The Third Claw of God

2 ROYAL CARRIAGE

The Security shutdown of Layabout inconvenienced thousands of travelers that day, a number of whom complained at great length while Pescziuwicz tasked all the men and machines at his command to finding my hypothetical third assassin.

There were additional baggage inspections, random passengers pulled out of line for special interrogation, even one or two body-cavity searches of travelers who’d asked that indignant question, “Do you know who I am?”

(Yes, we know who you are. You’re somebody not nearly as important as you think you are. We will now demonstrate this you in terms that will calibrate your self-image to its proper level, once and for all. Please bend over. This will hurt.)

Since four elevator cars had already departed Layabout for the planetary surface between the attempt on my life and the precautionary shutdown of the station, additional security was called to the dirtside terminal, Anchor Point, and ordered to take all passengers into custody upon their arrival. This measure would lead to the temporary detention of hundreds more, most of whom were going to be irate indeed when they discovered that their respective positions among Bettelhine’s work force and clientele were not sufficient to declare them above suspicion.

The third assassin, if there was one, remained absent. Pescziuwicz connected the two Bocaians we knew about to the Grace, a passenger liner of Bursteeni registry that had arrived at Layabout only ten hours before I did. But he’d failed to evidence any special interactions between the Bocaians and other passengers. Nor had they interacted, in any special way, with anybody except for a couple of food vendors, in the hours they’d waited for me.

We knew the names on their travel documents. The Porrinyards had saved me from Veys Naaiaa, and I’d taken down one Shaarpas Tharr. Even with their every move in the terminal recorded by security monitors, it would likely take months to collate their movements to those of every other civilian passing through at the same time. By then the potential suspect pool, both potential assassin and potential target, would be distributed across the length and breadth of Xana’s two habitable continents, as well as occupying berths on more than a dozen vessels headed for destinations throughout civilized space.

None of the searches turned up any more Claws of God, or any more Bocaians. Travelers passing through Layabout at the time did include races from Humanity to Tchi, Bursteeni, Riirgaan, K’cenhowten, Cid, and Mundt, only some of those who might have harbored high moral dudgeon over a crime committed against the relatively obscure Bocaians. Special attention was paid to K’cenhowten, whose race had provided the exotic weapon, and the Bursteeni, since it was one of their vessels responsible for carrying the two acknowledged assassins here. But even that felt like a formality undertaken for due diligence and no other reason. Pescziuwicz wasn’t about to prove anything in the minimal time his people had to clear and release hundreds of travelers and almost as many station employees.

At one point during the two hours it took Pescziuwicz to surrender to the increasing pressure from the surface and release us as the first group of travelers cleared for transport, I broke down and asked, You wouldn’t be in the mood to just break down and tell me, would you?

The AIsource interface in my head didn’t always respond to direct questions, but was voluble today. We’re sorry, Andrea. Your usefulness to us is limited if we hand-walk you through every dangerous situation. Just warning you about the attack from behind was controversial enough among our kind. Those handling your case debated it at length and with considerable rancor over a period equivalent to several years to our perception before deciding to err on the side of good employee relations.

Since their thought processes were more or less instantaneous, on human terms, that controversy may have occupied as much as a fraction of a second, real time. Is it safe to assume that I’m not done with this business?

We can neither confirm nor deny.

Can you at least tell me whether the Unseen Demons are involved?

They are always nearby, much as we are always nearby. But of their input into the current business, the present rules of engagement prohibit the release of that information. We can neither confirm nor deny.

Once again, my part in the war between the AIsource majority and the so-called Unseen Demons felt too capricious for any facile comparisons to a pawn in a game of chess. You’re the ones who urged me to accept this bullshit invitation. What can you tell me?

A moment’s hesitation. I knew it was meaningless, given their computation speed, but such pauses seemed to be built into their communication paradigm, indicating for my benefit those moments when my questions had required special consideration. Your next few days will be very difficult.

How?

You will soon find yourself faced with the most contradictory impulses of sentient behavior: treason in the name of loyalty, betrayal in the name of love, tyranny in the name of freedom, corruption in the hearts of those who believe themselves driven by the purest motives. This assassination attempt should be taken as no more than a side issue, but we can warn you that it will not be the last you experience before we are done with this business. Nor will it be the last development that involves you, personally. Some of us feel we should fear for your capacity to absorb trauma. We hope you’ll survive the shock.

Thanks a lot.

I was really looking forward to fulfilling the terms of my contract with them, which happened to be finding a way to put all of them, AIsource and Unseen Demon alike, out of their immortal misery.

This was the essential nature of the war between the two factions. The AIsource had lost all interest in life and wanted to die. The Unseen Demons among their collective wanted no part of their planned mass suicide. I’d joined the AIsource side because the Unseen Demons had admitted causing the massacre at Bocai. I still didn’t know what subtle switch they’d pulled or what advantage they thought they’d gained in doing such a terrible thing to us. But I wanted both sides gone and humanity freed from their machinations.

I wanted it so much that I’d come here, to this place run by merchants of death.

I hytexed my liaison Artis Bringen for information about the missing Bard Daiken, and was just finishing that when Pescziuwicz returned, looking like a man whose birthday party had ended with too many tears and not enough cake. “Your hypothetical third assassin hasn’t materialized. Nor have any additional Claws of God. We’re left with hundreds of angry travelers and no reason to suspect a deeper conspiracy.”

“You’re missing something.”

“Maybe. But if so, it’s something I haven’t found by turning this entire station into a transportation bottleneck that’s going to play hell with our arrival and departure schedules for days. You’ll forgive me if I refrain from trying to make that ‘weeks.’ It’s gonna take another couple of hours before anybody gets out of here as it is.”

I nodded. “I understand, sir. Just as I hope you’ll understand that I’m stating hard truth, not giving you a hard time, when I point out that this matter will likely end some time very soon with one of those Claws of God being used on its intended victim, and the blame falling back on you for not doubling or tripling your investigation time.”

The tightening of his jaw muscles confirmed that this possibility had already been weighing on him. “My career will just have to survive it. In the meantime, the Boss has ordered me to make sure that the three of you get wherever you’re going.”

“Thank you.”

“By that he meant down to Xana. But he left that unspoken, so I have room to ask you if that’s what you really want. I won’t stop you from returning to your transport and heading back home, or to any other out-system destination, if that’s what it takes to get you out of danger.” He hesitated. “Your business aside, that happens to be what I recommend. Nobody’s personal security can protect you from an assassin who doesn’t mind giving up his own life, or the lives of innocents, in the attempt.”

It was well-meaning advice. Too bad I couldn’t follow it. “We didn’t travel this far just to leave without finding out what Mr. Bettelhine wants from me.”

He nodded. “I know. Your escort should arrive in a moment.”

He subvocalized again, admitting to his office four of his security men and a fifth individual impossible to mistake for one of them. He was a man in his mid-thirties, with shiny black hair, a twig of a mustache, and big brown eyes that so dominated the rest of his face that they might not have changed proportion since his last stages in utero. His own uniform included among its many jarring elements fringed epaulets, a red-ribbon sash bisecting his ramrod-straight posture from right shoulder to left hip, and shoes so polished that they qualified as an additional light source. One look at him and I knew he had to be a servant of some kind. Only rich assholes would force employees to wear anything that ridiculous.

“This is Arturo Mendez,” Pescziuwicz said. “He’s the Head Steward aboard the Royal Carriage. He’ll see that you’re comfortable.”

The Porrinyards were as dumbfounded as I’d ever seen them.

I said, “The what?”

We had been promised a ride in Bettelhine’s private elevator car. We hadn’t known that there was anything royal about it.

But the Royal Carriage, its local nickname, was just that. One of a matched pair held in dry dock at the two endpoints of the cable linking Layabout to Anchor Point, the terminus on the planetary surface, it was installed on the cable only when members of the Bettelhine Family, or other passengers deemed of equivalent importance, needed shuttle rides up and down. As such, it was a vivid illustration of the kind of luxury wealthy people believe they deserve, and the rest of us either envy or view with jaw-dropping embarrassment.

The elegant obsequiousness we received from Arturo Mendez (the perfect servant, in that any actual personality he might have possessed seemed completely subsumed by the formality his job required) should have provided us with our first indication of the excessiveness we were in for. Then the outer doors, embossed with the raptors of the Bettelhine Family crest, irised open, revealing the rich auburn grain of the local woods that lined the bulkheads, and the glittery gold fixtures that adorned the trim. The overhead light fixtures were hugged by jovial cherubs. A pillar at the center of the room bore a reservoir of bubbling seawater and a glittery, silver fish that stunned me by its astounding facial resemblance to an elderly human being, complete with fleshy nose and sunken blue eyes. As its lips popped open and closed in conjunction with the gills behind the jowls, it looked like it intended to complain or say something unbearably wise. It had a family resemblance to the Bettelhines. I wondered for whom it was bioengineered to flatter, and answered my own question: some Bettelhine patriarch, of course. It was not a form of immortality I would have wanted.

There were no free-fall issues. As with Layabout itself, the interior was equipped with Specific Gravity systems, maintaining a pleasant .8 gee that wouldn’t budge one fraction of a percentage point whether the craft was in ascent, descent, or dry dock. The sofas and lounges were ornately carved antiques of the sort that might have seen service on more worlds than I had, without a fraction of the wear. The ceiling glittered with jewels the size of my fists. The observation window, made of some material that refused to take a fingerprint even when I flattened my sweaty palm against the “glass,” covered the entire exterior wall of the shared lounge and the one suite assigned to us, and offered a panoramic view of the planet below, including a wedge of daylight blessed by more green than most worlds inhabited by human beings have historically managed to keep.

Arturo led us to one of the four suites on our level, which included a bed large enough to welcome not only the Porrinyards and myself but also any other half dozen sentients we might have elected to invite. (There was, he said, another suite level, less luxurious than this one, giving the car sleeping accommodations for thirty.)

After a dazzling tour of the other wonders we’d been provided in our quarters, he led us back into the central parlor with that discomfiting fish and showed us a bar stocked with the finest liqueurs of a hundred worlds and the most popular narcotics of a hundred more. An actual, real-paper book set into its own recess on the bar, bound in something that felt organic, turned out to be a menu of available delicacies longer than some encyclopedias.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” Arturo said as the Porrinyards and I collapsed in grateful heaps. “I’m afraid it will be another hour or more before all the other passengers are reboarded, and we’re ready to depart.”

“There are other passengers?”

“Yes. Two of Mr. Bettelhine’s children, three Bettelhine employees, and a pair of personal guests. I believe more may be coming, but you’ll have to ask the Bettelhines about that when they arrive.”

“They weren’t the target of assassination attempts today. Why aren’t they here with us already?”

“They expected to be, Counselor. The Bettelhine youngsters and their personal guest rode up from the surface with the express purpose of greeting you, and several others boarded at various times while we awaited your arrival. Then the unpleasantness occurred, and all of those notables needed to be evacuated offstation for security reasons. Now that Layabout’s docking facilities are opening again, they can return to the station and rejoin us for the descent to Xana proper.”

Interesting. I was not just some peon summoned to await the pleasure of the Great Man, but a personage of sufficient importance to deserve an escort by his offspring. “Can you tell me how long they were waiting for me?”

“The youngsters? About twenty hours, if you only count all their time in dry dock, thirty if you include their hours of ascent.”

I moaned. “Flights to and from the ground would be faster.”

“The Bettelhines limit ground-to-space traffic for security and environmental reasons. In any event, the other guests all arrived by various transports in the past day or so, the tardiest among them joining the party some five hours before your arrival. I’m afraid that there may have been some unkind words about your own late arrival, words that grew more heated as the unfortunate crisis required their own evacuation, but I assure you that neither of the Bettelhine youngsters held this against you in the slightest.”

“That’s a relief,” the Porrinyards said.

I ignored them. “Who was that last passenger?”

“That would be the gentleman, Monday Brown.”

The name meant nothing to me. What did was the timeline. The Bursteeni ship carrying the two Bocaian assassins had docked at Layabout ten hours before my own arrival. This Brown person hadn’t checked aboard the Royal Carriage until some five hours later, meaning that he’d possessed ample opportunity to meet with the Bocaians while they were waiting for me. Following that, he’d been an evacuee offstation for the entire duration of Pescziuwicz’s security sweep. In the absence of any other intelligence about him, I already found myself worrying about Claws of God in his luggage. “And aside from him? Was anybody other than him aboard the carriage for less than eight hours?”

“Not that I am aware of, ma’am. I can investigate, if you’d like—”

“Never mind. That’ll be all for now.”

Had Arturo clicked his heels, I might have been forced to kill him. Instead, he merely bowed, an act that simply argued for a light wounding. He didn’t stick around long enough to receive either punishment, but made his descent to the lower levels using the spiral staircase at the other end of the parlor.

I stood up, folded my arms, and wondered, not for the first or even twentieth time, just what Hans Bettelhine wanted with me. Up until now the closest I’d ever come to dealing with the Family on any substantial basis was a few interviews with distant cousins representing the corporation’s interests in remote outposts, and so far removed from the wealth and power of the Bettelhine Inner Family that they must have felt like human skin cells connected to the organism but superfluous and unconnected to the beat of its huge, cavernous heart.

But this was the belly of the beast…

Behind me, the Porrinyards said, “Andrea?”

I didn’t turn. “What?”

“You’re obsessing again.”

I still didn’t turn. “This is going to be a bad one, love.”

“I would not be surprised. On this corrupt world, with these corrupt people, it could not be anything less. But that’s just an additional reason to face our trials properly refreshed.”

There was something familiar about their shared tone, something that made me turn.

They were cuddled together on a nearby love seat, Skye resting her head on Oscin’s shoulder and playing, idly, with the fingers of his right hand. She peered at me from beneath half-closed lids, a special look of hers she’d always used to communicate her boldest invitations. Oscin faced me head-on, his smile so slight that only a curlicue wrinkle at the edge of his lips distinguished it from the one he wore at his moments of greatest concentration.

Their shared mind meant that they both found me amusing in the same, exact way, but the subtle differences between her smile and his seemed to express complementary attitudes that arrived at the same place by coincidence alone. It was a pose, but one they must have practiced with great care.

“The main problem with focus,” they said together, “is losing your peripheral vision.”

I felt foolish. “For Juje’s sake, love, somebody just tried to kill me!”

Their fingertips traced each other like old friends searching for changes in familiar faces. “True. And it was a catastrophically incompetent attempt, wasn’t it?”

“So?”

“So why not celebrate?”

“Because there’s another assassin out there!”

They tsked. “That deduction, brilliant as I found it, remains unproved. It’s entirely based on the premise that the actions of sentients dedicated to mad and murderous causes can be trusted to make some kind of consistent internal sense: an idea easily debunked by any look at the history of mad and murderous causes. Tonight, in these spectacular accommodations, I don’t even see a reason to let it ruin our mood. The operative phrase in this place should be, We’ve hit the big time.”

They patted the couch cushions in unison.

As always, when the Porrinyards surprised me by seizing the initiative, my cheeks burned. “Now?”

“Your path is a difficult one, Andrea. You’ll never have a perfect moment, unless you stop from time to time to make one. I see no hypocrisy in suggesting a little wine, a little music, and some time putting that big bed in our suite to some fine recreational use. After all, our next venue might not be even remotely as nice.”

I remembered my first glimpse of them. They’d been as beautiful as anybody I’d ever seen. Sometimes, faced with pressing problems, I forget. Sometimes they take the time to remind me.

Oscin’s smile became broad and challenging, while Skye’s became more sly, implying secrets that she and I could find some way to hide from him. This was a transparent fraud, as Skye could no sooner keep secrets from Oscin than I could decide, on a whim, to keep secrets from the right half of my brain. But the pretense had its intended effect. The two of them—dammit, the one of them—had mastered all the skills they needed on me.

“There’s a shower in there,” Skye said. “Big enough for three.”

“Water,” said Oscin. “Not sonics.”

Skye: “I noticed a handy menu of expensive topical euphorics.”

Oscin: “Some I’ve tried and some I’ve always wanted to try.”

“Together,” suggested Skye, “and in combination.”

Oscin said: “We have plenty of time.”

And then the two of them, together, rising as one: “Why not?”

There was no point in further resistance.

“God damn it,” I said, and went to them, lowering my head against the cleft formed by the place where their shoulders met.

I think I came within a heartbeat of calm, before I felt the sudden tension in their postures. “Andrea,” they said.

I took a step back and glanced at their faces. Both wore looks equal parts astonishment, alarm, and anger. Oscin was staring over the top of my head at something behind me; Skye had seized my forearm with a grip that prevented me from turning around right away. I gave her a questioning look. She nodded, then gave my arm an extra squeeze, just strong enough to approach but not cross the threshold of pain.

This could only be a warning to be careful how I reacted when I turned around and saw what they saw.

I nodded to let her know that I understood.

She loosened her grip on my arm.

I turned around and did not overreact at all.

“Son of a bitch.”