Death Sentence (41 page)

"I think that Hallaben found out how to keep those cellular failures from ever happening, or at least from happening for decades. And if you find out how to keep a set of switches turned
on,
you've also learned how to switch them
off.
Maybe taking the longlife treatment required deactivating some part of the existing geriatric treatment, and that's what this stuff was. Or it was some other byproduct of the research. Something to
cause
old age so you test to see if it could be counteracted. Bulwark of Constancy was involved in the longlife project, in a sort of negative sense--trying to get it shut down. I think Constancy got hold of the stuff and exposed Hallaben and Trevor to it--fed it to them, made them inhale it, whatever--just before Trevor departed. Hallaben died as expected, probably while Trevor was still en route up the Grand Elevator to the
Adler
--but Trevor stayed alive. Bulwark of Constancy decides to let the old-age-in-a-spray-gun have longer to work. Constancy chases Trevor's ship, hoping to find him safely dead. Except he's not."

"I get it," said Jamie. "Trevor cons the Metrannans that Constancy sends aboard the
Adler
into docking through the nose hatch. Bulwark doesn't want to be seen--and has got to be even worse on a rope ladder than a Metrannan. So Constancy sends a bunch of Metrannan flunkies aboard to search for the decryption key. They don't know much about humans, and Bulwark of Constancy wouldn't have been crazy enough to order them to check for signs of premature aging. They come back without having found the decryption key and reporting Trevor as being in good health--which he is, more or less. He's aging rapidly, but still holding together well enough to fool a bunch of xenos."

"Constancy can't destroy the
Adler
--not with a shipful of Metrannan witnesses. It concludes that the aging treatment doesn't work on humans and maybe the biochemistry isn't all
that
similar--but then Trevor never arrives. Months pass with no word, no decryption key, and no joint human-Metrannan lab busily working away on the longlife treatment. Does that mean Trevor did die, and his ship was lost forever? Maybe Constancy figures out that the treatment
did
work--just not so fast on humans."

"But wait a second," Jamie objected. "Something that kills over the course of a couple of weeks isn't much use against someone with a gun. Why did Constancy pull that spray gun on us?"

Hannah counted off on her fingers. "One--it was the only weapon Constancy had. And/or two--it wasn't expecting
us.
It thought we were safely dead. It was expecting it might have to spritz a couple of Metrannan cops. Then it'd just have to stall long enough, requiring proper and respectful treatment, until they keeled over. It took Hallaben a couple of days to die--but he might well have been incapacitated long before he died. Three--you told me yourself that Constancy had gotten to the point of borderline deranged--and maybe it's crossed the border. Four, if you hadn't had the stun grenade, it would have just shaken off the bullets and kept coming. It almost
did
manage to spray you as it was. We just barely
did
have a defense. And five, maybe it was just very, very eager to have a guinea pig. It sprays us down, abducts us, locks you up for a couple of weeks, waits to see what happens--and knows for sure whether the stuff works on humans. I've run out of fingers, but I could probably come up with more motives if you gave me a chance."

Jamie shivered. "No, I think that's a good enough list. But I've got another question. What, exactly, was Constancy doing there? What did Bulwark of Constancy hope to accomplish by breaking into the
Bartholomew Sholto
?"

"Not a thing in the world," Hannah said. "My guess is that Constancy thought it was breaking into the
Irene Adler
to search for the decrypt key. It figured out that we had disguised one ship as the other--but got it backwards. At the very least, it needed to make sure the
Sholto
wasn't the
Adler
. Maybe it was going to steal the ship and take it somewhere private where it could spend years searching it, if need be."

"But it wanted the decrypt key destroyed! Why not just blow up the ship and be done with it?"

"If you want, I can stack a few more guesses on top of each other. It wanted to find the key, hold it in its manipulators, know that it controlled it as a matter of positive fact. It'd never know that for sure if it simply destroyed the spacecraft. Or maybe it figured that, someday, it would be to Constancy's advantage to have the key in its possession as a bargaining chip for use with this faction or that. Say, someone interested in using the data in the message to create bioweapons instead of a longlife treatment."

"You've just convinced me that part was perfectly possible. Constancy
used
that spray gun like a weapon. It tried to aim and fire it at an opponent. And if it was expecting a few droplets of it on my skin, or my inhaling just a trace of it, was going to be enough to kill me--then the amount in that spray gun in the lockup is probably enough to kill half of Center City."

"Yeah. Unless it's just distilled water and Hallaben died of natural causes and since we've been gone Doc Vogel has figured out that Trevor died of some rare disease with a long incubation that he contracted three missions ago."

"I don't believe that any more than you do. What you're saying is that all you have right now is circumstantial evidence and some logic that holds together fairly well. But they've got Trevor's body still in the morgue, and we've got that spray gun full of something to be analyzed. I'd bet whatever you like Forensics is able to make a connection."

"No bet," said Hannah. "I agree. We can't nail it down until we get that stuff back to the lab, but I feel quite certain we now know how Trevor was killed and who did it."

"Great," Jamie said sourly. "Mission accomplished."

"No," said Hannah. "Not until
Trevor
's mission is accomplished. Which brings me to our next decision, and it's a nice complicated one. If Taranarak is correct, we can expect pursuit by a faster and more powerful ship, and that ship could launch any minute. We might not have much of a head start. We've got the spray gun and the new information with us. Do we risk losing all that--and ourselves--by taking on the delay and confusion of linking up with the
Adler
--or do we give up on finding the decrypt key aboard her, use the remote-destruct system to blow her up as we go past, and just go home with what we've got?"

"I say we don't write off the
Adler
," Jamie said. "We can't. I don't want to say a single syllable about why." He gestured toward Taranarak. "Not until we have
her
safely back in Center System. All I'll say is this: We've been led around by our noses and chivvied around since the moment we landed at Free Orbit Level Station. It's time that we call the shots and decide where to go and what to do. I don't feel like playing it safe or being chased away from finishing our job."

"I'm with you," said Hannah. "But I felt I had to at least bring up the other option."

"Fine. But just deciding to bring back both ships is step one. There are about forty-seven different scenarios for how to do it. I don't think there's any point in getting fancy about maneuver-masking or trying to pretend the
Adler
isn't there. We'll
have
to light her engines by remote command long before we're anywhere near her if the two ships are going to match velocities. If there is a fast ship chasing us, it will get close enough to see the energy output no matter what games we try to play. We might as well just run as fast as we can without wasting time and thrust reserves trying to fool someone who won't be fooled." Jamie thought for a minute. "There are a lot of variables to play with."

"I think my tactical officer just requested time in the chair I'm in so he could start working out possibilities."

"He did indeed," Jamie said. "
After
I bed down somewhere for a while. I'm too tired to think straight. But with Taranarak's nest taking up half the deck, I'm not sure where. Maybe if I leave the air lock door open, I could sleep in there for a while."

"Leaving me to doze off in this glorified dentist's chair?" Hannah asked. "Gee, thanks. We'll need to work out better sleeping arrangements and so on, but it's going to have to wait." She yawned hugely. "I'll rig some alarms on the detector system so it'll start howling if it spots a ship on our tail."

"Okay," said Jamie. "But I wouldn't say no if you shifted to, ah, boost pattern seven-b before you turn in. It's optimized to give near-max boost, minimum time, and makes no effort at detection avoidance. Speed is going to be our best defense, I think."

"Agreed," said Hannah. "Go climb over Taranarak, use the washroom, and turn in. I'll go after you."

"That order I'll obey without argument, cap'n. Good night."

Hannah watched him head down the ladder, then ordered the nav system to shift over to pattern seven-b. Jamie was right. Speed was likely to be their best protection.

What worried her was that sometimes, even the best was none too good.

TWENTY-SIX

EDGE OF CENTER

The days that followed were difficult in the extreme for Taranarak. She had often fantasized about escaping from Metran--but that was a far different thing than the harsh reality of being cast out, left homeless, dependent on the kindness of barely civilized aliens for her own survival. It was hard not to dwell on all she had lost. In all likelihood, she would never again set foot on her home planet.

That was, far and away, the deepest wound and the widest. But it was far from being the only one. Life aboard the exceedingly cramped quarters of the
Bartholomew Sholto
made her life in house arrest seem the apex of luxury. There was scarcely room enough to turn around without bumping into one of the humans or the other. Privacy was virtually nonexistent, and using the human-style sanitary facilities was an exercise in humiliation.

It was likewise most disturbing that she was forced to watch the two humans constantly scrambling up and down that dreadful flexible ladder arrangement. She grew somewhat more used to the sight in time, but the mere sight of it never failed to make her feel just a trifle queasy. Needless to say, she flatly refused to use the ladder or visit the flight deck herself.

All she had in the way of clothing was two sets of maintenance worker's coveralls supplied at the last minute by the liftpod station crew, and the only food she had, aside from the emergency rations she had herself arranged to have aboard, were a few unappetizing long-store rations and lower-class leisure snacks scooped up by the liftpod crew.

But all that was as nothing compared to the attitude of the two human agents. They were polite, yes, even courteous and respectful--but it was clear that they did not trust her in the least. They frequently shifted to their own tongue in order to exclude her from conversation on anything remotely technical or confidential. They spoke in low voices. They concealed datascreens and even hid their antique paper notebooks from her view. They seemed to work on the assumption that any or all of her possessions contained recording devices.

She could not really blame them for the precautions. After all, an attempt had been made on their lives as well. Bulwark of Constancy had been attempting to break into their ship. And in their very brief stay on her world, they had spent nearly every moment entangled in murky plots and schemes.

But understanding their motives did not wipe away the sense of humiliation--and of uselessness. She had nothing at all to do, while the humans were both constantly bustling about, making plans, making lists, discussing scenarios, working out contingencies.

Toward the evening of their first day out, Taranarak at last felt she had actually contributed something, that she was something more than an encumbrance. Even so, it was not a happy moment. It happened when an alert started to sound on the main control board. Agent Mendez had been spending most of his time working on what he called "tactical options," whatever exactly that meant, and he was the first to see what the alert meant. "Ship launch from Free Orbit Station," he announced, doing her the courtesy of speaking in Lesser Trade Speech. He studied the displays as Agent Wolfson scrambled up the rope ladder to see for herself. "There have been plenty of those since we left, of course--but our nav plot projects this one on a near-intercept with us."

"And the ship-thrust pattern signature matches what we have on file for a particular class of ships flown by the Unseen Race," Agent Wolfson said. "We're getting data from the ship's transponder. Definite Unseen Race ship. Massing about twenty times what we do. Even getting a ship name: the
Stability
. That's got to be our friend Constancy. Looks like you got it right, Taranarak," she said, calling down to the lower deck.

"I sincerely wish I had it wrong," Taranarak replied sadly. "Bulwark of Constancy took a lot longer to get moving than I expected. I was beginning to hope that it wouldn't pursue."

"Can we be sure that it
is
Constancy?"

"If it is a ship of the Unseen People, yes. The controls on those ships are configured so that no Metrannan could operate them. And I cannot think of any other of the Unseen with any reason to pursue us."

"Is Constancy going to catch us?" Mendez asked.

"Yes," said Wolfson, quite calmly, as she studied the displays. "Assuming everything continues as it is. But our job is to make sure things
don't
stay the same."

"If I understand the plan," said Taranarak, "we are to boost toward your other ship, brake to a halt next to her, transfer to that ship, then fly on to transit-jump range. Is that correct?"

"No," said Wolfson. "But that's the profile we're flying right now. That's what we want Bulwark to
think
the plan is. I'll take the slight risk of telling you that much and a bit more."