Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

They were regulars at Marianna’s, to the point where Callie, the waitress, didn’t even bother getting up to show her to their table. Of course, it wasn’t that large a place, either. She could see Sergei sitting in the back the moment she walked in. And he was grinning like he was about to choke on wee yellow feathers.

“You’re scaring me. What?”

“I had a little chat with an old friend of mine who was shocked, shocked to hear that criminals had their hands on any part of the ‘Fabulous Finds.’ A few hours later, this job came in. Since we are, after all, the only team who could pull something like this off…”

He slid a piece of paper across the table to her. She picked it up, noting first the weight of the paper, then the fact that it was letterhead stationery; and then her mind took in the words, and she started to laugh as Sergei called Callie over to open the wine.

“The Meadows Museum board would like to make use of your services to retrieve a painting that went missing from our premises on the night of July 14…”

Getting paid to take back what they took in the first place, and undercut any attempt the organization might make to go ahead with their plan anyway.

“I love this job,” Wren said, raising her glass.

“To karma,” Sergei agreed. “To karma, and the joy of being the boot that gives it a kick in the ass. Zdorov’ye! ”

“Is it dead?”

Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon looked around for the speaker, but the hallway outside the delegates’ quarters was empty. Even in a small, busy spaceship, the crew was giving the alien diplomats a wide berth.

“Up here, mudfoot,” the voice said.

Gordon looked up. A pale, thin young man was standing on what was, to Gordon, the ceiling, his left hand wrapped around a gripfast to keep himself from floating away.

“Is it dead?” he asked again.

Gordon shrugged. “How can I tell if it’s dead if I don’t know what it is?”

The man sighed, flipped himself off the ceiling, tumbled through the zero gravity to another gripfast, and oriented himself with Gordon.

“Mudfoots,” he said to the air. Then, to Gordon, “It’s in contact with the deck, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead raising his voice, and saying, “Computer, is the object on the deck near the location of my voice an organic?”

“It is,” a voice drawled out of the air, “if you mean the other object besides Probationary Intern to the second assistant undersecretary Oscar Gordon of the Federated Planets’ Corps Diplomatique.”

Gordon laughed. “I guess starspawn don’t know everything,” he said to the young man.

“Probationary Intern Gordon,” the voice drawled, “name-calling with ship’s fourth officer John Carter isn’t really an occupation for a member of the Corps Diplomatique. You humans should get along better, whatever your superficial differences.”

Gordon recognized the justice of the computer’s rebuke. His command of diplomacy wasn’t all that it should have been. He’d only graduated from the academy at Alpha Cen six months before, and this was his first real assignment.

The sentient races were having a big powwow on Rigel A1101, called Ricketts by the humans who lived there. Protocol prevented any extraterrestial ships from approaching the inner system that held Ricketts, so the Chuck Yeager had been assigned, along with a dozen other ships, to meet the arriving interstellar vessels, pick up their legations, and ferry them to Ricketts. This was hardly a plum assignment, so the Brahmins had assigned the lowest-ranking and least-well-connected diplos to the ships.

Gordon looked at the young man hanging in front of him. He’s one of the reasons I don’t like spaceflight, he thought. So at ease in zero G, and so superior about it. Look at his uniform. Plain gray silk without an insignia on it. How does anyone tell who’s an officer out here?

His own uniform, the uniform of a very junior diplomat, was a thousand times nicer. Rainbow bodysuit, lavender cloak and spats, yellow gloves and boots. He might be short and dark and even a trifle plump from an endless round of practice state dinners, but compared to the other young man, who was long and pale from years of no-gravity spaceflight, he looked like a million credits.

Say what you want about the Corps Diplomatique, he thought, we know how to dress. Even if the magnetics he needed to keep from floating away in zero gravity did ruin the drape of his cloak.

“You are quite correct, Computer,” the young diplomat said aloud, bowing slightly to the ship’s officer. “Can you tell me how this object got here?”

The object, somehow thoroughly anchored to the deck, was an oval, thicker in the middle than at the ends, its surface divided into segments by snaky lines. To Gordon, it looked like the shell of an earth tortoise with the leg and head holes filled in.

“I can,” the voice drawled. “It was rolled out the hatchway leading to the diplomats’ quarters. I’ll show you.”

The air in front of the two humans congealed into a replica of the hallway. The hatch opened, and the object rolled out on its side, wavered and fell, ever so slowly, to the deck, where it remained.

“Attila the Hun!” Gordon said. “If it came out of the diplomats’ quarters, it’s my problem. Computer, can you tell us who moved it here?”

“No can do. Before any of the alien species came aboard the captain ordered me not to snoop in their quarters. Something about diplomatic immunity.”

More likely worried about the Xtees bringing bug detectors and catching him red-handed, the young diplomat thought. Gordon looked at the object on the deck. “Computer, we didn’t take on any aliens that look like this, did we?”

It was Fourth Officer Carter who answered.

“We took on thirteen species, all oxygen breathers, none of which looked like that.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “But one that could. It’s a Husker.”

Gordon snorted. “That’s no Husker, starspawn, “he said, flipping his cape so that the synthmaterial rippled. “They’re eight feet tall, and they have all those arms, or fronds, or whatever they are.”

“Which one of us was it that smoked spatial geometries, mudfoot?” the ship’s officer asked. “Oh, that’s right. It was me. That’s a Husker.”

The Huskers were a recent contact. They were from a system in Clarke’s Cloud, a raft of stars in toward the center of the universe. Or so they said. They called their home star “the sun” and their home planet “Earth,” just like every other sentient species, which drove the translation program crazy. It also made it hard to locate their home planet. They were officially designated Unknown Origin 37s. But they looked like nothing so much as walking-sort of-talking-after a fashion-stalks of corn. So it didn’t take fifteen minutes after first contact for some wag to hang the nickname on them.

The young diplomat opened his mouth to argue, but the computer interrupted. “Fourth Officer Carter is right. Look.”

A full-grown Husker appeared in the air in front of Gordon’s nose, then folded itself slowly this way and that until what was left was an object like the one on the deck.

“Vlad the Impaler!” Gordon said. “How am I going to explain this to Second Assistant Undersecretary Tulk?”

“Who’s that?” Carter asked.

“My boss in the Corps Diplomatique,” Gordon said.

“Aren’t you going to have to explain it to the chief Husker first?”

Gordon’s answer was cut off by a throat-clearing noise.

“Actually, fellas,” the computer said, “there’s a more pressing problem.”