Strangers Among Us

I Count the Lights-4

But Lodolo, releasing his hand, tilted his head left then right then left again, the Prevarian equivalent of a human head-shake. “I count the lights.” He moved to the wall and touched the lamp, fully alight again. “Forty-six,” he said. And then he turned away from Kelvas and resumed climbing. “I count the lights,” he said nine steps farther along. “Forty-seven.”

Kelvas hesitated. He put his hand on the heavy ball in his pocket. He looked down the steps for a moment. Then, moved by some strange and unexpected impulse, he climbed after Lodolo, following him all the way to the top of the Tower of the Silent God.

Four Prevarian tri-days later, Kelvas sat in his office at the Embassy, his back to his desk, looking out over the city through the office’s single large window. In the middle-distance, the Tower of the Silent God pointed at the sky. The sun had almost set, and already the green lights were beginning to glow along the five hundred and sixty-seven steps.

The black ball he had recovered had quickly revealed its secrets. Both it and the dousing of the light were triggered only by the presence of a Terran. It had been planted very specifically to kill the Ambassador . . . or any other human who happened to climb the Tower. But no human other than the Ambassador ever had, or had been expected to.

It was clearly not Prevarian technology, but tracing it to its human source might have proved impossible had a lead not been forthcoming from a most unexpected source.

Hence the visitors whose arrival Kelvas awaited even now.

The tri-tone chimed in his earbud. He tapped it twice. “Yes, Simon?”

“Eve and Tyrone Boynton are here,” Simon said.

“Send them in,” Kelvas said. He turned to face the door, and stood as Eve and her brother entered. He nodded to Eve, whose face bore an interesting expression of mingled hope and pride, but when he rounded the desk, he went straight to Tyrone. “Tyrone,” he said. He held out his hand. Tyrone looked at it.

“Shake his hand, Tyrone,” Eve said.

Tyrone looked at her, then back at Kelvas’s hand. He held his hand out hesitantly. Kelvas took it and shook it firmly. “Thank you, Tyrone,” he said. “Without your help, we never would have solved Ambassador Hori’s murder.”

“Mr. Kimblee . . . meet with bad man,” Tyrone said in his high-pitched voice, soft and lilting as a child’s. “I saw him.” He pulled his hand back, and turned around and pointed at the office door. “Out there.”

“I know you did,” Kelvas said.

He had returned from his climb of the Tower to find Tyrone and Eve waiting for him in his outer office, under the watchful eye of Simon. Simon had leapt to his feet as he entered. “I’m sorry, sir,” he’d said. “I called Eve as soon as she came off-duty, but she couldn’t get Tyrone to leave, either.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kelvas,” Eve said, and he heard the worry in her voice; he knew she was afraid Tyrone’s strange stubbornness would convince Kelvas once and for all there was no place for her brother on Prevaria. “All he’ll tell me is that he has to talk to you. Over and over again.”

Over and over again, Kelvas thought. Like Lodolo. And so Kelvas did what he would never have done before, and sat down next to Tyrone and asked the boy what he wanted to say.

And Tyrone pointed at the POI screen and explained, in his halting fashion, that he had seen Mr. Kimblee talking to one of the people on that screen. He pointed out the man when his image rolled around again: a certain Peter Lagat, with known ties to one of the criminal syndicates bankrolling some of the more notorious of the planetary pillagers.

Tyrone, it turned out, liked to walk around the Embassy compound late at night. “He doesn’t sleep well since Mom and Dad died,” Eve had explained. “He walks to make himself tired.”

I wonder if he counts the Embassy’s lights? Kelvas thought in passing, while he busied himself with sending messages, and arranging an arrest detail. A little over half an hour after Kelvas’s return from the Tower, John Kimblee was in custody and under interrogation.

As Kelvas’s second-in-command, Kimblee had been fully aware of the Ambassador’s plan to ascend the Tower of the Silent God. A thorough forensic audit of his assets revealed that he had also been in the pay of Legat’s syndicate. His enjoyment of the luxuries of the Core Worlds had not been feigned: he’d enjoyed them so much, during his last visit there, that he’d been massively in debt until he agreed to work with Legat to sabotage the Prevarian trade agreement.

Of course, although the murder device had been of human manufacture, it had not been placed by a human: that had been the work of one of the Prevarian anti-trade factions: one whose own links to the waiting scavengers had been uncovered by the . . . forceful . . . investigations of the Prevarian government. The faction had made a deal to rule the planet on the scavengers’ behalf once the trade deal was dead and the Terran Navy gone. The sacrilege of Prevarians actually daring to climb the Tower of the Silent God in order to commit murder had shaken Prevarian society to its core, just as the corruption revealed on the Terran side had shaken Earth—and destroyed several fortunes, reputations, and political careers.

The new Ambassador, Kuzue Akamatsa, even now awaited the descent of darkness so that she . . . and her entire staff . . . could ascend the Tower. Once that had been done, the trade agreement would, at last, be formalized. Kelvas had spent the day making the security arrangements for the signing ceremony to be held the next day in the Great Hall of the Prevarian People, out of sight on the other side of the Embassy from his office.

But that was for later. “You did a good job, Tyrone,” he said. “A very good job. Would you like to work for the Diplomatic Corps permanently?”

He heard Eve’s gasp, but he didn’t look at her, only at Tyrone. Tyrone’s brows pulled together. “Perm . . . permanently?”

“For good,” Tyrone said. “Work, and stay here with your sister. For good. “

Tyrone’s face split into an enormous grin. “Yes, Mr. Kelvas! Yes, please!”

Kelvas glanced at Eve. “He’ll work as a night watchman. He’ll walk the grounds just as he has been. He’ll report anything out of the ordinary he sees.” He returned his gaze to Tyrone. “Can you do that? Watch carefully every night? Report anything you see that you think is strange?”

Tyrone nodded vigorously. “I see things,” he said. “I see when things are different. That’s how I saw Mr. Kimblee and the bad man. I can do that.”

Kelvas held out his hand again. “Then welcome to the Terran Diplomatic Corps.”

This time, Tyrone shook his hand without prompting.

“Take him to HR and get the forms filled out,” Kelvas said to Eve. “They’re expecting you.”

“I stay, Eve!” Tyrone cried to his sister. “I stay!”

Tears glistened on Eve’s cheeks. She hugged Tyrone tightly. “You stay!” She smiled over his shoulder, rather wetly, at Kelvas. “Thank you, sir, thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Kelvas said softly.

Eve led her brother out of the office, and Kelvas returned to his chair. He turned to look out the window once more. Darkness had descended at last. The new ambassador would be beginning her ascent of the Tower of the Silent God.

Though he couldn’t see all of them, Alfred Kelvas began to count the lights.