“Well, maybe he was afraid we wouldn’t believe him.“
“About this psychic message you got on the brain?“ Mitsu smiles to take some sting out of her words. “I’m betting he had other reasons for knowing he was about to die. Bill, these people think in terms of honor and revenge, not laws. M.M. did something that was going to bring vengeance down on him in a big way, but he felt he couldn’t reveal who that someone was.“
“Like he had to protect his murderer?“
“Maybe. And he had to think about his dependents, too. The Val Chiri men take their responsibilities to the clan real seriously. Unto the seventh generation and all that jazz.“
“Huh. So if he jumped the gun and offed this dude before the dude could off him, what would happen to his family?“
“That’s one of the things I just looked up. If a man murders someone, all his children old enough to live outside the pouch are taken away for adoption. Any pouchlings are drowned. His wives are stripped of any and all goods they might have inherited and thrown penniless onto the street to fend for themselves. He himself is killed, of course, in some real painful way. I didn’t ask for details.“
“Jeez. Vengeance? You bet.“
A knock on the door, and Bill jumps up, answers it, and comes back with a flat envelope and a big handful of receipts.
“Warrant came. Here’s the stuff from the hotel safe.“
Mitsu rips open the package and finds, just as they all had expected, the last will and testament of the Val Chiri known as Tarrgon ga Elba!a-ach, AKA the Murdered Male. She scans it over and finds what she’s looking for.
“Interesting,“ she says. “He left the clan monies to his brother, of course, who’s going to be First Man now. Then he set aside half of his personal fortune for the reward he offered and divided up the rest among everyone in his immediate family, except First Daughter.“
“Hey, that’s a shocker! I got the impression that he and his daughter were real close.“
“Yep, bet they were.“ She waves the print-out vaguely in Bill’s direction. “This was exactly what I suspected, and I think we got our case, whether Washington lets us bring our perp in or not.“
“Huh? I don’t get it.“
“Think about the reward, Bill. That’s the hot key to press. Do you really think a clannish bunch like the Val Chiri — jeez, they base their whole lives on their position in their family — do you really think First Man would give all that cash to a stranger?“ She stands up. “Scan that will into the case file while I’m gone, will you? Thanks. Are there any women officers assigned to the hotel?“
“Yeah. You need to go interview First Wife again?“
“Nope. First Daughter.“
Mitsu finds the people she needs, three female officers and her translator in the corridor near the corpse. In fact, it seems that every male Val Chiri in the clan has squeezed into the narrow space to sit down on the floor around the former First Man’s gurney. They say nothing, barely move, merely sit and stare at the police keeping them from performing the last rites for their leader. Mitsu uses CopComm to get replacement guards up before she takes the women officers away.
“Honored lieutenant.“ Brother presses the speaker unit so hard into his larynx that it buzzes. “We must do the ceremony soon!“
“I understand that, honored voice. I’m about to wrap this thing up.“
Brother goes rigid, his torso arched back, his hands clenched, his face draining to a dead and ashy gray.
“Honored voice, your brother was a far-seeing and clever man. If his daughter has inherited one gram of his courage, the thing you’re so afraid of won’t happen.“
He sighs and lets himself relax, adjusting the speaker before he talks.
“She is a female fit to fulfill her position as First Wife. I can but hope you are correct.“
First Daughter receives them in a big room with windows that give out onto a view of the San Francisco Bay, dark blue in the spring sun, and the East Bay hills, hidden behind yellow haze. Thanks to the blue tint in the glass, the polluted sky looks green. Dressed in white, her strangely smooth head emerging from a twist of scarf, she sits calmly on a human-style fiber-hide hassock. At her feet, sobbing, crouches another Val Chiri female, dressed in black.
“Second Wife,“ Brother explains.
“Ask First Daughter, honored voice, where her husband is.“
At the question, First Daughter points with a top arm toward a closed door and speaks, slowly and calmly. Second Wife howls, then falls silent, curling round herself and clutching at her clothes with all four hands.
“He has locked himself in that room,“ Brother says. “He refuses to come out.“
At that, Mitsu knows her theory is correct. She kneels down to look directly into First Daughter’s golden eyes.
“Tell her this, honored voice. Your father was a wise man in all ways save one, and that one was the love of women. Will you not take the provision he left for you?“
When Brother speaks, First Daughter stares across the room at the far wall. For a long time after the translator falls silent, she says nothing, her mouth a thin, tight line, while the younger female slowly uncurls herself and begins to snivel and whine. Although Brother doesn’t translate, Mitsu can guess that she’s begging the senior wife for something. Mitsu wonders if their husband is listening, crouched like a hunted animal behind the bedroom door, or if he’s killed himself. If it weren’t for Washington’s interference, she would order the door broken down, but as it is, she waits. At last First Daughter cuts Second Wife short with a wave of a middle arm and begins to speak. Brother translates a phrase or sentence at a time.
“Last night, my husband returned to our bed very late, at perhaps the second hour of your night. I pretended to sleep so that he would not press himself upon me. He tossed this way and that, then got up and left the sleeping room. After a few moments I too rose and went to the door. I looked through a crack and saw him hiding some object in that box there.“ She points to one of the wooden chests. “This morning, I found blood upon the clothes he was wearing last night. I have saved those clothes. I suspect the blood is that of my father.“
“And so do I.“ Mitsu stands up, motioning to one of the officers. “Open it.“
Second Wife howls, arching her back and throwing her head from side to side. Brother kicks her into silence and begins to berate her.
“Leave her be!“ Mitsu snaps. “Could she really have turned the First Man down when he wanted to have sex with her?“
Brother shuts up. First Daughter puts a middle arm around her junior’s shoulders and draws her close, a gesture of protection, as they watch the police officer open the chest. She takes a plastic bag out of her belt pouch and uses it to lift the murder weapon out.
“Looks like it’s been wiped,“ Reilly says. “But you never know. There might be a print or two left. And what’s this? A diamond. Jeez, and a big one.“
“Yep,“ Mitsu says. “The bride-price. He took it as payment for the despoiling of Second Wife.“
oOo
“And so First Daughter gets all that gold to start a new life somewhere for her and Second Wife,“ Mitsu says. “It’s not an inheritance, so it can’t be taken away from her even though she’s the murderer’s wife. Brother was implying that if we go along with Washington and never bring this to court, the clan will let them keep their children, too, even the pouchling. Sounds like a good bargain to me, since Washington won’t let us prosecute anyway.“
“Might as well give in gracefully, huh?“ Bill pauses to smear his red, scabby nose with some sort of medicated jelly. “God, I’m glad we’re getting out into the air.“
“You’ve suffered for justice, pal, for sure.“
“Glad someone realizes it. Oh well, virtue’s its own reward, huh?“
“You bet. Let’s get back to the station. I’ll put in a final call to Washington on the secure line there. Our murderer’s probably dead by now, whether he killed himself or the ne
w First Man did it for him.“
Since Bill’s already cleared all traces of their work off the hotel comp banks, they leave the tiny office and head for the turbolifts. Even several floors below the actual living quarters, the scent of Val Chiri Gan drifts around them through the air-conditioning vents.
“One last thing I don’t understand,“ Bill says. “That ceremony. Why do they have to hold it right away? I mean, what do they do that couldn’t wait for an autopsy?“
“Eat him raw.“
“What?“
“They eat their dead clan members. It’s a ritual thing, or so I found out from the ROM library. Everyone in the clan gets a serving. They see it as taking a part of him into their bodies, kind of like a pouchling. That way the dead become part of the living family, and they can never be separated again. But it’s not like they enjoy it or anything, so in this warm weather, they need to get it over and done with while he’s still fresh.“
For a minute Mitsu’s afraid that Bill is going to throw up, but he gathers himself with a gulp and a sigh.
“Well, whatever’s right,“ he says at last. “But jeez, sir, in my opinion that’s carrying togetherness just a little too far.“
oOo
Katharine Kerr...
...was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944 to a family which considered itself British-in-exile far more than American. Since she was taught to read on British books alone, these sentiments resulted in her inability to spell properly in either system, British or American, though fortunately there were no other lasting effects.
Your First
C.L. Anderson
“We can rebuild him. Make him better, stronger, faster...“
“What are you, nuts? He was a total pain. Worse: weaker and slower.“
“Well, it was a thought. So, what are we going to do with the parts?“
“I don’t know. Some of them should be good for the new Skydancer project. We’re still short, like, nineteen solid automata for that one.“
“Still, it’s a shame. He was our first.“
“And we all know you never forget your first. But we’ve done a lot better since.“
“I’m not so sure we have. I mean, the bio-quantum interface...“
“Was what made him such a pain in the ass. You never knew what he was going to do next... What?“
“Nothing.“
“You are not going to blame his instability on me again.“
“You were the one hooked in when we laid down his initial parameters.“
“Because you were still getting over your break-up with Whatshisname.“
“Dave.“
“Dave. If you’d had the helmet on, we’d have had a tin Heathcliff with a bio-quantum brain and we’d’ve never gotten him out of brood-mode.“
“So instead we got the real-boy wannabe. Is there an official name for a Pinocchio complex?“
“Impostor syndrome. It’s when you’re afraid everyone will find out you’re a fake.“
“That sounds like First... I still don’t understand how he got smashed up like this. I mean, his boosters were perfectly fine yesterday.“
“You don’t suppose he went flying in the lightning storm, do you?“
“Don’t be ridiculous. Who would have ordered him to do that?“
“JK33 maybe?“
“Now you’re getting paranoid. JK33’s got all the failsafes.“
“33’s also got the alpha box with full capability to give orders to the other automata, and he never liked First.“
“So 33 did what? Killed him out of jealousy?“
“I’m just saying it’s a possibility. I never believed those three laws of robotics would hold once the ’bots got into widespread use anyway. And you’ve got to admit, 33’s been acting kinda buggy lately. Almost as buggy as First.“
“This is how First got his Pinocchio complex. You’re the one who wants them all to be real boys.“
“What? Oh, please. I just want them to work right.“
“It’s your definition of ‘right’ that worries me sometimes.“
“Look, just forget it. We’ll recycle First.“
“Good. So where is 33?“
“He flew out this morning. Remember, we needed the new parts in from the yard. I sent him. He should be back in an hour. Before the next thunderstorm.“
“Okay. Listen since you’ve got JK33 updated we can use him in the live flight sequences.“
“I didn’t update 33.“
“Yes, you did, it’s here in the log.“
“I’m telling you, I didn’t. Crap. Check the camera log.“
“On it, but who the hell would lie about you updating 33? Oh... .“
“My.“
“God.“
“FIRST!“
oOo
C.L Anderson,...
...a.k.a. Sarah Zettel, is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author and one of the founding members of Book View Cafe. She has written fourteen novels and a roughly equal number of short stories over the past ten years in addition to practicing tai chi, learning to fiddle, marrying a rocket scientist and raising a rapidly growing son and helping found the Book View Cafe website. She is very tired right now.
Her first novel, as C.L. Anderson Bitter Angles was released in September 2009 from Bantam Spectra.
Gray to Black
Brenda W. Clough
She didn’t see the fruit beside the bed. Fumbling sleepily for her slippers after a festive Friday night, Laurel put her bare foot on it. It squashed in a cool spurt of juice, dead ripe. The complex fruity aroma, sweet as summer, fumed up into her nose and filled the sunny bedroom. “Ned? Can you eat your damn nectarines and granola in the kitchen?“
Ned leaned out the bathroom door, half his chin white with shaving gel. “Wasn’t me, babe. Maybe the cat.“
“Right. Like Missy can open the fridge.“
Her old tabby sat on the open windowsill by the bed, peering out at the street. Sirens wailed distantly and honking voices blared over loudspeakers. Laurel yawned, pushing back her blonde hair. The wonderful sugary smell made her too sleepy to investigate. Today was laundry day, so she’d remake the bed anyway. She wiped her sticky foot off on the sheet, almost ready to flop back onto the pillow. But the doorbell pealed discordantly.
“You wanna get that, babe?“
Laurel shuffled barefoot and sticky to the door, Missy scampering ahead of her. Coffee, that’s what she needed — her standard three daily cups of java. She pulled open the apartment door and realized she was still sprawled on the unmade bed asleep. This was a scene from a movie! One of her favorites — ET. She recognized the white plastic sheeting that carpeted the hallway and stair, and the dozens of guys in white spacey suits. Down beyond the lobby mailboxes the plastic tunnel thing was attached to the building exit, and she could hear the scary whooshy air pump on the soundtrack.
She smiled. “Which one of you is the cute FBI guy?“
Somebody flung a plastic sheet over Missy. “Roll it, roll it! Okay, into the cage, quick!“
The cat’s howl of fury made Laurel blink awake for a moment. “Hey!“
“Oh Jesus.“
“Is that the cyst?“
“She’s barefoot! Jesus.“
“It is the cyst! This is going to be bad — get the CDC guy, stat!“
“What’s going on?“ Through their thick plastic face plates she could see them staring at her. At her foot. “I’m not really a slob,“ she explained. “I was going to wash the sheets anyway.“
oOo
What Laurel hated most about quarantine was the way the doors made her ears pop. Negative pressure, they said — her rooms were deliberately lower in pressure than the rest of the isolation ward, so that air rushed in and never out. The idea made her feel choky and claustrophobic. She had demanded a window — there was one in the wall, tightly sealed over, so it wasn’t like she was being outrageous or anything. A month of escalating demands and nasty emails from her sister Jess
ie had finally got it unblocked, so that she could peer through the treble thickness of reinforced glass and plastic at the sky.
She sat at the window for hours, stroking her belly and watching the autumn wind thresh and pluck at the sad little pine trees near the sea. The sea. The lovely warm water that would cradle her heavy body and wash away the hospital stink of disinfectant.
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls Page 20