The Third Claw of God

5 THE BIG LIE

The chime alerting us to the dinner party in the parlor was as affected as everything else in the Bettelhine Royal Carriage. It was a sylvan tinkle, the kind of sound that could only have been tolerated by people who frown with fey disdain whenever reminded of their social obligations. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe the moment I’d found myself thinking I’d had enough of the Bettelhine lifestyle came when the Porrinyards and I rose from the bed and found ourselves transfixed by an amenity that began with our old linens rolling into the bulkhead, continued with mechanisms in the bedframe unscrolling their replacement, and ended with puffs of mist wrapping everything in a nice, rueful emphasis on nice, floral scent to keep things embossed with perfection until our return.

I moaned. “Oh, come on!”

The Porrinyards grinned. “Must make it convenient for any murderer who wants to dispose of forensic evidence.”

I remembered the Claw of God and did not think the comment funny. “Must.”

It didn’t take us long to get ready. I don’t own any formal clothing. But my usual severe black suit would do, as would the Porrinyards’ matching white, especially if they wore the buttonless slipon jackets they donned whenever they wished to stress their status as a matching set. I don’t wear makeup either, though both Porrinyards have been known to, depending on local custom. There was little to be done with our hair either, thanks to their skull bristle and my own longstanding habit of keeping mine short with but a single, defiant shoulder-length lock along my right cheek. This might or might not be acceptable by Xana’s standards, but to hell with the other attendees if they thought otherwise. We weren’t here to dazzle anybody.

We emerged to find the parlor inhabited by assorted Bettelhines and associates already deep in the tiresome mill-around-and-chat that always makes me want to leap off the nearest balcony.

I caught a glimpse of a tall, elegant redhead in a silvery gown that left much of her back bare, disappearing through the doorway into one of the suites. Her movements looked familiar, but I didn’t see enough to place her.

I saw a nervous couple in their late fifties, the man all high sweaty forehead bald but for a spiral spit curl, the woman beaming with a desperate contact-high that did not translate to leaving the protection of the alcove where she and her husband huddled like frightened cats. When her eyes met mine she looked away in a hurry, as if afraid that even that moment of contact would be seen as impudent.

Jason Bettelhine was across the room, in discussion with two men I didn’t recognize, both dressed in black suits of identical design. The taller of the two glanced our way, revealing Bettelhine features beneath a helmet of premature silver. Probably the brother Jason had mentioned. Unlike Jason, he was not smiling. The third man was balding, shiny-faced, shorter than either Bettelhine and pale in ways that went beyond mere complexion. He could stay in the sun and tan himself to a crisp, and he’d still be pale beneath the skin, all the way to the bones. He glanced my way too, and nodded in recognition.

Jelaine Bettelhine was closer to us, sipping something vaporous as she chatted with the Khaajiir and a tall thin man whose face was all sharp lines. She’d changed gowns and put her hair up into a fractal swirl of the sort designed to reveal new flourishes and embellishments with every casual flip of her head. It would have looked fussy or pretentious on anybody else, but she wore it like a jeweled crown. I’ve never given a flying crap about hairstyles and I still envied her ability to pull it off, let alone her ability to put it together in the three hours since I’d last seen her. It was, I supposed, one of the inherited skills of royalty; certainly, I certainly knew few women who would have attempted that gown, a silvery bejeweled monstrosity that seemed determined to compete with the overhead lights for luminosity. She happened to spot us as we left the suite, and flashed a smile rich with either genuine warmth or a simulation too cunning to be distinguished from the real thing. “Counselor. You look radiant.”

I had two conflicting thoughts, the first being bullshit and the second an amazed, mortifying I do? Against my will, the latter won out, and I felt a flush come to my cheeks. “Thank you.”

“Nonsense. It’s the simple truth.” She turned to the Porrinyards. “And you too, dears. I’m afraid I don’t know the proper etiquette for addressing linked pairs, and therefore don’t know whether to say handsome or pretty, let alone when to refer to both of you and when to address you as individuals, but if you show me some indulgence I promise to learn. I look forward to setting aside any awkwardness I might have in favor of friendship.”

There wasn’t a single awkward, or less than charming, cell in her body. Damned if the Porrinyards, who could normally give as good as they got, weren’t blushing too. “You’re doing fine. I like your hair.”

“Thank you. I know you’ve already been introduced to the Khaajiir,” she said, a reference the Bocaian academic acknowledged with a nod, “but I believe this is your first encounter with one of my father’s closest associates, Mr. Monday Brown.”

The man with the sharp face blinked at me. His smile, unlike Jelaine’s, never reached his eyes. He might have been determining the profit potential in selling the Porrinyards and me for component parts. “Counselor. How have you enjoyed your visit so far?”

I couldn’t believe he’d said that. “It’s been a little over-populated with assassins.”

His teeth were very small and very white. “I spoke with Antresc just a few minutes ago. He told me that both criminals remain unresponsive. But as his people were able to remove the microteemers implanted in their tear ducts, there’s little chance of them waking up and continuing to evade interrogation with further flashes.”

“That’s progress. I don’t suppose he’s found their confederate?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Nor has he been able to trace their travels any farther back than their embarkation on the Bursteeni homeworld. But he’s a good man. I’m certain that the second the teeming wears off, he’ll be able to get the answers from them in short order.”

The Khaajiir shifted his weight against his staff, the strain manifesting as a tremor in his upper arms. “And how will he do that, sir? Torture?”

“This is a civilized world, sir.”

“Alas,” the Khaajiir replied, “the definition of that word has always been fluid. We both know of worlds where civilization meant that slow torture only took place in soundproofed rooms. We also know, unfortunately, just what species of commerce provided our dear hosts with their riches, and therefore just what agonizing capabilities this society must be equipped to exercise at times of crisis.” He then seemed to remember his hostess. “No offense, dear.”

“None taken,” said Jelaine. “It happens to be a legitimate concern.”

“Still,” the Khaajiir continued, returning his attention to Brown, “if the preferences of the apparent target have any weight here, I would prefer to make sure that any questioning remained in the realm of the humane.”

Brown’s face flickered with something that was not politic and was not friendly. “What about Counselor Cort? She was a target too.”

My smile met Brown’s irritation head on. “I’m afraid I’m not quite so principled about the treatment of people who have tried to kill me. But I see no reason to oppose the Khaajiir here.”

Brown might have shown more resentment toward the Khaajiir and myself had we spoken for ourselves alone, but Jelaine had indicated agreement, too, and that changed everything. “If you wish. I’ll arrange for the two of you to speak with Mr. Pescziuwicz, so you can share your concerns.”

“Please,” the Khaajiir said.

As Brown wandered off, trailing an invisible cloud of resentment behind him, Jelaine’s expression turned pitying, like someone observing a wounded bird. “I must apologize for Monday. He’s never charming, but he’s at his best in my father’s presence. Any place other than with my father is, shall we say, not his habitat.”

I asked, “That doesn’t extend to being with you or Jason?”

“Oh, we can give him orders, if that’s what you mean. Father’s made it clear to him that any directives coming from us are to be considered as coming from him. But there are always about three hundred relatives within the Inner Family, with all the politics and personal competition that implies. Aides like Monday learn to back the ones they work for, clinging to them with a sort of determined possessiveness that leaves very little leeway for loyalty to any of the others. It’s a lot, I suppose, like having a pet. From their personal point of view, they own you. Monday’s a rather extreme example of that syndrome. My father’s his entire world.”

“He doesn’t have a family? Or friends?”

“No, he maintains quarters in my father’s house, and except for trips like this remains at my father’s beck and call from the moment my father gets up in the morning to the moment my father goes to sleep at night, taking time off only when he’s ordered to.”

The Khaajiir shifted his weight against his staff. “It’s true. I’ve seen that happen. Monday takes it like he’s being punished.”

“That’s pretty sad. Has he always been that way?”

“At least as long as he’s been working for my father.”

“What about you?” I asked her. “Do you and Jason have people like that working for you?”

“Oh, please. Subservience on his scale makes us uncomfortable. We can’t escape it, not entirely, but we prefer our loyalties earned, not imposed. So we hire out of the staff pool, as needed.” She smiled. “In any event, Andrea, is everything in your suite is to your liking?”

“I’ll feel more comfortable when I find out what this is all about.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps this doesn’t all have to wait for my father. I’d love to be able to move past the ‘necessary business’ part of this relationship and proceed to what I hope shall be a warmer connection, maybe even one with that earned loyalty I talked about. Let us get you a drink first, and we’ll have a private chat. If the others will excuse us…?”

The Porrinyards took the Khaajiir with them, professing deep fascination with the sudden end of K’cenhowten’s great Dark Age.

Jelaine escorted me to the bar, which was being tended by a petite young woman with a fresh face, scarlet hair composed of artificial fibers wired to strobe with bars of orange light, and eyes like cut emeralds—which is to say, not just possessed of green irises but actually faceted, and translucent, sans any obvious whites. I’d seen stranger body-mod combinations, but could not help wondering to what degree it affected her vision. Introducing herself as Colette Wilson, and declaring herself honored to serve me, the young lady with the bejeweled eyes and the neon hair flashed the kind of smile that confirmed the opportunity to pour drinks for me a sensation somewhere between the best sex she’d ever had and direct electrical stimulation to the pleasure center of her brain.

I didn’t want anything in particular, but bowed to Colette’s superior knowledge of the stock, and asked for something sweet but light, intoxicating without any euphoric or hallucinogenic aftereffects. Whatever it was also turned out to be electric blue, in a tall glass. It was sweet, as I’d requested, but one sip and I felt tingles in my fingers and toes. Light, my ass. I was going to have to nurse it.

By the time Jelaine led me to a quiet spot beside the tank with the Bettelhine fish, the scattering of guests had changed configuration. The nervous couple was still hiding in the alcove, but were now talking to the redhead in the gown, whose face I could still not see. Oscin and the Khaajir had moved to a set of plush couches so the frail Bocaian could sit; he was holding forth on something which made Oscin nod with unfeigned fascination. Skye had left them to join Jason Bettelhine and his companions, her very presence seeming to lift the mood on that side of the room. The Bettelhine brothers grinned at her, delighted by whatever witty thing she’d just said. Even the pale man with them seemed impressed. I was equally certain that her bon mot had been brilliant and that the men would have reacted with just as much glee to something banal. There’s a reason why I defer to the Porrinyards on matters requiring interaction with other human beings. They’re as good at being liked as I am at not.

Jelaine saw me watching Skye. “Fascinating. The way you use them.”

I stiffened. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, Counselor. I’m not belittling your friends—or friend, if you prefer the singular. How troublesome, referring to them can be! I can see that they’re not just assistants to you. But you’re using them as a resource right now, aren’t you? You’re using their shared perspective to gather as much intelligence as possible.” She sipped her own drink, a golden concoction in a flute. “Forgive me my sense of wonder. They’re the first linked pair I’ve ever met.”

Cylinked pairs may be rare, since the AIsource procedure that creates them is illegal on most human worlds, but I found a Bettelhine’s protestations of sheltered naïveté hard to believe. “Jason told me he had a crush on a pair of cylinked women who worked for an uncle. He said they visited the main estate on a regular basis.”

She placed a placatory hand on my wrist. “Yes, I know. I was there when he told you, remember? But you won’t find a contradiction here. I do know who he’s talking about, but I was a very naïve young girl at the time and thought they were just close in the usual way young ladies can be close. I’m afraid I never watched them at length and never registered how they functioned as a unit. I never even heard them speak at the same time, the way your lovely Oscin and Skye do. Is it really so terrible for me to be dazzled, a little? Even a little envious?”

“No,” I said, watching Skye chuckle as the Bettelhine men glanced my way. I supposed I’d become a subject of conversation. “I suppose not.”

“How did you ever meet them?”

I almost launched into a summary of my posting to the cylinder world known as One One One, but stopped myself and appraised Jelaine anew. “You know, you’re very good.”

She went wide-eyed. “At what?”

“The way you pulled me aside with hints of explanation, delayed me with a drink, and now change the subject to something safe. The way you give the impression you’ve opened up without telling me a damn thing. The way you take a wary and unpleasant person who has no intention of making friends and make her relax in her presence. Whatever else you are, you’re a born politician. But I’m not fooled, and I’m losing my patience. What is this all about?”

Her secretive smile never wavered. Only her eyes reacted, and then with a twinkle of affection. “I was told you could be difficult, Andrea. I was also told that you’re well worth the effort. I do want to be friends.”

I almost demanded to know who the hell told her that, since the Porrinyards were pretty much the only people I knew capable of tolerating me without being ordered to. But it would have meant changing the subject again. “The explanation. Please.”

She sighed, betraying not irritation but a deep, pervading sadness that might have been about me and might have been about something else. For a moment I could see the same shadow of terrible suffering I’d spotted on Jason’s face. “You may have guessed at least part of this already, but you’re here, at least in part, for what might loosely be termed a job interview.”

“No shit.”

“Not at all. My father has a specific position in mind, and believes that he can offer you terms capable of luring you away from your current employers.”

She had to mean the Corps, as she couldn’t have known about my association with the AIsource. “No.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We know that you’re not happy with the way the Corps has treated you. It can’t be home.”

“It isn’t. In fact, I hate the bastards. But neither am I eager to sell my loyalty to an organization I’ve always considered evil for a little more money and a slightly fancier job title.”

“I appreciate that, Andrea, but there are factors here that you can’t possibly guess. It wouldn’t be a little more money. Or a slightly fancier job title. And evil is only a function of how the power’s used. Frankly, I believe that my father will be able to make the case that your loyalty’s a commodity better invested with us at this critical point in your history than with any of those self-righteous slavemasters at New London.”

She seemed so sure. But then, a sense of entitlement, of being able to collect people, would just naturally go along with being a Bettelhine. “I’m still not hearing any answers.”

She sighed. “My father really does deserve the pleasure of telling you the whole thing. He’s done so much to arrange this, and it will mean so much to him. But perhaps I can save him some time covering the background.”

“Anything,” I said.

“Well, let’s start with this. Have you ever experienced a turning point? One of those moments so profound that it not only changed your life after that moment, but also how you interpreted everything you’d seen and done beforehand?”

I thought of the day I’d lost my family on Bocai, of my mission to the world known as Catarkhus, and of the way the Porrinyards had looked at me after the second time they’d saved my life in just about as many days. “Yes.”

“Well, as it happens, the fortunes of the Bettelhine Family have experienced such a historic moment, one that’s likely to alter the way we conduct business and how we relate to the rest of human civilization.”

“Would this be Jason’s disappearance?”

The guess did not surprise her. “Would it surprise you to hear that his absence almost destroyed us?”

“No.”

“You’re alone, then. I know what people say about us. They look at all the damage we’ve done, at the blood spilled because of us, and declare us soulless monsters profiting off human lives. I’d wager half my share in the family fortune that you’ve said something like it yourself, certainly before you got here and absolutely since you’ve arrived. Am I right?”

I decided not to insult her with empty denials. “Your money would be safe.”

“We’re used to that. But sometimes, when we suffer a family trauma, outsiders don’t even give us credit for the ability to feel for our own. They question our tears and attribute our grief to public relations. It’s different when you’re in the middle of it. It almost tore us apart.”

“I understand.”

“No, Andrea, with all due respect, and more affection than you could possibly know, I don’t think you do. A missing child is supposed to be horrible for any family, and I’m certain it is, but I think a big family with a small mob of children, like ours, feels it more. The suffering, the fear for him, the sense of loss, is not subdivided, as you’d suppose, but multiplied. We all reflected each other’s heartbreak and uncertainty, and we all felt more hopeless in the face of it. But that may have been a good thing, in the long run. We may have been the first generation of my family in many years to not grow up feeling invulnerable.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not arrogant enough to say that it was worse for me than for any of the others, but I became a shadow of myself. Jason and I were about the same age, and up until that day he’d always been my closest friend among all my brothers and sisters.”

The hubbub of soft music and surrounding conversation seemed as far away as New London. For the moment, at least, there was no one in the room but us. “Why did he leave?”

“In part, idealism; in part foolish rebellion. He thought he’d return home a conquering hero. I was such a starry-eyed little idiot that I believed him, and even wished him luck when he left. To my eternal shame, I even helped him slip away.”

“That must have gone over well.”

“Nobody knew until long after he got back. And by then, the damage was done. Have you ever heard of a cylinder world known as Deriflys?”

The word sounded elegant, the way she uttered it horrific. I found part of me not wanting to know. But I’d opened this door, so I just shook my head.

“There are places where the machinery of civilization carves out a habitat for people to live, only to abandon them when the people who pay the bills either go bankrupt or decide to move elsewhere. Deriflys was one of the all-time worst.”

“What happened?”

“It was supposed to be a travel and manufacturing hub, with plenty of work, but the backers disappeared and left two million human beings stranded there with no way to evacuate. No human or alien government anywhere in civilized space considered the looming catastrophe their problem. The local economy crashed. Legitimate shipping went elsewhere. More and more, the only vessels interested in stopping at Deriflys became those run by criminal enterprises intent on profiting from the misery of those left behind. Drugs and weapons flooded the place, gangs took over, and the residents who did manage to book passage offworld found themselves delivered against their wills to lives worse than the ones they’d left. Everybody who stayed had to live with the chaos. There were a few well-fed leaders and absolute wretchedness on every level below them. The inhabitants were left starving, desperate, filthy, and clawing at each other for every gram of food, breath of air, and square centimeter of space. In short, life there became a daily litany of atrocities, and an exercise in how low you were willing to sink, how cheaply you were willing to sell yourself, in order to survive.” She told the story as if she’d lived it herself. She dabbed at her eyes with a soft linen. “This, Counselor, is the place where my beautiful brother Jason, my best friend, spent five years while we didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.”

It wasn’t the only such story I’d heard. Civilized space was dotted with worlds that had made themselves hells, sometimes out of sheer suicidal neglect, other times by turning on each other with the very same weapons responsible for providing the ancestors of Jason Bettelhine with the wealth he’d forsaken when he went wandering, bright-eyed but blind, through a hostile universe. There was no reason I should have felt sympathy for him, given who he was, but he’d been a child, much like another whose innocence had ended with brutality and blood. It took me several seconds to muster words. “Why didn’t he tell somebody who he was, and promise a big reward to the first ship that sent him home?”

Once again, her smile crossed the border into the pity she’d shown for Monday Brown. “Surely a woman as wise as yourself knows the answer to that.”

It had come to me as soon as I’d asked the question. Of course, he couldn’t have. The kind of people capable of clawing their way to the top of a world falling apart would have seen a Bettelhine heir as a commodity more valuable than any mere ransom could be. There were entire civilizations ravaged by his family trade that would have given half their treasuries just to have him handed over for execution, others that would have loved to have him chained to a wall and tortured a different way every day for the rest of his natural life. Still others would have pointed a gun at his head and advised the Bettelhines that he would remain alive for only as long as the family made regular payments. In none of those cases would any thought be given to actually returning him. Hard as it would have been to accept, Jason would have been far safer as a ragged little corridor rat, or as the plaything of powers greater than himself, than he ever could have been as the long-lost Bettelhine son, expecting a comfortable ride back to the luxurious estate he’d forsaken in favor of the adventure gone bad.

But there was another factor, even more terrible, that loomed above all of those nightmares like a massive weight set to crush everything beneath it to insignificance. Exactly how long could a naïve, pampered boy live in hell before survival meant doing something that he could never bring back to his family? How long before the only possible conclusion for him would be that he’d ruined himself, and belonged nowhere but where he was?

I said, “How did he get out?”

“He’s not willing to share that at this time. But I can say that when he got home it was almost another additional year before he was willing to accept the family’s joy at seeing him again. The boy we’d known had been…broken.”

I glanced at the confident young man enjoying his conversation with Skye. “He seems fine now. As do you.”

“Thank you. You don’t know what it cost us, by which I mean, the two of us. We help each other carry the weight. It’s one reason we remain so close now.”

“And—excuse me—all this helps explain why I’m here, how?”

Jelaine spread her hands. “A changed man can change his family, and what his family stands for. Even, I daresay, how far the web of family extends. We want to reflect that with our policies, Andrea, and we believe that you can help us realize that ambition. We believe that you’re uniquely suited to help guide us into that future. But the rest is for my father to say. I can see we’re out of time anyway.”

I heard another sylvan tinkle, like the one that had summoned the Porrinyards and me from our suite. It was followed by a gentle mechanical hum, somewhere above me. I followed the sound to its point of origin and saw a formal dinner table, draped with a golden embroidered cloth and equipped with twelve settings, descending from an invisible recess in the ceiling, sans wires. The table itself had no legs, just the dining surface, which found its natural level at the altitude appropriate for diners. Just as it settled into place, twelve chairs, including eleven built for the human posterior and one designed for the bonier Bocaian rump, came into view, lowering themselves through the illusory solidity of the ceiling, and settled into their positions. Atop the table, gleaming silver holders anchored a pair of scarlet candles, burning fore and aft, their reflections dancing on each of the bejeweled table settings. Each place had a printed name card, tented behind the plate, establishing the prearranged seating order.

Across the room, the middle-aged couple went aaaaah and just barely resisted clapping their hands. I stifled the same impulse I’d obeyed at the suite when confronted with the bed that had made itself. I did not exclaim, Oh, come ON! But I thought it. I may have liked one Bettelhine at least, more than I’d imagined I was going to, but I hated what seemed to be a family habit of doing everything as if it had to be accompanied by a flourish of trumpets.

Somewhere, Arturo Mendez said, “Dinner is served.”

To me the common dinner party is as alien an environment as an ocean of liquid mercury, or an ice field on a frozen moon.

But some things can’t be helped.

We took our seats, and I got to meet the other members of the party.

It turned out that I did know the dazzling redhead seated opposite me (“Counselor Cort! How wonderful! I heard that you were here!”), but that was no great accomplishment on my part. Everybody knew her. Her name was Dejah Shapiro, and she was the famous mistress of a personal empire as star-spanning as the one commanded by the Bettelhines, much of it based on the sale of high-end orbital habitats for markets throughout human space. It was said that she’d built more worlds than a year’s output of the Bettelhine factories could have blown up. It was also said that, despite her youthful appearance, she’d lived longer than any human being now alive. We’d spent a week working together, about ten years ago, when she’d been engaged to double the size of an expanding New London, and I’d been the young Dip Corps attorney assigned to ease her through the permits. She’d claimed to like me, at the time, even though I’d done everything within my power to discourage it.

When the Porrinyards were introduced to her as my assistants, she sized them up and brightened at once. “Oh, wow. Counselor, you haven’t.”

The Porrinyards, seated at opposite ends of the long table, but enjoying themselves a little too much, said, “Surprising, isn’t it?”

“Not now that I think about it. It would take more than one person, acting in concert, to break past Andrea’s defenses.”

Dejah’s latest marriage, to a low-end petty thief named Karl Nimmitz, had been the stuff of tabloid journalism, impossible to escape even if, like myself, that was the kind of news you tried to. But he wasn’t here. I wondered why. Had they fought? Broken up? Or were there just some pets you didn’t take out in polite company? I rejected those questions as irrelevant to the moment at hand and asked a polite, deceptively casual, “And is this your first trip down to Xana?”

Dejah gave me a look of total understanding, which in her case gave the impression that she could map every stray neuron that decided to fire in my brain. “In fact, yes. I’m afraid that relations between myself and our hosts have not always been as cordial as they’ve been tonight.”

The other Bettlehine brother emitted a laugh that sounded more like a bark. “Let’s not understate the case, Dejah. The proper word, before today, has always been enemies. There have been times when you wouldn’t have dared come here without an armada.”

“Well, yes,” she said, with a genteel tip of her goblet. “But I hope this marks the start of a more congenial relationship.”

He matched her toast. “As do I.”

Best wishes like that make the air between them seem full of broken glass.

His name was Philip Bettelhine, and he was introduced to me as the half brother of Jason and Jelaine, born a decade before them to one of their father’s previous wives. The Bettelhine genes remained dominant, of course, and he had the same strong jaw, the same piercingly intelligent eyes. But his complexion was darker, a polished mahogany where theirs was a milk-fed pink. His gray hair was the color and consistency of lamb’s wool and had been trimmed to meet his forehead in a jagged line like a sawtooth, suggesting either the points of a crown or the teeth of a shark, I didn’t know which. As a man he seemed wearier and less prone to politic smiles than either of his younger siblings, more bent by whatever responsibilities marked his own contribution to the Bettelhine enterprises.

Tonight he sat at Jason’s right hand and murmured soft comments toward his younger brother whenever conversation lagged. Only Skye, sitting to his immediate left, managed to establish that he was capable of smiling with actual mirth, rather than just sublimated tension. At least one of her comments made him glance my way with genuine amusement. I burned to know what the joke was, but would have forgone that for some understanding of whatever was going on between him and his brother.

Sometime during the salad—orange, crunchy spheres that I probed with little appetite, and much dismay, and which Jelaine leaned over to describe as a “delicious, tangy” spore native to Xana’s frozen continent—Philip turned my way and uttered the only words he’d directed toward me since our terse introduction at the meal’s onset. “Excuse me, Counselor? Jason and I were talking about this new job title of yours? Prosecutor-at-Large?”

I dabbed at my lips with a napkin, having rearranged the spheres in my bowl without quite managing to consume any of them. “What about it, Mr. Bettelhine?”

“It’s downright unprecedented, as far as I know. In fact, from what I know about the Dip Corps leadership, it flies in the face of any of their policies maintaining command oversight over agents in the field.”

I’m notorious for preferring food mixed in vats to those grown on planets, but I tasted one of the spheres anyway, just to look unconcerned. It was as tangy as advertised, even if I wasn’t sure about the delicious part. “That’s correct. It does.”

“Forgive me, Counselor, but how you got yourself declared so independent has got to be the very best story at this table.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It is. But I’m not telling it.”

Philip surprised me by letting the subject go. But I still caught him sneaking glances at me afterward. After the first few, I knew one thing as well as I knew the litany of Bettelhine crimes against humanity: he didn’t know why I was here any more than I did. He just knew the level of importance his father and siblings had placed on my presence, and being out of the loop bothered him.

The Khaajiir did not speak much—a change from his behavior before dinner, when he’d been visibly chatty—but when he did open his mouth, he was charming and kind, if more hesitant and formal than he’d been before. He kept his staff threaded between the seat and the left armrest of his chair, and touched it often, if afraid to go without it for so much a single moment.

The pale man sitting to Skye’s immediate left, the same one who had been so charmed by her before the meal, was Vernon Wethers, another dedicated aide like Monday Brown, except working for Philip Bettelhine instead of Hans. For the few moments I spoke to him he said, in a voice reluctant to break into any other conversation, that he’d been working beside Philip for fifteen years, and valued the chance to see so many high-level projects from the perspective of management. He couldn’t give me any details, of course, those projects being classified, but he assured me that it was exciting work. Sitting between two extraordinarily beautiful women (Skye and Dejah), facing another (Jelaine), and dealing with a fourth who at the very least did not deserve to be buried beneath the nearest rock (myself), seemed to unman him. He stammered, and faced his food, and, at the one point when Skye’s shoulder brushed against his, recoiled as if burned. The one thing I would later remember him saying, in response to Mrs. Pearlman’s gushing praise of the food, was, “I’m glad you like it. But I’m afraid I have no sense of taste, myself.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Dejah.

He shrugged. “It would be a distraction from my work.”

I didn’t ask Vernon if he had a family. There seemed little point.

The Pearlmans, Dina and Farley, seemed to have the simplest story. They were introduced to me as a pair of middle managers from Temet, a village based around a tiny research facility on an island off the coast of Midgard. Fourth-generation residents of Xana, they claimed not to have met any Inner Family Bettelhines before. Given their dullness, I would have been surprised if they often ventured out of their own neighborhood, let alone made it offworld. But they’d exceeded their latest project quotas, and been chosen out of all the coworkers on their pay level, to enjoy a celebratory evening with the big bosses, during this luxurious elevator ride from orbit. It was no wonder they turned pale every time any of these rich and powerful rulers of their world spoke to them spoke to them for five minutes. They were people who had lived their lives in a dark box, blinded when they found themselves beneath the light of the midday sun.

Over the next course, some fishy delicacy from Xana’s southern sea that the Pearlmans devoured with gusto and that I quit with after only a few bites, I heard Dina questioning Oscin. “I’ve always wondered, one thing about this Dip Corps. Is that the same thing as the Diplomatic Corps?”

“Yes,” Oscin said.

She struggled for a precedent. “Like Hom.Sap is the same thing as Homo Sapiens.”

“Yes,” he said again.

There was a pause, then she wondered, “Who decides that kind of thing?”

Several seats down, Skye reddened and covered her mouth. But there was no sign of a grin on Oscin’s face. “There’s a committee.”

Monday Brown, who had been absent since his abrupt departure at the end of our conversation before dinner, returned to us a few minutes after the fish course, taking his seat with the lack of self-consciousness that must have come from years of having to interrupt or delay his meals for important business. He nodded at Jelaine, and at the Khaajiir, who immediately clutched his staff as if expecting to be summoned somewhere. “I’m sorry for the delay. I had a few other things to take care of, in addition to contacting Mr. Pescziuwicz, and even then it took a few minutes to reach him, after all the, ah, damage today’s incident did to his schedule. He wants the Khaajiir to know that he’s invited to join the interrogation, once the suspects are capable of being interrogated. He also suggests that you’re likely to find the procedure not only beyond reproach, but also far too boring to sit through.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Sounds just like the bastard.”

The Khaajiir chuckled. “I just might surprise him and take him up on that. The ruffians might be sufficiently surprised to see me up close that they’ll blurt out the confession he wants.”

Brown turned to me next. “As for you, Counselor, he says he has no new information at this time, but asked you to contact him anyway.”

I blinked. “Right away?”

“He said, at your leisure. Colette at the bar will help you if you’d like.”

I made my apologies and left the table, therefore rescuing myself from the course Mendez was then serving, something gray and semiliquid that Dina Pearlman had already pronounced spectacular, but which, if it had an organic origin, I did not want to know about. I wondered, not for the first time, about the courage of the unknown historical figures responsible for trying certain foods for the first time.

Colette, whose fibrous hair now strobed streaks of light resembling comets, and who regarded contacting Mr. Pescziuwicz for me as yet another unparalleled highlight of her working day, told me she’d pipe the call to the hytex node in my suite.

The chime alerting me of the connection sounded the second I closed the door behind me. “Cort here. Talk to me.”

His holographic image shimmered into existence, a meter away. As per the Bettelhine policy of providing their guests with the finest, it had none of the static or fuzzy signal that plague hytex projections elsewhere. It wasn’t even translucent. The only way I knew it was not his actual head, floating there, was common sense and the absence of any blood hemorrhaging from the cutoff beneath his chin. “Counselor, this is Antrecz Pescziuwicz. Enjoying the ride?”

The projection followed me as I plopped into one of the suite’s easy chairs. “I’m a little dumbfounded, to tell the truth. Mostly by these two guests, the Pearlmans. Do your bosses always take such excessive pleasure in awing the plebes?”

He smirked. “We’re all plebes to them, Counselor. Except, maybe, I see that Shapiro woman’s name on the passenger manifest. Must be odd for the Family to have a personal guest with the same number of decimal places in her ledger.”

“There were some comments passed at dinner to the effect that your bosses and this particular bigwig have a bumpy past. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

“Sorry. Never came up in the course of my daily work-day.”

Which was not, quite, the same thing as saying he didn’t know. I bit my lip. “Have you been told there’s another Bocaian aboard?”

“Yeah. Mr. Brown told me a few minutes ago. I tanned his eardrums for withholding until he told me the bosses were behind it. He also said I’m not authorized to know this mucker’s name or what his business is, so you should refrain from telling me.”

I said, “Is that a sneaky way of asking me to leak it?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, Counselor, it’s a straightforward way of telling you not to tell me. When the bosses say I’m not authorized to know something, they mean I’m not authorized to know it, not that I should rush right out and contrive to find myself an accommodating big mouth. Honestly, I don’t want to know.” He took on the look of a man fighting a little battle with himself, before he surrendered with a grudging, “But I guess it wouldn’t be out of line to point out that being extra careful is always a fine idea when breaking bread with a representative of a civilization that wants you burned at the stake.”

“Covered. Is that why you wanted me to call?”

“No.” He hesitated again, like a high diver gathering up his nerve before that first step off a clip. “The thing is, I’ve spent the last few hours trying to draw some lines between you and our perpetrators, and I’ve run into some…problems.”

“Like what kind of problems?”

“Like there’s a lot about your personal history that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Old news. I’ve spent my whole life wrestling with the parts that don’t make sense. The massacre on Bocai, for one.”

He grimaced with impatience as he waved that away. “Naaah, I’m not talking about that. See, there’s a difference between something we don’t have enough information to understand, like what happened on Bocai, and something we take for granted that just plain refuses to add up. This thing I’m talking about? Doesn’t add up at all. Maybe you can help.”

I had not been impressed by his job performance so far, or by his lack of curiosity over the Khaajiir, so I didn’t expect much. “Shoot.”

Another pause, as he searched for the right approach. “Look, Counselor, I wouldn’t have worried about it if there wasn’t so much out there about how smart you are. You got a wicked reputation for solving problems by asking the right questions. There’s one report, here, one of the ones that made it as far as the media, about how your bosses sent you someplace owned by the Tchi, to defend one of your diplomats accused of killing one of theirs. You went to your very first meeting with the prosecution and within five minutes of hearing what evidence they had showed them why they had to have the wrong guy. I mean, you knew right away. The entire embassy staff worked on the case for four months, and you show up and poke a hole in the whole thing before you can warm the chair with your butt. So between that and what you did in my office, I know from the very start, that you’re not stupid. So either there’s a factor here I’m not getting, or one you’re not getting. Maybe you’re so close to this thing, having lived with it for so long, that you never even bothered to question it.”

I pointed out, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about yet.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes rich with apology. “Let me put this in perspective, all right? One day when you’re a kid, your people and some Bocaians they live with go crazy and start cutting on each other. You survive that mess and get labeled a war criminal at eight years old. The rest of your surviving neighbors get shipped off to Juje knows where, maybe some kind of institution. I don’t know, maybe they’re out, maybe not. But you, the Dip Corps takes you in, gives you an education, and once you grow up decides that you’re cured of whatever it was that ailed you. They figure it’s safe to let you go out and earn a living, as long as you’re working for them and that way protected by diplomatic immunity, because if you’re not somebody’s gonna snatch you and send you back to the people who want your head on a pike. I mean, no offense, but is that pretty much the situation?”

I still didn’t have the slightest idea where this was heading. “Yes.”

“So you spend the next few years zipping from system to system, as a Dip Corps counsel. And you make a name for yourself in legal circles, but you’re always having to deal with political crap because of all the parties who want you stuffed in a sack and handed over to the Bocaians. That also right?”

“Is there a question at the end of all this?”

That’s when he opened the trap door beneath my feet, left me realizing how much of my life had been based on a lie. “How come anybody even knows you’re a war criminal?”

Several seconds passed before I felt my heart beat again. “Come again?”

“What,” he said, “you think you looked exactly the same at twenty that you did at eight? I mean, the Dip Corps could have changed your name, your skin pigment, your nose, 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.”

There was a sound building in the room. It was between my ears and it was burning at the pit of my stomach and it was crumbling the bones in my spine to powder. It was the sound of cracks forming in every assumption I’d ever made, and of the entire superstructure of all the further assumptions that followed them beginning to list, and then to sway, and then to fall. I felt the room turn red at the edges, and did not want Pescziuwicz to continue, because now that he’d taken me this far I didn’t need his help to travel the rest of the way.

But he went on, every word out of his mouth a fresh spike driven into the base of my brain. “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 had just handed all the alien governments who wanted to paint humanity as a bunch of homicidal bastards who let their own get away with murder.”

I closed my eyes, desperate to shut him out, hating the way his voice insisted on making itself heard through the pounding of my heart.

He asked, “Why would they put themselves through that?”

Stop, I thought.

“Why would they put you through that?”

Please stop.

“And why would you let them?”

My eyes rolled into my head, and the darkness flickering at the corners of the room swallowed me whole.