Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 5

There's been a murder, and DuQuesne was right there..

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Chapter 5.

"You're back!" Ariane exclaimed as DuQuesne appeared in the doorway. Then, seeing how the massive frame sagged, she ran to him, caught his hands in hers. "You look terrible, Marc."

 

"I feel terrible. Klono and Noshabkeming, I feel terrible." The way he muttered off the outmoded Hyperion curses without so much as a selfconscious twitch told her just how bad it was. She exchanged glances with Wu Kung, as her bodyguard helped DuQuesne in, and saw the same concern in his eyes.

 

"They couldn't save him?"

 

DuQuesne shook his head, then sank heavily into one of the Embassy chairs scattered about Office of the Leader of the Faction of Humanity – that is, her office. "Whoever did it knew damn well what they were doing. Surprise isn't that he's dead, it's that he lasted as long as he did." He closed his eyes, shook his head again, then blew out a long breath. "If we're gonna talk this out now, I need about a gallon of strong black coffee and half a mountain of food. Didn't take any time to eat or drink while I was there."

 

"Jesus, Marc. With your metabolism that's just … stupid, Mr. Hyperion Superman. Should I get anyone else here?"

 

He sighed. "I'd really just rather talk to you… but no, dammit, this is going to involve all of us." He grimaced. "At least get Simon in here. If I don't miss my guess, that'll bring Oasis too, and we'll have the inner circle of the Inner Circle complete, anyway."

 

She called Simon – finding that DuQuesne's guess had been right on the dot, and didn't that give her an odd twinge of combined approval and jealousy? Get your brain straightened out someday, Ariane. You and DuQuesne decided to move forward while you were out in the Deeps; did you really think Simon would just sit there waiting? Or Oasis, for that matter?

 

She also arranged for DuQuesne's late dinner – the steaks he loved, steak fries, a big salad. It arrived about the same time as Simon and Oasis.

 

"They kept you this long, Marc?" Simon asked, eyebrow raised in combined surprise and worry.

 

DuQuesne raised a finger, asking they wait, as he finished swallowing the first huge bite of steak. "Ahhh, that hits the spot!" he sighed, and then took a big swallow of coffee. "Well, wasn't so much they kept me as I kept myself. I wanted to find out what they learned. I wasn't a suspect – too many witnesses to show that I simply couldn't have been out there at the right time."

 

"So, who are 'they' who are involved?" Oasis asked. "The Adjudicators? I'd think this would be a big thing for them."

 

"No such luck," DuQuesne grumbled. "If it'd happened inside Nexus Arena, sure, but it didn't. Whoever it was knew just as well as everyone else that you'd be an idiot to try anything inside the Arena. Even if you could somehow get away with the murder, the Arena would know, and you can bet your very last dollar it'd nail you for it in the end."

 

"Most people," Simon said slowly, "Yes. But there are at least two groups for which that might not be entirely true."

 

DuQuesne nodded while chewing, glanced at Ariane.

 

"Obviously," she said. "The Shadeweavers and the Faith. And us, perhaps, although I wouldn't want to test that. But this…" She shook her head. "It is just not their style, either of them. The Shadeweavers aren't an organized group, but still… straight murder doesn't seem to fit with their usual behavior. And they certainly wouldn’t do it so…" she waved her hands, trying to find the right word.

 

"Crudely?" Wu Kung supplied. "No, that is not their way. They are too twisty, too proud of their fancy powers and fancier plans to just ambush someone. It was an ambush, yes?"

 

"Yep. Someone knew his routes and set him up. He was stabbed with something with a curved blade that penetrated the body right through two vital organs. It also carried a payload of medical nanos tailored to interfere with his." He bit off another piece of steak, chewed. "As for who the investigators are, it's a sort of mishmash. The Vengeance not only used Byto, he was actually part of the Faction, so they're the first part. He was a big noise back with the Dujuin, too, so some of their people are in on it. And, of course, the Champions just lost one of their own, so you can believe they're sticking their noses in."

 

Ariane shook her head, the impact of the event slowly becoming clear. "Marc, whoever did this just made a whole lot of enemies – big ones, too. The Dujuin are a pretty widespread species, the Vengeance is one of the Great Factions, and the Champions… They must have been desperate."

 

"Maybe. Maybe." DuQuesne ate furiously for a bit, the frown on his dark olive-tanned face fixed and focused.

 

Oasis' eyes were looking to the ceiling, as though seeing something up there no one else could. "I dunno, Captain," she said after a moment, then looked down so her emerald gaze met Ariane's. "Sure, that's a high-profile killing, but from what DuQuesne says it was set up perfect. Whoever it was isn't so desperate that they couldn't take the time and effort to figure out the perfect place for a hit. You'd think if things were that far along, someone like Byto Kalan would've known it, wouldn't he? He'd have been alert."

 

DuQuesne nodded. "That's it exactly. Byto's a Champion. I may have met him on the field of battle in a card game, but he was someone who'd be able to take on pretty much anyone in a scrap and at least hold his own. He wasn't stupid in any sense of the word. Whoever it was managed to get to him despite all that, and that tells us a lot about them."

 

Simon looked puzzled. "What does it tell us, then? I admit I'm not quite seeing it, other than that they must be quite formidable – but that was already obvious."

 

"It tells us," Wu Kung said, "that either this person is even better than Byto Kalan, or that Byto trusted them – that even on alert, he did not think of them as a threat."

 

"And there are not very many people better than Byto – if he was on alert. Do we know if there's evidence he was on alert, Marc?" Ariane asked. "Anyone, even the best, is an easy target if they don't know they are a target."

 

"Good point, Captain," DuQesne said, draining the rest of his huge mug of coffee. "But no, I think he was on alert. He'd asked to see me to discuss 'something', but he never told me what the something was. This was over comm-ball, and he was still being cagey. So, either he suspected someone could listen in, even on that communications channel, or he was damned worried about something to the point he didn't want to put it in words until he talked to me personally."

 

Ariane did not like the way this looked at all. "DuQuesne, you've only known Byto for a little time now. I know there's a bond between people who've played the Challenges the way you two did, and you've played a couple more private contests with him for fun, but doesn't it strike you as odd that he'd be coming to you with something so worrisome? Wouldn't he go to someone in his Faction, or one of the other Champions, or someone who was his actual friend?"

 

The sour, cynical expression on DuQuesne's face echoed her own doubts. "Sure does seem odd, yeah. No matter how I look at it, the whole thing stinks."

 

"Trying to set you up for something?"

 

"Byto? No. He was as straight as a die, I'll bet my life on it. He might trick you in a Challenge, but personally he was a stand-up guy." His gaze flicked to Oasis.

 

She wore the same expression, like she’d bitten into an apple and discovered it was a lemon. "Ugh. It means that he didn't dare trust any of the people near him. Something was wrong either with them, or with what he'd discovered or figured out or whatever that he couldn't just bring it to someone nearby."

 

Wu Kung hissed. "Yes. Something that might mean anyone he trusted was part of the problem. He came to you for the same reason that Orphan said he asked us for help with his one problem: we are so new that we have not had too much time to become part of the tangled web these people weave."

 

"That's the way I figure it, yeah."

 

Simon tilted his head, then his green eyes narrowed. "Oh. Oh, my. Then all the people investigating his murder…"

 

"… may just be the prime suspects," DuQuesne finished.

 

Ariane nodded slowly. She could follow that line of thought far enough to know how messy this could get. And with the murder having occurred when Byto was heading to a meeting with DuQuesne, it was obvious that there was no way they could avoid being involved, even if DuQuesne was the type to let go of someone he knew being murdered – which he wasn't.

 

But there was one thing that really bothered her.

 

She took a breath and focused on her second-in-command. "Marc, why are we even having this conversation about all the motives, means, and opportunities?"

 

"Eh?" DuQuesne looked genuinely puzzled.

 

"Marc, you're a telepath. You just talked with me mind-to-mind not that many hours ago, and here was Byto not half a meter from you and you couldn't get out of him who did that to him?"

 

DuQuesne lowered his fork and knife, and closed his eyes. His mouth tightened, and she could see his neck muscles jump with restrained anger or shame.

 

After a moment, he opened his eyes. They were somehow even darker than normal, and the faint shadows under his eyes made them look deeper-set, hollow and pained. "A lot of reasons. You want the whole lot?"

 

She looked at Simon, Wu, and Oasis, then nodded. "I think we all need to know all the reasons, Marc – good or bad – because knowing when we can rely on our abilities, or when we can and should use them – or not – is going to be absolutely one of the most important parts of our future tactical choices."

 

He sighed, nodded, and contemplated his food; he made an abortive gesture, as though to shove it away, but then caught himself, grimaced, and with obvious reluctance started eating again.

 

Ariane waited; she'd learned that sometimes Marc had to get things arranged just so in his head before he would speak.

 

"All right. You're right, as usual, Captain." A flash of white teeth, the smile there and gone, a flash of humorous lightning. "So, the first reason is where I got these powers, and how they were used. You know my background's a mishmash of two separate series, so it didn't follow the plot of either very closely. I spent about forty years, subjective, in that simulation, of which twenty of them were going through a pretty clever blending of the early Skylark and Lensman novels."

 

Ariane nodded; she knew she was probably the only other person in the room who'd read the books he was talking about, although Simon had undoubtedly skimmed summaries and Oasis/K had probably seen some of it.

 

"Anyway, in the original Lensman series, the whole conflict between 'we should trust these Lensmen' and 'Lensmen: Threat or Menace?' was played out in what amounted to one election." He shook his head. "Even the people running Hyperion didn't swallow that one. There was a lot of caution and suspicion surrounding anyone who had telepathic abilities, and we had a whole powerful code of behavior about when you could, and could not, use those powers. One of the absolutes was you do not read minds without explicit permission, except in self-defense or in pursuit of your official duty – and you'd better be able to show how necessary it was, and that it was within your personal authority to make that choice."

 

"Ah," Simon said. "So, your basic training meant you could not just casually read Byto's mind?"

 

"If he'd been, oh, one of our people, that'd have been different," DuQesne affirmed. "But I have no standing with the Vengeance, with the Champions, or the Dujuin, that would've made that an easy choice. Yes, it could be justified… but I'd have to get that justification clear in my head first."

 

"Still, that was a long time ago, Marc," Oasis said, frowning.

 

The cynical smile Ariane knew well curled one side of DuQuesne's mouth. "Sure was. So, add the next reason. For fifty years, I was in a place where none of my powers worked. And I had to make myself accept that. By the end of our main adventures, I had internalized the psionics I'd gained, the mental scope and reach and power that Norlamin and Arisia had given us. And then it was gone."

 

He looked at Oasis. "I know it was hard for you, K, but at least your 'powers' were just… being more of who you actually were. For me, it was … it was like having both legs cut off, no warning. I spent the next fifty years driving every bit of those habits, those skills, those beliefs, into the same area of my mind that other fiction existed; worked on it so hard that a part of me believed it was fiction, in a way."

 

Oasis bit her lip. "Yes. So just using them takes a conscious effort now."

 

"Getting better as time goes by, but hell, I've only had 'em back, only used them, for a few months now." A wry grin as he looked at the Hyperion Monkey King. "Easier for you, Wu, really. While you always knew it was fake…"

 

Wu Kung looked embarrassed, but took DuQuesne's hint. "… I knew it was fake, but… well, because I hid from that truth by running back to my old world, I never really got out of the habit of using them. The only reason I didn't discover I could was that the way in which I was beaten in this real world…" his normally-cheerful face was downcast, "… well, it absolutely taught me how useless my powers were here. I knew it was true that I had no special powers any more once I left my home."

 

"But," DuQuesne finished, "that still meant he had the habits of using those abilities recent in his mind. So, once he realized he could, he ran way ahead of us others in using them."

 

"That's two reasons. And I'll admit, they're good reasons," Ariane said. Personal training bound up with emotions are real good reasons you might hesitate a few seconds… and there were only a few seconds for Marc to act. "But you said, 'a lot of' reasons."

 

"Well, five reasons, to be accurate." DuQuesne set down his fork and knife again, leaned back, eyes distant. "The third… has to do with the way telepathy worked, according to how I learned it in my Hyperion world. The whole schtick of the Lens was first and foremost as a translator, and that was the one job it did for you without effort, without focus. Here, though, the Arena does that; I don't need my special powers for that.

 

"But what wasn't without effort was making contact with nonhuman minds. Even if they sounded like you and your friends, that was partly a trick of a perfect translator. We've run into some of that here in the Arena; being able to speak with someone so easily helps mask the actual alien nature hiding behind the translation."

 

"Ah," Simon said. "So, going actually mind-to-mind with an alien species you do not really know could take time and effort before you could really reliably acquire information from their mind?"

 

"On the beam with that one, Simon. That leaves aside whether they have any reluctance for the contact. Dying, Byto might not have noticed… or he might have freaked out and fought the contact."

 

He turned back to Ariane, who already found herself nodding. And that means…

 

"Next – Ariane, I was able to speak to you mind-to-mind, but even then I could feel a strain. It wasn't big, but it was noticeable. We'd all agreed we would not use our powers if it could possibly damage us, and making first contact with an alien mind – a dying alien mind – was something a lot harder than touching your mind. It would have been a terrible risk, which I was under orders not to take."

 

He looked up with an apologetic grin. "And finally… Ariane, I'm a Hyperion, but I'm also human. I wasn't really thinking about being in danger, or any of those things. I was a little worried about Byto, then I heard the screams, got there, and was trying to figure out if there was anything I could do for him. By the time I realized he wasn't going to survive… well, he was one instant from dying. I didn't have time."

 

Ariane inclined her head, then forced herself to smile. "Thank you, Marc. I could probably have guessed some of those reasons, but it's good to have it all out in the open. I don't suppose there's any way we can find out if you'd hurt yourself making a telepathic link to another species?"

 

DuQuesne took another sip of coffee, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Sure. But there's risk in all of them. I guess the best shot would be Orphan. He already knows about many of our Arena-born powers, so we wouldn't be revealing too much by asking him to help, and the cost of helping in the experiment would be balanced by him learning a bit more about our abilities, so we wouldn't owe him anything."

 

"He'd have to agree to keep it secret, of course," Simon said.

 

"Ha!" Wu Kung said. "That one? He collects secrets like a dragon hoards gold, Orphan does. He will not give them away. As long as he is our friend, he knows it would cost him too much, anyway."

 

"Wu's right," Ariane said, smiling as she often did at Wu. "Orphan knows we're his best allies and that betraying our secrets would hurt him in many ways. DuQuesne, why don't you arrange that?"

 

"Will do, Captain. What about Byto?"

 

As the saying went, in for a penny… "Marc, you were right there. He was trying to contact you, personally. Probably, through you, the Faction of Humanity. This is our business, and if he came to us, he probably thought the secret would be important to us in some other way. So yes, Marc, we investigate. I'll give the whole summary to the rest of the Inner Circle and we'll go from there."

 

She glanced up and out, as though she could see the rest of the Arena through the meeting room walls. "Someone thinks they can get away with murder. It's up to us to prove them wrong."