The Cause of Death (46 page)

He hesitated and eased off his aim. He seemed to come back to himself after a few seconds. He took a deep breath and resettled himself. He sighted along the aiming guides set into the top of the barrel.

"Georg!" Marta said again.

"I'm doing this for us, Marta," he said without looking behind. "For all of us. To make us safe at last." He leveled the gun. He sighted in on his target again, from a range of less than two meters. He put his finger around the trigger. He pulled it back--

And Marta leapt forward, her arm slamming into the top of the gun barrel, shoving it down, hard, just as the trigger engaged and the rocket projectile fired. With a roar and whoosh, the projectile blasted not through the head of the dummy, but through its midsection, slicing it clean in two, dropping the two halves to the floor, already ablaze.

The projectile crashed into the floor and stuck there, engine spent, spewing smoke, for a count of one, two, three--then it went off with a flash and a pop that threw the projectile up hard enough to bounce against the ceiling before dropping back to the floor.

Smoke and dusk and the smell of burned propellant and spent explosive and burned wood, shouts and cries and yelling, filled the room. The dust and sound and flash of light seemed to have stunned everyone.

Or almost everyone. Agent Hannah Wolfson made a flying tackle to bring Marta down just a step or two shy of the door. Wolfson coolly and professionally restrained Marta, held her down, and produced a pair of restraint cords from somewhere, wrapping one cord around Marta's wrists and another around her ankles.

Marta spat and cursed and hissed at her captor, struggling long after struggle was pointless. "You! You switched the ammo after all, you nasty little--"

But Wolfson taped Marta's mouth shut, before Marta could say any more. "No," said Wolfson, with an expression of intense and feral satisfaction. "I didn't do that. I told your husband--Agent Mendez is our weapons expert." She grinned, and a bright spark of blood dribbled down from her lower lip, split open at some point in the scuffle. "But I'll take all the credit I can get for that takedown," she said. "You definitely weren't that easy to catch."

Georg dropped the gun, and it hit the floor with an empty and meaningless clatter.

TWENTY-EIGHT
CONVICTIONS

A few hours in an improvised cell served to calm Marta Hertzmann down a bit before questioning, but did nothing to improve her disposition.

"Where did the suicide rounds come from?" Jamie asked for the dozenth time.

"You've got all the proof you need," Marta Hertzmann snapped--which was actually more of an answer than she had given up to that point. "Why in the devil do we need to go through with this?"

"For more or less the same reasons we gave to your husband," Darsteel said, lounging back on his perching stool. The more tense and angry Marta got, the calmer and more relaxed Darsteel became. "To make sure that rumors cannot grow, to see to it that the facts are planted close together and make each other strong. You know you're going to tell us what we want, sooner or later--and I think we both know the process will be a lot gentler with your fellow humans present. Let's get it over with before I tell them to leave. Answer the questions."

Judging by her expression, the not-very-well-veiled threat made an impression.

"The suicide rounds," Jamie said once again. "Where did you get them? Where did you buy them?"

Marta snorted disdainfully--but this time, she actually answered. "Buy them? I
made
them. I'm an engineer, when I don't have to waste my time playing adoring wife to my brave and noble husband. Twenty minutes' work for each of them--and that was only because I was working carefully. Get a standard round, cut here, glue there, reroute some wires. Simple."

"When did you make them?" Hannah asked. "And why? And when did you load them into the Thelm's dueling pistols?"

"Or to put it a trifle less delicately, whom were you planning to annihilate?" Brox asked.

"Just after Georg was recaptured and handed back, things got very, very ugly between our own great and noble Thelm and that fiend incarnate, the High Thelek," said Marta, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "For a few days there, it looked like they actually might fight a duel and try to kill each other. That seemed like a good idea to me. The Thelek would be no loss. Most people would tell you that, though they thought the Thelm was some kind of saint. But he was ready to sell Georg out the first moment that the price was right.
You
helped prove that, when you told him about Penitence.

"I decided to make the duel as lethal as possible. But once I had swapped the rounds, I wanted to get as far away from Thelm's Keep as I could. If there
were
a duel, and the suicide rounds were found, there would be an investigation--and I didn't want to be in the neighborhood for that. I decided it would be a good idea to stay safely on the other side of the planet for a while. Once I heard you were coming, I figured I had to be close to the scene."

"I do not understand the point of booby-trapping the pistols before the duel," Darsteel said. "Why would it matter? One or the other would die, and that was what you wanted."

"Not quite. She wanted them
both
dead," said Hannah. "If both guns shoot backwards, straight at the shooter, the odds are much better that someone is going to die--probably two someones. If you don't want
either
side to win, why not get rid of both? Furthermore, if either duelist
did
survive, he'd be the obvious suspect for rigging the guns. His reputation would be destroyed because he had acted dishonorably. If it was the Thelm, he'd be removed from office--if the Thelek, removed from the line of succession. If both the Thelm and the Thelek were out of the way--who did that leave to inherit the power? Georg."

"That's all about right," Marta said.

"But it would also mean that Georg's adoring wife Marta would have inherited the Thelm's wealth, his property, his land--and the income that property produced," said Brox.

Marta's eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. "The income flow generated from the Thelm's wife's share is amazing. Even getting a small percentage of the gross planetary product for a poor, backward planet means a truly astounding amount of cash," she said wistfully. "I could have done some grand things for Reqwar with that money." She glared at Darsteel and the BSI agents. "Now, thanks to you, none of that can happen."

Hannah snorted. "Right. It's our fault."

Darsteel stared at Marta. "You humans look enough like us, and act enough like us, that, sometimes, I can forget how alien you are. How could
you
blame
us
?"

Marta tossed her head back, glared at him through half-closed eyes, but did not answer.

"I might be able to give a hint on that point," said Jamie. "Your husband is a true believer. He believes that his oath
requires
him to do what's
right
. You're an absolutist, and your oath merely confirms what you already know--that
you
can do no
wrong
. He feels obliged to do certain things--and you feel entitled to certain rewards."

"Very cute phrasing," Marta said. "But meaningless."

"Is it?" Jamie asked. He gestured to Hannah. "It puts me in mind of a talk we had about the ends justifying the means. Rob a bank to feed the poor, and if the bank guards get killed trying to stop you, it's their own fault for interfering with your act of benevolence. Your cause is good, and therefore you can do no wrong." Jamie looked at Marta. "You were going to spend the money you got from killing the Thelm and Thelek--or at least most of it--on doing nice things for the planet, and so it was all right to kill them, and besides they weren't nice men anyway. And you worked so hard to do good that you deserved to be rich anyway. Is that about it?"

Marta shifted her poisonous stare to Jamie. "Go to the devil."

Jamie chuckled. "Let the record show that wasn't a denial."

"But what about that Pax Humana oath of yours?" Darsteel insisted.

"'I will die most willingly to stop evil, but I will not kill, even in the name of good.' " said Jamie. "Simple. Marta didn't kill anyone. Did you, Marta?"

"No, I didn't, as a matter of fact."

"Of course not. How could she, when she is sworn to Pax Humana? Instead she found a way to get her victim to kill
himself
. When the Thelm died, it was because he was willing to kill Marta, and it was his own finger on the trigger that killed him. What would you call a plea based on that theory, Marta? Premeditated self-defense?"

Marta said nothing. Hannah decided to do some talking. "Stop me if I go wrong, Marta. I want to see if I have this put together right. Weeks ago, when you thought the Thelm and Thelek might have a duel together, you bought or borrowed a couple of standard dueling rounds from somewhere, modified them into suicide rounds, then took advantage of your position as a trusted member of the household to sneak into his audience chamber and swap the standard rounds for the suicide rounds. If they had had a duel, and had used the Thelm's weapons, then both of them would die, or at the very least one would die and the other be badly discredited."

"It would have been the Thelm's weapons," said Darsteel. "The Thelm may not issue a challenge, but only accept one. And the challenger is always required to accept the challenged party's weapons."

"Except the duel never came off--and you either never saw a reason to swap the rounds back, or else you never got the chance. Maybe you just liked having a weapon like that handy, right where it might do some good. Maybe you even amused yourself, a little harmless fantasizing, working out ways you might use it.

"Then, suddenly, last night, you had to act at once, before the machinery for deporting you to Penitence could be started up and put in motion. Maybe the Thelm would have decided today to take no chances and lock you and Georg and Moira up someplace safe to prevent your causing trouble."

"He should have done it last night," said Darsteel, unhappily.

"True enough," said Brox.

Hannah went on. "You got Georg to come to the Keep, on a perfectly legitimate errand that would also give him the same motives for killing the Thelm that you had. You convinced him to spend the night, so he could take the blame, or credit. And of course, you needed his shoe, in order to do some evidence planting. You figured--rightly, as it turned out--that he would figure out you were guilty, without being told, and that he would act to shield you--or at least shield your child."

Hannah had received the distinct impression that Marta did not hold her husband in the highest possible regard, though she didn't really have a good sense of the depth of feeling that Georg had for Marta. Did he love her--or had he merely accepted that he was stuck with her, and that his daughter needed a mother? She hoped for his sake that it was the latter.

But best not to be sidetracked too far. "The rest was pretty straightforward. You simply had to go the Thelm's chamber--easily done, for you, a trusted member of the household--and goad him into firing at you. But he would only die if
he
tried to kill
you
. Attempted murder would be punished, instantly, by a death sentence. You were setting yourself up as judge and jury, but making the Thelm his own executioner. How, exactly, you got him to fire I don't know. At a guess, you tried--or pretended to try--to blackmail him, threatening him in a way that so enraged his sense of honor that he would have no choice but to kill you."

"No," said Marta. "You're wrong there."

And you'll start talking if someone tells you how clever you were, and then you get a chance to prove it by correcting them
, Hannah thought. "All right," she said. "How did you make it happen?"

"By playing on what the Thelm knew about the succession, and knowing that he obsessed on it, saw everything first by how it affected it, or was affected by it. I set up a plan I knew wouldn't work, knowing it would inspire him to try a plan of his own. I waited until Georg was asleep in our bed. Then I went up to the Thelm's audience chamber, carrying a gun--a small-caliber slug thrower--which I made very sure had exactly one round in it. I went into his audience chamber and started an argument. Easy enough to do, believe me. He didn't like me any better than I liked him. I told him that he was not going to send us to Penitence, that there was a better and more honorable solution that he had never even considered. I told him he should abdicate, at once, in favor of Georg."

Hannah frowned. "I must admit I never thought of abdication. Can a Thelm do that?" she asked Darsteel.

"If so, none of them have done it for a long time," he said. "It wouldn't be very healthy, for one thing. One faction or another wouldn't like something the new Thelm was doing, and would gear up a plot to put the 'rightful' Thelm back in the job. Which would leave the new Thelm with very few options. Thelms die in office, because they'd die pretty fast if they left the job any other way."