by Nancy Fulda
* * *
He commandeered an unoccupied cubicle in the forensics suite, took a quick detour past the cafeteria to order some overdue breakfast, and munched home-grown, hand-baked bagel while flipping through the small-font text of the report.
He found the section Sanderson had referred to. Following standard procedure, weapons had been collected from security guards — both public and undercover — after the chaos had cleared. Those tetanizers used standard-issue powerpacks. Kimball supposed one of the undercover security guards might have slipped away long enough to swap packs, but that didn’t answer the question of why that guard would have killed Rannen in the first place.
And yet, Rannen was dead. And no one — not even Sanderson, if Kimball was any good judge of body language — really believed that his heart had coincidentally failed at the same time he was getting shot.
Kimball shook his head, feeling lost in a whirl of information; too many puzzle pieces with jagged edges, too many bits of data that didn’t fit together.
Could Sanderson be covering something up? Should he go check the weapons himself, maybe? Kimball drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then decided against it. First, he couldn’t believe that Sanderson was hedging. Sanderson might rush a report out without tying up the loose ends, but he didn’t seem the type to fake the data. Secondly, if Kimball was wrong and Sanderson had fudged the data, there wouldn’t be anything left to find at this point. The power packs would all have been swapped out and recharged by now.
Kimball’s fingers were still drumming the table. He brought them to rest with conscious effort. He was going at this from the wrong direction. The critical question was why Rannen fired on Ambassador Komitz in the first place. Despite his misgivings in the autopsy room, Kimball could not picture Rannen as an assassin. A separatist, yes, a member of the colony’s isolationist faction, and a very vocal one at that. But Rannen had also understood the importance of order and the role of government. He was no Son of Aldebaran, no fanatic willing to further his ideals by force.
Kimball glanced at his left hand and saw that it was still holding his breakfast bagel, which had only been nibbled at. He sighed, left the bagel on the desk, and headed for the door to get some fresh air. He wasn’t hungry anyway.
Aldebaran burned orange and bright in the late afternoon sky, and Kimball felt the red giant’s weak warmth on his face as he meandered the external catwalks of Firstcity. A plasma-bee buzzed past Kimball’s face and he swatted irritably at it with one hand, his nose twitching at the narrow stream of Kaliandrus spores that trailed in its magnetic wake. The mote-sized particles sparkled and spun like dust specks in the afternoon sunlight.
It was early in the season for spores to be loose. Kimball made a mental note to report them to medical HQ. Kaliandrus plants mutated only slightly from year to year, but the meds would still want to develop updated antibodies for Aldebaran’s citizens. No one wanted to risk another bout of the spore-induced anaphylaxis that had killed so many of the early colonists.
The plasma-bee buzzed away, the magnetically contained plasma sac in its abdomen pulsing orange and yellow.
Kimball watched it vanish, living proof of mankind’s intellectual poverty. According to all known laws of science, plasma-bees shouldn’t exist. Neither should hundreds of other phenomena discovered on the colonized worlds. Each new planet was a gold mine of applied science, biological proof of achievements once thought impossible. Mankind was learning that the annals of science were vaster and greater than previously imagined, that man’s technological achievements were constrained by the limited range of phenomena that happened to manifest themselves on the home planet.
Which was why United Earth Government was suddenly so eager to control the colonies it had once neglected. Earth men, believing that they had held an entire encyclopedia of cosmic knowledge, were suddenly faced with the fact that all they held was a single planet’s volume. It made them feel small and, feeling small, they also felt threatened. What if scientists on the colonized worlds unleashed new and powerful technologies?
What if they returned to wage war on the mother planet, the only planet whose scientific record harbored no new secrets?
President Duchevsky, faced with the prospect of armed takeover, had hammered out the Partial Protectorate Treaty as a way to preserve some of the colony’s autonomy. He had chosen to injure the world he loved rather than lose it altogether.
Kimball froze in his tracks.
Injuring something. Injuring it, to protect it from something worse. Kimball could almost hear the click-clack of puzzle pieces falling together in his mind.
He switched directions and headed back into the complex.
He found Sanderson in the cafeteria, sharing a late brunch with President Duchevsky and Minister Farlay. Farlay dominated the conversation, ring-studded fingers gesturing expansively as he spoke, but amidst the clack of trays and the hustle-bustle of passers-by carrying food, Kimball could not hear what he was saying. He snagged a chair from the next table over and slid it into place beside them.
Duchevsky glanced up as he sat down. “Do you have something, Kimball?”
“A hypothetical situation,” Kimball answered. “Suppose you’re a plainclothes security guard at a politically charged event. And suppose you see a threat to the Guest of Honor, a threat you can’t neutralize directly. What do you do?”
“Use your radio to notify Event Management,” Duchevsky said.
“What if there’s no time?” Duchevsky shrugged.
“Shout a warning,” Farlay said.
“No good. As soon as you open your mouth, everyone’s looking at you. Perfect chance for the assassin to strike.”
Blank stares greeted him from across the table.
“Come on,” Kimball said. “What if you see a threat to the Earth ambassador, but there’s no time to intervene or call for help, and what if you’re carrying a nonlethal weapon. What do you do?”
Duchevsky’s face paled. “Shoot the ambassador,” he whispered.
“Exactly,” Kimball said, punctuating the word with a snap of the fingers, index finger raised. “You shoot him, to save him. In all the chaos, the threat is thwarted. The assassin can’t act now that everyone’s attention is on the ambassador.”
For a moment no one spoke.
“That scenario doesn’t work,” Sanderson objected. “Your hypothetical assassin—” (and he emphasized the adjective) “—must have planned to use an unobtrusive weapon. Skin-contact poison, perhaps. And the chaos following a failed attack would be the perfect moment to administer such a weapon unobtrusively. Besides, if Rannen’s only motive was to draw attention to Komitz, then he wouldn’t have boosted his tetanizer to dangerous power levels.”
Kimball’s heart sank; he had forgotten that detail. But he had Duchevsky’s attention, and he pushed forward with bravado. “One step at a time, Sanderson. I don’t claim that my theory is correct, but I think it bears investigation. Particularly because it might explain Rannen’s death. If he really did see something, a thwarted assassination attempt perhaps, then the assassin may have taken measures to silence him.”
Duchevsky clicked his tongue for a few moments. “It sounds rather tenuous, Commissioner Kimball,” he said hesitantly, “but I agree that it’s worth investigation. Particularly since we don’t want our hypothetical assassin trying something else. I’m going to have a hard enough time convincing Komitz to rein in his war dogs as it is.”
“Speaking of which,” Farlay chimed in, “I’ve finished the arrangements for that private meeting ambassador Komitz agreed to. We’ve set you up in guest room three; Komitz is coming in half an hour. He insisted on bringing a slew of body guards, of course.”
Duchevsky winced, but nodded. “That’s understandable. Sanderson, would you assign a squad of our own men to that room as well? Word on the grapevine is the Sons of Aldebaran are getting restless.”
“Again?” Kimball asked. “I thought they disbanded after the
Charis fiasco.”
“So did everyone,” Duchevsky answered. “But they’ve resurfaced and are claiming responsibility for the attack on ambassador Komitz. They also claim they’ll take ‘even more dire’ action if the Earthmen don’t leave the system immediately.”
“Isolationist pigs,” Farlay spat. Kimball glanced up, startled. That was a change of tune for Farlay. The dark-haired aristocrat had never pushed for an independent Aldebaran in public, but Kimball knew from private conversations that he loathed the Earth men. Now that the treaty had been ratified, Farlay was pulling an about-face. It was as if he didn’t want people to remember that he’d ever opposed it.
“At this point I’m more concerned about ambassador Komitz than the Sons of Aldebaran,” Duchevsky said. “Sanderson, I’d like you to help Kimball track down his theory. Let me know if you learn anything new in the next half hour. Nothing would please me more than explaining to ambassador Komitz that our security guard was actually saving his life, not a part of the Aldebaran government’s plot to assassinate him.” Duchevsky smiled wanly, gulped the rest of his coffee, and left the room.
“Back to the videos?” Sanderson asked dryly.
Kimball shook his head. “I have them memorized by now. Let’s check out the reception hall in person. Your security team still has it under quarantine, don’t they?”
“They do.”
“Then let’s go there first. The videos only show the hall from a limited set of angles. Maybe standing there in person will help us know what to look for.”
Sanderson shrugged and stood. “You’re leading the investigation. To the hall it is.”
“Can I come, too?” Farlay asked, also standing. “Six eyes are better than four, you know.”
Kimball sized up the Minister of Social Affairs, bright-colored host robes and all. “Sure, why not?” Farlay had been primarily responsible for organizing the reception and its accompanying entertainments. If anything was out of place or had been tampered with, perhaps he would notice.