Death Sentence (29 page)

The greatest change, of course, was merely that the Three were of any importance at all. Yalananav, Tigmin, and Fallogon not only shared power--they had more power among them than anyone ever had before in thousands of years.

For countless generations, Metrannan government had been so weak, so small, as to be almost undetectable. What need of government when all was stable, all was safe, all was unchanging? Change was Wrong, according to Bulwark of Constancy. Perhaps, after all, Constancy had been right, if change forced government--especially government like this--upon a society.

But that assumed that change was optional, something that could be rejected if it proved inconvenient. The truth was that change could at best be held off for a time, but that the longer it was forestalled, the faster, the harder, the crueler it would be when it at last broke free. Her people had slept through endless, all but changeless generations--but now they were paying the price in the form of a most rude and unpleasant awakening.

Her main concerns were to figure out the internal dynamics of the Three and get some idea of what they intended to do with her. It was hard to judge what changes were truly significant, and which were trivial happenstance. She could note who spoke first, who sat where, how far back she herself was required to stand, how long they made her wait before calling for her to enter the chamber. But what all that could usefully tell her, she had no idea.

The elevator opened, and the guards ushered her out. She turned automatically to the left--but the guards pointed her the other way. She realized that, this time, she was indeed being led toward the Great Room--or at least toward a smaller holding room just outside it. The guards hustled her inside and stayed there with her. There was no place to sit, nothing at all in the room. Taranarak resisted the urge to find meaning in that and settled herself until the Three were ready for her.

There was not long for her to wait. At some signal that was unseen to her, the guards roused themselves, opened the inner door, and led her into the round-walled confines of the Great Room. It was easily three times the size of the chamber in which she had been interviewed before. The Great Room could be used for many sorts of events, and had been designed as a sort of blank backdrop that could be dressed and decorated with whatever sort of set and theater might be desired for a particular occasion. It had been left utterly, even aggressively, undecorated. Its walls, ceiling, and floor were a steely grey, unrelieved by any sort of painting or design or pattern.

Taranarak was not in the least surprised to see a metal table and two human-style chairs set in the geometric center of the room. It took no complex or elaborate interpretation to understand for whom those places were meant.

The Three were seated at a table on a raised platform in front of the humans--but were they in fact Three anymore? Fascinated by what was before her, Taranarak barely noticed as the guards guided her to her own chair at a table next to the one for the humans. Things had changed indeed. Now Tigmin had the center chair, with Yalananav close by him on his right side. But Fallogon, near-silent Fallogon, was seated at the far left, as distant from Tigmin, and from Yalananav, as he could possibly be while remaining at the same table. Bulwark of Constancy was at the right of Yalananav, standing closer to him than he was to Tigmin.

It all had to mean something--but what?

Hannah and Jamie followed their guards into the huge, all-but-empty room, and were conducted to their places at the central table. They saw Taranarak seated off to one side, and three other Metrannans and a Xenoatric seated at a large table, facing them. The three other Metrannans were dressed in gleaming black tunics with elaborate silver decorations that made Taranarak's garb seem drab and ordinary.

"You are Special Agents Mendez and Wolfson," said the Metrannan on the right, speaking in Lesser Trade Speech. "Learned Searcher Taranarak is known to you. She is observing, but may not participate at this time, though it is possible she will be called upon later. I am Yalananav of the Order Bureaucracy. To my left is my colleague, Tigmin, and to his left, our mutual colleague, Fallogon. To my right, and also observing, Bulwark of Constancy of the Unseen Race." Yalananav turned to Tigmin. "The formalities of introduction are now complete," he said.

"Then let us begin," said Tigmin.

"Begin what?" Hannah asked. "Why are we here? What is the purpose of this meeting?"

"Your question is noted and will be answered in time," Tigmin said evenly. "At the moment, it is for us to ask the questions of you. You are required to answer."

"Under what authority?"

"Under
our
authority," Tigmin replied. "As I understand from the signals your vessel sent while you were approaching the planet, you are requesting the cooperation of local law enforcement in the investigation of the loss of your colleague. We are local law enforcement--and
we
require
your
cooperation."

"There were two discrepancies noted in the supplies you had placed aboard your vehicle after landing at our orbital station," said Yalananav. "We require an explanation of both these items."

"I beg your pardon?" Hannah said.

Yalananav rolled on smoothly, as if Hannah had said nothing at all. "According to our records, it was Agent Mendez who actually approved the deliveries. You requested and were supplied with a quantity of electro-setting repair compound."

"Yes, we were," said Hannah.

"It would be our preference that Agent Mendez speak to this matter, as he was the one who approved the delivery."

"It would be our preference to know what all this is about," Hannah said testily. "One does not always get what one wants. I am the senior agent present, and I choose to speak for my partner in this matter. If cooperating with you is a precondition of your cooperating with us--then it will be on our terms."

"Very well," said Yalananav. "If you wish to implicate yourself, that is of no consequence to us. You admit that you requested and received the repair compound."

"Yes. What of it? It is a perfectly standard repair supply and was a perfectly routine request."

"Why did you need it?"

Because that stuff sets like reinforced concrete and it will provide additional sealing and structural reinforcement to the damage on the patched windshield on the
Adler.
I don't want to try a transit-jump with just our spit-and-chewing-gum repair holding it all together. But I'm not going to tell you that, you interfering old buzzard.
"Our craft, the
Bartholomew Sholto
, experienced some minor hull damage just before departure. A hold-down cable attached to another vehicle snapped and banged into our craft. The broken cable was not discovered for some time, and we were not made aware of the incident or the damage until we were well under way. There is no immediate danger, but we felt it prudent to take precautions. We plan to make temporary repairs to our hull before we depart."

"Our experts tell us that the damage to your hull would only be significant during an atmospheric entry. Do you plan to make such a maneuver? To land on our world, perhaps?"

"We have no such plans. When we have done our work here, we are expected to fly directly back to our base, which is in vacuum and in free orbit. Still, we deemed it wise to take precautions. Surely you would agree that it is only prudent to keep one's vehicle fully capable?"

"We will ask the questions here," Yalananav said. "You ordered and received a far larger quantity of the material than would be required to repair the observed damage to your ship."

You people certainly have been snooping,
thought Hannah.
Checking our manifests, doing an external exam of the
Sholto.
What else have you been checking out?

"As I said, we were not made aware of the damage until we were well under way. We used the ship's onboard cameras, but we couldn't be sure of the extent of the damage. Better to order too much repair material than too little."

"You did not even examine the damage to your ship upon arrival."

And you watched as we disembarked. Why are we so interesting?
"As you said, the damage would only be of consequence during an atmospheric entry. The matter was not urgent--and we were eager to enjoy your splendid hospitality." Lesser Trade Speech did not lend itself to sarcasm, and she very much doubted that Yalananav had a sense of humor, but if a snide remark served to deflect his attention, that would suit Hannah. And why the devil were they interested in the repair compound?

"There was another, and stranger, discrepancy," Yalananav went on. "You accepted delivery of a twenty-four-day supply of Metrannan-digestible emergency rations. What possible use did you have for them?"

"I know nothing of such rations," said Hannah, quite truthfully.

"I do," said Jamie. "Though I know very little. It seemed such a minor point at the time, I did not bother mentioning it to my colleague. The packing lists for the two containers we accepted were printed in Metrannan Script, Greater Trade Writing, and written English--rather poor written English, with several mistakes. However, we were in a hurry, and as it was the language most familiar to me, I read over the English listing. There was one item with a garbled description. It was something like 'Made for/by Metrannan Meals Twenty-four Daily.' I took it to mean there were twenty-four mealpacks made by Metrannans for us, for humans. I gather they are in fact meals for Metrannans, which were somehow mistakenly delivered to us."

"If you were uncertain of the meaning of the listing," Yalananav said, "you should have compared it against the other languages, or else opened the package and examined the contents directly."

Jamie frowned. "If what we got were rations that a Metrannan could eat, but not a human, I was not uncertain. I was mistaken. I failed to understand a garbled notation properly. I note that you did not say that we ordered the rations--just that we accepted them. Correct?"

"That is correct."

Good for you, Jamie,
Hannah thought.
You got them to answer a question. A small start--but a start.

"Then at worst I am guilty of misunderstanding a poor translation done by some automated system in your resupply service. There. I have confessed. Why don't you arrest me for that? Except--excuse me. Haven't you done that already?"

"I do not understand."

"Arrested. Are we arrested? Held against our will under suspicion of committing a crime?"

"You are not arrested."

Jamie stood up. "Then we are free to go?"

A guard stepped forward from the rear of the room. "You are not free to go. You must remain."

Jamie sat down. "Then I must insist that you clarify our situation."

Silence. Plainly they had no intention of clarifying anything.

Hannah used the quiet moment to try to think. Jamie had just done a good job of using his own anger to push back at this gang of bullies. And bullies they were--all sly threats and leaning on people weaker than they, and doing it because they were scared themselves.

What worried her was that scared and inexperienced leaders in a crisis often spent a lot of time looking for someone to blame. If she didn't know better, she would have guessed they were toying with the idea of choosing humans for the role. Never mind that it made no sense. Never mind that it was, in fact, completely irrational. There they were, picking at minor oddities in their packing list, looking for--even manufacturing--evidence of conspiracies.

She could almost see the gears in their heads turning. Jamie and she were only a few inferences away from being accused of a plot to land on the planet, and either kidnap someone, or else collect some fiendish Metrannan traitor who would fly off to conspire with his evil human allies. They had already scraped together just enough nothing to build into a nearly plausible story.

Hannah's gut instinct was that the Metrannans
couldn't
clarify the situation because they weren't sure of it themselves. This session was a fishing expedition, an attempt to rattle them. Jamie, in effect, had called their bluff. Good for him--but now it was time to defuse things just a bit. "Let us not argue over terms and definitions," she said. "I trust we have answered your questions satisfactorily. We have cooperated. Now we seek your cooperation."

"First one or two questions more, if you please," said the one on the end, speaking for the first time. Fallogon, that was his name. "Are you familiar with the term 'maneuver-masking'?"

"I believe I have heard it in passing," Hannah said, trying to sound casual. "I don't know what the precise definition might be." That was a flatout lie, but her internal alarm bells were going off, and this didn't seem the moment to reveal knowledge of covert piloting techniques.

"I am surprised that a spacefaring police officer wouldn't know the term intimately. It refers to various techniques whereby one ship is interposed between a detection station and a second ship, in hopes that the energy field generated by the first ship's engines would conceal any maneuvers by the second ship. Ship two hides behind ship one so the detection station cannot see it."