Walter Williams - Logs

"I'm afraid Lieutenant Corbigny isn't well," Xi said. "I had to give her something to settle her tummy. Part way into the interrogation she threw up all over the floor." He raised the beaker and looked at it solemnly. "I fear she isn't cut out for police work."

Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. "Did anything go well?" he asked.

"The interrogation wasn't a success, particularly," Xi said. "Phillips said he hadn't killed the captain, and didn't know who did. He said he doesn't belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way the story can't be confirmed because she's dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens."

Xi slumped over his table, and took a drink from the beaker.

"When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny, when she wasn't spewing, tried to keep him on the subject of the captain's death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe there were different chants. It was hard to tell."

"What was he chanting?"

"I don't know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word Narayanguru all right, so it's a cult ritual language and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they'll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips, and if the IS is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end of them, because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am, and who are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent." He looked at the beaker again, and then raised his head to look at Martinez.

"Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?"

"No thanks, I've had enough already. And you're going to have a hell of a hangover."

Xi gave a weary grin. "No, I'm not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man." His face fell. "And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn't hurt anybody, if you ask me-which nobody did-but who's going to die anyway, and I wish I'd kept my damn mouth shut about the captain's injuries." He poured more alcohol into his beaker. "I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly I wish I could throw up like Corbigny."

"Keep this up and you will," Martinez said.

"I shall do my best," Xi said, and raised his glass. "Bottoms up."

The taste of defeat soured Martinez' tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he'd keep it to himself.

A call from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. "There was a guard here all night, lord captain," Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. "There's no way anyone could have got to him."

Martinez walked to Lord Phillips' cell and looked inside and wished he hadn't.

Sometime over the course of the night Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, and then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.

Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated over the room like motes of dust.

Doctor Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.

"He knew he'd crack," Michi said after she arrived. "He knew he'd give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends." She shook her head. "I wouldn't have thought he had the nerve for it."

Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.

"We're still no better off than we were!" Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.

Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery One and the riggers' stores, but it didn't make him feel any better.

"General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill!"

From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew this wasn't a drill from the first word. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.

Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of Martinez' heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but he still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser, but he managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.

His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meant Illustrious was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail and he began to swing himself back to the steep stair so that he could kick off and jump to the next deck.

No good. The engines fired without warning and suddenly Martinez had weight again. His arm couldn't support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.

Martinez tried to rise but the gravities were already beginning to pile on. (Two gravities. Three…) Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives. (Four gravities at least…) He gasped for breath. Eventually Martinez realized he wasn't going to be able to climb.

He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn't taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn't get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.

A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine. (Five gravities…) His vision was beginning to go dark.

Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.

It was Chandra's nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inbound and he needed to get to Command. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.

Martinez thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine. (Six gravities…) His vision was totally gone. He couldn't seem to breathe. Without the drugs Terrans could only rarely stay conscious past six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.