The Cause of Death (38 page)

One or both Stannlar could have sent any number of smaller components into the Keep, through any number of routes. The components could have met up in the Keep, then assembled themselves into whatever sort of size and shape monster would be most likely to scare the Thelm. Well, all right, subcomponents going "boo" was getting a bit outlandish, but she was casting about for possibilities, not probabilities. They might have used some other way to get the Thelm to fire that gun.

The Stannlar would have to sabotage the gun first, but that was true of every possible suspect. But, after the murder--that was the beauty part. The Stannlar components could start the fire in the room, making sure to destroy any bits of evidence they needed to get rid of--such as whatever it was they used to create that shoe print--then throw
themselves
into the fire. That would leave whoever investigated searching for an escaped murderer, when the murderer in fact no longer existed.

Suicidal for the components themselves, yes, but for the Stannlar Consortium of which they were a part, it would be a sacrifice, a degree of stress to the system, somewhere between a haircut and a blood donation. How much stress
would
it be? How would it show, and how much? If, say, both or either Stannlar suddenly showed signs of needing to regenerate, or seemed to have not quite as many components on view, that might well tell the investigators something. The signs might be subtle, or fleeting. They would have to check at once, as soon as Darsteel came in to talk with them in the morning.

She moved on to other questions. What, exactly, had Jamie asked for in that second note? Brox's being there was a dreadful nuisance. Though, it had to be confessed, Brox really was a decent sort. No. More than that. Downright honorable. Capable of seeing beyond short-term advantage for his side, of worrying about the long-term consequences for all.

She yawned. Good old Brox. Good man to stand by in a crisis. But he wasn't a man. Kendari. Got to watch out for trusting him. Yes, sir. She yawned mightily, shut her eyes, and stretched. Watch out for the Kendari, even the good ones . . .

And she slept, fitfully, nervously, her slumbers disturbed by dreams of trying to work a crime scene while a whole herd of miniature component-Kendari in tiny iso-suits endlessly split up and re-formed into all sorts of monster shapes, before turning into the Thelm, up and walking around with a gaping hole clean through his chest, then melting into a pair of earnest Stannlar who kept interrupting her measurements with eager explanations of how death was nothing to worry about.

And then the dreams faded down into the calm and welcoming darkness, and she slept.

* * *

Brox 231, as an individual, liked to believe that he was not much given to fretting in bed. He was, for that matter, a member of a species not much given to it either. His main problem was with the confounded excuse for a sleep-sling that they had brought in. The blasted thing had obviously been built by someone who had seen a picture of one once, but that was where its resemblance to a proper sling ended. It somehow managed to be too long and too short, too narrow and too wide, all at the same time. He finally gave up trying to adjust it and resigned himself to suffering with things as they were. He probably would have been better off simply curling up on the floor somewhere.

But Brox had always prided himself on being honest with himself. It wasn't just the badly designed, badly made sleep-sling--though that was a part of it. There was a great deal more going on to keep him awake.

He was only thankful that the humans and Darsteel showed no signs of realizing the real reasons he had left the Thelek's home without a word, the moment he had heard of the fire.

First and foremost, the Thelek
had
to know, backwards and forwards, the exact laws of succession under every possible set of circumstances. He had lived and breathed the ambition of ascending to the Thelmship for so long that it had all become second nature to him. But the instinct, even the need, to scheme and plot had also become second nature.

The Thelek would not be able to resist the temptation to find advantage in this catastrophe. Given half a chance, the Thelek would have sucked Brox into whatever plots he started to hatch. Brox wanted no part of such schemes and wanted the Kendari government to have no part of them.

If, as seemed quite possible, there was a way for the Thelek to ascend to the Thelmship legally, properly, and openly, Brox would do all he could to assist him. But if Thelek sought to achieve that goal by exerting pressure to suppress evidence, by encouraging witnesses to forget certain details, or encouraging them to remember other details in a more helpful manner, by altering documents or "correcting" evidentiary photos, or any of the rest of it, the Kendari government could not be involved. Not only was such nonsense stupid and dangerous, not only was it dishonorable--worst of all, it was doomed to failure. After all, the human investigators were there, ready and watching for all the usual tricks.

And of course there was the very real possibility that the Thelek had committed the murder. Oh, not himself. Of course not. That would not be the done thing. But as the head of a vast, complex, and murky conspiracy? Yes, absolutely. And the evidence all pointed to the sort of conspiracy the High Thelek would have come up with. A needlessly complicated way to do the murder itself, involving an upper-class obsession like dueling. Various indications of a botched follow-up, such as the repeated attempts to start the fire, and the odd scratches on the Thelm's hands and fingers. The attempt--however crude--to plant evidence implicating an enemy in the crime. Brox did not know for sure who had done the killing, but he had not the slightest doubt in his mind that the shoe print was faked, somehow.

It looked all too much like a High Thelek job. And if Brox had been there at the High Thelek's side in the aftermath, he would have gotten sucked into the explanations, the deceptions, the cover-ups that were likely being devised even now.

Far better to be safely locked up here in these apartments, literally caught in the middle, with a snoring human in either side room. Put that way, his current situation seemed quite satisfactory indeed.

Brox sighed, stretched out into the least uncomfortable position he could manage, and went to sleep.

TWENTY-THREE
CONFERENCE

Somehow or another, Jamie managed to be the first one up in the morning. He emerged as quietly as possible from his room, and slipped in and out of the human-style refresher without waking Brox. It was only after he emerged that he noticed a box on the main table. It had his name--written in very clumsily written Roman letters instead of Greater Trade Writing phonetics--scrawled on the side. He scooped it up and took it to his room to open. Inside was a rocket-gun dueling pistol, two dummy rounds, and a simplified manual with lots of pictures. That was helpful, as Jamie's ability to read Reqwar Pavlat was severely limited.

He set to work studying the gun. It took only a minute or two for him to understand its basic workings--but somehow, he got the feeling that it could tell him a lot more if only he gave it a chance. He sat there, thinking, for a long time. It was almost coming. Almost.

* * *

The other two were awake, in and out of the refresher, fed, and ready for the day by the time he came out again. There was a tray waiting for him, and he saw with regret that the food had dropped back from palatable to merely digestible again. But it was all he was going to get, and so he sat and forced it down, whatever it was, as best he could. Brox studiously looked the other way, apparently not finding the sight of a human eating all that pleasant.

"One of Darsteel's flunkies brought a message in for you a few minutes ago," said Hannah.

"What was it?" Jamie asked.

"It was sealed, and still is," she said, handing him a message tube. "It was addressed to you."

And if we don't want Brox opening messages that aren't for him, we can't do it either
. "All right," said Jamie. He broke the seal on the end of the tube and fished out the note itself. He read it over quickly and summed it up out loud. "It's a quick update and an answer to one of my queries," he said. "It's date-stamped about ninety minutes ago. As of then, everyone on our list of suspects except the Stannlar has been removed from where they were staying and placed elsewhere, with reasonable but limited freedom of movement. There was no other good place to keep the Stannlar, and so Darsteel has left them where they were in the warehouse and posted guards all over the place. None of the suspects has said anything useful, and nothing remarkably suspicious was found when the places where they were living were searched. However, he does report that Georg's
left
shoe was found in Marta's quarters in the Keep. Not being all that familiar with human shoes, they tested it, and confirmed that it makes a print that is a mirror-image copy of the print found at the scene."

"Very interesting," said Hannah. "So that pretty much nails down the fact that Georg was here at the Keep
before
the fire last night."

It does a lot more than that
, thought Jamie. But he wasn't quite ready to work on that side of the puzzle. "So it does," he said, and went no further.

"Brox and I have been talking about the timing of the crime," said Hannah.

"In reality, we have been doing our best to pass the time until the door opens up, and Darsteel brings us some
news
, and not just notes that tell us nothing we couldn't guess," said Brox. "Or, better still, until he lets us out of here."

"I'm not so sure I
want
to get out just yet," said Hannah. "Feelings are likely to be running a little high just now--and the locals have already tried pretty hard to kill Agent Mendez and me."

"I grant your point," Brox said.

"What's this about the timing of the crime?" Jamie asked. "You mean its happening so soon before the execution deadline for Georg?"

"That too," said Brox, "but we were mainly looking at events that happened
before
the murder, to see if any of them might have been the trigger, so to speak. Your arrival, for example. It might well be that someone in some faction feared that you might cause trouble for them. Perhaps someone who feared that you would suggest a solution to the Georg Hertzmann crisis."

Jamie and Hannah exchanged looks. Jamie was startled to realize that his suggestion about Penitence was only a few hours old--and that Brox had very likely not heard about it yet. But should he hear about it now?

"What do you think?" Hannah asked, engaging in a not particularly difficult bit of mind reading.

"I think he's played pretty much straight with us, and it won't stay quiet for long, anyway."

"That's about the way I figured it," said Hannah, "but I wanted to get your okay first."

"Might I ask what in the soul's dark forest you are talking about?" Brox demanded.

Jamie wasn't quite sure what a soul's dark forest might be, but he took the sense of the question. "I made a not-very-smart little suggestion toward the end of the meeting last night," he said, and quickly described his idea about sending Georg on a one-way trip to Penitence. Brox instantly understood its significance, and was not shy about sharing his opinion that Jamie had not been wise. He asked a series of sharp and detailed questions about how the Thelm reacted and what had happened next.

"This is vital new information," said Brox when he had heard it all. "It was a serious failing on your part not to report it at once last night."

Hannah let out a weary sigh. "You're right," she said. "But in our defense, we were a little busy with other issues. I don't even think it occurred to us that you didn't know it already."

"How could I have?"

Jamie resisted the temptation to laugh, or worse, answer that question. Brox could have known easily, through all sorts of means he might not want to talk about. "Let's just leave it there," he suggested. "We've told you now, and that ought to count for something."

"Anyway, for the sake of argument," said Hannah, "let's assume that Jamie's bright idea about Penitence was the motive."

"Let's not," Jamie said. "I don't want the Thelm's death to have been caused by my shooting my mouth off."

"It was not," Brox said flatly. "It was caused by a sabotaged rocket-propelled projectile blasting back into the Thelm's chest when the Thelm attempted to fire his gun, even though the Thelm had no intention of shooting himself. Whoever set the--what was the term you used?"

"Booby trap," said Jamie dejectedly.

"Whoever set the booby trap caused his death. You spoke--unwisely, perhaps, but out of honorable motives--to try to save the life of your fellow human. You cannot be responsible for another party's deliberately acting to subvert or prevent what you intended. The Thelm fired, most likely to defend himself against some unknown intruder--and yet he killed himself instead, as an unintended consequence of his own actions. It would be no more logical to blame him for his own death than to blame you."