Death Sentence (46 page)

"We weren't planning on it anyway," said Hannah. "That's why we sent our call for help when we did. So what happens now?"

"Well, we've made our move by
not
moving," said Jamie. "We didn't do the normal post-transit-jump thing and immediately start our braking maneuvers. If Constancy was counting on tracking us on braking thrust, it's out of luck. It's got two choices. Constancy can search the entire volume of space we might be in, or it can leave the ship's engines off and wait, and call our bluff, force us to light
our
engines.

"We're moving at a helluva fast clip, and we're going to
have
to start braking sooner or later, or else we're going to blow right through the system and never come back. If we don't light our engines soon, we won't be able to stop in time. But the
Stability
's got more powerful engines, and more stored power. She can wait longer--and for that matter, she could blow through one side of the Center System and out the other and Constancy wouldn't care--it's not trying to get to Center. What all that boils down to is that it can wait us out.

"
Except
we're on our turf now. It has to know we might have called for help already. And in fact we're not planning to do a braking run. We're counting on getting rescued. And Constancy ought to have seen that possibility. For all it knows, there could be a pair of heavy cruisers headed this way right now. They could blow the
Stability
out of space and rescue us with no fuss or bother. On the other hand, it also might be aware that one or both of our ships is awfully short of stored propulsion power. It doesn't know about the booster, and it can't know for sure which of the two ships it knows about we're on--and it can't rule out that we might have crews on both ships."

"Okay, now that you've got my head swimming, what happens next? Is Constancy going to just sit there and wait for us to blink first and fire our engines?"

"What I'm hoping is that
Constancy's
head is swimming. My guess is that it launched after us with no better plan than squashing us like bugs when it caught us. Now it's in over its head. I doubt Constancy realizes how difficult a thorough search of a volume of space this big can be--and as time goes by, and the possible trajectories we
might
be on expand, the search volume is only going to get bigger. The
Stability
will have to fly through a volume of space, scanning as she goes, and then stop, move over, and scan the next sector. And on top of everything else, of course, even if Constancy manages to kill us, it has to think about making its escape afterward, and that creates a whole
new
set of complications."

"Any chance it might just decide to give up and go home?" Hannah asked.

"If you had sat next to Constancy at that dinner, you wouldn't bother to ask that question," Jamie said with a shudder.

"Well, it sounds to me as if just sitting tight and waiting for us to blink first and start our braking run would be the more rational strategy for Constancy to follow."

"Maybe," said Jamie. "But it was mad enough to be spitting rivets before we left, and it's had a lot of time to get more frustrated since. My guess is that it goes for the active search." He stood up and punched a series of commands into his datapad so its main display would show a lower-resolution repeater display of the nav status screen. "For now, all we can do is sit tight. So we might as well go back down to the lower deck, keep Taranarak company, and start staring at Trevor's crossword puzzle clues."

Twenty minutes later, Jamie had learned very little from the clues, other than that he didn't like crossword puzzles very much. "Maybe it's something else
disguised
as puzzle clues," he said. "Maybe we're supposed to read the first letters of each sentence, or the last letters, or the capitalized letters, or something."

"Or maybe we should do what I suggested a while ago just to be polite and to keep Taranarak happy," Hannah said. "Maybe we should ask her about a few things in this." She shifted over to Lesser Trade. "Taranarak--it would be utterly hopeless to try and translate this message as it stands. But there is something I have just noticed in it. In my dealing with the Elder Races, I have often encountered beings who tell me how young I am, or how young the human race is. They do this when they wish to be insulting, or intimidating. However, that is not true of Metrannans, is it?"

"I do not understand."

"Would it be rude to tell a Metrannan he or she was, or seemed, young?"

"Not in the least," she said.

"But it would be terribly insulting to make any mention of a Metrannan being or seeming old, would it not?"

"Oh, far worse than insulting. It would be dreadfully rude--especially coming from a being from another race who was of about the same age but could expect to live twice as long."

"That is as much as I thought," said Hannah, and shifted back to English. "Okay, that's a start. That first sentence--'To good old, Hallaben to see back half of insult twice.' If your idea was right, and we were supposed to read one element of it, like capitalized letters, then all the other elements would be meaningless, and you'd just toss them in anywhere to make the message look like real prose. But if this is supposed to be like a crossword clue, then
everything
in a clue is supposed to mean something--including the punctuation and commas. Since calling a Metrannan 'good old This-or-that' is about as deadly as an insult gets, that made me think 'for good old' followed by a comma is supposed to stand by itself, a separate phrase inside the clue-sentence. But what does the phrase mean?"

"Wait a sec," said Jamie. "Suppose 'To good old' means 'to
get to
good aging'--long life? To achieve it? But what's the 'back half of an insult'?"

"No, no," said Hannah excitedly. "Think crosswords. Not 'an insult'--the
word
'insult.' Letter by letter, the back half is 'ult.' Syllable by syllable, it's 'sult.' Twice?"

"Sult-sult?" Jamie frowned. "No! Sult repeated! Sult and
result.
So it means 'To cause good aging--long life--show the results to Hallaben.'"

"And it's got to mean the results of the message itself. It's
got
to. Unless it leads to another puzzle that leads to a puzzle that leads to a puzzle that leads to the decrypt key. In which case I'll start a research project to bring Trevor Wilcox III back to life just so I can strangle him."

"No. I want in. You can hold him down and I'll beat him with a shovel. But I don't think Trevor would dare get that cute. 'To age well, show the thing this helps you find to Hallaben.' Translation: This message will tell you where the decrypt key is."

"Good," said Hannah. "Good! But I think it's also saying in a sort of sideways way that the clues point to each other. There's going to be layers to this."

Taranarak spoke in Lesser Trade. "Excuse me," she said, "but your datapad seems to be indicating something."

Jamie snatched it up and looked at it. "That's for sure," he said. He looked to Hannah. "I think the party is about to start," he said. "Constancy is on the move."

TWENTY-EIGHT

SEEK AND HIDE

Taranarak watched as the two humans scrambled back up that infuriating ladder to the flight deck. It was not only disconcerting to see them move that way, it was becoming downright mortifying. There were plainly any number of things that humans--crude, half-civilized, oh-so-Younger-Race humans--could do far more easily than Metrannans. Things that went far beyond climbing ladders or dealing with shifting gravity fields. Things like being able to stand up to the Unseen Race, and, indeed, all the Elder and Eldest Races. Improvising, taking risks, trying things that had not been done before.

Nor was it that they were unafraid. Even across the gulf between her race's gestural signaling and that of humans, it was easy to see just how scared Mendez and Wolfson were. And yet they pressed on.

It struck her that she was, in that very moment, witnessing a battle between the Youngest and one of the Eldest known surviving sentient races in the Galaxy. Age versus youth. It was inspiring, in a way. But, regardless of who won this confrontation, the
way
they were fighting it told her volumes. Perhaps the Elder Races might have a lot more to be worried about than they realized.

"I was beginning to think Constancy had decided to go for the sit-and-wait strategy," Jamie admitted as he studied the nav plot. "That would be a nice play-it-safe way to go. Custom-made for an Elder Race attitude. But the
Stability
has lit her engines. She's
definitely
moving into position for an active pattern search. And pow! The
Stability
's active detection system just lit up. Big, bright, and powerful, that's for sure. Better than I thought she'd have. But it's like Constancy just switched on a really powerful searchlight. If it manages to get close enough and point it directly at us, it'll see us for sure. But exactly because it's so powerful,
we
can see the
Stability
from way far away, no matter which direction the detector is pointed."

"So we can see Constancy better, but it'll be able to search faster than we figured," said Hannah.

"Right. And, sooner or later, depending on what search pattern it chooses and how that pattern interacts with dumb luck, it'll find the booster, the
Sholto
--and us. Maybe not in that order. We might have to play our next card a little sooner than I thought."

"Anything more you can do? Anything more you need to see?"

"Not right now. It's going to be a while before the
Stability
shifts course into the next leg of her search pattern. That'll tell us a lot."

"Then let's get back to the puzzle."

"'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor grant of bank officer
.'" Hannah read out loud. "There's an inspiring quote to live by."

"Wait a second," Jamie said. "Read it aloud again."

"'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor grant of bank officer.'
What are you hearing?"

"Different words than I see when I read it on paper," said Jamie. studying the paper. "At least in the first part of the sentence, every word is a pun and a misspelling of some other word. 'Wen Her mutt cited know Moor.' Hmmm. Lemme see."

He scrawled out the nonsense phrase, then wrote another version directly under it.

"'When Her mutt sighted no more'? No. Wait a second. 'When
hermit
sighted no more!' Something happens when you can't see a hermit anymore?"

"Not exactly," said Hannah. "Keep on misspelling and punning. "Bank officers don't give grants--they make loans. 'Grant of bank officer' is a loan--but make that
alone.
'When a Hermit is sighted, the hermit is no longer alone.' And maybe--maybe--the capitalization of 'Her' makes it seem likely that the hermit is special or important and/or female."

"Or else 'Her mutt' might mean 'her dog,' or it might even be a pun inside a pun--Hermit's her-mutt. The female hermit's dog, or the hermit's female dog," Jamie said. "This is starting to make my brain hurt. Maybe it's 'When the female hermit sights her dog, she is no longer alone.' That actually almost makes sense."