“Twenty-three days,” he corrected me.
“Three weeks, three months, it makes no difference. The important thing is that she was promoted before Kdin decided to invite everyone to Graydawn.”
“But we already knew that.”
“Think it through, Max,” I said. “There are a lot of reasons for killing Kdin, but the likeliest is anger or resentment at being passed over for the top spot. Would you agree?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“What does that imply to you?”
He was silent for a moment as he considered the question. “That sooner or later the killer will realize that getting rid of Kdin didn’t solve his problem. If he wants to control the company, he’ll have to kill her.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Now, we’ve been told that she’s brilliant, creative, innovative, imaginative, everything a successful and ruthless executive is supposed to be. If you and I can see that, don’t you think she can?”
“And yet she doesn’t seem worried or apprehensive!” he said excitedly.
“Okay, you’ve got it,” I said. “Now try not to get too excited about it.”
“But—”
“You figured out what you were supposed to figure out,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you should jump to conclusions. Consider: she could simply have total confidence in her ability to protect herself. She could have a pretty good notion about who killed Kdin, and will make sure she’s never alone with him. She could know who killed Kdin, and told him he’ll be exposed if he harms her. She could know that the motive had nothing to do with business. She could think we’re not able to protect her; she wouldn’t be the first. She—”
“Enough,” said Max. “I understand.” Then: “What do we do now?”
“We interview the other five and hope we can catch one or more of them contradicting her or each other.”
“She didn’t tell us anything. How could anyone contradict her?”
“What if the Thrale says he cried out, ‘I can’t breathe!’?” I said. “What if Kbing says Kbang told her he wanted to kill him?”
“Kbing? Kbang?” he repeated, confused.
“I don’t know their names,” I said. “What if one contradicted her statement about not knowing why anyone would want to kill Kdin?”
“I see,” said Max.
“Remember, no one’s going to walk up to us and confess. We’ll build a case one tiny brick at a time. No matter how trivial it is, if it’s an inconsistency or a contradiction, it could lead to bigger ones.”
“It’s fascinating, Jake,” said Max, his enthusiasm returning. “It can be,” I said. “Usually it isn’t. Usually the forensic boys come in and an hour later they tell you who the killer is, and all you have to do is hunt him down. This kind of detective work was obsolete a few millennia ago.” I grimaced. “Except when the corpse and all the suspects were wearing full-body protective suits, and the wind and the chlorine destroyed every clue that might have been left behind.” I sighed deeply. “Oh, well, bring in the next one.”
“Have you any preference?”
“Yeah. Let’s have the human. Maybe I can sympathize with his being passed over for a Gaborian, and we can bond a bit.” “If he’s the killer, are you sure you want to bond with him?” asked Max.
“He’s probably not,” I said. “Neither is the Thrale.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re aliens in a Gaborian-owned and -dominated cartel. They’ve risen as high as they’re going to. I can’t imagine there’s as much bitterness and jealousy there as among the Gaborians.” I shrugged. “Still, I could be wrong. Let’s see if I can get him talking, and then we’ll know a little more.”
“You want me to bring him up here now?”
I thought about it for a moment. “No,” I said. “I’m a human, he’s a human. Anything that makes him uncomfortable is going to make me uncomfortable, too. And as long as I’m going to be uncomfortable, I might as well kill two birds with one stone.” “There are no birds on Graydawn,” said Max.
“That must depress all the cats,” I said.
“There are no cats on—”
“Never mind,” I cut him off. “Sooner or later I have to look at the murder scene, even if we both know it’ll be useless. Have Shea meet me in the building that holds the protective gear.”
“Do you want me to come along, too?” he asked.
“I can’t imagine it’ll do any good,” I said, and his face fell— well, about as much as a beachball’s face can fall. “What the hell,” I added quickly. “Sure, come along. Maybe you’ll spot something everyone else has been missing.”
“Thank you, Jake.”
He left to get Shea, and I snapped my fingers to get the robots’ attention.
“Sir?” they said in unison, reentering the room.
“This will be my room for as long as I’m on the planet,” I said. “During that time, I don’t want anyone making any changes in it without my permission. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” they all said. I thought for a minute that they were going to salute me, but they just went back outside the room and then stood motionless.
I took the airlift down to the main floor, then walked out of the retreat, crossed the lawn of alien grass that scrambled to get out of my way, and entered the outbuilding that held the protective suits. Max and Malcolm Shea were already there, getting into their gear.
“You’re not going to learn much,” announced Shea. “You’ll be lucky if the wind doesn’t blow you over. And the visibility is wretched.”
I was surprised he didn’t tell me I’d get warts too.
“I just need a brief look at it,” I said. “I can question you while we’re walking there and back and get it over with.”
“I hope you have a lot of questions saved up,” he said. “It could take me hours to locate the formation.”
“I thought it was just a quarter mile away.”
“It is—but visibility’s about five or six meters, tops. And I’ve only been there once.”
“Max,” I said, “find a robot that can lead us to the spot.” “Yes, Jake,” he said, scurrying off.
“So who do you think did it?” I asked Shea.
He shrugged. “Beats me. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? I mean, if I wanted to be chairman, I’d kill the current one, not the former one.”
“I agree,” I said. “So who had a grudge against Kdin?” “Everybody except Ktamborit, I imagine,” he said. “We were all passed over for the job.”
“You never seriously expected to get it, did you?”
“No, not really. And while I hate to say anything to remove suspicion from a Thrale, Toblinda didn’t expect it any more than I did.”
“So why are you working for an organization where you can’t rise to the top?”
“I’m the cartel’s top executive in the Democracy,” said Shea, not without a touch of pride. “I have more power, more people under my command, than almost any governor, admiral, or general. I couldn’t spend my annual salary in a couple of lifetimes, and in fact I have so many perks that I don’t spend much of it.” “Okay,” I agreed with a smile. “Those are pretty good reasons.”
“I have fourteen million good reasons a year, plus stock options,” he said, returning my smile.
“So you think it was one of the Gaborians?”
“It seems likely. Except...”
“Except?”
“Except that I can’t see what could be gained from it,” he said, frowning. “Maybe we’re all bitter that Kdin chose Ktamborit rather than one of us, but killing him doesn’t change anything.”
“Maybe it makes the killer feel better.”
“On the one hand is the ability—maybe—to feel better for a while,” he said. “On the other is losing everything you’ve got if you’re caught. It’s a piss-poor business proposition, and we’re all businessmen.”
Max returned with a gleaming silver robot that was shaped
exactly like a Gaborian. We finished getting into our gear. Then I walked out of the building and to a hatch about fifteen meters away, and stepped into the airlock, followed by Shea, Max, and the robot. Once the hatch was secure, the outer door opened and we stepped out into the swirling chlorine fog.
“Lead the way,” I said to the robot.
A glowing light indicated that he’d received my transmission, and he began walking very slowly to the northwest, calling out the hazards—large rock, small depression, slippery rocks, sharp incline, whatever—and it took us about eight minutes to cover the quarter mile. I was surprised that none of us tore our suits on the razor-sharp rock formations we had to pass.
“Why the hell would someone build a retreat here?” I mused. “No visitors,” said Shea.
“I suppose so,” I agreed. “If there’s a second reasonable answer; I can’t come up with it.” Then: “Max, you’re from this system. Has Graydawn got any natural resources worth anything on the open market?”
“No, Jake.”
“Any native life-forms?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. It’s a pretty inhospitable place.” I looked around. “Robot, where did Kdin fall?”
“I was not here, sir;” answered the robot. “You asked me to take you to the spot where he often viewed his favorite rock formation. This is that spot.”
I looked around. “I don’t see any rock formation.”
“It’s there, all right,” said Shea. “Wait until the wind stops blowing all this chlorine around.”
And sure enough, no sooner had he spoken the words than the atmosphere stopped swirling and I could see a strange structure about ten yards ahead of me: a thin rock, maybe five inches around, extending straight up about fifty feet, with a huge circular slab of stone, maybe eight feet in diameter, balanced precariously atop it.
“Why doesn’t the wind blow it over?” I asked.
“Beats me,” said Shea. “From what Kdin told us, it’s been like that ever since he built the place.”
“Maybe the needlelike structure is piercing the circular one so it cant blow off,” suggested Max.
“I suppose that’s as good an answer as any,” I said. “So you seven were looking at this thing, and Kdin fell over dead?”
“He clutched at his face mask first,” said Shea. “Clawed at it like he was in a panic.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Not that I recall.”
“And you picked him up immediately and carried him back?”
“No,” said Shea. “Two of the Gaborians knelt down next to him to see what had happened. There was a powerful wind, and it was possible he’d just been blown over. Then they announced that they couldn’t see any signs of life, so the Thrale took one end, I took the other, and we carried him back to the dome.”
I looked around. Visibility hadn’t increased since we’d come out onto the surface. “How did you find the dome?” I asked. “I couldn’t.”
“Ktamborit and Ktee had been here a number of times before. They knew the way, or we might all still be out here.” “When you got him back, what then?”
“We called Bdale as soon as we reached the dome. He showed up a minute later and tried to revive Kdin, but he was past it.” He paused. “Just as well. There hadn’t been any oxygen to the brain for ten, maybe eleven minutes. If Gaborians are anything like us, he’d have been a vegetable anyway.”
“Then what?”
“We put his body in a refrigerator bag to keep it fresh, and loaded him and his suit in the shuttle, which we sent to Bramanos.”
“And then?” I said.
He looked confused. “That’s it.”
“Did any of the executives want to leave?”
“We all did,” said Shea. “But Ktamborit ordered us all to stay here until the authorities confirmed that it was death from natural causes.”
I thought about his answers on the way back to the dome. Once we’d entered it I told him that I was through questioning him for the time being and sent him back to the retreat.
“Aren’t we going inside, Jake?” asked Max.
“In a minute,” I said, fascinated as the grass kept ducking away from my feet. “We want to think first.”
“What are we thinking about?”
“We’re not sure,” I said. “But something is bothering us.” “What?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Everything Ktamborit and Shea said makes sense, but there’s something wrong, something I can’t quite put my finger on.”
Five minutes later I still hadn’t spotted it, so I finally gave up teasing the grass and walked back into the retreat with Max.
The next one I questioned was Kchang. He seemed genuinely distressed over Kdin’s death, and didn’t like Ktamborit at all... but in the next breath he admitted that she was the proper choice for the job, that her skills and intellect dwarfed everyone else’s.
Ktee struck me as a good company man—or a good company Gaborian, as the case may be. He’d been with the cartel for thirty-four Standard years, never made waves, and seemed animated only when describing the business and his role in it. Was he pissed off at being passed over? Not at all. He loved what he was doing, and as chairman he’d be doing too many things he didn’t like as well. Or so he said.
Kmorn was the third of the Gaborian vice presidents. He seemed the dullest, but he had an advantage the other two lacked: he was family. He tried to explain Gaborian bloodlines to me; the closest I could figure was that he was the equivalent of Kdin’s cousin. He was more upset over Kdin’s death than the others, but then, if he was as slow as I suspected, he’d just lost his protector, and his days of power and luxury might be numbered. Of them all, he had the least reason to want to see Kdin dead.
I figured that as long as I was questioning Gaborians I might as well work my way through them. Besides, I had an innate dislike of Thrales after what they did to a few outlying worlds I used to visit, so I decided to put off talking to Toblinda a little longer and sent for Bdale, the doctor.
Max ushered him into the room a few minutes later. He walked up to me, made some kind of obeisance that looked for all the world like a curtsy—it was a gesture none of the high-powered executives had felt obligated to make—and then waited patiently for me to start questioning him.
“I won’t be long,” I assured him. “How long were you Kdin’s physician?”
“Just over ten Standard years,” said Bdale.
“How was his health?”
“Not good. He suffered many of the problems of aging, exacerbated by the enormous pressure he worked under. His heart especially was not in good condition. That is why he decided to step down and turn the company over to Ktamborit.”
“Did you feel any apprehension when he left the dome?” “No, he did it almost every day, usually alone, though occasionally I or a visiting executive would accompany him. Exploring the area was physically taxing, but paradoxically it seemed to relax him. He had taken me to the structure a few times, so I knew he wasn’t going far afield, and of course he was in the company of friends.”
“Did you recommend that he take a robot along?”
Bdale smiled a Gaborian smile. “Kdin was the one who programmed the robots, Mr. Masters. He could find his way around the area as quickly and easily as they did.”
“I assume his failing health was not a closely kept secret?” “No, he had given it as his reason for retiring.”
“Since all the executives knew he was in poor health, did any of them suggest that a robot come along?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose it occurred to any of them.” “What did you think when they brought his body back?” “That he had finally overtaxed his heart,” answered Bdale.
“I gave him a perfunctory examination and pronounced him dead.”
“Why was the body shipped to Bramanos as opposed to being buried or disposed of either here or on Kdin’s home world?” I asked.
“When someon
e who wields that much power dies, even from what appear to be natural causes, it is essential to have an autopsy, just to ease everyone’s mind,” answered Bdale. “I don’t have all the necessary equipment to perform one here, so his body was sent to Bramanos, with the stipulation that the autopsy be performed by a member of the Gaborian race, who would be conversant with his physiology.”
“You had no reason to suspect foul play?” I persisted. “None. As I said, the autopsy was routine.”
“What was your initial diagnosis?”
“Heart failure. There were no discernible signs, and in such instances heart failure is usually the case.”
“What are the signs of asphyxiation in a Gaborian?” I asked. “They are all internal,” replied Bdale. “If chlorine had somehow entered his protective suit, I would have spotted the signs instantly. But with simple asphyxiation, the Gaborian lungs collapse and the pulmonary artery often ruptures—but it takes an autopsy to discover that.”
“What was your reaction when the results of the autopsy came back from Bramanos?”
“I was shocked,” said Bdale.
“One last question,” I said. “Did anyone suggest that the body not be shipped to Bramanos for a postmortem?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll want to speak to you again later.” “I am at your disposal,” he said, curtsying again and leaving the room.
I decided to take a break when I finished with Bdale. I wasn’t tired; I just wasn’t looking forward to even talking to a Thrale. And something was nagging at me; it was nothing I could put my finger on, but in this job you learn to trust your instincts, and my instincts told me I’d already heard some things that didn’t add up.
Max was pretty sensitive to my mood. I could tell he wanted to talk, to discuss the various statements we’d heard, but he kept quiet and waited for me to work things out. It looked like it was going to be a long wait; the more I tried, the more things kept slipping away from me.
Finally I pulled a smokeless cigarette out of a pocket and lit it up.
“Well, what do you think, Max?” I said.
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
“You heard everything I heard.”
“Everything seemed logical. I know it’s early in your investigation, but I would say we could probably eliminate Kmorn from consideration.”
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