Oh, Juje. Am I going to be all right?
You would have not survived, at least not as a functional human being, had the Bettelhine medics not recognized the limitations of their capacities on site and sealed you in cryofoam for delivery to our emergency facility at Anchor Point. You should not worry. Your current confused state, which will be marked by periods of apathy, delirium, and malfunctioning short-term memory, is an expected condition of your recovery and should pass within the next forty-eight hours.
Swell. What about the others?
As you surmised when you took such a desperate measure, the immediate medical emergency involving an honored guest proved more pressing than the prior commands given by Vernon Wethers. Their conditioning overriden by the need to rescue you, the Bettelhine security forces were able to board the Royal Carriage and rescue the surviving passengers.
Surviving?
Alas, several casualties have been reported, among them Mr. Jeck, Ms. Wilson, Mr. Pearlman, and the Khaajiir. Xana’s mass media has reported that they were all killed at the moment of the violent emergency stop. None of the others saw any point in disputing the accuracy of this account.
I bristled at that, but then remembered what I’d told Philip at the onset of my investigation. This was not my jurisdiction. On the Royal Carriage I could overpower a few self-important Bettelhines by sheer force of personality; on a planet with a bureaucracy comprising thousands, I was so far beyond overpowered that it was wiser to recognize the value of walking away from a battle I couldn’t win. What else?
All the surviving Bettelhine employees have gone back to work. Dejah Shapiro has been visiting you regularly in between stops on her grand tour of Asgard in the company of Hans Bettelhine, Vernon Wethers, and the two Bocaian assassins who went after you on Layabout, and who have emerged from their catatonia and are now being questioned at length. Mr. Wethers, in particular, has been more helpful than he might have wanted to be, and has given up many of the names he’s compromised.
And?
The two Bocaian assassins have confirmed that Dejah Shapiro was indeed their main target on Layabout and that they did in fact lose interest in her when they spotted you. They’ve identified the third assassin in their team, their contact on the Bursteeni liner known as the Grace, as a Bursteeni named Neki Rom, who made it as far as Anchor Point but has been taken into custody. Rom has confessed to passing the second Claw of God to Arturo Mendez, who under strict orders passed it to Wethers on the Royal Carriage. There were no other weapons in Rom’s possession when he was captured. If you were correct about the Layabout team possessing three Claws of God, he has already managed to discard the third one or pass it on to yet another Confederate. But there have been many subsequent arrests, and it is considered just a matter of time before the rest of the conspirators are captured and the Bettelhines no longer require the increased security measures in effect at this time.
None of which should have had anything to do with me, now that I was out of it. Why would you say I’m not out of danger?
Just that. For as long as you remain here, you must not allow yourself the luxury of complacency. Even now, forces rally against you.
Why, dammit?
It is as we have said. You are not yet out of danger of assassination. And you are still facing the moment that will determine the shape the future takes. It is coming. Be ready.
Not long afterward I received a visit from the other side.
(( Andrea Cort * Do you know who we are? ))
It appeared inside my head, but it was not the voice of the AIsource. It was another, even less comfortable presence, one I’d only endured once before.
The Unseen Demons.
Get out of my head, you murderous bastards.
(( Your curses fail to shame us * we have explained before that everything we’ve done, we’ve done out of self-preservation * if it meant the deaths of your fellow humans on Bocai, they are neither the first or the last to be sacrificed for our survival * if it is murder, it is murder in the cause of preventing a greater crime, the destruction of a race that wants to survive ))
You’re still not welcome in my head, you pieces of shit.
(( Nor are we comfortable in a place so driven by pain * we visit now only because it is the only chance we have * the Rules of Engagement forbid us from telling you what to do * but you are not long from deciding the future of a species that never did you any harm, as well as the future of your own * you must know that the lies told by your AIsource masters dwarve any you’ve been told by us * your mistake, if you make one, will be tragic ))
Go to hell, I thought again. I don’t care what your excuses are. You killed my family. You made me a monster. I’ll see you dead.
They remained silent, though present, for what felt like several minutes.
And then they departed, with a gentle: (( Someday you’ll know you were wrong ))
More periods of waking.
One of the first visits I managed to understand took place sometime at night. The lights were dim and the sky I could see through a wall-length window to my right was black, dotted with stars. It was good to be awake at a time like that. The darkness soothed my eyes and made everything seem less frantic.
Dejah Shapiro sat beside my bed, clad in a shiny red gown designed to hug her perfect figure, its surface rippling in a manner that to my eyes resembled the wave motion on a small body of water. She wore baubles I would have called earrings had they depended on her ears for support; instead, they seemed to float unsupported beside her lobes. I realized that she’d just left another formal gathering of some kind, and in my semiconscious stupidity hoped that nobody had been murdered during it. I wasn’t up to solving the crime.
She’d been talking for a while, but I didn’t focus until she whispered, “Well, I now know what Hans Bettelhine wants from me.”
“What?”
She lowered her painted lips closer to my ear. “A merger. As I told you on the Royal Carriage, he’s scaling down the munitions business. He wants to retool and go into my line, habitat construction, with a specific focus on investing in and reclaiming shattered ecosystems, whether natural and manmade. Places like this world, Deriflys, that Jason lived on for a while. His proposals are sheer genius. There’d be a sharp loss at the beginning, but in a few years of working together we’d accomplish a great deal for humanity without any damage to our existing profit margins. We’d even make a little bit more. It would work, Andrea. It would.”
I tried to muster enthusiasm and failed. “What did you tell him?”
She took my hand and squeezed, the gesture friendly on the surface but painful in execution as she made sure to press the night’s long painted fingernails into the back of my hand. I winced and opened my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a look, and spoke with a burning urgency greater than any I’d ever heard from her. “I said I’d bring the figures home to my people and get back to him with my decision. But that’s just an excuse to get the hell out of here as fast as I can. It’ll be great if he pushes through the change, and if he does I’ll do anything I can to help him. It’ll be the best news the poor human race has had for a long time. But these are the Bettelhines we’re talking about, Andrea. That sharp loss for the first few years won’t go over well with some parties. There’s going to be more blowback, and the rest of us all need to be out of range when it happens.”