Final Inquiries (15 page)

Hannah glanced over at Brox. He was standing, his back to the crime scene, staring blankly at a patch of very blank wall. He was acting one hell of a lot like a human who had held together until his job was complete, his duty performed, and then fallen apart. It had been an act of sheer will to keep moving forward, get the job done--but now the job
was
done. He had delivered the human investigators he had been told to retrieve. Now he could let go, unravel, at least a little bit, for a little while.

"Well," said Hannah, "the obvious answer would be to get someone from the same species, preferably someone who has some expertise in crime scenes, to do the job--and that's Brox. But Brox
can't.
He's the grieving intended mate--and, let's face it--a suspect. Don't get me wrong.
Every
body in both embassies is a suspect, and that BSI coffee mug and the three desks for BSI agents three meters from the corpse don't make it look good for our side. But the whole point of our being dragged in here was to keep from having Brox investigate this one by himself. Even if he wasn't half in shock, even if we were ready to ask him to draw samples from his fiancee's dead body--it would taint the whole case to have him do the work."

"Then it's up to us," said Jamie. "But I don't know what sorts of samples to take, or how to take them. And that brings us right back to Brox. He's the only one who can walk us through this."

"No he isn't," Hannah said. "Medical officer. The Kendari diplomatic mission must have
some
sort of medical officer. So would the human mission."

"Both of whom are also suspects," Jamie objected. "More so than most of the other embassy personnel, given that this a
prima facie
poisoning case."

Hannah gestured to Emelza. "If we found her dead from a blow on the head, would you say that carpenters had to be prime suspects because only a carpenter would know how to use hammers?"

"I don't see your point."

"
Everyone
knows that caffeine is deadly poison to Kendari. They train and train and train every human who comes into contact with Kendari, exactly because it's in such common use with us and it kills them. We all know what the symptoms are, how small the dose has to be, what a Kendari caffeine case looks like. You don't need to be a doctor to know poison will kill you."

"Point taken. They aren't stronger or weaker suspects than anyone else."

"Right," said Hannah.

"So you're saying we pull both medical officers out of solitary?" Jamie asked. "Let them watch each other, and we watch both of them--and maybe Brox will snap out of it enough to watch us watch them?"

"Right. Brox will know how to contact his side, and have them contact our people."

"Let's do it."

But, of course, it was never that easy.

Ambassador Stabmacher splashed some water on his face, smoothed his hair back with the damp palm of his hand, and did his best to straighten up and smooth over the rumpled clothes he had been in for more hours than he cared to admit. He didn't much worry about his appearance for his own sake, but he knew full well the importance of looking his best for the sake of those he represented. And when that hatch opened in a moment, he would be the visible face of the human embassy on Tifinda.

The annunciator chimed, and the ambassador folded up the sink, made one last check of his appearance in the mirror, and went to the door. He pushed the intercom button. "Hello," he said.

"I'm here to escort you," said a voice he heard from the intercom, and also, in more muffled tones, coming through the hatch.

"Very good," he said. "You'll see what I believe are called tamper-indicator tapes over the seam of the hatch and the hatchway and so on. I'm told that those need to be removed before the hatch is opened, to prevent them from getting jammed in the mechanism."

"Yes, sir," said the voice once again, in a tone that managed to suggest both due respect for the ambassador, but also a slight weariness at being told how to do your own job by someone who knew far less about it than you did. "I'm photographing the tamper strips now, to demonstrate they were intact, just in case that comes up."

There was a slight pause, and then a few quiet rustles and scraping noises. "All right, sir. Ready for you on this side."

The ambassador undid the lock from the inside, and the door slid back into its recess. Ambassador Stabmacher put a smile on his face while at the same time trying to mask his very genuine sense of relief--and then decided there was no point in masking it at all. Who
wouldn't
be glad to get out? And why not, at least once in a while, let his expression and his voice show the way he really felt, instead of the way he
ought
to feel?

"Hello," he said, putting out his hand. "Ambassador Berndt Stabmacher, representing the United Human Governments to the Eminent Masters and the Preeminent Director of the Grand Warrens of the Conclave of Tifinda." He grinned again and shook his head slightly. "How's that for a mouthful?"

"Senior Special Agent Hannah Wolfson, BSI," said the woman as she took his hand. "Very glad to see you, sir. This is a bad situation. But you know that better than I do."

"Maybe not. I've been cooped up here quite a while. Things might have changed without my knowing," said the ambassador. He gestured around the small compartment. "Negotiating from voluntary solitary confinement is difficult."

"There was a lot of negotiating, yes, sir. It took a lot of dickering with the Kendari just to get a deal that would allow me to go through the door on the human-embassy side of the joint operations center."

"Let me be sure from you that I understand the agreement. The medical officers from the two embassies are to perform the, ah, actual
handling
of the body, and the two ambassadors, and Inquirist Brox 231, and you and your partner are to observe? Plenty of witnesses all around?"

"That's about it, sir. Except I believe the Kendari medical officer will be the one doing most of the work. Obviously their medical people will know more about handling one of their corpses. And my partner is watching the body while Inquirist Brox and I collect everyone else."

"Yes, I suppose that makes sense. Well, let's go pick up our doctor and get on with it. I promise you there are a great number of people who don't want to be kept waiting any longer."

"We've gathered that much, sir, but I think it might be best if you didn't say anything more until after we have dealt with the primary evidence. I think it would be wise if we waited for a formal interrogation--or debriefing, if you prefer that word."

"'Hearing,' would come closest, I think. But let's get on with it, shall we?"

Jamie stood alone--or nearly alone--in the harshly lit center of the joint operations center. He did, after all, have the simulants for company, for whatever that was worth. And, of course, Emelza 401 was there as well.

He knelt in front of her body and considered it thoughtfully. He knew nothing about her, really. She had been an Inquirist, she was young, and somehow, a group of family members from both sides had concluded she and Brox would be a good match. That was all.

In the cold, grim world they were working in, it didn't matter if he knew much else, unless it bore directly on how and why she was murdered. He, Jamie Mendez, and Hannah Wolfson, Commander Kelly, and Ambassador Stabmacher, and the BSI, and even Greveltra and his monster ship, had been pulled into all this not because of who she was, or what she did, or thought, or felt, or who did or did not love her, or even because she had died--but simply because of
how
she had died, and when, and where, and what was going on around her death. All that really mattered about her, to any of them, was that she had been murdered in the midst of delicate negotiations, and in a way that threw suspicion on humans in general, and BSI agents in particular. She had been reduced to a token, a symbol, an excuse.

"I'm sorry," Jamie said to Emelza. "I'm sorry you're in the middle of all this." In the middle, and yet just about forgotten. Which brought him back to the simulants--over at the edge, and likewise just about forgotten.

He stood up and walked over to them, stared at them both again. They were doing their deflated-beach-toy routine. But it would be a mistake to underestimate them. Whatever they were, exactly--robots, living beings, some weird amalgam of the two--they were here, in this room, because the Vixa were powerful enough to insist upon it and get their way. Odd to realize that he had more contact with them than any of the other Vixa. Unless Greveltra counted--and Jamie had gotten the very distinct impression from Brox that Greveltra, to some extent,
didn't
count. Jamie had barely said five words to Zeeraum.

And if
he
didn't count, these two--beings, objects, machines, animals--certainly didn't. And what did that say about the "real" Vixa if they surrounded themselves with lesser forms?

"What are you here for?" Jamie asked the two simulants.

The two of them stirred and came to life. The humanoid one was moving much faster and more smoothly than he had before. The thing had started out as a cartoonish blob-shaped approximation of the human body, so poorly programmed that it didn't even know to face the person he was speaking to. But it had learned to look up at him and establish eye contact.

For that matter, Jamie realized, the simulant had grown
eyes
along with a mouth, nose, and ears--or at least simulations of them. They all looked painted on, like the features on a doll or a mannequin. He had a sort of a mop of hair on his head--no, strike that--there were bulges growing out of his head that were colored and textured to approximate a thick mop of hair. "We are here to observe and assist," said the simulant. The words came out of the general region of the mouth, but the mouth itself did not move--nor did any other part of the head. But Jamie recognized the voice--his own voice--all the same.

Jamie felt as if he were looking through a mirror that produced a blurred and slightly distorted reflection. It was more obvious by the hour that this simulant was making himself over into a copy of Jamie Mendez.

"For whom do you observe? What are you here to observe?" he asked in Lesser Trade. "And how do you assist? You have not been of any great help so far."

"We observe on behalf of those who sent us. Our assistance will be provided at a later time and will be of significant help to you."

"Those answers, I must tell you, are of no help at all."

"They are the answers we provide. Our assistance will be provided at a--"

"That's enough," said Jamie. "Quiet."

He turned his attention to the Kendarian simulant, who pointed his muzzle at Jamie and cocked his head slightly to one side in a startlingly good imitation of one of Brox's mannerisms. "You have had more time to develop and observe than your companion. Will your responses be any more helpful?"

"We observe on behalf of--"

"Quiet," said Jamie. It didn't make any sense. Jamie was no expert on diplomatic niceties, but BSI agents had to know the basics. The principles of diplomatic immunity and of extraterritoriality, of an embassy being outside the territory and control of the host government, were to all intents universal. The Elder Race traditions and laws controlling those concepts were virtually identical to human practices.

It was a huge breach of those standards for the Vixa to require these simulants to accompany them on this mission, and into Kendari and human sovereign territory. Legally, the spot of ground he was on was, for most purposes, to be treated as if it were physically part of the planet Kendal. If he walked three meters to the BSI side of the main room, legally speaking, he'd be on Earth--or possibly Center. He was a little fuzzy on that detail.

What he did understand was that the cartoon version of diplomatic immunity--a drunken ambassador running over five people in the host country's capital, and not being punished for it--wasn't the reality. Diplomats and embassies weren't supposed to be immune from the law, or above it. The whole idea was that they were to be governed by the laws of their home governments. That was why this case wasn't being investigated by Vixan cops. And an embassy was supposed to be a place of safety, sanctuary, privacy. Access to it should be completely under the control of the embassy itself, with no reference to the host government.

Of course, nothing in life was absolute. There were practical limits and exceptions to that principle, and the rules had been broken many times by both host and guest governments. But the rules were there because they had to be there. Without such protections, every ambassador, every diplomat, was little more than a volunteer hostage, controlled by the whim of his or her hosts--with his or her opposite number the obvious target for reprisal by the folks back home. When one side or the other started playing that game--and it happened from time to time--relations between the two governments rapidly ground to a halt. Diplomats
had
to be safe. Embassies
had
to be extraterritorial, or else the whole system would collapse. The principle was universal because it was so basic, so fundamental.

And yet here were these two simulants, given the run of the Kendari/human joint operations center, and, apparently, both embassy compounds. The Vixa would have had to force that down the throats of the two ambassadors. It must have been the subject of huge protests, big arguments, complicated negotiations.

And for what? So a pair of rubber-faced copies of the real investigators could sit at the edge of the room and stare blankly at nothing at all. Why cause so much ill will for so little gain? It didn't make sense.

The inescapable conclusion was that the simulants were there for some other reason. But what the devil could it be?

He decided to try one more thing. The simulants had picked up Lesser Trade very rapidly. So fast that Jamie figured that it
had
been preprogrammed in them, but that the programming was latent in some way. It was in there, stored away, but it had to be
activated,
in something like the way a simulant apparently had to be near to and observing a subject before it started mimicking it. At a guess, hearing Lesser Trade spoken stimulated the memory centers that held the language, causing them to activate and feed their language skills to the simulant's brain, or its central processor, or whatever it had.