The Third Claw of God

by Adam-Troy Castro

  I moaned. “Are you sure they gave this up? I don’t even want to live in a universe where they can put something like this on the open market.” Nor one where this was the means of the genocide I’d been warned about.

  “Then I won’t make you feel worse that this is no more severe, in terms of its destructive potential, than several items the Family’s been selling for some time. I don’t even want to know about all the projects the Bettelhines must have completed but withheld for fear of their destabilizing impact on the economy. But in this case, I understand enough of what I’ve read to confirm that the project managers ultimately judged the technical difficulties insoluble.”

  This established little beyond confirmation that the Bettelhines, or at least past generations of the family, were not unfamiliar with the Claws of God, a disturbing but wholly unsurprising revelation given that reverse engineering the innovations of others would have to be part of their business model.

  It also underlined everything I’d always believed about what pricks they were. But Skye was right. It established only that the Claws of God used today might have been Bettelhine re-creations, a possibility already considered that was, at best, a small piece of the puzzle. I filed the data away and told her to move on.

  T he Khaajiir’s writings on the subject of K’cenhowten’s Enlightenment turned out to be just one of several volumes dealing with the bloody histories of multiple species, from the Third Millennial Self-Immolation of the Cid to the Nazi Holocaust of humanity’s homeworld. He seemed fascinated by the subject, returning again and again to a special thesis: the often just-as-bloody periods of adjustment that tended to follow any extended period of tyranny and injustice. I had not yet picked up the knack of pulling the relevant facts from the explosion of information that overwhelmed me when I tried to read part of one of those theses for myself, but as it had taken the Porrinyards mere minutes to speed-read the specific volume dealing with K’cenhowten’s Age of Enlightenment, Skye was able to point me to the point she found most central.

  “The Khaajiirel are the key,” Skye said. “The late professor—I’ll call him that for the time being, to avoid confusion—noted that tyrannies and dictatorships are often so successful at repressing their peoples that chaos, borne from the various grudges and hatreds kept at bay for so long, often follows when the source of that repression is removed. He listed a number of historical strongmen who upon being overthrown or persuaded by liberalizing forces to loosen the chains on their respective societies, were replaced with even more ruinous anarchies. In short, the conquerors and despots ease up and the societies left behind chew off their own legs, reacting with auto-genocides and civil wars that end only when history provides a new order just as bad as the old one. He wrote, ‘A people hip-deep in fire will not stop burning just because would-be reformers decide that fire can be ordered to become water.’ End quote.”

  I nodded. “But that didn’t happen to the K’cenhowten. They had the Khaajiirel.”

  Skye left me holding the staff and started to pace. “True. Utopian idealists who preached peace and, instead of having their words twisted over the years and centuries to a new dogma capable of prompting inquisitions just as bad as the Age of Terror, actually got what they wanted: the tyrants overthrown, the hatred felt against their kind forgotten after only a few years. It’s not unheard of for peacemakers on any world to accomplish such a thing, but most often that occurs only when the emancipation arrives after a handful of generations. According to our professor, that’s a far cry from sudden changes of regime that have stood for centuries or longer. They possess a historical momentum almost impossible to stop without a disastrous crash. To put it another way, you can sit the various factions down at tables and tell them to play nice, but they’ll still start arguing over crimes the privileged committed against the not-so-privileged among their great-great grandparents. Again, if I can quote: ‘Claiming that the Khaajiirel accomplished otherwise, with just the force of their own ideals, is to embrace a naïveté stunning in its idiocy. The miracle claimed of them would have required a despotism dedicated to benevolence, one that forced their world’s first free generation to also become its first generation unpolluted by past evils. It was not a despotism they could have had the power to create in secret, not without leaving yet another black stain on their history. And yet they did what they did, burying all memory of their own brand of tyranny as they had buried the reign of terror that had made it necessary.’ End quote.”

  I found myself seized by a chill. “Does he specify how he thinks the historical Khaajiirel managed it?”

  “No. It’s just a vague suggestion, nothing more. But that’s the theory of historical momentum that Jason referenced when you pressured him for more information.”

  I said, “I’m not sure I like the idea of Bettelhines, any Bettelhines, reading that paragraph. Let alone idealist Bettelhines like Jason and Jelaine.”

  “Neither do I. Nor am I encouraged by the idea of Hans Bettelhine, who has never been an idealist, and who would no doubt prefer for his family to continue doing business as usual, suddenly deciding he wants to spend a year in our professor’s presence. It makes no sense.” She hesitated. “If it helps, I’ve determined the reason the Khaajiir’s such a hated, controversial figure on Bocai. Why some factions would like to assassinate him.”

  “What is it?”

  “He made light of their hatred for you.”

  My heart thumped. “What?”

  “He stood up in front of a large crowd at his university and said, ‘The phenomenon that led to the massacre is not, as so many of us would have it, solely a human one. We know better than that. Nor is it confined to Bocaians, even if so many Bocaians trapped in that community on that day committed crimes just as brutal as those committed by the Hom.Saps among them. Harping on that terrible day, urging the never-ending hatred of those who participated on one side, while ignoring the universality of the community-wide spasm, ignoring the clear evidence that this was not a tragedy of clashing cultures and moralities but of unknown other factors that would have affected any sentient creature present on that day, is the equivalent of allowing the terrible anomaly to make our decisions for us. And it is especially tragic that, betraying everything that is great about our people, we focus the impulse to demonize the people present on that day on the face of the most innocent, whose subsequent lives have been the most blighted.’” She looked up at me and concluded, “Then he said, ‘If we are ever to achieve understanding, we need to do what the historical Khaajiirel would have done. We need to stand up as one and forgive the massacre’s most maligned innocent, the human Andrea Cort…’”

  I had seen the last line coming for more than half of her recitation; indeed, I’d suspected something like that since the Khaajiir first treated me with genuine warmth. But the words hit like a hammerblow anyway. I tried to say something, but found myself obliged to excuse myself and spend the next several minutes locked in my suite’s bathroom, thinking of the siblings I’d seen murdered and of the weight of a night I’d already carried with me for too many years. This was something I’d rarely admitted to myself: not only that I’d loved Bocai as much as I’d loved my family, but that I still felt the same way after so many years of being demonized as the girl who plucked out the eyes of a Bocaian neighbor and used them as playthings. It would have meant a lot to me to hear forgiveness from a Bocaian’s lips.

  After a few minutes the immediate emotional tsunami subsided, and I was able to return to Skye with dry eyes and more troubling questions. “But why would the Bettelhines give a royal shit one way or another? They’ve never been a part of my life and I’ve never been a part of theirs. Are they commencing new careers as angels of compassion, forcing feuding peoples to shake hands and play nice? Was I invited here as an honored guest just to scratch the Khaajiir’s moral itch?”

  “I have no contribution at this time, Andrea.”

  “Even if they did decide it was important to give their pet Boca
ian professor a present, what difference would it make? He’s just one Bocaian, not even a decision-maker. The majority would still hate me. He’d tell me he was sorry about the way things are between his people and me, I’d say I appreciated the gesture, and we’d have nothing else to say to one another. That’s one hell of a stupid reason to drag a total stranger from her home with minimal notice.”

  Skye bit her lip. The Porrinyards must have wanted to take the nobler view of things, but they were also prevented from doing so by their very common sense, and it hurt them to give up on the happy ending. “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “No, it’s not possible. Not with the Bettelhines involved. Not with everything else I know about them, not with what I intend to demonstrate to you when we finally get that sparkly slut of a bartender in here. There’s not an atom of instinctive benevolence in them. There must be something else, maybe in some of the other materials Jason suggested.”

  “I’m sure there is. Alas, it took some time to get past the Khaajiir’s history, and I’ve yet to find any galvanizing connection.”

  “What about this Lillian Jane Bettelhine Jason mentioned?”

  Skye took the staff from my hands and walked away, spinning it absently as she contemplated the best route into whatever followed. “I think she may be one of those wastes of time I mentioned.”

  “That bad?”

  “That dull. She appears to have been one of the reform-minded relatives Dejah talked about; she caught the pacifism bug early and argued that the family needed to become a more positive force in human civilization. Her sentiments, as far as I can tell, were just standard Utopianism: not far from the Khaajiir’s in tone, but far inferior in depth.”

  “Give me a sample,” I said.

  “From an essay she wrote at nineteen, one that could not have gone over well with her private tutors: ‘I can’t look at the way we do business without seeing that our affect on the rest of the human species is toxic. We spread like a sickness, our very presence poisoning the wells that others drink from, our trade inspiring entire worlds to turn upon themselves like starving rats chewing off their own limbs. It is not enough for me to declare that I won’t be part of the corruption myself, if I still live life sharing in the profit. I have to do more. I need to do more. I ache to be an anti-Bettelhine: if not in the sense of warring on my family, then at least in some smaller way, proving by example that we can replenish some of the hope we’ve stolen.’”

  “That sounds like more than typical adolescent rebellion.”

  “You would think so. In truth, she was always very careful to separate her love for her family as people from her rejection of everything they stood for. Unfortunately, she was as naïve as she was idealistic, and so it never occurred to her that her statement of principles, mild as it reads to us, could get her into trouble with Mom and Dad. Not long after she penned those words she was deemed a disruptive force, useless for all corporate purposes, and subjected to internal exile at one of several estates the Family maintains for that purpose—hardly, as Dejah indicated, the first or last time something of the sort had happened. I doubt she wanted for anything in her life but freedom.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “The Bettelhine genealogy lists her as deceased, not many years afterward. I don’t know whether she remained in Internal Exile or left Xana, but she was certainly never a corporate force.”

  I refrained from scolding Skye, even in jest, for this gap in her intelligence. Allowing for all the extreme compression required of them, the Porrinyards must have already gleaned more data from the Khaajiir’s files than I could have found given weeks to work with. But Lillian Jane Bettelhine’s scandalous opinions didn’t fill in a missing piece of the jigsaw so much as establish the existence of an entirely new region of the puzzle. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “There’s got to be a connection, love. Do you think Jason intends to model himself on his late aunt?”

  “That would be a step back for him. He’s hooked up with his sister and consolidated a substantial power base that threatens Philip’s role as heir apparent. Lillian Jane said a few intemperate things before being shuffled off to some cozy family gulag where she wouldn’t disturb anybody by causing uncomfortable silences at parties. On a global level, there was nothing to emulate about her but for a few principled words.”

  Skye’s determination to minimize Lillian Jane at any cost was beginning to get on my nerves. “Words have been known to move mountains.”

  “And mountains,” Skye said, “are easier to move than empires. Trust me, Andrea. I understand the natural impulse to paint Lillian as a great visionary, but there’s no indication that she ever had any truly revolutionary ideas capable of affecting more than her own personal conduct. You can translate everything she wrote up to that point as the bland self-serving declaration I will be a good person, devoid of any additional context or detail. I don’t think she ever presented a real threat to the Bettelhine status quo, at least not as much as Jason and Jelaine seem to.”

  I had noticed the careful use of the phrase up to that point. “And yet Jason said she’s important. How?”

  Skye spun the Khaajiir’s staff in her hands, not so much plumbing its data as distracting herself with baton twirls. The lights it reflected spun around the walls like glowing coins. “Not to the problem at hand.”

  I waited for her to offer something else.

  But the answer to that question, if it existed, remained locked in the crystal staff.

  Part of me wanted to continue looking. I could feel something tremendous lurking in that direction. But the Porrinyards were correct about one thing. Right now, all other questions paled against the identity of the individual who had placed the Claw of God against the Khaajiir’s back.

  If Skye was so certain that the travails of Lillian Jane Bettelhine were irrelevant to that question, then it was time to leave her behind and start setting off bombs.

  Especially since I was already juggling several that remained undetonated.

  I could feel a special kind of anticipatory anger, the kind that would give me strength for the confrontations to come, welling up inside me as I told Skye, “All right, then. Have Oscin send that annoying little quiff up here.”

  “I’m already bringing her,” Skye said, her voice deepening to indicate Oscin’s. Then, in her own softer tones: “I could tell you were ready from the look in your eyes.”

  C olette Wilson sat, puzzled but as obliging as always, in the suite’s most comfortable chair, offering several attempts at a tentative half-smile that only grew broader as I obliged her with a kind, encouraging look of my own. Her spirit and vitality had been depleted not at all by the stress of the hours since the Khaajiir’s death; though she’d been willing to take the chair, she perched at its very edge, her back straight and her eyes round as she awaited her opportunity to answer any questions I might provide. At some point in the last hour she’d washed up and replenished her makeup, providing a thin touch of eyeliner to accentuate her bejeweled eyes and bring her gamine look back into sharp relief. Her electric hair remained inactive, thank Juje. Either she continued to find its display programs too grim for the occasion, or she knew that they rendered any undistracted conversation with her almost impossible.

  Now that she was alone with us and away from the Bettelhines, she revealed a simmering fascination for Skye, asking her if she really remembered everything Oscin had said and done since the two had been apart.

  Skye said, “You want to know what he’s doing right now?”

  Colette colored, glanced at me, then hid her little grin with a fan of her fingertips. Not hidden at all, the fanning gesture as expressive as the grin itself had been. Like most people enjoying their first encounter with a linked pair, she could not help thinking about the erotic possibilities.

  I sensed how easy it would have been to like her, if I allowed myself.

  If I didn’t consider her obscene.

  Skye wasn’t fooled by my gentle dem
eanor as I told Colette my questions would be no more than routine, and apologized again for snapping at her before dinner. But she remained silent, merely backing me up with smiles and nods and occasional leading questions that followed my leads.

  What followed was, for most of its length, by design one of the dullest and least informative interrogations I’ve ever conducted.

  Any pretense that I might have considered Colette an important witness faded as I exhausted substantive matters and steered toward fripperies, such as the important people she’d hosted in her years on the carriage, and her favorite places to spend her time off. She told a funny but respectful story about Arturo’s fussy behavior. I made a little scandalous joke about Philip Bettelhine. She tittered and found the nerve to ask how long the Porrinyards and I had been together. I told her, offering a cute and slightly risque detail for lagniappe. More laughter.

  We had a great time. We became good friends.

  By the time another twenty minutes had passed, it was all one great big fucking party.

  At which point, I shook my head to deny the most recent burst of gentle laughter, shot a sharp glance at Skye, and repeated, “You know, I really do need to apologize again for the way I treated you during dinner. I was out of line and I apologize.”

  She fanned her fingertips over her lips again. “You don’t have to keep doing that, Counselor. I understand. It’s not the first time I’ve ever had to deal with a stressed-out client.”