Death Sentence (33 page)

The stunned silence from the humans would likely not have lasted long, even if their guard hadn't chosen that moment to reappear, and the aircar hadn't started its landing approach. But in a strange way, Taranarak was glad of the timing. She could think of many questions the humans would want to ask right away.

But none that she would not prefer to answer later.

Much, much later.

TWENTY-ONE

CHANGING FOR DINNER

The ride in the aircar provided a spectacular view of the city at sunset and flew them over parts of town they had not seen before. However, Jamie was far too distracted to take much of it in. The car they had flown in that morning had been converted to bench seating for the benefit of human visitors. Jamie had not really appreciated that detail until now. This vehicle had not been so modified and retained the hard, narrow saddles that the four-legged Metrannans preferred. They were excruciatingly uncomfortable for humans to sit on even in the straddle position, and of course that pose was utterly impossible for Hannah in an evening gown. They were both reduced to wedging themselves in sidesaddle, which was massively uncomfortable. Nor was the higher gravity much of a help.

Meanwhile, of course, Taranarak, possessed of both a body and a gown suited to the saddles, sat placidly and silently, watching their contortions and doing a far better job than the two humans of pretending that nothing at all had happened at the landing pad.

And as soon as the relaxing car ride was over, they would have to wade through the horrors of, not only a formal dinner, not only an Elder Race formal dinner, but a
multispecies
Elder Race formal dinner. Jamie remembered reading somewhere that a human logician had computed that, given the mutually exclusive mores and rules of etiquette of the various Elder Race species, and the physiological limitations of the human body, with anything over six species in attendance, it became something close to a mathematical impossibility to get through the evening without committing a perhaps literally fatal social error.

On the bright side, so far as Jamie was aware, there would only be three species present at the meal: human, Metrannan, and Xenoatric. On the downside, two of the species there were among the most dangerous of all known species when offended or annoyed: Metrannan and Xenoatric. Jamie glanced over at Hannah, wedged in between two saddles, the expression on her face a veritable catalog of discomfort and negative emotions, and decided it might just be that humans belonged on the second list as well.

They were coming for a landing. Jamie breathed a sigh of relief. The ride was about to come to an end. Unfortunately that meant the meal was about to begin.

Hannah bolted a smile onto her face as she pried herself out of the car. Jamie offered her his arm, and she made no pretense at all about the fact that she needed it to keep upright, just at first. She had nearly regained feeling in both legs by the time they were ushered inside.

The Xenoatrics seemed to have polished and burnished their metal carapaces, and they literally glittered in colors of gold and silver and hard-edged steel. But even they receded into the background compared to the Metrannans. Taranarak's iridescent gown turned out to be downright dowdy compared to most of the outfits. Bright colors, designs with complex geometric patterns and elaborate decoration, and madly complex headdresses were the order of the evening. Perhaps the overall effect was less jarring to the Metrannans' red-adapted optic nerves, but it came close to making Hannah's Earth-evolved eyes water.

Hannah almost felt embarrassed by the stark simplicity of her own gown and the comparative drabness of its color. But perhaps the understated style of her clothes and Jamie's was distinction enough. It was to her eye, at least. She thought Jamie looked very much the poised, cosmopolitan, elegant gentleman. The gaudy, overwrought clothes of the other guests merely served as a backdrop to Jamie's crisp, simple tuxedo. What he wore was a welcome spot of refined quiet in the midst of clamor. But then, she was biased.

The drill seemed to be that the guests were all held backstage by a gaggle of minders and sorted out into a precisely calculated pecking order, moving from least to most important. It did not escape Hannah's notice that Jamie and she were posted quite near the head of the line, or that Taranarak was positioned only a place or two behind them. What she found more amusing was that the minders flatly refused to let her go in on Jamie's arm. She was, after all, senior to him. Therefore, he had to go first, and alone. It didn't really matter, anyway, as they were to be seated at separate tables.

The five or so Xenoatrics were assembled at the most senior end of the line--with Bulwark of Constancy last of all. One other thing struck her: Constancy was motionless, aloof, inert, for long periods of time--but the other Xenoatrics were engaged in animated conversation, among themselves and with the senior Metrannans near them in the line.

Once the guests were in order, they were required to wait where they were, in the order they were in, for no clearly explained reason, until it was somehow determined it was time to begin the Procession of Entrance and the door to the dining room was opened.

Guards of the Order Patrol, resplendent in formal red uniforms with green-and-purple piping, came to stand beside each guest. Then, one by one, the guests were escorted to their starting positions around their initial feeding vats, while complex, atonal--and dreadfully unpleasant--music played. Somehow the whole process resembled a bizarre variation on musical chairs.

Hannah allowed herself to be led to her own table, and tried not to be alarmed by the dining saddle set behind her place. She was the first one to her table. She quickly saw why--the seating at each table was also in order of seniority, counterclockwise around the round table. She remained standing as each diner was escorted in, in part because everyone else did, and in part because between her gown and the saddle, she simply had no other options. She located Jamie going through the same ritual at the far side of the room.

At last the Order Guards ran out of Metrannans and started working through the Xenoatrics. One of them--thankfully, not Bulwark of Constancy--was led to Hannah's table and took the last open place, to Hannah's right.

Once the Xenoatrics, the Unseen Beings, were delivered to their places, it was time for the guests of honor--or, more accurately, the hosts of the event--to be brought out from some separate holding room. Yalananav, Fallogon, and Tigmin did not so much enter the room as appear in it, stepping abruptly, three abreast, from a shadowy corner into the bright dazzle of a sudden spotlight, as music that sounded even more like a cat fight blared out.

The Three stepped forward together, carefully avoiding any pose or positioning that might indicate anything other than exact and precise equality among the three of them. The Metrannans in the room thumped their forefeet on the floor and their closework hands on the tables. Even the Xenoatrics offered their version of applause--a sort of low-throated trilling that sounded like something halfway between a birdsong and a synthesounder.

Hannah had expected the Three to sit separate from the others at some sort of special table where they could remain a little bit apart, a little bit exalted, a little bit better than their followers--but apparently this particular New Order hadn't reached that stage yet.

Instead, the Three took their places at three different tables, each taking the seat for the most senior person, but otherwise without any particular special treatment. Once the Three were at their places, the Metrannans sat down, while the Xenoatrics contracted themselves somehow and refolded their carapaces a bit to bring them in closer to the tables.

Hannah was relieved to discover that her escort Guard had produced a more or less human-style chair from somewhere while she was distracted. He set it in position and whisked away the Metrannan saddle at her place. She could see Jamie getting the same treatment on the other side of the room.

The briefing materials Hannah and Jamie had read while inbound to Metran had covered the procedure and etiquette of a formal meal on Metran, but somehow the dry words of the report didn't quite convey the feel of the event itself. In a sense, it was the opposite of a human dinner party, where the diners remained in place and the food was brought to them. On Metran, it was the diners that did the moving around.

There were six formal dining saddles set around the edge of each table--if "table" was the right word. Probably "feeding vat" would be a more accurate description. Each vat contained a particular dish, and the diners would assemble at their assigned spot for each course, eat whatever particular item was on offer at that table, converse with their neighbors, then, when a chime sounded, follow their escort to their next assigned seating at another table for the next course.

Perhaps by use of some hideously complex algorithm, the diners were in effect shuffled and redealt to a fresh grouping for each course, so that each diner encountered five new dinner partners with each change.

Hannah rather liked that feature of Metrannan dinner etiquette. She could almost imagine trying to introduce it at her next dinner party--or would have, if she ever gave dinner parties. But then she considered the difficulty of getting six or seven tables of six into her duty quarters, and the chaos that would ensue every time it was time to swap tables, and decided to drop the idea.

What she did not care for was the food itself or the way it was served. Things got off to a difficult start at her first table. Set into the center of the table was a large shallow metal container that resembled a wok or a frying pan. In the pan were small, eight-legged creatures scuttling around its interior. They more or less resembled a cross between a bald mouse and a crayfish. Their bodies were covered with a chitinous material, except for brownish-red strips of fur that ran along the topsides of their bodies.

The Metrannan diners would snatch one of the scuttlers out of the pan using their heavy-duty outside pair of hands, then use their smaller closework hands to take the little creature apart. They used the fur strips more or less as zippers, pulling back on them to peel the animals right out of their shells before popping them, still wriggling, into their mouths. The fur strip, it would appear, added a little roughage.

As a matter of justice and logic, Hannah knew there was no real difference between what the Metrannans were eating--and how they were eating it--and eating a fresh lobster that had just been boiled alive. Even so, she was just as glad that her hosts didn't expect her to try a scuttler for herself. Sometimes, having an incompatible biochemistry was a good thing.

Instead, she noted that a small bowl of what appeared to be yogurt or porridge and a plastic spoon had been set at her place. Somehow, she couldn't work up much of an appetite for that, either. She noticed the servers didn't bring anything at all to the Xenoatrics. She had no idea what they ate, if anything. Maybe they simply plugged themselves into recharging receptacles.

The Metrannans at her table seemed intent on ignoring her, and instead conversed among themselves in Metrannan. Based on the nervous glances they directed at Tigmin, who was seated at a nearby table, her guess was that they were waiting for some sort of cue from the powers-that-be before they risked dealing with an alien, especially one from a disreputable Younger Race species.

The Xenoatric to her right, however, was quite another story. "I am Maintainer of Calm," it announced in mechanically accented Lesser Trade Speech. "You are either the human Wolfson or the human Mendez."

"I am Wolfson," said Hannah, a trifle startled. Should she have spoken first? Introduced herself? "Forgive me if my actions do not suit the required etiquette. This is all quite new to me."

"Your apology is needless. The general rule is for the senior party to speak first, and the junior party not to speak until addressed."

So all the Metrannans around the table are the ones violating etiquette. Interesting.
"I thank you for clarifying that point." It occurred to Hannah that it was possible this Unseen One could provide her with some useful information. "I have almost no experience of your people. Bulwark of Constancy was present at a--ah--ceremony--I attended this morning, and Bulwark of Constancy is here tonight, but I have not noted that being speaking to anyone at all. I had started to wonder if that was the way of all the Unseen." She glanced across the room to the table that held Bulwark of Constancy and saw Bulwark was still motionless.

"Ah, yes, the well-named Bulwark of Constancy. But what does such a Bulwark do when the landscape itself shifts and changes around oneself? It is not unknown for those of our kind to behave in the manner of Bulwark of Constancy when under great stress."

"And perhaps the recent changes in how the Metrannans govern themselves have been stressful enough to cause Bulwark of Constancy's behavior?"

"Perhaps," Maintainer of Calm said doubtfully. "But while I have found the pace of change unpleasant, you will observe that
I
have not become excessively withdrawn, and neither have any of the other Unseen present here this evening. I would suggest there must be some other, additional cause for Bulwark's behavior, though I could not say what it might be. But I wish to learn more about your own mission here. There are many conflicting stories. Are you in fact here to avenge your fallen colleague?"