The Third Claw of God

by Adam-Troy Castro

  I opened the holo and knew where I’d seen Daiken. He’d been living a content if quiet existence, warming up food in the galley of the Bettelhine Royal Carriage.

  His name at the time had been Loyal Jeck.

  What a joke. Loyal.

  The Bettelhine he’d offended must have been having a great time at his expense.

  I awoke again to find my bladder full and the ceiling striped with lengthening shadows. I sat up, fought off a wave of dizziness that almost made me want to lie down again, winced even after it cleared from the sensation of a peculiar heaviness to my head, and swung my legs (clad, I noticed now, in silky pink pajamas just loose enough to caress the skin with every move I made), over the side of the bed. The tile floor felt warm, in a manner that suggested subsurface heating elements. But the texture of the lining was just sensual enough to make me appreciate the decadence anyway.

  The lights came on the instant I carried my own weight. However long I’d been drifting in and out, there had not been any extensive muscular atrophy. Still, just to be sure, I closed my eyes and spun en pointe, just once, to make sure I still had some coordination. I did. That was good. If I had to fight for my life anytime soon, I wouldn’t be stumbling around like a drunk.

  My head felt heavier than it should have been. I didn’t realize why until soft hair longer than mine was supposed to be brushed both sides of my face. It was shoulder-length now, and fuller than it had ever been. What the hell?

  The bathroom was a few steps away, complete with a sunken tub bigger than some swimming pools I’d known and a gold-trimmed vanity surrounded by a selection of creams, perfumes, lotions, and topical euphorics even more extensive than the one that had so impressed the Porrinyards in our suite on the Royal Carriage. I was more bothered by what I saw in the mirror at their center, but waited until I could find the solid gold toilet and achieve blessed release before returning to lower myself into the plush chair at the vanity and stare, with a mixture of horror and wonder, at the stranger gaping back at me.

  The face was still mine, even if the complexion was milkier than it had been even in a while; I’d always retained a light tan with minimal exposure to UV, even in environments limited to artificial light. I supposed I could have lost a little color during my time in recovery. But the hair was a revolution. The tint was closer to dark brown than to my habitual jet-black; and my usual close-cropped style, chosen for practicality, and providing the only concession to personality with one errant lock that I allowed to grow longer, was now rich and silky and tickling my shoulders on both sides. Shiny bangs descended to eyebrow altitude. The unknown cosmetician had also applied a touch of eyeliner: not much, just enough to add to my own growing alarm.

  All my adult life I’d been surprised when people called me beautiful. I’d never seen it before, and had to admit it now. They’d made me a stunner. But this was not a look I’d ever sought for myself. It made me look soft, feminine in a manner that had never been among my personal affectations.

  Could this be what Hans Bettelhine wanted?

  It seemed insane. Were he in the market for more empty-headed concubines, he had plenty of obliging choices on this planet, with or without artificial inducement.

  And why would the Porrinyards ever have abandoned me to this?

  I returned to the bedroom, where my first stop was the wardrobe. I hoped against hope to find my satchel or one of my black suits in there. No such luck: there were sequined things I might have been expected to wear to a formal dinner, patterned blouses and skirts more suitable for everyday wear, and even some pullovers and trousers I could imagine walking around in, but there was nothing that communicated my preferred cold, iron armor of authority. The shoes included everything from slippers to vertiginous high heels. I left the wardrobe behind, considered a straight escape through what appeared to be the front door, decided that it was probably guarded, then focused on the scarlet mountains on the horizon and ran out to the balcony, in the vain hope that I’d find sense out there when there was none available in here.

  The balcony was large enough to contain its own garden, with speckled plants that flowered in spirals and a tiny water wheel that spun in perpetuity from the gentle influence of a crystal stream spouting from a channel in the wall above. There was enough space for a narrow path marked by tiled flagstones and leading to a hovering swing large enough for two. A wide-eyed, flexible animal of some kind, with snow-white fur and an expression of intense interest, watched me and then indicated acceptance with a languid collapse against one of the embroidered cushions.

  There was also a sculpted stone table surrounded by a circular stone bench. The Khaajiir’s staff stood propped against a salmon-colored planter sprouting an orgy of fronds. When I reached the waist-high wall at the end of the balcony and peered over, I winced at the sight of a drop that, between three stories of building and another great wall of rusty scrub-covered cliffside, must have totaled four hundred meters straight down. There was a sparkling lake down there, aglow with the light of the setting sun, and empty at the moment but for a single pleasure boat under sail. Many kilometers away, angular red mountains backlit by the light of a sun so close to disappearing over that horizon that I was able to stare at that distant swollen circle without feeling the need to blink.

  A bird flew by. It was unlike any flying creature I’d ever seen, a scarlet flaming thing with a face like a dagger and a head crest that resembled a paper fan, reaching almost all the way back to its brilliant, blue-tipped tail. It performed a little swoop, blinking at me with clear intelligence before performing the avian equivalent of a shrug and spiraling with a defiant caw.

  I was just beginning to consider ways to climb down when a familiar voice behind me said, “That’s a dekarsi. It’s an imported Tchi species, one of my favorites. Their intelligence is that of a human five-year-old.”

  I whirled.

  It was Jelaine Bettelhine, dressed in riding pants, boots, and a tight leather vest over a checkered shirt. Her hair was tied back, and looked windblown. Her fair complexion had freckled from sun. She was shiny and smiling.

  I punched her in the mouth.

  I don’t know whether she could have stopped me. Probably. My experience with my own linked pair had long ago established that the enhancement provides a superhuman reaction time. Neither Oscin nor Skye would have been caught off-guard by an attack like that. But Jelaine allowed my blow to strike home and knock her down. She lay on the floor, blinking at me, the pain doing nothing to dilute the damnable affection in her eyes. “Why did you do that, Andrea? Just to see if you still could?”

  I rubbed my knuckles. “Something like that.”

  “I thought you needed the reassurance, which is why I let you get away with it. Don’t worry. Your mind is still your own, and will remain your own. We wouldn’t dream of dragging you this far, and putting you through so much, only to vandalize such a finely tuned instrument.” She used her knuckles to wipe blood from her lips. “May I get up?”

  I didn’t say yes. “Where am I?”

  Jelaine sat up, shaking her head in comical reaction to the force of my blow. “One of the smaller guest suites of my private estate in the northeastern region of Asgard. That’s the prettier continent, the one restricted to Inner Family and support staff. We had you transferred here under high security once you were deemed well enough to travel.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “On Xana? About a week. Here? About three days. You’re a fast healer. Oh, Andrea, I know you haven’t had the best visit so far, but this is silly. May I please get up so we may speak face to face?”

  Her sweet deference, a sharp contrast to the power she held over me, grated. I wanted to kick her. But I could think of no reason I should and a multitude of pressing reasons why I should not. So I nodded.

  She stood, used a hand to pat down her hair, and gestured toward the stone table.

  We sat down, facing each other across a frieze of winged serpents flying en masse
over a landscape of snow-capped mountains. The stone of the bench felt cool through my sheer pajamas, in sensuous contrast to the pleasant warmth of the breeze. I don’t like outdoor environments and I still felt energized by this one, in a manner I immediately attributed to an oxygen mix higher than the usual formula on places like New London. Leave it to the Bettelhines. They even gave themselves superior air.

  She said, “I know this is difficult. A mind as sharp as yours must have trouble dealing with short-term memory loss. Please understand that the worst has passed, that we don’t expect any further problems with retention, and that everything I now need to explain to you a second time has already been accepted and embraced by you in the recent past.”

  Just because I bought her explanations when not in my right mind—and I had only her word for that—was no guarantee that I’d feel the same way when capable of reason. “I refuse to believe that the Porrinyards abandoned me.”

  She reached out and touched the back of my hand. “They haven’t. They stayed with you, or nearby, throughout the most difficult stages of your recovery. I was awed by their devotion.”

  “Then where are they now?”

  “In orbit, staying aboard your personal transport, which is still docked at Layabout. I assured them that they could remain here as personal guests, and they said they didn’t want to pressure you in any of the difficult decisions you’re going to have to make. That was how they put it, at least. Nobody’s keeping you from speaking to them, or even leaving with them if that’s what you want.”

  This still felt wrong. Oscin and Skye were my partners. There were no difficult personal decisions I’d keep from them, or any they’d expect me to. I grabbed a lock of my luxurious new hair and said, “What about this? I have trouble accepting that it’s one week’s natural growth.”

  She grinned. “What about it? It’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s also disturbing. What gave you the right?”

  Her smile never wavered. “You did. My father asked to see what you’d look like with shoulder-length hair, you said it was all right with you, so we applied some nanostimulants to your follicles and had one of our stylists sculpt the results. You can cut it short again, if you like. Though I’d consider that a genuine shame.”

  I was growing more and more frustrated by this private joke I was failing to get. “I’m not your father’s doll to dress up. What is this? Is he infatuated with me or something?”

  Jelaine winced. “Oh, Juje, no.”

  “Then what the hell difference would it make to him what my hair looked like? Whether it was long, short, braided, absent, purple, glowing like Colette’s, or replaced with scales?”

  The animal I’d spotted sleeping on the swing now leaped up on the table before her, inviting attention. Jelaine scratched the fuzzy head and made it purr. She said, “He just needed to see what you would look like with shoulder-length brown hair. Come on, Andrea. Think. I’ve already seen you astonish my father by anticipating the explanation for all this. I’m sure you can put it all together a second time if you try.”

  Now irritated beyond all measure by her teasing ways, I rolled my eyes and this time found myself focusing on the Khaajiir’s staff, still propped up against the planter like any other design element in this fussy little garden.

  Why was it here? Had I been using it before?

  I remembered Skye’s words: “If I ever withhold anything from you it’s either because, by my considered judgment, it’s none of your business or nothing you need to know at the moment.”

  She’d said that on the Royal Carriage, while giving me a tour of the Khaajiir’s database. She’d indicated her intension to leave out issues unrelated to the current problem, issues that I might have to deal with later. It was the only way to keep me on track.

  But her briefing had seemed pretty complete anyway. Hadn’t it been?

  She’d even allowed me to hold on to the staff myself, providing me direct access to the data she’d judged pertinent as she guided me through everything Oscin had found.

  How could she have hidden anything from me then?

  I thought back and realized.

  No. She hadn’t let me hold the staff throughout that briefing.

  Near the end, she’d taken it away before sharing her findings.

  She’d done it with such casual skill, such a lack of apology, that I hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

  But now I remembered that she’d taken the staff away while covering the only subject she claimed she hadn’t learned everything about. Her answers on that subject had been fragmentary at best, containing no information relevant to me. When that subject proved irrelevant to the identity of the murderer aboard the Royal Carriage, I’d allowed her to put the issue aside.

  What issue had she been talking about then?

  What was so big it might have hurt my ability to resolve this crisis threatening all our lives?

  I found myself thinking of other moments, all the way to the beginning of this whole sorry business.

  The AIsource had said, We hope you’ll survive the shock.

  Jelaine had told me, “You need to stay.”

  She’d also said, “We have more in common that you can possibly know.” Later on, when I’d figured out the true extent of the connection between her and Jason, I’d imagined that she was just talking about cylinking. But that was something she had in common with the Porrinyards, not with me.

  She’d spoken to me with affection and looked at me with undisguised love.

  They’d both looked at me with undisguised love.

  The Bettelhines had made me not a personal guest, but honored guest.

  And then there’s what the Dip Corps had done to me, their pet war criminal.

  Antrecz Pescziuwicz had seen it right away. “The Dip Corps could have changed your name, maybe your hair color and a couple of other cosmetic things about you, given you a new ID file and a false history, and nobody but your bosses would have known that you were the same kid. Instead, they put you to work as Andrea Cort, child war criminal grown up, and willingly ate all the seven hundred flavors of crap they had to swallow because of the propaganda weapon they handed all the alien governments who want to paint humanity as a bunch of homicidal bastards who let their own get away with murder. Why would they put themselves through that? Why would they put you through that?”

  The AIsource had given me part of the answer. Any conspiracies that have been around you since unformed childhood must have had less to do with manipulating you than using you as a tool to manipulate others.

  But who could I have been used to manipulate, when still a child?

  Jelaine had said, “A changed man can change his family, and what his family stands for. Even, I daresay, how the family sees its obligations toward its own.”

  Too many other offhand comments to list, all now making a terrible kind of sense. I could think of a dozen more without even trying hard.

  Among them, the AIsource assuring me that the tragedy on Bocai was the last thing any Bettelhine would have wanted.

  Wethers, at the end, acting like he recognized me for the first time. Saying, “I’ve…been stupid. Didn’t see what was in front of me. Didn’t see what I should have known.”

  And them, finally: when I struck Colette in anger, when I searched for the limitations of her inability to say no, Skye had looked at me as if just then discovering who I was for the very first time. She already knew, from what she’d read in the Khaajiir’s files. But how must it have felt for her, to see it demonstrated with such awful clarity?

  I watched myself, as if from a distance, rising from the bench and approaching that planter, and as my right hand closed around the Khaajiir’s staff and as I thought a woman’s name.

  The image that formed in my mind portrayed her the way she’d looked when she lived on Xana. She was a bright-eyed, wistful young woman with shoulder-length brown hair and the kind of face that makes light shine on any world where she chooses to walk.

>   I’d known her years later when she wore a different name and when that hair was cut short but still sleek enough to shine beneath the glow of a Bocaian sun.

  Dejah had said, “You’d be surprised how many outcast Bettelhines live in other systems under assumed names.”

  Lillian Jane Bettelhine.

  Younger sister of Hans.

  Aunt of Jason, Jelaine, and Philip.

  Exiled idealist.

  Name changed to Veronica Cort.

  Resident of a doomed experimental Utopian community on Bocai.

  Participant in the auto-genocide that community inflicted upon itself.

  Loving wife of the late Bernard Cort.

  Loving mother to my late brother and sister.

  Loving mother to—

  I dropped the Khaajiir’s staff and fell to my knees, crying a word I had not spoken in decades.

  “Mommy…!”

  20

  BETTELHINE FAMILY BUSINESS

  I ’ll skip over the hysterics of the next ten minutes. I was overwrought, wrapped in loss, mourning a family torn from me that I’d refused to remember with love for more years than I care to count. An idyll had been transformed in one horrid night of blood and madness to a hell of sterile incarceration and institutional rape, leaving me not just hard but also brittle, capable of shattering into pieces on those rare occasions when something scraped the scabs off my wounds.

  The Porrinyards had been very good at dealing with me at such times. Now the shared persona of Jason-and-Jelaine proved the same, its Jelaine avatar embracing me, telling me that she knew what I’d been through, that it was all right, that I had a real home now if I wanted one. I’d be lying if I claimed that I didn’t hug her back, or that many of the tears I shed in that ten minutes were grateful ones.