly involved in the development of newer and deadlier weapons, including I presume those that would permit the hijacking of this elevator. Why would you consider it impossible for some disgruntled tech to gather together whatever resources they needed for exactly this kind of stab at the Bettelhine heart? In a world where advanced weaponry has been the very basis of your daily business, why have there never been any ambitious would-be conquerors willing to attempt a coup d’état?”

  He said nothing, but instead just looked at his hands. Juje help the hereditary leader whose personal strength has never been adequately tested; on the day that test comes, his very bones may turn out be made of sand. Maybe he’d stand up again, stronger than before. Maybe he wouldn’t.

  I searched my fellow passengers for the unguarded expression or relaxed posture that would give away those to whom this development would have come as no surprise. I saw nothing. Jason looked pale and shaken, still determined to maintain a confident unfrightened veneer even if the reactions of his body were just as determined to betray him. Jelaine seemed angrier, though just as frightened, the gestalt of those two emotions a determination to hurt somebody once she knew just who deserved to be hurt. Farley Pearlman remained at the bar, working on what may have been his six or seventh drink, staring at his latest glass as if he envied the liqueur’s capacity to conform to its shape. Dina Pearlman glared back at me, but with a furious concentration that seemed, to me, testimony that she was struggling just as hard to figure out what was going on as the rest of us. Dejah was just angry. Monday Brown looked ill, the perspiration dripping from his forehead as if every moment the Bettelhines remained out of control required additional effort on his own part, just to cope. Vernon Wethers looked worse. The four stewards, Mendez, Colette Wilson, Paakth-Doy and Loyal Jeck all looked like the recipients of recent blows to the base of the spine, though even as I watched Doy and Colette both offered me their own highly different attempts at comforting smiles. Skye circled all of us like a herding animal, her eyes constantly moving as she searched for any cue I might miss. Oscin continued the task that had occupied him for long minutes now, examining the Khaajiir’s body from every angle he could find. Nobody seemed willing to step forward and identify themselves as the hijacker in charge.

  Instead, it was Philip who spoke again. “We…still don’t know that this is anything more than a malfunction.”

  “Please,” Dejah begged him. “Forget the rest of us. Tell us any other reason that the Stanley would want to keep its distance rather than do anything it could to rescue Jason, Jelaine, and you. Just one.”

  “It’s impossible,” he said again. It was the very structure of his universe.

  After him, the most likely sources of useful information were Jason and Jelaine. I studied them for a moment, saw them both willing to make eye contact with me, both straining with the awareness that they’d withheld vital information, both eager to tell me but unsure whether they should or not. I saw apologies in their eyes, even a brave half-smile on Jelaine’s lips. But they didn’t speak up, neither one of them, not in front of these others.

  Fine. So it was time to come at this by some other angle. I turned away from Philip, making no secret of the disgust I felt for him and his denials, and addressed the group at large. “If any of you know anything, anything at all, that might shed some more light on what’s happening here, understand that I will find it out, sooner or later, whether you come forward now or continue to stay silent in the hopes that I’ll go away. That won’t happen. This is what I do for a living, and though I’m damn good at my job, I don’t particularly appreciate it being made difficult. Trust me. You don’t want me annoyed.”

  The parlor was so still that the ambient sound excluded even our respective breath.

  Jason seemed about to break. Jelaine seemed even more anxious. But there was something else there as well, something that worried me almost as much as whatever our culprit or culprits were prepared to do next.

  Sadness.

  Whatever their absent father Hans had to tell me, neither relished the thought of this being the time and place.

  I picked one of the two at random and went to Jason, who slumped a little at my approach, not in fear but in resignation, the sadness spreading from his eyes to the planes of his face.

  I said, “You told me before, that you wanted to be friends.”

  He actually smiled at that. “Yes.”

  “Forgive me for saying that, right now, I don’t.”

  The smile did not falter. “I’m sorry to hear that, Counselor.”

  “If you brought me this far, you already know about me, including my willingness to blight the lives of people who obstruct my investigations. Will you believe me when I tell you, right now, that I’ve already figured out more than you want me to tell the other people in this room? That I’ve confirmed that very sensitive deduction in just the few seconds since the two of us started this conversation? And that I have absolutely no problem with passing on what I know, right here, out loud?”

  Had I expected that to break him, I would have been doomed to disappointment. If anything, he just looked more confident, probably because I’d phrased exposure as a threat rather than an inevitability. He glanced at his brother, who had frozen stock-still in anticipation of the secret now hanging in the air between us, and smiled. “Well, I’ll be damned. You did trip me up. I must give you credit, Counselor. You’re—”

  “Please. Spare me the compliments about how remarkable I am. I’ve had my fill of that this evening, and I’m damn sick of it. I just want answers. Any answers. I’ll even start with a small one. How do I make the Khaajiir’s staff work?”

  This, at last, surprised him. “His staff?”

  I ticked off my observations at a hammering staccato rate rate that barely permitted intake of breath. “One: as I told Mr. Pescziuwicz earlier, Bocaians have never been especially known for their talent at learning languages beyond whatever native tongue they learned first. Two: in fact, they’re particularly bad at it. Three: despite that, the Khaajiir made part of his reputation as a scholar studying the past of another species, an endeavor that must have required substantial poring through primary sources. Four: he even demonstrated his fondness for multilingual puns, demonstrating several that required knowledge of extinct languages. Five: chatty as he was, the Khaajiir barely spoke at all during dinner, when his hands were so busy dealing with his meal that he could not retain a consistent grip on his staff. Six: when he did want to speak up, he grabbed his staff first. Seven: when he lost his staff upon falling to the floor, he asked for the staff in Bocaian. Eight: I’ve been told that I spoke Bocaian at some point today, not an impossible slip given that I grew up speaking the language, but still one sufficient to make me wonder how come I’m not aware of uttering words in a tongue I haven’t uttered since my childhood. Nin
e: just about everything else I said today was spoken in the presence of other people who had no difficulty understanding my words. Ten: the Khaajiir spoke directly to me while I was examining his staff, and I replied. Conclusion: during those few seconds it provided the same service for me that it provided for him. It translated for me. Corollary Number One: since it stores data, it might also contain information about his scholarly activities and about his mission here, information that may prove invaluable when it comes to determining just why an assassin of his species or any other would want to kill him. Corollary Number Two: since Jelaine’s actions after the emergency stop prove that the two of you have been apprised of its capabilities, you might as well take this opportunity to tell me anything I need to know about its operation or what data I should be looking for. I’ll have more pressing questions for you later, but that, at least, would be a fine start.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Dejah’s lips curled still further. Jelaine sipped from a drink that might not have been hers. Philip seemed to have woken up; he now sat up straighter, his eyes darting from his brother to his sister in furious search of the sensitive deduction I’d alluded to and which he must have wished he could share.

  Jason wore no signs of defeat, just an increased sadness, as if my rejection of his friendship remained the most heartbreaking experience he’d been through all day. He spoke softly, as if placating a recalcitrant child. “The translation function is automatic, for anybody holding the staff by the friction strip. Opening the Khaajiir’s files requires the use of a Bocaian password phrase: ‘Decch-taanil blaach nil Al-Vaafir.’ Speaking it out in a clear tone of voice, once, will train the internal software to recognize it when subvocalized. After that you’ll have permanent access.”