The Third Claw of God

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Is this what you want, you bastards? Is it?

  The soldiers were turning, but still not coming for me.

  I stabbed myself again. This one made me convulse. Something slammed into my back; the figures around me became a blur, but not a blur I could see, because there was something wrong with my eyes and then with my brain and then with the taste of blood in my mouth and then what a goddamn stupid way to die and then something exploding inside my chest and then

  19

  XANA

  N othing seemed to happen after that, not for a long time; nothing except for me replaying those moments and remembering how and where but not why I’d died.

  Even when things started happening, they didn’t amount to much.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while.

  At one point I found myself floating, fetuslike, in a chamber filled with golden fluid. The walls were both curved and transparent, and the shapes moving in the drier chamber beyond were all distorted funhouse figures, their faces stretched into cylinders with only distant resemblance to the people I had known. One pressed a palm against the wall separating us and mouthed something. I considered reaching out to place my own hand against the other side, but could not seem to translate the impulse into action, and soon lost all interest. After a few seconds I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

  With little transition I found myself in another flotation chamber, in this case the blue nothingness of the AIsource virtual interface. I was annoyed. I didn’t want to be bothered by their shit right now. But the avatar just studied me and spoke a single sentence, one I was in no mood to register, much less heed. It’s not over, Counselor.

  I n between flashes of being wheeled somewhere on a gurney and lying on a bed with each of my hands being held and massaged by a watchful Porrinyard, I dreamed of my childhood on Bocai. I’d had such dreams before, of course, but most of them, too many of them, had been traumatic flashbacks to the night of the massacre. I was well used to sitting upright in cold sweats, still seeing images of bloodlust and loss. Less often I returned to the moments I remembered now: the idyll before the tragedy, the sunny skies, the laughing faces, the love of both my human and Bocaian families. In this particular flash I must have been about three or four years old. My mother and I were together in a park I remembered well, playing a lazy game with a ball at the end of a string and rules that I made up as I went along. I tripped over something and went down hard, exploding with sobs at the typical childhood inability to absorb the pain and shock adults deal with every day. My mother picked me up and told me it was okay, that I’d be all right, that she’d take care of the owie when we got home. She was bright-eyed and sympathetic, strong and wise—she knew the wound was really nothing, and knew the crisis needed to be felt in order to pass. As the dream, or memory, ended, Bocai’s sun glistened on her dark hair and I reached out, in innocent fascination, to touch it.

  T he blue room again.

  Andrea Cort: You are not yet out of danger.

  I thought you said you wouldn’t help me. That it was against your precious rules of engagement.

  We’ve helped you more than you can know, Counselor. We are helping you now. The Bettelhines are using their local franchise of our medical enterprise to treat you.

  AIsource Medical. This marked another time I owed them. What’s wrong with me?

  You were exposed to pure vacuum for just under a minute. There was extensive damage to your lungs, your trachea, your nasal passages, your throat, and your eyes. You also suffered a number of disfiguring burst blood vessels on your chest and shoulders, and a significant cerebral event in your brain. You were, for several subsequent minutes, dead.

  Oh, Juje. Am I going to be all right?

  You would have not survived, at least not as a functional human being, had the Bettelhine medics not recognized the limitations of their capacities on site and sealed you in cryofoam for delivery to our emergency facility at Anchor Point. You should not worry. Your current confused state, which will be marked by periods of apathy, delirium, and malfunctioning short-term memory, is an expected condition of your recovery and should pass within the next forty-eight hours.

  Swell. What about the others?

  As you surmised when you took such a desperate measure, the immediate medical emergency involving an honored guest proved more pressing than the prior commands given by Vernon Wethers. Their conditioning overriden by the need to rescue you, the Bettelhine security forces were able to board the Royal Carriage and rescue the surviving passengers.

  Surviving?

  Alas, several casualties have been reported, among them Mr. Jeck, Ms. Wilson, Mr. Pearlman, and the Khaajiir. Xana’s mass media has reported that they were all killed at the moment of the violent emergency stop. None of the others saw any point in disputing the accuracy of this account.

  I bristled at that, but then remembered what I’d told Philip at the onset of my investigation. This was not my jurisdiction. On the Royal Carriage I could overpower a few self-important Bettelhines by sheer force of personality; on a planet with a bureaucracy comprising thousands, I was so far beyond overpowered that it was wiser to recognize the value of walking away from a battle I couldn’t win. What else?

  All the surviving Bettelhine employees have gone back to work. Dejah Shapiro has been visiting you regularly in between stops on her grand tour of Asgard in the company of Hans Bettelhine, Vernon Wethers, and the two Bocaian assassins who went after you on Layabout, and who have emerged from their catatonia and are now being questioned at length. Mr. Wethers, in particular, has been more helpful than he might have wanted to be, and has given up many of the names he’s compromised.

  And?

  The two Bocaian assassins have confirmed that Dejah Shapiro was indeed their main target on Layabout and that they did in fact lose interest in her when they spotted you. They’ve identified the third assassin in their team, their contact on the Bursteeni liner known as the Grace, as a Bursteeni named Neki Rom, who made it as far as Anchor Point but has been taken into custody. Rom has confessed to passing the second Claw of God to Arturo Mendez, who under strict orders passed it to Wethers on the Royal Carriage. There were no other weapons in Rom’s possession when he was captured. If you were correct about the Layabout team possessing three Claws of God, he has already managed to discard the third one or pass it on to yet another Confederate. But there have been many subsequent arrests, and it is considered just a matter of time before the rest of the conspirators are captured and the Bettelhines no longer require the increased security measures in effect at this time.

  None of which should have had anything to do with me, now that I was out of it. Why would you say I’m not out of danger?

  Just that. For as long as you remain here, you must not allow yourself the luxury of complacency. Even now, forces rally against you.

  Why, dammit?

  It is as we have said. You are not yet out of danger of assassination. And you are still facing the moment that will determine the shape the future takes. It is coming. Be ready.

  N ot long afterward I received a visit from the other side.

  (( Andrea Cort * Do you know who we are? ))

  It appeared inside my head, but it was not the voice of the AIsource. It was another, even less comfortable presence, one I’d only endured once before.

  The Unseen Demons.

  Get out of my head, you murderous bastards.

  (( Your curses fail to shame us * we have explained before that everything we’ve done, we’ve done out of self-preservation * if it meant the deaths of your fellow humans on Bocai, they are neither the first or the last to be sacrificed for our survival * if it is murder, it is murder in the cause of preventing a greater crime, the destruction of a race that wants to survive ))

  You’re still not welcome in my head, you pieces of shit.

  (( Nor are we comfortable in a place so driven by pain * we visit now only because it is the only chance we have * the Rules of E
ngagement forbid us from telling you what to do * but you are not long from deciding the future of a species that never did you any harm, as well as the future of your own * you must know that the lies told by your AIsource masters dwarve any you’ve been told by us * your mistake, if you make one, will be tragic ))

  Go to hell, I thought again. I don’t care what your excuses are. You killed my family. You made me a monster. I’ll see you dead.

  They remained silent, though present, for what felt like several minutes.

  And then they departed, with a gentle: (( Someday you’ll know you were wrong ))

  M ore periods of waking.

  One of the first visits I managed to understand took place sometime at night. The lights were dim and the sky I could see through a wall-length window to my right was black, dotted with stars. It was good to be awake at a time like that. The darkness soothed my eyes and made everything seem less frantic.

  Dejah Shapiro sat beside my bed, clad in a shiny red gown designed to hug her perfect figure, its surface rippling in a manner that to my eyes resembled the wave motion on a small body of water. She wore baubles I would have called earrings had they depended on her ears for support; instead, they seemed to float unsupported beside her lobes. I realized that she’d just left another formal gathering of some kind, and in my semiconscious stupidity hoped that nobody had been murdered during it. I wasn’t up to solving the crime.

  She’d been talking for a while, but I didn’t focus until she whispered, “Well, I now know what Hans Bettelhine wants from me.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her painted lips closer to my ear. “A merger. As I told you on the Royal Carriage, he’s scaling down the munitions business. He wants to retool and go into my line, habitat construction, with a specific focus on investing in and reclaiming shattered ecosystems, whether natural and manmade. Places like this world, Deriflys, that Jason lived on for a while. His proposals are sheer genius. There’d be a sharp loss at the beginning, but in a few years of working together we’d accomplish a great deal for humanity without any damage to our existing profit margins. We’d even make a little bit more. It would work, Andrea. It would.”

  I tried to muster enthusiasm and failed. “What did you tell him?”

  She took my hand and squeezed, the gesture friendly on the surface but painful in execution as she made sure to press the night’s long painted fingernails into the back of my hand. I winced and opened my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a look, and spoke with a burning urgency greater than any I’d ever heard from her. “I said I’d bring the figures home to my people and get back to him with my decision. But that’s just an excuse to get the hell out of here as fast as I can. It’ll be great if he pushes through the change, and if he does I’ll do anything I can to help him. It’ll be the best news the poor human race has had for a long time. But these are the Bettelhines we’re talking about, Andrea. That sharp loss for the first few years won’t go over well with some parties. There’s going to be more blowback, and the rest of us all need to be out of range when it happens.”

  She released my hand. I pulled it away from her and started massaging it with the other, as resentful as any child for the unwanted momentary pain. I was so groggy that I was more concerned about the pain at that moment than about anything she’d said.

  She once again lowered her lips to my ear and murmured: “I’d take you with me if I could. I stayed this long, longer than was wise, just to warn you. I’d stay still longer if I didn’t think these people needed somebody to oppose them if the worst happens. But you need to get well as soon as you can. Prepare yourself. And don’t forget what the Porrinyards kept saying before they left. Remember who you are.”

  B ut for a while the most I absorbed from that was: the Porrinyards left?

  Part of me refused to believe it. I couldn’t countenance any condition where they’d ever hate me enough to abandon me to enemies. I could imagine them getting so sick of me that they sought more congenial fields elsewhere. Part of me had expected it for a long time, and remained astonished that they’d lasted this long But leave me? Helpless and injured and not at my best, among people who might want to hurt me? Why would they ever do that? What would ever make them want to do that?

  I remembered every argument we’d ever had, every moment I’d betrayed my own cruelty and selfishness in their presence. None seemed bad enough to make them want to do this. None.

  Remember who you are.

  I remembered who I was. I was the little girl caught up in the madness of a community devouring itself in a spasm of horrific self-cannibalization, who went after the Bocaian she considered a second father and tore out his eyes. I was a war criminal considered the face of evil on Xana, a symbol of Mankind’s capacity for violence to a dozen other races, and a political liability to the Confederacy. I was a caustic bitch who had never loved anybody as an adult, not until the moment they came along, and even then not well.

  Remember who you are?

  I remembered who they were. And that remained, by far, the more pressing question. If it came down to life or death, they would not have abandoned anybody, not even the likes of Dina Pearlman. What could I have done, to make them hate me so much that they’d abandon me?

  I slept some more, woke again in light, accepted more visitors, including a number who I’d never met but who seemed fascinated by my very existence.

  I began to register the details of my room, by far the most luxurious hospital facility I had ever seen. It occurred to me, after a while, that it might not have been a hospital at all. The walls were like spun gold, the ceiling an arched vault bearing a chandelier of jeweled crystal. A portrait of some past Bettelhine patriarch, complete with ridiculous mustache and an expression that suggested he’d smelled something awful in his immediate vicinity, hung on one nearby wall, in a frame with a sufficient number of cornices and rills to support a courthouse. The freestanding wardrobe, polished to a high sheen, looked like it had cost more when new than I ever could have expected to earn in a year as representative to the Judge Advocate. The wall-length window I’d spotted off to my right was actually a wall-length sliding door, open to a vast balcony and a sky so bright and blue that it hurt my poor, suffering eyes to look upon it. I heard birdsong: not random tweets, but complex symphonies, from species accomplished for the breadth and depth of their compositions.

  Every surface in sight was covered with flowers: a riotous rainbow of them, arranged in bouquets so rich in color and variety that they must have required thousands of man-hours just to cultivate, let alone arrange.

  I remember thinking, This isn’t right. And then I drifted away again.

  I received another visitor, Paakth-Doy, dressed in a sunny blouse that left her arms bare and revealed the recombinant tattoo of some kind of reptilian cat prowling up and down her arm in an animated simulation of ravenous hunger. She told me that I’d given everybody a tremendous scare, also that she considered me one of the bravest people she’d ever known. She said that she would always remember me and let me know that she’d brought me a message from my Dip. Corps superior Artis Bringen, which had been forwarded to the Royal Carriage and gone unnoticed until the vehicle was brought back down to Xana for inspection. She’d uploaded the data to this room’s hytex connection.

  Our conversation was pleasant enough until I asked her what she was going to do.

  Her eyes went dark, and she said, “We have all received a great deal of attention since the disaster. It has resulted in lucrative job offers. I myself have been given the opportunity to become a personal companion to one of the Bettelhine aunts. She likes my exotic accent, you see.”

  Oh, Juje. They’d gotten to her. Somehow they’d gotten to her and made her want to give up everything she was. I seized her by the wrist. “Doy—you don’t have to do that. I’ve promised to take you away. There are always positions available in the Dip Corps…”

  She pulled her hand away. When she answered me, her heavy Riir
gaan accent was so pronounced it was as if she’d decided to embrace it, eschewing the part of her that identified with the species of her birth. “This is my idea, Counselor. I know what ‘personal companion’ is likely to mean. I know how the job will change who I am. I have, after all, worked with Colette Wilson. And while I make this decision I am in full command of my will.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because to me it will not matter. Because I am not Riirgaan nor fully human and I am tired of not knowing how to live. And because I have been assured by my new employer that when the changes take effect I will always be happy, even if made to commit acts that would revolt me now.” She wiped moisture away from her eyes, and forced another counterfeit smile. “How can anybody ever say no to happiness, Counselor? How is it less real if it is imposed?”

  By the time I thought of anything I could say to that, Paakth-Doy was gone.

  A nurse came in and gave me a breakfast of mashed fruit, unfamiliar to my palate but sweet in a way that reminded me of the candies I’d loved from a confectionary back on New London. It was tart enough to sting my raw tissues, but for the first time since the Royal Carriage I found myself ravenous. I ate the entire bowl and asked for a second serving.

  After I ate I accessed the room’s hytex and found the message from Bringen. It was a late delivery of the answers to the questions I’d sent him before boarding the Royal Carriage. Most of what I’d asked him had either come up in the subsequent investigation or no longer mattered, but I paused when I passed a section with information about the missing debt arbitrator, Bard Daiken.

  “Daiken defected to the Bettelhine Corporation during a routine arbitration, abandoning a wife and two children on New London. He’s since refused all communication, and we don’t know where he’s working on Xana or even if he’s still on-world. This should be considered low priority, but if you’ve run into him, please forward any information you have. His family might find closure a great comfort. Holo enclosed.”