by Simon Kewin
She thought of the images she seen from Glanden Ver's memories. If this amiable man was a highly-trained and skilful warrior, then perhaps it hadn't been such a good idea to meet him here, alone, out of touch with Coronade. She could signal her ship, and it could come and pick her up in a few seconds, but she might not have that time if he attacked. She could fight, and she was younger and fitter, but she had no skill in the martial arts.
She found herself involuntarily taking a step sideways, covering it by pretending to peer up at the arch. She swept her hair out of her eyes as the wind threw it around her head. She glanced aside at him and could see that he'd noticed she'd moved away. Her action appeared to amuse him.
Over the wind, he called, “Are you saying the murder bears the hallmarks of a Blood Knight execution?”
“The details are a part of the investigation. I obviously can't disclose them.”
“Then I'm not sure how much I can help you.”
“You can tell me what happened when you went to the Congress Hall this morning.”
She began to sidle around the archway, pretending all the while to be considering its form. Vol Velle followed her, staying close, also innocently studying the artefact, as if they were engaged in some strange, ritual dance about the ancient arch.
“Nothing happened,” said Vol Velle. “I went to my rooms to meditate before the start of the talks.”
“What time?”
“Six-half, thereabouts.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I did not. Of course, you thoughtfully ensured that we each had our own entrance to the building, to avoid any conflict.”
“How did you learn about the death of Delegate Palianche?”
“I used a public access point to agree some final discussion points with my people and heard from them.”
“And you left immediately.”
“I did. Still without seeing anyone.”
“If, say, you'd brought a weapon to the planet with you, no one would have known about it. Furthermore, you could have returned it to your ship there and then without anyone seeing.”
“That is all possible, but I assure you, it did not happen.”
“Are there Blood Knights on Coronade?”
“Ah, that I'm afraid I can't tell you. But I will state that we have come fully prepared to defend ourselves. If the need arises, we will act. If we are attacked, we will fight back. Anyone insulting us, or trampling over our sacred beliefs becomes our enemy, and we do not treat our enemies as we do our friends.”
She did not like the focused stare that had come into his eyes as he spoke. The ruthless working of his mind was suddenly laid bare: an absolute, unflinching devotion. Somewhere inside, he was still the unswerving fundamentalist. He was someone who could very well have ordered a Knight to slay Palianche – or even struck the fatal blow himself. Quietly, Magdi sent a summons to her ship. He would know immediately what she'd done from his own vessel, but she suddenly did not want to be alone with him.
She watched him carefully. His eyes flicked to the ship, then back to her, but he didn't otherwise react. She'd been wrong about him at that first meeting; he wasn't going to be easily seduced by luxury or wealth. That wasn't him at all. But he might respond to clarity and to simple rules laid down.
“Be very clear,” she said. “I am accusing you of nothing, but if you were responsible for this act, directly or indirectly, it will not go well for you. We will do all we can to protect Sejerne and its sensibilities, but not at the expense of peace.”
“Threats, now, Conciliator Magdi? That is disappointing.”
“Call them what you like. They are statements of fact. The best way to achieve what you want from these peace talks is to behave peacefully.”
“Just as you behaved peacefully when you despatched your probe to study Amon?”
So he did know: some monitoring station Coronade wasn't aware of, perhaps. The question was, did he also know about the atmospheric incursion? She very much hoped that he didn't.
“Coronade may have acted without my knowledge or consent,” she said.
He spread his hands wide, palms outwards, in a gesture that said, There we are, the implication is obvious. “As I say, a thing that happens too often, in my view. What was it you wished to learn? Were you, perhaps, assessing likely locations to mine for resources? A geological survey?”
“I promise you; we were not.”
“What then?”
“We wanted to be sure that no Gogoni or Aranian intrusion had already taken place.” The ease with which the lie slipped out of her own lips surprised her.
“You would swear the truth of that?” he asked.
“I would. I do.”
“But what would you swear on? You are not a person of faith, regrettably. What is there that means so much to you that your vow upon it carries enough weight?”
There was only one thing; this time, at least, it was no lie. “The Nexus. The peaceful union of cooperating worlds and the Minds who make it possible. Coronade. To me, this is the greatest achievement of intelligent life in this galaxy. I swear by the Nexus that we were not and are not assaying Amon for any form of mineral exploitation. We wish the world to remain sacrosanct.”
He considered her for a moment, then nodded. It seemed strange to her that such a simple statement would reassure him, but such was his nature. A solemn vow carried more heft with him than the proof of this or that fact. She watched his aura carefully, the emotional responses she could pick up from his mind. The flecks of darkness were there in him, still, but the colours were overwhelmingly those of golden light. So far as she could tell, he wasn't lying, and he also believed she wasn't lying.
“Good,” he said, the warm smile returning to his features. “Then I will give you my word, too, sworn upon sacred Amon. We of Sejerne did not kill Palianche. I will not swear that we don't have Blood Knights here, but I can say that none have acted, and won't do so unless needed.”
“You will return to the talks?” she asked.
“If there are talks to return to, yes. And if we decide we can trust the others around the table.”
“Then, I will do my best to ensure that happens. And to find out who did kill Palianche.”
She turned and strode away towards the edge of the island to meet her ship. This time, Vol Velle didn't follow her. But he watched her go, a calculating frown upon his features as the wind lashed his hair around like white fire.
Six
Magdi breathed deeply once she was cocooned in her loopship seat. The ship picked up speed rapidly, the acceleration as they arched skywards a giant's hand pressing her down. She tried to relax; they would soon reach zenith and begin the weightless drop into Suri. Behind her, on the screens, the grey-green ocean swallowed the tiny round island. Vol Velle's ship hadn't moved; he wasn't pursuing her. In a moment, it was gone behind a cloud layer.
She took the opportunity to catch up on developments elsewhere. Temen Zeb had left several messages requesting an urgent conversation. He answered immediately as she pinged him.
“Zeb. You have updates? Where are the delegates at this time?”
“Ro is still in her quarters. The delegation from Gogon have left the system.”
“With Palianche's body?”
“Yes.”
“Were you able to complete your investigations?”
“Hardly. These things take time to do properly.”
“You must have discovered something of interest, or you wouldn't be contacting me.”
“I was able to isolate the toxin delivered by the warbug. If I understand Gogoni biology correctly, its properties are rather more interesting than I first thought. By my calculations, it wouldn't have been fatal, at least not to someone with Palianche's body mass.”
She thought about that. It seemed unlikely someone would have made such a basic mistake. “You're saying it was planted on him to make us think he'd been poisoned?”
“No, I think it was intended to hav
e a very specific physical effect.”
“What effect?”
Zeb spoke rapidly, his frustrations apparently forgotten in his enthusiasm for the subject. “For one thing, it would have knocked him out, which I presume explains how he was killed without any apparent struggle. He sat in his chair, the warbug triggered, the toxin overwhelmed his system and he slumped forwards. Perhaps his arms were outstretched because he was simply yawning when the moment came. At least he would have been oblivious to the energy-weapon blow. A small mercy.”
“Or perhaps the killer arranged his arms like that, to make it look Palianche was surrendering.”
“Perhaps. There's more, though: this is an exotic toxin, with several highly-complex proteins whose operation I can't identify. I can discern some of the effects they would have had on his tissues, even if I'm reduced to educated guesswork.”
“Guess away; you're all I have.”
“The proteins resemble those the Gogoni employed during long space-flights, before they had powerful reaction-drives and metaspace tech. There would have been a stasis-like effect on his biology, slowing everything down, like a hibernating creature going into torpor. The effect would have been slight, and it's hard to spot, but I believe it's there.”
“So that means what?”
“It mainly means that the time of death estimate I originally provided may be wrong. The calculations contain too many unknowns to be sure, but I now think it's possible the killing blow could have been struck at any time in the half hour before the sevenmark.”
“No earlier?”
“I don't think so.”
“You can't be more precise?”
“Not without carrying out a full-body assay.”
“Of course.” Magdi swore to herself. Admitting his own mistake appeared to be making Zeb more conciliatory, at least. The findings were interesting, but she needed clarity, not more uncertainty. The revised timings didn't change much: both Ro and Vol Velle could still have killed Palianche – even if she was coming around to accepting Vol Velle's assurances that he wasn't involved. What was interesting was that someone, apparently, had tried very hard to alter the apparent time of death, presumably to cover their tracks. Temen Zeb was skilled and highly conscientious – she'd checked – and it was possible another forensics expert might not have spotted the effect.
“There's something else,” said Zeb. “Palianche was dying. I mean, before he was attacked with the warbug or the energy-weapon. He was in the advanced stages of cancer, metastasized throughout his internal organs, including his spinal column and brain. It was too advanced to cure.”
“He would have known about that?”
“He had to be in a lot of pain. He didn't give you any clue?”
“Nothing.” She thought about the fear she'd picked up from him. It was rare, in Magdi's experience, for cancers to advance to such a terminal stage, easily-curable as the condition was. But then, the Gogoni were especially susceptible, living out their lives so close to the radioactive furnace of their star.
“Still no sign of the weapon anywhere?”
“No.”
“Anything from the searches of the delegations' rooms or living quarters?”
“Just dust and dirt, the normal detritus we walk in and out of every building.”
She couldn't afford to miss anything, no matter how unimportant. “I'd like to look at everything you've found, just for my own satisfaction. The test results, the images. Even the dust and dirt.”
“Of course.”
“I'll be back at Suri within the hour.”
She closed the connection and settled back to think, looking for the answers she needed. The problem was that she was in two minds: not only over who the killer was, but also between her instincts as a conciliator and as an investigator. The two sides were starting to pull in very different directions. She needed to solve this murder quickly, but another part of her mind whispered a very different thought.
Did she, in fact, want to identify the killer? Or would it be better for everyone if she failed to? By not apportioning blame, the peace talks could – perhaps – continue.
The notion had been niggling at her, but now she gave it free rein, studying it from every angle. She tried to ignore the troubling thought that she was considering exactly what Emchek had predicted: suppressing the truth. She'd naively thought that all she needed to do was to uncover the facts and the peace talks could begin. But in politics, perceptions mattered more than truth. She should have realised that – and she wondered if the Coronade Mind had realised it from the start, setting her up to fail.
Or was that Vol Velle's mistrust of the planetary AI creeping into her own thoughts?
She found Temen Zeb in his laboratory, at the Marshals' station a quarter-turn away from the Congress Hall. He was engrossed in more data, manipulating the angle of his display with subtle movements of a clenched fist.
“You've come at a good time,” he said. “I've found something on the warbug. The design is unusual, not one we've seen before, but it's been put together using components familiar from other devices. We've been lucky.”
He made a more complex series of finger-gestures, and the display changed to show two warbugs: the one she'd seen at the murder-scene, and a larger device, its bulbous body perhaps a reservoir of some toxin. The images zoomed in, to focus on microscopic control beads within the head of each. Moving in closer still, she saw that two serial numbers were etched onto the beads: strings of sixteen letters and numbers.
“These numbers identify the source of the components,” said Zeb, “and they're clearly from the same manufacturer and in the same sequence. One laboratory made both.”
“Where did this second warbug come from?”
“That's what's so interesting. A scout ship from your disputed system recovered this one and two like it a little over six months ago. They were embedded in the skin of soldiers killed in a mining skirmish upon a comet whose eccentric orbit brought it within scope of all three worlds.”
“Which planet were the dead soldiers from?”
“Gogon.”
“And who were they fighting at the time?”
“Hard to say, but they were nearest Sejerne.”
“Not Arianas?”
“No bodies from the other side were found so it's hard to be sure, but the comet was moving towards perihelion; it had left Arianas a long way behind.”
Had she been too ready to accept Vol Velle's vow of innocence? If the warbug toxin had been designed to advance the apparent time of death, perhaps Vol Velle was the culprit, killing Palianche at six-half and then making it look like the Gogoni didn't die until Ro arrived at seven.
Zeb must have seen the look of calculation on her face. “This surprises you?”
“Ro seemed the more likely killer.”
“This doesn't prove it either way.”
“True, but it is suggestive. What else do you have?”
“All the catalogued evidence is here.”
“Show me everything you've collected.”
“There isn't much. Everything we've retrieved from the delegates' meeting rooms and living quarters rooms is here, but that's about it.”
The collected detritus was carefully sealed away inside more stasis cubes, protected from external reality in case they needed to be studied further. She held up each in turn, but there was nothing of interest. It was dust. The galaxy was full of dust. She studied the one from Pannax Ro's quarters carefully. There was nothing visible to the eye, and nothing interesting on the microscopic survey. But then she picked up the cube from the Congress room itself, and a fleck of green caught her eye. She studied it from all angles. There was no doubt: it was a tree-needle.
“What do you make of this?” she asked Zeb.
“A scrap of vegetation. I assume Palianche or Ro picked it up on their shoes before going to the meeting room, walking through the Hub Park, perhaps.”
“Ro didn't go via the Hub that morning.”
“Does this sample have to be from Palianche or Ro?”
“The room was swept and secured the evening before, and no one else went in there until we arrived to establish the bio-secure cordon.”
“Interesting.”
“You think this is significant?”
“I've seen needles like this before, but not in any city park. In the subarctic biome, when I went there to meet Ro. We should analyse it, confirm which trees have needles like it.”
“It's possible she picked the needle up on her footwear when she met you.”
“No, she was wearing military boots then, but today she's dressed more formally. And that might mean she's been to the biome this morning.”
“Even if she has, why would it matter? From what you said, she liked to go there because the freezing, hostile climate reminds her fondly of home.”
“So far as we know, she went directly from her quarters to the Congress Hall. That's what she said, and that's what the mesh records confirm. We have no knowledge of an earlier visit. If she did go to the dome, she was off-network, untraceable. And the question then is why?”
“Unless she's going to admit to us she went there, we have no way of proving it. Citizens are free to move around Coronade without being observed or recorded in any way. Even if they happen to pass a public camera point, they can instruct the system to silently wipe all images of them as they're captured. You know this. It makes my job harder, but it's obviously a fundamental right on Nexus worlds.”
“Except, in this case, she would definitely have been recorded,” said Magdi. “There's a camera inside the door of the biome. I saw it when I went there. It allows visitors to check that there are no gataraptors lurking by the entrance ready to bite their head off when they step inside. If Ro went to the dome, there's a chance she'll be on those images.”
It took only a few minutes to grab the video stream from the mesh. They scanned backwards through the images and saw: an individual had indeed entered, well before the fivemark that morning.