The Third Claw of God

9 MAGRISON’S WOMAN

Oscin had found an octagonal chip, about the size of pinky fingernail, and so well integrated with the skin it was imbedded in that it was impossible to discern a seam where flesh ended and metal began. I knew, without examining it further, that it would be only a few molecules thick, that it would resist any attempt to remove it, and that the thousands of infinitesmal filaments extruded on its subdermal side would be threaded throughout the wearer’s nervous system, forming a braid of sorts that would culminate in a seething terminus somewhere in the meat of the brain. Worse, though, was the pattern of raised dots, at its center, forming a letter that to my eyes had always resembled a pair of serpents swallowing each other whole. The letter, corresponding to the sharpest of the three consonants Mercantile devotes to the M sound, did not belong to the Mercantile alphabet at all, but rather to another, famous only as the birthplace of a destroyer not seen in civilized space for almost thirty years.

The mere sight was enough to make my ears throb with trapped blood. I released the forearm bearing the hateful artifact, turned my back on the glaring figure it belonged to, and confronted the three Bettelhines, now huddled together in whitening silence. “Did you know about this?”

Jason Bettelhine shook his head.

Jelaine had paled in a manner that suggested blood loss on the scale of the Khaajiir’s. “I swear to you, Counselor. I had no idea.”

Philip said nothing. But I noticed that Monday Brown had moved a little closer to him, like a mother cat attempting to comfort a kitten crying after a great fall.

My fury colored my vision, like a red curtain turning everything behind it the color of blood. “You did know, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

Philip Bettelhine’s mouth had become a horizontal slash as white as a bloodless wound. “I would watch your tone of voice, Counselor. You’re on our ground.”

“To hell with my tone of voice! Answer my question!”

He rolled his eyes. “I knew. So did Father, if you’re wondering. And my grandfather before him.”

“And you had no problem with that?”

“Historical precedent. Whenever any great war ends, the victors imprison some of its leaders, execute others, release a few more, and recruit the remainder to serve their own cause. Your own Dip Corps employs some intelligence assets guilty of crimes as vile as anything this poor woman ever did. Hell, look at yourself. Are you in any position to complain about any system that puts war criminals to work?”

I trembled with fury. “We don’t have any of Magrison’s people working for us. We hunt Magrison’s people.”

His pitying look only threw fuel on the fire. “That’s naïve, Counselor. Your Confederacy has several of Magrison’s people on the payroll. If you want, I’ll provide you with a list.”

The wearer of the chip, Dina Pearlman, met my gaze with a cold, defiant look of her own, her eyes transformed from the red weeping springs they had been a few minutes before to dry, reptilian marbles absent not only of fear but any human warmth. It was impossible to reconcile that look, and its dangerous intelligence with the vapid, fluttery idiot she had been pretending to be only a few moments before.

Her husband, by contrast, had deflated utterly, the cheerful confidence he’d projected replaced now with resignation and, yes, relief. There was no surprise in his eyes, just like there was no fear. He mostly looked like he just wanted to sit down.

I jerked a thumb his way. “What about him?”

“Farley? He’s who he’s supposed to be. A third-generation corporate citizen. He married her the day she entered our employ.”

The Porrinyards noted: “That sounds like a marriage of convenience.”

The woman known as Dina Pearlman expelled one brutal, explosive laugh. “Of inconvenience is more like it. The man’s useless to grown women. If I told you what age he prefers—not just single digits, but low single digits—you’d all forget your civilized scruples and kick him to death right now.”

“Possibly,” the Porrinyards said. “You might have to wait your turn.”

Farley Pearlman just hung his head, waiting for it to be over, so much a puppet of forces beyond his control that he had nothing to do or say once those strings were cut.

Dejah Shapiro placed her drink back on the bar and dabbed her lips with a napkin. “You know, Philip, every time I dare hope that your family can achieve some kind of collective redemption, new evidence wipes my face in the cold, ugly reality. I’m honestly sorry I came.”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” Philip said, his own voice just as controlled.

“Really?” she asked. “What have I done?”

“You’re married to a criminal, for starters!”

Dejah’s smile communicated disappointment that his best shot had been so pathetically feeble. “I’ve been married to a couple of different criminals, in my time. Indeed, I’ve already mentioned Ernst. Which one are you referring to right now?”

“That moron you left at home!”

“Oh, Karl.” She picked up her drink, treated herself to another drink, savored the taste, put the glass down, and replied, “You’re absolutely right. My current husband, whom I love with all my heart, has a criminal record. That’s common knowledge. He’s also of subaverage intelligence. That’s a verifiable medical fact. He was led astray by people with will greater than his own. What’s your excuse?”

For a tenth of a second or so I thought Philip was going to hurl himself at her throat. Dejah must have thought so, too, because she turned toward him, her expression calm but her chin outthrust, her arms free, and her posture transformed into a warrior’s.

Before anything could happen, the Porrinyards stepped between Philip and Dejah, positioning themselves back to back with a calm efficiency that placed any possibility of the confrontation turning violent in the distant past. They spoke, as they’d moved, as one.

“Andrea? I believe you have the subject of your first interview…”

There was another tiresome pissing match with Philip over whether I’d be permitted to speak with Mrs. Pearlman alone, or whether I’d have to bring Monday Brown and Vernon Wethers along, as Bettelhine counsel. I might have argued longer about the idiocy of suggesting that she even needed counsel when interviewed on the home soil of a power that had no interest in prosecuting her for past crimes, but I was eager to get past the preliminaries and into a room with a monster who, unlike myself, had committed her crimes as an adult. I let Brown come along.

The five of us (Paakth-Doy, Brown, Wethers, Skye, and me), escorted Mrs. Pearlman into my suite, taking seats around the outer room in what, without consultation, turned out to be a perfect circle with the defiant Mrs. Pearlman at dead center. She appropriated an ottoman for her own use and perched there with legs crossed, as comfortable in her interrogation as she would have been making arrangements for a formal party.

Most people who wore her current expression were dealing with unwanted infestations of insect life in their homes. “I didn’t kill the Bocaian. And I didn’t send those other idiot Bocaians after the bitch counselor. I’m not that stupid.”

“Exactly how stupid you are,” I told her, in a voice that reeked of loathing, “is yet to be determined.”

“Hans Bettelhine doesn’t think so,” Mrs. Pearlman sniffed. “He compensates me very well for my intelligence. If you knew the amount that gets put into my retirement fund, every year, just for sharing the fruit of that intelligence, you’d likely kill yourself. Of course, Andrea, I’ve read in your file that getting you to attempt suicide isn’t all that difficult, considering it’s been—how many? Five or six incidents over the years? So that’s not saying much.”

I found myself missing the old Mrs. Pearlman, the abrasive but essentially innocent one that had never really existed. “What’s your real name?”

She looked bored. “I’ve been called Dina Pearlman for as long as I wore the name before it, so you might as well use that one.”

“For the moment,” I agreed, aware that I didn’t want to get bogged down in this one point, and that consulting the Confederate Intelligence files on known associates of the man responsible for that chip would likely uncover her identity later. “How did you become involved with the man known to the authorities as Peter Magrison?”

“He recruited me in my youth.” She made it sound like some ancient epoch, as far removed from our own as the Cretaceous.

I asked, “Where was this?”

“On my homeworld. Ottomos. I was a student of nanopsychology, enrolled in a school known as Pastharkanak University, in a small town called Vivakiosy. Of course, I’m certain these names mean nothing to you. Would you like to know the names of my idiot professors, as well as the address of my dormitory?”

“Maybe later. How did Magrison approach you?”

For a moment her eyes went soft, seeing not the hostile faces around her, but whatever passed for blessed memory in a soul lost to darkness. “People only know him from the usual image, in the few holos that exist: that blurry, sneering face, half obscured by shadow, half washed-out by excessive light, with those knit black eyebrows and the eyes like bottomless pits. I think the powers-that-be have nicer images, in their archives, but publicize that one because it’s so easy to sell as the face of evil. In truth, he wasn’t like that at all. He had a gentle smile, the face of a saint, and the voice of a healer. Less than five minutes after he found me, sitting under a tree eating lunch between classes, I knew that I’d go anywhere with him, and do anything for him.”

“Must have been one hell of a five minutes,” Skye said.

“It was less than that. Maybe one question. I was hytexing my assignments for the next class period, and he walked right up, passing through the projection, and asked me: ‘Do you honestly think they’ll let you make a difference?’ I don’t know how he knew. But it was something I’d been asking myself all semester. Nanopsych had such potential, such possibilities for changing the way people thought and dreamed and interacted with one another, that nobody before him had thought of asking the tough questions. He—”

I waved away the rest of it. “Why would he pick you?”

“He said later that he’d been sitting in the back monitoring classes, looking for a mind capable of following where he needed to lead. It may even be true. I don’t know. I just know that I don’t remember seeing him, at all, until that moment.”

“You went with him,” I said. “Did it ever occur to you that he might have been controlling you against your will?”

“Oh, I knew that right way. He had a subteemer aimed at my pleasure center, and he gave me a happy jolt every time I considered what he was saying, a negative jolt every time I doubted him. Of course, it was very tiring for him, keeping such a close eye on me for days on end, but he was able to manage until we met up with his people and he was able to install the automated system.” She indicated the octagonal chip on her wrist. “But the truth is, it wasn’t even all that necessary by then. I’d seen the brilliance of his ideas. I believed in him the way earlier generations believed in God. His dreams were my dreams, his ambitions my ambitions. I lived to realize his vision of Mankind’s future.”

The Porrinyards grimaced in disgust. “Soul-rape.”

“Love,” Mrs. Pearlman shot back. “Passion.”

I said, “He made you feel that way.”

“The finest gift he could have given me.”

Skye said, “The girl he found on that university campus might not have thought so.”

“She was a vapid little idiot.”

Yes, I thought. A vapid little idiot capable of thinking for herself, and acting for herself, and of some concern for human beings other than the one who had replaced whatever value system she might have had with one designed to serve his own purposes.

I found myself remembering the night of madness that had overtaken my family and neighbors on Bocai. We’d lived in peace until the moment when, with no warning, we’d all found ourselves wanting to kill each other. Then we became other people. Could Magrison’s means of mind control be the same weapon the Unseen Demons had used on us?

Could it be associated with the upcoming extinctions the AIsource had spoken of?

Skye was asking Mrs. Pearlman, “Did he ever take physical advantage of you?”

Mrs. Pearlman’s eyes darkened. “You’re mocking me. You know his philosophy. He hated to be touched. He thought all human beings are deprived of their true potential by the animalistic drives that force us to crave the approval of others. He wanted to free us from that. As far as sex was concerned, there was only one thing he liked, and he refused to render it pleasurable for me; the defilement and degradation his lovers experienced was very much the central point.”

Vernon Wethers, whose prissiness had already impressed me during dinner, went a little green at this; he murmured an excuse-me and rushed to the bathroom, his cheeks ballooning.

Mrs. Pearlman watched him go, with defiant pleasure at his discomfort. Then her eyes softened again, and her voice became breathless, even giddy. “Want more? Sometimes, when I was good, when I’d solved a problem or furthered his plans in some other fashion, he’d send as much joy as my heart could stand, directly into my brain, and stay with me for hours while I felt touched by God. Once he even went on a trip for six weeks, and as a special treat left the transmitter on maximum while he was gone. He had to leave people behind to keep me fed and watered and clean and turn me so I wouldn’t get bedsores. It felt like hundreds of years. When he came back and turned it off, I would have done anything to be touched like that again. Anything. I wept. I even begged him to do the thing he liked. I told him he could befoul me as much as he wanted if he’d just leave me in that place again, even if only for another five minutes. One time, he—”

Monday Brown interrupted. “Counselor! Isn’t this enough, already?”

Much as I hated to admit it, the man was right. The psychological destruction of one young woman, and her transformation into a creature capable of furthering the nihilistic ambitions of the terrorist history knew as the Beast Magrison, did exert a sick fascination, especially given its resemblance to what my people had endured on Bocai, but it had little to do with the reason we were here. I took a deep breath, glanced at the now-weeping Paakth-Doy, felt a moment of sympathy for her that made me hope she did not turn out to be the Khaajiir’s murderer, and pressed on. “What was your personal contribution to the development of Magrison’s Fugue?”

“For five years I worked on the team that developed the strain. It was not easy, you know. Anywhere people can afford AIsource Medical they also have nanites, screening out all biological infestations, whether natural or artificial. The developers had to make a sheath capable of interacting with those defenses and turning them into allies. I was one of those refining the actual symptoms, taking out everything that damaged cognitive function and enhancing only those elements that caused pain at the sight and sound of other human beings.” She beamed. “When the chaos started on the worlds we infected? He said that the victory was at least ten percent mine. He was even moved to kiss me.”

The room fell silent, no two of the observers willing to look at each other. We all knew the history that followed. Before it was contained, Magrison’s Fugue had infected seventeen inhabited worlds and over fifty billion people, with over ninety-five percent dying in whatever hiding places they could find because they preferred starvation and thirst to the agony they only felt in the presence of other human beings.

There was still life, and civilization of a kind, in the places that remained. The people who lived there wore AIsource prosthetics over their eyes and ears, to prevent them from sensing anybody else except as hypothetical abstractions, more like the stick figures in a child’s drawing than as living, recognizable individuals. Their prosthetics talked to each other and negotiated agreements with each other and allowed something like an organized, sustainable society on worlds where every inhabitant, down to the infants being born to mothers who would never love them, could only view every other as silhouettes rendered indistinct by sensory veils.

Only military blockades on the part of the Hom.Sap Confederacy, imprisoning all the victim populations on their affected worlds, and blowing several infected vessels out of the sky, had prevented Magrison’s contagion from infecting all of humanity.

There was no cure. Those worlds remained quarantined today.

But even that was not the worst of it.

The Confederacy remained in contact with the survivors, who had no problem communicating with us in text format, as long as we eliminated all personal pronouns and all details of social interaction in the outside universe from our responses. They could make their needs known. We could send food drops, tech, even a few brave volunteers in isolation suits, to deal with whatever they required to keep their infrastructures going. But we couldn’t call what lived on those worlds anything but damned. A few more generations of artificial insemination brokered by AIsource proxies, and automated child-rearing by more AIsource proxies, and I’m not even sure you could call the beings who walk there human.

But that was not the worst of it.

Wethers returned from the bathroom, looking pale, tiny beads of moisture glistening on his forehead. He murmured an excuse to Brown as he sat. It would have been easy to feel sorry for him, had he not been a willing participant in the empire that employed a monster like Dina Pearlman. He was like other bureaucrats, guilty of signing the papers that made atrocities possibility but lost the stomach the second they were shown the abattoirs they’d authorized.

But he was not the worst of it, either.

I coughed, swallowed spit to soothe a voice that would emerged as a dry croak, and dealt with the very worst of it: The question that obsessed some of my colleagues in the Dip Corps to this very day. “Mrs. Pearlman… do you know where Magrison’s hiding today?”

“No,” she said, with a tinge of regret. “We had to separate, during our time as fugitives. I don’t know where he went. Otherwise I’d have gone to him already.”

In Confederate custody, this woman would have been interrogated for the rest of her life, by grim men ill-inclined to take no for an answer. Even those inclined to believe her, as I found I did, would have pressed the question forever, using techniques that approached and exceeded all possible definitions of torture. There would have been no choice. He was Mankind’s single greatest bogeyman, and we all lived in paranoid fear of his return, this time armed with something that made the Fugue look like a stuffy nose.

I did not have the time or the authority to do what so many of my colleagues would have done, but I couldn’t accept a simple no, either. “Do you have any reason to believe he’s still alive?”

“Yes,” she said. “Faith.”

“Do you have any reason to believe the Bettelhines are in contact with him?”

Monday Brown shifted in his chair, looking as unhappy as any child receiving a sweater as his only gift for Specday. “That’s a bit much, Counselor.”

I whirled on him with something like a snarl. “You’re the bastards putting his old slaves to work. I’d say it’s absolutely fucking called for.” Then turned my attention back to Mrs. Pearlman. “Answer the question.”

Her lips pursed, hiding the smile that had threatened to form when I’d snapped at Brown. “Why would they want anything to do with him? They make their riches from human beings at war with one another. Human beings who can’t interact at all are useless to them.”

“The Fugue ravages any civilization it touches. That’s a pretty powerful prize for a munitions empire.”

“Not really,” she said, with the slightest shade of boredom. “It’s useless as a weapon of conquest. In any battle between nations confined to a single planet, the first country using it is unable to avoid being infected in the process.”

Skye said, “Fear of Mutual Assured Destruction has never prevented the development of doomsday weapons.”

“A good point. But, unlike most devices of that kind, the Fugue is not the kind of tech martial cultures can be persuaded to covet. Dying at the same time as your enemies has such a romantic cache that any population can be persuaded to crave it. But damning yourself and everyone you know to a state you perceive as a living death is a different prospect entirely.”

“And in any battle between worlds, separated by space but capable of bombing each other into oblivion?”

Mrs. Pearlman sniffed. “Please. There are less of those than the action-adventure neurecs, so beloved by the common man, would have you think. But again, even if that scenario happened more often than it does, the Fugue’s the last thing you would ever want to drop on an enemy. If you’re fighting for territory, you do not salt the earth you covet and render the land useless to yourself. And if you just wish to destroy the other civilization out of sheer malice, there are other ways to do it, bombs and mass-drivers and the like, that will eliminate their ability to fight back and therefore don’t leave the power for full, automated retaliation still in the hands of vengeful commanders unable to consider regard for your civilian populations even as a distant, nagging abstraction.” She licked her lips, establishing with her slight smile that she found the very image delicious. It took her a moment of dwelling on it, finding pleasure in the very idea, before she was able to continue, fresh scarlet blushing her plump cheeks. “No, Counselor, I’d have to say that the only people who would want to use the Fugue are those agreeing with its philosophical point. The Bettelhines may present some useful opportunities for a woman with my skill set, but they haven’t demonstrated that kind of elevated consciousness. Believe me, I know. I believe in the Fugue. I propose mass-producing it every six months, Mercantile, and the decision-makers here have always given their most emphatic no.”

Thank Juje for small favors. “And that would be who, in your case?”

“First the late Kurt Bettelhine, then his eldest son Hans. Soon, if I live long enough, Philip. He’s been seeing to my needs for three or four years now.”

“Just Philip?”

“I’ve met Jason and Jelaine before. They know about my work, and have required my aid on a couple of past occasions. But no, they did not know of my past connection to Magrison. That, I’ve been encouraged to keep secret.”

So she was not some black project, initiated by some overzealous company man without the knowledge of his superiors. All the Bettelhines knew about her, even if they didn’t all know where she came from. I said, “And that ridiculous situation-comedy personality you put on, earlier?”

“A means of camouflage I’ve developed, over the years. It comes in handy when I must deal with outsiders like yourself.”

I would have some harsh words for her illustrious host Hans, if we ever did manage to stand on the same planetary surface at the same time. “How did you come to work for them?”

“I arrived in my personal transport and sent a message from the outer system. Docking at Layabout would have been easier, you understand, but in those days it was dangerous for Magrison followers to approach armed worlds except under a flag of truce.”

Skye muttered something I did not hear but, doubtless, would have agreed with. I said, “Did you identify yourself?”

“Yes. I gave my resume and offered my services in exchange for protection.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“It went up the chain of command until I found myself speaking to Kurt. He was still in charge, back then.”

“And he just authorized your approach, knowing what you might be carrying?”

“No. He directed me to meet his fleet at Spyraeth, an uninhabited moon in the outer system. They quarantined me there, subject to regular searches and interrogations for almost a year, until they determined that I had no samples of the Fugue, anywhere aboard.”

“And then?”

“Kurt Bettelhine spoke to me again and asked me why he shouldn’t just surrender me to your Confederacy, as a gesture of good faith. He said that cooperating with your authorities on this manner would be a fine way to approve relations between the two powers. I told him that I had a number of ideas he could find profitable, more conservative uses of the techniques that had gone into the creation of the Fugue. After some research, I presented him with additional weaponry capable of managing the behavior of entire enemy populations. Later, I produced more focused uses of the same technology—”

Thinking of Bocai, I had gone rigid at the phrase additional weaponry capable of managing the behavior of entire enemy populations. “Has that…ever been used, Mrs. Pearlman?”

“Not my department,” she said.

And Monday Brown looked irritated again. “Counselor, may I please point out that these questions exist outside your license for exploring corporate secrets? The Khaajiir wasn’t killed with a virus. Nor was he killed from a distance. He was killed close up, with a Claw of God. A weapon that, I should add, existed many millennia before this woman was even born.”

I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to beat her until she confessed that the capabilities she’d boasted about had been used on Bocai. But he had a point, damn him. Much as I wanted to know what horrors this woman had produced, on behalf of our hosts, getting those details could take weeks I didn’t have, and an authority I could not claim. “What happened when Kurt Bettelhine agreed to take you on?”

“He installed me in the isolated island facility where I still work today, with a small but dedicated staff of qualified experts in the field.”

“And that ‘installation’ involved an introduction to the man who now poses as your husband?”

“It’s no pose,” Dina Pearlman said. “The damnable union is legal, all right.”

“But you don’t love him, or even care for him.”

Her mouth was just a red slash across a face that had become a caricature of the harmless, dithering one she had worn. “I care for no human being but Peter Magrison.”

“What would the Bettelhines get out of forcing the two of you to live together as husband and wife?”

She shrugged. “Protective coloration. I think he wanted to use me to redeem Farley more than he wanted to use Farley to redeem me. The silly man had gotten himself into some trouble at another installation he managed, when circumstances left him alone with the four-year-old daughter of one of his lead workers. Something like that made him a undesirable executive, even to Bettelhine employees accustomed to suppressing their own moral qualms for the common good. But he was still an excellent leader who always pushed his workers hard and brought his projects in ahead of schedule. Kurt provided the parents with more than enough compensation to make them forget the outrage, albeit perhaps not enough to pay for the damage such a compromise to their parental responsibilities did to their souls, then paired the two of us together in the theory that his two misbehaving beasts would be willing to report on each other in exchange for small rewards. Later, when the idiot was caught attempting to indulge his passions again, we took certain other safeguards preventing him from ever misbehaving in that manner again. If you trust me on nothing else, Counselor, trust me on this. He no longer has to capability to indulge his baser impulses.”

Paakth-Doy ventured a hesitant, “Did you…castrate him?”

The look Mrs. Pearlman gave her then was any number of things: amused, pitying, contemptuous, and superior… but above all proud. “Nothing quite so disgustingly blunt.” Then, to me: “We live as husband and wife. But do not consider our relationship love. We have attempted to sleep with each other a few times out of boredom. But we have never completed the act. He cannot match the transcendent pleasures I was shown by Peter Magrison… and I cannot pass for under five. Have I mentioned, too, his terrible dullness?”

I coughed. “What are you doing here today?”

“My husband and I are well-known, distinguished contributors to the Bettelhine Corporation and must from time to time be trotted out and provided with the kudos that accrue to high producers like ourselves. At such times I make myself the chattering ninny and he pretends to be a man. These are the same personas we use whenever we mix with co-workers and local society, as our positions force us to do often. I don’t know about Farley, but I have grown so used to putting on that personality on a regular basis, that sometimes I forget and almost manage to make myself believe I’m the person I pretend to be.” Her next expression reflected a dozen separate emotions at once: pride, anger, amusement, sadness, triumph and loss, all coupled with deep satisfaction over the repugnance in our faces. “It may not be the person I was before Peter Magrison liberated me, but it is as close as I can fake it now.”

The moment of appalled silence following that statement lasted for several seconds. Even Monday Brown, who had already known what she was, seemed affected by it. I weighed the life she had never had a chance to live against the life she had embraced instead, and did not know what I was going to say until the moment it left my mouth. “Mrs. Pearlman…you’re a disgusting person.”

It didn’t bother her a whit. “I have been told that before.”

“You have not heard it enough. But for what it’s worth, I think you’ve been truthful with me so far.”

“What you think is worth nothing.”

“I have only a few more questions,” I told her. “I warn you to remain candid, because I will be angry indeed if any of the information I receive from the others contradicts your own answers in any way.”

“I’m not intimidated.”

“You would be if you knew me better. Nevertheless. Have you ever seen a K’cenhowten Claw of God before tonight?”

“Once. In a private collection. I don’t know whether it was authentic or a re-creation.”

“Have you ever met the Khaajiir before tonight?”

“No.”

“Have you ever heard of the Khaajiir before tonight?”

“No.”

“Did you have any idea before tonight that Hans Bettelhine was hosting an alien dignitary of any kind?”

“It would not have surprised me. A man in his position has offworld guests all the time.”

“Did you know?”

“No.”

“Is there any possible way you might benefit from the death of the Khaajiir?”

“No.”

“Is there any possible reason you would want the Khaajiir dead?”

“No.”

“Are you serving any cause outside the Bettelhine organization that would be furthered by the Khaajiir’s death?”

“How many times do you intend to rephrase the same question? No. No. No.”

“Are you serving any cause outside the Bettelhine organization, period?”

“I am allowed no contact with causes outside the Bettelhine organization.”

“Do your privileges as a Bettelhine employee include any means of communication offworld?”

“No. Given my history, my hytex access is read-and-respond only.”

“Is the same true of your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anybody working with you who would send messages on your behalf?”

“No.”

“So it would have been impossible for you to recruit Bocaians as assassins.”

“I am sure I could figure out a way, if the need presented itself. I am a clever woman.”

“But since you did not know of the Khaajiir’s presence until you boarded this carriage, you had no opportunity to abet any conspiracy.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Mrs. Pearlman, all the questions I asked about you and the Khaajiir apply to you and myself as well. Would you have any reason to want my death?”

“Yes.”

Monday Brown rose halfway out of his seat.

I said, “That’s all right. I warned you to be truthful. Let me rephrase. Would you have had any reason to want me dead before this conversation?”

Monday Brown sat down again, mollified.

Mrs. Pearlman seemed to savor the taste of triumph the same way a lizard would have savored a delectable species of bug. “No. I never heard of you before yesterday. I researched you, as I research everybody I expect to meet, but nothing in your past made you a target. I even imagined that as fellow monsters we might even get along.”

“There’s little chance of that,” I told her. “But I’m done with you. Go back to your husband.”

She nodded at me, flashed a predatory grimace at the others, and stood, hesitating just before she reached the door of the suite. “Do you want me to send my husband in?”

“Given a full range of choices, I’d want you to send him out the airlock and leap out after him. But no. I think I’m done with both of you, for the moment.”

She showed teeth again, and left. A few seconds later, following some summons known only to themselves, Brown and Wethers followed, their eyes hiding from mine as if afraid of being punctured by accusations. Paakth-Doy went to the rest room, just as pale as Wethers but not in as much of a hurry.

Skye and I sat staring at each other, the silence providing the perfect soundtrack to the thoughts racing through both our minds. After a while, she said, “Philip’s taken his vassals aside. No doubt they’re comparing notes on all the sensitive corporate scandals you’ll be bringing home when all this is over. I suspect we might be having some trouble leaving Xana once we’re done.”

I’d been thinking the same thing. “I’d give half my disposable income to know what happened to the last Dip Corps envoy who crossed the Bettelhines, this, whatever his name was, Bard Daiken. It might give us an idea what to expect.”

Skye raised an eyebrow. “Would it even help us to expect a consequence we don’t know how to avoid in any event?”

I didn’t know. I suspected not. We’d blundered into a malevolent place filled with trap doors and shadows, where every step took us farther away from an exit that already seemed shut to us. It might have been different had my AIsource handlers been available to provide their usual hints and portents and thus light the path ahead of me. But they remained silent, even as I made yet another attempt to call them back.

Paakth-Doy returned from the bathroom, her eyes glazed and her complexion even paler than the one she’d worn before going in. But she nodded at me as she took her seat again, well prepared for whatever came next.

Skye asked her, “Are you all right?”

Paakth-Doy needed a second to answer. “I must confess that my upbringing among Riirgaans renders me vulnerable to shock at the corrupt potential of my fellow human beings.”

Skye said, “It wouldn’t feel any different if you were raised by your own kind. We’ve all been ashamed of our species, from time to time.”

“I suppose,” she said, with excessive dignity. “But I will do my best to prepare myself for whatever follows. Except, one thing? Counselor?”

“Yes?”

“When you leave Xana… would you take me with you?”

That was about the last thing I expected. “Really?”

“Yes. I would very much like to go.”

“Why?”

She struggled with the words. “When I left the Riirgaans in my midteens, never having met another specimen of my natural species, the family that raised me afforded me my choice of human destinations. I chose to avoid your Confederacy because of the legal gauntlet it requires of humans with nonhuman citizenship who seek repatriation. Employment with the Bettelhines seemed an easier alternative. But after what I have seen, right now, I am no longer certain that I wish to pay the moral price of living here. I now believe that it would be better to face and overcome the bureaucracy of New London. Will you give me a ride? And perhaps a testimonial to my good faith, if required?”

She had an inner strength, that one. There was no way of telling yet whether that would make her a useful ally or an implacable enemy, but there was no point in underestimating her. People who bounce back are dangerous. Still, I warned her, “It might not be possible. The Bettelhines seem to have a problem releasing people who’ve served the Inner Family.”

“True. But I have never served the Inner Family before this descent. Nor am I impressed with my first taste of life among them. If I can still leave this world, I would like to. Please help me.”

I may be an unsympathetic bitch, much of the time, but I’m still capable of being moved. “If it’s within my power, I’ll make it happen.”

She did not thank me for the promise yet to be fulfilled. She just nodded and went back to her seat, content to wait for the next of the revelations she had to witness.

Skye, who had watched the exchange without comment, now turned to me. “Who next? Philip? We have some hard questions to ask him right now.”

“No, not yet. I’ll want a little more ammunition before I go after that one.”

“Dejah? Given her prior antipathy toward the Bettelhines, her presence here raises the most questions.”

“I think not.”

“Jason and Jelaine?”

“No,” I said. “I think we’ll hold on to them for a little while, yet.”

“Who, then?”

I bit my lip, considering. And then said, “Mendez.”