Analog SFF, July-August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I don't know if I is with you,” said Porkle'pi, “but I appear to still be behind you."

  "Watch your head as we pass through this doorway,” Albrett said.

  They crouched as they entered an unlit corridor with a low ceiling. Albrett switched on a flashlight and produced a large ring full of keys.

  "One of the prices of living in the City of Locked Doors is carrying too many keys,” he said as he began examining them one by one. After a while, he grinned and held up the ring by a brass key with a large shaft, proclaiming: “Here it is."

  A few minutes later, they were inside the War College, in a back gallery where shafts of light fell through the steamy haze from high windows. They worked their way through a confused maze of hallways and courtyards—no chamalian building was ever laid out in a comprehensible pattern, but relied instead on chance and memory. And as was usual in such places, Pog suddenly found himself in a familiar space.

  "Follow me,” he said.

  He led them straightaway to the office he was seeking, Albrett guarding their passage with his sword in his hand while Porkle'pi and Kurch'll kept an eye on their rear.

  They passed through the outer door, which Albrett locked behind them, then went on into the inner chamber, where they came face to face with the chamalian Pog had come to know as H'ree, a pilgrim of the Way of Jobe.

  "Come in,” H'ree said. “I've been expecting you."

  * * * *

  Three hundred and forty years ago, young Jobe, innocent and ambitious, walked out of the sunrise gate of the city of Suridash. Three hundred and twenty years ago, old Jobe, wise in the ways of the world, returned through the sunset gate to the city of his birth, having circumnavigated the globe.

  His followers—or the most persistent of them—endeavored to repeat the journey. Jobe had come to Meshkar late in his own pilgrimage, and as a consequence, pilgrims of his Way who made it as far as Kar-Kar-a-Mesh were wise, wily, and difficult to kill.

  Judging by appearances, H'ree was none of these. An old terrier with white fur in his chin whiskers and at the peaks of his ears, he would not have attracted notice on the street.

  But Pog wondered if that was the secret to his longevity.

  "I assumed that someone would come along asking questions about the wise angel,” H'ree said after all the introductions were made and instructions for standing guard over the office were issued. Albrett, sword in hand, took command of the outer office, while Porkle'pi and Kurch'll covered the windows. Pog settled into a large overupholstered chair across a table from H'ree. The table was cluttered with bound texts, scrolls, and scrap boxes, with a small sphere-of-Jobe set in a cradle at one end.

  "But I expected another angel or a member of the Public Vendetta,” H'ree continued. He picked up a pair of spectacles and pushed them over his square snout. Pog wasn't sure how much they could help, given the fan of white whiskers that shielded his eyes.

  "I worked for Dr. Wu,” Pog said. “No one has more right to answers about his death than I do."

  "You are the one he made sit in the outer office,” H'ree said. “His house servant. Or are you more than that? I don't know of many house servants who travel with a retinue of armed guards. One might almost suspect you of being the Scarlet Starflower."

  Pog noticed Porkle'pi's pines stand briefly on end, then subside.

  "So what brings you here before anyone else?"

  "Servants see many things. There was very little about Dr. Wu that I did not know. You would suppose that if anyone wanted him dead, I would have known that as well. But I did not. I still do not. It stands to reason, then, that he was killed because of something that was hidden from me."

  "And I am the very little that Dr. Wu kept hidden from you?"

  "Some of it,” Pog said. “Can you tell me about what the two of you spoke?"

  "Yes, but I'm not sure it will help you. Philosophy. History. Good and evil. The great subjects of wisdom. Not the kind of thing that you think would get someone killed."

  "Ah, but in our world, among angels and admirals, that is exactly the kind of thing that would get someone killed."

  H'ree narrowed his eyes, then said: “You are wise beyond your appearance. Indeed, that is so."

  "Dr. Wu had a habit of passing along powerful wisdom without appreciating its power,” Pog said. “Can you think of anything that he might have said to you that could have endangered his life?"

  H'ree began to speak, then hesitated. He did this three times, before answering Pog's question.

  "Three things,” he said. “First, he spoke quite early and often about the fate of the War College. He was taken by its irony in a world where war is no longer allowed.

  "Second, I asked him if he believed that chamalians could refrain from the temptation of battle. Or are we doomed to repeat our history and thus incur the wrath and punishment of the angels?"

  "Third, he said he expected us to realize the silent lesson that the angels offered by their mere presence: that it is possible for a world to outgrow war. After all, he said, the angels had done it."

  "I've heard him say such things many times,” Pog said.

  "Then you know how much danger there is in it,” H'ree replied. “We spoke about it in great detail. To outgrow war is to outgrow hate, outgrow desire, outgrow the emptiness inside us that drives us to violence and domination."

  "It does not sound like he was in danger from you,” Pog said.

  "He was not. I am a pilgrim of Jobe and have forsaken hate and desire and the need for violence and domination."

  "But I can see where the admirals might have had cause to disagree. And that is where I must go next."

  "It would appear so,” H'ree said.

  "Porkle'pi and Kurch'll will stay here with you until I return—as protection for you. Albrett and I will continue on."

  "Good luck to you, then,” H'ree said.

  He grabbed his pack and headed for the door. But before he could put his hand to the latch, H'ree stopped him with a final word.

  "You know he was writing a book about the admirals, don't you?” H'ree asked.

  "And what book was that?"

  "He called it The Secret Understandings of Bankers."

  * * * *

  As he grew old, Winston could not help but think about what would happen if he suddenly dropped dead, victim of sudden cardiac arrest, like his father and his grandfather before him. It was a morbid thought and one that came unbidden. And it was a fate that was easily avoided—if one were willing to subject oneself to the cruel technologies of modern medicine. And although it was unbidden, it was not always unwelcome. Not as unwelcome as the realization that the world would largely continue on without taking notice of his passing.

  But now, as the sun dropped behind the high mountains beyond the city, he was almost afraid that death would take him without warning—much as it had David Wu—before he could solve this mystery.

  Especially since so much of the evidence, the witnesses, and the crime scene itself could so easily be swept away in an orgy of social violence.

  The evidence before him, however, was secure, locked in the servers that relayed the messages from David's mindpad.

  Locked within those messages could be the key to David's death.

  But where? There was so little to work with.

  Three messages had been written on the mindpad after the moment David Wu had died: a heated response in a textwar over the free will of chamalians, a love note in English that consisted of Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and not much more, and an order from Wu for members of a university archaeological team to return to Kar-Kar-a-Mesh.

  Nothing in their contents suggested a motive or means or even an awareness of David's death.

  Perhaps the context itself could tell him something. If David Wu had not written them, only his houseboy, Pog, could have done so. He was clearly the author of the love note. And he twice passed himself off as Wu.

  Pog had access to the mindpad—and had
taken it with him when he left the house after the black steamwagon attack. And David's AI had gone stark raving mad over unauthorized technology transfer.

  "What was going on in that house, David? What did you let your boy do? Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

  And then, with a sudden flash of inspiration, he scrolled through the list of messages to find out what Wu did have to say for himself.

  Before the order to the archaeological team, before the love note, before the textwar posting, Winston found many more messages with time-date stamps well before the official time of death. He was about to open them up when the phone rang.

  "We pinged your missing mindpad,” said Lieutenant Cloud. “It's at the War College."

  * * * *

  Pog rolled up the mindpad and put it back in his pack. There was no reply from Mally, so he'd sent her another note, pledging eternal devotion and quoting from Shelley ("Nothing in the world is single").

  He and Albrett crossed the courtyard and passed through the eastern gate of the War College. From here, Pog could see over the surrounding city and down to the waterfront, where ships of the White Fleet huddled close together at their quays and the Red Fleet stood out to sea.

  "What's that?” Albrett asked suddenly. His question was followed by a rising buzz from the harbor. “Look! Over there!"

  Pog's companion pointed to a small dark shape in the air over the water. A flying machine! This one consisted of an ovoid hull hanging from a wide airfoil, with a tail and rudder sticking out of one end and a noisy, smoky engine perched on the wing.

  As they watched, the flying machine swung low over the docks, doubled back, and touched down on the smooth surface of the protected waters of the inner harbor, leaving a long wake behind.

  "Strange things are happening all around us,” Albrett said.

  "They'll get stranger before they end,” Pog said.

  They struck off across Officers Country, its streets clear of the masses that filled the city beyond. Pog needed Albrett to cross the district because Albrett had something Pog didn't—rank. He was a lieutenant of the Red Fleet and he had a medallion to prove it. Pog could easily pass himself off as Albrett's servant, however, having been one all his life.

  But none of that prevented them from being accosted as they crossed the Plaza of Drowned Heroes.

  "You! You are the one!"

  Pog recognized the owner of the voice. It was Revkat of the Committee for the Purity of Thought. He still wore a dark coat and a dark hat, but he no longer had an entourage of ferret-faced thugs.

  Albrett made ready to fend Revkat off, but Pog raised a hand to hold him back.

  Revkat stopped before them, obviously agitated.

  "You and your questions,” he said. “Arrrgh!"

  "Did I say something wrong?"

  "Don't start again,” Revkat said. “I have thought about nothing but your questions since last night. I have not slept. I have not eaten. It is like I have been possessed by a demon. Though I should know how to answer you, I cannot. You have set doubts afire in my mind that I cannot quench. The more I try to counter them, the more powerful they become."

  "I am sorry for your suffering,” Pog said.

  "Don't you understand?” Revkat said. “I am undone."

  And with that, he lurched away and staggered off into shadows at the edge of the plaza.

  "I'm almost sorry that I created that damned committee,” Pog said.

  "You created the Committee for the Purity of Thought?” Albrett asked. “Wait a minute. Of course you did."

  "You can't base a revolution on the critique of the exchange system until everyone in the society is fully educated about the system."

  A few minutes later, the sun set with equatorial suddenness, and electric lights came to life along the streets in long geometric perspective.

  But those streetlights were nothing compared to the bright neon shapes that covered the walls of the Admiralty Bank. There were crowds here—but there were always crowds here. Albrett and Pog worked their way through them, climbed the wide steps, passed through the high doors, and onto the casino floor.

  Hundreds of chamalians filled the great hall, clustered around tables where great wheels turned and turned, and fortunes rose and fell whenever they stopped.

  * * * *

  "Come with me,” Pog said. “We're going to spin the wheel."

  "And I suppose we're going to use my money?"

  "I have none with me and cannot use the Exchange in any case."

  They found their way to the tellers. Albrett filled out a withdrawal slip and stepped up to a window where a buck-toothed, long-eared, old gray hare with spectacles took the slip.

  "Stock name?” the teller asked.

  "Hotspur Shipping,” Albrett said.

  "Password?"

  Albrett gave him the secret word to his account. The teller disappeared for a moment to consult the books and the current stock prices, then returned to hand him a small stack of wooden plaques embossed with copper and gold—Hotspur stock markers.

  Albrett took his kitty to one of the tables and placed a bet on a great wheel, setting one of the plaques in a numbered bowl. The wheel spun, then slowed. The bettors held their breath as one of the red squares that belonged to the bank rolled up and past the pointer at the top of the wheel. Then it stopped on one of the high numbers.

  A monkey at the end with gold chains around his neck let out a whoop when the croupier dropped a handful of gold into the bowl with his stock marker and scooped up his winnings. The others snarled as the croupier pulled a lever that tipped the bowls and emptied their contents into the basket below.

  Albrett bet again, this time putting his marker in a green bowl. When the number in green came to a stop at the end of the next spin, he found himself a tiny bit richer.

  He made one more bet, losing another of his stock markers, then they left the table and found a pit boss, a bulldog with a studded collar and a jacket with square shoulders.

  "I need to speak to a banker,” Pog said as Albrett looked on with an air of haughty indifference that looked awfully natural. “I'd like to discuss a line of credit."

  "Come with me,” he said.

  They crossed the floor of the casino and a minute later, they passed into the bank proper, staffed by junior officers in rows of cubicles who spoke with supplicants of every stripe and hue. The pit boss never noticed Albrett as he slipped up behind him and set a sap against the back of his head with a short twist of his wrist. The pit boss sagged and Albrett caught him, dragging him into a side corridor before anyone noticed.

  "If I recall correctly, the admiral's cabin is this way,” Pog said.

  Albrett's eyes widened. “Which admiral's cabin?"

  "The lord high admiral himself,” Pog said. “Who else?"

  A short time later, they stood at the lord high admiral's door, face to face with a hulking panther, close enough to count each strand of his sleek black fur and each tiny brass button on his uniform.

  "Tell Admiral Pym I have a message from David Wu,” Pog said without flinching.

  The panther kept his obsidian eyes focused on Albrett and Pog and pressed a button on a small intercom to one side.

  "A messenger from David Wu,” the panther hissed.

  "Send him in,” a voice on the intercom responded.

  When he contacted Inspector Mag'Rrrruff with his news, the chamalian policeman told Winston he would take care of transporting him to the War College. But, he added, it might take a while.

  "The uprising continues,” Mag'Rrrruff said. “No violence involved, but you never know."

  Rather than think about the implications of that, Winston decided to study David Wu's message logs while he waited for Mag'Rrrruff. It was not as easy as he had expected. Wu was a prolific correspondent with dozens of scholars, students, and friends. Routing headers, date-time stamps, and subject lines offered little help.

  But after a while, still long before Mag'Rrrruff arrived, he
had narrowed his search to two items.

  One was the last piece of incoming mail, from an address on Earth.

  The other was the outgoing message that prompted the incoming mail.

  He plunged ahead, hoping to find the clues he was seeking before he had to leave.

  * * * *

  Lord High Admiral Pym looked almost like a cousin of Porkle'pi, but with a single row of pointed spines protruding from the circumference of his spherical body and fur, now white with age, that stood on end. His nose was more pointed and pink, however, and his eyes small and dark. His hand shook slightly, another sign of his advancing years. This was the Pym who had taken command of the chamalian warship from his father when the angels first arrived at Chamal so many years ago.

  His chambers were ornate, with gold inlay in the woodwork, tapestries of great naval battles with threads of precious metal worked into the scenes, and ornate carved furniture against every wall.

  A small scribe with long whiskers and tail sat at a tall desk, scribbling in a thick book. A pair of white-furred kittens shared a broad couch in one corner, dressed in tight mesh that overemphasized their feminine curves, grooming one another and smiling seductively at Pym.

  When Pog first thought about approaching the admiral, he had considered the possibility that Pym himself had ordered the assassination of David Wu and his house servant. And the possibility that presenting himself would only give the admiral the opportunity to complete the task.

  But he hoped that someone who would send a black steamwagon to carry out his homicidal purpose would be reluctant to commit the deed in person.

  And with a clear trail of evidence leading to his door...

  So Pog decided it was worth taking a calculated risk—the danger in return for the truth.

  "You have a message from Dr. Wu?” Pym asked.

  Pym's bodyguard sniffed at Albrett and prepared to take him out with a single swipe of his heavy paw. Albrett shrugged his shoulders, loosening up in preparation to unleash the small arsenal he kept concealed in his long gray coat.

  Pog felt his hearts squeeze hard, then said: “He sends his regrets that he will no longer be able to indulge in the long conversations with the lord high admiral that gave both of you such delight."