She looked at a point above his head and carefully said, 'No.'
'Who wouldn't want these killings stopped?'
'I don't…' she began. Then she shook her head, adding, 'I can't. Ask all you want, but I won't tell you anything else.'
He asked, 'Do you consider yourself in danger?'
She sighed. 'Hardly.' 'Why not?'
She said nothing.
'Two husbands are left alive,' Pamir reminded her.
A suspicious expression played over him. Then she admitted, 'I'm guessing you know which two.'
'There's the Glory.' Glories were birdlike creatures, roughly human-shaped but covered with a bright and lovely plumage. 'One of your more recent husbands, isn't he?'
Sorrel nodded, and then admitted, 'Except he died last year. On the opposite side of the Great Ship, alone. The body was discovered only yesterday.'
Pamir flinched, saying, 'My condolences.'
'Yes. Thank you.'
'And your first lover?'
'Yes.'
'The J'Jal in the red suit.'
'Cre'llan, yes. I know who you mean.'
'The last man standing,' he mentioned.
That earned a withering stare from a pained cold face. 'I don't marry lightly. And I don't care what you're thinking.'
Pamir stood and walked up beside her, and with his own stare, he assured, 'You don't know what I'm thinking. Because I sure as hell don't know what I've got in my own soggy head.'
She dipped her eyes.
'The J'Jal,' he said. 'I can track him down for myself, or you can make the introductions.'
'It isn't Cre'llan,' she whispered.
'Then come with me,' Pamir replied. 'Come and look him in the eye and ask for yourself.'
As a species, the J'Jal were neither wealthy nor powerful, but among them were a few individuals of enormous age who had prospered in a gradual, relentless fashion. On distant worlds, they had served as cautious traders and inconspicuous landowners and sometimes as the bearers of alien technologies; and while they would always be aliens on those places, they had adapted well enough to feel as if they were home. And then the Great Ship had arrived. Their young and arrogant human cousins promised to carry them across the galaxy-for a fee. The boldest of these wealthy J'Jal left a hundred worlds behind, spending fortunes for the honor of gathering together again. They had no world of their own, yet some hoped to eventually discover some new planet reminiscent of their cradle world -an empty world they could claim for their own. Other J'Jals believed that the Earth and its humans were the logical, even poetic goal for their species -a place where they might blend into the ranks of their highly successful relatives.
'But neither solution gives me any particular pleasure,' said the gentleman wearing red. With a nearly human voice, he admitted, 'The boundaries between the species are a lie and impermanent, and I hope for a radically different future.'
According to his official biography, Cre'llan was approximately the same age as Homo sapiens.
'What's your chosen future?' Pamir inquired.
The smile was bright and a little cold. 'My new friend,' the J'Jal said. 'I think you already have made a fair assessment of what I wish for. And more to the point, I think you couldn't care less about whatever dream or utopia I just happen to entertain.'
'I have some guesses,' Pamir agreed. 'And you're right, I don't give a shit about your idea of paradise.'
Sorrel sat beside her ancient husband, holding his hand fondly. Divorced or not, she missed his company. They looked like lovers waiting for a holo portrait to be taken. Quietly, she warned Cre'llan, 'He suspects you, darling.'
'Of course he does.'
'But I told him… I explained… you can't be responsible for any of this…'
'Which is the truth,' the J'Jal replied, his smile turning into a grim little sneer. 'Why would I murder anyone? How could it possibly serve my needs?'
The J'Jal's home was near the bottom of Fall Away, and it was enormous. This single room covered nearly a square kilometer, carpeted with green woods broken up with quick little streams, the ceiling so high that a dozen tame star-rocs could circle above and never brush wings. But all of that grandeur and wealth was dwarfed by the outside view: The braided rivers that ran down the middle of Fall Away had been set free some fifty kilometers above their heads, every diamond tube ending at the same point, their contents exploding out under extraordinary pressure. A flow equal to ten Amazons roared past Cre'llan's home, water and ammonia mixing with a spectacular array of chemical wastes and dying phytoplankton. Aggressive compounds battered their heads together and reacted, bleeding colors in the process. Shapes appeared inside the wild foam, and vanished again. A creative eye could see every face that he had ever met, and he could spend days watching for the faces that he had worn during his own long, strange life.
The window only seemed to be a window. In reality, Pamir was staring at a sheet of high-grade hyperfiber, thick and very nearly impervious to any force nature could throw at it. The view was a projection, a convincing trick. Nodding, he admitted, 'You must feel remarkably safe, I would think.'
'I sleep quite well,' Cre'llan replied.
'Most of the time, I can help people with their security matters. But not you.' Pamir was entirely honest, remarking, 'I don't think the Master Captain has as much security in place. That hyperfiber. The AI watchdogs. Those blood-and-meat hounds that sniffed our butts on the way in.' He showed a wide smile, and then mentioned, 'If I'm not mistaken, you'd never have to leave this one room. For the next ten thousand years, you could sit where you're sitting today and eat what falls off these trees, and no one would have to touch you.'
'If that was what I wished, yes.'
'But he is not the killer,' Sorrel muttered.
Then she stood and stepped away from the ancient creature, her hand grudgingly releasing his grip. She approached Pamir, kneeling before him. Suddenly she looked very young, serious and determined. 'I know this man,' she implored. 'You have no idea what you're suggesting, if you think that he could hurt anyone… for any reason…' 'I once lived as a J'Jal,' Pamir allowed.
Sorrel leaned away from him, taken by surprise.
'I dyed my hair blue and tinkered with these bones, and I even doctored my genetics, far enough to pass half- assed scans.' Pamir gave no specifics, but he understood he was telling too much. Nonetheless, he didn't feel as if he had any choice. 'I even kept a J'Jal lover. For a while, I did. But then she saw through my disguise, and I had to steal away in the middle of the night.'
The other two watched him now, bewildered and deeply curious.
'Anyway,' he continued. 'During my stay with the J'Jal, a certain young woman came of age. She was very desirable. Extraordinarily beautiful, and her family was one of the wealthiest onboard the ship. Before that year was finished, the woman had acquired three devoted husbands. But someone else fell in love with her, and he didn't want to share. One of the new husbands was killed. After that, the other husbands went to the public hall and divorced her. They never spoke to the girl again. She was left unattached, and alone. What rational soul would risk her love under those circumstances?' Pamir shook his head while studying Cre'llan. 'As I said, I slipped away in the night. And then several decades later, an elder J'Jal proposed to the widow. She was lonely, and he was not a bad man. Not wealthy, but powerful and ancient, and in some measure, wise. So she accepted his offer, and when nothing tragic happened to her new husband, not only did everyone understand who had ordered the killing. They accepted it, too. In pure J'Jal fashion.'
With a flat, untroubled voice, Cre'llan said, 'My soul has never been thought of as jealous.'
