Early on a Tuesday morning Lieutenant Mitsu Morgan of the San Francisco Police, Homicide Division, slides two steaming bowls of apple-cinnamon oatmeal out of the microwave and plops them down in front of her kids. Alan and Trish barely notice, since they’re fighting over the remote for the TV, which drones about weather on the opposite wall. Mitsu slops milk over the cereal, slops a little into her coffee, then intervenes.

“Trish! His turn. You got Doctor Blast-off.”

With one last whine on a dying fall Trish surrenders the remote. Mitsu checks the time — another hour before she’s due down at the Hall of Justice, less before Trish needs to get to her live tutorial. While she wonders if her current day-care person will make it on time, she pours herself more coffee and the kids juice. Synth music floods the kitchen.

“Down!”

The music drops to a tolerable level. On the huge screen a consumer tape-crawl show is gearing itself up, the Admart Experience, or so this one terms itself.

“Alan, love, why are you watching this?”

“Cause Dad promised to buy me a jetboard for the lake this summer if I could find a good one used.”

“Ah. Well, you know, I wouldn’t put a lot of energy into it. Your Dad sometimes has trouble remembering things.”

Alan grins and holds up a comp stick.

“I got it in writing.”

Mitsu laughs and hands dribbling Trish a paper napkin. Alan shoves the stick into his notebook’s slot and sits poised, vulture like, over the record button.

“Something good comes on, I’m gonna bank it for Dad to watch later.”

On the TV the music fades to a mutter. While Mitsu shoves dishes into the washer and sorts the piles of school junk and old mail that always seem to fetch up onto kitchen counters, she finds herself watching bits and pieces of the show, an endless loop of home-made ads. Nervous sapients, both human and lizzie, stand in front of home holocams and stumble through their spiels while their unwanted material goods sit sullenly beside them, old zap ovens and comp units, collections of twentieth century Elvis plates, camping equipment, fiber-hide luggage, nearly-new lamps in the shape of Saturn and its rings, and every now and then a really peculiar object, such as an alabaster globe on a Lucite stand. Down in one corner of the screen lot numbers flash while across the top, the station’s link code hangs, gleaming pink and begging viewers to call toll-free and bid. Finally, just when Mitsu wonders if her kids might be better off watching sex and violence, a pale blue void swirls and forms into the long thin oval of a Val Chiri Gan face. She stops working to stare.

Under a thatch of black hair a huge brow-ridge proclaims him male, and he wears faceted jewels inlaid directly into that sweep of cartilage so that they protrude through the thin gray skin in a pattern of sparkle and scars. His tiny eyes gleam golden: he’s from a northern clan, then. For a long time he merely stares into the cam lens, his thin slit of a mouth working, driven by some deep feeling. That he would show feeling shocks her as much as his appearance on this advertising channel. Mitsu speaks out of sheer instinct.

“Alan, record this.”

He hits the button on his notebook. At last the Val Chiri raises a speaker-unit in his top-right three-clawed hand and presses it to his long, ridged throat. No Val Chiri mouth can produce more than a few American sounds, any more than a human one can cope with the Gan-Girun syllabary.

“I acknowledge all who watch and listen.” The formal greeting sounds grotesquely appropriate. “By the time this my image speaks to you, I shall be dead. I record this message at 2000 hours of March the nineteen in the year forty-one of our common era known as the time in which our people have met one another. I apologize to this city of San Francisco for the trouble my murdering shall cause to be upon its police officers. I have drawn up what is termed here a will, which shall be made public once my death is discovered, so that all may read its provisions and know I speak truth. One of the provisions of that will is this. To the San Francisco Police Force I leave, for the sole purpose of giving to whomever it should be who provides the evidence that produces the discovering of my murderer’s identity, I bequeath as I say four times forty-four times four again kilograms of pure gold.”

On the screen the Val Chiri pauses, as if allowing his listeners a chance at an expletive.

“That’s lots,” Trish says. “Right?”

“Multo lots, love,” Mitsu says. “Now please, let’s listen.”

“I cannot say who will be murdering me, or I would save all much inconvenience. I do hope that this reward will be bringing forth witnesses and informants.”

The Val Chiri lowers the voice unit and stares once again into the lens. Then he touches his eye-ridge with one finger of his top-left hand and speaks what seems to be a single sentence in his own language.

Mitsu cannot understand one word.

The void swirls, then reforms itself into a living-den, where a female lizzie in a purple sarong is trying to sell her old incubators. Mitsu reaches over the table and punches the stop button on Alan’s notebook.

“Sorry, love, but I gotta have that flat. Go get yourself a new one out of my office.”

“But Mom! It’s the one with Dad’s promise on it!”

Mitsu stops herself from venting her feelings.

“Well, rats,” she says instead. “Tell you what. If he tries to back out, I’ll break my own rule and interfere. That’s the best I can do. I got no idea if anyone down at work’s recorded this message, and it’ll take all day to subpoena the crawl station.”

“You mean this is a case?” Alan’s eyes grow wide. “I thought that dude was just some actor dubbed over or something.”

“Nope. I got this sinking feeling it’s all real.”

And what’s more, she thinks, it’ll be mine to handle. Although Mitsu’s never been to deep space, she’s traveled out of the gravity well to a watch station a couple of times, and by some perverse logic on the part of the higher-ups, cases involving aliens always come to her. Alan slides the flat out and hands it over. Mitsu tucks it into the shirt pocket of her uniform, grabs Trish’s bowl just as Trish tries to pick it up and drink the last of the milk out of it.

“You have a glass, and there’s more milk on the table.”

The CopComm unit at her belt begins to beep hysterically. The doorbell rings. Mitsu sets down the sticky bowl.

“That must be Elena. Trish, love, go answer it. I gotta take this call. Alan, turn off the TV. Now!”

Without one word of back-talk they follow orders. It will be the last satisfying moment of Mitsu’s day.

oOo

The Val Chiri Gan delegation has rented two floors of the New Palace Hotel down on lower Market Street. Three pink ziggurats joined by ramps and enclosed bridges, it hunkers around a triangular court yard that, at the moment, swarms with police. Mitsu’s partner is waiting for her at the gold-veined synthmarble registration desk in Building One — Sergeant Bill Hoffman, a skinny blond Cauc with a perpetually runny nose. Not even gene transplants can cure his allergies to the yellow skies of Earth.

“We got the area cordoned off,” he announces. “No one speaks much American up there, but I did find one guy. Jeez, Morgan, these people are weird. I bet they really are psychics, just like you always hear.”

“Medic team on the job yet? The lab dudes?”

“Sure are.”

“Well, let’s go up. See what we can see.”

Mitsu strides off across the lobby toward a bank of bronze-colored turbolifts. Bill trots after.

“You don’t think they’re psychic, huh?” he says.

“Think it’s a lot of bull.”

“But I saw this special, it was on one of the nets. The Secret World of the Val Chiri Gan. Come on, they wouldn’t spend a whole hour on a special if it wasn’t true.”

“Bill, sometimes I wonder how you got into police work.”

Bill opens his mouth to answer, shuts it fast, and contents himself with a scowl.

The turbolift drops them at a white corridor carpeted in white. The air is hot, sticky with artificial humidity and the spicy scent of Val Chiri. The first thing Mitsu notices is that all the doors to the various rooms have been removed; the second, that huge potted tree ferns of a kind she’s never seen before make a green and random maze out of the halls. Val Chiri Gan males drift from room to room or stand under the ferns and stare. Since they’re a small people, maybe 1.2 meters on an average, they seem to scuttle whenever they move on their four lower appendages, which can be either arms or legs depending on need. They always hold their heads and top arms upright on double-jointed torsos, and since they’re draped and swathed in layers of cloth, mostly blue and a metallic gold, Mitsu finds herself thinking of beetles. Sharply she reminds herself that they’re as warm-blooded as she is, mammals of a sort, and intelligent as all hell.

As they walk down the hall, dodging ferns and pedestrians alike, she glances into rooms. Hanging panels of multi-colored cloth, a scatter of tubular cushions, big wooden boxes, small and shiny brass things, more ferns — no real furniture to speak of, only Val Chiri males, standing and talking in low chirps and mutters, sitting and staring at nothing. Occasionally someone looks up and waves an upper arm, a gesture mimicking the human one and meant to be friendly. She waves back and keeps walking. The scent, a mix of something like cinnamon, something like roses, and the tang of an open sea, seems to billow around them. Beside her Bill sneezes, stops to blow his nose and snort. His eyes are bright red.

“You want to go take over on the street?”

“Thanks, sir, but no. I’ll be okay.” He’s fishing in the cargo pocket of his walking shorts. “Brought a lot of kleenex and some pills.”

At a T-junction the corridor ends. One arm of the T leads to an open doorway, where a cop stands glowering.

“The master suite.” Bill waves a kleenex in its direction. “Where the murdered dude lived with his. . .well, I guess it’s his family. There sure are a lot of them.”

“The victim was high-status, then.”

“You bet. That reminds me. Got a call from Washington.

“Washington? Jeezus christ.”

“Yeah. They sounded hysterical. You’re supposed to call them back once you got something real to tell them. Turns out that these people are here to dicker over the terraforming project on Venus.”

“And without their engineers, it’s no go?”

“Yep. We gotta be real careful. Can’t cause a diplomatic incident, no matter what the cost, the guy said.”

“Okay, I gotcha. Let’s be real nice and polite.”

Down at the opposite end of the T sapients and ‘bots crowd round a pair of double doors — med techs, the pathologist, a big anti-grav flat of equipment, three beat cops dressed in regulation blue. In among them, swathed in gold lamè, a Val Chiri is standing on his lowest legs to make himself look taller. His bluish-gray hair has been swept up in a plume as well. Around his neck like a necklace hangs a speaker-unit.

“Those doors leads outside, don’t they?” Mitsu says.

“To one of the enclosed bridges, and the bridge leads to the other building, so the doors are never locked.”

“So anyone could have come through there last night?”

“You bet.”

“And the corpse was found?”

“Just on the other side of those doors. Kind of slumped up against them, like he was trying to get back in.”

As they approach, the pathologist hurries over to give her report. The murdered sape died at some time between 0000 and 0400 hours of multiple stab wounds from a thin curved blade. One wound, inflicted from the front, pierced the main heart. For the others, which seem to have been made after death, the knife entered from the back between the shoulder blades and grazed the secondary heart.

“I get the impression that he reflexively twisted round to grab at the door handles,” she finishes up. “But he would have been dead before he could touch them. There’s blood on the corpse’s forehead, too. He might have cut himself as he fell into the door.”

“These wounds on his back?” Mitsu says. “Made by someone in a rage?”

“Good guess, lieutenant. Why else stab a dead man?”

With the rustle of cloth-of-gold the Val Chiri with the speaker unit joins them. He folds his top four legs over his torso and bows to Mitsu, then puts the box back into position.

“You are the officer in charge?”

“Sure am. Thank you for being willing to humble yourself by translating our unworthy words into your tongue.”

“I will endeavor to do so to the limit of my poor powers.” He bobs his head rapidly. “But there is something I must be making clear at the very beginning of your most excellent investigation. We cannot surrender to you the body of our leader. We must have it here tonight for the traditional ceremony.”

“Well, sir, I’d never interfere with someone’s religious beliefs, but couldn’t we pick it up for the autopsy after the ceremony?”

“That will be impossible. I cannot say why.”

“Well, then, we’ll do the autopsy and return it to you for the ceremony.”

“That will be impossible. I cannot say why.”

Mitsu decides that arguing can wait till later.

“Well, let’s start getting some information.”

Bill brings out his notebook and turns it on.

“Now, sir, if you’ll just give me the victim’s full name, and yours as well.”

“I cannot do so. Honored lieutenant, you are not of Chiri Gan. You are doubtless not understanding what you are asking. I am sure in my many cells, deep as you say, that you do not understand how you are giving offense by asking for such a personal thing as a name.”

“Most certainly I mean no offense, honored translator. But our courts of law will demand names.”

“But honored lieutenant, will this matter truly become dragged into a public court?”

If Washington’s involved, he has a point.

“Okay, Bill, for now, put the victim down as M. M. Murdered Male.”

“And you may describe me as Brother of M.M, and we are Clan Milac’ Abri.” The Val Chiri bobs his head again. “Honored lieutenant, you display tact and understanding worthy of diplomats.”

In the conversation that follows Mitsu needs every shred of those qualities that she possesses. Formal compliments, circumlocutions, evasions, hints, and half-truths — she hears them all, but never a simple statement, though at the same time, never an outright lie. Her other dealings with Val Chiri have convinced her of their essential honesty, which is why, she supposes, they’ve developed such elaborate ways of hedging the truth, just as, she’s sure, Brother of M.M. is hedging now. She’s willing to bet a chance at promotion that he either knows or thinks he knows the identity of the murderer — not, of course, that he’s going to tell her. What he does talk about, at great length, is the structure of the clan, more than they ever would have thought to ask or wanted to know. Finally, after a frustrating hour, she cuts him short.

“Tell me, honored voice of Clan Milac’ Abri, if these things we are recording are true. The murdered male, former First Man of your clan, left his suite last night at about 1800 hours. None knew where he might be going, because it was not their position in life to question him. I, however, guess that he went to the public studio of the Admart show in order to record his message. One of my assistants will confirm or deny that fact. However, he never returned to the suite. In the morning, about 0600 hours, First Wife went to search for him, as was indeed part of her position after so long an absence. He had recently been ill, too, and she was worried because of that. She found him in none of the rooms of the suite and came out into the hallway here. Something struck her about the outside doors, and she opened them to find her husband’s body. When she screamed, Second Wife and First Son heard her and came to help. First Son told the women to leave the body as they found it and sent Third Son, who had also joined them by then, to fetch you, Second Man of Clan Milac’ Abri. You then called the police.”

“That is correct, Honored Lieutenant.”

“May I ask you why you called us?”

He stiffens, glancing this way and that.

“It was the correct thing to do.”

“Certainly, but Val Chiri tend to solve these problems on their own, when they can.”

“It was the message.” He seems to be forcing himself to look her in the eye. “Third Son saw it during its first showing on that execrable television program. Soon the police would have called without doubting.”

“Thank you for being so frank. Will you accompany me to look at your brother’s corpse? Or will that be too painful?”

“I have seen it once. I can look again.”

The med-techs have laid the murdered man flat on the floor of the connecting bridge. Colored shadows fall across him from the stained glass insets in the bridge walls. The Brother joins her as she flips the end of the sheet back for a look at the victim’s face. For a moment Mitsu mistakes the smear of dry orange blood across his brow-ridge for a shadow.

“Hey, wait,” she says. “One of the jewels is missing. A diamond, I think it was.”

“You are correct, honored lieutenant. It was a white diamond.” Automatically he touches his own brow ridge, where a single red jewel glimmers. “It is part of First Man’s station in life to carry the wealth of the clan within his body. The rest of us carry only a few gems of little value, for use in emergencies, I think your word is.”

“I see. Looks like that diamond got pried out with the point of a sharp knife. Like maybe the one that killed him.”

“Perhaps this is merely robbery? Yes, that must be it. That jewel was worth very many of your dollars. Perhaps one of your poor people was overwhelmed by his need to care for his family.”

“Do you really think that your brother’s murderer had only money on his mind? If so, he would have taken all the jewels.”

Brother turns pale and studies the floor. Because she needs him, Mitsu lets him off the hook. She goes to a window and looks out and down. Identical bridges run between the two buildings at every other floor, so that it would be the easiest thing in the world for someone to do the murder here at Building One, rush back to Building Two, take a lift down and cross back to Building One again. She realizes then that she’s sure the murderer was another Val Chiri. Whom else would Brother bother to protect?

“Now then, honored voice, I need to speak to First Wife. I want to know what made her open those doors.”

“What you ask is impossible. No male from outside her clan may speak to a Val Chiri wife.”

“Honored voice, I happen to be female.”

Apparently, comic surprise is one of those things that cuts across cultural boundaries. Brother’s eyes bulge, and he opens and shuts his mouth several times very fast.

“Honored lieutenant, I am guilty of shame and horrifying insult. I pray with all my hearts that you will be forgiving me for this terrible terrible mistake. You sapients who are not of Chiri Gan — you look so much alike, male and female both. I will escort you to speak with First Wife.”

“You are forgiven, honored voice. Bill, give me that recorder, okay? Get the med techs’ final report, make sure the photo guys have double the usual number of record shots, and then get the corpse on a gurney. No need to let him lie out here.”

Brother thanks her wordlessly with a low and curling bow.

In a group of other women First Wife sits in the innermost room of the suite, a white cube hung with red and blue banners and littered with objects: piles of metallic bowls and flat shapes, wooden boxes, fiber-hide sacks, lengths of cloth, cushions, all tumbled and scattered about. She herself wears white gauze and sits silent and immobile on an upturned wooden chest. Her female face, smooth and hairless, nearly featureless except for the tiny eyes, the lipless slit of mouth, is so pale, so utterly closed that Mitsu finds herself thinking of that strange alabaster globe she saw on the morning’s AdMart. All around First Wife the other females alternately curl up into balls like some jointed beetle, then stretch out again, holding their arms up to the Val Chiri idea of heaven, perhaps, and shrieking out a tone so high-pitched that Mitsu’s ears can barely register it. At a word from Brother, they stop and flee, scuttling off into the other rooms of the suite.

“I will tell her that you are female,” Brother remarks. “And that you wish to help us avenge her husband.”

While he speaks, Mitsu kneels to get on the same level with First Wife, who turns her head slowly to face her. Under the white drapery, her top four arms are clutched round her torso.

“Ask her about the doors, honored voice. I don’t want to intrude on her mourning any longer than I can help.”

They speak together briefly.

“She wants only to know when her husband’s body will be returned to her.”

“Once I know who murdered him, she may have the body back.”

Another exchange, and it seems that First Wife’s angry about something, from the way that her arms unclasp and lash back and forth. Mitsu can only assume that the woman’s half-mad with grief.

“She does not remember about the doors, she says. They are not important, she says. She is First Wife. She is used to having her wishes fulfilled.”

“I see. Well, honored voice, if she remembers this detail later, perhaps she might send one of her sons to tell me?”

“They are not her sons, honored lieutenant. They are his sons. She is the one who gave them birth, yes, but he pouched them during their growing into children.”

Mitsu sits back on her heels and reproaches herself for forgetting again. Marsupials. These people are marsupials, and the males produce milk as easily as the females. For some reason she always finds these facts hard to remember.

“Of course, honored voice, and you have my apology for my mistake.”

The pale face of First Wife turns once again to her own. The golden eyes sweep over her, the voice softens when she speaks.

“She offers you sympathy, honored lieutenant, that you have no husband and no clan and must work among males.”

“Then thank her for me. Huh, interesting. Tell me, honored voice, do your women sometimes do male work, then? If they have to, I mean?”

Instead of answering her directly, Brother relays the question to First Wife, who answers slowly, gravely, and he translates the same way.

“Only in situations of great shame, when their husbands and their clan are dead or utterly and completely without honor, and then, only the most menial of work. She wishes you to know that it is a terrible, terrible thing for the daughter of a man to bear such a shame.” He pauses as First Wife says something more. “She says she does not mean to insult you, of course. It is your father’s shame that he could not provide for you, not yours.”

“And your husband did pouch daughters?”

Brother translates; First Wife inclines her head slightly yes in a mimic of a human gesture and holds up a single finger. So. They have an only daughter. When Mitsu looks into her golden eyes, she finds them still impassive, but she knows that she’s been given a clue, a big clue, in the only way that First Wife will be allowed to do so, hidden among female things.

Mitsu meets the daughter a few minutes later, in fact, when she and Brother come out of the suite. The med-techs have laid the body, draped in a morgue sheet, onto a gurney, which now stands, guarded by a pair of officers, in the corridor between the outside doors and the suite. Bill waits nearby, talking with one of the officers. When she hears the word ‘psionics,’ Mitsu has no compunctions about interrupting.

“Bill, I need a comp unit and a place to work on site.”

“Manager’s already thought of that.” Bill gives her a keycard. “We got one opposite the turbo doors on the third floor. He says they keep a few business rooms set up for guests.”

From down the corridor Mitsu hears a shriek coming. She can think of it no other way, than that the shriek, a high-pitched howl of mourning, comes like a living thing, carrying the Val Chiri Gan female along with it. All dressed in flowing white she rushes to the gurney to raise herself up on her lowest legs and throw herself on the body.

“First Daughter,” Brother says. “She is First Wife to Chief Navigator. They and their Second Wife live on the floor below.”

First Daughter has clawed back the sheet to cradle her father’s head in her upper-most hands. Still sobbing she begins to rock back and forth.

“Honored lieutenant, you must release us the body of my brother. The women will be in this pain of grief until the ceremony is performed.”

Mitsu is too busy watching the daughter to answer. She falls silent, shakes herself to pull herself under control, and rests her father’s head on the gurney again. Mitsu walks over and points to the spot where the jewel is missing. The daughter looks, then freezes, crouches, her eyes widening, her breath coming in a long sob. She pulls herself away and drops to race down the hall toward the lift. When Bill starts to follow, Mitsu grabs his arm.

“Let her go. I got what I needed.”

Just as First Daughter reaches the lift, a Val Chiri male steps out of it. First Daughter drops flat onto the carpet at his feet. Snarling and muttering her grabs her top arms and hauls her up, shoves her into the lift, and steps in quickly after her. The doors hiss shut.

“That was Chief Navigator.” Brother is shaking all over as he speaks. “She never should have left her rooms. I mean, there are males up here who are not clan males!”

“Is that the only reason he was so angry, honored voice? That missing jewel? It seemed to mean a lot to her.”

Brother makes a sound under his breath, partly a sob, partly a chitter of rage.

“Theft is always bad.” He hesitates for a long while. “Especially of clan property.”

“You know, sir, if we solve this case quickly, like this afternoon, then we won’t need to do an autopsy. You can hold your ceremony whenever you want.”

For a moment the Val Chiri neither moves nor speaks.

“I have endeavored to assist you in all matters, to the limit of my poor station in life and among our people.”

“Of course, honored voice. I do believe you’ve fulfilled your station in every detail.”

The office that the hotel manager’s given them turns out to be small but serviceable, with two chairs, a desk, and a good comp link station built right into the wall. It’s also sound-proofed, as Bill immediately remarks.

“Sir?” he goes on. “While you were talking to the head wife, Washington called again. Want you to call them back on a secure line right away. They’re getting real worried.”

“Tough. What do you bet they’re going to tell us to sweep this under the rug? We’re going to have to do it, too. But I want to know what happened before I start sweeping.”

Nodding agreement, Bill grabs another kleenex and blows his nose hard. Mitsu sits down at the link station and logs into the main police comp at the Hall of Justice, then has Bill feed in everything he’s noted as well as her recording of the original AdMart message. The CompHQ in turn has a couple of reports for her, one about the victim’s background and his clan, the other about his movements of the night before. He did indeed go down to the AdMart studio to use one of their automated recording booths, then returned to the hotel and gave the night clerk a manila envelope to be put into the safe.

“Looked like papers.” The recording officer on screen is reading from his notes. “Might be the will he talked about, lieutenant. We’re getting a warrant for it now. The clerk logged the package into the safe at 2146 hours, gave the victim a time-stamped receipt, and watched him get into the turbolifts.”

The report ends there. Mitsu feeds an analysis sub-routine into comp, sets it to isolating that sentence of the original message that was in the language of the Val Chiri Gan, then does some hard thinking. A couple of missing hours there, maybe more, between that receipt and his time of death, but First Wife swears — and Mitsu’s inclined to believe her — that he never returned to the suite.

“Family,” she says aloud. “Bill, how many human murders come down to problems between family members or close friends?”

“Bout ninety per cent. But these people aren’t human, sir.”

“Good point, but about how much of our time did old Honored Translator spend talking about his clan?”

Bill grins.

“Ninety per cent, yeah.”

On screen a message comes up. The sentence has been isolated and transcribed into the American alphabet. Since Mitsu still doesn’t understand one word, she accesses the police ROM library. She’s looking for some very specific facts, and once she finds them, she feeds her gleanings into the case file, clears the screen, and enters a handful of keywords to play around with.

“Shame, daughter, a weird name, virtue, jealousy, polygamy, vengeance, provide for, no testimony against.” Bill reads them off. “Against what, sir?”

“No spouse can be forced to testify against his or her spouse. That’s our law, not theirs, but they’d agree with the principle, I bet.”

“Okay. What’s the weird name, N’ya however you say that?”

“Who, not what, and that’s a throat click in the middle. Remember how the victim spoke in his own language? He said, ‘I take leave of you as N’ya!a took his leave.’ The language program in the banks translated it that way, anyway; let’s hope it’s accurate. And in the Oxford Dictionary of Val Chiri Gan Culture I found a story that goes with the name, a classic that everyone would know. Kind of like Shakespeare is to us.”

“Yeah? And the story is?”

“N’ya!a fell in love with one of his son’s wives. Honor said one thing, lust said another. So he screwed the lady and committed suicide and took care of both.”

“No way this could be suicide! And his sons are too young to be married. Old honored bullshitter told us that.”

“Yeah, he sure did, didn’t he? Repeated it a couple of times. He could figure out that we’d get the N’ya!a reference translated, sooner or later. But there’s a son, all right, that he was hoping we’d forget about.”

“The son-in-law.”

“Right. Jeez, Bill, you psychic or something?”

“Go on, make fun of me, but I still think the victim had some kind of psychic powers. I mean, he predicted his own murder, didn’t he?”

“But why didn’t he just name the killer and save us a lot of trouble? If he was psychic, he would’ve known, and he said he didn’t.”

“Well, yeah, I guess so. . .but wait! He said he couldn’t say, not that he didn’t know.”

Mitsu grins.

“Very good, sergeant. Now you’re thinking. Look, let me tell you what I got so far. We have a man who knows he’s going to be murdered. He’s not just afraid of it; he’s sure of it. Yet he doesn’t come to us, even though he must know he’s so important that we’d turn out half the force to protect him.”

“Well, maybe he was afraid we wouldn’t believe him.”

“About this psychic message you got on the brain?” Mitsu smiles to take some sting out of her words. “I’m betting he had other reasons for knowing he was about to die. Bill, these people think in terms of honor and revenge, not laws. M.M. did something that was going to bring vengeance down on him in a big way, but he felt he couldn’t reveal who that someone was.”

“Like he had to protect his murderer?”

“Maybe. And he had to think about his dependents, too. The Val Chiri men take their responsibilities to the clan real seriously. Unto the seventh generation and all that jazz.”

“Huh. So if he jumped the gun and offed this dude before the dude could off him, what would happen to his family?”

“That’s one of the things I just looked up. If a man murders someone, all his children old enough to live outside the pouch are taken away for adoption. Any pouchlings are drowned. His wives are stripped of any and all goods they might have inherited and thrown penniless onto the street to fend for themselves. He himself is killed, of course, in some real painful way. I didn’t ask for details.”

“Jeez. Vengeance? You bet.”

A knock on the door, and Bill jumps up, answers it, and comes back with a flat envelope and a big handful of receipts.

“Warrant came. Here’s the stuff from the hotel safe.”

Mitsu rips open the package and finds, just as they all had expected, the last will and testament of the Val Chiri known as Tarrgon ga Elba!a-ach, AKA the Murdered Male. She scans it over and finds what she’s looking for.

“Interesting,” she says. “He left the clan monies to his brother, of course, who’s going to be First Man now. Then he set aside half of his personal fortune for the reward he offered and divided up the rest among everyone in his immediate family, except First Daughter.”

“Hey, that’s a shocker! I got the impression that he and his daughter were real close.”

“Yep, bet they were.” She waves the print-out vaguely in Bill’s direction. “This was exactly what I suspected, and I think we got our case, whether Washington lets us bring our perp in or not.”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

“Think about the reward, Bill. That’s the hot key to press. Do you really think a clannish bunch like the Val Chiri — jeez, they base their whole lives on their position in their family — do you really think First Man would give all that cash to a stranger?” She stands up. “Scan that will into the case file while I’m gone, will you? Thanks. Are there any women officers assigned to the hotel?”

“Yeah. You need to go interview First Wife again?”

“Nope. First Daughter.”

Mitsu finds the people she needs — three female officers and her translator — in the corridor near the corpse. In fact, it seems that every male Val Chiri in the clan has squeezed into the narrow space to sit down on the floor around the former First Man’s gurney. They say nothing, barely move, merely sit and stare at the police keeping them from performing the last rites for their leader. Mitsu uses CopComm to get replacement guards up before she takes the women officers away.

“Honored lieutenant.” Brother’s pressed the speaker unit so hard into his larynx that it buzzes. “We must do the ceremony soon!”

“I understand that, honored voice. I’m about to wrap this thing up.”

Brother goes rigid, his torso arched back, his hands clenched, his face draining to a dead and ashy gray.

“Honored voice, your brother was a far-seeing and clever man. If his daughter has inherited one gram of his courage, the thing you’re so afraid of won’t happen.”

He sighs and lets himself relax, adjusting the speaker before he talks.

“She is a female fit to fulfill her position as First Wife. I can but hope you are correct.”

First Daughter receives them in a big room with windows that give out onto a view of the San Francisco bay, dark blue in the spring sun, and the East Bay hills, hidden behind yellow haze. Thanks to the blue tint in the glass, the polluted sky looks green. Dressed in white, her strangely smooth head emerging from a twist of scarf, she sits calmly on a human-style fiber-hide hassock. At her feet, sobbing, crouches another Val Chiri female, dressed in black.

“Second Wife,” Brother explains.

“Ask First Daughter, honored voice, where her husband is.”

At the question, First Daughter points with a top arm toward a closed door and speaks, slowly and calmly. Second Wife howls, then falls silent, curling round herself and clutching at her clothes with all four hands.

“He has locked himself in that room,” Brother says. “He refuses to come out.”

At that, Mitsu knows her theory is correct. She kneels down to look directly into First Daughter’s golden eyes.

“Tell her this, honored voice. Your father was a wise man in all ways save one, and that one was the love of women. Will you not take the provision he left for you?”

When Brother speaks, First Daughter stares across the room at the far wall. For a long time after the translator falls silent, she says nothing, her mouth a thin, tight line, while the younger female slowly uncurls herself and begins to snivel and whine. Although Brother doesn’t translate, Mitsu can guess that she’s begging the senior wife for something. Mitsu wonders if their husband is listening, crouched like a hunted animal behind the bedroom door, or if he’s killed himself. If it weren’t for Washington’s interference, she would order the door broken down, but as it is, she waits. At last First Daughter cuts Second Wife short with a wave of a middle arm and begins to speak. Brother translates a phrase or sentence at a time.

“Last night, my husband returned to our bed very late, at perhaps the second hour of your night. I pretended to sleep so that he would not press himself upon me. He tossed this way and that, then got up and left the sleeping room. After a few moments I too rose and went to the door. I looked through a crack and saw him hiding some object in that box there.” She points to one of the wooden chests. “This morning, I found blood upon the clothes he was wearing last night. I have saved those clothes. I suspect the blood is that of my father.”

“And so do I.” Mitsu stands up, motioning to one of the officers. “Open it.”

Second Wife howls, arching her back and throwing her head from side to side. Brother kicks her into silence and begins to berate her.

“Leave her be!” Mitsu snaps. “Could she really have turned the First Man down when he wanted to have sex with her?”

Brother shuts up. First Daughter puts a middle arm around her junior’s shoulders and draws her close, a gesture of protection, as they watch the police officer open the chest. She takes a plastic bag out of her belt pouch and uses it to lift the murder weapon out.

“Looks like it’s been wiped,” Reilly says. “But you never know. There might be a print or two left. And what’s this? A diamond. Jeez, and a big one.”

“Yep,” Mitsu says. “The bride-price. He took it as payment for the despoiling of Second Wife.”

oOo

“And so First Daughter gets all that gold to start a new life somewhere for her and Second Wife,” Mitsu says. “It’s not an inheritance, so it can’t be taken away from her even though she’s the murderer’s wife. Brother was implying that if we go along with Washington and never bring this to court, the clan will let them keep their children, too, even the pouchling. Sounds like a good bargain to me, since Washington won’t let us prosecute anyway.”

“Might as well give in gracefully, huh?” Bill pauses to smear his red, scabby nose with some sort of medicated jelly. “God, I’m glad we’re getting out into the air.”

“You’ve suffered for justice, pal, for sure.”

“Glad someone realizes it. Oh well, virtue’s its own reward, huh?”

“You bet. Let’s get back to the station. I’ll put in a final call to Washington on the secure line there. Our murderer’s probably dead by now, whether he killed himself or the new First Man did it for him.”

Since Bill’s already cleared all traces of their work off the hotel comp banks, they leave the tiny office and head for the turbolifts. Even several floors below the actual living quarters, the scent of Val Chiri Gan drifts around them through the air-conditioning vents.

“One last thing I don’t understand,” Bill says. “That ceremony. Why do they have to hold it right away? I mean, what do they do that couldn’t wait for an autopsy?”

“Eat him raw.”

“What?”

“They eat their dead clan members. It’s a ritual thing, or so I found out from the ROM library. Everyone in the clan gets a serving. They see it as taking a part of him into their bodies, kind of like a pouchling. That way the dead become part of the living family, and they can never be separated again. But it’s not like they enjoy it or anything, so in this warm weather, they need to get it over and done with while he’s still fresh.”

For a minute Mitsu’s afraid that Bill is going to throw up, but he gathers himself with a gulp and a sigh.

“Well, whatever’s right,” he says at last. “But jeez, sir, in my opinion that’s carrying togetherness just a little too far.”

First published in Whatdunits

Edited by Mike Resnic & Martin H. Greenberg, DAW 1992

Copyright © 1992 by Katharine Kerr