Vigiant (27 page)

At the far side of the room, two ScrambleTacs had stationed themselves by an elevator shaft, just like the one in the main tunnel—no elevator, merely an open hole. The club-thumpers trained their poppers down into the darkness; if robots clambered up from the depths, our fierce protectors would be ready. Other ScrambleTacs had spaced themselves out around the room, but most had congregated in a knot off to my right.

They were circled around a corpse. Not human. Not Oolom.

Freep.

The ScrambleTacs surrounded the body, but stood well back from it. I suppose they didn't want to disturb the death site. Or should I call it a murder site? Hard to say. The Freep lay flat on his back, eyes closed, hands folded cross his chest: a natural position for a corpse tucked into a coffin, but hard to imagine anyone dying half so tidy. Most likely, someone else had arranged the body after death—maybe the robots.

And the cause of death? Nothing obvious. The Freep was healthy-looking and only thirtyish. He wore a good winter parka, clean of acid splashes, knife wounds, and bloodstains. Maybe the poor sod had frozen, even with that parka—Freeps were designed for hard ultraviolet and blazing heat, not Great St. Caspian cold. But no sense speculating, when an autopsy would provide a definitive answer.

Tic stood beside me, looking down at the body. He cleared his throat. "Captain Cheticamp? I recognize the deceased."

Cheticamp blinked in surprise. "You do?"

"His name is Kowkow Iranu. You can check with the Freep embassy. Until his disappearance three months ago, he was a junior attaché with their trade-treaty negotiating team."

"Shit," Cheticamp said. He spoke for us all.

The police began their death scene cha-cha: taking pictures, scanning the area for hairs/fibers/scales/etc. Eventually they'd get a vacuum servo to suck up everything in the room, but they did a manual search first so they could record the position of everything they picked up—who knew if the location of a fluff-speck might be important? The servo did a better job of sweeping, but it didn't make note of where each feather of lint came from.

We so-called civilians kept out of the way and watched. Scrutinized the heck out of everyone... for a minute or two anyway. Festina scanned the corpse with her Bumbler. Tic kept himself moving, looking over shoulders, busy-busy-busy so he wouldn't think about the claustrophobic screamy-weamies. As for me, I soon let my mind drift away from the meticulous-fastidious-tedious police work; and timidly, shyly, asked the world-soul for anything it could tell about this Kowkow Iranu.

Instant data dump... and I knew a bunch more than I did before, thanks to a missing-persons report filed by the Freep embassy twelve weeks earlier.
Kowkow Iranu:
age twenty-three Freep years = thirty Earth standard. Family connections to several corporate barons in the Free Republic. Ergo, stinking rich with some political pull. One of four dozen staff members assigned to provide background info to the three senior Freep negotiators working on the trade treaty. The embassy hadn't stated Iranu's area of expertise, what kind of background bumpf he was supposed to provide... but the missing-persons report said he had graduated from a Freep university with a top-rank diploma in archaeology.

Hmmm.

Maya Cuttack spent time at archaeology digs in the Free Republic; no great surprise if she met Iranu there. Suppose they stayed friendly. While Iranu was on Demoth, he might have taken a break from the treaty talks to visit Maya here.

Then what happened? Did she kill him because he learned something he shouldn't have? Or was Iranu in on this too? Whatever "this" was. Perhaps he and Maya were working together on something shady and they'd got into a disagreement...

Wait now—go back. Why did the trade talks need an archaeologist on staff? To play devil's advocate, I could explain it away: young Iranu indulged his interests by taking an archaeology degree, but found there was no money in it and fell into a government job. Lots of people study one thing, then get a job doing something on a whole other block.

But.

But, but, but...

Here's the thing: Freep scientists weren't noted for pursuing knowledge out of dainty love of learning. Most just wanted to cash in. For Freeps, archaeology was a commercial enterprise—grave-robbing and treasure hunts, where you might find anything from ancient art objects to alien technological wonders.

In a Vigil law course, my professor talked about a group of Freep archaeologists who'd been caught smuggling artifacts off Demoth: fiddly-dick trinkets, lumps of junk, probably intended for sale to some
tico
collector who'd pay top dollar just because the stuff was old. But the incident had blown up to a major pissing match between us and the Freeps... them howling in righteous indignation at wicked Demoth, cruelly jailing honest Freep citizens for exercising their right to engage in commerce. The whole kerfuffle had soured relations between our planets for ages. In fact, the mess had happened three decades ago, just a year before the plague; and it was only now that our two planets had cooled off enough to talk about trade treaties again.

So the Freep contingent had an archaeologist on their negotiating staff. Something important there... but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Tic," I murmured, "what does the trade treaty say about archaeological artifacts?"

"Not much," he replied. "Considering past history, no one wanted to address archaeology at length—if they had, both sides would have been obliged to start blustering about sovereignty versus nearsighted greed, and that argument might have devolved all the way into a discussion of real issues. Couldn't have that: bureaucrats love to dicker about minutiae, but have aneurysms when you suggest they question first principles. So our negotiators took a low-key approach on archaeology in exchange for concessions on... oh, I think it was an acreage cap, how much agricultural land Freep citizens could buy on Demoth."

"What exactly is this low-key approach?"

"Archaeological sites are just another type of mine. Anything dug up will get taxed at the same rate as iron or copper, and Demoth won't raise a fuss about 'priceless artifacts' leaving the planet. No one thinks there are priceless artifacts here anyway—certainly not the Technocracy's Heritage Board. I'm doubtful myself; Ooloms have lived on Demoth nine centuries, and we've never found anything worth cheering about."

Time for a snort of derision. So the Ooloms hadn't made any dazzling archaeological finds? What a thundering surprise. Tic might have been the first Oolom ever to come down one of these tunnels, and he was only staying out of bloody-minded determination. Blessed near his whole body had turned gray-blue now, and his ear-sheaths were fluttering like caffeinated butterflies. I could flat-out guarantee that Ooloms never tried a systematic survey of a single one of these mines, let alone the hundreds all over Demoth.

But I could imagine the Freeps doing it.

And what did they find? Before the plague, they were smuggling out trinkets... no, sorry, the ones that got
caught
were smuggling out trinkets. Who knew how many other secret expeditions might have been digging around? And who knows if any of those hit pay dirt?

Then the epidemic came to town. Explorers flooded in, searching the countryside for sick Ooloms. The Freeps must have been forced to scurry away before they got noticed.

After the plague, Demoth had laid down tighter controls over incoming spaceships, funneling all arrivals through a down-to-the-marrow medical exam to make sure they weren't carrying alien microbes. That had mightily cranked off Freeps at the time; before, they'd been able to come and go without passing through any control authority. Away from urban centers, small ships used to be able to slip down to the surface without being noticed.

But postplague, Demoth bought state-of-the-art detectors to monitor the outer atmosphere. Had to keep out those germs, didn't we? And even the best stealth countermeasures can't hide a ship when it's hanging all by its lonesome, nothing but near vacuum for a thousand klicks in any direction. Drop your radar profile to the size of a chicken, and people will still wonder what a chicken's doing, flying through the Van Allen belts.

So: no more Freep archaeologists. Except Kowkow Iranu. And maybe Maya Cuttack—human, but on the Freep payroll.

What could they be digging for? Not knickknacks. Not the remains of old elevators, or the crumble-rust debris moldering on the floor all around me. Freeps would be chasing the Big Strike: alien tech. Whizbangs beyond the current knowledge of the Technocracy. With so many ruins on Demoth, you got rumors galore of high-tech gizmos, buried just out of sight, waiting to be discovered by the next idle spelunker who scuffed up a bit of dirt. It hadn't happened yet... but that meant nothing. Who knew if Demoth had been hiding alien treasures for thousands of years?

Such as a machine for making peacock tubes appear out of nowhere?

Speculation,
I told myself. But worth discussing with someone. With Tic? Not right now—he'd already scooted away to watch a ScrambleTac officer poke at a lump of dirt. Tic was not in a stand-steady, rational-discussion mood at the moment.

So who to talk with? Cheticamp? Festina?

Or should I just think hard?
Peacock, I seek advice as your humble petitioner and maidservant...

A voice sounded clearly in my mind.
Po turzijeff. Kalaff.

Not maidservant. Daughter.

I damn near screamed.

A blank few seconds after that. Next thing I can tell, I was cowering tight against a cold rock wall, my hand jammed into my carry-bag and clutching the old cold scalpel. I hadn't pulled the blade out... just grabbed it like a talisman, razor-sharp stability. Made me wonder, was this some blind impulse to defend myself, or to knife my own skin bloody in a lunatic self-aimed panic attack?

Even a link-seed can't answer some questions.

I quick yanked my hand from my purse and looked around, feeling the hot-guilt blush in my cheeks... worrying someone might have seen me. Tic, Festina—were they wondering what scared me, wondering what I'd been clutching in my bag? No. Not even looking my direction. They were both paying attention to someone new coming up the tunnel: the medical examiner, Yunupur, flown in from Bonaventure as soon as Cheticamp reported Iranu's corpse.

You can tell by his name, Yunupur was Oolom... and a young one at that, all hustle-bustle energy. New enough he could still tell you where he kept his accreditation certificate. I'd met him several times—his mother was Proctor Wollosof, one of the Vigil members who'd been scrutinizing Bonaventure since the plague. Thanks to her, Yunupur had grown up in the city among humans, and he'd bought into our culture with bubble and bounce... the roiling breathless enthusiasm only an outsider can muster.

"Mom-Faye!" he cried. "Catch!" He launched himself across the room and made no attempt to slow down as he whumped into me, wrapping his arms round my neck. Kiss kiss, one on each of my cheeks. Oolom lips are stickier than
Homo saps.
"Looking sexy as always," the boy beamed. "That parka does things for your shoulders."

Festina boggled at the two of us. I muttered, "I know his mother."

"And she wouldn't be caught dead down here," Yunupur announced, right cheerily. "If she knew this job made me go underground, she'd have a
spasm.
Old folks, right? They go totally Pteromic over the least little thing." He rolled his eyes, then noticed Tic. "Present company excluded, of course. You look like you're holding up okay, down here in the dark and squeezy."

"I'm not 'okay,' I'm magnificent," Tic answered; but his voice was tight enough to choke. "I also happen to be Proctor Smallwood's supervisor... which makes me concerned to see her fraternizing unprofessionally with civic officials."

"Ooo," said Yunupur, "chilly. But if you want professionalism, I can give you professionalism." He detached himself from my neck and put on an expression of mock seriousness. "And where is the unfortunate deceased I must examine?"

"How 'bout the guy lying on the ground?" Cheticamp suggested. He pointed toward the corpse.

"Certainly a popular locale for the lamented," Yunupur agreed as he bounced toward Iranu's body. "I see 'em in beds and I see 'em in chairs, but flat on the floor still wins as the position of choice for those with a love of the traditional. You found him exactly like this? With his hands neatly folded?" Cheticamp nodded.

"Then someone wanted to make a statement." Yunupur knelt beside the body and reached into his carrying bag for a scanning device, much like Festina's Bumbler. He held the machine a few centimeters above the corpse and moved it slowly from Iranu's head down to the feet, then back again. "Nothing immediately obvious," he said. "Have you taken all the pictures you want?"

Cheticamp nodded again. "Then let's start getting personal."

Yunupur produced a small vacuum cleaner and ran it lightly over Iranu's parka—not that I could see any hairs or fibers that might have come from the killer, but it paid to be thorough. Then, wearing sterile gloves, Yunupur carefully shifted the corpse's hands enough to clear the parka's fastener strip. Or at least, that's what he intended to do; as soon as Yunupur unclenched the hands from one another, Iranu's dead arms slapped limply to the ground.

"Oops," Yunupur said. "Usually corpses are stiffer than that."

"Do you
know
anything about Freep cadavers?" Cheticamp asked.

"My med courses covered all the Divian species," Yunupur replied, confident as a rooster. "I haven't had much practical experience, but still... Freeps advance slowly into rigor over the first twelve hours after death, stay steely for three days, then ease off into something inelastic yet movable." He looked up at Tic. "My professors never said Freeps went totally flaccid."

Tic didn't answer. His expression showed what he thought of people who blamed their professors for their own clumsiness.

I was thinking something totally different. Something that scared me left, right, and sideways. I prayed rare desperate that Yunupur would find some blatant cause of death—a stab wound through the heart, strangulation marks round the throat.