Final Inquiries Read Free

myself."
    "Security is very tight," said Brox.
    "So you know what the assignment is?" asked Jamie.
    "Oh, yes," said Brox. "However, I am authorized to say very little at this time. I am permitted to say that I have been given the task of conducting Final Inquiries regarding an incident that has just taken place."
    Hannah crossed her arms and let out a low whistle. "Final Inquiries" was what the Kendari Inquiries Service called a death investigation. But no one launched Final Inquiries if the victim had died at home in advanced old age in his, her, or its sleep. It was obvious that Brox wasn't supposed to come out and say it was a murder investigation, but apparently it was all right for him to give very broad hints.
    Brox went on. "I can tell you that it was the humans involved in the negotiations who suggested we keep the circle of knowledgeable personnel as tight as possible. They were the ones who suggested the tightly controlled brief in the interests of not endangering any more beings than necessary."
    "But it was deemed necessary to endanger Special Agent Mendez and me?"
    "Regrettably, yes. I must refrain from saying more. Explaining the form of the danger in question would in and of itself release potentially dangerous information."
    "I don't like this," said Kelly. "In fact, let's just say that's one of the great understatements of the year. But my orders were very clear, very specific, and very emphatic. It's you two they want, and it is you two that they're going to get." She checked her pocket comm. "Good. Kosolov and the Quartermaster's Office are both reporting task complete. We're clear to go."
    "Wait a second," Jamie protested. "You mean, that's the briefing? We're done? We can't even go back to our desks?"
    "Right on all counts, Agent Mendez," said Kelly. "There's no time, there's no more information anyway, and now that you know as much as you do, the more we keep you two out of sight, the better. And that goes double for our guests. Maybe triple. So you're leaving. Now."
    She turned, opened the door behind her, and led the way down the corridor. Brox trotted along behind her. The simulant stomped along behind Brox, struggling to keep its balance and working hard to keep up with him. It somehow gave the impression that it was traveling blind, navigating mostly by luck. Hannah and Jamie brought up the rear, neither of them eager to get too close to the simulant. Part of it was simply the desire to avoid collision with the clumsy simulant--but that was far from all of it.
    Hannah's subconscious had already decided the sim was not an intelligent being, but instead a thing, an object. It was a machine, like a bicycle, a computer, or a coat hook. There was no need to treat it with the respect due to an Elder Race xeno. But it wasn't that simple. Echoes, whispers, of the old Frankenstein story flitted about in her memory as she watched the awkward, lumbering thing moving ahead of them. She wasn't so sure how much the sim would facilitate communications--but it was going to do just fine at giving them nightmares.
    Kelly was taking them on a roundabout route through the maze of corridors that made up BSI's orbiting headquarters, no doubt doing her best to keep their two unusual guests out of sight. She was leading them at a brisk enough pace that Hannah nearly missed one or two turns. At last, Kelly hustled them all into an elevator. The simulant walked straight into the back of the elevator car and stopped, with its face--or where its face would have been--right up against the rear wall. All three humans, and Brox as well, managed to find ways to get as far away from it as possible.
    They reached the docking-bay deck and the elevator doors opened. They got off--the simulant simply walking in reverse rather than turning around first. We're going to be cooped up in a starship with this thing for a week? Hannah asked herself as she watched it do a sort of three-point turn before following along behind Brox.
    That was