I had no faith in the truce lasting as long as our shared predicament. But I knew it would help in the short run when Philip said, “Well, Counselor? What’s next?”
Farley Pearlman spoke before I could, an unwitting favor to me as it covered my own temporary bankruptcy of ideas. “Is there a reason we can’t just evacuate? That’s what we did, earlier today. Sure, we don’t have a shuttle. But it’s not like there’s a shortage of vessels out there eager to rescue us.”
Dejah bit her thumbnail, a gesture so close to a habit that had plagued me for years that I felt a twinge at the reminder of what it must have looked like. “I wouldn’t advise anything like that until we know why we have all those weapons pointed at us.”
Philip said, “Do you really think they’d fire on us?”
Dejah gestured at the image. “Look at them. As you said, that’s a classic siege formation. Rescuing us, or at least the family members aboard, must still be a priority, unless there’s been a coup we don’t know about, but their first concern seems to be a show of force, aimed at…somebody. Can you imagine what they might do if we go EVA and they don’t think it’s any of us, but instead only our murderer trying to escape?”
“And why wouldn’t they just intercept without deadly force?” Philip asked. “They’d have to, if the alternative means risking harm to Bettelhines.”
“Again,” Dejah insisted, “that’s only as far as we know. Without direct contact, we don’t know what’s been happening on their side of this standoff. We don’t know why they’re keeping their distance. For all we know, the threat’s bad enough to be considered a planetary crisis.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Philip said. “I can’t imagine any circumstance bad enough to render three members of the Inner Family expendable.”
My mental paralysis eased. “I can.”
Every face in the room turned toward me.
“Understand, please, that I’m not calling this the only possible explanation. There are others that fit the available evidence. But are you all really forgetting that our fellow passengers include one of the people who helped to engineer Magrison’s Fugue? If Mrs. Pearlman wanted to, she’d find an orbital vantage point like this a perfect place to infect the atmosphere with that or any other weapons she might have developed in the meantime.”
Dina’s already cold features went even more rigid with anger. “I knew this would come around to blaming me.”
“Forgive me, madam, for treating your words like last year’s toilet paper: unwanted, unpleasant, superfluous, and old. I did say that it was just one of several possible explanations, but the fact remains that the economy of the world below us is entirely based on the munitions trade, and there are any number of such weapons, your obscene Fugue among them, sufficiently dangerous to Xana as a whole that, in any siege situation, the Bettelhines in command would have to consider the loss of a few trapped Inner Family members a small price to pay for the common good.”
“That’s not a bad point,” Philip said. “It’s just as likely, probably more likely, that you’re part of this and using doomsday scenarios to scare us out of doing the easiest thing.”
I took no offense. “Based on the data you have, exactly right. I could be. The only constant here is uncertainty. Either way, Dejah’s right. We can’t take precipitous action until we make contact and determine what those forces are doing.”
The various prisoners of the Bettelhine Royal Carriage stewed in a shared uncomfortable silence.
Then Mendez cleared his throat, with a dry deference that carried with it an apology for intruding on the business of his superiors. “May I offer a suggestion?”
“For God’s sake,” Jelaine told him, “if you have something to say, just come out and say it. Don’t start asking permission to speak now.”
“That’s very kind of you, miss. I was just saying that if I suit up and go outside, I might be able to toss an airtight container with a message apprising the troops of our concerns and sharing our eagerness for any information they might be able to impart in return. It won’t require any great feats of precision on my part, as there are so many soldiers out there that any container thrown in any random direction will inevitably be intercepted by somebody.”
Jason shook his head. “And if Counselor’s right, and they blow your head off the moment they see you’re throwing something?…”
“I will do my best to establish with body language that my intentions are benign.”
Jelaine said, “That’s putting an awful lot of trust in your talent for pantomime.”
“In a space suit, yet,” Jason said. “No thank you, my friend, but I think Dejah and the Counselor are right. Until we know what the military’s doing out there, and what they think we’re doing in here, I’m not about to allow you to risk your life by recklessly throwing things at them.”
There was another moment of silence before I said, “Maybe he doesn’t have to.”
My plan almost failed because nobody could find anything to write on. Cut off from the hytex network, we now found that none of us had anything as antiquated and as fragile as paper, let alone implements capable of marking it. Jason grumbled that it might be a good idea, in the future, to stock the various suites with a nice supply of paper, Bettelhine-crest stationery. A twinkling Jelaine snapped back, yes, of course, because it goes without saying that this exact situation comes up all the time.
In the end, wincing from the necessity, Philip opened a display case in the parlor and ripped two blank pages from a Bettelhine family history, commissioned decades earlier by some great-grand uncle or twentieth cousin or other ancestral somebody, and provided its most recent home on the carriage because it carried the whiff of royalty the Bettelhines wanted to display. The search for a writing implement might have been an equal headache had Dejah not reached into her pocket and produced a glittering golden cylinder that she identified as a personal weapon, but which was at its lowest setting capable of creating hairline chars on paper.
By this point nobody was in any mood to scold her for smuggling weaponry past Layabout Security.
Vernon Wethers, who claimed the best handwriting, inscribed the letter in a cursive so elegant that it managed to impart beauty to the blocky Mercantile alphabet. He prefaced it with a series of symbols, all three Bettelhines identified as Inner Family codes, that the recipients would be able to use to confirm that Bettelhines had a hand in composing everything that followed.
To Colonel Antresc Pescziuwicz: We are the surviving passengers and crew of the Bettelhine Royal Carriage. One among us, the Bocaian academic known as the Khaajiir, has been assassinated by parties unknown, utilizing a K’cenhowten Claw of God. A preliminary investigation has been authorized by the three Bettelhine siblings on board and is being led by Counselor Andrea Cort, of the Hom.Sap Confederacy, now an honored guest of Hans Bettelhine. We have yet to identify the culprit or discover any direct connection between this incident and the previous one aboard Layabout. We are all together in the cargo bay and keeping our eyes on the exterior monitors. If there’s anything you need to tell us that might increase our chances of survival, now’s the time.
Philip Bettelhine
Jason Bettelhine
Jelaine Bettelhine
Monday Brown
Vernon Wethers
Dina Pearlman
Farley Pearlman
Paakth-Doy
Dejah Shapiro
Andrea Cort