Paul Chafe - Windows of the Soul

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Windows Of The Soul

Table of Contents

Windows Of The Soul

Paul Chafe

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31838-1

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, January 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Niven, Larry.

Man-Kzin wars IX / created by Larry Niven.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-671-31838-1

1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Space warefare—Fiction. 3. Animals—

Fiction. I. Title: Man-Kzin wars 9. II. Man-Kzin wars Nine.

PS3564.I9 M36 2002

813'.54—dc21 2001043635

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Windows Of The Soul

Paul Chafe

For Christian, with love

Transport tunnel nineteen is one of thirty-two that run the fifty-kilometer length of Tiamat's axis to link the

docking hubs. Normally it's full of twenty-meter cargo containers, gliding in virtual weightlessness. Last

night a roller jammed in section A near the down-axis hub. The Port Authority shut the tunnel down and

sent in a tech. The problem was a body. That's when I got involved. Pathology said it had been there nine

days and the Scene Team had all the evidence. There was no reason to go down there myself, but I did.

You can't get a handle on a crime if you don't get on the scene. I wished I hadn't.

The body was M18JSK98—Miranda Holtzman, nineteen standard years old, engineering student at the

Centaurus Center for Advanced Studies. Her dossier holo showed sparkling blue eyes and brown-gold

hair. She was a Wunderlander, just arrived in the Swarm on a work-study deal with a spun metal

fabricator called Trist Materials. Good looking, smart and last seen alive at a bounce-bar called the

Inferno. She'd arrived with friends and left with a stranger. The witnesses agreed on dark hair and a

Wunderlander build but little else. A movement trace came up blank. After she left the Inferno, she hadn't

thumbed a single scanner—and on Tiamat that takes some effort. That was nine days ago. Pathology had

it right on the money.

We identified her through her on-file gene scans so her next of kin didn't have to. That was a good thing.

She'd been badly mauled in jamming the track rollers, but that wasn't the worst of it. She was slashed

open from throat to groin and eviscerated, her skin was flayed off and her limbs were missing. Her empty

eye sockets stared at nothing. The coroner listed cause of death as "unknown." There wasn't enough left

to tell.

Now you know why I wished I hadn't looked.

* * *

I tubed over to Trist Materials. They were closing down early, hampered by a swarm of Goldskin

investigators. I grabbed the top cop. "Captain Allson, ARM."

"How can I help you?" He looked harried.

"I'm looking for the primary witnesses."

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He pointed out the couple to me. They were sitting on a couch in the reception area holding each other.

Tanya's face was drawn and pale, she'd been crying recently. Jayce looked sombre.

"You got somewhere I can hold an interview?"

"We have their statements."

"That's not what I asked." He looked sour. ARM outranks the Goldskins, but they don't like it. He

beckoned over a uniform to set me up with some cubic. I called up their dossiers on my beltcomp. It

helps to know who you're talking to.

PCL9C3N4—Koffman, Tanya C., 24. Born Tiamat Station. Graduate Serpent Swarm Technical

Institute. Physical engineer for Trist. Unmarried. Holder of a non-current belt navigation certificate rated

for polarizers and fusion. No outstanding warrants, no criminal record.

BG309003—Vorden, Jayce I. F., 23. Born Tiamat Station. Also an SSTI graduate and Trist's

Compsys specialist. Unmarried. No warrants but he had a record, two hits, public mischief. I tabbed the

entry for the details. University pranks. He'd hacked in to the scoreboard during a championship skyball

game and displayed insults for the rival team. Acquitted with a warning. Another time he'd gained access

to the transit system and given himself priority routing and children's fare. Charged double back payments

on his fares and five hundred hours community service. That was three years ago—he'd been clean ever

since.

On a hunch, I punched up my desk from the beltcomp and did quick movement trace. Multiple hits—the

pattern was clear. Jayce and Tanya traveled as a couple, starting three months ago. I scanned forward

and found trouble in paradise—ten days with no visits. I called up the comm logs for the period. A few

calls, all very short, then a long one. Right after that, the visits started again. They'd fought and made up.

The fight started a week after Miranda arrived and she'd gone missing the day they got together again. I

called up her comm logs and found long calls to both of them, starting her first day on station.

The facts suggested a scenario. Jayce and Tanya have a good thing going, then pretty Miranda shows up

and gets in the middle. A week later they sort out the triangle and go out for a no-hard-feelings party,

which goes bad. Someone kills Miranda and the other gets involved. They make up the dark

Wunderlander as cover. It wasn't a perfect theory, but it was a start.

I stuck my head out the door and called Jayce over. He was tall and slender with dark hair and eyes and

a Flatlander's blended facial features. I tapped record on my beltcomp and began.

"What can you tell me about the night Miranda disappeared?"

He shrugged. "There just isn't that much to tell. We went to the Inferno after work like we always did.

She was dancing with this Wunderlander. After a while they left together."

"By 'we' you mean Miranda and you?"

"Miranda, Tay and I." He was perfectly comfortable with his answer.

"You and Miss Koffman have been seeing each other for some time, is that correct?"

"Yes."

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"I understand you and she had a serious argument a couple of weeks ago." I stated it as a fact.

He was taken aback. "What do you mean?

I kept pushing. "I mean that Miranda Holtzman precipitated a rift in your relationship. That gives you a

motive for murder."

The shock he displayed was genuine. I just didn't know if it was due to hidden guilt or injured innocence.

"What was your relationship with her?"

"She was our friend, that's all."

"You didn't have an affair with Miranda which brought on a fight with Tay?"

"No."

"Why did you go to the Inferno that night?"

"We just did. It wasn't unusual, we went fairly often."

"The three of you."

"Yes."

"Did anyone else go with you?"

"There's a bunch of us who sometimes go out, friends of ours, but they didn't come that night."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, just busy I guess." He looked stricken as he said it. He felt he was digging himself in

deeper with every word.

"So there's no one who can corroborate your story that she left before you."

"Tanya can."

I waved a hand dismissively. "Anyone else?"

"Maybe the bartender."

"But you don't know for sure."

He put his head in his hands. "No."

I changed tack. "What about this man she left with?"

He seized the question like a drowning man grabbing a straw. If I was asking it, I must believe his story.

"He was a Wunderlander, thick dark hair. He had a glowflow bodysuit, set to rainbow smears."

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"Had you seen him before?"

"Not that I recall."

"Do you think he knew Miranda or that she knew him?"

He was anguished. "I don't know, I wish I did. We just didn't know what was happening." Then, almost

to himself, he repeated, "We just didn't know."

He was devastated by the sudden loss. Perhaps he hadn't known Miranda that well but he'd been with

her the night she was killed. It wasn't his fault but he felt responsible anyway. Survivor's guilt—or simple

guilt. Either way, I wasn't going to learn anything more. The Goldskins would go over his statement and

cross-check for inconsistencies. I just wanted a read on the first-pass prime suspects.

"You can go now, Mr. Vorden."

"What?" He'd sunken into a reverie while I pondered.

"You're done. Thank you for your help."

"Oh." He seemed bemused for a couple of seconds, then gathered himself. "Good luck, Captain."

"Thanks," I said, and I meant it. I hoped he did too.

After he left, I punched my beltcomp's audio log through to my desk. I've got a program that analyzes

voice microtremors—sometimes it even works. My system told me that Jayce was telling the

truth—mostly. He was hiding something about his relationship with Miranda. That concurred with my

theory. There had been infidelity, a fight, a murder. I just needed the link.

I had Tanya sent in. She was petite for a Belter—my height. Her eyes were red and she dabbed at them

with a handkerchief. In other circumstances she would be pretty.

"Come in, Miss Koffman. Please sit down," I said in my best good-cop manner.

She sat, giving me a forced, trembling smile. She was barely holding herself together. If I pushed her,

she'd go over the edge. At times like this it's a judgement call. Sometimes a little nudge brings an easy

confession, sometimes it catalyzes uncrackable resolve.

And sometimes you're just adding pressure to a bystander already under emotional overload.Maintien

le droit , the ARM motto cuts both ways. Tanya was a prime suspect. I would step softly, but I would

find out what I needed to know.

"Look, I know you're upset. I just have a couple of questions for you, and then you can go." I said it

gently, coaxing. She nodded in response.

"Were you jealous of Miranda and Jayce?"

She didn't answer; she just shook her head, biting her lip.

"But they did . . . did sleep together?" I couldn't think of a more delicate way to put it."

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She nodded. Paydirt.

"That didn't make you jealous?"

She shook her head. "We had a . . . you know . . . all three of us . . ." She collapsed into tears.

I hadn't been expecting that. I sat back, implications running through my brain while Tanya wept. No use

questioning her further now, my theory was shot. I needed to reassess.

I sent her out and pulled up the transit logs again and cross-matched all three of them for Miranda's tube

station. They'd both been spending nights in her apt. Far from causing a breakup, she'd been the

hingepoint of a menage. Tanya and Jayce's transit pattern changed because they'd been spending their

time at Miranda's. That didn't clear them but it reopened the question of motive. Miranda's file yielded

another link. This was her second time on Tiamat. At sixteen she'd been on a six-month school exchange

with FRCK1798—Koffman, Bris, Tanya's younger sister. That explained why Tanya was more upset

than Jayce and where the spark for the expansion of their relationship had come from. And it told me

what Jayce had been covering up about his relationship with Miranda. At least part of what he'd been

covering up. The information also offered some good motive possibilities—jealousy now for Jayce

instead of Tanya or an old grudge rekindled for her. Even so, my instincts were telling me that they

weren't the culprits. I needed another angle.

After a while I got up and grabbed the tube back to my office. On the way, I thought about dossiers.

* * *

C137PUDV—Allson, Joel K., ARM Captain. 33 standard years old. Born: Constantinople, Earth.

Current assignment: Chief of Investigation—Tiamat Station, Alpha Centauri. Fingerprints, retina prints,

gene scan. A holo of a man with a Flatlander face, Arab, African, Slav, Balt and Mongol—boringly

nondescript on Earth, noticeably different on Wunderland. Date of birth, date of marriage, date of

divorce. Medical history, educational records, details of promotion. Case reports from Bangkok, New

Delhi and Berlin. Commendations for service and commendations for bravery. Date of transfer

outsystem.

A good record, I was proud of it. What's the measure of a man? Nowadays it's his data file. Dossiers

are the tools of my trade. They give me a skeleton—my job is putting flesh on the bones.

The best cops are just one step this side of the law—that's how you get into a criminal's mind. I was one

of the best. In deep-cover work, the line gets blurry. You make so many sacrifices you start to feel

entitled to fringe benefits your cover requires you to take anyway. The Brandywine case cost me my

marriage. When it blew up, my position was—confused.

The Conduct Review Board said, "Captain Allson's actions were directly related to his assignment and

he did not act with criminal intent." They must have known more than I did. Prakit believed them because

he believed in me but when the slot on Wunderland came up, he offered it, firmly. After Brandywine I'd

never be safe undercover again, not on the Organization cases I'd made into my life. He never mentioned

Holly, but it wasn't my cover that worried him. I took the assignment. What else was I going to do?

Wunderland—the name says it all. The colonists found a virgin paradise of mountains and forests, clear

air and low gravity. They turned it into the jewel of Known Space, but the world they'd built was gone

now. First the kzinti had invaded taking the land and turning the citizens into slaves—or dinner. Some

fought, some fled, some tried to save what they could. Most just survived and carried on in a grimmer

world.

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Forty years later, Earth attacked with lightspeed missiles, twelve thousand gigatonne impacts that

punched to the planet's core and blotted the suns from the sky. The UN wrecked the kzinti industrial

base and much of Wunderland in the process. The survivors cheered anyway, and dreamed of liberation.

And it came, faster than anyone could imagine, in an Earth armada with We Made It hyperdrives. The

Provisional Government was formed and the Wunderlanders began to heal the scars of conquest. The

rebels came out of the mountains and the pirates came in from the Swarm. The few kzinti left insystem

adapted, disappeared into the forest, or died.

But liberation didn't end the war. Alpha Centauri became the UN advance base. The Provo Government

was controlled by UN advisors and the Serpent Swarm made a UN territory outright. The economy

went to full war production. The liberators quartered thousands of troops in Munchen in case the kzinti

came back—and in case the Wunderlanders objected to the UN plan. Maybe the breakdown was

inevitable. The kzinti were no harsher than the Provos and a lot less corrupt. A political party called the

Isolationists emerged with a simple solution—Wunderland for Wunderlanders. The kzinti were gone, the

Flatlanders could go too. By the time I arrived in Munchen, they were no longer a political party, they

were a terrorist group. The Provisional Government's anti-collaborator campaign had become a random

witch hunt. The whole infrastructure was falling apart—transportation, medical support, civil services,

even basic maintenance stripped to feed the UN war machine. The black market thrived on everything

from pleasure drugs to biochips and a dozen crime webs warred over the spoils. Whole outland regions

rejected the Provos and UN troops were used to impose control.

I should have thrived in that environment—it was my kind of work, but the rot had spread to the ARM.

Certain individuals, certain groups had immunity. Investigations that got too close were closed down.

Critical evidence simply disappeared. I fought a losing battle to clean up the agency and made a lot of

high-powered enemies. When they discovered they couldn't shut me up, they kicked me upstairs, big

time. I wound up with the top job on Tiamat, half a billion kilometers skyward.

It was better on station. There was smuggling, theft, even murder—but no bombings, no assassinations,

no gang wars. More importantly, the taint of corruption was gone. I needed that change most of all. It

didn't tempt me, but it disturbed too many sleeping ghosts for comfort.

The tube stopped and I climbed out and hurried back to my office. I wanted to catch up to

Hunter-of-Outlaws. One of the few wise decisions the UN made was to let the kzinti left in-system run

their internal affairs as long as they toed the UN line when dealing with humans. Tiamat has a lot of kzinti,

most in the Tigertown high-G section. They were surprisingly good citizens, considering, but keeping

relations smooth was a balancing act. Hunter was my high-wire partner.

He was on his way out when I got back. I grabbed him before he could leave and outlined my findings.

"What do you think?" I asked when I was done.

"Hrrr . . . If Koffman and Vorden are to be believed the prime suspect must be the human she left with,

on evidence of contacts. Since she left no transit log, it is probable she traveled on her companion's ident

to the transport tunnel where she was killed. However . . ." he trailed off.

"Go on," I prompted.

He continued reluctantly. "The body was found near the kzinti sector. The corpse looks like a butchered

prey animal. On the basis of these facts I would suspect a kzin."

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I nearly laughed but he was dead serious. "You don't think a human would do that?"

"I have seen humans kill each other but I have never seen them strip a carcass so. It is the act of a

carnivore."

"Never underestimate humanity, my friend." I grinned, but didn't let my teeth show.

He ignored the barb. "If it is possible, then we must consider it. It is conceivable the culprit was cutting

the body up into manageable pieces and was disturbed before the task could be completed. Perhaps

Miranda Holtzman held dangerous information and was killed to preserve its secrecy."

"I hadn't considered that, but you're right." I didn't go on.

Hunter considered, pupils narrowing. "Your manner tells me you have another thought." He knew

humans well.

"Perhaps she was killed by a schitz." It was a wild idea, but it fit.

The kzin looked baffled. Maybe he didn't know humans so well after all. "What is aschitz ?"

"It's a blanket term for someone who isn't wired properly. They respond to hallucinations, become

paranoid or megalomaniacal. Specifics vary but they can be homicidal."

He knew what hallucinations were but—"What is paranoid and megalomaniacal?" He pronounced the

words awkwardly.

"Paranoia is when you feel that the entire world is plotting against you. Megalomania is when you have

delusions of grandeur." His expression continued quizzical. "As if a telepath was convinced he was

destined to be Patriarch."

"A kzin so defective would not survive. I have never heard of these conditions."

"It's rare, the genes are being weeded out. There are drugs to control it too—but—med support is hard

to get nowadays. On Wunderland people are dying for lack of it. It isn't so bad up here . . ." I trailed off,

thinking. Getting treatment was easy in the Swarm, but what if someone didn'twant treatment?

"Why do you suspect a schitz if they are rare? Probability would suggest another scenario."

"Yah, it would. But Miranda was a pretty young woman last seen with an unknown male. Schitz crimes

sometimes involve violent sexual motives."

He gave me another quizzical look. "Violent sex is a contradiction in terms. How can genes for this

behavior propagate?"

"Schitzies aren't rational, I don't know how they think. Dammit, I've only evenheard of one schitz; this is

just what I learned in training." I thought about the case I knew. An autodoc misread a med card and a

quiet sculptor murdered his roommates in a blind rage. The error wasn't his fault but . . .

Hunter interrupted my reverie. "We have a wealth of possibilities—a kzin with a lost temper, a human

with a definite motive and a connection to the victim, a schitz engaged in random murder. We lack

information. I suggest we gain some."

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I smiled. "Let's do that." Hunter could be relied on to cut to the heart of the matter. He gave me the kzin

gesture that meant concurrence-between-equals and left. I watched him go and pondered. There was

another possibility.

Hunter's dossier told me he'd once been Kurz-Commander, in control of the kzin base on Tiamat.

During the occupation he'd gained a reputation as a hard but fair governor and a ruthless, efficient rebel

hunter. He'd earned respect and even affection from his human charges but he was their prime target on

the day Tiamat revolted. He survived because he was off station, organizing a ragtag group of tugs and

mining ships into a last-ditch defense against the Terran fleet. He survived the battle and the labour camps

and eventually wound up back on Tiamat—this time to maintain order among the stranded kzin. He was

the logical choice, he knew more about the asteroid's workings than anyone of either species. I relied

heavily on his experience and judgment.

That gave him a lot of power, and made me vulnerable.

I called in Tamara Johansen, head of Criminal Investigation with Tiamat's Goldskin police. She'd served

on Tiamat since before the liberation and would have had my job if the UN hadn't dumped me on top of

her. It was a credit to her professionalism that she didn't let her resentment show—much. When she

arrived I filled her in.

"Where do I fit?" she asked.

"There's a fourth scenario. Maybe Miranda was killed by a kzin with some connection to her. What if

she knew something she wasn't supposed to?"

"What are you getting at?" She was intrigued.

"Look, we've got fifty thousand kzinti on-station. They're the ones smart enough to adapt to human rule.

They know they have to work with us. That doesn't mean they've changed allegiance. Hunter-of-Outlaws

doesn't mind suggesting that a kzin might have killed Miranda in a rage. What if a kzin killed Miranda

because she knew too much about kzin underground activity?"

She didn't look impressed by my suspicions. "We know they run an intelligence net, but it isn't much. I'd

be surprised if they've got a secret worth the trouble a murder investigation will bring. They can't even get

information back to Kzin."

"What's your theory then?"

She held up an imaginary magnifying glass. "It is a cardinal error to speculate in advance of the facts."

She gave me an exaggerated scowl.

I laughed and the ice broke a little. "Speculate anyway, Holmes, I won't hold you to it."

She became serious again. "I'd suspect a Kdaptist."

"What's a Kdaptist?"

"They're a kzin cult. They've only surfaced once in the swarm, but the case was a lot like this one. Right

after the liberation, a fighter jock named Detoine disappeared. He was a real war hero, very famous.

Had every decoration you could get, most of them twice. There was a huge search."

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"So what happened?"

"We got nothing. Then three years later a kzin got caught with a human skin—the DNA was Detoine's.

Turns out the kzin was a high priest in this breakaway cult. They believed their god abandoned them and

they used Detoine's skin in their rituals to try and get him back."

"And the rest of Detoine?"

"Theyate him. To absorb his heroic warrior spirit."

I shuddered involuntarily. "That's a close enough pattern to be worth investigating. That's your angle.

Keep me posted."

She gave me a thumbs-up and turned to go. I stopped her before she got to the door.

"Why do you think Hunter is covering this up?"

She shrugged. "We don't know that he is. He was still in a security camp down on Wunderland when all

that happened, he probably doesn't even know about it. Remember, Hunter-of-Outlaws is a kzin. His

personal honour is the core of his identity."

"Meaning?"

"Getting involved in a cover-up is risking his honour, so he probably isn't. But if he is, it'll be something

big. Very big."

She went off to start her inquiries and I sat at my desk and pulled up the files on the Kdapt cult. Service

number K78131965—Squadron Leader Jean-Marc Detoine. Valour Cross, UN Cross, UN Medal and

bar, Flight Medal and two bars and a dozen lesser awards. He had forty kills in atmosphere and eighteen

in space. UNF Command put a lot of pressure on when he went missing and the Goldskins turned

Tiamat upside down. They found nothing. Three years later, a kzin named

Trras-Squadron-Battle-Planner forgot his shoulder pack in a tube car. The Transit lost-and-found

opened it and discovered Detoine's skin, but Trras had scoured his quarters of evidence and committed

suicide by the time the pack was traced. The search team got nothing but a paw-written Kdaptist creed.

That dead-ended the case until a smart investigator connected the Kdapt view with the fact that Trras still

carried his Fifth Fleet name. Seven kzin were found with similar names. All seven were involved with the

cult. All seven were shot. I skipped the details and called up all unsolved murder files since the liberation.

None came close to the Kdaptist's flay-eviscerate-devour pattern.

I pondered. If any Kdaptists were left, they weren't very energetic. Anyway, Miranda hadn't been

eaten—at least not all of her. Perhaps Hunter simply didn't consider the cult a possibility worth

mentioning. So, what else was big enough for the kzin underground to risk a murder investigation, big

enough for Hunter-of-Outlaws to put his personal honour on the line?

Hyperdrive was the obvious answer. The UN's ongoing campaign against kzinti interstellar trade was

strangling their empire. That strategy depended entirely on their lack of FTL travel. Hyperdrive ships

aren't even allowed to dock at Tiamat because of the kzin population. The secret of hyperdrive was the

only information they could get back to Kzin faster than a laser.

Was that what was going on? Was Hunter involved? I forced the question out of my mind. If he was on

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WindowsOfTheSoulTableofContentsWindowsOfTheSoulWindowsOfTheSoulPaulChafeThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2002byLarryNivenAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportion...

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Paul Chafe - Windows of the Soul

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