Звезда Пандоры

“I hope so.” Her hand moved up and down, as if physically weighing the cylinder, demonstrating her reluctance. Then she brought it up and slapped it into the hooked end of the tentacle. Qatux hurriedly pulled it back. “Don’t take too long,” she admonished.

“A week. No more. I will call you. I promise.”

The wall parted again to let them out.

“That’s it?” Hoshe asked. “We just leave her memory with Qatux?”

“You heard. Qatux will call when he’s finished.”

“Hell, I thought…” Hoshe lowered his voice. “I thought we were taking it to some Raiel authority, a forensics lab. Something official!”

“What do you want? A mayor or a president with a signature certificate on a court warrant? The High Angel lets us in, the Raiel city gives us access; it doesn’t get any more official than this.”

Hoshe took a long breath, he really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Chief Investigator. But he was police, too; maybe not like her, but he had a sense of right and wrong, of justice. “All I’m saying is, it took the Oaktier Supreme National Court three days to grant us copy authority to Shaheef’s secure store memory. And if it had been anybody else but you applying, we probably wouldn’t have got that. Isn’t that an indicator of how highly we value a secure store? This is a person’s life we’re dealing with here, her whole life. And now you just hand it over to some sick alien.”

“Yes it’s her life. But that life was entrusted to us when she was murdered.”

“Alleged murder.”

“It is time you learned that passing your own judgment and acting upon it is essential to our profession. Have some confidence in yourself and your ability, Detective.”

Hoshe scowled, though he knew his cheeks were reddening. He walked through the bizarrely lit alleys next to the Chief Investigator, both of them keeping silent.

The lift door was still open when they arrived back at it.

“They pity him, you know,” Paula said as they started their descent back down the stalk.

“Who?”

“The other Raiel. They pity Qatux. You understand what he is, don’t you?”

“I think so.”

“They’re an old race. They have dignity and grace in abundance, their minds are far superior to ours. We’re only a few generations away from our hunter-gatherer ancestors; while the Raiel are so far past that rung on their evolutionary ladder they’re almost a different species to the creatures they left behind. It leaves them vulnerable to certain things. I’m not making excuses for what Qatux is, but I understand his fall. We can cope with raw emotion because we’re still close to the animal origin. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an entity who has never experienced love or hate or anger or joy to be exposed to such feelings. Shock, I guess. For the majority of them, anyway. Most Raiel are mentally strong enough to dismiss it. But the weaker ones, they can become addicted. That’s what happened to Qatux; he’s a human junkie. He loves us. And I think it’s the saddest thing in the universe.”

“So he’s reliving Shaheef’s memories?”

“Not reliving, he’s becoming her. Every experience, every sight, every sound, he knows them. You heard him, it’ll take a week to absorb a hundred years of her life. When it’s done, we’ll be able to ask him anything about any day, hour, or minute of her life, and get a coherent answer.”

“All right, but I don’t see the need. We can do that, we don’t need a Raiel.”

“Have you ever reviewed someone’s memory, Hoshe?”

“No,” he admitted.