Naturally, most intercontinua craft were airworthy, as a result, and it was only the most reckless of souls who translocated while anywhere near ground level.
As the ground fell away beyond the portholes, Starkweather chatted amiably in Spanish with the Berber scholars over cups of strong Turkish coffee, spicing her own liberally with a splash of Tennessee whiskey from a flask she pulled from a hip pocket. A few moments later the ship’s physician joined them, an older woman named Ortiz who was a Guanche native who spoke Castilian Spanish with the slight accent of the Canary Islands, her coffee so flavored with milk that it almost matched her tawny skin.
The Berbers, like Starkweather and all the other passengers onboard, were bound for the seat of the League of Worlds and hub of intercontinua trade, Helium. Knowledge, like wealth and natural resources, was something which the Heliumites had in abundance. And while the streets of Helium were not paved in gold, they may as well have been, as the alternative was rich in the lighter-than-air gas that gave the city-state its name. The gas helium was found in most all alternatives, but only a scant few, like Helium herself or Vivian Starkweather’s native Texico, had the resources necessary to extract and refine it. And though only the most trusted diplomats could penetrate to the heart of the League of Worlds headquarters itself, all were welcome in the public areas of Helium, and so it was not uncommon to find natives of all imaginable histories jostling cheek by jowl in the markets and thoroughfares of Helium, including elfish or brutish men from alternatives where different strains of humanity came to dominate, or even some who, while they walked and talked like humans, were derived from other animals altogether, lagomorphs and lizardmen and talking apes from alternatives where species other than man rose to sentience and dominance.
The ship’s steward entered the drawing room, a young man of European extraction who was no more than twenty years old and spoke with a faint Eton accent. He introduced himself merely as Patrick, and said that he’d been sent to see to the passengers’ needs, and that the captain would be joining them shortly.
When the airship had reached a suitable altitude, the chimes again rang throughout the ship, this time signaling that the translocation engine would momentarily be engaged. A short while later a brief, high-pitched whine sounded in the drawing room, followed by an almost imperceptible juddering, and then faded almost, but not entirely, away, the whine persisting just at the edge of hearing, the vibration only barely perceptible in the faint ripples in the coffee within their cups, or the gentle shake of the feathers the purple-haired Aztec woman wore through her headband.
Once the ship was underway, propelled by jets of air from nozzles mounted on the outer hull, the propellers useless in the airless vacuum of underspace, the captain joined the first-class passengers in the drawing room.
Before Captain N’Diklam had made it two steps into the cabin, though, the three men of the security detachment, bowler hats now clutched in their hands, put themselves in his path.
“Captain, we need to discuss the security precautions you’ve taken for our empress’s impending arrival.” Engels blinked his eyes rapidly, punctuating his words with little stabs of his free hand, the fingers of the other wrapped tightly around the brim of his hat.
“And so you shall, gentlemen,” N’Diklam said with an easy smile. “We won’t be stopping at your alternative until late afternoon, the day after tomorrow, and I assure you that we will have everything settled to your satisfaction well before that time.”
Behind Engel, the little round man and the other with the piercing blue eyes exchanged glances.
The tall African looked down at the smaller white man still blocking his way. “But in the near term, I would very much like a cup of coffee and a chance to speak to the other passengers,” N’Diklam said, gently but with steel beneath his words. “If you wouldn’t mind...?” He made a short motion with his hand, as if miming opening a door, and raised an eyebrow, waiting a response.
Engel, flustered, clenched the brim of his hat tighter, but with a final harrumph turned to the left and moved out of the way, his two companions following precisely at his flanks, as in a carefully practiced maneuver.
As the captain moved to mingle with the rest of the passengers, introducing himself and giving the assurances of himself and the whole Crosstime Line that their journeys would be pleasant ones, the three men of the security detachment drifted to the nearest porthole and, peering out with open-mouthed expressions of wonder, gawped like rustics at the unsettlingly shifting colors and strange geometries of underspace beyond.
That evening, after dinner, Captain N’Diklam, Starkweather, and a few of the other passengers gathered at the card table in the smoking room, while in the salon the ship’s steward played a seemingly endless series of romantic airs on the aluminum grand piano for the entertainment of the Hindu princesses.
The Russians, with small glasses of vodka at their elbows, urged for a few rounds of durak, but the notion of a game with no winners, only a single loser for each round, soon wore on the other players, and another game was called for. N’Diklam exercised a bit of command authority and led the way with a hand of primero, which proved too complex for simple enjoyment but with stakes too low to be of much interest. When Starkweather instructed the others in the basics of Texican hold ‘em, though, the group seemed to have found its proper tempo, and a number of hands followed.
Starkweather had the button, and was sitting on a pair of queens in the hole, when the bosun burst in, eyes wide and white in his dark face.
“It’s the navigator!” he blurted out, rushing to the captain’s side. “She’s been murdered!”
And that signaled the end of the evening’s entertainments.
It was long past the hour when the passengers might have been expected to retire for the evening, but most of them lingered in the salon, waiting to hear word about the poor navigator. The Aztec woman, her purple bob somewhat ruffled, was uncharacteristically chatty, and reported passing the crewmen carrying the body through the companionway to the medical bay, the blood seeping through the linen sheet which swathed her lifeless form. Her companion, in only his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, tapped one of his jade earplugs and scowled, muttering something beneath his breath about the unseemly waste of so much blood.
There was some concern over what would become of the ship, without the navigator to guide her through underspace. Would the Crosstime Express drift helplessly in that strange realm, never to return to the sane security of space-time, much less her intended destination? Those fears were quickly put to rest, however, when more seasoned intercontinua travelers among them explained about the standard practice of employing second navigators in the event of emergency. All agreed that brutal murder was likely not one of the anticipated emergencies, but were nevertheless relieved the protocol was in place.
A few of the crew mingled with the passengers, as the captain had evicted all but Doctor Ortiz, himself, and the bosun from the medical bay for the duration of the autopsy, and the crewmen were just as unsettled by the unexpected and brutal slaying as the passengers. The steward made a desultory attempt to lighten the mood by playing music hall tunes on the aluminum grand piano, but abandoned the attempt in moments, after catching a sharp glance from Starkweather.
Finally, the captain returned and gave a full accounting of the situation to the others. It appeared, he said, that the navigator had been assaulted at her post by an unknown assailant, and stabbed repeatedly with a slim blade. Nothing further was known about the incident, but the captain assured the passengers that the crew would be conducting a thorough investigation, and that on their arrival in Helium the matter would be remanded to the Crosstime Line and the authorities to investigate fully. In the meantime, however, the passengers should sleep soundly in the knowledge that he had increased the ship’s onboard security, posting armed crewmen in all of the companionways and public areas day and night, and that he would allow nothing to threaten the safety of the passengers.
/> At the captain’s side was a man of middle age with a double chin and tufts of hair sticking from his ears, who had the sigil of a seer emblazoned on the blue-and-gold rosette pinned to his lapel.
“Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Mr. Tanacre, our ship’s second navigator,” the captain said. “You have my complete assurances that Tanacre will be able to guide our course successfully through the remainder of our voyage.” ,
Some of the passengers evidently harbored concerns about the man’s qualifications, but it was Engel who stepped forward to give those concerns voice.
“How do we know that this tub of guts has the stuff to get the job done?”
The second navigator seemed flustered by the brusque and outright rude manner of the man, but with a glance to the captain he calmly explained. “Well,” he began, his voice quavering slightly, “while my own mastery of the talent of seeing is not nearly so powerful or refined as that of the late navigator, still I am confident in my ability to fulfill my duties.”
Engel narrowed his eyes. “Just what do you mean, ‘not nearly so powerful?’“
“Well,” the navigator explained, with mounting confidence, “the late navigator was so powerful a seer that she might even have been able to read another’s thoughts if she so chose, and at the very least could have detected any extremes of emotion or distress onboard the Express.” He paused, then humbly added, “I, on the other hand, am able merely to peer through underspace into other worlds, helping chart the Express’s course through this tumultuous region.”
“Thank you, Tanacre,” the captain interrupted. “And thank you,” he said to the passengers, “for your patience and understanding in these unfortunate circumstances. Now, the second navigator is needed at his post if we are to reach our off-route stop tomorrow.”
Captain and navigator excused themselves, and then singly or in pairs the passengers drifted away from the salon and back to their individual cabins for the night.
The following day passed quickly, with most of the passengers seeming to prefer the solitude of their cabins to the exposure of the public spaces, and so it was not until the evening meal that most of them were gathered together again. At the captain’s insistence, the first-class passengers had joined him at the captain’s table, which had been expanded by additional leaves for the occasion.
Whether by happenstance or design, the three men of the security detachment had been seated as far from the captain as possible. And when Engel began to belabor the captain about the failure of the crew to locate the killer, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the placement had been by design.
Starkweather found herself seated next to the two Indian princesses. Chatting amiably over appetizers and aperitifs, the young ladies with the former and Starkweather with the latter, it eventuated that the two Hindus were wealthy heiresses from an alternative dominated by South Asia, and were on one last grand voyage together before one of them went off to university and the other got married. They hadn’t traveled far at all from home before, and were almost as wide-eyed at the wonders of the Myriad as the backwater security detachment, though the young ladies handled it with considerably more grace.
Still, there were some realities of intercontinua travel that came as a surprise to them. For example, one of the two mentioned having been accosted back in Starkweather’s Texico by a young man who insisted that he knew her, when the young lady knew for a fact that they’d never met. The young man had pressed the issue, referring to some intimate history that they’d supposedly shared, and it was only with the assistance of a passing Texican Ranger that the young lady had been able to extricate herself from the man’s grip.
Starkweather, taking pains to reassure the young women about the safety of the streets of her native Waterloo, explained how worlds which were nearest one another in the Myriad, whose histories diverged in the relatively recent past, could produce nearly identical duplicates of the same person, one in each alternative. But while the two duplicates might resemble one another physically, sharing a common point of origin, their own personal histories would diverge as much and as quickly as did the histories of their world. Such misunderstandings and misidentifications as the young women had encountered were actually quite common in intercontinua travel. With a sly smile, Starkweather confided that she’d pretended to be her own duplicate, on several different occasions, just to avoid uncomfortable reunions with her own past associates.
Later, after the first course arrived, conversation around the table turned, as it often did, to politics. There was some dissension around the table about the League of Worlds, and particularly its noninterference accords. The League, to which the native alternatives of most of the passengers and crew belonged, worked to prevent the disruption of developing worlds, in the hopes that worlds unaware of the existence of the Myriad might not be exploited by their more technologically advanced neighbors. However, as others around the table were quick to point out, the noninterference accords were only enforceable among member alternatives. Others, and in particular the Tenth Imperium, an intercontinua power which dominated nearly as many alternatives as belonged to the League of Worlds, in particular had a long history of interference. And, in fact, it was a customary tactic of the Imperium to offer intercontinua technology to worlds that had not yet discovered the principle of translocation or yet developed the Talents, in exchange for their allegiance to the Tenth Imperium.
The Ambassador from the Reformed Dynast of Heliopolis, who had remained silent through most of the discussion, raised a grim specter when he suggested the possibility that the differing philosophies of the League and the Tenth Imperium might one day lead to armed conflict between the two bodies. It would be regrettable, the Ambassador insisted, but seemed to him to be inevitable. Something of a pall fell over the table, as the Ambassador’s dire assessment settled in.
It was at this point, rushing to fill the silence, that Engel switched from opprobrium, directed at the captain and crew, to self-aggrandizement, directed at himself and his people. He boasted about how scientists of his own nation-state had independently discovered translocation the year before, and made contact with other worlds in short order. And that his own island nation boasted a disproportionately high number of Talents, or so he believed, including a member of his own detachment. He indicated the man with the piercing blue eyes, and explained that he had been found to have some ability to send, though understandably undeveloped and untrained.
Starkweather couldn’t resist deflating the man, as puffed up as he was. She pointed out, casually, that in her own alternative it had been less than a decade and a half since William James pioneered the development of psychic abilities, fortuitously just in time for Nikola Tesla to complete the translocation engine. And yet with only a few years’ head start, her own alternative was rapidly becoming a key player in intercontinua commerce, while his home was still barely dipping their toes into the shallow end of underspace.
Engel blustered, cheeks puffed and red, but failed to mount any effective retort, and when the next course arrived on the table, the conversation drifted on.
After dinner, Captain N’Diklam was joined by the bosun and the cook’s mate in an impromptu recital. All three men hailed from the western shores of Africa in their respective alternatives, and had brought onboard sabar drums crafted from the wood of the baobab tree; though they came from widely divergent histories, the rhythm of the drums seemed to cut across the Myriad. While he was the commanding officer of the ship, in their informal ensembles N’Diklam played the Lambe, the squat barrel-shaped bass drum, letting the cook’s mate set the tempo with the tall, slender Sabar N’Der, leaving the bosun to play the tenor Talmbat.
The rhythm of the sabar drums reverberated through the ship, and for a short while, at least, the tense atmosphere of the past day seemed to lighten, if only a little.
On the way back to her cabin, Vivian Starkweather nearly collided with Doctor Ortiz, who was visibly upset. With the promise of a nightca
p of Tennessee whiskey and a fine Virginian cigarillo, Starkweather lured the woman to her cabin, and there got from her the reasons for her distress.
The doctor’s report about the late navigator, it appeared, had differed in significant detail from that relayed by the captain to the passengers. Rather than being stabbed to death, the doctor explained, the amount of blood found on the navigator’s body suggested that the woman’s heart had stopped pumping long before she had died. In other words, the navigator had been dead before the knife had ever been plunged into her body.
“A sender,” Starkweather said, nodding.
“It isn’t unheard of,” the doctor answered, plainly distressed. “A powerful enough suggestion could convince the mind to stop the heart’s beating.”
Starkweather took a long drag of her cigarillo, thoughtfully.
“What I don’t understand is,” the doctor went on, both hands wrapped tightly around her mug of whiskey, “if the killer was a sender, why stab a body that’s already dead?”
Starkweather threw back the rest of her own whiskey in a single shot, then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Darlin’, that’s a fine question.”
Klaxons sounding in the middle of the night disturbed the slumber of the crew, and even woke most of the passengers in their soundproofed cabins. It was a familiar sound in intercontinua travel, and hardly a cause for serious alarm, but even the seasoned travelers like Starkweather found it difficult to go back to sleep while the ship was under attack.
Beyond the pressurized hull of the Crosstime Express, the strange denizens of underspace swarmed, intent on consuming the ship and all within her. From time to time one ventured near enough that their diamond-hard hide brushed against the outer hull, sending vibrations rattling through the ship, setting teeth and nerves on edge.
Sideways In Crime Page 38