Death Sentence by Roger MacBride Allen Page A

fact that someone had seen something, and the others contradicted each other in almost every detail.
    It also seemed highly improbable to her that the seven occasions she had found referenced were the only sightings in all the endless years. No doubt many other accounts and reports of sightings had been expurgated from the records. But they were all she had to go on--and they provided so little data that speculation could be allowed to run all but unchecked.
    There were four general classes of theory about what was inside the carapaces. One was that they were in fact superior artificial replacements for the natural carapaces evolved by the ancestor species of the Unseen.
    Another was what Trevor of Wilcox had called the "hermit crab" theory--that the Unseen were actually smaller creatures that climbed in and out of the metallic casings, treating them more like vehicles to be operated rather than as integral parts of their own bodies. Or perhaps they stayed in them permanently, wearing a particular carapace continuously for years or decades at a time until it wore out.
    A third was that the Unseen themselves were not in fact inside the carapaces, but were elsewhere, and operating the carapaces by some form of remote control.
    The fourth was that the Unseen were formerly biological beings, but had gradually made the transition to being wholly robotic life-forms; the carapaces were the Unseen beings, and the Unseen were in fact there for all to see.
    There were endless variations on all these ideas, and any number of theories as to why exactly the Unseen were determined to remain so--but it was unseemly, and unhelpful, to dwell on such matters.
    Taranarak had dealt with the Unseen for all of her life, as had many Metrannans. She was used to such mysteries. They had remained unresolved for generations before she was born and would likely stay that way until long after her death. Usually, she was able to accept that fact--but somehow, this was not a usual day.
    She reached the boundary of the Enclave, and crossed the unguarded border with the greater city outside. She turned and looked back the way she had come, really seeing the Enclave for the first time that day. Her own research had told her a lot--perhaps too much--about what it had once been like. The earliest records showed that there had been an Enclave here, even then--but in those early days, it was the city of the Unseen that had all but surrounded the tiny Metrannan village. Generation by generation, lifetime by lifetime, the Metrannan presence had grown, and that of the Unseen had shrunk.
    One repair, one adjustment, one removal, one rebuilding at a time, at a pace too slow for any but the longest-lived beings to witness directly, the grand city of the Unseen People had shrunk, been slowly swallowed up by the burgeoning Metrannan metropolis. The very quiet, very cautious research done at Taranarak's request had demonstrated conclusively that the Unseen Enclave--and the planet-wide population of the Unseen--had been shrinking at a steady if all-but-imperceptible rate for thousands of years. If the trend merely continued along the same curve, then the Unseen would be extinct on Metran, perhaps within the lifetime of Taranarak's great-great-grandchildren--perhaps even that of her great-grandchildren.
    No wonder the Unseen feared change.
    Taranarak was so entirely lost in thought that she was not even aware of the four officers from the Bureaucracy of Order standing in her path until she was almost on top of them. By the time she did see them, it was of course far too late to escape. The Bureaucracy of Order, after all, had a great deal of practice arresting radicals, dangerous dissidents, and anyone else who was a threat to the established system of stability and order. It was only in the moment that the other officers closed in behind her, sealing off any chance of escape, that she realized that those words were a precise and accurate list of what she had become without