Re: Othaglot and Cane - Story Thread
Epic is good, eh? Well here's chapter 1 of an SEIV murder mystery=-) No title yet, but "Othaglot and Cane" has quite a nice ring to it =-)
The first alien I had ever seen lay on the floor before me, dead. It had four limbs, a thick torso and no head. I was pretty sure there was supposed to be a head, but I couldn’t be certain. The skin was ice- white, and I wondered whether that was the correct colouration, or whether it was a result of prolonged exposure to the chilly vacuum of space. I reflected that it might also have something to do with the thick red liquid now oozing out of the thawing corpse. Cappa Loog shuffled backwards nervously as the expanding puddle approached him.
“Captain said pull him in so we pulled him in. Half an hour ago. Opened the sat doors and went out in a space suit and pulled him in.” He said. Even for an unjoined Cappa, he wasn’t particularly bright - He’d already given me the same story twice, but since he didn’t seem to have any other comments, he just kept repeating it. I sensed my own Cappa’s mirth at Loog’s repetition, and affectionately warned her against displaying it. I pressed on with the questioning, hoping to get something new out of Loog.
“And have you touched the body since then?”
“Nope, just pulled him in and left him here.” Adding hurriedly; “Captain told us to do that.”, apparently afraid that I would find some reason to arrest him.
At that point, the second alien I had ever seen entered the room, in a far better state of health than the first. I had expected it to move on all four limbs, but its two-legged locomotion afforded the creature a curiously long, slow rhythm which, combined with its height, made it seem somehow aloof. The security officer accompanying it eyed his charge suspiciously, clearly blaming him for the inconvenient delay incurred by the discovery of the body.
The human looked first at the bulky Cappa Loog, and quickly surmised his status from the greasy work-suit and heat armour. A brief process of elimination allowed him to identify me, and he turned, extending one of the upper limbs in my direction as he did so.
“Detective Othaglot, I presume”, he said, withdrawing the appendage when he realised that I hadn’t recognised the gesture. His translation device produced perfect Cue-Cappa, and I acknowledged his assumption.
“You must be Mr Cane. I look forward to working with you.” This Last statement wasn’t true, but since I was stuck with him I thought it best to be polite. I realised with some embarrassment not only that his mouth was exposed, a hole right on the front of his head, but that I had been staring at it. The muscles around it had worked to change its shape, and I wondered if it was a significant display of body language. It seemed bizarre that a culture could exist where an individual could display their mouth without shame, let alone use it for non-verbal communication.
“As do I.” He said simply. “And this is our mystery man. Have you examined him in any way?” For the first time he looked down at the corpse, which by now was a white lumpy island in a sea of red. Now that I had a complete specimen to compare the body to, I could see that a head was indeed lacking, and that the pale did not match that of a live human. Mr Cane was far pinker than the corpse, although the longer he looked at it the paler he became. Perhaps it was some kind of sympathetic response. Psychically examining his thought processes, I could make no sense of his alien mindscape. His shapes of his thoughts were accessible to me, but they were so alien as to be completely unreadable. It was disconcerting to communicate with a being but to have none of those psychic cues which you only notice by their absence. Perhaps that’s why the security officer had taken such a dislike to him.
“I’ve only just arrived on the ship myself.” I said, and at first it seemed as though he hadn’t heard me, or that the translator had failed. After a moment he looked away from the dead body and made eye contact with me. “I haven’t had time to question anyone except Cappa Loog here.”
“I see. Well, at least that saves you the trouble of debriefing me. Are you the person who recovered the body?” he now addressed Loog, whose idiotic expression promoted itself to bewildered at the human’s question. Just as I thought Cane would have to repeat himself, Loog replied.
“Yeah, pulled him in through the sat doors, half an hour ago. Captain said pull him in so we pulled him in. Me and Olta”
“Was the.. uh.. was the head missing when you collected the body?”
Not wanting to hear the technician’s Version of events for a fifth time, I quickly interposed. “I have already questioned Cappa Loog. We shouldn’t keep him from his duties any longer.” It took him a few moments to register my meaning, and then he lumbered wordlessly off, no doubt to recount his limited anecdote to Olta and his other workmates.
Cane stepped in to the red pool and crouched down to the body, in the kind of pose I had expected him to assume normally. He conducted a squeamish search of the corpse’s damaged clothing, during which he found and retained several items. He looked up at me after he had done so. Did he think I hadn’t seen him take anything? I made a mental note to question him about that later. He then produced a small device from his own garments and used it to take a tissue sample. He studied the instrument in his hand for a moment, and then said “The DNA isn’t in our database. There isn’t even a family match. This is very strange.”
He stood upright again and addressed the security officer. “Do you have any cryogenic facilities on this ship? I don’t doubt the capabilities of your own medical staff, but our races still have much to learn about one another, anatomically. I’d prefer that he be transported back to our colony on Ceres IV for examination.”
The officer’s objection to this new imposition was evident to me, but was probably lost on the alien. “We do have cryo-units on board. Our First Officer will have to decide whether your request can be accommodated.” He paused a moment while his mind reached out to the First Officer’s and made the request. “It can. The cryo-unit will be transferred to the ship which brought you.” He said. “The Captain says she is ready to see you now.”
The security officer guided us to the Captain’s office and departed, throwing the human one Last dirty look as he did so. The door opened, and we entered. It was a functional room – a broad, circular desk, a terminal and a large screen on one wall displaying views of the bridge and other critical parts of the ship. The Captain was resting on a seat in the centre of the desk, her tentacles spread out upon it in all directions. One tentacle tapped at the console, eliciting various displays of data that did not seem to meet with her approval. I doubted that she had ever seen a human face to face either, but she didn’t waste any time with curiosity.
“We had assumed that you would examine the body yourself. Had we known you were simply going to put it in cryo, we would have recovered it a week ago and continued with our mission. Instead, you have a 300kt vessel following a corpse around, wasting time and supplies.”
“I apologise for the miscommunication and the inconvenience, Captain Roothloota.” said Cane. I heard his human voice mispronounce the Captain’s name, but the translator corrected it. “I’m sure that your superiors will understand the delay, since the request for your co-operation comes directly from my government to yours. I assumed that you would have put him into cryo already. My function is to investigate his death, not to examine him. I’m not a physician.”
“Well, the delay has given us a chance to carry out some maintenance and catch up on administration.” She indicated the mass of writing-sculpts on her desk with a tentacle.
“If you are not a physician, you must be a policeman, like our detective Othaglot here.” My Cappa wagged her eyestalks in acknowledgement.
“Actually, my normal role is a diplomatic one, but out here on the frontiers we often have to adapt. I was the nearest available person, and my government decided that a prompt investigation was preferable to a fully-qualified one.” His mouth made that shape again, and I struggled to guess at it’s meaning.
The captain spoke. “How exactly do you plan to investigate this death? Security officer Oogroothoo tells me you have no identity for the deceased, and presumably you have no idea how he came to be floating in space in the first place. Where will you start?”
Before Cane could answer, I spoke. “Since this body has been found in Cue Cappa space, this is still my investigation. In the interests of diplomatic relations, I have been instructed to allow Mr Cane to observe and assist.”
Cane made another facial expression, which involved one eye and not the other, but said nothing.
“The proximity of the deceased to the mining colony below us indicates that he had business there. There would certainly be no other reason for a spacecraft to pass this way, and my limited knowledge of astrophyics tells me that he couldn’t possibly have drifted in from a busier part of the system in the few years that humans have had knowledge of our people.”
Cane added “I have also found some items on the body which may give us further avenues of investigation once we get down to the moon.” He looked at me and made the mouth-shape again. It was making me feel uneasy.
The Captain’s Cappa made a noise of acknowledgement, but her Cue seemed to have little interest in the answer to her question. I could tell, but the human could not, that she was telepathically communicating with one of her officers. Oblivious, Cane continued talking.
“Captain, I have a question for you. How did you find the body? Even in such close proximity to an inhabited world, the chances of a ship stumbling across so small an object and then taking the trouble to identify it as something of interest are too remote to be mere chance. You must have detected him somehow, but I can’t begin to imagine how.”
The Captain had redirected her attention just in time to hear most of the question. Her answer was curt. “I’m afraid I cannot answer that question, Mr Cane, but I can tell you that your logic is sound. I have little doubt that you will find out the truth about your unfortunate compatriot. Now, if you have no further requirements of me, I’d like to resume my task, which has been delayed by yours.”
“Of course, Captain, thank you for your time.” Although I could not sense it in his alien mind, I could guess the human’s frustration at the Captain’s sudden reluctance to talk.
As we were escorted from the office to the airlock, where a police shuttle waited to take us to the mining colony below, Cane turned to me. “I hope we will be able to work well together, Detective. I sense a certain antipathy. Are you more used to working alone?”
I felt my Cappa’s tentacle tips flush blue with shock. How had he managed to divine my thoughts and feelings, when I, a telepath, had so completely failed to understand his? I knew very little about humans but I knew they were not telepathic. No other races were, as far as we knew.
I hoped the embarrassment of my response would be filtered out by the translation device. “I am not used to… to aliens, Mr Cane. I have no objections to them , but I have no experience of them. Of you. Given time, I am sure I will learn to work with you effectively.”
He simply made the mouth-shape again, and said nothing more until we reached the airlock.
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