The clockwork traitor, p.11
The Clockwork Traitor, page 11
The workroom here was small-it was obviously a place for assembling microelectronic circuitry. The tools on the workbench-microscopes, jeweler's equipment, printboard for microcircuitry-were evidence of intent. Over to the side of the room, a glass wall separated this room from the next. A set of waldo controls manipulated a series of intricate devices on the other side. There was a metal slab that reminded Luise of nothing so much as an operating table, but it was bare at the moment, and there was no indication of what had been constructed on it.
Luise and her party combed the room quickly and thoroughly. There were a couple of scraps of notepaper on the desk top with long formulae and cryptic notations on them. The writing made no sense to Luise, but she slipped them into her pouch anyway; they might be significant to someone else.
When they had scoured the place completely and could find nothing else of value, they turned out the light and moved on through a door to the room beyond. This one was also small, empty, and dark-and much more disappointing. When they turned the light on, all they found was a couple of well-upholstered, comfortable chairs and a telecom machine on whose screen no messages were currently displayed. This room was even less informative than the first, so, with regret, the team moved on still further.
The next chamber they found held a surprise for them: pieces of skin lay scattered all over the floor, amid opened packing crates and small scraps of metal. On closer examination, though, the "skin" turned out to be a material called plastiderm-a substance widely used in the manufacture of prosthetics. All the d'Alemberts were familiar with it because the Duke's right hand was made from the substance. It looked and felt exactly like real skin when heated up to the proper temperature; at room temperature, though, it tended to be a bit stiffer and more brittle.
"From what I'm told," Luise whispered, "Duke Fyodor is a walking junkyard. He may need a lot of prosthetics to keep him going. This whole area may be nothing more than the area where his doctor works to keep him alive." Nevertheless, having no better leads, they decided to press onward.
The next room seemed to confirm Luise's guess. It was a comfortable study, with a desk and several padded chairs, plus three walls full of bookreels. Looking at titles at random, Luise could see that they were on biomechanics, prosthetics, organ transplants, artificial intelligence, and computer programming. Those last two puzzled her a little. She could understand that those first subjects would be needed to keep Duke Fyodor's body alive; but what would a surgeon need to know about artificial intelligence and computer programming? Surely the Duke had a brain of his own. Or could he be suffering from a disease that gradually destroyed the brain as well as the body, and was his doctor augmenting his mind with electronic aids? The situation did not make a whole lot of sense to her at the time, so she just filed the information away for later use.
There was no other way out of this study, and no other doors had been apparent in the chain of rooms that they'd gone through. They had come to the end of the line. There might well be more rooms in this hidden section of Rimskor Castle, but they would have to go out and find another way in if they were to reach them. Feeling very discouraged at their inability to learn anything incriminating against Duke Fyodor, Luise began leading her troops back out the way they'd come.
Suddenly the world exploded with alarm bells, and all the d'Alemberts were instantly ready for action. As far as Luise knew, they hadn't tripped any alarms, so the security forces wouldn't know precisely where in the castle they were. But perhaps the unconscious guards had been found at the front gate, or some other sign of the intrusion had been detected.
One thing, at any rate, was clear: they were going to have one hell of a time' fighting their way out of this place-and they had not yet learned a single important fact!
Chapter 9
Encounter in the Dark
Borov's death, coming in such a manner, produced an instant chill throughout the members of the Progress. The rest of the ball was instantly canceled, and the fate of the next day's activities was in doubt as well. No one knew quite what to think; a million unanswered questions were floating around in everyone's mind, and no solutions were forthcoming. Jules and Jacques lifted the tree off Borov, and the body was taken off to the local hospital to have an autopsy performed. Yvette spent some time just staring at the tree, then wandered around the garden for a bit, her keen eyes observing everything in minute detail. Then most people went up to their rooms and prepared for bed.
Yvette went back to Edna and filled her in on what had happened. Then she and Yvonne took the Princess upstairs to her room, checked it out to make certain that no bombs had been placed there while they were out, and put the heiress to the Throne to bed with assurances that everything would be taken care of. Edna didn't believe the assurances any more than they did, but she pretended to so that the two women could get back to their real job-finding the traitor.
The four DesPlainians met secretly in Jules's room. It was the first opportunity they'd all had to talk together since coming to Cambria, but all of them were stunned by the events of the night and at first their air was so thick with worry that they found it hard to talk. Even the first kiss between Jules and Yvonne, who had been working so hard at not knowing each other for these past few days, was less than the passionate affair it normally would have been. Each was weighed down with preoccupation over the mystery of what had occurred.
Jacques and Yvette watched awkwardly as the two lovers kissed. Yvette knew that Jacques harbored an infatuation for her, one which she really did not return. They had been close friends since childhood, but that was all they ever could be as far as she was concerned. She could feel his pain as he watched his sister caress her brother and then as he turned his gaze to her. She could feel sorry for him-but pity was not love.
When Jules and Yvonne finished their embrace, Yvonne sat down on the edge of the bed, with Yvette beside her. Jacques sat on a chair in one corner. Jules, as was his wont, paced the room nervously. He always claimed to think better when he was on his feet and moving around.
By unspoken consent, Jules became the chairman of their meeting. "This is something none of us expected," he began with an understatement. "Something is happening here beyond our calculations, and we have to figure out what-and fast. Anyone care to offer a gut reaction?"
"Mine isn't very nice, I'm afraid," Yvette said, "but I'm not the slightest bit sorry that Borov is dead."
"He was a loud-mouthed bastard," Jacques agreed. "But he was also our prime suspect," Jules said. "He came from Kolokov, where we got our initial lead about the time bomb. He was the one most determined to cause trouble for everyone else. With him out of the picture, everyone else is an equal suspect, and we're right back at word one."
"Maybe he was the traitor after all." That suggestion came from Vonnie. "Maybe he was coming back into the castle to plant the bomb when that tree fell on him."
Yvette shook her head. "Trees just don't fall over like that in a garden as well tended as this one is. Borov was murdered."
"Are you sure of that?" Jules asked.
"Positive. I looked that tree over pretty thoroughly.
There's not a trace of rot in it anywhere, nothing that would make it fall over on its own accord. The root system seemed sound and healthy. I saw the hole that tree came out of; it seemed to have been uprooted in one massive heave, because dirt was sprayed around the hole for a good distance around."
"Uprooted?" Jules knitted his brow in perplexity.
"You heard me right. My first thought was that someone must have chopped that tree down, or beamed it with a blaster-but there are no axe marks or bum marks on it anywhere and the entire trunk, from top to roots, is intact. It was pulled up out of its hole."
"But..." Jacques's voice trailed off as he contemplated that possibility. "But nobody's that strong. Didn't you see, it took Jules and me together to lift that tree off the body. Two DesPlainians, and that was only to shove the trunk over to one side. It would have taken a crane to lift that tree out of the ground and hit Borov with it."
"Maybe they had a crane," Yvonne suggested. "Or a team of men," Yvette chimed in.
"Absolutely impossible. Remember, I had ordered the rest of the bodyguards and myself to be extra alert so that Borov wouldn't sneak in. We failed at that, obviously, but even so we couldn't have missed the sound of a crane or of three or four men working together crashing through the underbrush."
"We're getting a little far afield," Jules said, trying to soothe Jacques's ruffled feathers. "I agree with Jacques; there's no way a crane could have been brought in without alerting every guard on the estate. And as for the team hypothesis-I don't think there would be any group of men who, when they see they outnumber their opponent three or more to one, would think of uprooting a tree and dropping it on him. There are plenty of easier, faster, and more efficient ways of killing someone."
"We're getting away from our prime question," Yvette said. "We know there's been a murder. For the moment we're stumped on how the murderer did it, so let's turn our attention to the principal topic: who did it?"
Jules looked around the room at his friends' faces as the silence descended. "Well, it seems there are no clear-cut suspects that jump instantly to mind. Nobody really liked Borov very much, so they all have an equal motivation.
Except that there were three people whom Borov threatened to kill-me, Symond, and Liu."
"I think we can rule you out for the time being," Yvette smiled at her brother.
"Mercil That leaves us with two people having slightly stronger grounds that anyone else."
"But Borov threatened them, not the other way around," Jacques protested. "That doesn't seem to make sense." "But suppose," Vonnie said, "that Borov sneaked back onto the grounds with the intent of killing someone. Instead, his intended victim got him first."
"But then why go to all the trouble with the tree?" Jacques asked. "If Borov really had tried to kill him, it was a pure case of self-defense. There were plenty of witnesses to Borov's threat; no prosecutor in the Galaxy would bring a case like that to trial, under the circumstances."
"But Borov was unarmed-at least when we found him," Yvonne persisted. "If he did have any weapon, his killer took it away from him. It doesn't make a good case for self-defense if the person you're defending yourself against is unarmed."
It was Yvette's turn to comment. "But perhaps the killer is also our traitor. If that's true, then even if this were a legitimate case of self-defense he wouldn't want to get involved. The spotlight would be focused on him, questions would be asked. He couldn't afford that kind of notoriety. As far as he knows, no one is aware that he's here for a treasonous purpose. He doesn't know his mission has already been compromised. And he'd work like hell to keep anyone from even suspecting."
There was silence for a long minute. Then Jules said slowly, "Tu as raison, as always, sis." He had learned from long experience that Yvette's most casual hunches were usually more perceptive than most people's carefully thought out theories, and he always listened to them. "If nothing else, this incident has shown us one thing. Before now, we couldn't even be certain that there was a traitor here. We were operating on a very faint clue and a probability. Now we know. Someone in this castle is a murderer, and is using that murder to cover up some darker secret."
He paced some more across the floor before continuing. "We need a few more details. When exactly did this murder take place?" He looked over in Jacques's direction.
"It couldn't have been before the ball started," said the male member of the Roumenier team. "My crew of bodyguards searched the grounds thoroughly. There was no sign of any uprooted tree or dead body."
His sister nodded confirmation. "That's right, we would have spotted anything as obviously out of place as that." "Bien," Jules said with a thoughtful nod. "That gives us about a two-hour time span between the start of the ball and the moment when the body was discovered. We'll have to check people's stories and see whose movements can't be accounted for during that time."
"And in the meantime," said Yvette, "we keep up our own covers, even if it means that we become suspects ourselves."
"Absolutely," her brother agreed. "Right now, the traitor still thinks no one's on to him. We can't let him suspect that we know anything, or he may panic and do something rash. It never pays to upset a man holding a live bomb."
The police came the next day to question everybody about the events of the previous evening. Also, because of the fact that the Crown Princess and a baron and baroness were involved, several representatives from the local office of the Service of the Empire were also present.
The coroner's report had brought to light at least one astonishing fact. Though the tree had done a considerable amount of damage to the body-and, in fact, had made it difficult for the team of specialists to learn much of anything-the coroner was able to determine that the cause of death had been a sharp blow to the neck that had completely shattered the spinal column and the bottom portion of the skull. It was not until after the deceased's death that the tree had fallen on the body.
To everyone except the d'Alemberts and the Roumeniers this came as a considerable shock-and even the four DesPlainians pretended to be as startled as the rest. No longer could anyone think of this as merely a bizarre and unfortunate accident; it was a clear-cut case of murder.
The police did not dwell on the peculiar aspects of the case-and the obvious strength of the killer in lifting and wielding the tree against Borov-and instead chose to question the members of the Progress, particularly as to their whereabouts during the evening. They had determined the time of death to within half an hour-and it happened to be the half-hour that included the formal break in the ball's activity. Suddenly everyone was trying to remember what they did during that break, and not everyone was entirely successful.
Yvette had been talking to Edna during much of the break, and Jules had been discreetly carrying on a friendly conversation with Yvonne. Most of the candidates had gone outside into the garden with some of Edna's ladies-in-waiting, and so had built-in alibis for the crucial interval. Only three of the men did not have such alibis-Paul Symond, Choyen Liu, and a fellow named Sean Mulvaney from the planet Arcta. Mulvaney said that he had been visiting the fresher then, and had no witnesses to his activity. Symond said he had gone up to his room to get a couple of pieces of jewelry he had forgotten to bring down to the ball with him originally. Liu admitted that he had gone out into the garden by himself to meditate.
The police zeroed in on him. The fact that he had no alibi for the time in question, that he admitted being in the garden at that time, and that Borov had threatened him earlier in the day made him a prime suspect. Liu accepted that suspicion quietly, saying very little except to answer every question the police put to him. He stated politely but firmly that he did not murder Borov and that he did not know who did. Neither the operatives from SOTE nor the police detectives could make a dent in that story.
Finally, they had to give up. There was not yet enough evidence to make an arrest, or even to take any one person down to the police station for more detailed questioning. Since all the suspects were here for the Progress, which was to last for another week and a half, the police left them alone and went out instead to look over the garden and search for more clues. After a while, they departed completely, with the warning that no one in the Progress party was to leave the planet without checking with them first.
All the rest of the day the topic of conversation centered around the murder. Symond, Mulvaney, and Liu were made unofficial outcasts, with very few people bothering to talk to them or ask their opinions. Liu took this all with the same quiet acceptance he affected toward everything; the other two were a bit more annoyed that their integrity should be so questioned, but they tried to exhibit good humor despite their awkward positions.
Midway through the day, Jules found an opportunity to take his sister aside and talk with her privately. "the thought has occurred to me," he said, "that we may have the number of the enemy figured all wrong. What if there are two traitors here--one to plant the bomb and the other to act as his backup? If there are more than one of them here, it might let those three off the hook; the killer would say he was elsewhere and his confederate would back his story.
Yvette mulled that over for a second. "You may be right," she said at last. "There simply aren't enough data to go by. Having only one infiltrator in this group would be simpler; remember how hard it is to qualify. But I suppose there could be more than one."
"We'll just have to generate more data, then," Jules said resolutely. "And I think I know how to do it. I'll drop a little bomb of my own."
He waited until dinnertime to do it, though. While everyone was seated around the large banquet table-talking about the murder, naturally--Jules suddenly dropped into the conversation the fact that he had a pretty good idea who the murderer was. Edna gave him a strange glance, wondering what sort of game he was playing, but, like the intelligent woman she was, she said nothing. Instead she left it to the others to ask questions that had formed in her mind as well.
There was no dearth of questioners. "Who is it?" asked Hans Gudding.
Jules shook his head. "I don't really want to say yet except that it isn't me. But this is a serious charge, and I wouldn't want to slander anyone on just what evidence I have. If I turned out to be wrong, I would never forgive myself for calling an innocent man a killer."
"Shouldn't you tell the police about your suspicions?" Paul Symond asked.
"I probably should, once I get them firmed up a bit. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I'll give them a call and explain my theory."
"What exactly do you have?" Mulvaney asked. "There've been several things that happened over the few days we've all been together. The person I suspect has done a couple of things that struck me at the time as being most peculiar. There are one or two facts I want to check on out in the garden." As he had by now finished eating, he pushed his chair away from the table. "Please excuse me, all of you, but this could be important."
