Death Sentence (28 page)

She was starting to get a real idea of what that War-Starter designation really meant.

"We're going to have to be very, very, very careful," said Jamie. "The people out there aren't likely to be very calm or relaxed."

Hannah shook her head. "No,"

Their gondola was shifted off the rail line and transferred to the back of a robotic flatbed truck. Hannah shook her head as she watched the passing scene, pristine and perfect streets and parks interspersed with scenes of ruin and wreckage.

At last they came to a halt on a quiet road on a hill that overlooked the city spread out far below. Lining the streets were widely spaced structures that were clearly no relation to any Earthly architecture. They were short and squat, and the windows were oddly spaced and the doors were in the wrong places, but they were still plainly places for people to live.

One house, the one at the end of the road, seemed to have been singled out for some reason. The yard looked as if it had been chewed up by some sort of heavy machinery, and then hurriedly tidied up. There were large ugly dents and dings and gouges in the house itself, around the doors and windows.

Very official-looking vehicles were parked everywhere, and Metrannans in combat uniforms stood around with serious expressions on their faces and serious weapons carried in their primary lifting arms.

As soon as the vehicle carrying their gondola came to a halt, a squad of security guards dragged a heavy portable barrier across the road, sealing off the house--and their gondola--from all the other houses.

Hannah knew enough about how things went wrong, and had enough practice as a detective, for her to make a very well-educated guess at what had happened. Someone had been under very strict house arrest, to the point of the doors and windows being boarded up in some way, and lots of heavy traffic outside. Then they had taken down the boards and shutters, dressing the set, perhaps in hopes of pretending everything was fine in front of strangers.

Trouble was, at a guess, the damage to the house and grounds was too severe to be cleaned up in a hurry, especially with the security forces as overstretched as they presumably were. Perhaps there had been violent demonstrations in the area, and the security forces hadn't been able to keep the low profile they had been hoping for.

And then, somewhere in the middle of the botched plans and improvising, once it was clear they wouldn't be able to pretend things were normal anyway, it would seem that someone had had the bright idea of putting the aliens in the same compound and saving on guards that way.

Almost before the barrier was erected, the hatch on the endcap of the gondola swung open to reveal a beefy-looking guard brandishing a particularly nasty-looking weapon. "You two beings," he said in crude, heavily accented Lesser Trade Speech. "Get ready. We go in three standard short social time intervals." He turned and pushed a button to close the hatch again and was already walking away, down an access ramp, before the hatch could seal.

"Ouch," said Jamie. "I thought Metrannans were hyperconcerned about proper behavior and correct manners."

"They are," said Hannah. "Either they've got the local equivalent of a Neanderthal guarding us, or that was a deliberate insult. Don't ask me
why
they'd want to insult us."

"Okay, I'll ask you something else," said Jamie. "Three shorts. What's that? About five minutes?"

"About," said Hannah, not really paying attention.

"We'll get ready for what? To go where?"

"I don't know," she said. She thought for a moment. "I've been in a lot of situations where the locals tried to put pressure on me, one way or the other. But this is the first time I've ever been stuck in a mobile goldfish bowl without explanation or consultation. If they're trying to control our movements, I suppose it's working. But they'd better not count on it making us more cooperative."

"I take it you don't mind if our hosts hear you make that little comment," Jamie said.

"No, I don't," said Hannah. "We're the representatives of a friendly government, come to inquire after our colleague who vanished while trying to do a service for these people. Maybe they need to hear that humans, at least, don't think this is the way to treat one's friends."

"For all you know, this is the standard way they handle every alien who comes in on the Elevator."

"If so, then maybe I can tell them why they don't get more visitors," Hannah growled. "But I can't believe it. Especially those last little grace notes. Dragging a steel barrier across the road? Sealing us in? Ordering us around as if we were prisoners? No one is that ham-handed, except on purpose. It's a deliberate attempt to intimidate us. Let's make sure they know it isn't working."

"With any luck, if they are listening in, you just told them."

"Did I? Well, I'm about to do it again, if I can. Can you get that hatch open? Or are we locked in here?"

Jamie went over and studied the control panel. "I should be able to," he said. "Unless it's been gimmicked from the outside, or welded shut or something. But if I do get it open, the folks on the other side probably won't be too happy."

"Good," said Hannah. "If they're mad, what are they going to do? Shoot us?"

"Could be."

"No," she said. "We've been under their complete control since we landed. If they wanted us dead, we'd be dead by now. They want us--or maybe just need us--alive. Open the door."

Jamie did as he was told, and Hannah stepped out the door and onto the top end of the ramp that had been positioned outside it. "You!" she called out to the guard, who'd taken up a position at the bottom of the ramp. "Tell your officer we will not be treated this way," she thundered, in the best and clearest Lesser Trade Speech she could muster. "The lowest criminals are permitted the right of proper dress! We will
not
risk humiliation for ourselves or on behalf of our race. We will
not
depart until we are clearly informed as to the nature of our destination, and until we are properly dressed for the time, location, and event in question! Is that clear?"

The astonished guard could only open and shut his mouth and let his closework arms twitch feebly.

"Is that clear?" Hannah demanded again. "Answer me!"

"Ah. Yes. Yes it is. My officer will be informed."

"See that he is--and promptly!" Hannah snapped, then went back inside and signaled for Jamie to shut the hatch. "Let's see if
that
got their attention," she said.

She resisted the temptation to let out a sigh or rub her forehead or show any other sign of emotion besides anger. After all, if the locals hadn't been watching them before, they almost certainly were after that tirade. She didn't dare end the performance she had just started.

"I'm sure you got their attention," Jamie said doubtfully. "But I'm just not sure we're going to be that much happier because of it."

"We will not be happier," Hannah said, speaking in Lesser Trade Speech to address the air. "But we will be more respected. I speak now in a language that those listening will not need to have translated. We came here in search of a lost comrade who vanished while performing a service for your people. We have seen many signs of fear and destruction since our arrival. We did not cause your problems. We did not set off the disturbances. We can make guesses, but we have been told nothing and know nothing of what has gone wrong. By human custom, and by that of your own people, our comrade's presumed death in your service places you in our debt. We need your help to learn his fate. If you need our help for your own purposes--as I suspect you do--then it is time to deal with us properly. Tell us where we are being taken and why!"

The interior of the gondola was silent. Hannah sat down, battling to control her emotions. It was a dangerous game, self-righteousness, especially when you were stretching and twisting the truth in the middle of it. Wilcox hadn't vanished, and there was nothing presumed about his death. But the game had to be played.

Moments later, both of their datapads beeped simultaneously. "I think that did it," Jamie said as he pulled his pad out of an inside pocket. "And it's got to be a good sign that they replied that fast." He looked at the screen, and then swore under his breath. "I just wish I liked the answer better."

Hannah checked her own datapad, determined not to reveal anything, no matter what it said. The Metrannans had responded all right--with a sequence of clothing database codings that did in fact report precisely what they should wear.

The calculation of appropriateness at the bottom reported the selected garments were ninety-six-point-three percent likely to be suitable for the event in question. That was the good news.

The bad news was the event-culture-equivalency estimate. According to its comparator algorithm, the human-style event most like what they were about to take part in was a trial at law.

With Hannah and Jamie as the defendants.

NINETEEN

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

"I think I liked the other outfits better," Jamie said as he and Hannah were bundled into the waiting aircar. After a brief and unsatisfying consultation with the databases, Jamie found himself in a white shirt with knit maroon tie, thick brown jacket, black slacks with oversized cuffs, and clunky brown shoes. All he needed was a pocket protector and old-fashioned spectacles held together with adhesive tape and he would have been ready to go to a costume party dressed as an archetypal ancient nerd of centuries back, from all the cartoons and jokes, as familiar a pop culture icon as the knight in shining armor or the caveman dressed in animal skins. Hannah's clothes were similarly drab, archaic, and awkward-looking: a dowdy brown wool skirt, a beige blouse, and black flat-heeled shoes. It took some doing to make Hannah look frumpy, but the outfit selected by the database had managed it.

The guard on duty sealed the aircar door from the outside and signaled for the driver to take off. But the law of inexplicable delays held true, and the aircar stayed where it was, even though it seemed as if they were ready to go. Not that Jamie was in any hurry. He didn't think it was going to be all that fun a trip.

"I'm not crazy about my clothes either," said Hannah. "But at least we've forced the locals to acknowledge that their traditions extended to us."

"Let's hope those traditions don't include trial by ordeal or single combat or anything fun like that," Jamie replied. "What I don't understand is what in dark space we could possibly be on trial
for.
We just got here, and for all intents and purposes, we've been locked up since arrival."

"I don't know," said Hannah. "But bear in mind that the only thing telling us what's happening is a low-grade artificial intelligence that's been programmed to simulate a fashion consultant. It might have gotten it wrong."

"Or it might not," said Jamie. "Maybe it's a trial--but we're just the witnesses. Look over there."

There was some activity by the house on their side of the barrier. An aircar landed in front of it. The main door of the house opened--and Learned Searcher Taranarak came out, dressed in formal robes of dark color and severe cut. A guard escorted her every step of the five meters or so to the aircar, and she got in.

"I guess they wanted us to fly in formation," Jamie said. Their vehicle and Taranarak's lifted off simultaneously, rising vertically to about two hundred meters or so before heading toward the center of town.

"Is
she
the one on trial?" Jamie asked. "For what?"

"Who knows? Maybe we're all codefendants in some kind of show trial, and we'll all be hanged together--or whatever they do instead of hanging around here. Metrannans don't exactly have necks."

"I thought you had it all figured out that we're still alive because they need us!" Jamie protested.

"Maybe. And maybe what they need us for is the show trial and the executions afterward. We'll just have to see what happens."

Jamie grunted. "And who it happens to."

Taranarak was bundled out of her aircar first and hustled inside to follow the route she had traveled so many times before. She strained to study everything as if she had seen none of it before. It was what changed that told her what was important. The trio of Order Bureaucrats had come to be called the Three, and that by itself meant something. They were, for all intents and purposes, the leaders of the planet, and a certain degree of myth, an aura of power, was starting to build around them.