Death Sentence (40 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

OUT AND AWAY

The next hour or so was a blur for Jamie. If, if, if, he had inhaled so much as a microdroplet of that stuff, then it might already be working. He might already be doomed to suffer the same fate as Trevor. But Constancy had never gotten close enough to fire, and barring some freak combination of an infinitesimal leak and just the right air current, it just plain hadn't happened.

Hannah wasn't wasting time worrying about such nonsense. Inside of four minutes after the gunfight, she had the ship unlocked, the hatch open, and was burrowing through the evidence-bag supplies and hazardous material equipment. Inside of another five minutes she had the spray gun sealed inside four layers of containment, any one of which should have been protection enough. She got the spray gun hidden aboard ship where Taranarak wouldn't be likely to find it, then set to work prepping for departure before the local authorities could stir themselves to investigate the odd goings-on.

Jamie used a length of tapeline to strap Bulwark's still-twitching legs together, and then did his best to tie her various manipulators and mandibles together, but even he knew he couldn't do much of a job. Once Hannah was satisfied that she had concealed any sign of the spray gun full of age-inducer, Jamie went to fetch Taranarak. She was openly contemptuous of Jamie's attempt to restrain the Unseen One.

"Bulwark of Constancy will be able to slice through all that in less than three short-social-duration periods," she said. "It will barely slow it up. The only question is how long it will be until it revives."

"Any idea of how long that might be?"

"No," she said. "It might awaken in any period of time you care to mention. It might happen right now, or tomorrow."

"How about never?" Jamie asked sourly. "I'd choose never."

"Fine. But suppose it's now?" Hannah said from the
Sholto
's air lock. "I don't want to be here when Constancy does wake up. The sooner we get out of here, the better. We've got clearance. Let's lift before they revoke it."

Jamie followed Taranarak up the ramp and into the air lock. Taranarak looked down one last time at Bulwark of Constancy. "Your reactionless thrust system," she said. "It will not harm Bulwark of Constancy to use it so close to where the Unseen lies?"

"No," said Jamie, looking down. "No, it won't, worse luck." He paused a moment, then looked at Taranarak quizzically. "You do understand that it's as near a certainty as anything can be that Bulwark of Constancy blew up your house and tried to kill you and me and Agent Wolfson a few hours ago? And that it is entirely possible it was behind many of the other efforts against you? You told us you thought Constancy was manipulating Tigmin and Yalananav."

"I understand all that. But Bulwark of Constancy is of the Unseen People, one of the Eldest Races. I would not wish any of them harm. The Unseen are venerated throughout the Galaxy."

"Not in my neighborhood, they're not," Jamie growled. "Now let's get this ship buttoned up and get out of here."

Departure was spookily routine, given that there had just been a firefight on the landing field.

But Fallogon himself had issued the order for the
Bartholomew Sholto
to be given priority departure clearance, and, however, exactly, Bulwark of Constancy had gotten there ahead of them, Constancy had done it covertly. Probably no one at Free Orbit Level Station was even aware the Unseen Being was on-station, let alone that it had been caught trying to tamper with the
Sholto
.

And besides, the whole system was automatic anyway. Jamie was keeping Taranarak company on the lower deck while Hannah sat in the pilot's chair on the flight deck, but Hannah wasn't doing much in the way of flying. The Grand Elevator's Traffic Control Center took over direct control of the
Sholto
, commanding her to boost to an altitude of about twenty meters, then begin moving outward toward the rim of the massive station.

"Ah, Hannah, Taranarak's just turned a really weird shade of pinkish green down here," Jamie called up.

"What? Oh!" Hannah, watching her controls as intently as she could, hadn't even noticed when they drifted clear of the Station's artificial gravity field and flipped to zero gee. Hannah hastily powered up the
Sholto
's one-gravity field and looked down below in time to see Taranarak hastily swallowing a little vial of liquid--presumably a dose of the anti-nausea medicine the liftpod techs had given her. "We'll see about increasing our gravity field as soon as we're secured from departure," Hannah said. "Can you hold out for a while at reduced gravity?"

"Um--urgh--ah--yes. Yes, I think so," Taranarak replied, her speech a little slurred. "I think the medication is already helping a bit."

"I'm very glad to hear it," Hannah said with absolute sincerity. Dealing with a spacesick Metrannan couldn't be a pleasant prospect.

But then, most of what was coming next was certainly not pleasant.

There were a thousand things to do, and a thousand decisions to make--starting with deciding what to do first. As soon as they were secured from initial maneuvers and in the groove for their constant-acceleration departure trajectory, Hannah and Jamie allowed themselves a brief time-out in order to change from their much-bedraggled formal clothes and into shipboard coveralls--which were, after all, clothes that even Metrannans would agree were more appropriate to shipboard life. Then Hannah wrote up an urgent signal to Fallogon, reporting the encounter with Bulwark of Constancy, but leaving out all mention of the spray gun. It described Bulwark of Constancy as a prime suspect in the bomb attack and requested that the Xenoatric be detained.

Hannah showed it to Taranarak to see if there were any points where she might suggest changing, but Taranarak seemed distinctly underwhelmed by the entire idea. "You can send it if you want, I suppose," she said. "But I doubt it would do any good. Detaining an Unseen being is something close to blasphemy. Even if there are good reasons for taking such a step--and obviously there are in the present case--there will be such massive resistance to the very idea that no one will act on it in the first place.
I
am resistant, and, as you said, it tried to kill me. Even to me, the idea of arresting one of the Unseen sounds unseemly and improper."

"But surely there must be some way of dealing with an Unseen being who causes trouble," Jamie protested.

"Oh yes, of course. The normal procedure would be to petition the Council of the Unseen Race to restrain their erring compatriot. However, you will not be surprised to learn that is a lengthy, even ponderous, process. And, let us not forget that Bulwark of Constancy is no average Unseen being. It would be closer to say Bulwark of Constancy is the Fourth of the Three. Constancy has developed an expansive network of power and influence among those who resist change."

"Which is just about everyone on the planet," said Jamie. "Very well. We'll send the signal, and it won't do any good. What will happen next? What will Constancy do--assuming Constancy wakes up and recovers?"

"Constancy will recover, I assure you, and will need only a few moments to free itself from the restraints you put around it. Then, I would assume, it would simply stand up, walk to Nexus Station, and requisition one of the Unseen ships that are on the field at Free Orbit Station. Constancy will then pursue us and kill us."

Hard to miss the confidence in that prediction,
Hannah thought. Taranarak didn't say "try to kill us" or "make an attempt to kill us."

"They'll just permit her to walk in and take a ship?"

"Of course. Why not?"

Hannah resisted the urge to answer that question. It was obvious that that way lay madness. "Would she be able to get a fast ship? An armed ship?"

"Oh yes, absolutely. The Unseen would not bother with anything less."

"No, of course they wouldn't," said Hannah. "All right, then. I'm going to go through the motions, and send the message--and then, Jamie, you and I need to talk flight plans."

"You won't be needing me for that, will you?" asked Taranarak. "I do feel in need of a rest."

"So do we," said Hannah with perfect truthfulness, "but we'll let you get started first. Jamie, rustle up some coffee for both of us, and then come on up to the flight deck."

It took some doing, but somehow Jamie managed to get up the rope ladder while carrying two cups of blessedly hot strong coffee. Hannah accepted her cup gratefully and eased back in the pilot's chair while Jamie leaned against a bulkhead.

"At least we don't have to hide in the air lock for privacy," Jamie said, speaking in English in a voice that wasn't much above a whisper. He glanced down to the lower deck, where Taranarak was settling herself down into a sort of a nest of whatever soft and padded material they had been able to scrounge up. "One look at her face--and her anatomy--and I knew she wasn't going to try the rope ladder if she didn't have to. My guess is that, given the choice, she'll stay off the flight deck for the whole trip."

Hannah blew on her too-hot coffee, smiled, and spoke one word. "But."

"But," Jamie agreed, "even if it's a zillion-to-one shot that she's a plant, she
might
be a plant. And if there are multiple copies of the message floating around, that means there are potentially many Metrannans who might want to get their hands on the decrypt key. I believe Taranarak is what she appears to be--but Fallogon--or one of the other members of the Three--or for that matter, Bulwark of Constancy--might have set her up for us. She
might
be packing forty-seven different tracking and listening devices inside that headdress, and she
might
speak English better than us, and she
might
be waiting around for us to say something we shouldn't. I don't believe it, but it might be true. And the stakes are too high for us to take chances. So I say we don't say or do anything that might tell her something until we're safely back home in Center's star system and can holler for help from BSI HQ. That more or less covers your 'but,' if you'll forgive an unintended pun?"

"Gee, you blush easy sometimes. Yeah, pretty much. But there are some decisions we need to make
now.
We've accomplished very little of value so far--but we do have a lot more current information about conditions on Metran, we know what the message was about and what it was for, and we've got ourselves a refugee passenger who happens to be the greatest living expert on what the message was about. Plus we've got that kill-juice that Bulwark of Constancy was about to try out on you. We need human scientists to analyze that stuff, understand it, and maybe find a way to counteract it."

"You think the stuff is that dangerous?"

"You remember how Doc Vogel said that when there have been wars between two species, lots of times one of the two went extinct? I think there's a good chance that that stuff could make
us
extinct, if it's what I think it is."

"Okay, so what do you think it is?"

"The existing standard geriatric treatment for Metrannans is to delay decline until the last possible moment, so the patient is still vigorous until just before death, so that he falls apart all at once. That's how Hallaben died, though he wasn't at risk for the syndrome. And that's how Trevor died.