Impersonations

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I am unharmed,” she said with finality, and the Torminel retreated to the lounge, from which he kept a wary eye on her.

  The first police arrived in blue uniforms and black leather shakoes, took one look at the place, and called for backup. More police arrived in even grander uniforms, all careful not to step in the blood with their shiny shoes. The grandest of them, a chief inspector, was a Daimong who added the fetor of his dying flesh to the room. He told Sula that their conversation would be recorded, and asked Sula for her name.

  “Captain the Lady Sula,” she said.

  The Torminel’s fixed face could not alter, but there was something in his posture that shifted to an attitude of greater attention. “You are the Lady Sula?” he inquired.

  “There’s only one Lady Sula, so far as I know.”

  Sula rose and managed to stand steadily on her heels. The chief inspector straightened, looking at her with black, round eyes. “I would like to make a statement,” she said. “I do not know the assassin, but I’m reasonably certain he was hired by Lord Peltrot Convil of the Manado Company, based in Manado, Sulawesi. I am involved in a contract dispute with him in my capacity as commander of the Fleet dockyard. The assassin entered the room from there.” She pointed. “He was intending to kill me but instead shot my cousin, Lady Ermina Vaswani, by mistake. I then tried to disarm the attacker, and we both ended up on the ground until the Naxid was shot and killed by my guard, Constable First Class Gavin Macnamara.”

  The inspector made a chiming sound, then spoke. “Very . . . comprehensive, my lady.”

  Sula was aware of a fierce harshness inflecting her words, but she couldn’t seem to curb her tone. “I would now like to go to my hotel and bathe. I will report to you in the morning to make a further statement and answer any questions.”

  The chief inspector apparently contemplated his authority and decided it did not quite extend to holding a hero of the empire. “Your guard will have to surrender his weapon,” he said.

  Macnamara put his pistol on a table, Sula gave the name of her hotel to the chief inspector, and she was asked to sign a printout of her statement. She signed the single title Sula and added the print of her left, undamaged, thumb. Then Macnamara and Spence hustled her out of the restaurant and to the car. She was put in the back, and then the two servants jumped into the front and sped away. Spence, in the passenger seat, dropped the window to the passenger compartment and turned to look at Sula.

  “Are you all right, my lady?”

  Sula sighed and closed her eyes. Splashes of scarlet pulsed on the back of her eyelids. “I suppose I must be,” she said.

  Disgust filled her senses like the reek of blood. Disgust at the tawdriness of the world, at the sordid hopelessness of the violence, at her own carelessness, at Goojie’s stupidity in dying for nothing.

  In her hotel suite, she threw her new clothes in the trash and stepped into the shower. She cleaned off the blood and let water rinse the taste of propellant from her mouth. She washed off the new face the cosmetician had applied, then scrubbed herself with sandalwood-scented soap until she smelled like a forest grove. Then she wrapped herself in a towel, scrubbed mist off the mirror, and looked at the pale, green-eyed figure in the glass, the lank, wet hair framing her face. She raised her hand, forefinger pointed like a pistol, and aimed at her own image. She made a puffing pistol noise with her lips.

  That’s what this is about, she thought. And this is who I am.

  * * *

  “Lady Sula,” said Lieutenant-Captain Koridun, “I must insist on sending my constables to guard you. And I’ll come myself to supervise.”

  Her image, gray and sable, shone from the chameleon-weave fabric of Sula’s sleeve display. Behind the security officer was her workplace, with the badge of the Fleet constabulary prominent on the wall. Koridun the Correct, fur glossy and well tended, alert to the possibility of notice and advance.

  “Send the constables, by all means,” Sula told her. “But I don’t know that this matter will require your presence.”

  “There is also the matter of the investigation—”

  “I’m afraid the police will insist on doing the investigation themselves.”

  Agitated, Koridun spat the words out through her fangs. “My lady, I am trained in investigative techniques, and—”

  “Your dedication is commendable, Lady Tari,” Sula said. “But I need you to employ your investigative techniques in another matter—I want you to trace Lady Ermina Vaswani’s movements on the ring. It occurs to me that I have no idea whether she was actually on the Benin or not, or on the ring, or for that matter, whether she was the person she claimed to be.”

  Sula didn’t have these doubts herself; she simply didn’t want Koridun coming down to Terra. It would be awkward to have a constabulary officer present when Sula ordered someone murdered.

  “As for the constables,” Sula said, “equip them with pistols, stun batons, and armor. Have them bring civilian clothes in case these prove necessary, and bring a couple machine pistols as well.” She was tempted to add and grenades but decided against it. “Some,” she said, “will need experience in driving motor vehicles.”

  “Very good, my lady. But—”

  “I’m afraid I have an appointment at police headquarters,” Sula said. “Let me know if there’s progress.”

  She ended the transmission and leaned back on the seat of her car. Otautahi passed by the windows in bland procession, the buildings raised, wrecked by earthquake, then raised again, the sequence repeated over and over until the structures were as bland and utilitarian as possible, built in the foreknowledge of the quake that would damage them beyond repair and that anything beyond simple functionality was pointless. Who would craft something beautiful, knowing that it would be destroyed?

  The car rocked over a pothole, throwing Sula forward, then back. A lance of pain impaled her head. She had slept very little, and all night, the fight in the restaurant had kept replaying itself in her mind. Whenever sleep caught her, she jolted awake with Caro’s dead eyes staring at her from out of the darkness.

  Police headquarters was another undistinguished building, marked only by an allegorical statue of the Great Master Presenting Perfect Justice to the People. She passed through the steel, fortresslike doors in her full dress uniform, ceremonial knife clanking at her waist, medals ranked on her chest, sidearm in its holster.

  The Torminel chief inspector was, she gathered, of insufficient rank to take her statement, and she was shown into the magnificently equipped office of Lady Gudrun Bjorge, the Commissioner of Police for New Zealand and the Chatham Isles. She was a burly woman with graying blond hair and wore a magnificent uniform of midnight blue fabric, with vermilion collar, cuffs, and brocade. Her rows of medals dwarfed Sula’s, and there was a polished piece of green stone, cut in a spiral design, pinned to her tunic. Her office was paneled in great shining bronze sheets, and there was a smaller version of the Great Master and his Perfect Justice standing behind her desk. Probably, the commissioner had paid for all that herself: high-ranking officials competed in expensive and elegant decor.

  “Lady Sula,” she said. “I am honored by your presence.”

  Sula began to suspect from this opening that the interrogation would go well.

  “Thank you, Lady Commissioner,” she said. If she’d been in a better mood, she might have said that the honor was all hers, but she was too wracked by the previous few hours to care much about the forms.

  “Please take a chair. Would you like coffee or a beverage?”

  “I’d prefer tea, if that’s possible.”

  Lady Gudrun sat behind her gleaming bronze desk and summoned tea. “I’d like to have someone here to make an official record,” she said. “Is that acceptable to you?”

  “Certainly.”

  Tea and the recorder came in at the same time, the latter a meek Lai-own in a sky-blue uniform. The recorder sat in a chair to the side and deployed his instruments. A servant put a la
rge silver carafe of coffee on the desk for the commissioner and poured tea for Sula. The cups were beautiful translucent hard-paste porcelain, leaf-thin, with a heraldic blazon, presumably that of the commissioner herself.

  “First,” Lady Gudrun said, “the killer has been identified. He was Naktar Fargu, age thirty-one, a professional criminal who has spent half his adult life in labor camps. It’s not known whether he was an actual member of one of our organized crime families or not—here on Terra, they’re called mafia.”

  “On Zanshaa, they’re handmen,” Sula said.

  “I know.” The commissioner gave her an austere look. “As I was saying, it’s not clear whether Fargu was a member of the mafia or simply associated with mafia members. He’s not been linked with murder before, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed people, just that he wasn’t caught. And as for his weapon, it was reported stolen sixty-three years ago and has been involved in crimes all around the world in the years since.”

  “That speaks to his criminal connections,” Sula said. She sipped her tea, added more sugar, sipped again.

  The commissioner nodded. “His last residence was Sydney, and he arrived in Otautahi two days ago on a ground-effects liner.”

  “Fast worker, then.” Sula tried to recall if she’d noticed any Naxids hanging around during her day of shopping, stalking her, but couldn’t recall any—and her senses had been sharpened by months of fighting the Naxids in an urban environment. She’d have to ask Macnamara and Spence.

  “Is Sydney a port?” Sula asked.

  “Yes.” Lady Gudrun tilted her head. “Why does that matter?”

  “It might be interesting to discover if the Manado Company has offices there.”

  “I’ll make a point of finding out.” She sipped coffee and gave a little frown. “Last night, you made an accusation regarding this Manado Company. I would like some substantiation of that allegation, if you will.”

  Sula gave the information she possessed. As she spoke, she sensed that her report was less than convincing—she didn’t know why Lord Peltrot wanted the berth in the Fleet yard; what the Manado had found, or was seeking, in the Kuiper Belt; or why Lord Peltrot would be willing to take such a risky step as the assassination of a very public figure.

  “My own investigation has shown that the Manado Company uses violence to achieve their ends,” she concluded. “You might want to have someone talk to the Lord Captain of the Port in Oakland—or indeed the lord captains of any port in which the Manado Company maintains an office.”

  “That shall certainly be done.” The commissioner looked down at her desk and frowned. “It might be said that the fact of the attacker’s being a Naxid is significant. You killed a great many Naxids during the war. Could this have been a simple act of vengeance by Fargu on behalf of the lost Naxid cause?”

  “If he were acting alone, how did he track me so well? He arrived in New Zealand the same day I did.”

  “I didn’t say alone. I said an act of vengeance—there could be others involved.”

  “I haven’t seen any Naxids keeping me under observation.”

  “I ask because Fargu’s elder sister was in the Fleet and was reported killed at Antopone.”

  Sula gestured with her cup. “I didn’t kill her. I wasn’t present at that battle.”

  “Other loyalist commanders aren’t on Terra, within range of Fargu’s vengeance.” The commissioner let this hang in the air for moment, then sighed. “Well. It’s a theory we’ll have to investigate.”

  “You will,” Sula said. “I won’t.”

  Lady Gudrun paused for a moment, her lips pursing in and out in time with her thoughts, and then she went on to another item in her mental checklist.

  “Your cousin, Lady Ermina,” she said. “How well did you know her?”

  “We were friends in childhood. This was the first I’d seen her in many years.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that the killer intended to kill Lady Ermina rather than you?”

  Sula repressed a snarl. “I suppose that’s another theory you’ll have to investigate,” she said.

  Any theory, she thought, that avoided the possibility that the killer had been hired by the Manado Company, because that made the investigation too complicated and too unlikely to get results. Professional killers who died on the job were unlikely to give up answers but were also unlikely to resist a simplistic theory being attached to them.

  Lady Gudrun looked up. “I want to give you my personal guarantee that anyone involved with Lady Ermina’s death will find justice.”

  “I’m assured beyond measure,” Sula said. “And by the way, can Constable/First Macnamara get his sidearm back?”

  “I understand that tests have been completed,” said Lady Gudrun. “I’ll have it delivered to the reception desk by the main doors.” She turned to the recorder. “I believe that completes my questions,” she said.

  Sula put down her tea and rose from her seat. “Thank you,” she said.

  The commissioner’s medals jangled as she rose. “Haere ra,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I wished you farewell in Maori,” she said.

  Sula noted again the spiral green stone, the same color as Yoshimitsu’s adze, pinned to the commissioner’s tunic.

  “You are Maori?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Lady Gudrun Bjorge. “In fact, I’m Ariki Tauoroa of the Ngai Tahu—chief of a large tribe.”

  Sula frowned. “Isn’t it contrary to the Praxis to have those sorts of quasi-governmental institutions?”

  Lady Gudrun spread her big hands. “We are a long way from Zanshaa, Lady Sula.”

  “Indeed we are,” said Sula.

  On her way out, she retrieved Macnamara’s pistol and handed it to him once she was safely in the car. As Spence pulled the car onto the road, Sula’s sleeve display gave a discreet chime, and Sula answered to see the unlined face, goatee, and perfect black hair of Lord Moncrieff Ngeni.

  “Lord Governor,” she said.

  “I wanted to contact you in view of the incident yesterday,” said Lord Moncrieff. “I’m shocked that this occurred during your stay here, and I wanted to offer you my condolences on the death of Lady Ermina.”

  “Thank you, Lord Moncrieff. I very much appreciate your taking the time to contact me yourself.”

  There was a moment’s silence as the signal bounced up to the ring, then down to Constantinople, and then Lord Moncrieff replied. “I have already been in touch with the local authorities to let them know I’ll be taking a personal interest. I hope they’re treating you with every consideration.”

  Sula considered mentioning the commissioner’s preference for simplistic solutions, but decided that such a complaint was both premature and, likely, futile. “Lady Commissioner Bjorge gave me her personal guarantee that those responsible would be found.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then a look of bewilderment settled onto Lord Moncrieff’s face. “Found? I thought you had dealt with the killer yourself, Lady Sula.”

  “Lord Governor, he is unlikely to have acted alone.”

  “Ah. I see.” His look darkened. “Fanatics of some sort, no doubt. This planet breeds fanatics faster than it breeds ants.”

  Sula had only a slight idea of what ants might be but agreed anyway. “Lord Governor,” she said, “I wonder if you could possibly find some information for me.”

  “Of course, Lady Sula. If I can.”

  “I’m interested in discovering the ownership of the Manado Company, a shipping company based in Manado, Sulawesi.”

  There was a moment’s confusion as Lord Moncrieff fumbled with his hand comm. “Just a moment, Lady Sula, while I set this device to record. Will you repeat that, please?”

  Sula repeated the information, then added, “It’s a privately held company, so the information isn’t public, but I know records must be held somewhere on Terra. I know nothing about forming companies myself, so I don’t know which agencies woul
d have the information.”

  There was an out-of-focus image as Lord Moncrieff peered at his hand comm from close range to make certain he’d recorded properly. “I can locate that for you, my lady,” he said finally. “May I ask why?”

  “The chairman of the Manado Company threatened me four days ago, and yesterday, someone tried to kill me. I suspect the two facts are related.”

  “By the All!” Lord Moncrieff was shocked. “I shall certainly bring you that information!”

  “The Manado Company wants to base their warship in the Fleet dockyards,” Sula added. “I was inclined to turn them down, but—”

  “A warship! A privately held warship!” Lord Moncrieff stared. “How can such a thing exist?”

  Sula explained how the Bombardment of Utgu had been turned into a privately owned ship that ventured into the Kuiper Belt. “It’s my understanding that no weaponry was ever installed. But now I’m determined to inspect that ship as soon as it can be arranged.”

  “They may be fanatics!” Lord Moncrieff was thoroughly alarmed. “With a warship they could threaten the entire planet!”

  Sula saw no reason to mollify the lord governor’s anxiety. “They’re up to something, my lord. That contract dates from before my time, but perhaps it’s time to revisit it.”

  “Indeed.” Lord Moncrieff chewed his upper lip. “Does the Lady Commissioner have this information?”

  “Yes,” Sula said. “But of course she has to be scrupulous and investigate all possible alternatives, such as the killer acting alone.”

  “Hardly likely!” Scornfully. “I shall certainly speak with the Lady Commissioner about this!”

  Sula smiled. “I shall be most grateful, Lord Moncrieff.”

  Well, she thought. That worked out well.

  Sometimes, people of limited intelligence could be very useful.

  * * *

  Between her military rank and her status as a Peer, Sula had no problem purchasing four pistols and a shotgun, all of them quite beautiful, with grips of rare woods and barrels engraved with arabesque designs. While the Shaa conquerors hadn’t wanted firearms widely available to ordinary people, they wanted their Peer proxies to be able to participate fully both in the suppression of rebellion and in the usual aristocratic blood sports, and so firearms were simply taxed to the point where most people couldn’t afford them. There was of course a subculture of people who built their own, but these were regularly culled and the unlucky killed publicly, in appalling ways, as a deterrent to others.