The Third Claw of God

7 THE FIRST DEATH

The power outage lasted only a couple of seconds, but neared absolute, the one real source of light during that interval being a flashing red glow that tinted the darkness rather than dispelling it. For a moment I imagined that glow to be an emergency indicator light, somewhere around the wide curve of the bar. I was correct about it coming from behind the bar, but wouldn’t realize until long after the lights came back on that the source was Colette’s ridiculous strobing hair.

While it remained dark, but after the tremors tapered off, Skye found me. “Are you all right, Andrea? Please say you’re all right!”

“I’m fine,” I said, with a tremor that rendered that assertion a lie. “You?”

“Skye’s fine. Oscin slammed his chin against the table on his way down, and it hurts like hell. He’s got a cut there. He’s with Mr. Pearlman now, and thinks—”

The lights returned.

I sat up, regretting it at once as pain flared all along my left side. My involuntary moan of pain was louder than I prefer my complaints to sound. Skye stepped over me and positioned herself under my arm on that side, ready to support me if I wanted to stand up, a notion that for the moment failed to tempt me at all.

Most of our fine dinner was now a halo of debris beneath the tilted table. We didn’t seem to have lost any people yet. Philip Bettelhine was on his hands and knees, wringing something moist from between his fingers. Vernon Wethers knelt beside him, unhurt but waiting for Bettelhine to tell him what to do. Dejah Shapiro comforted the sobbing Dina Pearlman. Monday Brown was facedown but stirring. Oscin, bleeding from a nasty diagonal cut across his chin, was helping Farley Pearlman to his feet. Jelaine Bettelhine was already at the shaken Khaajiir’s side. His staff was nowhere to be seen. I made eye contact with Jelaine and saw her register that I was hurt too. Jason, who had fallen not far from Philip, managed to stand, revealing an ugly gash across his forehead that had already painted the lower half of his face red with blood. Though his eyes were just narrow, glistening slits, he still lurched around the side of the table to collect the Khaajiir’s staff from where it had come to rest, avoiding all other debris as he went.

The Khaajiir, who had already struck me as frail, had not weathered the jolt well. He looked paler than he had been, and more confused. He asked for his staff, in Bocaian. Jelaine, answering in the same language, said she’d get it for him in a moment.

Colette appeared behind the bar, smeared blood staining her upper and lower lips. She wiped it off with the back of her hand, and widened her bejeweled eyes when she saw the scarlet staining her wrist, but remained at her post anyway, no doubt as much out of shock as duty.

I didn’t see Arturo Mendez at all. Maybe he was down in the galley.

Farley Pearlman gasped. “What the hell was that?”

“That,” the Porrinyards said, “felt like a full emergency stop.”

Philip Bettelhine rubbed his face. “That’s what it was. Is everybody all right?”

The Porrinyards said, “The two of me have accounted for everybody but Mr. Mendez and any other workers you might have belowdecks. I don’t see anything but bruises and lacerations up here.”

Philip Bettelhine scanned the room for the lowest-level employee on hand, and found Colette. “Hey, sweetie, why don’t you rush to the galley and check on everybody? Get back with a head count as soon as you can.”

Colette nodded, ran around the bar, and disappeared down the spiral staircase to the lower levels.

Farley Pearlman pulled free of Oscin so he could tend to his sobbing wife. He fired off a question as he ran, debris crunching beneath his shoes. “So what would cause a full emergency stop?”

“This one?” Philip asked. “I don’t know.”

Dejah Shapiro, relinquishing Dina to Farley’s care, snapped, “The man’s not asking what it is. He’s asking what it could be.”

Across the room, Jason and Jelaine Bettelhine were helping the shaken but still ambulatory Khaajiir to one of the overstuffed easy chairs. Jason had the staff tucked under his right arm, and made sure to hand it to the grateful Khaajiir after he and his sister lowered the elderly sentient to his seat. At the same time he shouted out an explanation to the rest of us. “If it ever looks like one car’s going to overtake another on the same cable, traffic control override stops the one coming up from behind.”

“What’s your cutoff?” Dejah asked.

“I never worried about it, before. It’s generous. Three hundred kilometers, I think.”

“Three hundred’s right,” Philip said.

The Khaajiir clutched his staff as if it represented the only solid object in the entire universe. “That’s how you stop if you have three hundred kilometers to slow down?”

Jason patted the eminent Bocaian on his wrist. “Considering how fast we’re descending, three hundred’s not all that much. But this was worse. This felt like a code red, or worse.”

“All right,” I said. “So what’s a code red?”

He left Jelaine behind to look after the Khaajiir, and, ignoring his own injuries, rushed over to help Skye with me. It showed grit I never would have expected from a Bettelhine, given his own oozing head wound. “Three hundred kilometers offers ample time for a gentle deceleration. If that first brake fails for some reason, there are secondaries and tertiaries set to go off at fifty-kilometer intervals after that, each also calibrated for a gentle stop. It’s only if all previous systems fail that the system goes code red at fifty K before collision. That’s pretty rough, too, but still not as bad as what we just felt. I think we just experienced a manual override from the control center in the ground station at Anchor Point.”

“Not Layabout?” The Porrinyards asked. “But Anchor Point?”

“Could have been either. There’s certainly maintenance performed at both ends. But my grandfather, who commissioned the upgrade on the elevator we used before this one, judged dirtside emergency cutoff less vulnerable than the orbital equivalent.”

“Not bad thinking,” the Porrinyards said. “Unless he was stupid enough to build your ground station on a fault line, or something like that.”

“He wasn’t. The point is, I’ve experienced at least a dozens of minor emergency stops, riding up and down over the years, and never felt any even a fraction as bad as this one. Whatever went wrong this time, the danger must have been pretty imminent.”

By now Jason was leaning over me, his eyelids trembling as he struggled to see me through a curtain of blood.

Skye grabbed him by the wrist. “You need to sit down, sir. You need medical attention.”

Philip, who was more dazed than he would have liked to let on, only registered his brother’s injuries now that I mentioned them. He took a step forward. “Yes, Jason, you’d better—”

Jason flashed a grim smile as he freed his hand from Skye’s grip. “I appreciate the concern, people, but I’ve been wounded worse than this, in places where I had to keep moving and had no access to immediate medical care. It performs wonders for your focus.”

“I’m not impressed with your experiences or your focus!” Philip snapped at him. “Let her help you!”

I seized the same bloody wrist he’d just freed from Skye, and said, “He has a point, sir. And I have another one. I’m not concerned with your focus so much as your blindness.”

His lip curled. “I take it that you don’t mean the blood in my eyes.”

“You’ve forgotten that all departures from Layabout were delayed for hours following the attempt on my life, and that this car was the first to leave once traffic was cleared. Unless there’s another car stopped somewhere ahead of us, there shouldn’t have been any danger of us catching up with anybody.”

“I know,” Jason said, as Skye began tamping his forehead with a cloth napkin. He lowered his voice. “Best possible scenario: major software crash. Worst possible scenario: something wrong with the cable.”

Across the room, Philip said, “I’m sure it’s a software error. Give it a couple more seconds and the oversights will fix the problem. Not that I won’t make sure somebody swings, down at Anchor Point—”

I already knew from the AIsource that we’d have a fatality soon, and was in no mood to worry about the delicate psyches of cringing hysterics. So I didn’t lower my voice, but rather raised it, speaking to the room. “Sirs. There was an assassination attempt today. I won’t believe this routine until somebody connected with security says it’s routine.”

Dina Pearlman emitted a soft wail and clutched at her husband tighter.

Philip looked annoyed. “I’m not saying it’s routine. I think the last time we had a code red—and then as a drill—was eight years ago. But I’m not ready to give in to paranoia just yet.”

“Paranoia’s why I’ve lived to this age, Mr. Bettelhine. I refuse to believe this stop unconnected with what happened earlier today.”

Oscin came around the table, carrying another cloth napkin he’d soaked with water from a carafe that miraculously retained some of its contents. He handed it to Jason, who murmured thanks and started cleaning the blood from his eyes.

I glanced at Jelaine. Monday Brown and Vernon Wethers had joined her in ministering to the Khaajiir. Monday murmured something that received a nod from Jelaine. Wethers asked the Khaajiir a question, receiving, of all things, a laugh in reply.

Wethers remained pale, a state I attributed less to the catastrophe we’d been through than to the proximity of a beautiful woman. I could see him stammering in Jelaine’s presence. He turned a shade paler when Jelaine placed her hand on the back of his.

Philip Bettelhine rested his arms on the edge of the tilted tabletop, tilting it further and forcing a fork and spoon that had somehow survived up until now to tumble off and join the general chaos on the floor. He almost fell himself, but his reputed enemy Dejah Shapiro came up from behind and steadied him. I read the look he gave her as sincere surprise. “Thank you,” he told her, before turning his attention back to me. “Believe me, Counselor. I share your concerns. I’m pretty anxious for some explanations, myself. But by now there must be a dozen alarms blaring at both Layabout and Anchor Point. Any attempt by us to pull the emergency workers off their repairs to deal with our fears is just going to slow them down. I’m sure that Mr. Pescziuwicz, or his equivalent on the ground, will be getting in touch with us as soon as there’s news to report.”

Colette came back up the spiral staircase, her steps hesitant but her emerald eyes bright. Thank Juje for small favors, she’d deactivated the system controlling the displays generated by her hair and now wore a single consistent shade, even it was close to purple. “Everybody downstairs is okay, sir. Arturo got a little banged up, but Paakth-Doy’s working on him, and says they’ll all be around to help with the injured in just about five minutes.”

I asked, “How many people are we talking about, total?”

“Downstairs? Just Arturo, Paakth-Doy, and, Mr. Jeck.”

“That few? For a party like this?”

Philip Bettelhine started working his way through the minefield around the table. “We don’t need any more. The food’s prepared dirtside by the finest chefs in my family’s employ and stored here in inert form. The galley’s just the place where it gets reconstituted. And why is that even an issue, this very moment? I saw the way you picked at your meal. Are you going to tell me your palate could tell the difference?”

It hadn’t, and I didn’t even know if it was an issue or not. Right now, it was just raw data of unknown pertinence. Meanwhile, the AIsource had told me that the murder would take place “within the hour.” How much time had I wasted since that warning? “I just want to make sure we don’t lose track of anybody, if things get close.”

Another wipe from the napkin and Jason blinked again, his eyes round and red-rimmed but once again, resentfully, open. “Philip? We should have heard from Mr. Pescziuwicz, or his equivalent, by now. We better take the initiative.”

“I agree,” Jelaine said.

Colette had returned to the controls behind the bar. “I’m sorry, sir. But I’m already ahead of you. And no luck. The hytex link’s down. We can’t reach them and they can’t reach us.”

I tried to reach the AIsource and found similar silence.

Dina Pearlman cried, “They might not know if we’re alive or dead!”

Philip Bettelhine looked like he wanted to strangle her. “I doubt that. Their instruments would be able to tell, even from a distance, if the carriage is still retaining atmosphere. Even if we weren’t, they’d proceed from the assumption that there might be people in airtight compartments, using our emergency tanks.”

“And then?” she insisted.

“And then, assuming they could not get us moving again, they’d send a rescue and repair craft, a Stanley, down the line to attend to whatever’s wrong. Those are high-speed ascenders and descenders, faster by far than anything we clear for civilian traffic. We’d have help here in no more than ninety minutes, on the outside.”

“And what if we don’t have that long?” Dina demanded.

I said, “That happens to be a good question, sir. This car has already been evacuated once, today. Do we still have that option?”

His urge to strangulate seemed to have risen to a low boil. “This car can be evacuated when it’s docked at Layabout and has one airlock linked to an orbital shuttle. Those connections have been terminated, so we’re not attached to anything right now but the cable. You want to go outside and climb up and down the maintenance ladders on the side of this thing, go ahead; we have the suits on board, and it’s perfectly safe as long as we’re not moving. But it won’t get you anywhere worth going, and might get you killed if there’s more damage or if we start moving again.”

Dina insisted, “But why do we need to wait for that, what did you call it, the Stanley thing? Why can’t they just send a shuttle and fly us out?”

“Because it’s not worth trying. As long as the line’s intact, we’d rather not have any spacecraft zipping around during an emergency, when high-speed climbers and descenders are always available and can manuever into safe docking positions almost as quickly.”

She persisted, “But if it can’t get to us in time—”

“Mrs. Pearlman, this is not some struggling Confederate world, where all the infrastructure was put together by low-bid contractors and falls apart the second somebody breathes on it. This is Xana, the headquarters world of the Bettelhine Corporation. The people dealing with this will all be at the very top of their respective professions. Whatever the challenges, they’ll deal with it.”

“Of course,” Jason Bettelhine murmured, in words meant only for my ears, “that only leads to a new worst-case scenario. Maybe the same thing that stopped us also took out Layabout…”

That was a cheery thought. I’d never pictured the kind of terrible things that could happen to an elevator in transit, if the cable was cut at either the orbital or dirtside termini. I supposed we’d all know if we initiated free-fall reentry, and it started getting hot in here. Or, worse, if debris opened us to space, leaving us staring through protruded eyes at a world we would not reach except as cinders and scattered particulates of bone.

Something around here smelled like an overflowing toilet. Maybe a line had ruptured. Maybe one of the systems was leaking ammonia or some other waste gas. Maybe somebody had just plain shit his pants.

“That’s good,” the Porrinyards said, leaving me with the impression that they’d gone insane. With their next words, I realized they were referring to Jason’s condition, though only Oscin was working on him. “Keep your head back. It’s just a surface wound, but forehead injuries always bleed a lot. You’d best keep it out of your eyes, to avoid burning—Mr. Bettelhine, is there more than one first aid kit on board?”

“Yes,” Philip and Jason said in unison. “Downstairs.”

There was a moment’s sheepish silence, which Jason and Jelaine broke by also speaking in unison: “So that’s what that feels like.”

“I feel left out,” Dejah said.

“So do I,” the Porrinyards said. “I’m beginning to see why everybody always complains when I do it…”

The smell got worse. Jelaine went to the bar to fetch Dina Pearlman a cup of water. The Khaajiir sat by himself, his staff resting across the armrests of his chair, his exhaustion more palpable with every moment. Philip Bettelhine stopped by his chair to ask him if he needed any emergency medical assistance, and received a weak chuckle in response.

There remained no word from Layabout.

My link to the AIsource remained silent as well.

Arturo Mendez and the two remaining members of the crew came upstairs, carrying the promised pair of first aid kits. There was a dark-eyed, smooth-faced, character-deprived young man who introduced himself as Loyal Jeck, and a petite, raven-haired, almond-eyed young woman who bowed before identifying herself as the one with the strange name, Paakth-Doy. Paakth-Doy gave first priority to Jason Bettelhine’s head wound, the tip of her nanite pen falling out of focus as each individual member of the microscopic fleet received its programming.

I watched for a few seconds as the bloodstains on Jason’s forehead dissipated, ransacked for the supplemental mass the machines needed to repair his gash. Paakth-Doy handled the pen with the casual efficiency of a woman trained in its use, neither lingering too long at any one spot nor rushing past the less damaged places in her haste to assault the more severe. “You’re good.”

Her voice was whisper-soft. Her accent stressed r’s and added a trilling nasal vibrato to her vowels. She seemed to filter almost every word through a nose that had no room for it. “Thank you.”

“Are you qualified for genuine medical emergencies?”

She frowned. But, then, that seemed to be her default facial expression, much like the whisper was her default volume. She hadn’t smiled, or shown any other emotion since introducing herself. “I am not qualified for internal medicine. But we have cryofoam tanks downstairs. If it comes to life-or-death emergency we can put anybody still living in stasis long enough to get the body to the AIsource Medical crèche at Anchor Point.”

AIsource Medical was the most lucrative of the many services my true employers contributed to interspecies economy, automated health care of such effectiveness and efficiency that they enjoyed a near monopoly on all such services, among those who could afford it. Even before I went to work for them, they’d saved my life more than once. It was no surprise that the Bettelhines had them on retainer. “What kind of coverage does Xana have? Is it for everybody, or does anybody have to make do with human doctors?”

“No. Mr. Bettelhine has made AIsource Medical available to all residents and visitors on Xana.”

That must have cost a fortune all by itself. “Have you stabilized patients before?”

The gash on Jason’s forehead was now no more than a white line, hard to discern even against his pale skin. Paakth-Doy said, “Once, when I lived in another system, I served as chief steward on a commuter car that suffered a blowout due to collision with a fragment of orbital debris. One passenger suffered a head wound too serious to be treated on-site. We had to gel her for later treatment dirtside. She survived with no loss of cognitive function.”

“And you were trained in first aid before this or after this?”

“After,” Paakth-Doy said, her eyes still impassive. “I was determined to prepare myself, if ever faced with an emergency again.”

“What’s your official classification?”

“Medic, First Grade.”

That represented two solid years of intense training all by itself. She wasn’t as qualified as a genuine human doctor, but then you only found that dying breed in substantial numbers in places that, unlike Xana, couldn’t afford AIsource Medical fees.

Still, something about Paakth-Doy bothered me, some kind of fundamental disconnect between our situation and her demeanor.

Her presence should have made me feel safer. I’d been hoping for a way to circumvent the prophecy of imminent murder, if I was lucky enough to get to any victim with life still left in her, and a qualified Medic with cryofoam on hand was exactly what I needed to accomplish that. But the hour deadline had passed, I still hadn’t spotted anything resembling a murder victim, and the chances of the AIsource lying about an imminent murder, or simply being wrong about it, were not within the realm of possibility. So somebody here had been murdered, even if they were still walking and talking and not yet, actually, dead.

To me, that spelled poison or some other doom that gave the victim time to linger.

Like a Claw of God, maybe.

And the thought made me look at Paakth-Doy again.

She asked, “What about you, Counselor? Are you well enough to stand?”

My side still gave me a twinge of pain with every deep breath. “I’m all right. You should take care of the other bleeders first.”

Jason’s smile showed genuine warmth. “Nice, heroic stance, Counselor. But: bullshit. You’re as entitled to medical care as the rest of us.”

“I’m not bleeding,” I said.

“Not externally,” he said.

“I tell you I’m fine.”

“You may go to the end of the line,” Paakth-Doy said. “If you can stand.”

Fair enough. I squeezed Skye’s forearm, and Oscin ran over to grab my other elbow. The pair of them supported me as I rose to my feet, grimacing past the pain of movement. It hurt like hell. I remained standing after the Porrinyards let me go. The bruise along my side was going to be stellar, but I’d functioned with much worse. “See? I’m fine.”

Paakth-Doy’s mouth hung open as she worked on Oscin’s chin next, the tip of her tongue pressed against her tiny, spotless lower teeth. I watched for several seconds, narrowing my reason for unease down to something having to do with her blank expression. It was setting off alarm bells, but I still did not know why.

Dina and Farley Pearlman huddled together on one of the couches, the husband whispering words of comfort to the wife. Vernon Wethers and Monday Brown treated themselves to some amber liquid from behind the bar. Dejah Shapiro, who had slipped away without me noticing, emerged after some unknown errand from the suite I now assumed to be hers. The Khaajiir slumped in exhaustion, his left hand still clutching the staff, his right curled into a claw against the armrest.

I felt a wave of black nausea, and again found myself unable to identify the precise shape of something horrible lurking at the edges of my consciousness. Again, Paakth-Doy had something to do with it. When she left Oscin and came to work on my bruised hip I said, “Excuse me. Young lady. Please forgive me for asking…You were not raised by human beings, were you?”

She didn’t look at me, her full attention absorbed by the gray clouds swirling at the tip of the nanite pen. “No. I was an orphan raised by Riirgaans. I never met another human being until I was twelve years old, Mercantile.”

That was similar to my own upbringing, in a way; I’d had plenty of humans around, but was just as close to the neighborhood Bocaians. “That’s—excuse me—why you show no facial expression, right?”

“Correct. The Riirgaans have no facial muscles. I never lacked for love, of a Riirgaan kind, but was never exposed to human expressions and thus never learned any until it was too late to pick up the skill. I am aware that some people find my appearance forbidding, but I assure you I’m quite congenial if you get to know me. Is that what you wanted to know, ma’am?”

“Not yet,” I said.

Philip Bettelhine moaned. “Counselor, can’t you see she’s—”

I held out my hand, in the universal gesture for stop. Something about my urgency succeeded in shutting him up, and even making him back up a step, as I said, “Please, Doy. I know these questions are very personal. But this is important. I’ve also noticed that you’re a mouth-breather, which I assume goes along with the somewhat nasal quality of your voice. Am I correct in my assumption that at some time during your life with your Riirgaans you had surgery on your nasal passages, to cut off your sense of smell and further your ability to adapt to life among your adopted species?”

Paakth-Doy spared me a glance that could have been anything from annoyance to encouragement. “Yes. The Riirgaans have no sense of smell. As a human girl, growing up in one of their families, I sometimes reacted at times when it was…inappropriate for me to react. I assure you, I was given a choice. The surgery was voluntary. Even now, I’m much happier, without—”

And now I knew why Paakth-Doy’s open mouth had bothered me so much. The rest of us were just people, enduring a stench we had written off as the expected taint in the atmosphere of any enclosed habitat that had just suffered serious damage.

But Paakth-Doy hadn’t reacted to the odor at all.

Had she been able to identify odors, she might not have devoted all her attention to the minor injuries of a few pampered passengers whose wounds were overt enough to be seen from a distance.

A medical professional like her would have been trained to recognize the smells given off by things like, for instance, perforated bowels.

And she would have followed that stench, that telltale scent of biological disaster, to its source.

I yelled and lurched across the room, not hearing the cries of people like Philip Bettelhine and Dina Pearlman who must have thought I’d gone mad, and the sudden alarm on the faces of the Porrinyards, who knew that I’d only react like this in the presence of death.

When I reached the Khaajiir I seized his shoulders and yanked him forward, revealing in the process that his slump had been more than exhaustion and that his stare had been more than shock.

The gases trapped by his body billowed upward, and I got a faceful, thick enough and rich enough that it was more like being splashed with a liquid than being hit with anything as intangible as air. The chair, designed for comfort, sloping downward from the natural resting place of a seated person’s knees, was now centimeters deep in a lumpy black stew composed of equal parts Bocaian blood, Bocaian shit, Bocaian urine, Bocaian bile, and dense but colorful swirls I could only assume to be the liquefied remnants of Bocaian organs. A thin mist rose from the awful mélange, the last of the Khaajiir’s internal heat, steaming as it collided with the cooler air of the parlor.

A black disk I recognized as a K’cenhowten Claw of God clung, unsupported, between his shoulder blades.

I heard gasps on all sides: coming from those who’d known the Khaajiir and considered him a friend, those who only considered him important and were now horrified that he was gone, those appalled by the sheer ugliness of the sight, those who sensed from this death that there would soon be more, even the gasps of those who did not yet understand what had happened and could only feel dread without understanding of the horror that had seized everybody else.

As for me?

All the uncertainty over why I was here, all the strain of dealing with the masters of a corporate empire, all the pressure of being owned outright by beings whose intentions toward me were shaky at best, all the shock of being targeted for death myself, all the horror of learning that a key assumption of my past had been a lie all along, and all the terror of the additional weight of the fresh challenge the AIsource had placed on my back, all went away, subsumed by something larger, something I had been carrying with me for most of the life.

For the first time since my arrival at Layabout, I was at home.

I knew why I was here and I knew what I was meant to do.

At the first moment of relative silence, I said it. “Someone in this room is a murderer.”

I had to give Philip Bettelhine credit. He gave as good as he got.

He croaked, “You mean, somebody other than you?”