The Cause of Death

by Roger MacBride Allen

"The message noted a previous signal from Marta Hertzmann to Pax Humana, summing up the situation but warning that any action on the part of the Paxers would only make things worse. I suspect that is why."

  "How do you come to know all this?"

  "The Kendari Inquiries Service cracked Pax Humana's encryption years ago. We read their daily headquarters reports before some Paxer offices get them."

  "Could it all be faked? Some sort of deception plan?"

  "Highly unlikely."

  "But I have no doubt both you and your friends back home are working to confirm it."

  Brox did not reply directly. He had no desire to discuss his sources of information with High Thelek Saffeer. "It shouldn't be hard to check," he said. "The text we intercepted clearly states that two lawkeepers have been dispatched here and are on their way. If they arrive, we know the message was legitimate."

  "Human lawkeepers?" the High Thelek echoed in surprise. "What in the stars would they want to come here for?"

  "It would appear they were summoned here by the Thelm, apparently in connection with the Hertzmann affair. But if, as you say, there is no hope for him, I don't see what they are likely to try to do."

  Thelek Saffeer frowned and folded his ears flat back against his skull. "Nor do I," he said. "Nor do I." He looked at Brox. "I have next to no experience with humans. We haven't had much reason to concern ourselves with them."

  "There is no reason why you should," Brox said. And no reason I'd want you to have any unneeded dealing with our competitors.

  "True enough," said the High Thelek, "but they have a reputation as troublemakers--and Hertzmann has certainly lived up to that reputation. I doubt they are here to do us any good."

  "You have just said there is no possible way out for Hertzmann," Brox said. In any event, I've distracted you from the problem with finding someone to decrypt the gene blocks.

  "That is far from the same as saying there are no possible problems for me--for us," Saffeer said. "Perhaps, for example, the human agents are here to arrange some absurd set of circumstances for the benefit of our dear Georg Hertzmann. A sudden rash of more accidents, a few assassinations, and a few nobles who suddenly decide to vacate titles by departing the planet--as a result of threats, or bribes, perhaps."

  "I think that is all highly unlikely," Brox said, cursing himself. He had failed to take the Thelek's streak of paranoia into account. "That is a great deal more than two human agents working alone on a strange planet could accomplish." Or two agents, or twenty agents, of any species. But that was beside the point.

  "Perhaps," said the Thelek. "But is there even the slightest chance they are coming here for my benefit, to do me good?"

  It was hard to miss that the Thelek didn't even bother to correct "me" to "us" the second time out. "Granted," said Brox. "But it is likely their reasons for coming have nothing whatever to do with us." He placed the slightest possible emphasis on the last word, but Saffeer didn't seem to notice.

  "Then perhaps they will not be looking toward my people as a possible source of danger. That could be helpful."

  Brox felt his hands go cold and his mouth go dry. "Helpful in what way, sir?"

  The High Thelek ignored the question. "How soon are they expected?" he asked.

  "It's difficult to be precise, of course, interstellar travel being what it is," said Brox. "In two or three days, I would expect. Certainly not sooner."

  "Very well," said the High Thelek. He turned and looked out the great window-wall, down at Thelm's Keep, far below. "Time enough, then, to contact my friends and followers elsewhere on the planet and alert them to be careful. It would be most unfortunate if, through some misunderstanding, the human ship was prevented from landing. An overzealous subordinate might well fire on their ship, for example, thinking that was what I wanted. There might be all sorts of unexpected results."

  And Brox knew there was nothing he could do. He had, quite accidentally, put an idea into High Thelek Saffeer's head--generally a quite difficult thing to do. But once an idea was lodged in there, it was all but impossible to get it back out.

  The humans might cause trouble. Therefore, the humans were going to meet with an accident.

  An accident as phony as the one that had killed the Thelm's sons was real, but, no doubt, just as fatal.

  EIGHTJUMP

  Jamie continued his research, studying the culture, the history, the politics of Reqwar--and the language. The high-tech, high-speed language-learning systems that the BSI had were effective, but exhausting.

  By their third day out, it was plain to Hannah that, left to his own devices, Jamie would do nothing but study the files, research the background of the case, and slog through the data morning, night, and noon, with as little time off as possible for eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene, until they arrived.

  That was basically what he ought to be doing--it was basically what she was doing as well--but experience had taught her the value of pacing herself, of taking a break, and of getting some sort of rest.

  It would do no good for him to arrive at the crime scene short on sleep and brain-fried. She needed an excuse to get Jamie to ease up for a little while--and she had one, ready-made.

  She went to Jamie's cabin, knocked on the door, then slid it partway open and stuck her head in. "Time to knock off for a while, Jamie," she said. "Transit-jump in about ninety minutes. Drag yourself through the shower, get yourself into fresh clothes and meet me in the galley in fifteen minutes. We'll down a quick meal and catch the show."

  "What show?" Jamie growled. He was seated, almost crouched, at the worktable in his cabin, three monitors running at once. Two backlit data tablets sat in front of him, each screen crammed with meticulous notes and diagrams plus a standard BSI issue paper notebook, also filled with notes. It was plain he didn't want to be dragged away. "I got up in the middle of the night for my first transit-jump, from the Solar System to Center System. I went to the party. Then I blinked, and missed it. I mean literally. I closed my eyes for a split second, and when I opened them again, the starfield was different. Nothing else had changed. I got a free glass of bad champagne because it was my first transit-jump. It gave me a headache. The other jumps I've done were all just about as exciting."

  Hannah laughed. "You won't get any champagne this ride--but you might get a much worse headache. You've done calibrated transit-jumps, on some of the best-surveyed routes around. This ride is going to be just a little bit wilder. I doubt there have been twenty human ships to Reqwar, ever. We'll be doing prime survey work ourselves--or at least the Hastings will be doing it for us."

  Transit-jumps were meant to be precisely targeted events, but precision was impossible when the exact mass and position of the target star was not known. Typically, a transit-jump aimed for a point 10 billion kilometers from the target star. Things could get rough if the actual arrival was farther out than that--and a lot rougher if arrival was significantly closer in, or if it was disrupted by some uncharted mass--perhaps a minor planet or comet--that happened to be close enough to throw the grav-gradient tuning off. Coming in at an unexpectedly high or low relative velocity could also cause problems.

  Because all the stars were orbiting about Galactic Central, and moving relative to each other, the distance between any two given stars was always changing, and the distance and relative velocity between most pairs of stars was not known to anything like the precision required to ensure a smooth transit-jump.

  The rule of thumb was: If the error was one one-millionth of the actual distance, the transit was survivable. If it was one-billionth, the transit would be at least relatively smooth, or at least not too violent. If the error was on the order of one-trillionth of the actual distance, the transit would be unnoticeable if you weren't looking out the porthole when it happened.

  The run from Center to Reqwar had only been made a handful of times. There was enough data that they were well inside the one-in-a-million range, but it would take a lot of blind luck to get them an
ywhere near the one-in-a-billion. One-in-a-trillion wasn't even worth thinking about.

  "Freshen yourself up," said Hannah. "Meet me on the command deck--and get ready for a bumpy ride."

  * * *

  Jamie felt a good deal better after a wash-up and a half-decent meal. It was pleasant to get his mind off his research for a bit. He strapped himself into his chair on the command deck, ten minutes before transition, almost looking forward to that bumpy ride--and if there were a few fireworks thrown in as well, fine. He glanced over at Hannah and grinned. "So," he said, gesturing at the starscape outside the view dome, "what's this going to be like?" he asked.

  "I haven't the faintest idea," Hannah replied. "Transitions are like snowflakes--no two are exactly the same. On calibrated runs like Earth to Center, the differences show up in about the twelfth decimal place, but they're still there. On poorly charted routes, believe me, you know the differences are there. In fact, what I experience and what you experience might be significantly different."

  "Isn't that supposed to prove that telepathy or psychic energy or whatever exists, and that different people were getting different signs and signals, or something?"

  "Nope. They tested the effects, and spoiled all the good stories. They didn't detect any noticeable effects on measurable brain waves--but they did confirm that the various field gradients are steep enough to make the view from one chair totally different than the view from another. It's a real effect. What I see as blue puppy dogs floating slowly past might look like red chickens flying rapidly in the other direction to you, because you're two meters away. No one can predict it. So I hope you like surprises."

  Jamie glanced over at the countdown display. Three minutes and a few seconds left. He shut his eyes. Not enough time to go and do anything. All he could do was what he was doing already--sit there and wait. It was the first real chance he had had in a while to just stop and take a little time for himself. He savored the feeling.

  But that small luxury wasn't his for long. An alert tone went off, and the words INCOMING OUICKBEAM MESSAGE lit up on the main display.

  "Oh, great," Hannah muttered. "Perfect timing."

  "What's the problem?" Jamie asked.

  "QB messages and transit-jumps don't mix," she said. "Even besides the transit-jump power-down, the transit-jump itself can jam reception. If we don't complete reception before the jump, and we miss the end of the message, we might be out of luck. Even if we miss just a chunk of the message during transit, that could be trouble, if they've used some sort of monolithic encryption."

  "I thought they resend QB messages a few minutes later for just that reason," Jamie said.

  "They do--when the sender pays for it," Hannah said. "If someone is sending on a budget, or decided to risk sending one long signal once with no backup, instead of sending a shorter one twice, or if we've already managed to miss the first transmission, we're out of luck."

  A monolithic encrypt meant the decrypt was an all-or-nothing proposition. No part of the message could be decrypted unless all of it was in hand. Getting only the first portion of the message would leave them not with half the text, but with a partial message that could not be decrypted at all.

  QuickBeam messages were faster than light. However, the actual transmission rate was maddeningly slow, and highly susceptible to all sorts of variables. The relatively small and low-power receivers that could fit aboard a small ship like the Hastings could only handle a very slow transmission rate. It was like having a cross-city phone conversation with a man who talked very slowly. The message signal crossed the distance almost instantly--but if the person on the other end spoke at the rate of one word a minute, reception could still take a while to complete.

  The on-screen indicator showed they were receiving the message at the glacial rate of one byte per second. The transmission rate edged up to 1.5 bytes per second, 1.8., and even as high as 2.1 before edging back down to one byte per second, and even a hair below.

  Jamie glanced at the countdown clock. Two minutes until transit-jump. "Come on, come on," he muttered at the QB receiver.

  The message might be any number of other things, but it was just barely possible it might be from Bindulan Halztec--if Bindulan had decided, for whatever reason, that a message from Jamie Mendez was a top priority and he answered it at once.

  But that was a long shot. Jamie was starting to feel a little foolish about wasting BSI time and money on the nonsensical idea of a message to his old boss. He had been a stock boy, after all. Jamie had been a good worker and a courteous subordinate, and Bindulan had been kind, even respectful, to him--but that was no reason to think he had some sort of claim on Bindulan.

  Ninety seconds until transit-jump. A new message appeared on the displays.

  INITIATING PRE-TRANSJUMP POWER-DOWNS

  The Hastings was shutting herself down as completely as possible, so that power surges would have fewer places to crop up and less chance to do damage. A whole series of subsystem names started to scroll by under the main notice.

  COMMAND DECK LIFE SUPPORT . . .

  SAFE

  POWER-DOWN COMPLETE

  MAIN DECK LIFE SUPPORT . . .

  SAFE

  POWER-DOWN COMPLETE

  ENVIRONMENTAL THERMAL CONTROL SYSTEM . . .

  SAFE

  POWER-DOWN COMPLETE

  The ventilator fans died, and Jamie was disconcerted, not so much by the silence as by the realization that he had been surrounded by their low hum for days without hearing it. Other systems switched off, each subtracting its previously unnoticed whir or tick or hiss from the background noise of a working spacecraft. "What about the message retrieval system?" Jamie asked, his voice sounding oddly loud in the suddenly too-quiet command center.

  "Checking that now," Hannah said, scrolling through a status page on her left-hand screen. "One of the last systems to be cut out, and the first to come back on," she said. "It shouldn't be off-line for more than a few seconds."

  "Suppose we need the QB receiver on for those few seconds?"

  "Then we're out of luck. Suppose we did have the QB receiver on for those few seconds and it fused into a solid lump, or blew up, or caught fire?"

  There wasn't any good answer to that. He glanced at the QB retrieval indicator, and swore under his breath as the reception rate briefly dropped to .5 bytes per second, before climbing back up to to the dizzying heights of 2 bps.

  "Hang on," said Hannah. "Lights and nonessential displays next--then acceleration compensation and gravity control."

  "Tell me the main thrusters are off," Jamie said. If they were still accelerating at twenty gees, or whatever fearsome rate it was, and the compensators went out--well, then, they'd most likely be dead so fast they wouldn't notice it happening.

  Hannah chuckled--but double-checked her displays. "Yes, the thrusters are off. Acceleration zero. We can't tell, thanks to the compensators, but the auto- sequencer cut the engines out ten minutes ago. Believe me, there are all sorts of interlocks to make sure we don't do a transit-jump with our main engines firing."

  "Yeah," Jamie muttered. "Nothing can possibly go 'worng.'" The cabin lights died and his insides did a few quick backflips as the grav system cut out and left them in the dark and in zero gee. Jamie had little experience in zero-gravity environments, and it was a struggle to keep his stomach from registering a violent protest.

  Only a few displays were still lit, glowing in the darkness, but Jamie only had eyes for the one still blandly reporting that a message was incoming. Less than a minute to go. He told himself there was very little point in staring at the display, and forced himself to look away, out the viewport. The glory of the starscape outside the darkened spacecraft showed in all its splendor, so close and real and vibrant it seemed to be just a few centimeters outside the hemispheric dome of the command center viewport.

  Jamie felt overwhelmed by the waves of emotion that seemed to wash over him. The simple beauty of what he saw left him in joyous awe, but that was
swept aside by wonder, and even fear. The universe was so impossibly big. How did humanity in general--and Jamie Mendez in particular--dare to imagine being capable of dealing with it, of going out into the stars and accomplishing anything of any value at all? And he was going out, to a world where few humans had ever been, to deal with a situation he was certain he did not understand, and after only a few days of study that he was equally certain had left him quite unprepared.

  A chime sounded, and drew his attention back to the status display.

  MESSAGE RECEIVED AND STORED

  MENDEZJ_BHEMP DECRYPTION KEY REQUIRED

  The changed message seemed to pop up on the screen so suddenly that Jamie had to stare at it for a moment, just to be sure it was really there. "So it is from Bindulan," he said in a low voice.

  "What's MENDEZJ_BHEMP?" Hannah asked.

  "My employee contact code from Bindulan Haltzec's Emporium--BHEMP," he said. He reached for the keyboard, eager to type in his decrypt key and find out what Bindulan had to tell him. Bindulan had come through for him. Bindulan knew something worth telling, and he was passing it on.

  "Hold it!" Hannah called out.

  Jamie paused with his hands over the keyboard, and at that moment the QuickBeam status display--and the whole QB system--went dead.

  "Good," said Hannah. "If you had started keying in your decrypt key and the system shut down, it might have read your partial code as being the complete one and rejected it for being wrong. That could have lost us the whole message."

  Jamie pulled his hands back from the keys. She was right. Some messages were set as one-try-only. Get the decrypt wrong, and they wouldn't just refuse to open. They'd erase themselves completely.

  "Transit-jump in ten seconds," Hannah announced calmly. Even in the dim illumination coming off the few remaining system displays and the glow of starlight through the view dome, Jamie could see that Hannah's body language was a lot more on edge than her voice. She was gripping the arms of her chair hard enough to dig her fingers into the padding, leaning forward, straining against her safety belt as she stared at the transit-jump countdown clock.