The Path of the Four

Jafari jogged after Ariana as her short legs, somehow, took giant strides down the hallway in Vertex.

“Look, Ariana, are you talking to me or what?”

The collar on Jafari’s uniform was loose. His brown skin glistened with sweat. His slicked back hair dangled over one eye and his pencil moustache, somehow, was wilting.

“You and me have to talk to Joe,” she said.

“Fine, we’ll talk to him. I think he can take a break from his brooding. But in the middle of this whole mess, I get reports that a contingent of Side Clan tough guys escort you back to a shuttle. Natives are calming down when you get within hailing distance. So whatever that means, it look like good news, but the clock is still running on the Lower Clan starting their invasion.”

Jafari followed Ariana into Joe’s office, through the open doorway.

Joe sat at his desk drinking a glass of what was, from the smell, whiskey.

The office sound system played an Englishman singing about nights (or knights?) in white satin.

“Oh,” Joe said. “Welcome back. What are you --?”

“Babe,” Ariana said. “Lose the music.”

The music stopped.

Joe set his glass on his desk and hopped up out of his chair.

“Hey!”

“Calm down, Joe,” Ariana said.

Jafari lingered in a corner of the office. He looked like he was waiting for whatever Ariana would do next. She didn’t keep him waiting.

Ariana sat on a corner of Joe’s desk and looked at him.

“Babe, how drunk is he?” she asked.

“He’s been drinking from that same glass, no refill, for three hours,” said the artificial intelligence from the ceiling speaker.

Ariana jerked a thumb at the open doorway.

“Can we get a door over there?”

“Babe,” Joe said. “Door, standard.”

From either end of the open doorway, two doors appeared and slid shut. The lines someone had painted on the two doors formed the Carne-Tischler “C.T.” logo.

Ariana told Joe and Jafari about the invitation to become Inner Clan.

Jafari shot up an eyebrow, for a moment.

“Hmmmm,” Joe said. “You’re taking the offer?”

“I think I sort of have to. If we’re going to repair Human/Zah-Gre relations.”

“Do you want this, from them?” Joe asked.

Joe looked at her, waiting for an answer to his question.

Ariana started to shrug, then nodded and said, “Yes.”

Jafari cleared his throat. “In legal terms, you’re way is clear to take a post with them, Ariana. Of course, the details of your--”

“There’s something else,” and Ariana hated to interrupt as she said it. She took a deep breath and told them about the revelation about the Fourth Book of the Garb Ock.

“Shit,” Joe said after a moment. He looked at Jafari. “You want a drink?”

“No. And I’m Islamic anyway.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. I forget. I don’t want a drink either. ”

Ariana smiled.

“You aren’t going to offer me one, Joe?”

“You’re the one who got the big-deal, ancient secret they lobbed over to you. It sounds like you might be more on top of this whole mess than your two co-workers here. ”

Ariana shook her head. “I don’t know about that, Joe.”

“I assume we’re sworn to secrecy about the Fourth Book,” Jafari said.

“They didn’t tell me that, but I advise that to you both now, yes,” Ariana said.

“OK,” Joe said. Only he said it as if things weren’t OK, but might be, with a little work. He walked over to the window and looked out at the planet, at outer space, at the tourism space station. He turned back to Ariana and Jafari. “Ariana, you’re OK with this? A native prophesy, tying together everything that’s happened?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. As a scientist--”

“Joe, do some research on scientific discoveries, from Newton to Yamato. They all kept saying variations on the same thing; ‘I knew it was true because it was beautiful.’ ‘Beauty’ is not the best word here, but the Fourth Book provides a unity for a lot of what has happened, since Yamato vanished back on Earth.”

Ariana hesitated and then told Joe and Jafari more, with exceptions. She told them of the extraordinary dreams she had experienced since arriving on Zah-Gre. She did not, however, mention her brother and what he had told her. She did tell them of the odd building, and the school, Ab-Druh in the school hallway, her moving among the giant chess set. She told them about finding out about the Alpha Covenant, whatever that was.

“What?” Jafari marched over to where she was, sitting on Joe’s desk, and stuck his face at her. “That test copy of the Damrosch Helix--you should have used it for purposes of company policy!”

Joe, when Ariana described the building that kept popping up in her dream, sat back down, got a whiskey bottle out of a drawer in his desk, and turned it around and around, watching the thick, brown fluid slosh around behind the glass and peeling label.

“We are all now way out of the territory of official company policy,” Joe said, still looking at the bottle.

“What is with you, Joe?” Jafari straightened his uniform. “You didn’t act this way when you just got that bit about the native prophecy.”

Joe set the bottle on his desk. He looked at Ariana, and then he looked at Jafari.

“Act what way, Jafari?” Joe asked.

“Well, I don’t know quite how to put it.”

“You recognized something in the dream,” Ariana said. “Didn’t you, Joe?”

“Fellow employees, I’m acting like a man who just felt a ghost breathing down his neck.”

“Ghost?”

“What ghost?” Jafari said, echoing Ariana.

“I’ll get to that in a moment. First, Jafari, I’m asking you--not ordering you, asking you--to be careful about what Ariana did with the Damrosch Helix.”

“Look, Joe--”

Joe put up a hand. It was such a commanding gesture, Jafari stopped his sentence.

“We got Human Security, or part of Human Security, saying that they followed up on that ‘Paladins of the Promise’ comment, and saying they got nothing. Trained law enforcers. Trained investigators, right. Ariana, not trained in that way, goes sniffing around in the same territory, and gets ‘The Alpha Covenant.’ Now somebody down the line isn’t playing it straight, and they’re not playing it straight about somebody running around the planet with a weapon that’s been illegal for more than twenty years and killed our Chief Engineer’s buddy.”

“It’s worse than that.” She reached into her pocket and put something on Joe’s desk.

The two men looked at it.

“That’s a Human Security badge,” Joe said.

“The Side Clan was first on the scene to the cave where the assassin must have shot,” Ariana said. “They found that there.” She nodded at the badge.

“Great,” Joe said. “Just swell. The main Human police presence on the planet Zah-Gre is involved in a murder conspiracy. Gang, we need to do something about this.”

“What am I supposed to do, Joe? Arrest all of Human Security?”

“I don’t know what any of us should do. Except take things one step at a time.”

“‘The Fourth,’” Ariana said. “‘The Fourth,’ whoever that it is, killed Ab-Druh.’”

“‘The Fourth’?” Joe put his feet up on his desk. He put his hands behind his head. He kept his face expressionless. “It will never stand up in court, but I’ve known who ‘the Fourth’ is as of five minutes ago.”

Ariana pushed Joe’s feet off his desk and she jumped down to the floor. Startled, Jafari took a few steps back.

“Don’t get cute!” She was shouting. “Don’t play games! This bastard burned a hole in Ab-Druh!”

“You’re shouting,” Joe said to her.

“Maybe I have to!”

Joe looked hurt, and maybe this was the lingering effects of a woman with whom, just a little while ago, he had been intimate and physical, shouting at him.

“Peter Hargrove,” Joe said. “He was really young when he joined the Universal Resistance League. He was, maybe, twelve at the start. Good at everything we asked of him, but every now and then he’d do things sloppy and stupid, like that badge in the cave. I never knew where he came from, and I didn’t ask. I always got the impression he was some sort of runaway, or orphan, or both. Anyway, I guess the Universal Resistance League kind of adopted him. Either of you ever been to Oak Brook, Illinois?”

“No,” Ariana said.

“I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“That building in the dream, during the League’s long fight, was the headquarters of a corporation, in Oak Brook. They--” He hesitated. He rubbed his jaw, as if he was trying to coax his mouth into saying the rest of it.

Ariana and Jafari waited.

“This corporation,” Joe said. “Poor people could sell their own body parts to them. For money.”

Jafari walked over to a wall, leaned his back against it, and crossed his arms.

“Well, that’s just sort of the old organ donor practice,” Jafari said. “You know, before Yamato and Ellsworth perfected organ-specific cloning, people would sign their driver’s licenses on the back and, when they died, their organs would be used to help the sick.”

(And, Ariana thought, Humans being the odd creatures they are, some didn’t take advantage of the Yamato/ Ellsworth techniques, like the man at the front desk at the Terra Hotel, with a hook instead of a left hand.)

Joe stood and looked at Jafari. Joe’s expression had darkened.

“So, uh,” Jafari went on. “So this corporation must have given money to the surviving family members of the people who--”

Jafari trailed off. Joe was looking angrier and angrier.

“Joe,” Ariana said. “This corporation bought organs from poor people while these sellers were still alive.” She gulped. “Didn’t they?”

“Damn right.” He gestured at the ceiling and seemed to address his next question to the whole universe. “Why do you think the League wanted to hurt them?”

Nobody said or did anything for a moment.

“Hargrove,” Ariana said, at last.

“I’m getting to him. So we got these--swell people leaving folks with bank accounts a little fatter, but with missing arms, legs, eyes, lungs. My cell does a lot of talking. We decide we kill the vice president of this corporation, and then, at the funeral, kill the president.” He walked around to the front of his desk, his back to Jafari. Joe looked straight at Ariana. “And that’s what we did, and it was just me and Peter Hargrove on the job. You talked about, what, a moment ago? Something about scientists knowing something was true because things fit together so well?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Ariana said.

“Well, Ariana,” Joe said. “How do you think somebody might describe the type of relationship you had with Ab-Druh?”

Ariana felt her face redden. “That’s a little too personal.” You said to the man you slept with. Shut up! “And what does that matter now?”

“Please tell me,” and Joe said it with his face impassive.

Ariana hesitated, but then said, “Well, I guess some people might say it was like what happened between a father and his daughter.”

“Gee, what a coincidence,” Joe replied. “That corporation. The vice president and president were father and daughter.” He stepped closer and glanced over his shoulder at Jafari, then looked again at Ariana.

Ariana’s stomach hurt.

“We all need to be real careful here,” Joe said to her. “Otherwise, I think my old ‘buddy’ Peter Hargrove will kill you at Ab-Druh’s funeral.”

Ariana clutched the pentagram and cross that dangled around her neck.

Joe lowered his eyes, looking at that gesture. “Better hold on tight,” Joe said.

“We need to work out arrangements with the Zah-Gre. Trap this Hargrove, turn him over to--” Jafari trailed off again.

“You need to finish more of your sentences.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“You can’t blame your Chief of Security for being confused,” Ariana said. “Trap Hargrove and turn him over to who? It’s obvious that unknown person or persons have compromised Human Security some way. The Friendship Bureau has so many political ties to H.S., so I think we should stay clear of them, for now, anyway.”

Joe sat behind his desk again. “Somebody stops Hargrove trying to kill Ariana with the Krink-Gaffin Two Thousand--”

“Thank you for the ‘stops’ part.”

“Don’t mention it, lady--And that makes him Ab-Druh’s killer. I say the Zah-Gre get Hargrove then.”

Ariana sat on the desk again. “I got a question. Why?”

“Uh, why what?” Joe asked.

Jafari walked over to the desk. “She means, ‘Why did Hargrove kill Ab-Druh, and now want to kill Ariana?’”

“Look,” Joe said. “I’m not an ex-cop like my man Jafari said, but we’re not moving into what I would call classical methods of investigation. We got a pretty good guess here that it’s Peter Hargrove and how we can catch him. We can toss ‘Why?’ at him when we bag him.”

Ariana put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. The fat space station manager started. She looked, deep, into his eyes.

“I want to know why,” she said.

“I don’t know why.” Joe’s voice was quiet.

“You knew him, knew Hargrove, long enough, and good enough, to make a decent guess,” she said.

Joe hesitated a few seconds, nodded, and then said, “OK. Let me think.”

Ariana smiled, nodded, and withdrew her hand.

Joe leaned back in his chair. “OK. Try this. Jafari, there might be something here for future reference. The way people who kill with deliberation think.”

“I’m listening,” the security chief said.

“First of all Peter--Hargrove is playing killer for hire here. It’s not personal to him,” Joe said. “Why should it be? The League won. He’s killing for money and he’s following orders.”

“From who?” The question shot out of Ariana’s mouth before she had time to finish thinking of it.

“I don’t know, but assassins, or the clients of assassins have three reasons,” Joe said. One, to get a guy’s money, house, car, whatever. That, of course, can’t be true. The Zah-Gre have their charm, a few weird customs, a few trinkets, and that’s it for people with minds like bankers. Two, revenge. You get me, so now I got you back. You know, real macho shit. Also not true in this case. Until the Ab-Druh killing, and the riots and fights afterwards, a Zah-Gre never lifted a hand against a Human. Not even those Lower Clan guys. That leaves three. Somebody, whoever is yanking Hargrove’s string, thought Ab-Druh knew something, something that was supposed to stay a total secret.”

“And thinks I know the same thing.”

“Looks like it, Ariana.”

“Damn it, what?”

Jafari broke back in to the conversation. “The ‘Alpha Covenant.’”

“But all I have is that name!”

“Sure,” said the security man. “But you spent all that time with Ab-Druh. So the killer, Hargrove, according to this theory, thinks you know what Ab-Druh knew.”

She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “And we got one more problem none of us has mentioned yet,” Ariana said.

Joe gave her a quizzical look.

Jafari said, “What?”

“Babe,” Ariana. “What are you doing right now?”

“I am currently performing over sixty thousand functions,” said the artificial intelligence program from a speaker below the window.

“Yes, but what are you currently doing regarding the conversation in this room?”

“I am logging it in audio, video, and text/transcript and preparing to forward copies to Human Security and the Friendship Bureau.”

Jafari slapped his forehead.

“Oh,” Joe said. “Shit.”