True Faces

  Pat Cadigan

  “I told you I wasn’t in the mood for this,” Stilton whispered.

  I gave him an elbow in the ribs without looking away from the body of the woman lying on the floor of the large room. I’m never much in the mood for a strangulation murder myself, but it didn’t pay to advertise. Not in this company. History, I thought; I’m looking at history, in the making right there in front of me. People had been strangled before, and they’d get strangled again, but this was the first time one had ever been strangled in an alien embassy. The first alien embassy, no less. Two firsts. And we were the first law enforcement officers on the scene, so that was three firsts. The day was definitely running hot.

  On my other side, the tall man in the retro-tuxedo swallowed loudly for the millionth time. He’d said his name was Farber and given his occupation as secretary to the dead woman. I wasn’t sure which was more striking, his old-fashioned get-up or his noisy peristaltic action. I’d never met anyone who could swallow loudly before—did that make it five firsts? I shoved the thought aside. The room was so quiet, I probably could have heard him digesting his food if I listened closely enough. The Lazarians either observed quiet as a religion, or they were as much in shock as the human employees, who were all huddled together on the far side of the room, too spooked even to whisper to each other.

  There was only one Lazarian on this side of the room. The rest were gathered in a semi-circle around the corpse. There were about twenty of them and the grouping had this very odd formality to it, as if they’d all gathered there to seek an audience with the woman.

  I turned to Farber, who reacted by swallowing again and then blotting his forehead with his sleeve. “One more time?” I gave Stilton another jab in the ribs.

  “Ready,” Stilton said sourly, moving so that I could see he had the interviewer aimed.

  “Migod, I always thought it was just in the hollies that the police made you tell a story over and over,” Farber said, glancing at the ‘viewer’s flat lens in a furtive way. I didn’t make anything of that—the only people who never got nervous about having a ‘viewer trained on them were dead or inhuman. Of course, it was hard to tell with the Lazarians—they looked a lot like scarecrows and I’d never seen a nervous scarecrow, or even an extraterrestrial facsimile.

  “You can give us the viewer’s digest condensed version,” I told him. “The third recording doesn’t need as much.” Farber swallowed. “Fine. I came in here and found Ms. Entwater just as you see her now, with the Lazarians gathered around her. Just as you see them now. The other human employees were elsewhere in the building but the one Lazarian rounded them all up, brought them in here, and hasn’t allowed anyone to leave since. Then I called you. From here. Since I’m not allowed to leave, either.”

  I glanced at Stilton, who nodded. “And you say that Ms. Entwater’s relationship with the Lazarians was…what?” Swallow. His adam’s apple bounded up and down above his collar. “Cordial. Friendly. Very good. She liked them. She liked her work. If she had any enemies among the Lazarians, she never told me about it and she told me close to everything.”

  “Care to speculate on what she didn’t tell you?” I asked.

  He thought about that for a moment, swallowing. “She didn’t tell me there was a Pilot in the building.”

  “Why not?”

  “Either she didn’t have a chance or she didn’t think to.” Swallow. “It’s hardly necessary for the secretary to be updated hourly as to who drops by for a social visit and who doesn’t.”

  “You’re sure it was a social visit?”

  Swallow. “Pilots come by all the time to visit the Lazarians. The Lazarians trained them in Interstellar Resonance Travel, so they feel a certain kinship to them, much more than to other humans, I think.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “Because they seldom have any interactions with any of the humans here. Except for Ms. Entwater, who sees them in and sees them out again.” Swallow. “Saw them in. And out again.”

  “She always did, personally? Isn’t that more of a job for a receptionist or a secretary?”

  “Dallette or I would see to other visits. The Pilots Ms. Entwater always saw to personally.”

  “Then she wouldn’t have had to tell you in so many words that a Pilot was in the building,” I said. “You’d know by whatever she was doing.”

  Swallow. “If I knew what she was doing. I was busy with press releases for most of the morning, so I was in the translation room.”

  “The Lazarian’s press releases?”

  Swallow, followed by a nod. “They like to alert the media themselves. About everything. Today it was various things about hollies they’d seen and what they thought about them and the dissolution of three-bond—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You didn’t mention that before.” The old ways never failed. Get someone to tell a story over and over and something new was bound to show up.

  Swallow. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t hiding it—” a glance at the ‘viewer “—I’d just forgotten. It’s like a—a marriage breaking up, or maybe a long engagement. The Lazarians are—well, there are similarities, but there are always strange little differences embedded in them. In any case, it didn’t concern Ms. Entwater.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Absolutely.” Swallow. “Ms. Entwater never, ah, intruded into their private lives.”

  I couldn’t help laughing a little. “Come on. Celie Entwater’s job was to gain improved understanding of the Lazarians. How could she do that unless she was acquainted with their private lives?”

  “Ms. Entwater considered herself a diplomat engaged in deep study of another culture. She was rigorous in observing customs and taboos, all that sort of thing. She knew that if we offended them, they might close down and go back to Lazarus—”

  “Lah-ah…ZA-AHR…eesh,” came a deep, nasal-sounding voice behind me, enunciating each syllable as if it were a separate word, with a bit of a gargle on the ZA-AHR.

  Farber swallowed and bowed from the waist. I turned around. The one free-ranging Lazarian in the room was standing as close as possible to Stilton, who rolled his eyes. The Lazarian custom of space-density had gotten old for him very quickly. I found it pretty off-putting myself—it was like dealing with a race of people who had been raised in crowded elevators, unable to be comfortable unless they were all on top of each other.

  Which made the half-circle formation around Entwater’s corpse doubly odd, I thought suddenly. They weren’t as close to each other or to her as they could get. Because she was dead? Or some other Lazarian reason I had yet to find out?

  “I need to question all the humans here,” I said to the Lazarian. “If one of them killed Ms. Entwater, that person must be punished according to our law.”

  “Trrrried and punished if found guilty,” the Lazarian corrected. “Question.”

  Farber moved to my side, swallowing. “Thinta-ah requests permission to inquire something of you,” he said to me, sounding ceremonial. I repressed the urge to sigh heavily; I’m no diplomat, and the six years I’d spent on the gang squad had made me tired of ritual. Maybe it should have prepared me for the more byzantine protocols of extraterrestrials, but I’ve got a bad attitude. Twenty years ago, when the Lazarians had first arrived, maybe I’d have been much more excited, but then, I’ve always had low blood pressure anyway.

  “Ask your question,” I said.

  “Say ‘please,’” Farber whispered.

  I smiled as broadly as I could. “Please.”

  The Lazarian put its six-digit hands on top of its sack-like head. “If Entwa-ahter is dead by one of us, wha-aht then?”

  I glanced at Entwater again. From this distance, it was hard to see the details of the marks on her throat, but they could have been made by one of those Lazarian hands. One would have been enough—like the rest of their limbs, those digits were long and multi-jointed, and could have gone all the way around a human neck easily. “This is your embassy,” I said, “which means to us, it is a piece of your nation. We would trust you to serve your own justice in this matter.”

  Stilton was looking at me like I was crazy. I didn’t blame him. All of a sudden, I was talking like a hollie version of a diplomat. I couldn’t help it; something about the Lazarians was making me go into awkward-formal mode.

  The Lazarian put a hand on top of the ‘viewer, much to Stilton’s shock. “Truth ma-ah-chine.”

  I gave Farber a sidelong glance. “What now?”

  Farber swallowed twice. “It would seem that Thinta-ah wants you to use the ‘viewer on them.” He gestured at the Lazarians standing around Entwater.

  Stilton coughed. “I don’t think it’ll work. We’re—ah—” he turned to the Lazarian “—we’re too different.” I could tell he was trying to imagine how those sackheads would register. The ‘viewer worked on interpreting a lot of little things—facial expression, blood flow, temperature, eye and muscle movements, pulse, respiration, vocal quality and inflection, choice of words, context, and some other things I didn’t have to bother remembering. It wasn’t infallible, we’d all been told, but in my experience, I have yet to see anyone beat it, not even the most hardened pathological liars. We were only allowed to use it to determine probable cause for search and/or arrest, not to determine official guilt or innocence, so it wasn’t any more admissible in court than the old lie detector results had been, but it was useful enough.

  “Can converrrt,” said the Lazarian. “Ha-ahve progra-ahms to conve rrrt for our species.”

  Stilton held the ‘viewer protectively close to his chest, giving me a desperate look.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to call—”

  Farber swallowed. “Weren’t you told to take every measure necessary to wrap this up as quickly as possible?” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Do you want to think about the repercussions of having an unsolved murder in the Lazarian embassy? They’ll have to call out the National Guard to protect this place, and all of us will still be trapped inside of it. And that includes you and your partner. The door is booby- trapped. Something sonic. Break the plane from this side and you’ll drop like a rock. When you wake up, you’ll have the worst headache of your life.” He jerked his head at the group of humans. “Some of them tried it. Ask them if they’ll try it again. Get it through your head, no one is going to leave here until this is settled, and if it takes months, that’s not Thinta-ah’s problem.”

  “All right,” I said. All right for now. Call in a siege team? I’d never get that okayed. I’d have to see about locating the control for the doorway knock-out and figure out how to disable it later. That would probably cause an international incident—interstellar incident?—but not as major an incident as a siege team storming the place.

  I looked at the Lazarian, but that face was unreadable. As usual. It was actually the outer surface of a kind of flexible exoskeleton that covered the whole head, featureless except for irregular, opaque black patches where the eyes and mouth would be. I’d read somewhere that the exoskeleton thickened and then thinned out again on some cycle that was individual to each Lazarian, but no one knew what caused it or what it meant to the Lazarians, except that they referred to what lay beneath it as the ‘true face,’ which was never to be shown to another living being, not even if its owner were dead. Which I thought begged the question: what was the point of having a so-called ‘true face’ if nobody could ever see it?

  Something teased at the edge of my mind. I looked over at the Lazarians still motionless around the corpse. Was the penalty for seeing a ‘true face’ immediate death?

  Everyone was staring at me expectantly. “I should still probably call in for authorization,” I said weakly.

  “Ca-ahll,” said the Lazarian, and it wasn’t granting me permission, but giving me an order.

  I took the cellular off my belt and punched the speed-dial for the direct line to the captain. The subsequent conversation was almost as brief.

  “She says it’s a go,” I said, clipping the phone back onto my belt. Stilton looked outraged for half a second and then wiped all expression from his face. For some reason, ‘viewer operators get extremely possessive about their baby. Normally, Stilton wouldn’t even let me hold his. “Let’s get the program and convert the ‘viewer for Lazarians.”

  Farber looked distressed as he swallowed. “Well, I’ve just thought of a problem.”

  I winced. “Only one. What a relief.”

  “It’s big one. The program is in Ms. Entwater’s office upstairs. Everyone who was in the embassy at the time of Ms. Entwater’s death is now here in this room, Lazarians and humans alike. We may not leave this room, not any of us.”

  “Why not?” I said, looking at Thinta-ah.

  “Bee-cauzzzzeh,” the Lazarian replied, still using the command voice.

  “Oh,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound sarcastic and looked at Farber. “Any ideas?”

  He took a long time swallowing. “We could call a courier to fetch the program for us. Of course, the courier will have to stay here with us afterwards.”

  “We’ll charge the overtime to the embassy,” I said, reaching for my cellular again.

  The courier business took a little longer, since the courier made the mistake of entering the room we were all in first, forcing me to have to call out for another. Forewarned, the second courier put the program chips in an envelope and tossed it to me through the open doorway.

  “Go to it,” I said, handing the envelope to Stilton. His face had a slightly greenish cast to it.

  “Before I fool with the ‘viewer and quite possibly break it, maybe we should talk to the humans,” he said.

  “Our species firrrrrrst,” said Thinta-ah, and it was another command. I wanted to object. Across the room, the half dozen human employees were also still huddled together, albeit less closely. Except for the Pilot, who had gotten tired of sitting and was now leaning against the wall behind the others, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. She looked happy, but all Pilots look happy all the time. It’s something that happens to them as a result of their training. Maybe after that first trip, they never really ‘came back,’ so to speak.

  “Do as you’re told,” Farber said to Stilton, managing to sound apologetic. “I’ve got a wife, a husband, and three children I’d like to see again before I’m much older, and I imagine you both have families as well.”

  I cleared my throat. In Stilton’s case, that had been the wrong appeal to make; his significant others had voted him out three weeks before and he was still stinging from it. But instead of giving Farber the evil eye, he went to work on the ‘viewer, even allowing me to steady it for him while he changed chips.

  It took Stilton about half an hour to get everything synchronized and in phase and whatever else—I’m no more of a techie than I am a diplomat, though I suspected the last fifteen minutes he spent on running tests and diagnostics was nothing but pure stalling.

  “I guess it’s ready,” he said at last. “But even with all these adjustments and conversions for Lazarian biology, I don’t know how well it’s going to work with an exoskeleton.”

  “No ex-oh,” said Thinta-ah, coming over to stand too close again. “True faaaa-aice.”

  The Lazarians gathered around Entwater made no perceptible physical movements, but something in the air changed. Everybody felt it, even the humans on the other side of the room. It was similar to the sudden presence of ozone before a lightning strike (don’t ask me how I know about that unless you’re ready for a story longer than this one), and for a moment, I thought I could actually feel my hair stand on end.

  “I know your custom of not showing the true face,” I said to Thinta-ah. “How—”

  Thinta-ah made Stilton cringe by touching the ‘viewer again. “Not a-ahlive.”

  “You’ll allow a recording that we can look at?” Stilton said, amazed.

  “A-ahllow to look a-aht recording one time,” the Lazarian said, making a strange movement something like a full body shrug. The clothing, as loose, mismatched, and wrinkled as anything that ever came out of a Good Will free bin, seemed to readjust itself on the Lazarian’s loose-jointed body, somehow acquiring even more wrinkles. Wrinkles especially seemed to be their fashion statement. The Lazarians around the corpse still didn’t move, but I knew they were unhappy. Not just unhappy, but unhappier than they had ever been in their lives. I tried to imagine an equivalent for myself—being forced to strip naked in public seemed obvious, but I knew this was a lot more than a nudity taboo.

  My gaze fell on the ‘viewer. Maybe more like being exposed with one of these things? “One time,” I said to Stilton. “We’d better make it a good look, then.”

  Thinta-ah did some fast organizing. The humans were to sit directly behind to the group in the center of the room so they couldn’t possibly see their true faces while they were speaking to the ‘viewer. Very simple solution—just the sort of thing that signals some major complication is imminent.

  Stilton and I found a chair for the ‘viewer. He got it aimed at the first Lazarian, fiddled with the focus for a few seconds, and then turned it on. “Any time,” he told the Lazarian and turned away, crowding close to me as Thinta-ah crowded close to him.

  In the long pause that followed, I could hear the Lazarian removing the exoskeleton. It was a ghastly sound, like cloth ripping and I wondered if it hurt. Anything that made a noise like that seemed like it had to hurt.

  “You a-ahsk,” said Thinta-ah.

  I cleared my throat. “What is your name?”

  “Simeer-ah,” said the Lazarian. I felt Thinta-ah stiffen. The last syllable indicated this was some relative of Thinta- ah’s, but not which kind.

  “How are you connected to—”

  “A-ahsk only about Entwa-ahter!” Thinta-ah practically shouted.

 

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