STARSHIP TROUPERS IV: THE UNKNOWN GUEST
Chapter Eight: Spirit of the Law
by
Christopher Stasheff
Copyright 2012
I muttered a foul word and looked at the woman who was coming down the aisle.
She was a knockout. Without even putting on boxing gloves. Raven hair, slender and graceful as a gazelle, with a face that would have made an angel envious—and a grinning devil-may-care look that set my blood simmering.
“Uh… yes, thank you, Giselle.” Morgan stepped between us, hands out with palms up. “I’m sure the match will be quite exciting, but perhaps we shouldn’t attack a guest, don’t you think?”
“He asked for it.” Giselle vaulted onto the performing space.
“That doesn’t mean you have to give it to him. Would you return to your seat and help us resolve this situation?”
“That’s what I was doing.” Gisele held up her fists, and her stance was perfect. “Classical boxing isn’t my best style,” I warned her.
“Your invitation,” Gisele said. “Going to chicken out?”
I felt my smile spread into a grin. “Not for a second.” I tried to step around Morgan—but he shifted his stance and managed to stay between us, saying, “I highly encourage your bout—but this is neither the time nor the place.”
“Why not?” Giselle stepped around Morgan, who moved almost fast enough to stop her—but not quite. She swung at me, a quick jab, and I blocked and returned the punch.
The audience roared. Anger. Not cheering.
“You see the problem,” Morgan called out. “The home team always has the advantage—and Giselle is the home team. Mr. Lazarian can’t defend himself, let alone attack, without all of you wanting to have a few swings yourself.”
My grin widened. “Sounds good to me.”
“But not to me!” Merlo stepped up in front of me. “We’re here to put on a play, not a boxing match.”
“We can do both,” I said.
“We can NOT!” Barry declared. “Our purpose is to enrich the audience’s cultural life, not their bloodlust!”
“True, very true.” Morgan turned to the audience. “It would be quite rude to assault a guest—and all members of this troupe are our guests!”
“But if he’s wanting it...” Gisele said, and the audience roared in return.
I put my palms on my thighs and bowed. “Whom have I the pleasure of fighting?”
With a bow of her own, she said, “Giselle Wan.”
Of course.
“And you?” she asked.
“Ramou Lazarian, at your service.”
“Um, yes, thank you, Mr. Lazarian.” Morgan stepped between us again, hands up. “I’m sure the match will be quite exciting, but there is, perhaps, a better time and place.”
“Can’t think of one,” I said.
Barry cleared his throat. I hadn’t known his neck was so long. “Stimulating it may be, Ms. Wan, but we have come to entertain.”
“Oh, I think this will be very entertaining.”
The audience agreed with her—loudly.
Hands still up, Morgan turned his head and asked Barry, “Is there any chance one of them might be injured?”
Barry shrugged and looked the question at Merlo.
“Always a chance,” Merlo said, “but with Ramou, not much. He knows what he’s doing.”
“If he’s pulling his punches, the bout’s no good,” Giselle snapped without taking her gaze off me.
“Fine!” Morgan started to lower his arms.
I saw her kick coming, barely in time—not enough to catch her foot and yank, but enough to block.
“No!” Morgan shouted, finally beginning to sound angry.
“Hold on, Director,” Merlo said. “Sometimes it’s better to let them get it out of their systems—especially the young ones.”
“I’m not a young one!” At that point Giselle must have realized how silly she sounded, because she covered by taking a kick at my belly. She was fast, very fast, so I could only lean aside, and her foot caught me in the hip. Six inches to the left, and I would have been out of the fight.
Merlo leaned over to whisper in Morgan’s ear, but as the director took a breath to disagree, Giselle stepped around him and away from the audience, so that he was between her and them. She spun, foot lashing out so fast that it would definitely have guaranteed her a peaceful night—if it had landed. Since it didn’t, I kept the possibility of seduction open.
“Ramou,” Horace called, “she’s upstaging you!”
Trust the old trouper to remember the important things. I ducked under the next roundhouse kick and said, “Thought you wanted boxing.”
“Kickboxing,” Giselle amended, and proved it by jumping in for a quick combination of punches, the kind that use fists. I blocked, but one fist got through, right to the point of the jaw, and I staggered back a few steps. Giselle caroled victory—just as I recovered enough to leap in and out with a quick one-two-three combination.
Now, a man who has been brought up to respect and protect women is at something of a disadvantage when he fights a femme. The courtly but archaic notion that it’s wrong to hit a woman can grow deep roots—deep enough to slow my reflexes. At least, that was a good excuse when Giselle aimed a quick punch at my head and followed it with a haymaker. I stumbled back with my blood roaring in my ears—then realized it wasn’t blood roaring, but the audience. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Marnie and Winston stepping out from the wings—but there wasn’t time to wonder what they were doing, because Giselle pivoted in, grabbing my arm and throwing me over her hip with perfect form.
I rolled and sprang up, saying, “Excellent. Who was your sensei?”
“Mom.” She stepped in and tried for an elbow lock, but I twisted out of reach in time. She grabbed my arm and turned away for a shoulder throw, but I saw it coming just in time to pick her up in a cradle hold. I dropped her feet first, then her shoulders.
“You chauvinist!” she shouted, angry now. “Don’t worry about hurting me—just do your best to win! You won’t, of course, but you can try!”
“Oh, I’ll try,” I said, “but there’s no sense in hurting you more than I have to, to win.” As I finished the sentence, I feinted toward her chin but followed hard and fast with a right cross. Her head snapped back, and she stumbled after it. That’s when I found out why Marnie was there—she caught Giselle under the shoulders and pitched her back into the fight. “Any time you children are done playing,” she said, “Barry has notes for us.”
Giselle reddened. “This isn’t playing!”
“But it isn’t serious work, either. Finish up and take your bows.”
I made the mistake of turning to her—and Giselle’s foot hit me in the pit of the stomach. I doubled over, gagging and stumbling away, but hands caught me under the arms—Larry was good for something after all—and Giselle said, “That’s his bow.”
I saw red, but in a free-style fight, it was completely fair. Of course, she hadn’t called for free-style, but that’s what it had turned into. I took longer than I needed to in the struggle to get my breath back, so that I could banish the anger with deep breaths—fair or not, a kick in the belly makes you mad. Larry pitched me forward and I stepped in, still doubled over and slamming quick punches at her midriff. She did what she should—covered her abdomen with her arms and skipped back, making an easy target for a sweep-kick. She fell with perfect form and bounced to her feet again, guard up and stance solid. She was a real fighter—I saw the gleam start in her eye, and this time, the reddening of her cheeks wasn’t due to anger.
Come to think of It, my face felt hot, too.
Then she grabbed my shirt front and fell back, one heel in my stomach as she tossed me somersaulting over her head.
I landed on my feet and said, “Enough.”
“Chickening out?” But the gleam in her eye told me she knew I wasn’t.
“If you want to think of it that way, then, yes, I am—but I think you know better. There’s a safety limit, and we’re pushing it. That last throw is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“But we both do.”
“True,” I said, “but we’re having fun pushing closer and closer. I’m a guest, and it’s not polite to break your host’s neck.”
“Aw, you’re no fun.”
I let my voice drop down. “But you are—or could be. Let’s call it a draw. There are better things to do with the night.”
“Can’t think of any.” But the look in her eyes said she had several possibilities in mind.
Marnie saw her chance and stepped in. “You’ve played nicely, children. Now make peace and take your bows.”
Bows? I’d completely forgotten we were onstage.
“Moscow Art Theater style,” Horace prompted.
I interpreted for Giselle. “Hold hands and raise ‘em high.” I held mine out. She hesitated for a second, then grasped, and we swung them up.
“Now down,” I said, “and bow.”
I did. She did—and the half of the audience still in the theater went wild.
Merlo grabbed me and hustled us offstage. “No encores for that act!”
Her gaze could have stripped paint. “Oh, we might arrange something…”
“How about a drink?”
“In your cabin?”
“If you like.”
“I could deal with that,” Giselle said.
“This way to the ship.”
“My place is closer.”
“If you insist.”
“I could tie you up and carry you,” she offered.
“Promises, promises,” I said.
As we went into the wings, we passed Suzanne, and her stare could have given me a sunburn. I was a little surprised, but as we came offstage, I grinned. A little jealousy wouldn’t hurt her—and it sure felt good to me.
“Friend of yours?” Giselle asked.
“She was,” I said. “Hope she still is.” I realized I hadn’t let go of Giselle’s hand.
Her face darkened. “I’ve got the same problem.”
“Boyfriend?”
She nodded. “Wouldn’t be fair to either of them.”
Well, it would have been very fair to Suzanne—she had it coming, after freezing me out for weeks and flirting with anything handsome and male at the party—but I had to admit I was no great prize, unless a girl really liked martial arts. Also electronics.
She dropped my hand. “Damn. I’m really in the mood right now.”
“So go find your boyfriend.”
“He’ll know why I’m hot.”
“Speaking as a professional male,” I said, “I don’t think he’ll mind.”
That won a smile. “See me if you’re ever back this way.”
“It’s a date,” I said, “if you’re single.”
She rose up on tiptoe to give me a quick but heated kiss, then turned away, walking fast. I watched her go, raising my hand to my lips; I could still feel hers, and they burned.
“Have fun?” asked an acid voice behind me.
“Yeah.” I turned to discover Marnie. “A bout is always fun.”
“Especially when your opponent is a beautiful young woman.”
“That doesn’t hurt,” I admitted.
She tried to glare me down, but it didn’t last; she looked away and admitted, “I’ve had that happen once or twice myself.”
“Oh?” I let the anxiety show.
Her gaze locked with mine. “Respect the young woman. Don’t do it if you don’t mean it.”
Then she was gone, gliding away across the stage. I watched her go. I’d have to dig up the 3DTs from her younger days—say, about twenty. Somehow I had a notion it wasn’t just her acting that had made her recordings blockbusters.
Onstage, Morgan said, “Well! It has been quite an exciting performance, even though part of it was rather unplanned.”
“Also totally unrehearsed,” Horace muttered near me.
“However, both the play and the afterpiece have concluded,” Morgan said, “so with no more ado, we should declare the evening ended.”
“No way!” somebody shouted. Another someone called, “Stop stalling and answer the question! Who killed Harrison?”
“I would rather wait until we have proof.”
“I’ll just bet you would,” a woman near the stage snapped, “but I wouldn’t.”
A chorus of agreement echoed her.
“I’d hate to accuse someone unjustly…”
“So don’t!” the woman yelled. “Let the stagehand do it!”
They all turned to me. Suddenly I was willing to do without a curtain call.
“You did claim that you knew, Mr. Lazarian,” Morgan said. “If you have proof, you will save me from a devilishly uncomfortable situation—and anyone else who could be a suspect, too.”
“Which includes everyone on the entire planet,” I said, “as you folks have so kindly pointed out—but since the dead body was found at Mr. Morgan’s party, it was probably someone there who killed Harrison.”
“Clear thinking.” Morgan nodded. “That cuts our suspect list down to a mere hundred.”
“Sar-chasms are the hardest to cross,” I said.
Morgan winced. “I thought the skull wasn’t speaking on its own.”
“If it had help,” I said, “it wasn’t from me.”
“Nor was I speaking sarcastically,” Morgan assured me. “As your audience has so politely pointed out, you have eliminated seventy percent of our suspects—approximately two hundred ten thousand out of our three hundred thousand. If you can do the same with the remaining number, we may yet find our killer.”
“Well, there are a couple of other avenues,” I said. “For example, the killer could be right here in this theater, trying to figure out whether or not he has to run.”
A ball of light sizzled from the back of the house straight toward me.
“Right there!” I shouted as I hit the floor and swung my legs to knock Morgan down with me. The blaster bolt screamed right over our heads and exploded against the back wall. “Grab her!” I shouted.
With shouts echoing mine, a dozen or so software developers descended on the woman holding the pint-sized hideout blaster.
It was Daphne de Licieux.
She yelled, “Stand back or you’re dead!”
I had to admit she had a musical voice, even when delivering a threat.
“This blaster may be small, but it holds a very big charge,” she said. “Anyone volunteering as a test subject?”
The vigilantes hesitated.
“But Daphne—why?” Morgan asked.
“Discrimination,” Daphne answered. “All I could be, here or anywhere, was an ornament. I know at least as much about software as anybody on this planet, but did I ever have a chance to show it? No! If a woman’s beautiful, everyone assumes she has to have a low I.Q. —and if she’s blond, they subtract another twenty points.”
“You never applied for a position,” Morgan said.
“I did—and the return mail told me to come, that there were plenty of opportunities for everyone. So I scraped together starship fare, came here—and found out that everyone assumed I was willing to be a code monkey by day and so that I could get ahead by flirting at night.”
“I never thought—”
“That’s right," de Licieux said. “You didn’t.”
“But—but why Harrison?” his fiancé asked with tears in her eyes.
“He was going to form a union,” de Licieux said. “I thought collective bargaining could make non-discrimination a reality, not just a buzz-word. I caught him at the party to explain my case, but all he wanted to do was make advances. When I turned out to be less than enthusiastic, he showed me this little blaster to impress me. I’ve never liked the things. I know how to use them, but I hate anything that deals out death.”
“Like Harrison?” I asked.
De Licieux nodded. “He said if he couldn’t get power through a union, he could do it by assassinating the right people. I got scared and told him that would be the worst thing he could do. Then I turned away and headed toward Mr. Morgan. Harrison must have panicked, because he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, pointing the blaster right at my eyes—but I knew something about martial arts, so I tried to take it away from him.” She gasped, eyes tearing. “It went off in the struggle, and I ran.”
“Why?” I called from the stage. “It was self-defense.”
“So it was.” Her lip curled in a sneer. “But how could I prove it?”
“Good question, Mr. Lazarian,” Morgan said. “How did you plan to prove it?”
“The flashing lights onstage,” I said. “I knew they weren’t planned, and they came whenever the dead king appeared—but after the third time, when Hamlet poisoned Claudius, I saw the pattern.”
“What pattern?”
“Morse code,” I said. “Harrison couldn’t talk to make his accusations—plenty of circuits, but no transducer to turn his energy into sound—except the ceramic skull, and Merlo put it away where we couldn’t hear it.”
“But Harrison’s ghost could interfere with the current flow to the lights.” Morgan nodded.
So did I. “Our lighting board is a computer.”
“As is every other tool we use,” Merlo added, “and its current is very low-level.”
“Easy to play with,” I said, “but first he practiced with some other gadgets. He makes very good coffee.”
The lights started flashing again, but instead of looking scared, the audience decrypted. Three voices called out, “Thank you. I’ve always prided myself on my taste in coffee.”
His fiancée gasped, then blinked away tears.
“Very good indeed,” I said, “but not when you put brandy in the drink of a recovering alcoholic.”
“There are no alcoholics in this company!” Ogden pronounced.
“Speak for yourself, old fellow,” McLeod answered from the wings.
More voices joined the Morse Code translators. “And I knew it.”
Somehow, even through other people’s voices, the ghost sounded smug. “In fact, I know a lot about everyone on this planet.”
A good quarter of the audience turned pale, thinking about facts stored in the computers.
“From now on, you’ll do exactly as I say,” Harrison said through Morse Code, gloating, “or all your gadgets will start doing some very strange things.”
“No, they won’t,” I said.
“Oh?” the crowd translated. “And who’s going to stop me?”
“The first software developer who can come up with an exorcism program,” I said, then called out, “Code monkeys! This is your big chance!”
“A hundred thousand credits to the first one to develop the de-ghosting program,” Morgan called, “and a job as senior developer!”
Feedback wailed through the sound-and-music speakers, and I could have sworn it wailed in despair, a wail that dwindled into the distance. Everyone was silent, glancing at everyone else—silent except for Harrison’s fiancée, who fought a rearguard action to stifle her sobs.
“Not a transducer,” Merlo said, “but feedback can work for non-verbals.”
“Perhaps he had the talent to be more than a code monkey,” Morgan mused.
“Not likely,” I said. “If he had, he wouldn’t have had to be dead to play with your systems.”
It wasn’t much of a trial – come to that, nobody there knew how a trial was supposed to go. Moreover, there was no doubt that Daphne De Liciuex was innocent, that she had definitely acted in self-defense. Even Harrison’s fiancé agreed, though she was very subdued, her spirits as downcast as her gaze.
“We don’t seem to have witnesses,” Morgan said with a frown.
“No word from Harrison?” I glanced at Exhibit A—the skull.
“I suspect that feedback squeal we heard at the end of our bit of detective work was probably Harrison leaving this worldly plane,” Morgan said. “He could not hope to accomplish anything more, except perhaps some minor pranks.”
A sob escaped his fiancé, louder than the others but quickly strangled.
“Still, that leaves us without conclusive evidence,”
Morgan said with a scowl.
“Well, one last attempt.” He looked up at the lights and called, “Last
chance, Harrison. Speak now in your own defense—now, or never.”
Everybody looked up, holding their cumulative
breath. Two minutes later, they let it out in a mass sigh.
Morgan turned to the twelve citizens who had been volunteered.
“Guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty!” the jury said with one voice.
And that was it. Daphne de Licieux was declared innocent—and offered a job as a software developer. Only one mystery remained.
“Where do you think Harrison went?” Ogden asked Morgan.
The Director shook his head. “None of us can know for certain what lies beyond the curtain of death.”
“Thou thy worldly task hast done,” Horace quoted. “Home hast gone, and ta’en thy wages.”
“What’s that from?” I asked.
“Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,” Horace said.
I nodded as though I knew what he meant. “Wonder what Harrison’s wages were.”
“And where he has gone,” Horace said, nodding.
With that, I wasn’t terribly concerned. I have an odd notion that the universe, with its obsession for balance, will make sure we each get what we’ve earned. Harrison had a whole planet of silicon to play in.
So back we went to the ship and battened everything down for take-off. An hour later, in space, we met in the lounge for a drink before dinner and a post-mortem analysis of our performance. Surprisingly quickly, we started yawning and went to bed. After all, it had been a very big and exhausting day.
I climbed into my bunk, closed my eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief as I let my mind drift toward sleep.
Then I heard the burbling of the drink dispenser, the clink of the cup sliding into position, and the sound of pouring.
I gritted my teeth and told myself that I was already asleep and dreaming, but it didn’t work—I had a nasty suspicion that I knew where Harrison’s ghost had gone.
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