"This is the planet: Wartl. Three billion sentient beings live here, none of them human. Humans visit regularly though, in spite of the fact that Wartl only has probationary status in the Confederation. People come here, some of them on business, some of them just looking for a restful and relaxing vacation along the hundreds of kilometers of unspoiled coastline. Sometimes things go wrong. That's where I come in. I carry a small biochip implanted in my neural network that identifies me to all y-base-c compliant platforms as a police officer. Oh, yeah. I also carry a badge."
Detective Inspector Angelo Glass sat back and made a noise of disgust. The voice recognition software that he was using obediently caused the word "brapphhhh" to appear on his monitor with a magenta arrow next to it indicating that the computer wasn't quite certain of the spelling. Glass turned the machine off, stood up and stretched.
He'd been on Wartl for nearly six hours already, and his biggest accomplishment so far had been the addition of a paragraph to his memoirs. Lovely.
"Image 312-B," he said. A rectangle of light appeared in the center of the room. Glass spun his chair to face it. He'd watched this recording countless times, but it still had the ability to fascinate him, in much the same way as some horrible accident might draw his attention against his will.
He grunted sourly as two Wartl appeared in the rectangle as real as life, which was far too real to suit him.
To Glass's eyes, they looked identical. Both were reptilian, covered with overlapping scales as strong as class-3 armor. They were tall, with their shoulders higher than the average terran's head. They had four massive arms - one pair at chest height and one pair below waist height - and brawny legs and a heavy tail with a ball of spikes at the end. Located high up so that they could see to the side and rear as well as to the front, they had two large intelligent eyes, which, Glass reflected, must have been Mother Nature's idea of a joke.
Glass was particularly disconcerted by their hands and feet, each of which had four digits tipped with heavy, razor sharp retractable claws, and their snouts, which were filled with teeth that looked perfectly designed for ripping the flesh off of a delicate human frame.
Glass shook himself free of these unprofitable thoughts. He was here on Wartl to do a job, and he would keep his mind on his work.
"Motion," he said. The static image of the two Wartl flickered, and then the two figures began to move.
"Do you know anything about humans?" one of the Wartl asked hesitantly. Because he, she or it had spoken first, Glass was able to identify this one as Tanda and the other as his partner Grundl.
The Wartl language, if you could call something that sounded like a duck gargling molasses a language, had been programmed into Glass's biochip which obediently dropped a colloquial translation of the noises into his mind.
On the recording, Grundl used his tail spikes to scratch his back and ducked his head for an instant in negation.
"Nope," he said. "Not really. But this one is dead, isn't it?"
Tanda sighed heavily. As the senior partner, he was technically in charge. "I think so," he said. "This is probably going to be kind of inconvenient."
The two peace keepers stared down at the still form.
Unfortunately, the monitors tracked the officers, not what they were looking at, so Glass had no recording of the corpse to study. It had definitely been a human, though. Both officers were certain of that, though they were not certain of the victim's gender, "what with mammals being so hard to tell apart, and all," as Grundl had put it.
Having read the report and viewed the recording so many times, Glass felt that he could almost track the thoughts, such as they were, that passed through the minds of the two officers.
Tanda had noticed that the human was lying utterly motionless in a nice sunny spot. If it had been a Wartl, it might almost have been basking. Having had that thought, Tanda would ask:
"Do human's bask?"
Glass mouthed the sentence along with the translation unit of his biochip.
Grundl smacked his tail against his back and said, "I think so. I mean, I've seen pictures of herds of them basking at the coast."
"Maybe this one isn't dead, then," Tanda said hopefully.
Glass also mouthed this sentence along with the recording, shaking his head.
Tanda nudged the human with his toe and, though he couldn't see it, Glass knew from the report that the Wartl's claws had opened a new wound in the human's side.
"Well, if it wasn't dead before..." Grundl began.
Tanda smacked him on the side the head. "It was dead," he said. "If it wasn't dead, it would have screamed."
"There is that," Grundl agreed. "I've heard it doesn't take much to make one scream. The darn things break so easily."
Glass didn't even want to think about the history that must lay behind that remark.
There was a long pause while the two officers contemplated their next move, and then Grundl asked, "Do they usually have handles? Sticking out of their backs like that, I mean?"
Glass groaned aloud. No matter how many times he watched the recording, he always groaned aloud at this point. He just couldn't help it.
"I don't think so," Tanda said with a frown. "Maybe that's what killed it: having that thing stuck in its back."
Grundl snorted. "Well, if it doesn't have sense enough to have scales, it deserves what it gets!"
There was another pause. The sidewalk had been moderately crowded, but the pedestrians had utterly ignored the two peace keepers and the alien corpse in their midst, as if were an everyday sight.
"How," Tanda asked suddenly, "Did it get that handle stuck in its back?"
Grundl snorted again. "Doing some human thing, I guess."
Tanda used one of his lower arms to reach down toward the motionless form and gently took the corpse's hand and tried to make it reach the handle in the center of its back. Glass was glad that this part was below the level of the monitor.
"It doesn't go," he said, tugging a little harder. There was sharp, brittle cracking sound.
"Yes it does," Grundl contradicted him. "It can reach, no problem."
"No," Tanda said. "I just pulled too hard. It wouldn't go before that."
There was yet another pause, which Grundl used to snatch a passing ipsl fly out of the air with his tongue. They were nice and crunchy this time of year, just the way he liked them. It had been nice of him, Glass reflected, to include that fact in his report.
"I..." Tanda began and then trailed off.
"What?"
Tanda thumped his tail spike against the ground in frustration. "I don't think this human could have inserted that thing into its own back. I think someone else must have done it."
"Oh, brilliant," Glass said aloud.
Grundl was busy looking for more flies. "So what?" he asked. "So they're polite and helpful. What's your point? Even humans have to have some good points."
And on that cheerful note, Glass stopped the playback and once again cursed the entire Wartl race.
It was bad enough that he'd been given a liaison job. They were always politically sensitive. Well handled, they could make your career. Bungled, they could end it. To make matters worse, it was on a planet where they didn't have the technology to detect and analyze DNA traces. Still, Glass felt that he could have handled those things. But why, oh why, did he have to be on a planet where the locals didn't even leave fingerprints?
He picked up the knife which had been removed from the victim's back and spun it. It caught the light and reflected it back blindingly, and that made Glass remember when the evidence technician had handed him the weapon and said, "It sure cleaned up nice, didn't it?"
"I beg your pardon?" Glass had asked, startled.
"Oh, sure," the technician had explained. "When they brought the thing in it was all covered with what I guess was blood and stuff. Disgusting. Look at her now, though. Clean as a spikyback's belly."
Mind you, that had gone better than his attempt to look at the body, which, in accordance with local custom, had been flash vaporized within two hours of its discovery.
Glass realized that he was holding the edge of the knife speculatively against his wrist and tossed it on a nearby table in disgust. Well, he reflected, at least there was a certain comfort in realizing that things were as bad as they could
A chime cut off his thoughts.
"Come!" he called. A small device hanging around his neck translated the sound into a collection of gargles and growls.
The door slid open and three Wartl walked into the room. Glass looked at them expectantly.
"Inspector," the one in the lead said, "Here are Officers Tanda and Grundl."
"Ah," Glass said in a noncomittal tone. He was not particularly eager to talk to those two, but he supposed that it would have to be done.
"You will be pleased to know, that we have assigned them to you for the duration of your stay."
"Oh," Glass said. "Um...good."
"You know, you're fortunate that it was Tanda and Grundl who found the body."
"Am I?" Glass asked. He was glad to hear it. He could use a little good fortune.
"Indeed. They are the only two officers still on active duty who have ever solved a murder."
Glass's eyes widened. "They're what?"
"The only two officers on active duty who--"
"And the rest of them have gone unsolved?" Glass was not actually as surprised by this as he sounded.
"The rest of them?" the Wartl asked, apparently puzzled.
"The murders which these two don't solve."
The Wartl was definitely puzzled. "I don't understand."
Glass sighed heavily. "Look," he said, "how many murders do you have in this place?"
The Wartl allowed his mouth to hang open slightly, and his tongue flickered into view and then disappeared. "Seven," he said.
Glass looked at him. Or her. Or maybe it. He wasn't sure. "Seven," he said.
The Wartl closed its mouth. "Yes."
They looked at each other for a moment before Glass realized that the Wartl wasn't going to expand on that statement.
"Seven over what time period?"
The Wartl shrugged. "Well, recorded history."
There was another long moment of eye contact.
The Wartl cleared its throat, making a remarkably human sound. At least, since his translator didn't drop any words into his mind, Glass assumed the Wartl had just been clearing its throat.
"Over what geographical area?" Glass asked. "The whole city?"
"Well...the planet."
Another long pause.
"Let me get this straight," Glass said finally. "You're telling me that there have been only seven murders on the entire planet in the entire recorded history of your race?"
"Yes," the Wartl said sorrowfully, shaking his head from side to side. "So many. So many."
"Oh, yeah," Glass said. His stomach was really beginning to bother him now. A thought struck him. "How long ago was this murder they solved."
"Five years," the Wartl replied. "To think that such a thing should happen in my own lifetime!"
"And...uh...what penalty was imposed?"
"On the murderer? He was burned at the stake. Well, I'm certain that you will wish to question these two officers, so I will leave you to get to it." Sketching a peculiar pattern in the air with both of his left hands, the Wartl turned and left the room.
Glass stared unenthusiastically at his helpers. "So," he said uncertainly, because it seemed rude not to say anything at all. Tanda and Grundl stared at him. "So...you found the body."
"Yep," Tanda agreed.
"The what?" Grundl asked.
Glass groaned. "The dead human," he explained.
"Oh, that!" Grundl said. "Yeah, we found that."
There was another long moment of silence.
"So," Glass said again. "Why don't you show me where you found it?"
"You bet," Tanda said.
"Okay," Grundl agreed.
"Let's go," Glass said with a sigh.
It was a short walk to the garage and then Glass found himself staring at a vehicle called a skimmer. He had never seen a less likely candidate for skimming. The thing was built like a tank, with three quarter inch duranite plating which was pitted, scarred and dented. Glass whistled softly to himself as he ran his hand over the damage. "What happened here?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Tanda asked, pausing with his body half in and half out of the vehicle.
"This!" Glass said, pointing.
Grundl smacked his tail against the ground and said, "That's the way it always looks."
"Get in," Tanda said.
Glass climbed into the tank. It was hazardous being a cop no matter where you worked, but he'd never seen a planet where the police force had to have combat rated vehicles to enforce the law, and he'd never seen a tank so battle-scarred before. He was beginning to like this planet less and less, if that was possible.
The seats inside the tank were not comfortable. They were not well padded. In fact, they were not there. Instead, there was a series of posts running from floor to roof. Each post had a variety of grooves cut into it and a number of smaller posts sticking out of it at right angles at various heights.
Tanda and Grundl were each in place, with their tail spikes wedged into some of the grooves. Grundl grabbed hold of some of smaller posts with all of his hands and wedged his claws into some of the grooves. Tanda did the same, though he had to keep one hand free for driving. Glass sighed and leaned against one of the posts. It was either that or sit on the bare floor.
Tanda flipped a switch and a view screen and various controls lit up on the console in front of him. He shook his head from side to side and pressed a button. That was when Glass realized how the skimmer got its name.
The vehicle lifted neatly from the ground, spun in a tight 180 and took off rapidly. Glass was thrown against the post behind him with most of the breath knocked out of his body. He quickly spun around and threw his arms around the post. Then he rotated himself so that he was looking out of the view screen. That turned out to be a bad idea, as it let him see what was happening.
He watched as the garage exit drew closer. He could see a busy street beyond, with numerous heavy vehicles moving along it at a high rate of speed.
Tanda was not slowing down.
"Uh..." Glass said.
Tanda rolled an eye toward Glass. "Yes?" he asked.
The Wartl appeared calm, and Glass relaxed slightly. "Nothing," he said. Obviously there was a computerized traffic control system that would slot the incoming vehicle into the traffic pattern. No problem.
The skimmer shot out of the garage directly at an even larger vehicle. Tanda did something with the controls, and the skimmer turned rapidly, striking the larger vehicle a glancing blow. It slid sideways and scraped against a barrier protecting the pedestrian walkways. The metallic shriek made Glass feel as if his spine was shriveling up.
After a moment, the skimmer slid away from the barrier and was immediately rear ended by another skimmer. Glass, with his ears ringing from the sound of the impact, was nearly wrenched free from his perch. Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms and legs around the post, digging his fingers into the grooves. He began to wish that other parts of his body were prehensile so that he could wrap them around the post as well.
Later, he had no idea how long the trip had taken. He heard some vague sounds and felt a vague pressure on his arms. He gradually became aware that someone was peeling him away from the post, which was good, as he didn't seem to be able to loosen his grip by himself.
Eventually, he found himself outside, leaning against the skimmer. He head hurt, his jaws hurt, his fingers, toes, hands, arms and legs hurt, and the left side of his face hurt. But he was alive.
He looked at the tank, which had several fresh scars decorating its hide and then shakily bent down and kissed the ground.
Tanda and Grundl looked at each other, their scalar ridges raised in surprise.
"What is it doing?" Grundl whispered.
"I don't know," Tanda said.
They both watched in amazement as the amazingly flexible creature, after actually lying down on the ground, climbed easily to its feet and then leaned against the skimmer, apparently to steady itself. Its hands were shaking and its legs appeared somewhat reluctant to support its weight.
"If it's that hard on you to bend down like that," Tanda asked curiously, "then why do you do it?"
Glass looked at him. "It isn't that," he said. "It was that ride." He shook his head. "My ears are still ringing."
Tanda and Grundl exchanged another look of surprised mingled with puzzlement.
"Okay," Grundl said slowly.
The skimmer had been parked on the sidewalk. The sparse pedestrian traffic ignored the vehicle and the police officers. A few feet away, skimmers and other vehicles raced alongside the barrier, bouncing indiscriminately off of it and each other. Glass averted his eyes and studied the walkway.
It was made of some material he didn't recognize, apparently synthetic. One side was blocked by the barrier which kept the traffic at bay. The other was lined with buildings. They were irregularly shaped and did not seem to be in harmony with each other, structurally speaking. It was a riot of different architectural styles, and there seemed to be something subtly wrong with each one, though Glass couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
He thought that some of the buildings looked they housed various businesses, ranging from manufacturing to selling to other things that he couldn't quite grasp. Scattered randomly among the businesses were houses and what appeared to be day care centers or something similar.
His inspection had given Glass enough time to recover his aplomb, and he turned to his companions.
"Where was the body found?" he asked.
"Right there," Tanda said, pointing to a spot on the walkway.
Glass stared at it. It was indistinguishable from every other spot on the walkway.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"You betcha."
Glass squatted near the spot, earning admiring glances from several of the passersby for his unWartl flexibility.
On closer inspection, the area of walkway proved to be still indistinguishable from every other spot on the walkway.
Glass looked up at Tanda. "Wasn't there blood?"
"Oh, sure. A lot. You guys are pretty full for being so small."
Glass wasn't certain how to respond to that, so he ignored it. "I don't see any bloodstains here."
"Of course not!" Tanda said. "We cleaned 'em up."
"You cleaned them up," Glass said tiredly.
"Of course."
"How soon after discovering the body?"
Tanda waggled his tongue thoughtfully. "Oh, fifteen, twenty minutes, I guess. As soon as we got the dead human out of the way."
"We couldn't have cleaned up before that," Grundl explained, "As the human was still leaking. You guys sure do die messy."
"Sorry for the inconvenience," Glass muttered. "What position was the body in? Can you show me?"
"Show you how?" Tanda asked.
"Well," Glass gestured at the walkway. "Lie down here and show me."
Both Tanda and Grundl made a series of breathy snorts rising in pitch while Glass stared at them.
"What?" he asked.
"Lie down!" Grundl said, using his tongue to clean the tears from his eyes. "That's funny!"
"We're not built the way you humans are," Tanda said.
"We're sturdy!" Grundl agreed.
Glass closed his eyes, annoyed at himself. Wartl couldn't bend the way humans could. He'd read that somewhere but had forgotten it. Rookie mistake.
"All right," he said, opening his eyes. "I'll lie down and you tell me what position the body was in."
Glass stretched out. Whatever the walkway was made of, it was very warm against his cheek. Given the strength of the sun, it was surprising that the material wasn't hotter. Glass hated the climate on Wartl, especially the humidity, hanging like a wet blanket in the air. His clothes were already saturated.
The sight of someone stretched out on the ground was enough to draw some attention from the passersby.
"Spread your legs," Tanda told him.
He did so.
"Farther."
He increased the spread.
"Farther."
He sighed and spread his legs even farther. He could feel the muscles of his inner thighs start to complain.
"Wow!" Grundl said. "You were right. They really can stretch."
"You owe me a lunch," Tanda told him.
"Wait a minute!" Glass said, lifting his head.
Two passersby stopped completely at this, and a shopkeeper stepped out of his store for a better look at the rubber alien.
"Okay, you can put your legs back together," Tanda said.
"Will you just tell me the position of body?" Glass pleaded.
Finally, after what seemed an interminable time, Glass had his arms, legs and head position in what the Wartl assured him was an exact copy of the position of the body.
"Now," Grundl said, reaching out with one of his lower arms, "Just let me jam this into your back, and you'll be perfect."
It didn't register for a second, and then Glass rolled to one side and twisted his head to see a knife flashing toward the spot he had just occupied.
"Hey!" he and Grundl said together, both of them complaining.
"What are you doing?!" Glass yelped.
"You said you wanted to be just like the other human, right?"
"I didn't mean that I wanted to be dead!" Glass snapped.
"But, you aren't exactly like the other one unless you have a handle in your back!" Grundl protested.
"We'll skip that part, all right?"
"Oh, all right," Grundl said.
"All right?" Glass repeated, looking at the other Wartl.
"Sure," Tanda agreed.
"Fine."
Somewhat reluctantly, Glass stretched out on the walkway again. Following Tanda's instructions, he adjusted his position slightly.
"Now--" he began, when a new voice cut him off.
"Is it another one?"
Glass twisted his head to see the shopkeeper talking with Tanda.
"No," Tanda said. "Well, I mean, it is another one, but this one isn't dead."
"You tell this one not to make a mess in front of my store, you hear?"
Grundl laughed self-consciously and quickly tucked the knife into a pouch hanging at his waist.
"Can we get on with this?" Glass asked.
"At least this one isn't so durned loud," the shopkeeper said casually. "That first one shrieked like a demented marmot."
Glass frowned. He didn't think that the translation unit in his biochip had gotten that one quite right, somehow. Then it hit him.
"What?" he yelped, climbing quickly to his feet.
All three Wartl stepped away from Glass, with the shopkeeper asking nervously, "Is it tame?"
"You heard the victim cry out?" Glass asked intently.
"What's that?" the shopkeeper asked, leaning forward to get a better look at Glass's eyes.
"The victim...the other human, you heard him...her...him...you heard the human cry out?"
"Oh, sure," the shopkeeper told him. He laid the ball of spikes at the end of his tail against the walkway and leaned backward. It held him up at an angle like a kickstand would have done.
"Did you see anything?" Glass was eager.
"Don't you want to lay down on the ground anymore?" Grundl asked. There was a solid thud as Tanda smacked him on the head.
The shopkeeper picked a piece of grit out of his auditory meatus, looked at it reflectively and then ate it. "Oh, sure," he said. "Well, I seen that other human, anyhow."
"You did?" Glass was startled by the presence of an actual clue. The murderer was a human.
"Sure."
"What did they look like?" No worrying about grammar now.
The shopkeeper allowed his nostrils to flare. "I don't rightly know," he said. "You humans all look alike to me."
"Well, was it a male or a female?"
The shopkeeper's thin lips twitched, revealing his teeth in a quick frown. "How do you tell the difference?"
Glass paused for a moment and then made a vague gesture with his hands in front of his body. "Well...um...human females sort of...bulge," he said helplessly.
Now all three Wartl looked interested.
"Why do they do that?" the shopkeeper asked.
"Well...um..." Glass stammered. He had the feeling that he was getting a little out of his depth. "They...well, we're mammals."
"Yeah," the shopkeeper said. "I heard that word before. So?"
"Well..." Glass paused. "Um...they have these glands that...that only mammals have."
The three Wartl looked at each other.
"Uh-huh," the shopkeeper said. "What are they for?"
With a sigh, Glass told them.
"Oh, good grief!" the shopkeeper said, hastily spitting three times on the walkway, a gesture that was copied by the two peace keepers. "That is the most disgusting thing I ever heard in my entire life!"
"Why you people can't just learn to lay eggs," Grundl said. For once, Tanda didn't smack him.
"Well," Glass said with a mix if discomfort and indignation, "Was the human a male or female?"
"No," the shopkeeper said, waving all four arms in the air as if trying to erase some image from in front of his eyes. "No, don't even make me think about that. Ask me something else."
"Well, what color hair did the human have?" He tugged at his own hair in explanation.
"It might have been yellow," the shopkeeper offered.
"Was it long or short? Was there a lot of it?"
"Hm." The shopkeeper paused for thought. "You know, it may be that there wasn't any at all."
"Then how could it have been yellow?" Glass asked through clenched teeth.
"Good point," the shopkeeper said. "Maybe it was black."
Glass gave vent to a wordless sound of frustration and turned away. Maybe the translator wasn't working correctly. Or maybe there was no word for 'hair' in the Wartl tongue. Why should there be, on a planet with no mammals? With a sigh, Glass turned back to the shopkeeper. "Look, suppose that you saw this human again, would you recognize him or her?"
"Well, I'm not saying I would," the shopkeeper said, digging his finger into his auditory meatus again, "But I'm not saying I wouldn't, neither."
"Swell."
"Maybe," Tanda suggested, "We could round up all the humans in the city and have him look at them."
"Oh, that's a lovely idea," Glass agreed sourly. "And do you suppose we'd go about doing that?"
"Well," Tanda said as if speaking to and idiot, "We'd just go and pick them up."
"Oh, and I suppose you know where every human in the city is located?"
"Of course not," Tanda said. "That would be foolish."
"I thought so, too," Glass agreed.
"I just know where they all sleep at night."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, sure," Grundl agreed. "All seven of them."
"Seven?" Glass looked around. "There are only seven human in the city right now?"
"Well, eight if we count you," Tanda said.
"Then let's round them up!" Glass said. Then he sighed. Though the killer is probably off planet by now."
Tanda smacked his tail against the ground and said, "Well, I don't suppose so. I mean, we do know how to do an interdiction." He seemed offended for some reason.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, right after we discovered the body, we interdicted. We are trained peace keepers, you know, and murder is a serious crime."
Glass shook his head. "No, what do you mean by interdicted?"
Tanda and Grundl looked at each other and then back at Glass. "Well, after we realized it was a murder, we inter--"
"No," Glass interrupted. "Don't just keep repeating the word. Tell me what it means."
"His translator must not be working right," Grundl said.
Tanda nodded, satisfied. "Yeah, you're right." He looked back at Glass. "We sealed off the city. Nobody has been allowed to leave it, and nobody has been allowed to enter it except you."
"Do you mean that nobody has been allowed to leave the city since the murder?" Glass asked, suddenly excited. If it even pretended to be a positive development, he would be excited about it.
"Well, of course," Tanda told him.
"We are professionals," Grundl added.
"Then let's round the humans up," Glass said.
"We have to go back to the station to get the order written up," Tanda told him.
"Let's go."
Unfortunately, it meant going for another ride in the skimmer, but what choice did he have? He climbed into place, wrapped himself around the metal supports as firmly as he could and then, to take his mind off of the journey, said, "Tell me about the murder that you solved."
"Okay," Tanda agreed and began to relate the tale. He rolled one eye toward Glass and kept the other one facing forward to watch the road.
Responding to a call, the two peace keepers had entered the victim's home. They had known that something was decidedly not right as soon as they had spotted the victim, as he had been lying on the floor. A quick inspection had shown him to be dead, and a medical examination had later shown that he had been poisoned. At that point, the peace keepers had gone back to search the victim's dwelling.
"You mean you didn't search it when you found the body?" Glass asked.
"Of course not," Tanda replied. "That would have been rude."
"It wasn't our house," Grundl added.
"How much time had passed when you went back to search it?"
"Not long. Maybe four or five days."
"Okay," Glass said, drawing the word out well beyond its normal length.
"When we searched, we found a glass which turned out still to contain traces of the poison and we found a note in which the dead Wartl explained that he was dreadfully unhappy about the state of his growlspit."
"Uh..." Glass said. "I didn't get that last word. The state of his what?"
"His growlspit." Tanda repeated.
Glass shook his head. "It isn't being translated," he said. "What does it mean?"
"Well," Tanda said slowly. "Um..his...lumpy psyche?"
Glass shook his head again. "Never mind. Just tell me what clued you in that the note was a phony?"
"I don't understand," Tanda said.
"Well, if it was murder, the note must have been a fake, right?"
"No," Tanda said.
Grundl made the sound that passed for a laugh on Wartl. "You humans sure get some funny ideas," he chuckled.
"Wh-bu-uh..." Glass stammered.
"I think he's going to be sick!" Grundl warned.
"N-no," Glass said, "but, I mean, if the note was genuine, how could it have been murder."
The two Wartl exchanged glances. "What do you mean? In the note, he confessed to drinking poison."
"Yes..." Glass said.
"Yes," Tanda said.
"So, how is that murder?" Glass asked.
Tanda sighed heavily. The sound was very human. "He deliberately took poison. He murdered himself."
There was a long pause. "That was the big murder case that you solved?" Glass finally asked.
"Yep. Not bad, eh?"
There was another long pause, then Glass said, "Oh, boy." A thought struck him. "Wait a minute. I thought you told me that the murderer had been burned at the stake!"
"He was," Grundl said.
"But he was already dead!"
Tanda snorted. "Well, we would hardly have burned him at the stake if he'd been alive, now, would we?"
"But, how is that punishment?!"
"Is it possible that you people don't know anything about the afterlife?" Tanda asked.
"Yeah," Grundl agreed. "Everybody knows that if you get cremated lying down, you get to rest in the afterlife, but if you get cremated standing up, you have to spend the rest of eternity without rest."
"What punishment could be worse than that?" Tanda asked. "It last forever?" Glass was saved from having to make a reply by the fact that they had arrived back at the station. Glass unwrapped his body from around the metal supports, counted his new bruises, noticed a faint ringing in his left ear and staggered out of the skimmer and onto blessedly solid and motionless ground.
"How long is this going to take?" he asked, moving more or less in the direction of the exit from the parking garage.
"Not long," Grundl said.
"It depends on how many of the humans are in their assigned locations at the moment," Tanda said, "but probably not more than a couple of hours."
"Great." It took Glass two tries to get through the doorway. His equilibrium was a still a little off after a rather bumpy ride.
Eventually they made it to a central office area where Tanda spoke first with a prefect and then with a clerk. After that, it was simply a matter of waiting.
Glass tried to use the time to work on his memoirs. It didn't go well. His career hadn't really taken off yet, but pulling off a successful liaison job like this could really jumpstart things for him. However, he couldn't write this case up without venting his feelings about the crime scene procedures and investigatory techniques employed on Wartl, and having that sort of thing in writing could come back to haunt him later in life. He was part policeman and part diplomat, and he needed to keep that duality in mind at all times. Especially when he wasn't feeling very diplomatic.
He spent some time in the office they had given him resting and having a meal. Fortunately, he had remembered to check up on the indigenous cuisine before leaving his ship. A quick glance at some typical native foods, at least the ones that stayed still long enough for him to get a good look at them, that is, had been more than enough to convince him to bring his own food with him from his ship.
He was in the middle of a nap when the office door opened and a Wartl came in. Glass was not one of those people who wake up instantly ready to face any situation. He preferred to glide gracefully to a state of alertness while lying in bed for half an hour or so as his faculties gradually readjusted themselves to the fact that he was once again awake and conscious thought was required of his cerebral cortex.
This probably explains why, upon blearily opening his eyes and finding a grinning bipedal lizard starting into has face from two inches away, Glass screamed, leapt to his feet, jumped backward, tripped over his seat, ricocheted off of a table and ended up lying on his back starting up at his visitor.
The Wartl ran his tongue across his teeth and asked, "Do you do this every time you are awakened?"
"I was not asleep," Glass said curtly, climbing to his feet.
"I'm sorry," the Wartl said, sounding genuinely contrite. "What were you doing, then?"
Glass spent a moment dusting himself off while his mind gradually started working. Eventually, an idea surfaced.
"I was meditating."
"Ah," the Wartl said. "So our two races do have some things in common. The search for spirituality is one of our primary characteristics."
"Yes," Glass said grimly. "Ours, too."
"Nearly all of the humans have arrived, as has the shopkeeper. Of course, we were only able to locate six of the humans. Then we realized that the one that we couldn't locate must be the one who was killed. We have prepared a file on him which you can read later, if you wish."
"Yeah," Glass said drily. "Thanks." Why didn't you do that two days ago? The question went unspoken, but not unthought.
As they walked out of the door, the Wartl said, "Did you know that, when you meditate, you make a noise exactly like one that we make when we're asleep? We call it snoring."
Glass cleared his throat and said nothing.
They found two Wartl standing in a room and looking at a pane of glass.
As they entered, the Wartl with Glass said, "Ready, Grundl?"
One of the Wartl in the room answered, "Yep."
"Okay," Glass thought to himself, "The one with me is Tanda and the one that didn't speak was the shopkeeper. Telling these guys apart isn't so hard. A child could do it."
Tanda flipped a switch. "Bring them in," he said.
A moment later, six humans shuffled into the room on the other side of the pane of glass. Four of them were female. Three of these were children, probably about six years old. The older female were just that. Older. She was certainly on the other side of her hundredth birthday. Of the two males, one of them had clearly been born on Scaleron. The light purple tint of his skin and his unusual build - he was over six and a half feet tall but very thin, almost gaunt - was enough to make that evident. The remaining male was about six feet tall and very muscular. Too muscular for earth, in fact. With that build, he had to be from one of the high gravity colonies. He had vibrant blue hair hanging nearly to his waist.
"Crumpets and sneeze juice," the shopkeeper grumbled. "It's like I said. They all look alike."
Glass blinked and shook his head. "Try," he suggested.
The shopkeeper dug a claw between his teeth and bit down on it.
"What about the children?" Glass asked.
"Which ones are they?"
"The little ones."
"That's a durn painful noise they're making," the shopkeeper complained. "But I don't guess it was one of them. Unless they can stretch about three feet or so?"
"No," Glass said. "I don't think so."
"Then it wasn't one of them. Not tall enough."
"All right, then," Tanda said.
The shopkeeper continued to stare. "I don't think it was any of them," he said.
Glass grunted. It was an explosive sound of frustration.
"But you said it was a human!" he said.
"It was," the shopkeeper affirmed. He gestured at the suspects. "It just wasn't any of them."
"But they're the only humans in the city!" Glass yelled.
"Not quite," Grundl said slowly.
"There are more?" Glass asked.
"There's you!" Grundl told him.
The three Wartl stared suspiciously at Glass. "You know," the shopkeeper said, "It could have been you..."
They began to move toward Glass, and he began to back slowly away from them.
"Now, wait a minute!" he said.
"What a great cover!" Tanda said.
"No wonder this case has been so tough!" Grundl agreed.
"Wait a minute!" Glass said. "I couldn't have done it!" Visions of himself being burned at the stake were flitting through his mind.
"And why not?" Grundl asked.
"Because the murder was committed two days ago!"
"So?" Grundl snapped. "Don't try to tie us up with your fancy logic!"
"But I didn't arrive on the planet until today! How could I have committed a murder when I was even here?!"
There was a long pause.
"Hm," Tanda said. He looked at Grundl. "He might have something there."
"I don't know," Grundl replied. "We could charge him anyway. The prefect would review the case after punishment had taken place."
Glass yelped. After punishment had taken place?
"But we'd get a reprimand if we were wrong," Tanda argued.
"Yeah, that's true," Grundl said. "It's a shame, though. It was a nice idea."
Glass breathed a sigh of relief and looked away from the Wartl and back at the suspects. "It must be one of them," he said.
The shopkeeper cast a speculative look at Glass but then returned his gaze to the suspects on the other side of the window.
Glass continued to stare at them as well, though it was more because he didn't want to look at the Wartl than because he...wait a minute...he stared more intently.. What were they wearing? It looked familiar, somehow. He asked Tanda.
"Polypron," came the reply.
Glass blinked. "Polypron? The stuff they make combat suits out of why? Why?"
"Because you guys break so easily," Grundl told him. "Just bump into a human and they leak that red stuff all over you."
"Do all tourists wear that stuff?" Glass asked.
"Of course. As long as they're in the city, anyway. That human goo is so hard to clean off of the streets."
"So, how come I wasn't given any polypron to wear?"
"Well, you're not a tourist," Grunld said.
Glass shook his head. "Never mind. The victim was wearing polypron."
"Of course. But the handle thingy went right through it."
"That's it, then!" Glass said with a laugh. "Only that guy on the end would have the strength to drive a knife through polypron! The two old ladies couldn't have done it, and nobody from Scaleron would have that kind of..."
It was at this point that Glass discovered that the suspects could hear what he was saying. The muscular man leaped at the window and struck it once with his fist. The window shattered, and the killer charged through. Grundl rolled his eyes at the ceiling and appeared to tap the man lightly on the chin with one hand. The human crumpled immediately, unconscious. Tanda snapped restraints on his wrists and ankles.
"It's a good thing you had me here," Glass told Tanda and Grundl. "You people seem to rely mostly on luck in order to solve your cases. I hope you see now what happens when you rely on knowledge and skill instead."
From that point on, the rest of it was routine. Local reports were written and filed. Glass acknowledged the tide of congratulations gracefully. His own report was agonized over, written, rewritten, proofed, and finally transmitted. He was told to await a reply.
Upon hearing that, Glass preened. Liaison jobs were always ticklish, and anyone who pulled one off as successfully as he had and in such a short time, deserved praise. Even more, he deserved a promotion, a raise, an increase in status...
These thoughts were still frolicking through Glass's mind when the reply to his report arrived. It was almost fulsome enough in its praise of his abilities and intellect to satisfy him. In concluded by stating that, in acknowledgment of the skill with which he had handled this assignment, he was being given an unprecedented job. He was going to be the first human police officer to be given a permanent post on a foreign planet...
The Wartl were delighted with the news that Glass would be staying with them, and Tanda and Grundl were the first to congratulate him on his new assignment.
"You know," Tanda said, watching Glass walk away moments later, "I liked him better the way he looked just then."
"I know what you mean," Grundl agreed. "That red in his eyes, the paler skin..."
"And the way his eyes kind of bulged out. It made him look a little more Wartl, don't you think?"
"It sure did," Grundl agreed.
"You know, they're giving him a house next to the swamp flats," Tanda said.
Grundl ran his tongue around his mouth. "Ipsl flies by the hundreds...slip lizards by the ton...and that aroma! What a lucky guy!"
"No," Tanda said. "It wasn't luck. It was his knowledge and skill that earned him this job. And he deserves it."
Bio:"I am a college biology teacher living in the southeastern US with my wife, one dog, and one cat, which is plenty of cats but several dogs too few. All in all, I think the universe is a lot sillier than we can possibly imagine, which won't stop me from trying."
E-mail: benedet@esn.net
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