Chapter Fifteen

Mairin started counting heads. There were seven other people in the room – eight, if the King happened to still be breathing, but it seemed unlikely – all in various states of panic and shock. She imagined none of them had ever seen a murder before, and nobody knew what to do. Mairin may only have been a philosopher, but she was from Garden – this was very much her area. The Speaker was fiddling with his device up at the top where he had tried to catch the President, while shouting began to bubble up around the room. All the while the President lay at the feet of his former subject, who had just publicly denounced him in the strongest possible terms. Lars, the young man, was now wavering on his feet as though he might faint. The two Edo executives had leapt to their feet, and the older of the two looked like he was going to throw up.

Somebody needed to take charge, and she spotted her chance when Sai began to move towards one of the doors. She vaulted over the side of the seating, landed with a thud that nearly took her off-balance, and blocked the machine’s path. “Somewhere to be?”

“what the hell?” Sai said, their output display flashing new combinations of light and motion that somehow signified agitation. Now their colleague, Sofia, was following up, and other heads were turning their way too.

“We cannot leave here. We need to stay where we are and let Security handle this. We don’t know if we’re under attack, and we don’t know what else is waiting out there. Most of the delegates are safely locked away in their dormitories – if you start wandering the halls, you’re the only target they’ll need.”

Now Sofia actually was sick. There was a gasp from the others as she doubled over, and Mairin took the opportunity to examine the locks on the chamber doors. They were digital, but could be automatically unlocked with a physical switch located on the inside. She sighed – of course, the designers of the room would have wanted to keep people out if necessary, but they didn’t imagine that they would want to keep them in.

“Listen up, everybody,” she said, striding past the shuddering, retching figure of Sofia and into the centre of the room. “We cannot leave right now. Speaker, are you on to Security?”

“They’re not picking up,” he said. “Connection’s fine, they just -“

“What, they’re all in bed?” Isi scoffed. “This is exactly why we have security teams; how in hell could they have let this happen?”

“I’m trying them again,” the Speaker said. All at once, as though they had taken a cue, everyone began to shout questions at one another again.

“Who did this?”

“Who’s the President now?”

“Should we wake the others?”

“No, they don’t need to know yet -“

“Oh yes, covering it up, as I would expect!”

Mairin couldn’t even tell who was arguing with whom in the din, and she wished she had a gun she could shoot into the ceiling to get their attention. It might ruin the pretty acoustic treatment or, perhaps, blow a hole in the tin can in which they were all currently living. But it would definitely make a hell of a noise. She settled for a bark instead.

“Everyone, shut up!” she yelled over the crowd. It had the desired effect. “There’s no use in speculating right now. We need to work together here, and that means at least for the next few hours, no fighting. I know tensions are high, but we can get through this. Then, you’ll have the time to shout all you like. But now, I need you all to stay alert. Okay?”

There were some nods around the room. Most peoples’ eyes were on her, but a few still lingered on the body lying behind her.

“Do we… do we know he’s dead?”

“I can check his pulse,” volunteered Sofia.

“No, I’ll do it,” said Kei.

“What, you don’t trust me to do his pulse?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know whether you should get close to that body,” she sneered. “You never really liked the President, eh?”

“People!” Mairin shouted again. “This is exactly what we need to avoid, understand me? I’ll check it.”

There were some murmurs – not everyone trusted her to do it right either – but nobody protested as she crouched over the splayed form of the King. She had figured out, two or three careers ago, that most people wouldn’t take issue with your actions if you just did them in front of their faces, as though there had never been a question.

No pulse.

She stood and shook her head to the room, and finally everyone lapsed into a solemn silence. The Speaker had finally descended from the higher seats, and was still making frantic motions on his device. She slipped away from the centre of attention to join him.

“What’s up?” she asked in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” he said, his normally strong voice wavering from panic, “it says the Security station is manned, but they’re not replying. I should go over there and bring someone back.”

“Geraint,” she murmured, careful to not appear as a threat, “you know I can’t let that happen.”

There was a silence as they looked each other in the eye. Eventually he nodded, and she stepped back from the body. “Do the doors lock from this side?” she asked.

He glanced at the other figures still looking at the body. “There are shutters that close if the lock is damaged.

“And they can only be lifted from the outside?”

“Right.”

“Okay,” she said. There was no further discussion to be had.

Mairin really was just a philosopher, though one of the four leaders to whom she was supposed to be giving counsel had just hours ago departed on a shuttle back home (convenient timing, a piece of her mind couldn’t help offering up), and the other three were hopefully safe in their dormitories. That meant that right now she was a free agent, and could apply her views anywhere she liked. Her views as they stood were that nobody in this room could be trusted, and a guilty party would slip away at the first opportunity. Another faction, perhaps The Clock or some other gang of predictivists, would say that that was illogical and pointless, because even if they escaped the chamber they couldn’t escape the station. Mairin would agree that it was illogical and pointless, but not that it meant they wouldn’t try.

So, quietly as she could, choosing a moment when nobody was looking right at her, she wandered over to the nearest door lock and put her hand straight through it.

Alarms blared and the room was awash in red light. All other lights switched off, which she cursed – it would be harder to see anyone making sudden movements now. There was a yelp of surprise from someone in the group, and then the shutters started to close. They were fast but not instant, exactly as she had hoped. She vaulted her way over a bench again and, with the benefit of the high ground, surveilled the group below.

Mairin couldn’t see who, but a figure in the darkness made a run for it, dashing to the nearest exit as the shutters closed. Unfortunately, that put them on a collision path with Mairin, who leapt over the other side of the bench and blocked their way. Up close she could see – it was Kei, a look of fear on her face. She tried to shove Mairin aside, but the older woman didn’t move an inch. The shutters behind her finally stopped grinding, and closed. The alarms stopped blaring, but the lights didn’t come back on, leaving them bathed in red. Mairin shook her head. “Bad move.”

“I just…” Kei protested, as Mairin grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the centre.

“Someone just made a run for it,” she announced.

“what did you do?” Sai yelled.

“I didn’t do anything!” Kei yelled back, still in Mairin’s grasp.

“not you,” Sai said. “her.” They pointed at Mairin.

“I closed us off. They can open it again, but only from the outside. And I found us a guilty conscience.”

There was a silence, which Isi eventually broke. “You’re trying to tell me… Kei?”

Mairin shrugged. “I can’t prove it. But keep an eye on her.” She let Kei go, and she sank to the floor.

“Listen here, sweetheart,” said Isi. “I don’t know how they do things on Earth: Garden – except, wait, yes I do, they do things extremely fucked up over there – so maybe you need to step back and not try to play law enforcement here. I mean, hell, locking us in…!”

Sweetheart? she thought. “I get that you don’t like us, Mr. Zhukov, but someone had to take action. And while you’re sitting there waiting for Security, perhaps you can take some time to consider that they can’t do shit. They don’t have jurisdiction here.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“She’s right,” said the Speaker in glum realisation. “Security don’t have the right to arrest anyone, or deliver any punishment. We don’t even have laws for murder up here.”

Everyone looked at the Speaker, then at each other, in shock. Mairin was tempted to ask how this was the first any of them were hearing about this, but didn’t feel like stoking the flames much further.

“It is murder, then?” said Panagos.

“Looks that way,” said Isi, bending down to look at the King’s lifeless body. “People don’t just start choking and bleeding. Though the fall can’t have helped.”

Mairin shook her head. “He was dead before he hit the ground. This is a poison.”

“You’ve seen it before?” Sofia asked.

“I’ve seen things like it. I wouldn’t know where to start with guessing the delivery method, but the King clearly ate something he wouldn’t like.”

“I need to get in contact with the King’s children,” said Panagos. “There needs to be a coronation as soon as possible – we don’t go without a King for more than a few days back home.”

“that’s really your priority right now?” scoffed Sai.

“What about…” Mairin trailed off, but jerked her head to Lars. The younger man was now seated at the front of the Herald benches, his head in his hands. The poor kid was coming out of this with serious trauma, that much was certain.

Panagos came closer to Mairin. “What about him?” he said with obvious contempt.

“The things he accused the King of… the lying. The family probably knows, but are you expecting them to just reveal that the King flew to space and died?”

Panagos was silent for a while, mulling this over. It was clear, at least to Mairin, that what Lars had said was true. But Panagos didn’t seem ready to admit it yet – years of being conditioned that one man’s word was law could have that effect. Eventually he spoke. “They need to make their own decision. Philip – his eldest – he’ll need to decide. I need to contact him.”

Mairin thought he seemed very eager to start moving forward, and grew suspicious. “Lord Panagos,” she said, “That’s going to need to wait. We need to have all the information before we start making calls. Besides, data moves slowly up here.” For some of us, she thought, remembering Carmen’s own little secret. “Speaker,” she called over to Geraint, “any luck with Security?”