Final Inquiries

by Roger MacBride Allen

  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."

  "I wouldn't put too much stock in that," said Zamprohna. "Commander Kelly won't be in that job forever--and maybe not even all that much longer."

  That was a nice, clear, indirect threat Hannah was going to have to report back as soon as possible. "I'll bear that in mind," said Hannah. And tender my resignation the split second a commandant sympathetic to your outfit takes over the Bullpen.

  Zamprohna flashed an impossibly toothy smile and winked at her. "See that you do," he said. "Now I'm going to have to spend all of about ten minutes working my sources, and finding out what, exactly, you're doing here. My fellow humans, I bid you a fond farewell. And, Senior Inquirist Brox 231, I hereby inform you of my departure." He bowed to Hannah, nodded to Jamie, made no gesture at all toward Brox, and headed back to his escort.

  "Real nice guy," said Jamie. "Hey, you think if his sources find out what we're doing here, then maybe we could get him to tell us?"

  "Sure, for the right price," said Hannah. "By all accounts he's a very bribable fellow. Brox, what the hell is he doing here--on-planet, and paying calls on the powers that be?"

  "You will learn the answer to the first part of your question soon, though you won't like it. As to the second part, I have no idea, beyond the motive he himself claimed."

  They watched as his escort started moving again. Zamprohna moved off with them. His posture and attitude reminded her irresistibly of an old-time tycoon in top hat and tails, at his ease in the back of his limousine, puffing on a giant car
toon cigar. His escort group cleared theirs. Hannah was not in the least surprised when their own group started up again without warning.

  It all had to be status, she reflected. The number of escorts a party received, the size and color and number of legs of the escorting group, the apparently intricate rules establishing who deferred to whom--all of it was, on the face of it, absurd posturing that accomplished nothing and used up labor and resources. It was of no more practical use than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, or the kilometer-long corridors of Hitler's Chancery, or the number of gold stars on an admiral's shoulder boards. But Vixan status display was different from what humans did. It was there to support the group, the clan, rather than to exalt an individual.

  That played both ways, up and down the status scale. That little speech of welcome their escort leader had given them mentioned Subhouseholder Zeeraum, but also "the Preeminent Director, now and forever nameless." She remembered that part from the general briefing on the Vixa. When a Vixan ascended to the Preeminent Directorate, he or she gave up his or her name for all time, becoming as nameless as the sub-caste Vixa in their escort, and was thereafter to be referred to merely by the title. The office was all, the power was all, the individual was nothing.

  None of it, none of it at all, was even remotely like the Vixa she had met on Earth, on Center, and in the course of her BSI duties. Obviously, the Vixa sent off-world were very carefully trained to act as much like humans as possible, so as to keep the primitive Younger Race beings happy.

  Hannah managed to study the Vixa that made up their escort in more detail as they moved along together. They appeared to be utterly identical to each other, down to the pattern of mottling on their bodies. They had to be clones, or something very much like clones.

  The lead one and probably the others, could speak and understand speech, at least to some degree--but they had to use some other form of communication as well. Their feet were touching the floor exactly together, to within a hundredth, a thousandth, of a second. Their other body movements were likewise too perfectly synchronized. They couldn't be doing it by watching each other. It had to be that their bodies were all being operated by one unified central control system. Maybe it was embedded bioelectronics. Maybe it was some form of telepathy, if there even was such a thing in Vixan biology.

  But if they were subject to central control, that either meant that the bodies themselves were essentially mindless, or else that they were configured so that higher-ranking Vixa--or perhaps even some automated control system, a computer--could take control of their bodies at will.

  How odd--how terrifying--to become, at any time, a mere passive passenger in one's own body, incapable of controlling any movement at all, with someone or something else deciding what foot to move, what eye to open, how hard to breathe--perhaps even what to say. Maybe the lead Vixa of their escort couldn't speak--maybe it had just served as a sort of mobile, living remote mike and speaker system for some bored systems controller or artificial intelligence a kilometer away--or on the other side of the planet.

  Well, Brox had warned them they would see disturbing things. Hannah had the feeling they had yet to scratch the surface.

  SIX

  SNACK TIME

  Jamie walked along behind Hannah with his own set of worries, most of them centered, quite irrationally, on the question of how they could get out of there. He knew, as a matter of sense and logic, that they couldn't get "out." They were on an alien planet, a long, long way from home, flanked on both sides by giant faceless spiders who could undoubtedly outrun them but just as undoubtedly wouldn't need to, as the whole vast expanse they were crossing was alive with any number of other giant spiders who could head them off effortlessly. They had no tools, equipment, or weapons that would do any good, and no remotely plausible place to which they could retreat.

  But by both training and inclination, Jamie tended to think in terms of tactics, moves and countermoves, strategies and plans. In an environment this strange, this alien and threatening, this downright creepy, it was no wonder that all the alarm bells were going off in his head.

  Settle down, he told himself. So you're surrounded by giant marching spiders and there's a smell of rotting flesh in the air and you have no idea why you're here or what happens next. Deal with it. Move on. Tell your paranoia to stop looking for lines of retreat that don't exist, and put it to work spotting information we can actually use.

  It helped. He looked around and starting taking note of their surroundings as more than possible places to take cover in or move out from. The floor of the vast hemispherical dome they were in was dotted with smaller domes of various colors and sizes. Vixa--likewise of various colors and sizes--were moving about quite purposefully between the smaller domes. In every case that Jamie could see, a larger, brighter-colored six-legged Vixa was escorted by some number of smaller Vixa that might have six or nine or even twelve legs. After the encounter with Zamprohna, Jamie was not all that surprised to see various other aliens--humans, Kendari, Pavlat, Metrans, and a few others he couldn't immediately identify--moving thither and yon as well, each of them escorted by a phalanx of smaller Nines or Twelves.

  He wondered briefly if there was any significance to seeing all these domed spaces inside this domed building that was inside a domed city--not at all unlike the ride they had just taken on a spherical ship inside a spherical ship. Did that speak of some deep-set Vixan need to have some physical space and yet not feel exposed? Did it reveal some Vixan obsession with domes and spheres--perhaps because they very roughly resembled the rounded main body of a Vixa? Or was it just a local, temporary, architectural fad?

  Their escort came to another of its abrupt halts outside one of a cluster of domes near the center of the greater dome, then led them to a fire-engine-red sub-dome. As with the larger dome of which it was a part, it was not the largest--but it was one of the largest, and adjacent to the largest of all.

  Great, Jamie thought. I'm here less than an hour and they've already got me checking the size and positions of the buildings and the type of escort Vixa to determine status. "It must be catching," he muttered.

  "What?" said Hannah.

  "Nothing. Nothing at all."

  "We have arrived," said Brox. "We must wait until we are summoned. That could take thirty seconds, or three hours. We must be patient. I do not know what, exactly, will happen once we enter. The rituals vary, and I know nothing of this particular Subhouseholder. But I can assure you that you will not be harmed in this time, or in this place. I will escort you in. Speak only when spoken to, and only when a reply is truly required. Use no honorifics, such as 'sir' or 'madam' or 'Great One' or whatever. Only a Vixan may address a Grand Vixan of exalted rank in that manner. Keep your answers short, literal, and truthful. Make no attempt at humor. Ask no questions."

  Even with those instructions, or perhaps in spite of them, Jamie felt sorely tempted to make a joke. But either Hannah was a mind reader, or they had been partners long enough for her to know him a little too well. The expression of warning on her face would have silenced anyone. He nodded his agreement and left it at that.

  Their escort kept in formation around them, standing utterly still. Even the two simulants remained in line and motionless. There were two Sixes, with escort groups, to their left, obviously waiting to be summoned as well. Their escorts didn't move at all either, but the Vixa being escorted didn't seem obliged to freeze in place. They remained inside the perimeters of their escorts, but they were moving around inside the spaces, using their manipulator arms to work with what appeared to be the Vixan equivalent of datapads. Reading the newspaper in the waiting room, Jamie decided.

  He was tempted to get "out" of their escort and walk around a little, see what there was to be seen, but it didn't seem worth the risk of misunderstanding--or worse. So he stayed with Hannah and Brox, in an absurd caricature of waiting in the car.

  Suddenly, without any signal that they could perceive, their escort started moving again. Jam
ie had expected that they would have to wait their turn behind the escort Vixa who were already present, but apparently their calculated status entitled them to jump the line. That's a good thing, Jamie told himself. Probably.

  Their escort marched them toward the blank wall at the base of the dome. A door slid open at the last moment, and in they went, the door snapping shut behind them.

  The interior was much dimmer than the outside, and it was hard to make out much detail immediately. The first things to hit Jamie were the heat, and the smell. It had to be at least thirty degrees Celsius, maybe higher, in the chamber, and, in those first few seconds, the sickly-sweet scent of decomposing flesh was almost overpowering. Jamie had to suppress the impulse to gasp, or cover his mouth. Hannah was having the same trouble. He glanced behind himself, and saw that Brox seemed not only unaffected, but slightly surprised by their reaction. Either the stink faded quickly or they had gotten used to it fast, but it didn't seem anywhere near as bad a few seconds later.

  Their escort broke formation. It was, quite literally, as if a switch had been thrown. One moment they were all motionless, at absolutely rigid attention--and the next they were all going their separate ways--one of them stretching, another scuttling over to the edge of the dome and, if Jamie was any judge, curling up for a nap, two or three going over to what seemed to be a feeding trough to the left of the entrance. The two simulants, he noted, just stayed right where they were, and did their usual deflated-doll imitations. Maybe that tells us that the others have at least some sort of volition to express when they're off duty, he thought. But not our two little pals.

  The red dome was just translucent enough from the inside to let him see the other domes that clustered nearby. It was difficult to tell whether the dim light in the room was being filtered in from the outside, or if there was some other, indirect source of illumination. Once his eyes adjusted, Jamie could see much more clearly--though his depth perception wasn't anything much.