Robert J. Sawyer - The Hand You're Dealt

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The Hand You're Dealt

by Robert J. Sawyer

Current HUGO AWARD Finalist

For Best Short Story of the Year

Current ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD Finalist

For Best Short Story of the Year

First published in the anthology Free Space, edited by Brad Linaweaver and

Edward E. Kramer (Tor, 1997). This is the author's preferred text as

published in the anthology Crossing the Line: Canadian Mystery Fiction With

A Twist, edited by Robert J. Sawyer David Skene-Melvin (Pottersfield, 1998)

And ye shall know the truth, and the

truth shall make you free. -- John 8:32

"Got a new case for you," said my boss, Raymond Chen. "Homicide."

My heart started pounding. Mendelia habitat is supposed to be a

utopia. Murder is almost unheard of here.

Chen was fat -- never exercised, loved rich foods. He knew his

lifestyle would take decades off his life, but, hey, that was his choice.

"Somebody offed a soothsayer, over in Wheel Four," he said, wheezing slightly.

"Baranski's on the scene now."

My eyebrows went up. A dead soothsayer? This could be very

interesting indeed.

I took my pocket forensic scanner and exited The Cop Shop. That was

its real name -- no taxes in Mendelia, after all. You needed a cop, you hired

one. In this case, Chen had said, we were being paid by the Soothsayers' Guild.

That meant we could run up as big a bill as necessary -- the SG was stinking

rich. One of the few laws in Mendelia was that everyone had to use soothsayers.

Mendelia consisted of five modules, each looking like a wagon wheel

with spokes leading in to a central hub. The hubs were all joined together by a

long axle, and separate travel tubes connected the outer edges of the wheels.

The whole thing spun to simulate gravity out at the rims, and the travel tubes

saved you having to go down to the zero-g of the axle to move from one wheel to

the next.

The Cop Shop was in Wheel Two. All the wheel rims were hollow, with

buildings growing up toward the axle from the outer interior wall. Plenty of

open spaces in Mendelia -- it wouldn't be much of a utopia without those. But

our sky was a hologram, projected on the convex inner wall of the rim, above our

heads. The Cop Shop's entrance was right by Wheel Two's transit loop, a series

of maglev tracks along which robocabs ran. I hailed one, flashed my debit card

at an unblinking eye, and the cab headed out. The Carling family, who owned the

taxi concession, was one of the oldest and richest families in Mendelia.

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The ride took fifteen minutes. Suzanne Baranski was waiting outside

for me. She was a good cop, but too green to handle a homicide alone. Still,

she'd get a big cut of the fee for being the original responding officer --

after all, the cop who responds to a call never knows who, if anyone, is going

to pick up the tab. When there is money to be had, first-responders get a

disproportionate share.

I'd worked with Suze a couple of times before, and had even gone to

see her play cello with the symphony once. Perfect example of what Mendelia's

all about, that. Suze Baranski had blue-collar parents. They'd worked as welders

on the building of Wheel Five; not the kind who'd normally send a daughter for

music lessons. But just after she'd been born, their soothsayer had said that

Suze had musical talent. Not enough to make a living at it -- that's why she's a

cop by day -- but still sufficient that it would be a shame not to let her

develop it.

"Hi, Toby," Suze said to me. She had short red hair and big green

eyes, and, of course, was in plain clothes -- you wanted a uniformed cop, you

called our competitors, Spitpolish, Inc.

"Howdy, Suze," I said, walking toward her. She led me over to the

door, which had been locked off in the open position. A holographic sign next to

it proclaimed: Skye Hissock Soothsayer Let Me Reveal Your Future! Fully

Qualified for Infant and Adult Readings

We stepped into a well-appointed lobby. The art was unusual for such

an office -- it was all original pen-and-ink political cartoons. There was

Republic CEO Da Silva, her big nose exaggerated out of all proportion, and next

to it, Axel Durmont, Earth's current president, half buried in legislation

printouts and tape that doubtless would have been red had this been a color

rendering. The artist's signature caught my eye, the name Skye with curving

lines behind it that I realized were meant to represent clouds. Just like Suze,

our decedent had had varied talents.

"The body is in the inner private office," said Suze, leading the

way. That door, too, was already open. She stepped in first, and I followed.

Skye Hissock's body sat in a chair behind his desk. His head had

been blown clean off. A great carnation bloom of blood covered most of the wall

behind him, and chunks of brain were plastered to the wall and the credenza

behind the desk.

"Christ," I said. Some utopia.

Suze nodded. "Blaster, obviously," she said, sounding much more

experienced in such matters than she really was. "Probably a gigawatt charge."

I began looking around the room. It was opulent; old Skye had

obviously done well for himself. Suze was poking around, too. "Hey," she said,

after a moment. I turned to look at her. She was climbing up on the credenza.

The blast had knocked a small piece of sculpture off the wall -- it lay in two

pieces on the floor -- and she was examining where it had been affixed. "Thought

that's what it was," she said, nodding. "There's a hidden camera here."

My heart skipped a beat. "You don't suppose he got the whole thing

on disk, do you?" I said, moving over to where she was. I gave her a hand

getting down off the credenza, and we opened it up -- a slightly difficult task;

crusted blood had sealed its sliding doors. Inside was a dusty recorder unit. I

turned to Skye's desk, and pushed the release switch to pop up his monitor

plate. Suze pushed the recorder's playback button. As we'd suspected, the unit

was designed to feed into the desk monitor.

The picture showed the reverse angle from behind Skye's desk. The

door to the private office opened and in came a young man. He looked to be

eighteen, meaning he was just the right age for the mandatory adult soothsaying.

He had shoulder length dirty-blond hair, and was wearing a t-shirt imprinted

with the logo of a popular meed. I shook my head. There hadn't been a good

multimedia band since The Cassies, if you ask me.

"Hello, Dale," said what must have been Skye's voice. He spoke with

deep, slightly nasal tones. "Thank you for coming in."

Okay, we had the guy's picture, and his first name, and the name of

his favorite meed. Even if Dale's last name didn't turn up in Skye's appointment

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computer, we should have no trouble tracking him down.

"As you know," said Skye's recorded voice, "the law requires two

soothsayings in each person's life. The first is done just after you're born,

with one or both of your parents in attendance. At that time, the soothsayer

only tells them things they'll need to know to get you through childhood. But

when you turn eighteen, you, not your parents, become legally responsible for

all your actions, and so it's time you heard everything. Now, do you want the

good news or the bad news first?"

Here it comes, I thought. He told Dale something he didn't want to

hear, the guy flipped, pulled out a blaster, and blew him away.

Dale swallowed. "The -- the good, I guess."

"All right," said Skye. "First, you're a bright young man -- not a

genius, you understand, but brighter than average. Your IQ should run between

126 and 132. You are gifted musically -- did your parents tell you that? Good. I

hope they encouraged you."

"They did," said Dale, nodding. "I've had piano lessons since I was

four."

"Good, good. A crime to waste such raw talent. You also have a

particular aptitude for mathematics. That's often paired with musical ability,

of course, so no surprises there. Your visual memory is slightly better than

average, although your ability to do rote memorization is slightly worse. You

would make a good long-distance runner, but ..."

I motioned for Suze to hit the fast-forward button; it seemed like a

typical soothsaying, although I'd review it in depth later, if need be. Poor

Dale fidgeted up and down in quadruple speed for a time, then Suze released the

button.

"Now," said Skye's voice, "the bad news." I made an impressed face

at Suze; she'd stopped speeding along at precisely the right moment. "I'm afraid

there's a lot of it. Nothing devastating, but still lots of little things. You

will begin to lose your hair around your twenty-seventh birthday, and it will

begin to gray by the time you're thirty-two. By the age of forty, you will be

almost completely bald, and what's left at that point will be half brown and

half gray.

"On a less frivolous note, you'll also be prone to gaining weight,

starting at about age thirty-three -- and you'll put on half a kilo a year for

each of the following thirty years if you're not careful; by the time you're in

your mid-fifties, that will pose a significant health hazard. You're also highly

likely to develop adult-onset diabetes. Now, yes, that can be cured, but the

cure is expensive, and you'll have to pay for it -- so either keep your weight

down, which will help stave off its onset, or start saving now for the operation

..."

I shrugged. Nothing worth killing a man over. Suze fast-forwarded

the tape some more.

"-- and that's it," concluded Skye. "You know now everything

significant that's coded into your DNA. Use this information wisely, and you

should have a long, happy, healthy life."

Dale thanked Skye, took a printout of the information he'd just

heard, and left. The recording stopped. It had been too much to hope for.

Whoever killed Skye Hissock had come in after young Dale had departed. He was

still our obvious first suspect, but unless there was something awful in the

parts of the genetic reading we'd fast-forwarded over, there didn't seem to be

any motive for him to kill his soothsayer. And besides, this Dale had a high IQ,

Skye had said. Only an idiot would think there was any sense in shooting the

messenger.

After we'd finished watching the recording, I did an analysis of the

actual blaster burn. No fun, that: standing over the open top of Skye's torso.

Most of the blood vessels had been cauterized by the charge. Still, blasters

were only manufactured in two places I knew of -- Tokyo, on Earth, and New

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