The suspect’s head snapped left and right. He waved his arms up and down, full of disappointment. He had to realize that he was alone now. Perhaps he smelled the Do’utian contempt.
“Truth?” he asked, in a voice still filled with challenge. “What do you know of truth? And where is this so-called truth?”
“We have Zo Kim’s effects, including his copy of the manuscript on weapons trade on which Bi Tan and Gonikli were working. Gonikli, did you keep Bi Tan’s copy? It can’t hurt her now.”
The Do’utian woman reached into her pouch and produced a standard data module.
“It is a terrible thing to remember her by, but it was the last thing she touched. I—I needed to have something. To touch.”
“A certified electronic copy of the review will do for evidence,” Drin said. “The copy she gave you will help us understand her feelings. It is, no doubt, filled with classic Zo Kim sarcasm. But, I gather my human colleague suspects, not as he wrote it.”
“So I made a few changes,” Stendt said, still calm, still sounding as if he were in control. “That harpy mate of hers already said it didn’t work for him and I just made that a little more clear, stronger. Improved the language, took out the weasel words and qualifiers. Hell, with the review as it was, their theories and her career, would never be taken seriously. She knew that. All I did was make it a little clearer, and suggest how she could end his career too. But she was already ready to do that, anyway. They didn’t get along. It would have happened anyway, don’t you see? With them living apart? All I did was to make a few changes—”
“It’s about the weapons, isn’t it?” Drin rumbled. “With Bi Tan, Zo Kim, and Gonikli’ibida all gone, that little secret would be safe until Lord Thet had himself a cybernetic war capability, wouldn’t it? Just how are you involved?”
Stendt shrugged.
Drin continued. “Zo Kim said he’d suspected for days. That might have been even before Bi Tan had herself killed—the only one that could have planted that suggestion was you. The whole thing was one complex, premeditated scheme. Two birds with one stone, was it? You used them and you used Gonikli. Was your human ego worth so much?”
“There’s more than my ego involved.”
“Gorman Stendt,” Borragil’ib asked, rising up from his pad on his limbs, claws bared. “Why have you troubled my family so?”
“I want an advocate,” Stendt said, and Drin recognized a mocking tone in the human voice.
“I,” the disembodied voice of Ibgorni answered, “am programmed to recognize the application of all Trimus and local Do’utian law in this and instruct you in its application. In this case, the law requires you to answer.”
“A human advocate, in private,” Stendt demanded.
“Privacy is for deceit,” Borragil’ib said. “Are you trying to conceal arms manufacturing by the human primitivists? And if so, why? Any refusal to answer will count against you.”
“Count against me? Because I’m human? Because I can’t bully people around with thirty tons of blubber?”
Stendt looked to Moon, then to Mary, for sympathy. Human help.
Drin saw only hardness in the looks Mary and Richard gave Gorman Stendt. Only a chauvinist, Drin thought, would look for sympathy from only his own kind while standing in the middle of the most conservative ethnic establishment on the planet of Trimus. If there was a defense to be made for ethnic enclaves, here was where to make it. If there were excuses for racial pride, here, if anywhere, were beings that would understand. If one wanted to plead local autonomy versus the state, here was where to make the plea.
Drin could not help but let a belch escape his blow hole in the ironic humor if it. Borragil’ib caught Drin’s eye and belched as well. The smell of challenge had faded to contempt. Mary glanced at Drin and winked. Go Ton and Do Tor exchanged a glance and a flap of wings as though, they too, had better things to do than sully their talons with this idiot.
Stendt’s agitation faded and his false affability returned. He shrugged and smiled. “Primitivist is a relative term. In some respects you are primitivists, too. And fools before your own biological chauvinism, posturing to each other in this archaic pile of stone.”
Drin’s beak opened slightly, hands on his gun. But Doglaska’ib remained impassive. Do’utian eyes rolled to him—this was a blatant challenge, but the long one seemed to utterly disregard it. Was he too far gone?
“I don’t get my missile guidance chips from Lord Thet,” Stendt declared.
Huh? Stay with the plan, Drin told himself. “Where do they come from?” he pressed.
In answer, the lights in the hall faded to black and stones in the dome above groaned. Dust fell.
Sonar chirps filled the room. Everyone was on their feet and claws. Everyone except Doglaska’ib. Well, thought Drin. He had meant to force Stendt’s hand, and here it was.
But the sophistication of this writer’s attack surprised Drin. Were they in time? Had they underestimated the capacity of Lord Thet’s resources? Why would Thet iet Stendt have this much—unless Thet had much more already?
Drin was nervous, but took his cue from the long one. Drin had warned Doglaska’ib, and the long one, presumably, had done something. If he had really understood the danger.
Stendt’s voice filled the darkened room with a dim glow, sinister to those who could “see” it fill space that way. “I don’t get them from Lord Thet—that idiot gets them from me.”
Both of Drin’s hearts surged. The school of fish solidified into an iceberg. A mock fatfish had turned to stab his tongue with poison fangs. The hunter was suddenly the hunted. Pollution! His own chauvinism may have turned out to be as bad as anyone else’s. How badly had he underestimated Stendt and overestimated Doglaska’ib’s ability to respond. What backup did he have? Drin fingered his comset.
A burst of electrical fire burst from one of the wall sensors.
Stendt laughed. “I control the computer now. I suggest you do not try to use any electromagnetic devices.”
“A product of your modeling computer,” Mary stated, her voice a brief glow in the gloom.
Drin shuddered. He hadn’t thought of artistic technology as real technology—it was, somehow, diminished, trivial. He hadn’t recognized the multi-media writer for the consummate technologist he was, operating so far beyond the limits of the Charter. But, in retrospect, that’s what he had to be to do what he did. So it was only a small step to have his system make smart weapons or even smart bugs—microbots to do his bidding. A saving grace was that if they could still, somehow, overcome Stendt, they would put Thet back in his place as well. But Stendt didn’t act like the loser in this, and Drin began to wonder if some of his worst fears might be realized.
In the silence, Drin could hear the wind outside. But it was not quite loud enough to illuminate the room. Then a brief whoosh and a momentary flash of sound suddenly filled the room. A broken ceiling panel lying on the floor in front of the dais, where no one had been standing.
“I suggest that nobody try to move. I can drop a hundred tons on anyone here.”
The sound flash had shown Gonikli moving slowly toward Stendt. He would kill her without a thought, Drin realized. Then they would both be dead, Gonikli and Bodil.
“Everyone, hold still,” Drin bellowed. “He doesn’t intend to kill us or he would have. Don’t provoke him.” Noise subsided. His voice revealed that Gonikli had halted. Thank providence.
Drin rolled an eye toward Stendt. “What do you want?”
“Good thought, Councilor. Now, I suggest you turn over to me all recording modules of the research that Gonikli and Bi Tan did right now. I have your main computer, you see. I also have the structure of your dome, and this whole complex in my hands.”