8

X-37’s discovery was damning to the ocular engineer, but I knew it wasn’t the complete story. I knew the basic facts but not the man’s motivation.

Soft music played in the hallways of the Lady Faith, making the place feel like a luxury resort rather than a yacht built for luxury. It was the most expensive civilian craft I’d ever been on, and that included my missions against senators and corporate executives. For a brief moment, I wondered how the Jellybird defeated it so easily in our race to the last slip tunnel entrance.

It didn’t matter. I needed to focus on unraveling Henshaw’s past.

We arrived at his den, which was similar to my observation deck but more extravagantly furnished. He offered me a cigar and a glass of whiskey, which I accepted. Because… why not.

“You have a way of making people uneasy, Mr. Cain,” Henshaw said. “All I’ve done since you arrived is think about the word assassination. It would be enlightening to know where you came to the conclusion I’m capable of such a thing. No offense, of course. I’m not judging your vocation.”

This statement told me several things. One, he hadn’t forgot my opening salvo. The accusation had been just subtle enough for somebody to have to be paying attention to pick up on it. A less sophisticated, less experienced person might have convinced himself he’d heard me wrong.

It also showed that he didn’t consider whatever he had done to be an assassination. That left several possibilities, including privately motivated, intentional murder, or a killing in self-defense.

X-37 had explained to me that Henshaw, when he was still with the Union, had volunteered to assist a relatively obscure politician with a personal project. The Union had given him professional leave and paid for transport to the rather remote planet.

He spent several weeks there, frequently dining with the politician until they were best friends. By the end, no one else attended their dinners. They ate in private, with only automated servants to deliver the food and drink and discussed esoteric theories of artificial intelligence.

The politician, it turned out, was a much better scientist than a statesman and had only followed his career path in response to family pressure. The details about exactly what they had worked on were unavailable to X-37.

What I knew, however, from medical records and the review of news articles from the time, was that the politician had died unexpectedly after Henshaw returned to his regular duties in the next star system.

The politician had been relatively young and healthy, with no family history of heart disease. So, the sudden heart attack had been suspicious.

A medical examiner’s report showed that a buildup of certain toxins had contributed to the myocardial infarction.

Henshaw became the focus of an investigation, which drew a lot of public scrutiny, and then ended abruptly.

I took a seat in one of the extraordinarily comfortable lounge chairs and leaned back with a cigar and a glass of whiskey. It took a moment to get situated. I didn’t want to spill anything or drop an ember from the cigar into my lap.

“You’re an expert at ocular engineering and several other scientific fields,” I said.

“I am. Thanks for noticing,” Henshaw said.

“I’m an expert in eliminating political problems,” I stated.

“Your necessity. You know about assassinations and what assassins do,” Henshaw said, emphasizing what he thought to be my vocation several times.

“I’m more than that,” I said. “I’m an enforcer. Some of my missions were meant to be quiet and covert, others messy and public. They made me to send messages to their enemies. I’m the archangel of death. The Grim Reaper. The bogeyman everyone fears and sees when they close their eyes with a guilty conscience.”

Henshaw went pale. I thought he might’ve been preparing a rejoinder to my statement, but he swallowed it when he realized his life could end in a second.

“But you’re right, I know all about assassination. Governor John Miguel Cortona was healthy when you met him but developed a fatal heart condition by the time you left his estate.” I pulled smoke through my cigar, then slowly let it out. “During your private dinners, the food service was handled by automatons.”

Henshaw shifted in his comfortable chair, holding a glass of untouched whiskey. “That’s all true.”

“Did you ever work on the bots? Perhaps to show Cortona some of your skill set? Showing off a bit? Being helpful? Something else?”

“His passion was limited artificial intelligences and larger programs like the artificial intelligence that control ships and manufacturing plants,” Henshaw said. “It was only natural that we tinkered with things, as Tom would say.”

I didn’t miss Henshaw’s reference to our mutual friend. If he was smart, and I knew he was, he would remind me of our human connection. If he had been trained as an assassin, he would know it was important to dehumanize targets so that the agent wouldn’t hesitate when it became time to make the kill.

If he thought reminding me of mutual friends would stop me from doing what had to be done, he was wrong. But it was a good try. What he didn’t understand was that if I spaced him, it would be to protect Tom and the others.

“These machines that you guys played with delivered your meals. I’m sure they did a great job. I’m also certain they could have introduced toxins into Cortona’s meals, maybe small amounts that built-up just in time to kill him after you were gone,” I said.

A tear leaked from each of Henshaw’s eyes. He tried to speak but couldn’t. His effort to remain dignified was easy to see. His face reddened and I thought he might start blubbering.

I’d seen this before, of course, when people begged for mercy, but this was different.

“John Cortona could’ve been a brother to me in other circumstances,” Henshaw said, voice rough.

I waited for his next response, but not because I was trying to unbalance him as I had been doing previously. What I saw now made me sympathetic of the ocular engineer’s situation. I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.

Henshaw let out a long breath as he spoke his next words. “He was a truly brilliant and caring man. But he’d stepped down a dark path that even he couldn’t see. If I’d followed in that way, the galaxy would be a much different place, and not for the better.”

“He was seeking true artificial intelligence in his machines, wasn’t he?” I asked.

Henshaw nodded, still having trouble forming words. He took a breath, calming himself in delivering the rest of it with more control over his emotions. “He’d come to believe that a well programmed artificial intelligence could make superior moral decisions to humans. It was an enticing argument, as flawed as the Union was. I was young, still in the early stages of my Union career, but had already started to see problems.”

“Be careful, Reaper Cain,” X-37 warned me. “Your biometrics indicate that you may be feeling sympathetic for the focus of this interview.”

I found it interesting that X-37 was already dehumanizing Henshaw. I also knew that he was correct to advise caution.

It was possible that Henshaw had been recruited to commit a single murder to save the Union, but if he was a master of espionage and killing, he would also be good at verbal manipulation.

I had training in this area but normally relied on physical action to escape tight spots where I might be taken into custody by local authorities during a mission. That was all part of the Reaper legend. It was almost better that I get detained and then shoot my way out of the police station.

Union officials denied the existence of Reapers, but their denials only made my existence more terrifying.

“You’re not what I expected,” Henshaw said.

“Warning, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “The focus of this interview is trying to change the subject.”

I acknowledged X-37 with one of my very subtle hand movements we had been perfecting.

“What do you mean?” I asked Henshaw, expecting him to give me some line about how I was fair and impartial when making judgments about who should die and who shouldn’t, or that I had other heroic qualities. He would want to prime me for mercy if he could.

“People are drawn to you,” Henshaw said.

“I’m not sure where he is going with this,” X-37 whispered privately.

I smoked my cigar and sipped my whiskey, never looking away from Henshaw.

“You don’t see it, but Elise looks up to you and Tom seems to think you are brothers. I doubt it began this way. Path has practically adopted Elise as his protégée and would, without a doubt, die for you without a second thought,” Henshaw said.

“Path is a sword saint. Dying in battle without flinching from danger is part of their ethos,” I said.

Henshaw smiled and shook his head, expressing that I wasn’t getting it, or that was what it looked like he was trying to do. “Someday you’ll understand, I think. I had never thought to come this far with you and your crew. Any rational human being would advise against affiliation with the last Reaper, a man the entire Union is trying to destroy and a person that might kill me as soon as look at me. You wouldn’t even need a reason, I imagine.”

I shrugged. “True.”

Henshaw leaned forward and put his palms together almost like he was praying or just trying to express his earnestness about what he was going to say next. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Cain. I worked for Vice Admiral Nebs several different times. On one occasion, I upgraded his nerve-ware to the point he can broadcast certain signals. One of the things he was most interested in, as the head of the Reaper Corps, was the ability to control or neutralize their LAIs. I also believe he may have one of the dual or even quad LAI experiments.”

X-37 made a noise, half clicking and half whistling. I’d never heard it before and had the idea that it meant the LAI was surprised. “I can’t believe he admitted that.”

I was also surprised but understood it was a good tactic to admit to an accusation before the accusation actually came. It gave his denial more credibility. At the same time, I was having a hard time doubting his earnestness. I just didn’t think he was that good of an actor, but I’d been wrong before. Not often, but more than once.

“Was that what you came to confront me about?” Henshaw asked.

“No,” I lied. “But it makes sense that you assassinated Cortona. When exactly were you going to tell me about Vice Admiral Nebs’ ability to shut off X-37 if I get too close to the man?”

“I planned to tell you sometime before it became necessary to confront the vice admiral,” Henshaw said. “I’m still hoping we can avoid that.”

“If we work together, and you stop holding back critical information, we might be able to steer clear of the man indefinitely, unless he gets in the way of me finding my mother and sister,” I said.

“Perhaps we could steal them away without going head-to-head with Nebs and his soldiers,” Henshaw said.

I agreed with him. Taking on somebody like Nebs was foolish. I didn’t mind a fight, but I wasn’t trying to commit suicide by spec ops soldiers. “Can you program a workaround that will allow X-37 to resist Nebs’s shutdown procedure?”

“I can try. In fact, I have already installed the basis for this algorithm when we first met,” Henshaw said.

“And yet you didn’t tell me about it,” I said, not exactly pleased with this revelation.

“The problem is, I installed that programming into Nebs’ LAI years ago. I must remind you that his limited artificial intelligence is not that limited—it may be cluster of LAIs instead of a single unit, something much closer to a true AI. The real reason he had me eliminate Cortona was that Cortona had already done some significant work for him. He was, in effect, removing any competition to his own efficacy as a master Reaper,” Henshaw said.

“It doesn’t matter how many gadgets he installed in himself, he doesn’t have the training or the experience to do what I do,” I said.

“You don’t know what he has or doesn’t have,” Henshaw pointed out.

I felt like ice water had been poured down my spine when Henshaw spoke this time.

“He is correct,” X-37 warned me. “My analysis is that we should avoid a direct confrontation with Vice Admiral Nebs or any of his best soldiers.”

A long moment of silence passed between Henshaw and me. After finishing my whiskey and pocketing the half-finished cigar once I had extinguished it, I stood to go.

Henshaw handed me three of the Starbrand Premium cigars. “You’re just going to steal them anyway.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’m heading back to my ship. I will most likely kill you in the morning.”

He laughed. “I didn’t think that men like you read the classics.”

“I had a lot of time in the Blue Sphere Maximum-security Prison. X-37 was able to access their library. His reading voice is shit, but it passes the time.”

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