Vigiant

by Gardner, James Alan

  Instant data dump... and I knew a bunch more than I did before, thanks to a missing-persons report filed by the Freep embassy twelve weeks earlier. Kowkow Iranu: age twenty-three Freep years = thirty Earth standard. Family connections to several corporate barons in the Free Republic. Ergo, stinking rich with some political pull. One of four dozen staff members assigned to provide background info to the three senior Freep negotiators working on the trade treaty. The embassy hadn't stated Iranu's area of expertise, what kind of background bumpf he was supposed to provide... but the missing-persons report said he had graduated from a Freep university with a top-rank diploma in archaeology.

  Hmmm.

  Maya Cuttack spent time at archaeology digs in the Free Republic; no great surprise if she met Iranu there. Suppose they stayed friendly. While Iranu was on Demoth, he might have taken a break from the treaty talks to visit Maya here.

  Then what happened? Did she kill him because he learned something he shouldn't have? Or was Iranu in on this too? Whatever "this" was. Perhaps he and Maya were working together on something shady and they'd got into a disagreement...

  Wait now—go back. Why did the trade talks need an archaeologist on staff? To play devil's advocate, I could explain it away: young Iranu indulged his interests by taking an archaeology degree, but found there was no money in it and fell into a government job. Lots of people study one thing, then get a job doing something on a whole other block.

  But.

  But, but, but...

  Here's the thing: Freep scientists weren't noted for pursuing knowledge out of dainty love of learning. Most just wanted to cash in. For Freeps, archaeology was a commercial enterprise—grave-robbing and treasure hunts, where you might find anything from ancient art objects to alien technological wonders.

  In a Vigil law course, my professor talked about a group of Freep archaeologists who'd been caught smuggling artifacts off Demoth: fiddly-dick trinkets, lumps of junk, probably intended for sale to some tico collector who'd pay top dollar just because the stuff was old. But the incident had blown up to a major pissing match between us and the Freeps... them howling in righteous indignation at wicked Demoth, cruelly jailing honest Freep citizens for exercising their right to engage in commerce. The whole kerfuffle had soured relations between our planets for ages. In fact, the mess had happened three decades ago, just a year before the plague; and it was only now that our two planets had cooled off enough to talk about trade treaties again.

  So the Freep contingent had an archaeologist on their negotiating staff. Something important there... but I couldn't put my finger on it.

  "Tic," I murmured, "what does the trade treaty say about archaeological artifacts?"

  "Not much," he replied. "Considering past history, no one wanted to address archaeology at length—if they had, both sides would have been obliged to start blustering about sovereignty versus nearsighted greed, and that argument might have devolved all the way into a discussion of real issues. Couldn't have that: bureaucrats love to dicker about minutiae, but have aneurysms when you suggest they question first principles. So our negotiators took a low-key approach on archaeology in exchange for concessions on... oh, I think it was an acreage cap, how much agricultural land Freep citizens could buy on Demoth."

  "What exactly is this low-key approach?"

  "Archaeological sites are just another type of mine. Anything dug up will get taxed at the same rate as iron or copper, and Demoth won't raise a fuss about 'priceless artifacts' leaving the planet. No one thinks there are priceless artifacts here anyway—certainly not the Technocracy's Heritage Board. I'm doubtful myself; Ooloms have lived on Demoth nine centuries, and we've never found anything worth cheering about."

  Time for a snort of derision. So the Ooloms hadn't made any dazzling archaeological finds? What a thundering surprise. Tic might have been the first Oolom ever to come down one of these tunnels, and he was only staying out of bloody-minded determination. Blessed near his whole body had turned gray-blue now, and his ear-sheaths were fluttering like caffeinated butterflies. I could flat-out guarantee that Ooloms never tried a systematic survey of a single one of these mines, let alone the hundreds all over Demoth.

  But I could imagine the Freeps doing it.

  And what did they find? Before the plague, they were smuggling out trinkets... no, sorry, the ones that got caught were smuggling out trinkets. Who knew how many other secret expeditions might have been digging around? And who knows if any of those hit pay dirt?

  Then the epidemic came to town. Explorers flooded in, searching the countryside for sick Ooloms. The Freeps must have been forced to scurry away before they got noticed.

  After the plague, Demoth had laid down tighter controls over incoming spaceships, funneling all arrivals through a down-to-the-marrow medical exam to make sure they weren't carrying alien microbes. That had mightily cranked off Freeps at the time; before, they'd been able to come and go without passing through any control authority. Away from urban centers, small ships used to be able to slip down to the surface without being noticed.

  But postplague, Demoth bought state-of-the-art detectors to monitor the outer atmosphere. Had to keep out those germs, didn't we? And even the best stealth countermeasures can't hide a ship when it's hanging all by its lonesome, nothing but near vacuum for a thousand klicks in any direction. Drop your radar profile to the size of a chicken, and people will still wonder what a chicken's doing, flying through the Van Allen belts.

  So: no more Freep archaeologists. Except Kowkow Iranu. And maybe Maya Cuttack—human, but on the Freep payroll.

  What could they be digging for? Not knickknacks. Not the remains of old elevators, or the crumble-rust debris moldering on the floor all around me. Freeps would be chasing the Big Strike: alien tech. Whizbangs beyond the current knowledge of the Technocracy. With so many ruins on Demoth, you got rumors galore of high-tech gizmos, buried just out of sight, waiting to be discovered by the next idle spelunker who scuffed up a bit of dirt. It hadn't happened yet... but that meant nothing. Who knew if Demoth had been hiding alien treasures for thousands of years?

  Such as a machine for making peacock tubes appear out of nowhere?

  Speculation, I told myself. But worth discussing with someone. With Tic? Not right now—he'd already scooted away to watch a ScrambleTac officer poke at a lump of dirt. Tic was not in a stand-steady, rational-discussion mood at the moment.

  So who to talk with? Cheticamp? Festina?

  Or should I just think hard? Peacock, I seek advice as your humble petitioner and maidservant...

  A voice sounded clearly in my mind. Po turzijeff. Kalaff.

  Not maidservant. Daughter.

  I damn near screamed.

  A blank few seconds after that. Next thing I can tell, I was cowering tight against a cold rock wall, my hand jammed into my carry-bag and clutching the old cold scalpel. I hadn't pulled the blade out... just grabbed it like a talisman, razor-sharp stability. Made me wonder, was this some blind impulse to defend myself, or to knife my own skin bloody in a lunatic self-aimed panic attack?

  Even a link-seed can't answer some questions.

  I quick yanked my hand from my purse and looked around, feeling the hot-guilt blush in my cheeks... worrying someone might have seen me. Tic, Festina—were they wondering what scared me, wondering what I'd been clutching in my bag? No. Not even looking my direction. They were both paying attention to someone new coming up the tunnel: the medical examiner, Yunupur, flown in from Bonaventure as soon as Cheticamp reported Iranu's corpse.

  You can tell by his name, Yunupur was Oolom... and a young one at that, all hustle-bustle energy. New enough he could still tell you where he kept his accreditation certificate. I'd met him several times—his mother was Proctor Wollosof, one of the Vigil members who'd been scrutinizing Bonaventure since the plague. Thanks to her, Yunupur had grown up in the city among humans, and he'd bought into our culture with bubble and bounce... the roiling breathless enthusiasm only an outsider can must
er.

  "Mom-Faye!" he cried. "Catch!" He launched himself across the room and made no attempt to slow down as he whumped into me, wrapping his arms round my neck. Kiss kiss, one on each of my cheeks. Oolom lips are stickier than Homo saps. "Looking sexy as always," the boy beamed. "That parka does things for your shoulders."

  Festina boggled at the two of us. I muttered, "I know his mother."

  "And she wouldn't be caught dead down here," Yunupur announced, right cheerily. "If she knew this job made me go underground, she'd have a spasm. Old folks, right? They go totally Pteromic over the least little thing." He rolled his eyes, then noticed Tic. "Present company excluded, of course. You look like you're holding up okay, down here in the dark and squeezy."

  "I'm not 'okay,' I'm magnificent," Tic answered; but his voice was tight enough to choke. "I also happen to be Proctor Smallwood's supervisor... which makes me concerned to see her fraternizing unprofessionally with civic officials."

  "Ooo," said Yunupur, "chilly. But if you want professionalism, I can give you professionalism." He detached himself from my neck and put on an expression of mock seriousness. "And where is the unfortunate deceased I must examine?"

  "How 'bout the guy lying on the ground?" Cheticamp suggested. He pointed toward the corpse.

  "Certainly a popular locale for the lamented," Yunupur agreed as he bounced toward Iranu's body. "I see 'em in beds and I see 'em in chairs, but flat on the floor still wins as the position of choice for those with a love of the traditional. You found him exactly like this? With his hands neatly folded?" Cheticamp nodded.

  "Then someone wanted to make a statement." Yunupur knelt beside the body and reached into his carrying bag for a scanning device, much like Festina's Bumbler. He held the machine a few centimeters above the corpse and moved it slowly from Iranu's head down to the feet, then back again. "Nothing immediately obvious," he said. "Have you taken all the pictures you want?"

  Cheticamp nodded again. "Then let's start getting personal."

  Yunupur produced a small vacuum cleaner and ran it lightly over Iranu's parka—not that I could see any hairs or fibers that might have come from the killer, but it paid to be thorough. Then, wearing sterile gloves, Yunupur carefully shifted the corpse's hands enough to clear the parka's fastener strip. Or at least, that's what he intended to do; as soon as Yunupur unclenched the hands from one another, Iranu's dead arms slapped limply to the ground.

  "Oops," Yunupur said. "Usually corpses are stiffer than that."

  "Do you know anything about Freep cadavers?" Cheticamp asked.

  "My med courses covered all the Divian species," Yunupur replied, confident as a rooster. "I haven't had much practical experience, but still... Freeps advance slowly into rigor over the first twelve hours after death, stay steely for three days, then ease off into something inelastic yet movable." He looked up at Tic. "My professors never said Freeps went totally flaccid."

  Tic didn't answer. His expression showed what he thought of people who blamed their professors for their own clumsiness.

  I was thinking something totally different. Something that scared me left, right, and sideways. I prayed rare desperate that Yunupur would find some blatant cause of death—a stab wound through the heart, strangulation marks round the throat.

  "Well, let's keep looking," Yunupur said, still perky. He opened Iranu's coat to reveal a thick white shirt and red trousers; both looked like normal Freep apparel, upscale but not all the way to obscenely expensive.

  No obvious bloodstains.

  Iranu had a black knit scarf tied loosely round his throat. Not tight enough to choke, just protection against the cold.

  Yunupur undid the scarf. No signs of violence.

  "This just makes my job interesting," Yunupur announced. "Where's the fun if the cause of death is obvious?"

  "Can you give us a time of death?" Cheticamp asked.

  "A corpse this limp has been dead more than three days," Yunupur replied. "And in this cold, natural processes take longer than usual... including going in and out of rigor. I have to make more tests, but I guarantee this mook's been dead longer than a week."

  "Which puts it before Chappalar's murder," Festina observed.

  "Could it be as much as three months?" Cheticamp asked. "That's how long he's been missing."

  "Wouldn't surprise me," Yunupur said. He lifted his scanning device and ran it over the corpse again. "Yeah sure, three months could work. There hasn't been much decay, but it's cold, and there are precious few insects this far down the mine. A corpse could stay intact for a long time."

  "Considering how cold it is," Festina murmured, "I'm surprised the body isn't frozen stiff."

  "It's not quite as cold as freezing," Cheticamp replied, "and this far underground the temperature doesn't change much, no matter what happens outside."

  "True," said Yunupur. "Now let's keep looking for cause of death."

  He opened Iranu's shirt. No injuries.

  Ditto the trousers. No obvious damage.

  He rolled the body over to examine its back. Nothing unusual.

  When Yunupur rolled the body faceup again, the eyes slumped open and the jaw sagged. "He is a limp bugger, isn't he?" Yunupur murmured.

  "Slack," I said. "He's slack."

  I looked around the room. The ScrambleTacs were young; Yunupur too. They wouldn't remember. Cheticamp was old enough, but maybe he didn't have much contact with the sick and dying back then. Festina came from offplanet. Tic had fled into the jungle, hoping he'd die before the Explorers found him; then he'd lain in bed longer than almost anyone, never seeing what other slack bodies looked like.

  Only I had seen. And from the moment Iranu's arms slumped like muscleless water bags, my skin had been crawling with déjà vu.

  Yunupur was right: Freep corpses weren't normally so flaccid.

  "Are you saying..." Cheticamp began.

  "Nonsense!" Tic interrupted. "The plague didn't affect Freeps."

  "Diseases have a way of adapting," Festina said grimly.

  "Oh bosh!" Yunupur rippled with laughter. Or at least his gliders gave a little shimmy. "Let's not turn melodramatic, shall we? There's an old maxim from medical school: when you hear hoofbeats, assume it's a leaner, not some alien beast like a horse. If this poor chump is dead without a mark on him, he was probably just poisoned. Or he overdosed on something. Or he had a garden-variety heart attack, or a stroke, or he choked on an ort bone. There hasn't been a single case of the dreaded scourge since the epidemic itself."

  "Let me touch him," I said. "I know the feel of slack muscles. I remember fierce clearly."

  "Look, Mom-Faye, if you're truly worried, I'll tell the autopsy lab to put some muscle tissue under the microscope..."

  "No!" I snapped. "We have to know now, before you take the body back to the city. If it's carrying a new strain of the plague—one that affects other species besides Ooloms..."

  "Then we isolate the deceased in a sterile body bag and take the usual precautions at the lab," Yunupur said. "It's not like we handle any corpse sloppily."

  "I want to touch it. I want to know now."

  "You won't know," Yunupur told me. "You can't diagnose just by touch. Anyway, it's been twenty-seven years since you've seen a plague victim... and those were all Ooloms, with a completely different musculature than Freeps..."

  "Let her touch the corpse," Tic said quietly. "Why not?"

  Yunupur looked to Cheticamp. The police captain shrugged. "Where's the harm?"

  "There's harm if she gets upset over nothing," Yunupur muttered. "I've heard stories about our Mom-Faye." But he pulled out a clean pair of protective gloves and tossed them to me.

  I put them on fast, trying not to think why I was doing this. Another freckles-and-scalpel thing? My chance to catch the plague, if this was a strain that affected more than Ooloms?

  A bit of that. But I genuinely wanted to know; and I was convinced I would recognize the feel of the plague. The aura of the disease, as well the queer sloppin
ess of a slack muscle. I knew the enemy. I'd massaged and kneaded and rubbed down... carried unmoving bodies, alive and dead...

  I'd know. I was harsh certain I'd know. One squeeze of Iranu's biceps, or his chest, or the limp muscles of his face...

  His eyes hung wide-open and his mouth too. Like Zillif's face on the roof of my dome, so long ago.

  I knelt. I reached toward the dead man's arm.

  A peacock tube erupted out of nowhere, and suddenly my hand was on the other side of the room.

  WATER-OWLS

  Something you don't see every day.

  The peacock thingy had materialized and swallowed my hand like a snake... and there at the other end of the tube, fifteen meters across the chamber, was my own plastic-gloved hand protruding from the field of rippling color.

  I wiggled my fingers. Which is to say I felt the wiggling down at the end of my arm, except that the wiggling happened fifteen meters away.

  Long-distance finger action. Rife with possibilities, that. Or was I just giddy with surprise/shock/bloody damned amazement?

  I pulled my hand back. The fingers disappeared from the far end of the tube, and my hand was back attached to my wrist as if it had never gone wandering elsewhere.

  The peacock tube winked out of existence. Job done.

  Silence. Then Festina let out her breath in a whoosh. "Do you know how many laws of physics you just broke? You can't be half-in/half-out of a Sperm-tail. They just don't work like that."

  "Maybe you never asked the right way," Tic suggested.

  She glared.

  Warily, I reached toward the corpse again. The peacock tube shimmered back into existence, and pulled its same hand-swallowing routine. This time its tail wafted down the tunnel and out of sight. I don't know how far the tube went, but I could feel a gusty breeze pushing against my gloved fingers.