Murder on the Orient

by David Barber

My guardian insisted travel would complete my education, though we both knew I was being sent away to end a relationship he disapproved of, and it was while travelling on the Jumpship Orient that I met the Assassin.

Just a handful of passengers boarded the Orient at Triton Port. Only the very rich could afford to travel live, though those frozen and stacked in the hold still paid handsomely for the privilege. My own staff were down there.

On the second day, as the Orient powered away from Triton, I came upon an artificial person standing alone in the commons. I’ve never understood the prejudice against them. It’s a common belief that they all look the same, but this one gleamed as if fashioned from liquid metal. Perhaps it was.

I’ve noticed how solitary adults rarely seem at ease in public spaces, busying themselves with phones or the media, or hurrying to be somewhere else. Look, they insist, I’m not lonely. This AP stood utterly still, radiating a powerful sense of being in its place, as a tree might, or some wild creature not needing our approval.

Have I explained this right? Perhaps the Buddha-like impression I gained was false. For all that, I was unable to resist introducing myself. “Have you met our other passengers yet?” I asked brightly. How could it be wealthy enough to travel live? I wondered privately.

No, it had not met them.

“I was sat next to a professor at dinner. A famous historian apparently. He told me a lot about his best-seller, Deus Ex Machina. It was like being taught a lesson.” The more taciturn the AP seemed, the more I chattered. Tutors tell me it’s a habit I should curb. “But he was over-attentive,” I confided. “I do not think he is a nice man.”

Perhaps my dislike of the professor was not just fanciful, for when he strode into the commons, he insisted on pressing his wet lips to my hand. If he was surprised to find an artificial person there, he gave no sign.

“I have heard of you,” said the AP. “You are famed for your work on the origins of silicon intelligence.”

“Oh, I would not say ‘famed’.”

“I recall something about an ancient generation ship.”

“Yes, all that effort tracking it down, but it proved a disappointment.”

The two of them seemed to have forgotten I was there, and were playing some kind of game.

“What of the passengers?”

“Isolated for so long they had fallen into a god-cult. There was no talking to them.” The professor smiled absently. “Perhaps my appearance provoked a schism. True believers of my Advent warring with doubters of the Visit.”

“And what became of them?”

The professor shrugged. “I was only there to interrogate the AI.”

“You did not think to help?”

“A situation faced by generations of nature-watchers. Do you save newborns from predators or carry on filming?”

A difficult moment followed; not because the professor was embarrassed by his own opinions, but because his implant must have finally identified who the AP was that he was talking to. “You are an Assassin!” He struggled to recover himself. “Well, I am sure I have nothing to fear. After all, what could I have done to merit someone employing you?” The professor tried to include me in the joke.

“Ask yourself what you have not done,” murmured the Assassin.

The professor’s smile weakened. “I see you have already met this charming young person. Did you know the well-known sun sculptor, Raphael is aboard? And also a Jirt?”

A tutor once set me a project on the Jirt. I never could pronounce Jirt identity-nodes. All I recall now is they’re an old and dominant species, and inveterate (and invertebrate) accumulators of wealth.

“Are you really an Assassin?” I asked after the professor had gone.

A foolish thought occurred to me.

“I am not here for you, either,” said the Assassin. “It is a common reaction and says much about people.”

I’ve been told by my betters that I pout, and that it is not a becoming look. “You’d deny it even if you were.”

The Assassin inclined its silvery head.

That evening, Raphael explained he was on his way to his latest project, a pre-nova sun already being prepped with heavy elements and a weak-force pump, so he could trigger a more controlled and artistic detonation.

“But does the star have inhabited planets?” the Jirt wanted to know. This was the frisson of sun-sculpture, watching populated worlds evaporate. The Jirt fluttered its gills in arthropod excitement.

The AP interrupted. “Wouldn’t your work be just as spectacular in an uninhabited system?”

Raphael acknowledged this, but the Jirt was not satisfied. “The sun will nova anyway; the natives cannot be saved.”

“Cannot?” murmured the AP.

“Who would pay for it?” the Jirt fumed.

“Even if a few could be evacuated,” admitted the professor. “It would not rescue their civilisation, such as it is.”

“Just some lives.”

Raphael made an expansive gesture that translators declined to interpret. “Their lives were always forfeit, but now their end has meaning. This nova will be their memorial.”

“What of other victims of catastrophe?” persisted the Jirt. It drummed a set of legs on the floor. “Would you have us rescue them all?”

It seems to me that translators underplay the anger. As a race, Jirt are very angry.

The AP replied in the staccato Jirt speech, conceding not all sentients could be saved, but that was no reason to eat the eggs of one’s clutchmates.

The Jirt threshed its mouthparts. “You censure the deaths of those too poor to save themselves!”

“Let me tell you something.” The professor glanced from face to face. I saw then that he had let this conversation unfold, hoping for clues. “This one is an Assassin. A notorious assassin. Ask yourselves why it is here, where there is no escaping.”

As one, they turned to stare at the Assassin.

“I am travelling to the Pavonis system,” it explained, “where I have business.”

It spread its silver hands in a human gesture, then seemed to think better of it. “Though with the exception of this lady here, I think the universe would be a better place without you.” It bowed in my direction and left.

The professor was the first to break the silence. “That machine could be here for any one of us. It asked me earlier what I had not done! What defence is there against that?”

“I have rivals,” said Raphael. “But surely...” A look crossed his face. “Though there are activists who oppose my work.”

“Enemies!” cried the Jirt. “Wealth breeds them. So I am prepared.”

Somewhere deep in the Orient, the Jirt must have a secure kernel, difficult to find and hard to crack.

Raphael turned on the Jirt. “You think an Assassin would not have anticipated that?”

The Jirt’s chattering mouthparts stilled. “Then what—”

The professor interrupted. I suppose he’d already come up with a scheme. Of the three, I felt he was the most fearful.

“We cannot know who might be its target, so we should act in concert.” He turned to me. “You will excuse us.” He had no more time for silly girls.

I’m told the approach to Corona Pavonis is spectacular. The light from twin suns diffracted through an accretion disc, etc., etc. I have never been much for cosmic wonders. Besides, it needs a special headset, which is not the same as seeing it.

The Assassin didn’t need the headset and stood at my elbow in the observation bubble. I was chattering about our fellow passengers. Just as well my guardian did not know how much I liked the company of this infamous AP.

“The professor is so pompous...” I paused. From around us came the rumble of machinery.

At the time I had no idea what was happening, and even now I’m not sure in what order events tried to kill me.

I was suddenly whirled about while the air was sucked from my lungs. Then the observation bubble vanished and there was pain, so much pain. I understand now it was water boiling out of me and my eyeballs freezing over. And there, serenely sailing on without us, was the Jumpship Orient.

You will think me a feeble heroine of my own story, but there is no way for flesh to survive exposure to vacuum for more than a few seconds, yet here I am to tell the tale. By enfolding me in some way I don’t understand, it seems the Assassin saved my life.

Of course explosive decompression and space temperatures are bad for the human body, and for some time afterwards I was immersed in a Med Tank. Even now I don’t believe my eyes are a good match, and I have patches of unpleasantly pink skin which I am assured will darken to normal in time.

After I was decanted, I received a visit from the Orient’s haggard-looking Captain. She explained the observation bubble was an add-on when the Jumpship was upgraded for live passengers. Fail-safes had somehow failed; mechanisms that were dormant somehow woke up, and the bubble sloughed off into space.

The Captain regretted these unfortunate events and hoped for my understanding. I may seem young and naive, but my lawyers would be contacting the Orient’s parent company.

The Assassin also visited later and was modest about the part it played in my survival. “I am not easily murdered, though deliberately spacing me must have seemed as effective. The Orient could not change course, but I was able to sacrifice mass to manage a rendezvous, an ability no one would have predicted.”

“Murder? But the Captain said...” Now it was all over, the notion of murder was strangely intriguing. “So when you said they had nothing to fear,” I mused. “One of them didn’t believe you. Someone with a guilty secret perhaps.”

“It was all three.”

“A conspiracy!”

“I am inured to risk, but you were innocent, and they did not care. In fact, your death would have made the idea of an accident more plausible.”

“Between them, they might have had the necessary skills, I suppose, but can we prove it?” The young heroine in immersives is often hampered by technicalities like proof.

“There is no need. Regrettably, the Orient will not emerge with any credit from so many accidents.”

“So many?”

“The three fatal accidents aboard,” explained the Assassin. It shrugged.

Eloquently, I felt.