Quietly, Pamir laughed at himself.
The machines stood still, waiting for encouragement.
'The brain's gone,' he offered, using his left hand to touch the forehead, feeling the faint warmth of a hibernating metabolism. 'A shaped plasma bolt, something like that. Ate through the skull and cooked his soul.'
The machines rocked back and forth on long legs.
'It's slag, I bet. The brain is. And some of the body got torched too. Sure.' He rose now, looking about the bedroom with a careful gaze.
A set of clothes stood nearby, waiting to dress their owner.
Pamir disabled the clothes and laid them on the ground beside the corpse. 'He lost ten or twelve kilos of flesh and bone,' he decided. 'And he's about ten centimeters shorter than he used to be.'
Death was a difficult trick to achieve with immortals. And even in this circumstance, with the brain reduced to ruined bioceramics and mindless glass, the body had persisted with life. The surviving flesh had healed itself, within limits. Emergency genetics had been unleashed, reweaving the original face and scalp and a full torso that couldn't have seemed more lifelike. But when the genes had finished, no mind was found to interface with the rejuvenated body. So the J'Jal corpse fell into a stasis, and if no one had entered this apartment, it would have remained where it was, sipping at the increasingly stale air, its lazy metabolism eating its own flesh until it was a skeleton and shriveled organs and a gaunt, deeply mummified face.
He had been a handsome man, Pamir could see.
Regardless of the species, it was an elegant, tidy face.
'What do you see?' he finally asked.
The machines spoke, in words and raw data. Pamir listened, and then he stopped listening. Again, he thought about Miocene, asking himself why the First Chair would give one little shit about this very obscure man.
'Who is he?' asked Pamir, not for the first time.
A nexus was triggered. The latest, most thorough biography was delivered. The J'Jal had been born onboard the ship, his parents wealthy enough to afford the luxury of propagation. His family's money was made on a harum-scarum world, which explained his name. Sele'ium - a play on the harum-scarum convention of naming yourself after the elements. And as these things went, Sele'ium was just a youngster, barely five hundred years old, with a life story that couldn't seem more ordinary.
Pamir stared at the corpse, unsure what good it did.
Then he forced himself to walk around the apartment. It wasn't much larger than his home, but with a pricey view making it twenty times more expensive. The furnishings could have belonged to either species. The color schemes were equally ordinary. There were a few hundred books on display-a distinctly J'Jal touch-and Pamir had a machine read each volume from cover to cover. Then he led his helpers to every corner and closet, to new rooms and back to the same old rooms again, and he inventoried every surface and each object, including a sampling of dust. But there was little dust, so the dead man was either exceptionally neat, or somebody had carefully swept away every trace of their own presence, including bits of dried skin and careless hairs.
'Now what?'
He was asking himself that question, but the machines replied, 'We do not know what is next, sir.'
Again, Pamir stood over the breathing corpse.
'I'm not seeing something,' he complained.
A look came over him, and he laughed at himself. Quietly. Briefly. Then he requested a small medical probe, and the probe was inserted, and through it he delivered a teasing charge.
The dead penis pulled itself out of the body.
'Huh,' Pamir exclaimed.
Then he turned away, saying, 'All right,' while shaking his head. 'We're going to search again, this place and the poor shit's life. Mote by mote and day by day, if we have to.'
V
Built in the upper reaches of Fall Away, overlooking the permanent clouds of the Little-Lot 7 the facility was an expansive collection of natural caverns and minimal tunnels. Strictly speaking, the Faith of the Many Joinings wasn't a church or holy place, though it was wrapped securely around an ancient faith. Nor was it a commercial house, though money and barter items were often given to its resident staff. And it wasn't a brothel, as far as the ship's codes were concerned. Nothing sexual happened within its walls, and no one involved in its mysteries gave his or her body for anything as crass as income. Most passengers didn't even realize that a place such as this existed. Among those who did, most regarded it as an elaborate and very strange meetinghouse -like-minded souls passed through its massive wooden door to make friends, and when possible, fall in love. But for the purposes of taxes and law, the captains had decided on a much less romantic designation: The facility was an exceptionally rare thing to which an ancient human word applied.
It was a library.
On the Great Ship, normal knowledge was preserved inside laser files and superconducting baths. Access might be restricted, but every word and captured image was within reach of buried nexuses. Libraries were an exception. What the books held was often unavailable anywhere else, making them precious, and that's why they offered a kind of privacy difficult to match, as well as an almost religious holiness to the followers of the Faith.
'May I help you, sir?'
Pamir was standing before a set of tall shelves, arms crossed and his face wearing a tight, furious expression. 'Who are you?' he asked, not bothering to look at the speaker.
'My name is Leon'rd.' 'I've talked to others already,' Pamir allowed.
'I know, sir.'
'They came at me, one by one. But they weren't important enough.' He turned, staring at the newcomer. 'Leon'rd,' he grunted. 'Are you important enough to help me?'
'I hope so, sir. I do.'
The J'Jal man was perhaps a little taller than Pamir. He was wearing a purplish-black robe and long blue hair secured in back as a simple horsetail. His eyes were indistinguishable from a human's green eyes. His skin was a pinkish brown. As the J'Jal preferred, his feet were bare. They could be human feet, plantigrade and narrow, with five toes and a similar architecture of bones, the long arches growing taller when the nervous toes curled up. With a slight bow, the alien remarked, 'I am the ranking librarian, sir. I have been at this post for ten millennia and eighty- eight years. Sir.'
Pamir had adapted his face and clothing. What the J'Jal saw was a security officer dressed in casual garb. A badge clung to his sleeve, and every roster search identified him as a man with honors and a certain clout. But his disguise reached deeper. The crossed arms flexed for a moment, hinting at lingering tensions. His new face tightened until the eyes were squinting, affecting a cop's challenging stare; and through the pinched mouth, he said, 'I'm looking for somebody.'
To his credit, the librarian barely flinched.
'My wife,' Pamir said. 'I want to know where she is.'
'No.'
'Pardon me?'
'I know what you desire, but I cannot comply.'
As they faced each other, a giant figure stepped into the room. The harum-scarum noticed the two males facing off, and with an embarrassment rare for the species, she carefully backed out of sight.
The librarian spoke to his colleagues, using a nexus.
Every door to this chamber was quietly closed and securely locked.
'Listen,' Pamir said.
Then he said nothing else.
After a few moments, the J'Jal said, 'Our charter is clear. The law is defined. We offer our patrons privacy and opportunity, in that order. Without official clearance, sir, you may not enter this facility to obtain facts or insights of any type.'
'I'm looking for my wife,' he repeated.
'And I can appreciate your-'
'Quiet,' Pamir growled, his arms unfolding, the right hand holding a small, illegal plasma torch. With a flourish,
