All My Sins Remembered

  “Crowell-who-jests?’

  “Yes, Baluurn?”

  “One family asked you visit. Old, very old woman remembers you. Would speak you before stillness, very soon.”

  “Say, that’s odd.:. I asked them if anyone remembered you and they said all had passed into stillness.”

  Crowell smiled. “You used the formal mode, right?”

  “Sure, who can handle the other?”

  “Well, they probably misunderstood you, then. It’s hard to talk about females in the formal mode, requires a certain amount of circumlocution. They thought you were asking if any men who remembered me were still alive.”

  “Crowell-who-jests right. Struckheimer-who-slows should sent for me talk. All village know old Shuurna.”

  “Well, let’s go see her. Should be interesting.”

  Shuurna’s building was one of the new high-rises. The two men and the Bruuchian filed in through the narrow door.

  It was a claustrophobic room, filled from floor to ceiling with the old hut, with less than a meter of floor-space between the old door and the new one. It was dark and damp and smelled of mold.

  Baluurn called out a ritual of entrance and someone upstairs responded. They entered the old hut and were surrounded by dozens of standing corpses, the family’s still ones, whose open eyes regarded them without expression. Baluurn whispered something in the mode of piety, too fast for Crowell to follow, and said, “I go up first see Shuurna ready speak Crowell-who-jests.”

  Baluurn clambered quickly up the rope, looking more monkey-like than ever. “Hope it’ll hold me,” Crowell muttered, taking a Gravitol. He put the pillbox back and took something else from his pocket. Keeping an eye on the hole in the ceiling, he sidled over to one of the still ones resting against the wall.

  “What are you doing, Isaac?”

  “Just a second,” Isaac whispered, reaching behind the still one. He returned and handed a small plastic envelope to Waldo. He put a small vibroknife back in his pocket. “A scraping from the shoulder,” he whispered.

  Waldo’s eyes got round. “Do you know…”

  Baluurn was sliding back down the rope. Two others followed him. “Shuurna wants speak Crowell-who-jests alone.”

  “Well, I’m game,” he said. “If I can make it up that rope.” Crowell got a good grip and heaved himself up, catching the slack end between his feet. With an extra Gravitol in him, it wasn’t really hard, but he huffed and muttered and went up very slowly.

  Shuurna was lying on a woven mat. She was the oldest Bruuchian Crowell had ever seen, hair yellowed and falling out in patches, eyes clouded with blindness, shrunken dugs loose gray flaps of flesh. She spoke the informal mode in a weak voice.

  “Crowell-who-jests/ I knew you in my year of learning/ so I remember you better than my own children./ You walk differently now/ your steps seem a young man’s steps.”

  “The years have been kinder to/ me than to you/ Shuurna who awaits stillness./ This apparent youth though/ is from an herb/ the doctor gave me to/ give me the strength of a younger man.” This was something Crowell hadn’t foreseen.

  “My large-eyes are darkened/ but my many-eyes tell me/ that you are taller by two kernels/ Crowell-who-jests/ than you were my lifetime ago.”

  “This is so./ It is something that may/ happen to a human as he ages.” You can add centimeters with plastiflesh, but you can’t take them off.

  There was a long silence that would have been considered awkward in human society.

  “Shuurna/ do you have something to/ tell me or ask me?”

  Another long pause. “No./ You who look like Crowell-who-jests/ I waited to see you/ but now you are not here./ I cannot wait longer/ I am ready for stillness./ Please summon the youngest and the new oldest.”

  Crowell walked to the rope. “Baluurn!”

  “Yes, Crowell-who-jests.”

  “Shuurna is ready to… pass into stillness. Can you find the oldest and the youngest?”

  The two who had come down with Baluurn scampered back up the rope. They walked by Crowell and stood before Shuurna. Crowell started to leave.

  “Crowell-who-jests,” the older one spoke, “/would you help us/ with our joyful burden?/ I am too old and this one is too small/ to carry Shuurna/ to join the other still ones downstairs.”

  Other still ones? Crowell went over to the three and stooped to take Shuurna’s hand. It was solid, unyielding as wood.

  “Old man in the family of Shuurna/ I do not understand./ I thought no humans could be present during/ the stillness ritual.”

  The old man nodded in that disarmingly human way. “This was so/ until not-long ago/ when the priests told us of the change./ To my poor knowledge/ you are only the second human/ to be so honored.”

  Crowell took up Shuurna’s body unceremoniously, a hand under stiff arm and thigh. “To what other human/ befell this honor?”

  The old one had his back to Crowell, following the youngster who was scampering to the rope. “I was not there/ but I was told/ it was Malatesta-the-highest.”

  Porfiry Malatesta, the last Supervisor of Mines, the first disappearance.

  The rope threaded through an iron ring (also purchased at the Company store), and normally hung as a single strand, a stick tied to one end preventing it from slipping through the ring. Crowell balanced Shuurna’s corpse on its feet and the old one passed the rope under her arms, securing it with something that was almost a square knot. They passed the body down to Baluurn, who untied it, and, balancing it with one hand, pulled in slack until the rope was in its original position. Then the two Bruuchians clambered down, hand over hand. Crowell followed with a little less confidence.

  During the whole process, Waldo stood to one side, looking rather lost. The old one addressed Crowell in the informal mode, and Crowell replied with what Waldo recognized as a polite refusal. “Uh—what was that all about?”

  “We were invited to the wake—you know, recite all the good deeds the old gal was responsible for and help decide where to lean the body. I told them no, thanks. These affairs last all day, and I’ve got an appointment. Besides, I’ve always gotten the feeling that having humans present puts a damper on the festivities. They have to invite you, of course, if you’re anywhere nearby when the thing starts.”

  “And we’re about as near as anybody’s ever been. Glad you didn’t accept for us—this whole business has gotten me a little queasy.”

  “Well, we can leave any time. Baluurn’s staying, naturally.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The sun was still blazing overhead when they stepped out of the hut. The whole experience couldn’t have taken more than half an hour. They walked down the dusty road a few meters before Waldo spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “That sample you gave me… what makes you think they won’t find out you took it?”

  “Don’t be so damned furtive! We’re just tourists, right?

  “You’d need a magnifying glass to find where I made the incision. Besides, I took it from one of the least accessible corpses, right up against a wall; with their taboo against moving them, we’re safe.”

  “Well, I’ll have to admit it is a windfall. Maybe we can finally figure out how—say, you were there when the woman died! Did you see anything?”

  Crowell stared at the ground for a few steps before replying. “I was leaving, backing out; I was sure they didn’t want me around. But they just went up to her and looked at her and said it was done. Whatever kind of embalming they do, they must do it while the person’s still alive.” Crowell shuddered in the heat. “They didn’t even touch her.”

  8.

  Crowell had deliberately ignored Dr. Norman’s advice, and had made an appointment with the ambassador in the early evening. He expected that the man would be pretty intoxicated by then. A strikingly handsome man—aristocratic features, gray hair flowing onto broad shoulders—answered the door.

  “Ambassador Fitz-Jones?”

  “Yes… oh, you must be Dr. Crowell.
Come in, come in.” He didn’t seem too far gone.

  Crowell walked into an elegantly appointed room, which the Otto part of his mind identified as being furnished in American Provincial, late twentieth century. Even if they were fakes, the shipping costs were staggering to contemplate.

  Fitz-Jones indicated an amorphous leather-covered chair, and Crowell allowed it to swallow him. “Let me get you a drink. You may have brandy and water, brandy and soda, brandy and juice, brandy and ice, brandy and brandy, or—” he gave a conspiratorial wink—“a bit of Chateau de Rothschild burgundy, ‘23.”

  “Good God!” Even Crowell knew what that vintage represented.

  “Somehow a small cask of it was mistakenly delivered here, instead of a case of badly needed immigration forms.” He shook his head gravely. “These things are inevitable con-carp—’scuse me—concomitants of trying to operate within the framework of an interstellar bureaucracy. We learn to adjust.”

  Crowell revised his earlier estimate. Fitz-Jones could well have been adjusting all day. “That sounds wonderful.” He watched the man’s careful steps and marveled at the human organism’s ability to cope with proven toxins.

  He came back with two highball glasses filled with the deep red wine. “No proper glassware, of course. Perhaps it’s just as well. ‘23 doesn’t travel well, you know—and it won’t keep: have to drink it up quickly.”

  It tasted quite good to Crowell, but Otto could tell that it was rather bruised. Barbarous treatment for the wine of the century. Fitz-Jones took a delicate sip that somehow managed to deprive the tumbler of two centimeters of wine. “Did you have anything specific to see me about?—not that I don’t enjoy company whenever it comes my way.”

  “Guess I just wanted to meet somebody else who wasn’t working for the Company. I need an outsider’s view of what’s been happening the past ten years. Quite a bit, I understand.”

  Fitz-Jones made an expansive gesture that came within a millimeter of spilling wine. Otto could appreciate the years of practice that had gone into the perfection of that ploy. “Not really, not really… up until a year ago, of course. Until then it was just the workaday grind of running this, you’ll excuse the expression, world. Absolutely nothing for me to do while everybody else kept the sweatshop working. Submit a blank report twice a year.

  “Then we had the disappearances, of course. Superintendent Malatesta was the official head, titular ruler, of this planet, so you can imagine the paperwork I went through. I was on the subspace radio for hours every day, until the… can you keep a secret,-Dr. Crowell?”

  “As well as the next man, I suppose.”

  “Well, it’s not really a secret anymore, since the doctor—Dr. Norman, that is—figured it out. It’s probably all around the Company by now. Anyhow, I talked to the Confederation officials on Terra, and they agreed to send a couple of investigators. Well, they came here—gave a splendid imitation of two scientific chaps—and while they were poking around, they disappeared, too.”

  “The two geologists?”

  “Precisely. And you’d think that, with two of their men gone, the Confederatión would send an army down here to see what’s going on. But no. I finally talked to some undersecretary, and he told me they just couldn’t afford any more men for our ‘petty intrigues’ on Bruuch.”

  “That’s odd.” The first item in the one report the agents had filed had been a warning about the untrustworthiness of the ambassador.

  “Indeed. So I don’t think the agents disappeared the way Malatesta did, you know, dead. They must have had a light cruiser hidden off somewhere, and when they found what they were after, they just left. Damned frustrating, you know; we still haven’t the faintest idea of what happened to Malatesta. I’m certain that they found out.”

  It’s quite likely they did find out, Otto thought. “Couldn’t the Confederación have sent more agents without telling you?”

  “No, impossible; violation of Confederación law. I’m the sole federal official on this planet. I must be notified. And besides, only two people have come in since the agents disappeared. One was Dr. Struckheimer’s new assistant; I’ve kept my eye on him. I think he must be just what he says he is; dull fellow, really. The other newcomer, of course, is you.”

  Crowell chuckled. “Well, I rather fancy being a spy. Will you ply me with wine frequently, then?”

  Fitz-Jones smiled, but his eyes were cold. “Of course—as I said, it won’t keep.

  “Confidentially, I am rather expecting another agent to show up, whether they tell me about it or not. It could be anybody. You know that personality overlay technique—”

  “The zombie business?” Crowell echoed Dr. Norman’s words.

  “Exactly. They can make a xerox copy of anybody. Anybody they can kidnap and hold for a month, anyhow.” He drained the last of his wine. “This puts a distinguished, shall we say a ‘well-exposed’ person, such as yourself, above suspicion, of course. Too many people would notice your absense.” And his eyes told Otto again: he’s lying, he suspects.

  The ambassador levered himself out of the oversized cushion. “Here, let me freshen your drink.” He came back with two full glasses.

  “Thanks. Oops, time to take my Pandroxin.” He took a pillbox from his pocket and washed two pills down, one Gravitol and one alcohol suppressant.

  “Ah, weak stuff, that. You must have a time here. Won’t they let you take Gravitol?”

  “No; I asked for it, naturally. But they say I’m too old and too fat.” How dangerous is this subtle drunkard? “You have any theory about Malatesta?”

  He shrugged and repeated the sloshing gesture. “I really don’t know. I’m sure of one thing, though. This nonsense about the creatures being responsible is just that, a pile of snuurgsh—’scuse me—hogwash.”

  “I agree. They simply aren’t capable of violence.”

  “Not only that. Malatesta was a great favorite of theirs. He even learned quite a bit of the language. They adoped him into one of the families, an honorary Bruuchian.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh yes, he went to a lot of their get-togethers. That priestly council made him an advisor of some sort.”

  “Yes,” Crowell mused,“ I heard today that he had been present at one of their stillness rituals.”

  “Where they embalm the poor creatures? Well, I didn’t know that. Wonder why he didn’t tell anybody about it? Struckheimer would’ve been his friend for life.”

  “Well, as you say, the Bruuchians couldn’t have done away with Malatesta; so it must have been either an accident or murder. I guess the agents investigated both possibilities.”

  “Presumably. They seemed to spend most of their time dredging dustpits. Supposedly taking samples, actually looking for a body, I guess.

  “I suppose the prime murder suspect would be Kindle, the new Supervisor. But he never wanted the job—it’s twice as much work for only a pittance more pay. Besides, he’s worried that whatever happened to Malatesta could happen to him too.”

  “You know him well, then?” Watch it, getting too inquisitive.

  “Oh, quite well. He was in the Civil Service when I was posted on Lamarr’s World. He had a considerable block of stock in the Company, and when the Assistant Supervisor position became open, he came out here and took the job. I was transferred here about a year later, and we just picked up where we had left off.”

  Time to change the subject. “Lamarr’s World. I’ve heard of it, of course, but I’ve never been there.”

  “It was a lovely world.” Fitz-Jones started the sloshing gesture but checked himself. “Especially compared to this desolation.”

  They talked of this and other harmless topics for about an hour. Crowell stifled a yawn. “I really must be going. Excuse me for being a poor guest, but I tire so easily in this gravity.”

  “Oh, excuse me for being an inconsiderate host. I can be quite a bore, I know.” Fitz-Jones helped Crowell up. “I’m afraid you may have some trouble ge
tting a taxi at this hour.”

  “No, no problem. I can walk the few blocks.” They exchanged amenities and Crowell lurched away convincingly.

  9.

  His room had been searched by an amateur; Fitz-Jones’ assistant, probably. He hadn’t caught the hairs pasted over the closet door and suitcase lid, or even the pencil propped against the front door. Crowell sighed. Otto was worthy of more.

  Anyhow, there was nothing incriminating in the billet itself. Crowell went outside to the outhouse, went in, and latched the door. Trying to ignore the smell, he took out a penstick and removed the cap. Doing so caused the pen to emit an invisible beam of ultraviolet light. Crowell shook the contact lens out of the cap and placed it in his left eye. With it, he could see quite well, though it would still be pitch black to light amplifiers or infrared eye clusters.

  The hair across the loosened board was still in place He lifted the board and removed the case that had been his suitcase’s false bottom. He took a few items from it, replaced it, and smoothed the hair down in the position he had memorized.

  At midnight the streetlights went off. Crowell donned the nightglasses he had bought at the Company store and walked the kilometer to the main warehouse without meeting anyone.

  Knowing that any guard would also be equipped with nightglasses, Crowell approached the building on a parallel street a block away and sat quietly behind the edge of a building for a half hour, watching the entrance.

  Satisfied that the warehouse was unguarded, he crossed to the entrance and studied the lock. It was a simple magnetically coded padlock, and he opened it in a couple of minutes with a desensitizer and a set of picks.

  When he closed the door behind him, the light level dropped below the nightglasses’ threshold and Crowell had to use his ultraviolet penstick to see. It was made for close work, but he could get around with it. Directed at his feet it made a bright spot surrounded by a vague circle about a meter in diameter. He couldn’t get any overall view of the warehouse, though, just a dim impression of crates stacked around.

  He wasn’t looking for anything specific, and really didn’t have any great expectations. It was just another part of the routine, like going through the mines. He wished it had been possible to get around there without a guide, when it was empty.