I Count the Lights

SELVAN HORI, TERRAN AMBASSADOR TO PREVARIS, paused on the stairs that spiralled around the Tower of the Silent God and peered anxiously at the pool of shadow in front of him. One of the green lights that gleamed eerily every nine steps had just gone out, vanishing as he stepped away from the previous light, and between the darkness and the black stone, it looked disconcertingly like the next dozen or so steps had entirely vanished. Since he was currently some two hundred feet above the cobblestoned courtyard of the Temple complex that was not a comforting thought.

The air around him moaned with the constant song of the Tower, carved here and there with complicated openings that turned it into a giant organ pipe, played by the sea breeze by day and the land breeze by night, so that only in the stillness of dawn and sunset did it fall completely silent. The complex chord engendered awe and tranquility in Prevarians, apparently, but it contained enough subsonic frequencies that the dominant human response was faint terror.

The steps haven’t gone anywhere, he told himself. The light has just gone out.

But he paused anyway, partly to gather his courage, partly to give his pounding heart a chance to slow and his breathing a chance to steady.

“I count the lights.”

Alfred Kelvas, Head of Security for the Terran Diplomatic Mission to Prevaria, tapped the soundbud in his right ear and glanced at the flexible screen on the underside of his left wrist. The datalink status indicators glowed green. As far as the AI back in the Embassy was concerned, that had been an accurate translation of the short squeaking phrase the blue-skinned Prevarian monk hunched on the stone bench before him had just uttered.

Maybe the translation had been faulty in the other direction. Kelvas decided to try again.

“I’m sorry, I think the translator may have malfunctioned,” he said, while the speaker concealed in the breastplate of the body armour he wore under his dark green uniform squeaked like a demented mouse. “I asked your name.”

The monk splayed his three-fingered hands and turned them rapidly from side to side, the Prevarian equivalent of a vigorous nod. He squeaked again. “I count the lights.”

Kelvas forced down his irritation. Two days ago, Ambassador Selvan Hori had fallen from the three-hundred-foot Tower of the Silent God, the central feature of both the Temple and the capital city of Prevaria. Support for the painstakingly negotiated trade agreement between Terra and Prevaria was plummeting as fast as the late ambassador had. Kelvas’s superiors were demanding answers, the Prevarian Motivator, roughly equivalent to the Terran Prime Minister, faced revolt from the hard-core isolationists on her Council of Satraps, the Navy was making contingency plans for a complete withdrawal...and somewhere, the planetary pillagers who lurked in the shadows between the civilized stars were gathering their mercenary forces in anticipation of moving in and taking over. Prevaria stood on the brink of invasion, conquest, and environmental ruin, though its politicians didn’t seem to grasp that reality.

All of that meant increasing pressure on Kelvas to find some answers. He didn’t have time for malfunctioning translators.

Nor did he have time for the cheerful tri-tone bell that suddenly sounded in his earbud. “Excuse me,” he said to the monk. “I have an incoming communication.”

“I count the lights,” the monk said...possibly.

Grimacing, Kelvas stepped off to one side. He tapped twice on his earbud to accept the call. “What is it, Simon?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” Simon’s deep voice came back, “but Tyrone Boynton is in your outer office. He’s been there since this morning. Five hours and counting.”

Kelvas closed his eyes. “With Eve, I suppose?”

“No, sir,” Simon said. “By himself.”

Kelvas’s eyes flew open again. That was new.

Eve Boynton had been after him for weeks to find a job for Tyrone in the Embassy. Kelvas liked Eve. He’d known her back on Earth; she’d come to their house in Bozeman for dinner once or twice, on weekend jaunts from the Diplomatic Corps Training Centre in Geneva, and his wife, Annie, had liked her, too. She’d barely mentioned her brother then—he and Annie had gathered Tyrone still lived with their parents, and was attending some kind of special school, but Eve hadn’t said exactly what kind of school or why he needed to attend it.

But then, a few weeks ago, Tyrone Boynton had showed up here, on Prevaria, arriving on the regularly scheduled Navy supply ship, taking advantage of the rule that allowed family members to visit staff on station, at least in locations where nobody was shooting at each other. By the regulations, he was due to return to Terra on the next ship headed that way, in about a fortnight. But a week ago Eve had come to Kelvas, Tyrone in tow. They’d sat in his office, Eve stiff and upright in one of the leather-covered chairs in front of his desk, Tyrone in the other. No taller than Eve—and Eve was not a tall woman—he had an oddly unfinished look, his facial features soft and doughy. He’d sat with his eyes downcast, rocking slightly in his chair, his hands, too big for the rest of his body, gripping his knees tightly the entire time.

Eve had told Kelvas why Tyrone had come to Prevaria: the siblings’ parents had died and she’d begged the authorities to send him to her. He couldn’t live on his own, she’d explained. If he’d stayed on Earth—or if he returned there—he would be institutionalized. Eve, her voice breaking, had begged Kelvas to allow Tyrone to stay.

The trouble was, the Diplomatic Corps rules were clear: to live on Prevaria in the Embassy compound long-term—and draw a Diplomatic Corps paycheque—Tyrone had to have a job...of which there were none suitable to someone of his limited mental capacity. Kelvas had explained all that. Eve had begged. He’d finally gotten rid of her by agreeing to “see what he could do,” but in fact he hadn’t given it another thought—certainly it hadn’t crossed his mind since the Ambassador’s death.

He wouldn’t have been particularly surprised to hear that Eve was waiting in his outside office, hoping to press her case further, but Tyrone by himself? That made no sense at all. The young man hadn’t said a word when he’d been with his sister.

“What is he doing?” he asked Simon.

“Sitting. Staring at the Persons of Interest screen. Rocking back and forth,” Simon said. “Special Agent Eston is the Officer of the Day. I could ask him to come take Tyrone away but...I think that would frighten him.”

“Probably,” Kelvas agreed. “I assume you’ve called Eve?”

“I’ve tried, sir, but she’s on duty in the comm centre, and you know how crazy things are there since the...incident. She’s out of touch for another couple of hours.”

Kelvas sighed. “And I presume you’ve told Tyrone I won’t be back for hours...if at all...today?”

“I tried, sir. I’m not...I’m not sure he understood.”

Kelvas shook his head. He really did not have time for this. “Then let him sit there as long as he wants,” he said, aware he’d let his irritation into his voice and not really caring, either. “Once Eve is off duty, have her come get him.” And then have her make sure he’s on the first ship home, he wanted to add, but didn’t. There’s no place for someone like him here. Especially now.

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else that needs my attention?”

“Mr. Kimblee would like to meet with you.”

Kelvas sighed again. “Let me guess. He’s champing at the bit to organize the withdrawal of the Embassy staff.”

“He did indicate that contingency planning of that sort would be the purpose of the conversation,” Simon said carefully.

John Kimblee, Kelvas’s second-in-command, had never had a good word to say about Prevaria in Kelvas’s hearing: he clearly resented being stationed on a primitive new-contact world without access to the many pleasures of the Core Worlds. He would have closed down the Embassy the second they’d heard about the Ambassador’s death if it had been up to him.

Fortunately, it hadn’t been.

“Tell Mr. Kimblee I will speak to him at my earliest convenience, and leave it at that,” Kelvas said. “Anything else?”

“No, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Just doing your job,” Kelvas said. “No need to apologize.” But don’t bother me again, he wanted to say, and he suspected that, too, seeped into his tone of voice.

“Yes, sir,” Simon said. “Simon out.”

The tri-tone played again, in reverse order.

Kelvas took another look at the screen on the underside of his wrist. All datalinks remained green. He turned back to the waiting monk. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”

Big-eyed like a lemur and with a snout like a dog, the monk looked up at the Tower of the Silent God, looming over the courtyard, and pointed with the longest, central finger of his left hand. “I count the lights!”

Ambassador Hori leaned against the black stone of the Tower, breathing deeply of the cool night air. He’d had no choice but to make this ascent. Prevarian tradition insisted that no treaty could be finalized until the negotiating satraps had ascended the Tower, both to meditate upon the agreement and to show their commitment to upholding it before the Silent God.

The climb was made along this staircase, bereft of any guardrail, which spiralled around the spire’s exterior. Every nine steps glowed a dim green crystal lantern, set above a carved face, each face an Aspect of the God, each unique: some smiling, some frowning, some howling in rage or fear, some slack in sleep or death. Believers offered a silent prayer as they passed each Aspect. Ambassador Hori was not a believer in the Silent God, but he was a somewhat-lapsed Catholic, and now, as he waited to regain his breath, he offered a prayer of his own, to the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of diplomats, that he could make it to the top of the tower without suffering a heart attack.

He dared not fail. To do so could well sabotage the trade agreement he had been working on for six long local years—almost eight Earth years.

He knew well enough there were plenty of Terrans for whom that would be the ideal outcome. For that reason, he was ordinarily accompanied everywhere he went by two bodyguards in constant contact with his head of security, Alfred Kelvas. But the High Deaconness who presided over the Temple Complex had made it clear that no weapons could be carried up the Tower, and since his bioengineered bodyguards were weapons in and of themselves, their presence on the Tower could and would have been seen as sacrilege, and used to derail the impending agreement. And so, over the strong objections of both his bodyguards and Kelvas, whom he had formally absolved of all responsibility for whatever might happen to him during the climb, he had left his men stationed at the foot of the steps, and ascended on his own.

His heart no longer pounded and his breathing came more easily now, and that in turn had lessened some of the sound-spawned disquiet. He was at least two-thirds of the way to the top—he could surely make it the rest of the way. There’s life in the old man yet, he told himself, smiling—it was something his wife liked to say to him. He took a fresh breath and, staying close to the Tower wall, stepped cautiously into the pool of darkness.

Kelvas glared at the monk, still pointing uselessly at the Tower, and then spun away from him. He strode across the courtyard to where the High Deaconness stood with her handmaiden, a young Acolyte, in the shadow of the Tower, already lengthening as the sun sank toward the blue saw-toothed mountain range in the distant west.

“Is there a problem?” the High Deaconness said. Though her loincloth was the same plain white as the monk’s, several jewelled gold bracelets on each arm and a gold circlet on her brow marked her rank as the highest non-secular authority on the planet.

“Yes, High Deaconness,” Kelvas said, “I’m afraid there is. Your so-called ‘witness’ will only say one thing. ‘I count the lights.’”

“I’m sorry,” the Deaconess said. The translator rendered her squeaks as calm and slightly amused. “I thought I had made it clear that Brother Lodolo is one of the Holiest.”

“Yes, I heard that,” Kelvas snapped. He wondered if the translator would accurately render his irritation, and decided he hoped it did. “I thought that meant he would have special knowledge of the Tower. Why does he keep repeating that meaningless phrase?”

“But it is not meaningless,” the Deaconess said, now sounding puzzled. “He is one of the Holiest. The Holiest are those closest to the Silent God, for their minds are uncluttered.”

“Uncluttered?” Kelvas said blankly. Then he understood. “You mean...empty?” He glanced back at Brother Lodolo. “Oh, that’s just wonderful,” he snarled...under his breath, but of course the translator passed the phrase along.

“Is it not?” the Deaconess said. “To be able to concentrate on worship without the distraction of more mundane concerns...the Holiest are the most fortunate of the God’s children.”

Lodolo, clearly agitated, suddenly stood up and strode across the courtyard to Kelvas. He jabbed his finger upward at the Tower. “I count the lights!”

Kelvas’s irritation swelled to the point he had to clench his jaw to keep from saying something so undiplomatic to the Deaconess it might provoke a worse crisis than the one in which they already found themselves. Who am I kidding? he thought sourly. It couldn’t get any worse.

But he needed answers. He needed a witness, and he’d thought that was what he’d been promised. Instead, he’d been presented with the village idiot.

“Thank you,” he said to Lodolo, though gratitude was the farthest thing from his mind. “I’m done.”

He turned away.

Lodolo grabbed his arm. “I count the lights!” he cried. “I count the lights!”

Startled and annoyed, Kelvas pulled his arm free, so hard he tugged the monk off-balance. The little alien stumbled and fell onto his bare blue knees. Kelvas barely noticed. “Who else?” he demanded of the Deaconess.

The handmaiden had hurried forward to help Lodolo to his feet. Kelvas belatedly realized how badly he had just erred when he saw that the Deaconness’s ears had flattened—as bad a sign in a Prevarian as in the dogs they vaguely resembled.

“You will talk to Lodolo, or you will talk to no one,” the Deaconess said. Her squeaks had a sibilant hiss to them he didn’t need the translator to interpret: he had deeply annoyed and offended her, and he couldn’t afford that. If any answers were to be found, they would be found here, at the Tower of the Silent God, where the Ambassador had met his gruesome fate, so close to where Kelvas now stood that he would be walking in the man’s blood if it hadn’t been scrubbed from the stones.

The guards the Ambassador had left at the base of the stairs had heard the impact, halfway around the tower from them. They’d run to the scene. One had spent the next few minutes throwing up while the other, of stronger constitution, had frantically called Kelvas. Meanwhile the monks had also come running. As their religion demanded, they had immediately set about removing the Ambassador’s scattered parts and ritually cleansing the place where he had died. By the time reinforcements had arrived from the Embassy, the Ambassador’s remains had already been burned to ash in the furnace of the central altar, the smoke of his immolation rising up the chimney at the heart of the Tower, completing the ascent his body had fallen so fatally short of.

The fact the Prevarians had disposed of all evidence before the Terrans could even begin their investigation had not inclined the anti-trade forces among the Terrans toward granting the benefit of the doubt, and in turn their accusations of assassination were rapidly driving those few Prevarians still on the fence about the wisdom of trusting the Terrans toward their own anti-trade camp.

If any answers were to be found, it would have to be with the help of the High Deaconess; and so, though it grated on him like fingernails on steel, Kelvas forced himself to say, with as much sincerity as he could manage, “I apologize, High Deaconess.” He looked at the monk, who stood hunched over, rubbing his knees. “Brother Lodolo.” He turned back to the Deaconess. “I am feeling the stress and I allowed it to sharpen my tongue in a most undiplomatic way. Please forgive me.”

The Deaconess’s ears flattened further for a moment, and he thought he had ruined everything; but then they slowly rose. “Apology accepted,” she said. “This is a difficult time for us all.”

I doubt it’s as difficult for you as it is for me, Kelvas thought sourly. Although if the Navy withdraws and your precious Temple is flattened by scavengers pour encourager les autres, it will be.

He turned back to the Brother Lodolo, who had straightened and folded his arms. He rocked from foot to foot. “I count the lights,” he said, the translator giving his voice a pleading tone. “I count the lights. I count the lights.”

“I’m sorry,” Kelvas said. He knew the apology sounded stiff, but he did the best he could. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“Is your translation link broken?” the Deaconess said behind him.

“No,” Kelvas said.

“Then how can you not understand? Lodolo counts the lights.”

“But...why?” Kelvas turned back to her. The handmaiden who had helped Lodolo had taken up her eyes-downcast post at the Deaconess’s left hand once more. “Why does he count the lights?” And how the hell is that of any use? he wanted to add, but didn’t.

“I told you. He is Holiest. His mind is uncluttered, giving room for the presence of the Silent God. He counts the lights because that is how the Silent God has told him to worship.”

This is going nowhere, Kelvas thought again. But diplomacy insisted he continue the charade a little longer. “But...what lights?”

“The lights of the Tower.” The High Deaconess pointed up. “There are five hundred and sixty seven steps on the outside of the tower. Every nine steps, there is a light: sixty-three lights in all. Sixty-three is a holy number, for the holiest number is three, and sixty-three is three threes.”

Three threes? Kelvas frowned for an instant, then understood: the Prevarians calculated in base four, in which the highest digit was three, because they were three-fingered. The numeral 333 in base four equaled 63 in base 10.

“Every night,” the Deaconess continued, “Lodolo walks around and around the tower. He counts the lights, from bottom to top, then from top to bottom, then from bottom to top. He does this sixty-three times, one for each light. Then he ascends the Tower, counting again from bottom to top; and descends, counting from top to bottom. Thus does he worship the Silent God. And something he saw, as he performed this act of worship two nights ago—the night the Ambassador fell—has troubled him deeply. Offended him, I would judge.”

But he can’t communicate it, Kelvas thought. Great. Perfect.

Kelvas felt a cautious tug at the sleeve of his uniform. He looked around. Lodolo hastily stepped back, as though afraid Kelvas would knock him down again. That was an accident, Kelvas thought, but now that his irritation had subsided...slightly...he felt guilty. “It’s all right,” he said to the monk, keeping his voice as calm as he could. “What is it?”

Brother Lodolo, short even by the standards of his people, stood, child-like, only as tall as Kelvas’s chest, which made it hard for Kelvas to remember that in fact—as the Deaconess had told him as she guided him to the monk—he was twice Kelvas’s age. The Prevarians lived longer than humans, and Lodolo was elderly even so. He didn’t repeat his single phrase this time: instead he pointed at Kelvas, then pointed up the Tower.

“I don’t understand,” Kelvas said, again. He was getting very tired of that phrase. He hated not understanding. It was his job to understand: to understand the ramifications of the deteriorating diplomatic situation, to understand the society of the planet on which he served, and when things went horribly awry—and nothing in his long career had gone as horribly awry as things had gone here with the Ambassador’s death—to investigate until he understood. He glanced at the High Deaconness. “Do you know what he wants?”

“He wants you to Ascend the Tower with him,” the High Deaconess said, the Translator rendering her as astonished. “It is a great honour. Without precedent.”

A great honour? Kelvas thought. He looked up at the black stone spire. How many steps had she said? Five hundred and sixty-seven?

He sighed. Still, he followed Lodolo the short distance to the base of the Tower because, with the High Deaconess watching, what else could he do? And anyway, he thought sourly, I could use a little divine favour right now.

But as they approached the start of the long staircase that wound around and around the tower, Lodolo held up a three-fingered hand and then pointed to a bench built into the wall. “Now what?” Kelvas said, irritated all over again.

The High Deaconess and her handmaiden had followed them. “You cannot climb the Tower of the Silent God while the sun is above the horizon,” she said, as if it were self-evident. “It is not a place one goes to see the sights of the world, but to see inside one’s own soul. You must wait until twilight.”

“I’m not—“ climbing it to worship your non-existent God, Kelvas almost said, but fortunately thought better of it. Instead he paused, glanced at his watch, and said, “Very well.”

Though the climate in the Prevarian capitol, tempered by the nearby ocean, varied little, the days still grew short in the winter, and the solstice was only a few tri-days away. Technically Kelvas could have returned to the Embassy for an hour, but that might have meant facing Eve and Tyrone Boynton or John Kimblee, and he didn’t want that. So instead he sat on the bench next to Lodolo, who fortunately did not continue repeating “I count the lights” over and over again as Kelvas half-expected. Instead, the monk rocked silently.

The motion reminded Kelvas of Tyrone. He wondered if Eve’s brother were still sitting in the outer office, staring at the Persons of Interest screen. The images and videos that cycled endlessly on that screen were of known troublemakers and terrorists and criminals. All Diplomatic Corps security headquarters were required to display the POI feed in prominent locations: the modern equivalent of a bulletin board covered with wanted posters. Kelvas had never heard of anyone being apprehended because someone had seen his or her image or video in the POI feed, but regulations were regulations.

Which reminded him again of Eve’s request he bend those regulations for her brother. He sighed. Much as he sympathized with her plight, bending regulations risked an official reprimand, and that, in turn, risked a black mark on his record just before retirements—which could impact his pension.

Of course, failing to solve the murder of the Ambassador he was charged with protecting would be an even bigger black mark. He glanced at Lodolo. Was this rocking blue alien with the “uncluttered” mind really his only lead to what had happened?

Apparently, God help me. He glanced up at the Tower. Any god.

He turned over his wrist to expose the datascreen and spent the remaining time until sunset reading messages and sending several variations of, “The investigation is proceeding apace and a resolution is expected shortly,” which was a flat-out lie, but at least bought time.

I’m chasing wild geese, he thought sourly as he sent the last message. He glanced at Lodolo, who had stopped rocking and now sat motionless, eyes closed. And sooner or later those wild geese are going to turn into pigeons and come home to roost. Despite everything, his mouth quirked. I must be worried. I’d never have come up a mixed metaphor that ugly if I were thinking clearly.

He sighed. He’d almost taken early retirement from Diplomatic Corps Security three years ago, and if he had, he and Annie would currently be fishing in the mountains of Montana and hoping against hope their daughter would find someone with whom to give them grandchildren. But the opportunity to be head of security at a major new embassy on a newly opened planet had seemed too good to pass up. The pay was very, very good. Though Annie hadn’t made the trip out here with him, she’d visited a couple of times, courtesy of the free-transportation program that had also landed him with the Boynton problem.

I guess we can still go fishing after I’m cashiered out the service, he thought sourly. In a much smaller boat. Wearing a disguise. Which will also be useful for panhandling for loose change on weekends.

He sent a final note to Simon, updating his secretary on where he was and what he was doing. If he fell off the Tower like the Ambassador...well, it would end all hope of a trade agreement, for one thing, but what really concerned him was that he not simply vanish without Annie ever knowing what had happened.

Almost without his noticing, the sun had slipped behind the dome of the Temple. The lengthening shadows vanished completely a few moments later. In the deepening twilight Lodolo finally stirred, and looked up at the Tower. “I count the lights,” he said helpfully.

“So I’ve heard,” Kelvas said. He got heavily to his feet. “Let’s get this over with.”

The High Deaconess had left them during the hour they waited, but she reappeared now, striding across the stones of the courtyard on bare three-toed feet. “I will wait here for your return,” she said. “To learn what you have found.”

Or to make sure they clean up the blood promptly, Kelvas thought.

The eerie green bioluminescent lights of the Tower had come on as the light faded. As the evening land-breeze sprang up, the Temple had begun to emit a low organ-like chord that made the hairs on the back of Kelvas’s arms stand up. He knew the Prevarians felt peace and awe when they heard it, but considering what had happened to the Ambassador, he thought the human fear-response might be more appropriate.

Lodolo began to climb. As they passed the first light he said, as Kelvas expected, “I count the lights”; but then, for the first time, he said something else. “One.” Another nine steps. “I count the lights. Two.” And again. “I count the lights. Three...”

They climbed onward. The steps, worn and slightly rounded, sometimes even sloped down, away from the tower. Kelvas kept as close to the wall as he could, trailing one hand along it. The last light slipped from the sky. Darkness surrounded the base of the Tower: all illumination in the Temple Complex was shielded to prevent it from spilling upward. Only outside the Complex wall did the ordinary bluish illumination favoured by the Prevarians appear, and even that was sparse: the Prevarians had better night-vision and what they considered brilliant illumination was more like what Kelvas associated with the kind of restaurant where the ambiance was more important than actually seeing what you were eating.

Lodolo strode confidently up the middle of the stairs, seemingly unconcerned by the ever-deepening abyss to his left. “I count the lights. Fourteen...”

Kelvas was fit for a man in his late 50s—he had to be, in his position—but he still found the climb wearing on him. The ambassador had not been particularly fit—he hadn’t had to be, in his position—and Kelvas found himself impressed Hori had undertaken the climb at all. He really believed in this trade agreement, he thought. He really cared about this planet and its...people.

“I count the lights. Twenty-eight...”

Kelvas had never cared very much about any of the worlds on which he’d served. His heart was always back on Earth. He didn’t hate the various aliens he’d met, and he’d done his level best to understand their societies, but not out of real interest: only so he could do his job and identify potential threats to the diplomats he was charged with protecting. He didn’t think of them as people so much as things that he had to deal with efficiently in order to do his job.

“I count the lights. Thirty-two...”

Like this simpleminded monk. He gulped more air and kept climbing, trying to ignore the growing ache in his calves.

Around and around. And then...

Just like that, Lodolo stopped. He didn’t say, “I count the lights.” He didn’t say...what number were they up to? Forty-six? Instead, he made a low, unhappy moan in his throat. He tugged at Kelvas’s sleeve, and pointed. Kelvas, who had been climbing with his head down, concentrating on putting one foot after the other, looked up.

He couldn’t see any reason for the delay. They stood two steps below one of the green lights, casting a paltry pool of illumination to his eyes, though no doubt beautifully bright to Lodolo. An Aspect of the God, smiling beatifically—although even that had a slightly demonic look to human eyes, given the strangeness of the Prevarian face—stared out from the wall below the light. The next light glowed some five metres away.

Kelvas looked at Lodolo. The monk, still moaning softly, had begun to rock back and forth again, for no reason Kelvas could see.

Kelvas resisted the urge to say. “I don’t understand.” He resisted the urge to say, “I count the lights. Forty-seven.” But he couldn’t just stand there all night, either. He took a step forward, and then another. The monk’s moan deepened.

As then, as Kelvas passed the screaming Aspect of the Silent God, the next light, number forty-seven, went out.

To Kelvas’s eyes, it was as if the steps disappeared completely, swallowed by the darkness. Their black stone barely showed even in the green light of the bioluminescent lamps. The stars glimmering overhead had no hope of reflection.

Lodolo plucked at Kelvas’s sleeve, as though trying to stop him from advancing. But Kelvas pulled free, barely noticing, mind racing. Was this where the Ambassador died? Had Lodolo seen this interruption in the lights as he walked around the Tower, counting the lights?

But why had the light gone out? And what lurked in the darkness?

Kelvas turned and looked out over the city, trying to get his bearings. The Embassy glowed on the horizon, its Terran lights brighter and whiter than anything else in sight. The Ambassador had fallen from the side of the Tower facing the Embassy...a pointed fact that the anti-traders insisted pointed to a Prevarian murder plot.

It could have been right here.

It had to have been right here.

But how did that help him?

He couldn’t send a forensics team up here to investigate: the Deaconess had made it clear that would not be allowed. The Prevarians lacked the technological know-how to even attempt to gather samples, and in any event, the steps were ritually washed every day, the only time anyone mounted the Tower while the sun shone.

If he were going to discover anything, it would have to be here and now. He took the flashlight from his belt and unfolded the collapsible framework that allowed him to attach it to his uniform cap so he could keep his hands free. With it firmly in place, he reached up and switched it on. Lodolo cried out in distress and flung his blue arm over his big eyes at flare of bright white light. “Sorry,” Kelvas said. He started back up the steps, head down, studying each riser and runner in turn. A trip wire, perhaps? But no, not if the steps were washed daily: someone would have discovered it.

He looked up at the wall as he approached the spot where the next lamp should have gleamed. There it was, its crystal sides reflecting his torch, but devoid of even the slightest green glow itself. Below it, the Aspect of the Silent God: in this instant, in sharp contrast to the Aspect he’d just left, screaming in apparent terror, mouth wide, eyes bulging, the perfect embodiment, for a human, of the Tower’s constant threatening moan.

He looked down at the steps again, and leaned forward to get a closer look at the step right in front of the burned-out lamp.

Just enough light came from the stars glittering above that Ambassador Hori could make out the shape of the dark lantern, and the indistinct Aspect of the God below it. He came abreast of it.

Something slammed into his side. He toppled left. The steps were only a metre wide, and sloped downward. His upper body fell into nothingness, and dragged his legs with it.

Prevarian gravity was very close to Earth’s. Ambassador Hori had just over four seconds to stare up at the whirling stars above him before, for him, they were blotted out forever.

“I count the lights!” Lodolo shouted—screamed. Then the monk slammed into Kelvas from behind even as something else shot over his head, brushing against his shoulder. Kelvas thudded to the steps, gasping, then rolled over.

In the light from his torch he saw Lodolo struggling for balance on the very edge of the precipice, giant eyes enormously wide in terror, arms flailing. He started to fall backward...

Kelvas lurched forward and grabbed the monk’s blue-skinned ankle, jerking Lodolo back onto the steps even as he toppled. The monk slammed down on the black stone harder than Kelvas had, and lost his breath completely, gaping soundlessly as his face purpled in the light from Kelvas’s headlamp.

Kelvas whipped around again, turning his head this way and that, searching frantically for their attacker. The circle of light slid over black stone. Nothing on the steps. Nothing on the—

No...there! A flicker of movement, in the gaping mouth of the Aspect of the God. He raised his light. A round black ball, contracting as he watched, settled silently into place. An instant later the darkened lamp glowed back to dim green life.

Kelvas got carefully to his feet and drew the weapon he wasn’t supposed to be carrying on the Tower, a tiny personnel stunner. He jammed it into the opening and triggered its powerful electric jolt. The thing in the mouth of the carved face sizzled and popped and then dropped to the steps, which sloped downward enough it would have rolled off if Lodolo, recovered somewhat, hadn’t shot out a three-fingered hand and grabbed it. “I count the lights!” he gasped out.

“Indeed you do,” Kelvas said. “And you do a very good job of it.” He picked up the ball to examine later. He held out his hand to the monk, who gripped Kelvas’s five fingers in his three and let Kelvas help him to his feet. Kelvas took a deep breath. Adrenaline had left him feeling a little shaky. “Let’s go down,” he said.

But Lodolo, releasing his hand, tilted his head left then right then left again, head the Prevarian equivalent of a human head-shake. “I count the lights.” He moved to the wall and touched the lamp, fully alight again. “Forty-six,” he said. And then he turned away from Kelvas and resumed climbing. “I count the lights,” he said nine steps farther along. “Forty-seven.”

Kelvas hesitated. He looked at the black ball. Then he shoved it into his pocket and followed Lodolo, all the way to the top of the Tower of the Silent God.

Four Prevarian tri-days later, Kelvas sat in his office at the Embassy, his back to his desk, looking out over the city through the office’s single large window. In the middle-distance, the Tower of the Silent God pointed at the sky. The sun had almost set, and already the green lights were beginning to glow along the five hundred and sixty-seven steps.

The black ball he had recovered had quickly revealed its secrets: triggered by the presence of a Terran, as had been the dousing of the light, but not by the presence of a Prevarian, it had been planted very specifically to kill the Ambassador...or any other human who happened to climb the Tower, but no other human ever had or had been expected to.

It was clearly not Prevarian technology, but tracing it to its human source might have proved impossible had a lead not have been forthcoming from a most unexpected source.

Hence the visitors whose arrival Kelvas was at this moment awaiting.

The tri-tone chimed in his earbud. He tapped it twice. “Yes, Simon?”

“Eve and Tyrone Boynton are here,” Simon said.

“Send them in,” Kelvas said. He turned around to face the door, and stood as Eve and her brother entered. He nodded to Eve, whose face bore an interesting expression of mingled hope and pride, but when he’d rounded the desk, he went straight to Tyrone. “Tyrone,” he said. He held out his hand. Tyrone looked at it.

“Shake his hand, Tyrone,” Eve said.

Tyrone looked at her, then back at Kelvas’s hand. He held his hand out hesitantly. Kelvas took it and shook it firmly. “Thank you, Tyrone,” he said. “Without your help, we never would have solved Ambassador Hori’s murder.”

“Mr. Kimblee...meet with bad man,” Tyrone said in his high-pitched voice, soft and lilting as a child’s. “I saw him.” He pulled his hand back, and turned around and pointed at the office door. “Out there.”

“I know you did,” Kelvas said.

He had returned from his climb of the Tower to find Tyrone and Eve waiting for him in his outer office, under the watchful eye of Simon. Simon had leaped to his feet as he entered. “I’m sorry, sir,” he’d said. “I called Eve as soon as she came off-duty, but she couldn’t get Tyrone to leave, either.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kelvas,” Eve said, and he heard the fear in her voice, knew she was afraid Tyrone’s strange stubbornness would convince Kelvas once and for all there was no place for her brother on Prevaria. “All he’ll tell me is that he has to talk to you. Over and over again.”

Over and over again, Kelvas thought. Like Lodolo. And so he had done what he would never have done before, and sat down next to Tyrone and asked the boy what he wanted to say.

And Tyrone had pointed at the POI screen and explained, in his halting fashion, that he had seen Mr. Kimblee talking to one of the people on that screen. He had pointed out the man when his face rolled around again: a certain Peter Legat, with known ties to one of the criminal syndicates bankrolling some of the more notorious of the planetary pillagers.

Tyrone, it turned out, liked to walk around the Embassy compound late at night. “He doesn’t sleep well since Mom and Dad died,” Eve had explained. “He walks to make himself tired.”

I wonder if he counts the Embassy lights? Kelvas had thought in passing, while he busied himself with sending messages, and arranging an arrest detail. A little over half an hour after Kelvas’s return from the Tower John Kimblee was in custody and under interrogation.

As Kelvas’s second-in-command Kimblee had of course been fully aware of the Ambassador’s plan to ascend the Tower of the Silent God. A thorough forensic audit of his assets had revealed that he had also been in the pay of Legat’s syndicate. His enjoyment of the luxuries of the Core Worlds had not been feigned: he’d enjoyed them so much, during his last visit there, that he’d been massively in debt until he agreed to work with Legat to try to sabotage the Prevarian trade agreement.

Of course, although the murder device had been of human manufacture it had not been placed by a human: that had been the work of one of the Prevarian anti-trade factions: one whose own links to the waiting scavengers had been uncovered by the...forceful...investigations of the Prevarian government. The faction had made a deal to rule the planet on the scavengers’ behalf once the trade deal was dead and the Terran Navy gone. The sacrilege of Prevarians actually daring to climb the Tower of the Silent God in order to commit murder had shaken Prevarian society to its core, just as the corruption revealed on the Terran side had shaken Earth—and destroyed several fortunes, reputations, and political careers.

The new Ambassador, Kuzue Akamatsa, even now awaited the descent of darkness so that she...and her entire staff...could ascend the Tower. Once that had been done, the trade agreement would, at last, be formalized. Kelvas had spent the day making the security arrangements for the signing ceremony to be held the next day in the Great Hall of the Prevarian People, out of sight on the other side of the Embassy from his office.

But that was for later. “You did a good job, Tyrone,” he said. “A very good job. Would you like to work for the Diplomatic Corps permanently?”

He heard Eve’s gasp, but he didn’t look at her, only at Tyrone. Tyrone’s brows pulled together. “Perm...permanently?”

“For good,” Tyrone said. “Work, and stay here with your sister. For good. “

Tyrone’s face split into an enormous grin. “Yes, Mr. Kelvas! Yes, please!”

Now Kelvas looked at Eve. “He’ll work as a night watchman,” he explained. “He’ll walk the grounds just as he has been. He’ll report anything out of the ordinary he sees.” He turned back to Tyrone. “Can you do that? Watch carefully every night? Report anything you see that you think is strange?”

Tyrone nodded vigorously. “I see things,” he said. “I see when things are different. That’s how I saw Mr. Kimblee and the bad man. I can do that.”

Kelvas held out his hand again. “Then welcome to the Terran Diplomatic Corps.”

This time, Tyrone shook his hand without prompting.

Kelvas looked at Eve again. “Take him to HR and get the forms filled out,” he said. “They’re expecting you.”

“I stay, Eve!” Tyrone cried to his sister. “I stay!”

Tears glistened on Eve’s cheeks. She hugged Tyrone tightly. “You stay!” She smiled over his shoulder, rather wetly, at Kelvas. “Thank you, sir, thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Kelvas said softly.

Eve led her brother out of the office, and Kelvas returned to his chair. He turned it to look out the window once more. Darkness had descended at last. The new ambassador would be beginning her ascent of the Tower of the Silent God.

Though he couldn’t see all of them, Alfred Kelvas began to count the lights.