“The time will come, and she will learn the truth.”
Of course. Alex was silent. Nodded.
“Maybe. But you were wrong.”
“Time will tell,” replied Edward wearily.
“And you’re sure that her mind is stable? To combine a hetaera and a fighter in the same consciousness is already at the limits of possibility.”
“I know the potentialities of the human mind better than you do.” Edward squinted. “Trust me, Kim couldn’t have gone mad and disemboweled the Zzygou… that’s what you’re talking about, right?”
“Yes. I am trying to check out a number of possibilities, to exclude the utterly impossible.”
“Aren’t you taking on the work of a detective-spesh, my friend?” The geneticist laughed. “God… it’s nice to talk with you this way… sincerely and kindly!”
Alex had no reaction to these words. He just sat there, thinking. Most probably, Edward wasn’t lying. He had created Kim O’Hara to suit himself: as a bodyguard, as a source for his means of existence and, ultimately, as a lover. It was improbable that a galactic war had been a part of his plans.
People suppose, but it’s chance that disposes. Still, the girl’s unstable psyche could have skipped a beat… no matter how sure Edward was of the opposite.
Alex asked, “What would you conjecture?”
“The murderer?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m not a detective. If a spesh is aboard, and a clone of Peter Valke, at that”—the geneticist threw up his hands—“all I can do is watch and admire his work.”
“Is he really that good?”
“Magnificent. I worked on that specialization for more than twenty years. Went through a lot of setbacks, but the result exceeded all expectations.”
“So far Mr. Holmes hasn’t impressed me all that favorably. A collection of standard magic tricks and enhanced sensory organs.”
Edward just smiled.
“The very existence of the Empire is at stake here.” Alex tried again to appeal to reason. “You probably won’t survive this, either. Finding the murderer is vitally important to us.”
“The Empire against the Zzygou?” The geneticist sounded utterly indifferent. “The poor little bees don’t have the slightest chance.”
“Why?”
Edward sighed.
“Good Lord, a pilot-spesh should show a bit more intelligence! Everything is there in plain sight! The murderer, and the cause, and the trump card up the sleeve—the card the Imperial cabinet is going to produce at the right moment!”
His voice rang with absolute certainty. But for some reason it only frightened Alex.
“What are you talking about? Is there a magic weapon that ordinary people don’t know about?”
“You could put it that way.” Edward pensively rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No. I won’t explain anything. You have all the necessary data to figure out what is going on. And so does the detective. So don’t worry about the Empire’s fate… and get ready to enjoy the show.”
“How can you call the death of a sentient being a show? And the inevitable death of someone from my crew?”
“I’m tired, Alex,” said the geneticist bluntly. “Drop in to see me in twenty-four hours, okay? That is, of course, if Sherlock Holmes hasn’t solved the puzzle by then. Goodbye for now!”
He got up and lazily walked toward the wall. It trembled, opening up before him.
“Edward!” Alex shouted.
To no avail. The wall reassembled, hiding the geneticist from view. Inside his own crystal, he was lord and master… until a more powerful device took over the controls.
“You don’t know any more than I do,” he said out loud. “Even less…”
What had he missed?
Or, rather—what was he reluctant to notice?
In any case, he wouldn’t get an answer here.
Alex left the virtual space.
Sherlock Holmes had recommended that the crew not leave their quarters until a special permission was issued. And a detective-spesh’s recommendation was, in fact, an order. Even for the captain.
Glancing now and then at the outer-space screen, where the Lucifer hovered languidly, Alex tuned in to the news from Zodiac.
And, of course, immediately ran into the news about the Zzygou.
The actual cause of the conflict hadn’t appeared in the commonly available information net. There were only indistinct references to an incident that had led to the death, on the Empire’s territory, of a member of the Zzygou ruling clan. Apologies had already been issued in the name of the Emperor, along with promises of just punishment of the perpetrators, the organization of a fancy funeral, and reparations. In general, from any human’s point of view, the Zzygou’s rage was absolutely unfounded… after all, accidents did happen in the universe, and rushing to war over the death of a single sentient being—it was sheer madness!
And that was what frightened Alex. The Empire was getting ready for war. The Empire was creating background propaganda. Of course, the alien races would learn the unedited version of the conflict, but… the belligerent Cepheideans would be happy with any kind of trouble with the Zzygou, and the Bronins most probably wouldn’t consider even the most gruesome murder as reason for war.
Perhaps the alien races were precisely the cause for Edward’s optimism? Maybe he was betting that humanity would quickly be joined by some allies?
That was naive. Allies always appeared on time, all right. The time when the opponent’s territory was being redistributed.
The worst thing appeared to be the fact that both sides had already sustained some casualties.
The incident had happened on Volga, a poor and austere planet whose inhabitants—mostly Jews and Slavs—earned a meager living by arduous and ceaseless labor. The planet had essentially only one large city, near the spaceport, and a single industrial enterprise—a fuel refinery. The rest of the habitable surface of the planet was taken up by shallow swamps, which were farmed by the planet’s inhabitants.
Volga had simply been unlucky—a small Zzygou trading vessel had happened to be passing the planet’s space.
The vessel wasn’t a recent model. Designed for nonmilitary use, it was not at all suited for action against a planet’s surface. But the Others turned upon the planet with kamikaze-like determination. Had they targeted the spaceport’s defense stations, fate might have actually smiled on them. But the Zzygou seemed to have gone insane. They started randomly shooting at the city from their low-powered plasma cannons, and in forty-two seconds were shot down by return fire. Strange as it may seem, the Zzygou weren’t even able to drop their burning ship onto the city. Instead it crashed in one of the uninhabited outskirts, where it quickly vanished in the deep muck of the swamp.
A short newscast from the planet was full of raw and unedited provincial emotion. A very young and attractive Jewish girl was giving a heated account of the damage sustained by the city and pointing out punctured roofs, mangled roads, and ruined buildings. The worst damage was caused to “the clinic of the kind Dr. Lubarsky,” the planet’s only dental-services center. Dr. Lubarsky himself, an imposing dentist-spesh with a crew cut, was standing in front of a blazing building, giving a colorful account of how, amid the sudden flames and shaking walls, he had rescued a lady-patient, carrying her to safety… he hadn’t even had a chance to finish cleaning a complex, twisted root canal…. Upset as he was, the dentist lost control of his movements—his right thumb and index finger formed a “claw” and started jerking and clicking involuntarily, as if searching for a bad tooth.
But the dentist turned out to be lucky. The destroyed clinic had probably been insured. As for the bookstore, which belonged to Yuri C-the-Second Semetsky, it hadn’t merely collapsed, but had buried its owner under the rubble. The clone’s spouse, sobbing uncontrollably, was incoherently telling a sympathetically nodding reporter what a good man C-the-Second Semetsky had been. Way better than C-the-First, with whom she had also been acquainted… He was so fond of trout. He had such a beautiful way of imitating the call of the swamp chaffinch… Believed in reincarnation and assured everyone that he remembered his previous lives, and each one of them had ended tragically… it was as if he had foretold his own fate… But whatever might have happened in Yuri’s former lives, his present life still had a chance, however slim—the rescue workers were tirelessly digging through the ruins in hopes that the poor man may have been protected by a layer of books, before being buried under concrete panels. The words of a rescuer-spesh also sounded encouraging—he heard a rhythmical tapping under the ruins. Perhaps it was only water dripping from some broken pipes, but everyone was eager to believe that it was the beating of Semetsky’s valiant heart… Alex turned the news off.