Man-Kzin Wars IX Read online

  He turned to his passengers.

  "By the time they have got the other car airworthy, we will be well away," he told them. "I do not think we need fear pursuit."

  "There is nowhere for me to hide on this planet," said Jorg, "I am a dead man. But I thank you for your efforts."

  "I find I cannot protect you forever, as I was charged," the kzin replied. "And I see that to die defending you would not save your life. But I can give you a chance, and be as faithful to my Honor as I may. I will put you down in wooded country. You can hide there for a time and perhaps with time the monkeys will hate you less. You will have monkey justice but perhaps not given to you while their livers are still burning."

  "And is monkey justice right, do you think? You with your Honor may have some power to ease my mind if you think I am not wholly traitor to my kind. What do you think?"

  "I am not a monkey. It is not for me to say."

  "And you? You cannot go back now?"

  "I could not hand over Vaemar, Vaemar-Riit, could I? Not to a monkey orphanage or perhaps to the Arrum. A hostage of the Patriarch's blood and last kit of Chuut-Riit's line? . . .

  "And I am Sergeant no more . . .

  "He and I are heading for the hills beyond the Hohe Kalkstein. The country is open and empty but for game, and we will see how the Fanged God meant kzintosh to live!"

  WINDOWS OF THE SOUL

  Paul Chafe

  For Christian, with love

  Transport tunnel nineteen is one of thirty-two that run the fifty-kilometer length of Tiamat's axis to link the docking hubs. Normally it's full of twenty-meter cargo containers, gliding in virtual weightlessness. Last night a roller jammed in section A near the down-axis hub. The Port Authority shut the tunnel down and sent in a tech. The problem was a body. That's when I got involved. Pathology said it had been there nine days and the Scene Team had all the evidence. There was no reason to go down there myself, but I did. You can't get a handle on a crime if you don't get on the scene. I wished I hadn't.

  The body was M18JSK98—Miranda Holtzman, nineteen standard years old, engineering student at the Centaurus Center for Advanced Studies. Her dossier holo showed sparkling blue eyes and brown-gold hair. She was a Wunderlander, just arrived in the Swarm on a work-study deal with a spun metal fabricator called Trist Materials. Good looking, smart and last seen alive at a bounce-bar called the Inferno. She'd arrived with friends and left with a stranger. The witnesses agreed on dark hair and a Wunderlander build but little else. A movement trace came up blank. After she left the Inferno, she hadn't thumbed a single scanner—and on Tiamat that takes some effort. That was nine days ago. Pathology had it right on the money.

  We identified her through her on-file gene scans so her next of kin didn't have to. That was a good thing. She'd been badly mauled in jamming the track rollers, but that wasn't the worst of it. She was slashed open from throat to groin and eviscerated, her skin was flayed off and her limbs were missing. Her empty eye sockets stared at nothing. The coroner listed cause of death as "unknown." There wasn't enough left to tell.

  Now you know why I wished I hadn't looked.

  * * *

  I tubed over to Trist Materials. They were closing down early, hampered by a swarm of Goldskin investigators. I grabbed the top cop. "Captain Allson, ARM."

  "How can I help you?" He looked harried.

  "I'm looking for the primary witnesses."

  He pointed out the couple to me. They were sitting on a couch in the reception area holding each other. Tanya's face was drawn and pale, she'd been crying recently. Jayce looked sombre.

  "You got somewhere I can hold an interview?"

  "We have their statements."

  "That's not what I asked." He looked sour. ARM outranks the Goldskins, but they don't like it. He beckoned over a uniform to set me up with some cubic. I called up their dossiers on my beltcomp. It helps to know who you're talking to.

  PCL9C3N4—Koffman, Tanya C., 24. Born Tiamat Station. Graduate Serpent Swarm Technical Institute. Physical engineer for Trist. Unmarried. Holder of a non-current belt navigation certificate rated for polarizers and fusion. No outstanding warrants, no criminal record.

  BG309003—Vorden, Jayce I. F., 23. Born Tiamat Station. Also an SSTI graduate and Trist's Compsys specialist. Unmarried. No warrants but he had a record, two hits, public mischief. I tabbed the entry for the details. University pranks. He'd hacked in to the scoreboard during a championship skyball game and displayed insults for the rival team. Acquitted with a warning. Another time he'd gained access to the transit system and given himself priority routing and children's fare. Charged double back payments on his fares and five hundred hours community service. That was three years ago—he'd been clean ever since.

  On a hunch, I punched up my desk from the beltcomp and did quick movement trace. Multiple hits—the pattern was clear. Jayce and Tanya traveled as a couple, starting three months ago. I scanned forward and found trouble in paradise—ten days with no visits. I called up the comm logs for the period. A few calls, all very short, then a long one. Right after that, the visits started again. They'd fought and made up. The fight started a week after Miranda arrived and she'd gone missing the day they got together again. I called up her comm logs and found long calls to both of them, starting her first day on station.

  The facts suggested a scenario. Jayce and Tanya have a good thing going, then pretty Miranda shows up and gets in the middle. A week later they sort out the triangle and go out for a no-hard-feelings party, which goes bad. Someone kills Miranda and the other gets involved. They make up the dark Wunderlander as cover. It wasn't a perfect theory, but it was a start.

  I stuck my head out the door and called Jayce over. He was tall and slender with dark hair and eyes and a Flatlander's blended facial features. I tapped RECORD on my beltcomp and began.

  "What can you tell me about the night Miranda disappeared?"

  He shrugged. "There just isn't that much to tell. We went to the Inferno after work like we always did. She was dancing with this Wunderlander. After a while they left together."

  "By `we' you mean Miranda and you?"

  "Miranda, Tay and I." He was perfectly comfortable with his answer.

  "You and Miss Koffman have been seeing each other for some time, is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "I understand you and she had a serious argument a couple of weeks ago." I stated it as a fact.

  He was taken aback. "What do you mean?

  I kept pushing. "I mean that Miranda Holtzman precipitated a rift in your relationship. That gives you a motive for murder."

  The shock he displayed was genuine. I just didn't know if it was due to hidden guilt or injured innocence.

  "What was your relationship with her?"

  "She was our friend, that's all."

  "You didn't have an affair with Miranda which brought on a fight with Tay?"

  "No."

  "Why did you go to the Inferno that night?"

  "We just did. It wasn't unusual, we went fairly often."

  "The three of you."

  "Yes."

  "Did anyone else go with you?"

  "There's a bunch of us who sometimes go out, friends of ours, but they didn't come that night."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know, just busy I guess." He looked stricken as he said it. He felt he was digging himself in deeper with every word.

  "So there's no one who can corroborate your story that she left before you."

  "Tanya can."

  I waved a hand dismissively. "Anyone else?"

  "Maybe the bartender."

  "But you don't know for sure."

  He put his head in his hands. "No."

  I changed tack. "What about this man she left with?"

  He seized the question like a drowning man grabbing a straw. If I was asking it, I must believe his story. "He was a Wunderlander, thick dark hair. He had a glowflow bodysuit, set to rainbow smears."

  "Had you seen h
im before?"

  "Not that I recall."

  "Do you think he knew Miranda or that she knew him?"

  He was anguished. "I don't know, I wish I did. We just didn't know what was happening." Then, almost to himself, he repeated, "We just didn't know."

  He was devastated by the sudden loss. Perhaps he hadn't known Miranda that well but he'd been with her the night she was killed. It wasn't his fault but he felt responsible anyway. Survivor's guilt—or simple guilt. Either way, I wasn't going to learn anything more. The Goldskins would go over his statement and cross-check for inconsistencies. I just wanted a read on the first-pass prime suspects.

  "You can go now, Mr. Vorden."

  "What?" He'd sunken into a reverie while I pondered.

  "You're done. Thank you for your help."

  "Oh." He seemed bemused for a couple of seconds, then gathered himself. "Good luck, Captain."

  "Thanks," I said, and I meant it. I hoped he did too.

  After he left, I punched my beltcomp's audio log through to my desk. I've got a program that analyzes voice microtremors—sometimes it even works. My system told me that Jayce was telling the truth—mostly. He was hiding something about his relationship with Miranda. That concurred with my theory. There had been infidelity, a fight, a murder. I just needed the link.

  I had Tanya sent in. She was petite for a Belter—my height. Her eyes were red and she dabbed at them with a handkerchief. In other circumstances she would be pretty.

  "Come in, Miss Koffman. Please sit down," I said in my best good-cop manner.

  She sat, giving me a forced, trembling smile. She was barely holding herself together. If I pushed her, she'd go over the edge. At times like this it's a judgement call. Sometimes a little nudge brings an easy confession, sometimes it catalyzes uncrackable resolve.

  And sometimes you're just adding pressure to a bystander already under emotional overload. Maintien le droit, the ARM motto cuts both ways. Tanya was a prime suspect. I would step softly, but I would find out what I needed to know.

  "Look, I know you're upset. I just have a couple of questions for you, and then you can go." I said it gently, coaxing. She nodded in response.

  "Were you jealous of Miranda and Jayce?"

  She didn't answer; she just shook her head, biting her lip.

  "But they did . . . did sleep together?" I couldn't think of a more delicate way to put it."

  She nodded. Paydirt.

  "That didn't make you jealous?"

  She shook her head. "We had a . . . you know . . . all three of us . . ." She collapsed into tears.

  I hadn't been expecting that. I sat back, implications running through my brain while Tanya wept. No use questioning her further now, my theory was shot. I needed to reassess.

  I sent her out and pulled up the transit logs again and cross-matched all three of them for Miranda's tube station. They'd both been spending nights in her apt. Far from causing a breakup, she'd been the hingepoint of a menage. Tanya and Jayce's transit pattern changed because they'd been spending their time at Miranda's. That didn't clear them but it reopened the question of motive. Miranda's file yielded another link. This was her second time on Tiamat. At sixteen she'd been on a six-month school exchange with FRCK1798—Koffman, Bris, Tanya's younger sister. That explained why Tanya was more upset than Jayce and where the spark for the expansion of their relationship had come from. And it told me what Jayce had been covering up about his relationship with Miranda. At least part of what he'd been covering up. The information also offered some good motive possibilities—jealousy now for Jayce instead of Tanya or an old grudge rekindled for her. Even so, my instincts were telling me that they weren't the culprits. I needed another angle.

  After a while I got up and grabbed the tube back to my office. On the way, I thought about dossiers.

  * * *

  C137PUDV—Allson, Joel K., ARM Captain. 33 standard years old. Born: Constantinople, Earth. Current assignment: Chief of Investigation—Tiamat Station, Alpha Centauri. Fingerprints, retina prints, gene scan. A holo of a man with a Flatlander face, Arab, African, Slav, Balt and Mongol—boringly nondescript on Earth, noticeably different on Wunderland. Date of birth, date of marriage, date of divorce. Medical history, educational records, details of promotion. Case reports from Bangkok, New Delhi and Berlin. Commendations for service and commendations for bravery. Date of transfer outsystem.

  A good record, I was proud of it. What's the measure of a man? Nowadays it's his data file. Dossiers are the tools of my trade. They give me a skeleton—my job is putting flesh on the bones.

  The best cops are just one step this side of the law—that's how you get into a criminal's mind. I was one of the best. In deep-cover work, the line gets blurry. You make so many sacrifices you start to feel entitled to fringe benefits your cover requires you to take anyway. The Brandywine case cost me my marriage. When it blew up, my position was—confused.

  The Conduct Review Board said, "Captain Allson's actions were directly related to his assignment and he did not act with criminal intent." They must have known more than I did. Prakit believed them because he believed in me but when the slot on Wunderland came up, he offered it, firmly. After Brandywine I'd never be safe undercover again, not on the Organization cases I'd made into my life. He never mentioned Holly, but it wasn't my cover that worried him. I took the assignment. What else was I going to do?

  Wunderland—the name says it all. The colonists found a virgin paradise of mountains and forests, clear air and low gravity. They turned it into the jewel of Known Space, but the world they'd built was gone now. First the kzinti had invaded taking the land and turning the citizens into slaves—or dinner. Some fought, some fled, some tried to save what they could. Most just survived and carried on in a grimmer world.

  Forty years later, Earth attacked with lightspeed missiles, twelve thousand gigatonne impacts that punched to the planet's core and blotted the suns from the sky. The UN wrecked the kzinti industrial base and much of Wunderland in the process. The survivors cheered anyway, and dreamed of liberation. And it came, faster than anyone could imagine, in an Earth armada with We Made It hyperdrives. The Provisional Government was formed and the Wunderlanders began to heal the scars of conquest. The rebels came out of the mountains and the pirates came in from the Swarm. The few kzinti left insystem adapted, disappeared into the forest, or died.

  But liberation didn't end the war. Alpha Centauri became the UN advance base. The Provo Government was controlled by UN advisors and the Serpent Swarm made a UN territory outright. The economy went to full war production. The liberators quartered thousands of troops in Munchen in case the kzinti came back—and in case the Wunderlanders objected to the UN plan. Maybe the breakdown was inevitable. The kzinti were no harsher than the Provos and a lot less corrupt. A political party called the Isolationists emerged with a simple solution—Wunderland for Wunderlanders. The kzinti were gone, the Flatlanders could go too. By the time I arrived in Munchen, they were no longer a political party, they were a terrorist group. The Provisional Government's anti-collaborator campaign had become a random witch hunt. The whole infrastructure was falling apart—transportation, medical support, civil services, even basic maintenance stripped to feed the UN war machine. The black market thrived on everything from pleasure drugs to biochips and a dozen crime webs warred over the spoils. Whole outland regions rejected the Provos and UN troops were used to impose control.

  I should have thrived in that environment—it was my kind of work, but the rot had spread to the ARM. Certain individuals, certain groups had immunity. Investigations that got too close were closed down. Critical evidence simply disappeared. I fought a losing battle to clean up the agency and made a lot of high-powered enemies. When they discovered they couldn't shut me up, they kicked me upstairs, big time. I wound up with the top job on Tiamat, half a billion kilometers skyward.

  It was better on station. There was smuggling, theft, even murder—but no bombings, no assassinations, no g
ang wars. More importantly, the taint of corruption was gone. I needed that change most of all. It didn't tempt me, but it disturbed too many sleeping ghosts for comfort.

  The tube stopped and I climbed out and hurried back to my office. I wanted to catch up to Hunter-of-Outlaws. One of the few wise decisions the UN made was to let the kzinti left in-system run their internal affairs as long as they toed the UN line when dealing with humans. Tiamat has a lot of kzinti, most in the Tigertown high-G section. They were surprisingly good citizens, considering, but keeping relations smooth was a balancing act. Hunter was my high-wire partner.

  He was on his way out when I got back. I grabbed him before he could leave and outlined my findings.

  "What do you think?" I asked when I was done.

  "Hrrr . . . If Koffman and Vorden are to be believed the prime suspect must be the human she left with, on evidence of contacts. Since she left no transit log, it is probable she traveled on her companion's ident to the transport tunnel where she was killed. However . . ." he trailed off.

  "Go on," I prompted.

  He continued reluctantly. "The body was found near the kzinti sector. The corpse looks like a butchered prey animal. On the basis of these facts I would suspect a kzin."

  I nearly laughed but he was dead serious. "You don't think a human would do that?"

  "I have seen humans kill each other but I have never seen them strip a carcass so. It is the act of a carnivore."

  "Never underestimate humanity, my friend." I grinned, but didn't let my teeth show.

  He ignored the barb. "If it is possible, then we must consider it. It is conceivable the culprit was cutting the body up into manageable pieces and was disturbed before the task could be completed. Perhaps Miranda Holtzman held dangerous information and was killed to preserve its secrecy."