The Third Claw of God (14 page)

Farley Pearlman, who was desperate to atone for his previous faux pas, ventured, “Th-then…what were you looking for…when you—”

“The one thing distant places can give you, when you once again turn your eyes to home.”

The Khaajiir and I spoke in unison. “Perspective.”

We glanced at each other. The Khaajiir seemed gratified, even proud of me in a way. I turned to Oscin and then to Skye. “So that’s what that feels like.”

Jason raised his glass. “You’ve got it, Counselor. You can’t determine the shape of an object, or a society, by examining it from only one side. You have to walk around it, look down on it from a height, even—as I did—bury yourself in the dirt, to see it from ground level. It’s the only way to see what something is, before you—”

That’s when someone, or something, moaned.

It came from all around us: a screech of metallic agony my mind insisted on interpreting as the sound made by an enraged giant peeling back the wrought-iron bars of its cage. The floor started vibrating. The floating table tilted twenty degrees, spilling drinks and plates onto the laps of all the guests on my side. Bubbles rose in the tank containing the Bettelhine fish. Monday Brown fell out of his chair. Vernon Wethers fell next. The scenic windows went black as metallic shutters slid from the exterior housings and blocked Xana from view. I heard screams, gasps of pain, and Philip Bettelhine commanding us not to panic.

I tried to get up at the wrong moment, and a final lurch sent me airborne. I had time to scream a single

“Shiiiiiiit!” before I hit the floor, taking all the impact on my left hip. And then, as the story goes, some idiot turned out the lights…

7

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 couldsee 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.”