by Timothy Zahn
And paused. As long as I was up anyway … “Wall: locate Collet,” I ordered. “Magnification, quarter-fill.”
There was a brief pause as the computer searched for the gas giant and calculated the magnification needed to make the image the size I’d asked for. Then the twin crescents disappeared … and despite knowing what to expect I very nearly gasped out loud.
Not at the planet itself, of course. Filling a quarter of the wall as per request, Collet’s hazy green/gray surface was delicately but unspectacularly banded in the normal pattern of gas giants everywhere. At both its poles was an almost cream-colored haze, while at a dozen spots to either side of its equator I could pick out the spiral patterns of huge hurricane storms, some of which had been raging since the first colonists arrived in the system seventy years ago. Perfectly standard planet … until you looked at its rings.
Not the usual gas giant rings, puny circles of dust and ice flakes invisible to all but the most careful observer. These rings literally filled what was left of the wall, stretching outward nearly from the planet’s surface in a thousand milky-white bands.
Nowhere in any of the Patri or colony systems did such an anomaly of nature exist, and it had been speculated more than once that if travel to Solitaire weren’t so restricted Collet would be a major tourist attraction. Only Saturn, in the old Earth system, could even approach this sight, and those few observers who’d seen both ring systems up close unanimously considered Collet’s far more dramatic.
Far more dramatic … and incredibly more valuable.
I gazed at the view for a long time, an odd melancholy filling me. It seemed wrong, somehow, for so exquisitely beautiful a creation of God to be ultimately responsible for the Deadman Switch and the human lives that went to feed it. Even from this distance, the computer could probably get a fairly clear look at one of the huge Rockhound 606 mining platforms out there, sweeping leisurely through those rings. Scooping up the rocheoids of ultra-high-grade ore that made Solitaire system worth so much trouble … and so many lives …
Angrily, I shook my head, forcing the thought away. Here we were, barely within Solitaire system, and already everything I saw was bringing me back to the Deadman Switch and the price that had been paid to get the Bellwether here. I was either going to have to learn better mental discipline, or else brace myself for an exceedingly depressing two weeks.
So do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own …
Shutting off the wall, I dragged myself out of the contour couch and plodded the two steps back to bed. Eventually, I fell asleep.
We touched down at Solitaire’s spaceport—named, appropriately, Rainbow’s End—at mid-morning the next day. Mid-morning ship’s time, that is; at Rainbow’s End it was already late afternoon. Too late in the day, probably, to get much of anything accomplished; but it might still be worthwhile to start finding my way around the local bureaucracy. And so, fifteen minutes after landing, I was in a rented car, driving down a very modern roadway toward the capital city of Cameo, twenty kilometers away.
The car’s computer had been well supplied with cross references, and after a short discussion we decided the place I wanted was the Habrin Tsiosky Office of Justice. I let it do the driving once we reached Cameo’s outskirts, and within a few minutes it delivered me there.
Within an equal number of minutes, I was again in the car, on my way back to Rainbow’s End.
Kutzko was just inside the Bellwether’s gatelock when I arrived, supervising the placement of a guard booth. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos is looking for you,” he greeted me as I stepped aboard. “Hold it a second; I want to give the weapons sensor a test. Here, catch.”
I caught the needler clip he tossed me—puff adders, of course, Kutzko’s usual ammunition of choice—and tried not to wince as I stuffed it into my tunic. I’d seen what these needles could do to a human being, and just holding a clip of them made me slightly queasy. “I told Captain Bartholomy I was going into Cameo,” I said as Duge Ifversn stepped over to the booth and flipped a pair of switches.
The archway above me emitted a pig-like squeal. “Looks good,” Duge nodded.
Kutzko nodded back. “He must not have checked with the captain, then. You should have taken a phone with you. Anyway, he’s in his stateroom with Aikman.”
Great. All I needed to make the day complete was to have to face Aikman again. “Joy and rapture,” I muttered, returning the clip.
Kutzko peered at me. “You okay?”
“Temporarily, no. But I’m not ready to roll over and give up quite yet.” I gestured at the guard booth. “What’s all this for? We expecting company?”
“Company, and lots of it,” Kutzko nodded. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos has decided we’re going to stay here instead of moving to one of the local hotels.”
“Really?” I frowned. “Why?”
He grinned lopsidedly. “You’re the expert—you tell me. Real reason, then official reason.”
It was an old game for us, but one I didn’t really feel like playing at the moment. “Mikha, I don’t have time—”
“Come on, Gilead, humor me. Besides, you look like you could use a cheap victory.”
I made a face at him; but at this point I was grateful for even bad humor. “Oh, all right.”
He put on his best stone face and held it as I, for my part, tried to read past his barriers. It was really pretty easy—despite being in a profession that often attracted the more shady sorts, Kutzko was basically an honest person. “Real reason is that he doesn’t trust the hotels,” I said slowly. I glanced away at the guard booth arrangement, noting the particular placement and positioning of it— “Not afraid of attack so much as he is of surveillance?”
Kutzko grinned wryly. “Straight set bull’s eye. Yeah, we found a couple of tricky little bugs in our suites back on Whitecliff, as well as a very cute one built into the records cyl we got from Aikman.”
“You think Aikman planted them?”
“Do you?” he countered.
I thought back, remembering the sense of Aikman at that first meeting. “No.”
Kutzko nodded agreement. “I didn’t think so, either. Aikman’s too blazing visible to risk pulling something that underhanded himself. It was probably some faceless assistant hoping to make points. So. How about the official reason?”
I changed gears back to the contest with some effort. “No idea. I suppose Mr. Kelsey-Ramos just claimed none of the hotels here were up to his standards.”
Off to the side, Duge Ifversn snickered gently. Kutzko glanced at him, looked back at me. “Two for two,” he conceded. “I don’t suppose you’d like to take a crack at guessing what we all had for breakfast?”
“You’ll excuse me if I find something more useful to do with my time,” I said dryly. Still, I did feel better. “Thanks, Mikha.”
He understood. “No charge. Don’t forget Mr. Kelsey-Ramos wants to see you.”
“I’m on my way. See you later.”
I made my way back through the Bellwether’s corridors, simultaneously hoping I wouldn’t be so late that Randon would be angry but still be late enough that Aikman would already be gone.
I was halfway lucky.
“About time,” Randon growled as I buzzed and was admitted into his stateroom. “Where have you been?”
“Cameo,” I told him. I nodded at Aikman with all the courtesy I could muster. He merely stared at me in return, not acknowledging the gesture. “I told Captain Bartholomy where I was going,” I added.
A flicker of annoyance touched Randon, but it was more annoyance at himself than at me. If Lord Kelsey-Ramos had instilled a single quality in his son, it was that of taking internal responsibility for both his actions and his oversights. “I see. Well, no matter.” He turned back to his computer—
“What were you doing in Cameo?” Aikman asked shortly, vague suspicion radiating from him.
“Business,” I said, deliberately vague.
> “More a mercy trip, actually,” Randon put in, looking up and favoring Aikman with a thoughtful gaze. “Benedar thinks our outzombi may have been framed for her crimes.”
If Randon had hoped for a sharper reaction from Aikman, he was disappointed. Aikman’s lip twisted, his sense that of a man whose worst expectations had been realized. “Because she says she was?” he asked pointedly, turning a cynical glare on me. “Or simply because Watchers aren’t supposed to do naughty things like murder?”
I started to reply, but Randon beat me to it. “You knew she claimed to be innocent, then?”
“Well, yes,” Aikman said, some of his truculence fading before the unexpected iciness of Randon’s reaction. “But so what? Convicted felons are always claiming that—what else can they do? If the Outbound judiciary thought she was guilty, I’m willing to take their word for it.”
“Yes, well, we may be able to do a bit better than that.” Randon shifted his attention to me. “What did you find out?”
I gritted my teeth, still feeling an echo of shame at my failure. “They won’t help us.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Some local law, apparently—”
“Local law, indeed,” Aikman snorted. “‘No Solitaran citizen, regardless of crime or levied punishment, will be removed from the jurisdiction of Solitaire system for purposes of navigation, piloting, or piloting assistance on any interstellar craft.’”
In spite of myself, I was impressed. “That’s the one, all right,” I confirmed.
“I’m sure it was. It happens to be the backbone of the original agreement between the Solitaran colonists and the Patri.” His sense was distinctly gloating. “And there are no exceptions. None.”
“Every law has exceptions,” Randon said tartly.
“Not this one. Not even the governor can override it, Patri appointment or no.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” he snapped. “Because they don’t want their world to become a zombi reservoir, that’s why.”
It was obvious, of course, in retrospect, and I felt like an idiot for not catching on earlier. If something went wrong with a ship’s outzombi, the Solitarans were far and away the most convenient population from which to draw a replacement. Possibly too convenient a population … and I could well understand the original colonists worrying about that.
“It would never happen,” Randon insisted. But beneath his sureness there was a shading of doubt. “The Patri wouldn’t let Solitaire become a zombi farm.”
“Persuade the Solitarans of that,” Aikman countered. “In the past couple of decades there’ve been at least a dozen threats to the law, any one of which would have set a dangerous precedent.”
“I take it they didn’t weaken?” Randon asked.
Aikman smiled tightly. “One of the ships was able to beg a replacement zombi from Whitecliff. The rest eventually had to execute one of their own crewers to get out.”
My stomach tightened. “And the Solitarans let that happen? How can they justify letting an innocent man die when someone who is deserving of death—”
“Innocent?” Aikman sneered. “Since when are any of us oh, so fallen humans really innocent? Sounds a little heretical, if you ask me.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Randon cut him off. He wasn’t interested in letting Aikman harass me in his presence; but at the same time I could also sense a subtle decrease of tension within him. Relieved that I wouldn’t be rocking any official boats over Calandra now?
If so, he was in for a disappointment. “I haven’t given up yet, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” I spoke up.
He looked warily at me. “Oh? How so?”
“There must be at least ten other ships in Solitaire system at the moment, sir,” I pointed out. “If someone aboard one of them should happen to commit a capital crime, perhaps we can persuade the Solitaire judiciary to release him to us.”
“In two weeks?” Aikman snarled. “Where the hell is your brain, Benedar?—you really think a court can make a life/death decision like that in just two weeks?”
“It’s been done before,” Randon reminded him coolly.
Aikman knew better than to really glare at Randon, but the look he threw him was pretty close. “I don’t know why I’m even sitting here arguing all this,” he gritted out. “The whole thing is nothing but an exercise in futility. Like it or not, Calandra Paquin is guilty of murder; and a hundred judiciaries reviewing the case a hundred times won’t change that.”
“Then I’m wasting my time,” I told him, fighting to hold onto my temper. To have to face such deep hostility and not be able to return it in kind … “On the other hand, it’s my time to waste, isn’t it?”
“And speaking of wasting time,” Randon put in, “I have no intention of letting this argument waste any more of mine. Benedar, you’re authorized to have Captain Bartholomy put a tracer on the local news services, see if anything useful comes up. And don’t forget the ring mines—most of the people on the Rockhounds are non-Solitarans, too.” He glared briefly at both of us, and I could sense that for now, at least, the subject was closed. “Now. We’ve been going over the itinerary HTI’s got planned for us, Benedar. We’ll be meeting with their local managers first thing tomorrow morning, then looking over what they have in the way of groundside facilities.”
Which wouldn’t be much, of course. All of the real hardware for the extraction and refining of Solitaire’s immense mineral wealth was out in Collet’s rings, with Solitaire itself hosting little more than basic administration and rest/recreation areas. “Yes, sir. When will we be meeting the governor and local officials?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I knew he could tell that my thoughts were still with Calandra’s problem. “Governor Rybakov will be throwing a semiformal dinner for us tomorrow evening at her mansion. Most of the appropriate people will be there. That soon enough for you?”
I flushed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then the day after tomorrow we’ll be heading out to Collet for a tour of one of the Rockhounds that HTI has contracts with.”
The day after tomorrow … and it would, I knew, be at least a four-day trip out to Collet. Four days, out of a visit that was supposed to last only two weeks. “And will we be returning to Solitaire after that tour?” I asked carefully.
Randon’s eyes bored into mine. “Not unless we have a good reason to do so.”
I bit the back of my lip. So that was it. The day after tomorrow … and I had less than two days in which to find someone to die in Calandra’s place. “I understand, sir.”
Randon held my gaze another heartbeat, then turned to Aikman. “So. We’ve been over the locations, personnel, and local customs. Is there anything else?”
“I have nothing more, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos.” Aikman got to his feet. “If you think of anything, I’ll be in my stateroom.”
“Thank you,” Randon nodded. Aikman nodded back, brushed past me and left.
“He’s staying aboard ship?” I asked as Randon waved me to a seat. “I’d have thought HTI would have a guest house for visiting employees.”
“They’ve got half a dozen,” Randon said dryly. “But Aikman and DeMont were gracious enough to accept my hospitality instead.”
I studied him. “You don’t want them out of your sight?”
“Let’s just say I don’t want strangers wandering in and out of the Bellwether at their convenience. Particularly bigoted ones.” He swiveled his computer around to face me. “You can take all this back to your own stateroom and study it at your leisure, but I want to go over the high points with you first.”
I nodded. “I take it you’ll be wanting me to come along and watch the proceedings?”
He shrugged. “‘Want’ is not exactly the word I would use,” he said candidly. “To be perfectly honest, I think that having you around promotes a certain amount of mental laziness. In my opinion, Dad overuses you, and it’s cost him some of the edge off his old sharpness.”<
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I already knew all that, but I was rather surprised he was willing to admit to it. “I’m sorry you feel that way. If you’d like, I’ll stay in the ship.”
He waved the offer away. “Thanks, but Dad would have both of us mined for proteins when he found out.” Lowering his eyes, he reached again for the computer, already closing the subject in his own mind. “You may be a crutch, Benedar, but two weeks on a crutch won’t hurt me.”
“I agree, sir.” I braced myself. “Though I believe that in most cases two crutches work better than one.”
He was sharp, all right. His mind, already on his plans for tomorrow, snapped instantly back on track. “Are you suggesting,” he asked quietly, looking up again, “what I think you’re suggesting?”
There was, oddly enough, no outrage in his eyes; just a thin layer of ice that was even more intimidating than any anger would have been. But in my own way I was as stubborn as he was, and I refused to back down. “Yes, sir. You have a unique opportunity here, one your father couldn’t possibly have anticipated.”
“You want me to bring a zombi to a high-level business meeting.” The ice in his gaze thickened a bit. “And you want me to believe my father would approve of it?”
“Why not?” I countered. “No one there has to know who or what she is.”
“Benedar, she’s a condemned killer. Remember?”
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But as long as we keep her away from tall buildings and bombs …”
It had been the right thing to say. Randon’s eyes goggled; then, almost grudgingly, he snorted out a chuckle and the ice began to melt. “I trust you realize that if I take a criminal into a meeting with me I’ll never live it down.”
I shrugged. “A reputation for mild unpredictability can be useful. As your father well knows.”
For a long minute he just glared at me in silence. Then he snorted again, gently. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he said. “I can see through your game. You want me to get as emotionally involved with this little crusade of yours as you are. Making Paquin more useful to me alive than dead would be a good way to start, wouldn’t it?”
