It is of course true that the sabotage of Santiago’s hammock required a level of technology that only we’re supposed to possess inside the Habitat.
“How would you explain that?”
There are only two possibilities, Counselor. Either we’re responsible for these incidents, or somebody other than us arranged access to the tools.
“Do you deny your own involvement?”
A moment’s logical consideration should be enough to establish our innocence of that crime. After all, we built this station. We maintain it. We agreed to your presence here. We even provide your life support. If we wished to kill every human being on board, we could do so in a matter of moments, by means far subtler than those employed by your supposed murderer. If we wished to kill individuals, the mechanisms that support your lives here are sufficiently precarious that, were we of the proper bent, we could have no trouble arranging a series of accidents that would never be suspected as the product of deliberate intent.
Thoughts like that had occupied my mind since my own arrival on this station. “And Warmuth?”
We did not murder either Christina Santiago or Cynthia Warmuth.
That last statement delivered emphatically.
It is of course possible, even probable, that even if innocent we still know more than we’re saying about these events, but in that case any explanation of our involvement would have to include the reason we’ve elected to keep such secrets.
“I agree with that too.” Sheer perversity would not work as an explanation.
There is another point. If your culprit used sophisticated tools to sabotage Santiago’s tent, why was the murder of Cynthia Warmuth so primitive by comparison? Why use high technology for one crime and messy savagery for the other?
The AIsource had hit upon the one aspect of this double crime that bothered me the most. “The circumstances weren’t all that different.”
How were they alike, in your view?
“They were both theater. They were both designed to be recognized as murders.”
Meaning?
“As you point out, life on this station is precarious by design. A murder designed to look like an accident could pass without suspicion, leaving no body and no forensic evidence. But both of these incidents raised immediate suspicions. They seem downright stage-managed. Is that what’s happening here?”
When the AIsource finally spoke again, I could only read the delay as a dramatic pause. Theatrics. Or diplomacy; wise men throughout history had already noticed that sometimes there wasn’t much of a difference between the two.
You are a very intelligent human being, Counselor. We have been more impressed by your capabilities than you could ever know, for a longer time than you could ever know. Indeed: you would be surprised indeed to discover some of the attributes we have in common.
Empty flattery was not AIsource style. “But?”
But you still need to rethink your starting assumptions in this case. Some are flawed.
“Which ones?”
Continue your investigation.
The blue glow faded to a gray nothingness. I knew, without asking another question, that the audience was over; that they would not tease me with further discussion until I was able to bring more to the table.
They were playing games with me. I had no idea why; until this moment, I never would have guessed that they played games at all. But their refusal to specify just which of my starting assumptions were flawed was a de facto admission that this was exactly what they were doing.
Why?
A gentle blast of cool air came out of nowhere and propelled me toward a grayer blur that might have been a portal opening in the chamber wall. Aware that there was nothing I could do to continue the interview if the masters of this station wanted it over, I said nothing and allowed the winds to usher me out.
But it seemed that the AIsource still had a parting shot.
Andrea Cort? Two other points of interest.
“Yes?”
Your false assumptions extend to your professional history. You have completely misjudged Artis Bringen.
I think my jaw dropped open. “What?”
Second, we are aware that you have received certain threatening messages. We are not, ourselves, responsible. But we do know that the responsible party is on One One One and does intend you harm. Whatever actions you take from this moment should include extreme vigilance to ward off imminent attempts on your life.
I didn’t bother asking for the assassin’s name, even though I was pretty sure they knew it. We wouldn’t have been going through this charade if they’d been in any mood for providing answers. “Thank you. Anything else?”
They spoke a single sentence that yanked my world out from under me.
By the time this business is done, you will know your Unseen Demons.
8. OZ
I’d expected to find all three of my guides waiting for me upon my ejection from the Interface, but instead found Oscin Porrinyard standing vigil alone.
The vestibule was a small chamber, similar to but quite distinct from the one I’d entered. The gravity was light, the air cold and marked with unfamiliar scents. The curved walls were alive with shifting lights, the ground spongy. The far end of the chamber narrowed, becoming a corridor that curved to the left. Though presumably built for AIsource use, its shape still seemed too conveniently scaled to human dimensions. I thought stage setting before a wave of weakness overcame me.
Oscin immediately seized my arms and guided me as I sank to the soft plastiform floor. I almost protested Oscin’s hands on my person, the way I’d protested Gibb’s, but the shock made it a medical necessity. So I said nothing as he eased me back against the nearest solid wall, which adjusted at the moment it felt my weight, becoming a soft, supportive cushion. Its touch felt disturbingly intimate, almost invasive, but I was not up to protesting.
Unseen Demons, they’d said.
I must have spoken those words to myself ten thousand times in the year since they’d become my personal mission. They’d roused me from despair, from apathy, from the feeling that nothing I could do would ever redeem what I’d done.
They’d given me a reason for living.
But I’d only shared them with one other human being, and he was dead.
The diplomatic crisis on Catarkhus, one year earlier, had involved several alien governments in a wrangle over the proper venue to try a disturbed human being named Emil Sandburg, who had admitted to murdering a number of the indigenes.
All the established protocols of interspecies law had argued for Sandburg to be tried by the locals, but the Catarkhans, while sentient, were nevertheless so closed to the universe that the rest of us lived in that they were incapable of even understanding that crimes of any kind had been committed against them. Blind, deaf, and unable to sense us in any way, they weren’t even aware of our presence. To them, the visiting humans, Riirgaans, Tchi, and Bursteeni delegations were just invisible, intangible presences whose influence on their lives was neither felt nor suspected.