Authors: Roger MacBride Allen
But there was more to it than that. The groups--packs--swarms--none of the words seemed quite right--were sorted by color and size--and, as well as Hannah could judge from this distance, number of legs.
"If you view each cluster of Vixa as an aggregate individual, what you are seeing will make more sense--and, I expect, be less disturbing," said Brox. "At least it's less disturbing for me."
It did help, in a number of ways. Once Hannah starting thinking of each cluster as a unit, patterns jumped out at her. Clusters made up of larger, brighter-colored, and fewer-legged individuals seemed to take precedence over clusters of smaller, darker-colored, many-legged Vixa, which gave way to them whenever a group of one type encountered the other. The higher-ranking clusters also seemed to have fewer individual Vixa in them.
Hannah didn't have time to make any further sense of what she saw before the command sphere swept forward to a large building--or possibly a collection of buildings--that looked like a collection of giant, opaque, milky-white soap bubbles clustered together. Part of one bubble drew back somehow, and the command sphere flew inside.
"We have arrived," said Brox. "The hatch will open in a few moments, and we will disembark. You will see things that I have not the slightest doubt will disturb you greatly. As your Commander Kelly conceded, you are about to be in violation of standing orders against dealing directly with Vixa of these castes and ranks. All I can ask is that you make the best possible use of your training as to how to deal with surprises and unexpected situations--particularly unpleasant ones."
"Great," said Jamie. "That sounds just great."
The hatch irised open before anyone could say anything more. Brox led the way out into a large, utilitarian-looking room about the size and shape of a small airplane hangar. All was neat, all was orderly. Everything they could see was a tool, a machine, a device. There was no decoration, nothing done to indicate status or demonstrate wealth or taste or any sense of individual choice. There was a faint, slightly unpleasant smell in the air, just a whisper of something somewhere between overripe fruit and rotting meat.
A contingent of nine midsized, mauve-colored, nine-legged Vixa were lined up facing the command sphere. At a guess each had about the body mass of a smallish Saint Bernard. Hannah was doing her best to get used to the Vixa. She could more or less handle dealing with giant spiders, but she still found herself very much thrown off stride by the absence of anything that could serve as a face. There was no point on the Vixan anatomy that could serve as a focus point in conversation, nothing that provided any sort of cue or clue to the being's mood or reactions.
The two simulants immediately trotted off the ship and took their places at each end of the line. A voice came from somewhere--possibly from the Vixan at the center of the line, but there was no way to judge for sure. "You are now welcomed to the household of Zeeraum, Subhouseholder to the Preeminent Director, now and forever nameless," it said in flat-toned, nasal Lesser Trade Speech, if one could use that term in connection with a being with no nose. "This will be your only welcome. This guard will lead and escort you to the ceremony of submission. Be fearful in the presence of your superiors."
"Hello to you too," Jamie muttered.
"That's the last wisecrack out of
you,
Agent Mendez," said Hannah in a harsh whisper through clenched teeth. "Jokes could get us killed."
"Very true," said Brox. "Telling you--us--to be fearful was sound advice. Any Vixan superior to any other Vixan has the unquestioned right to destroy the inferior for any reason--or no reason. Occasionally, compensation must be paid to the victim's household, but that is rare--and it wouldn't do us much good."
"Ah, right," said Jamie. "Sorry."
The Vixan in the center of the formation pulled in its three forward manipulation arms and folded them out of the way, spun about on its six walking legs and started to move away from the ship. At a cue from Brox, Hannah and Jamie formed up directly behind the lead Vixan, with Brox bringing up the rear. The four Vixa on either side, and the two simulants, dropped in alongside to the left and the right, so their unit was marching along three abreast. The Nines walked in perfect synchronization with each other, moving their walking legs in double-ripple fashion from back to front, so that two pair of legs at a time were touching the floor. The procession moved forward at a speed that was almost, but not quite, too fast for the humans.
They moved out of the hangar, into an equally utilitarian walkway, its floor made of something resembling bare concrete, with bundles of cable and conduit strapped to the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The lead Vixan turned this way and that when the corridor they were on intersected others, never varying its pace, never pausing to confirm that the visitors were still behind him.
Of course not,
thought Hannah.
He's got eyes in the back of his head--if his central core counts as a head--plus the ones on his elbows and wrists.
The lead Vixan made one last turn, and marched them down what seemed to be a dead end, with a blank wall directly ahead. It made no attempt to slacken its pace or prepare to stop, and neither did any of the other Vixa or the simulants. Then the entire unit--except for the humans and Brox--halted abruptly, with the leader's forward manipulator arms no more than a half meter from the wall in front. Hannah nearly crashed into the leader, and Jamie bumped into Hannah. Brox skidded to a halt a millimeter or two short of crashing into both of them.
A heartbeat or two after they had halted, there was a sudden faint vibration, and the blank wall in front of them started to move downward. It took Hannah a moment or two to realize that couldn't be right. They were moving
upward.
The section of dead-end corridor was in fact a long, wide, open-ended elevator car.
Either the Vixa expended the huge time and effort required to install acceleration compensators on interior elevators, or else they were merely superb engineers, but there was virtually no sense of motion or acceleration.
Why couldn't they do it that way on the
Eminent Concordance? Hannah had to watch the nearly featureless wall before her slide downward to be sure they were still moving. They passed one, two, three openings that gave them the briefest of glimpses of other levels, each seeming just a trifle more elegant, more decorated, and less like a factory floor, than the one below it.
At last they emerged at what had to be the top level of the structure. At least, when they started moving again and exited the elevator car, they were done with corridors of any sort--and walls too, for that matter. A vast, translucent, milky-white dome at least a hundred meters high formed the roof of the chamber they were in. The city outside could be dimly seen through the dome. It would appear that this one vast room took up the upper third or so of one of the soap-bubble structures they had seen on approach. A larger and higher dome was faintly visible outside. Perhaps that meant that this subhousehold was subordinate to that one--or perhaps not.
Their escort was immediately back on the move, making a beeline for the center of the vast chamber. But, as abruptly as it had done so for a solid wall, they stopped again after only about twenty meters. There was another cluster of Vixa moving toward them, apparently heading for the same elevator. Hannah instantly noted that this escort consisted of six, not nine, brighter-colored, larger nine-legged Vixa.
It took her a moment to realize that they were escorting a human. And, impossible as it seemed, a human she recognized--not through personal acquaintance but from seeing his picture on the news channels and newspads. Perhaps the last man Hannah would have expected to see on Tifinda, let alone being escorted by a half dozen Vixa Nines.
"Escort is respectfully requested to halt!" the man called out. The words might be a request, but the tone of voice made them an order--something more than an order. It was the voice a certain sort of man would use to call his dog, just to reinforce discipline. The escort stopped instantly, and the man stepped casually from inside it, with an air of self-possession that would have been more in place if the six Vixa were the horses pulling his carriage, or the body of the groundcar he was driving. His escort was an honor guard that he could put on oh-so-casual display. Hannah had the strong impression that their own escort was more of a security detail there to make sure they didn't run away. She wasn't quite sure what to do in response to his getting "out" of his escort. Things might get unpleasant if their escorting Vixa decided Hannah should stay where she was. It appeared that neither of her companions wanted to risk it either, so they simply stood awkwardly inside the space contained by their own escort.
"What in the stars, what in
hell
, is
he
doing here?" Jamie asked. "Brox--does
he
have anything to do with why we're here?"
"I cannot answer that," said Brox. "I knew he was on-planet, but I had not seen him face-to-face before now. Needless to say, that was fine with me. When I spoke of unpleasant surprises, I was thinking that
you
were likely to experience them. I was not speaking for myself. Clearly I should have been."
Tancredo Zamprohna, president of the Human Supremacy League, strode confidently toward them. He was a tall, thickly built man, with pockmarked skin, a jowly, ugly-handsome face, and a thick shock of red hair that was combed straight back on his head in a manner that had become one of his trademarks. Another was the perfectly tailored powder-blue business suit, always worn with an archaically wide necktie with a pattern of thick stripes--blue, white, and green as the colors of Earth, and then black, white, brown, and yellow to represent the races of humanity.
One joke was that just black and white, representing prison stripes, would have been just as appropriate. According to BSI intell reports, a good deal of money had changed hands in his native Brazil in order to prevent certain cases involving creative finance from being prosecuted.
"Ain't he a gaudy sight," said Jamie under his breath. "Sorry, Hannah, you said no jokes."
"It's all right, Jamie. You weren't joking."
"What have we here?" Zamprohna asked in a loud, booming voice that echoed slightly in the massive dome. He spoke in smooth, lightly accented Lesser Trade Speech. "Two humans and a Kendari. You're the Kendari Inquiries agent I have yet to meet. I am Tancredo Zamprohna. I acknowledge your presence."
"And I acknowledge yours," Brox replied, stiffly correct. "I am Brox 231. I should note that my service prefers the job title and ranking of Inquirist. I am a Senior Inquirist."
In Lesser Trade, one "acknowledged" an enemy met off the field of battle, or a rival, or anyone else one would not care to greet or welcome. Zamprohna's breezy, hail-fellow-well-met, backslapping-pol attitude made it a mere form of words. Brox's tone of voice carried exactly the intended subtext--perfectly understandable, as Zamprohna's Human Supremacy League advocated the eventual domination of humanity over all other sentient species in general, and looked with a certain degree of favor at the idea of exterminating the Kendari in particular--the sooner the better.
"And you're not the only one feeling inquisitive right now," Zamprohna said cheerfully. "Who are your companions?"
"I hereby present Senior Special Agent Hannah Wolfson of the Bureau of Special Investigations, and Special Agent James Mendez, likewise of the Bureau of Special Investigations," Brox said, speaking in the same formal, rigidly correct tone.
"More BSI here? Interesting. Very interesting indeed." Zamprohna shifted to English, and spoke it with somewhat more of a Brazilian accent than he had betrayed in Lesser Trade. "What has this character dragged you here for? Have the Ks managed to talk our people into doing more of the work?"
"I'm not at liberty to discuss our assignments," said Hannah. "But I would observe that your organization has created a great deal of often very unpleasant work for the BSI over the years--and that the Senior Inquirist understands English quite well."
"Have any of your friends along?" Jamie asked. "Maybe some of the ones with outstanding warrants against them?"
"Oh, you're out of luck there." Zamprohna laughed, completely unabashed. "I made it clear that was a condition of the deal when we were invited. None of my people are subject to arrest while here--and neither you nor your alien pals have any powers of arrest.
Maybe
you could slap the cuffs on us on the embassy grounds--but you'd have to set us free the moment we stepped out of the gate, or cleared embassy airspace."
"Well, stop by sometime when we're there," Jamie said. "We could just arrest you at the embassy and keep you there for all time. Though I suppose that might not be fair to the embassy staff."
"Wouldn't work either," Zamprohna said calmly, patting himself on the chest. "You're looking at a man with a clean rap sheet. All warrants dismissed, all charges dropped."
"Congratulations. I'm sure you must be very proud," said Hannah.
"Oh, I am," he said. "But listen here," he went on in a more businesslike tone. "What the devil goes
on
at the human embassy? It's shut down tighter than a drum. No calls answered, no access of any kind permitted, no one in or out." He hooked his thumb in Brox's direction. "My spies tell me his shop is in lockdown too. I need to know why. I was just up here trying to get the Grand Poobahs to tell me more. They've been real cooperative up to now--but they've clammed up too. What's going on?"
"No comment," said Hannah. "And let's just assume that's good until further notice."
"I've got a right to know what's going on!"
And I haven't the faintest idea myself what's going on,
Hannah thought. "You show me a law, a regulation, a written order from my superior officers that tells me you've got that right--and after I double-check it, I'll comply with your request for information. I don't want to start any fights here, Dr. Zamprohna, but even if you've got a clean sheet right now, it wasn't more than six months ago that the Human Supremacy League came off the BSI list of terror-supporting organizations--and that was in spite of the protests of my direct superior."