FSF Magazine, August 2007 Page 8

  I told the omni, “Research,” and asked my question. Great gadget. In a few seconds the answer began to unroll. Vatican, a hill just outside what was now the village of Roma in the European Council District. A long, colorful history. Magnificent ruins still visited by tourists. A hologram popped up, showing a vast shattered temple with statues of gods defaced by time, weather, and war.

  Once the Popes ruled Roma, then it was taken over by a nation called Italia. In the twentieth century the Vatican was made an independent micro-state to give the chief priest of the Christians political independence. But it also became a refuge for all sorts of unpleasant characters who happened to have an in with the church bureaucracy—absconding bankers (!), right-wing politicians with blood on their hands, prominent churchmen tarred by pedophile scandals. In time its reputation became so bad that the Vatican State was abolished and reabsorbed into Italia.

  I went on reading for an hour or more. It was the first time I'd gotten an overview of this lost world, and it was fascinating. The Popes, the Cardinals, the religious orders. Among them were saints, ascetics, statesmen and scholars—also fools, debauchees, fanatics, and monsters. So everything I'd been imagining already happened, long ago. A holy place becomes a refuge for unholy characters. Lao-tzu again: All things are bright on one side and dark on the other.

  Damn tiresome of history, telling the same old stories over and over.

  But now I'd got at least a glimmer of a possible motive. Somebody going into space to kill a middle-aged monk—highly improbable. But what if the monk was an absconding banker? What if somebody that Krovich had cheated in the past found out where he was hiding, and either sent an assassin or came to do the job himself?

  Mr. Black Death. Yes, even if I liked the guy, I had to admit he was prime material for a hired killer. Maybe getting a bit old for fighting, wanted to spend some years in peace at home with his family. Killing an unknown monk might strike him as equivalent to swatting a fly, only much more rewarding. There was a lot more to the religious life than I'd realized. This was starting to sound like Renaissance Roma. I'd just been reading about a Pope who had his bravos grind a cheap diamond to powder and sprinkle it on Bevenuto Cellini's dinner in order to perforate his intestines. That, I thought, was even nastier than—

  At that exact moment the screaming started.

  * * * *

  It came from the corridor outside, pretty close to my door.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt and jumped up, nearly launching myself against the ceiling, and ran out, stuffing the omni into my pocket after remembering at the last second to set it on Record. Then followed the sounds up the corridor to D Ring.

  A crowd had formed near the airlock. The usual anonymous white-robed figures, now agitated, chattering away as if there were no Regulation 4, no rule of silence. I shouldered my way through and halted, staring into the open lock.

  It was crowded in there too, monks gathered around another body. I pushed to the front. The corpse was frosted over, another chunk of frozen meat, lying on his right side with knees bent.

  "Who's this?” I demanded.

  "It's Brother Ion,” said an anonymous figure. I tried to turn back the stiff cloth of his hood and it cracked like glass, broke off and burned my fingers like dry ice.

  For a moment I was stunned, just staring. Then I shooed the monks out of the airlock like a flock of chickens and turned back to the body. So this is what Ion looked like. A set, square gray face, scarred on the cheek, the visible left eye fixed and bulging, a bristle of beard covered with hoarfrost now beginning to melt in the warm air entering from D Ring.

  Oh yes, I knew him. Not the name—it had been a long time since I saw his dossier. But he was another fugitive, and the charge against him was murder. Multiple murders.

  Mechanically I proceeded with a task I've been doing much of my life. As I worked, recording hundreds of angles on the omni, another kind of recognition began to dawn. Krovich had rested in a completely different posture, flat on his belly, back up. Yet gazing at Ion, I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu—felt it all over again, as the philosopher said. Here was another chunky, bearded, middle-aged man of medium height, wrapped in webs of ice.

  Bizarre thoughts went flickering through my head. Some killers pursue a certain physical type. Especially sexual predators, with their specialized appetites for girls, boys, hookers, blondes, brunettes—even for dwarves, the crippled, or the blind. But somebody with a compulsion to kill middle-sized, middle-aged men with beards? I was shaking my head over that when Sister Jann slipped into the lock, carrying her medical bag.

  She viewed Brother Ion, muttered “Oh dear,” then asked, “Can you turn him on his back? I'd like to check for a wound."

  I wrenched the body over. Like turning an ice statue. No wound appeared, but something just as informative did. A murmur ran through the onlookers in the doorway—also several stifled laughs. Everybody was looking at the little tent of white cloth over Brother Ion's crotch. The corpse had an erection, a substantial one at that, frozen in place.

  Sister Jann shook her head. “Things become more and more embarrassing,” she murmured.

  Abruptly the monks scattered as the CM erupted into the lock. All by himself, he seemed to overfill it. “What's this?” he roared. “What's this?"

  Since the answer was perfectly obvious, neither Sister Jann nor I said anything.

  "My right hand,” muttered the CM. “First they sabotaged the monitoring system. Now they've cut off my right hand."

  "They who?” I asked, ungrammatically.

  "My enemies. It's a campaign. It's a deliberate campaign to ruin me."

  He'd sunk to one knee. The huge face turned up and gave me the fierce heartless stare of a wounded lion.

  "What the hell have you been doing all day?” he demanded. “Why didn't you prevent this?"

  I stepped back, pushed by the almost palpable aura of rage and fear flowing from the Reverend Aung Chai. I said nothing because, once again, there was nothing to say.

  Breathing heavily, he rose to his feet. Great Tao but the man was big. I'm used to looking down on people, but he looked me straight in the eye. He said in a quieter voice, quieter but perhaps more dangerous, “I want a complete report on this in the morning. Complete. Don't think, Colonel, you have forever to stop this ... this thing."

  Then he was gone, whirling monks out of his way like chaff.

  At Sister Jann's orders, a couple of monks broke the corpse loose from the deck and pushed it—floating, no gurney needed—to the impromptu morgue beside the big refrigerators in the kitchen. I followed, walking beside her, pondering a case that suddenly had too much data instead of too little.

  "Ion skipped the Great Meditation?” I asked.

  "So it would seem."

  "But not alone."

  "No, that doesn't seem likely. Well, nobody counts the attendees, you know. Over a hundred people, dressed all alike. The darkness, the chanting...."

  "I know. Will you do the post-mortem tonight?"

  "Yes. Not that there's much doubt about how he died. He was quick-frozen. But after the body thaws, I want to check him over thoroughly before rigor sets in."

  I was turning to go when something struck me. “One question, Sister. What was Ion's orientation rating?"

  She looked baffled. “One-point-oh het. Rather unusual. These days, most people are a bit more ambiguous than that. But why do you—"

  "Excuse me,” I said. “I'm feeling an urge to meditate."

  * * * *

  Sometimes you just have to sit down and think, hard work though it is. But before I began trying to put the pieces together, I figured I'd better call my wife. I'd have done so the night before, except that I fell asleep over Brother Kendo's bio.

  "I thought you'd forgotten about me,” she said.

  "Never. How's everything in Manypalms?"

  "Oh, the usual. Mr. Applebaum had a stroke, but I got to him in time and he's resting comfortably, or as comfortably as y
ou can at the age of a hundred and six. Sometimes I wonder if living as long as people do nowadays really is a good idea. Your martial arts class called, they want to know when you're coming back to break piles of bricks with them. Speaking of that, how's the investigation going?"

  Bearing in mind the possibility of being overheard, I told her, oh, things were getting sorted out little by little. She asked whether my asthma was acting up—a private code we'd agreed on before I left, meaning Are you in danger? I said no, no symptoms worth mentioning, “If I feel it coming on,” I added, “I'll know what to do."

  Incautiously, I added a few words of praise for her fellow medico, Sister Jann.

  "Oh?” Anna said, in an absolutely neutral voice.

  "Oh, come on. She's a nun, and celibate besides. Anyway, I'm too old to fool around."

  "Too old —you??” she asked, with just the right amount of exaggerated wonder, and we enjoyed a chuckle. Before signing off, she asked when I'd be back.

  "Before you think,” I told her. At that moment I knew I was going to do whatever in the hell it took to get my aging butt back home soonest.

  I settled down to work. Anna taught me long ago how to go at a problem the Zen way. Zen was originally Chinese; it was called Ch'an, and there's a Chinese pun that says, “The taste of Ch'an (Zen) is the taste of ch'a (tea).” Figuring that was a good idea, I revisited the kitchen and brought back a pot of strong black stuff to clarify my thoughts and help me stay awake. I put a straw into the teapot through a flexible nipple and settled down. I assumed the half-lotus position, belted in, and spent a while sipping, my mind blank, just breathing in and out.

  Don't think ... don't think ... now, think!

  I began reviewing the evidence, playing sections of my recordings back from time to time to refresh my memory. About midnight I started to draw conclusions.

  First, there was no longer the slightest doubt about the CM hiding fugitives on Heaven's Footstool. Ion's real name still eluded me, but his face was engraved on my memory from the time when—ten, maybe twelve years ago?—I was briefly assigned to a task force that hunted him without success. Not an impulse killer, either. The man was a pro. A skilled assassin, not a simple murderer.

  Checking the Security records for more data on him would be pointless. I already knew that by the time a fugitive reached this—what did the Grande Dame call it?—this sanctuary, the records had already been purged. By now his physical data adorned a bland biography either stolen from some innocuous citizen, or made up out of the whole cloth. Only the brain of an aging cop had proved impossible to reprogram.

  What mattered, I told myself, was that I knew who murdered Brother Kendo. Why the job looked so professional. Why it took place at exactly the right place and time, when everybody's attention was absorbed elsewhere. Why the weapon wasn't found—after all, Ion himself led the search.

  Now for the real question: Who hired Ion for the job? Okay, I thought, let's assume the obvious—somebody with money. So maybe Aung Chai had been right after all when he accused a guest. The guest didn't do the killing, of course. The CM's own “right hand” and enforcer did it, proving only that assassins are apt to be bad employees.

  But a guest suborned the murder. Why? I didn't know, but I knew I'd damn well have to find out before I arrested him.Yes, I said him. The fact that Ion was a perfect heterosexual and died in a state of arousal had caused me to waste a couple of hours suspecting a woman—until I remembered Councilor Mmahat and his sinuous handmaiden. Despite his act of pomposity, snobbery, and self-important foolishness, underneath lay a much deeper and darker character—or so I now believed. One who purchased a murder with money, drugs, and the promise of sex with the most seductive female in Heaven's Footstool. Then used her to lure the killer (maybe befuddled in advance with GLS?) into the airlock.

  I wondered how many of my Security Forces colleagues had ever tried to get the goods on a Councilor of State. Not many, I bet. I'd have to have everything nailed down, and actual proof would be hell to find. I was still brooding when the clock coolly announced 0430, startling me. The whole night was gone and, more than anything else, right now I wanted a shower and breakfast.

  Later I'd have to see Sister Jann to get the autopsy report on Ion. And I'd have to report to the CM—not exactly an inviting prospect, now that I knew him for what he was. Then the struggle to get Mmahat before the shuttle arrived to whisk him home, where he had power enough to stop any investigation. I needed to get him here, while he was far from home in a sovereign world where he was not a Councilor of State.

  I needed help. I needed somebody with power to back me up. Well, I knew only too well where I couldn't get it. And I was beginning to think I might also know where I could.

  * * * *

  The military, with its unerring ear for the gross, thus sums up the beginning of a new day: shit, shave, shower, and shine. Only you can't shine stickums.

  The usual good breakfast followed, the reader on the dais delivering some stuff from the Diamond Sutra I didn't understand at all. “These ‘living beings,’ so called, are not really living beings at all. Such is only a word."

  In context, that gave me a bit of a shiver.

  I had my interview with the CM right after breakfast. It was at best painful, since I viewed him as an abettor of criminals and he viewed me as a failure at my job.

  "Maybe it would have been better,” he began grimly, “if Security hadn't sent us someone quite so old."

  Setting the tone of confrontation early. He hadn't asked me to sit down, so for once I was able to stare down at him, at his tawny locks, the ginger fur on the backs of his big hands. I could've told him that I was completing my theory of the case. That I knew the guilty party. That with his backing, I could probably gather the evidence I needed, and go on home.

  Right. The very suggestion that I might be thinking of arresting the most important of all his Very Important Guests would've caused an explosion fit to knock Heaven's Footstool right out of orbit. Besides, I was enraged by having to work for and with this sleazy criminal. So instead of asking for help, I went for his jugular.

  "Why didn't your Reverence tell me you suspect a conspiracy? Did you send to Terra because Ion couldn't find out anything useful, you needed help and couldn't trust anybody here?"

  "I'll ask the questions. I'm in charge here."

  "Tell that to your dead dogsbody. There must have been other incidents before Kendo's killing that I don't know about. What were they? When did you first begin to suspect a conspiracy?"

  "You know everything you need to know. In fact you know more."

  "I know a lot more. Years ago I was engaged in hunting Brother Ion, or whatever his real name is, on a murder charge."

  That stopped him. He eyed me the way a treed puma eyes a hunting dog. Unlike the dog, I could go after him, only modifying the truth a little to protect the Grande Dame.

  "In checking Security's records, I also found out that Brother Kendo's real name is Krovich and that he's a fugitive on a fraud charge. Just how many of these characters are you sheltering, your Reverence?"

  "I was told—” he said, and snapped his jaws shut.

  "That the records had been purged, I suppose. So they were, but not competently. Who's your contact in the archives at Security HQ?"

  "This is a sovereign world. You have exactly as much power as I choose to grant you. You're here to investigate a homicide—two homicides now—and turn the guilty party over to me for judgment by the Master. You know, Colonel, I can call eighty-eight monks to my aid at any time, if you force me to deal with you as a new threat."

  "Yes, and I'm sure you will, too, with thirty-three well-heeled guests looking on. Incidentally, you have only eighty-seven monks now, and I'm not by any means sure that all or even most of them are loyal to you. Even when they wear white robes, criminals have a stink all their own."

  Our dialogue continued in this friendly fashion for another twenty minutes, after which I turned on my heel and walked ou
t. At any rate, the shouting match cleared the air. He was right that I was bound by my orders and that I had no independent authority. I was right about everything else. So that's just the way it was.

  Now, I thought, to look for the help I need.

  Sister Jann was already in her office, breakfasting on a chunk of fragrant bread and a cup of milk that she sucked noisily through a straw. She was wide awake, but with a frazzled look. I greeted her and she gestured me into the other chair.

  "The tension's starting to get me,” she apologized. “I didn't sleep at all."

  "Murder has that effect,” I told her. “As Shakespeare did not say, murder doth murder sleep."

  She smiled wanly. “I checked Ion's body last night. Under the robe, he's one of the hairiest specimens I've ever seen. A kind of ape man. Maybe a double-Y-chromosome freak. But I was too tired to run his DNA and see. Oh, one thing. On his left shoulder he had the tattoo of a rat."

  "Standard. That's the ancient symbol of the Ninja. Hijacked by modern thugs to give themselves a distinguished pedigree. Any other surprises?"

  "Not really. When the airlock's outer door opened, there must have been a catastrophic drop in pressure, but he froze solid so quickly his tissues didn't have time to rupture. There was no external sign of trauma whatever. He wasn't forced into the lock."

  "Of course he wasn't,” I said impatiently. “He was lured in. Somebody said, ‘You go in first, I'll be there in a minute, just go in and shut the door. Get yourself in the mood. When I'm ready I'll knock.’ Tell me something—is the airlock often used for sex?"

  She sighed. Polished off her milk. “The answer is yes. It's hard to find privacy here—anybody's cell can be opened at any time on the CM's orders. So couples aiming at a quickie go into the airlock and push the button that seals the inner door. There's enough air and warmth to give them half an hour or so to do whatever they've got in mind. Outside a warning light starts flashing, and when people see it they grin and chuckle. It's an open secret, the kind that everybody knows and nobody talks about."