Judgment at Proteus

ELEVEN

“You must try to calm down, Mr. Compton,” Captain of the Guard Lyarrom said in probably the closest he could get to a soothing voice. “We are doing our best to locate your friend.”

I looked at Bayta, who was sitting in a corner of the security nexus, her face rigid with her efforts to hide her emotions. I looked at Emikai, whom I’d summoned back from Minnario’s room and who was now standing stiffly beside her. “I appreciate your words of concern, Guard Captain Lyarrom,” I said. “You’ll forgive my impertinence if I say that’s not good enough.”

“One’s best is all that one can do,” he said in a sage, grandfatherly way.

“Then maybe it’s time to bring in more people and add their best to the mix,” I countered. “For starters, you could start a trace on Dr. Aronobal’s comm—chances are she’s still with Ms. German. You could bring in patrollers from other parts of Proteus and get them started on a room-by-room search, starting with her quarters—”

“Ms. German’s quarters have already been searched,” he put in. “There is nothing of any help to us there.”

“—and finally, if you can’t or won’t get through the bureaucratic inertia,” I concluded, “I suggest you bring in Chinzro Hchchu to streamline things.”

Lyarrom’s face had grown stiffer, and his blaze darker, with each suggestion. “Mr. Compton, you are seriously overreacting,” he said stiffly. “There is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in this matter. Nor is there any evidence that Dr. Aronobal is in danger, impaired, or engaged in criminal behavior, which are the legal requirements for activating her comm’s tracker. Finally—”

“So get Chinzro Hchchu in here to override those requirements.”

“Finally, your verbal contract regarding Ms. German’s safety ended when she came aboard Kuzyatru Station,” Lyarrom said, raising his volume. “As to your final suggestion, I am not going to call in Kuzyatru Station’s assistant director to deal with a bookkeeping error.”

I took a careful breath, fighting back the urge to punch the complacent idiot in his snout. “Fine,” I said between clenched teeth. “You just stay inside your nice, comfortable guidelines and limitations. When dead bodies start showing up, don’t blame me.”

Without waiting for a reply I stalked over to Bayta and Emikai. “You okay?” I asked Bayta quietly.

“I shouldn’t have left her,” Bayta murmured, her voice on the edge of tears. “I should have just sent Minnario when you called and stayed with her.”

I grimaced. Minnario. If the Nemut hadn’t pulled his own vanishing act that first night, it might have been easier to convince Lyarrom that Terese’s disappearance was something more serious than a bureaucratic glitch. But then, that had hardly been Minnario’s fault.

Nor was Terese’s disappearance Bayta’s. “You had no way of knowing,” I reminded her.

“Didn’t I?” Bayta countered darkly. “I knew Dr. Aronobal knew about the missing hypos. I should have guessed she and the others wouldn’t just leave things the way they were.”

“And what exactly would you have done to stop them?” I shot back, more harshly than I’d intended. I should have anticipated this, too. Even more than Bayta should have. “In fact, I’d go so far to say that, under the circumstances, I’m just as glad you weren’t in their way when they decided to move her. Who knows what they would have done to you?”

“I’m not as helpless as everyone thinks,” she said stiffly. She sighed and lowered her eyes. “But you’re probably right.”

Which wasn’t to say that I was right, or that she believed I was right, or that any of my soothing logic was making her feel better. “Regardless, what’s past is past,” I said. “We need to focus on finding her and getting her back.”

“Right.” Bayta took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go back to our room and start figuring out who Blue One is,” I told her. “If and when you finish with that, start making a list of all medical facilities in this part of Proteus—yes, I know there are a lot of them, but we have to start somewhere. Logra Emikai, would you escort her back to the room?”

“Of course,” Emikai said, his voice dark and grim. His contract to keep Terese safe had ended, too, but that clearly wasn’t making any more difference to him than it was to me. “What will you do?”

I looked over at the Jumpsuits poring over their controls in front of their fancy monitor banks. Fat lot of good any of it, or any of them, had done us. “I’m going to have a word with my attorney,” I said. “Watch yourselves. Both of you.”

* * *

Minnario was understandably surprised to see me. [I thought you would be at least another hour,] he said, wiping his mouth with a cloth as he backed his chair out of the doorway to let me in. [Forgive me—I’d just brought in my dinner.]

“No problem,” I assured him, looking over at the couch. Blue One didn’t seem to have moved. “You left him alone?”

[The restaurants don’t deliver,] he reminded me. [But I checked his restraints before I left, and I was gone less than fifteen minutes. May I offer you something?]

“No, thank you,” I said, walking over to the couch and reaching around behind the Filly. The quick-locks were still securely in place. “Please go ahead with your meal,” I added as I pulled over the computer desk chair and sat down facing the prisoner. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

Among the Human diplomats I’d escorted during my early days in Westali, Nemuti were considered fairly low on the list of desirable dinner companions. The species in general tended to chomp their food, and their truncated-cone-shaped mouths added an odd echo effect to the sound of their mastication. The additional distortion of Minnario’s mouth, I quickly discovered, greatly enhanced the overall effect.

Back on the super-express, the Modhran mind segment I’d dealt with had mentioned that, as far as he knew, Minnario always took his meals alone. Now I knew why.

He’d finished his main meal and was starting on his dessert cheese when Bayta finally called.

“I can’t get a match on Blue One’s face with anyone aboard the station,” she said tightly. “Staff, visitors, clients—no one. As far as the main computer is concerned, he simply doesn’t exist.”

“Terrific,” I growled. “Is Emikai there with you?”

“No, he left as soon as we reached the room,” she said. “He said there were some things he had to do.”

“You’ve double-locked the door, though, right?” I asked. “Blue One had a passkey, remember. Some of the others might have them, too.”

“Double-locked, one of the dining chairs is pressed against it to make it harder to slide, and Ty’s lying down beside it,” she assured me.

Clearly, my native paranoia had started rubbing off on her. Aboard Proteus, that was increasingly looking like a good thing. “And you’ve been through all the records?”

“Everything I can find,” she said. “Do you want me to keep digging?”

“Probably no point,” I said. “But there are bound to be areas of the computer you haven’t been able to access. Maybe we’ll call Emikai in later and see if his cop training included system hacking.”

“You think it might?”

“Mine did,” I reminded her. “Besides, he did say earlier that even enforcement officers sometimes have to improvise. Go ahead and get started on that listing of nearby medical areas.”

“All right,” she said. “Is he awake yet?”

I looked at Blue One. His eyes were still closed, his face still slack. From all outward appearances he seemed to still be in the depths of dreamland.

All appearances but one. His breathing, while still slow, was definitely faster and stronger than it had been when I’d first begun my vigil. “Actually, he just woke up,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I keyed off the comm and reached out a foot to nudge Blue One in his side. “Come on, look alive,” I said. “I haven’t got all night.”

For a moment he didn’t move. I was picking out a spot for my next kick, a harder one this time, when he opened his eyes. “Interesting, that last conversation,” he said. “Have you misplaced someone?”

“Only temporarily,” I said. “You want to tell me what you know about it? Or do I have to beat it out of you?”

He favored me with another of his thin, evil smiles. “Address me by name,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “What name would you like me to use?”

“By my name,” he repeated. “Or this conversation is ended.”

“I don’t know your name.”

“A pity,” he said, and closed his eyes again.

I felt my lip twitch. In other words, he wanted to know how much I actually knew. “How about Shonkla-raa?” I asked. “That close enough?”

He opened his eyes again, his blaze darkening. “So we were right,” he said quietly. “You did indeed examine Asantra Muzzfor’s papers aboard the Quadrail.” He cocked his head. “And if he didn’t destroy them, it follows that everything else you told us concerning his death was a lie.”

“Most of it,” I agreed. “The truth is that he attacked me after the murder investigation was over. Without warning or provocation, of course.”

“And?”

I looked him squarely in the eye. “And during the fight I killed him.”

His blaze darkened even farther. “Impossible,” he said flatly.

“I’m sure you’d like to think so,” I said. “But it might just be that you don’t know as much about me as you think you do.” I leaned back deliberately in my chair. “You ever hear of the mystery of Quadrail 219117?”

“The outbound train from Homshil to the Bellidosh Estates-General,” he said. “The one that…” He trailed off, an odd expression suddenly on his face.

“The one that disappeared a couple of years back,” I finished for him. “Vanished from the tracks into thin air with everyone aboard and was never heard from again. You want to know what really happened to it?”

His eyes were locked on me. “Tell me.”

“One of the mind segments of your friend the Modhri had decided I had information he didn’t want me to have,” I said. “He’d also brought some coral aboard the train, which he used to infect the rest of the passengers. He figured a trainful of walkers ought to be more than enough to take me down.”

I paused. “And?” Blue One asked.

“It wasn’t,” I said. “I killed him.”

He smiled again. But this time it was forced and uncertain. “All of him,” he said.

“Every last bit of him,” I confirmed. It hadn’t been nearly that easy, of course, any more than it had been easy to take down Asantra Muzzfor. And I’d had a lot of help in both situations.

But Blue One didn’t know that. And he wasn’t going to. “There’s a reason the Spiders hired me, Shonkla-raa,” I continued. “I’m good at what I do. And if I don’t get some answers about Terese German, I’ll probably have to kill a lot more people. Starting with you.”

For a dozen heartbeats he remained silent. Across the room in the dining area, Minnario had stopped chomping, and even Doug at my feet seemed to be listening in anticipation. “I’m not afraid of you,” Blue One said at last. “But I also have no desire to see blood flow in the corridors of Kuzyatru Station.”

“A wise decision,” I said, “especially since you’re probably trying as hard to operate under the radar as I am. Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Blue One said. “Moving her wasn’t part of the plan. I can only assume it was done in response to this.” He twitched his shackled arms. “If you’d care to release me, I could go ask them.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “Fine—let’s assume you really don’t know where she is. Where might she be?”

He snorted. “What, aboard Kuzyatru Station?”

“I’m not talking about the whole station,” I said. “I’m talking about the limited number of ratholes you and your limited number of fellow Shonkla-raa have set aside for yourselves.”

He smiled again. “You delude yourself, Compton. There are far more of us than you can possibly imagine.”

“And they’ll be jackbooting their way down the corridors to Director Usantra Nstroo’s office any time now,” I said. “Heard it before. I want a list of those bolt-holes.”

He shook his head. “A waste of time. She’s a medical patient in poor condition, which means they’ll have taken her to another medical facility.”

“That makes sense,” I said, watching him closely. “Except that she wouldn’t be in poor condition if you hadn’t been dosing her with sickness juice. Did I mention we’d found your gimmicked hypos?”

His face changed, just enough to show I’d hit a nerve with that one. “Did you think we weren’t expecting you to?”

“Actually, yes, I do think that,” I said. “Seems like a lot of wasted effort, though. Why not just have Dr. Aronobal spike Ms. German’s normal meds? Aronobal is on your team, isn’t she?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “I suppose there’s no point in denying it. Yes, she was our agent looking for likely prospects on Earth. She heard about Ms. German’s condition and arranged for her transport here.”

“And the rest of the Humans, the ones in Building Twelve?” I asked. “Did Aronobal bring them in, too?”

Again, his expression shifted subtly. “You’re well informed, Compton,” he said. “I was told you hadn’t been closer to Building Twelve than the spot where I left Tech Yleli’s body.”

A cold feeling settled around my heart. I’d tentatively tagged Blue One as Yleli’s killer, but I’d never had any actual proof of that. Now I had a confession. “You’re right, I didn’t,” I said, managing to keep my voice as casual as his. “Just observation plus simple logic. Once I knew Usantra Wandek was lying about the buildings being malleable, it followed that no one would put up a whole dome’s worth of Human buildings unless he also had a whole dome’s worth of Human patients to put there. I gather from the décor that most of them were taken from the EuroUnion?”

“Many were, yes,” Blue One agreed calmly. “A few were from other places on your worlds.”

My coldness at Blue One’s confession of murder dissolved into the warmth of anger. I’d already deduced that the Shonkla-raa had been taking Humans like Terese out of the Terran Confederation. But to have it so casually confirmed, as if Earth was nothing more than their own private butterfly preserve, was just plain galling. “Why?” I demanded.

“Do you really want me to tell you here?” he countered. His eyes flicked over my shoulder to Minnario. “When we win this field of battle, everyone who knows will have to die.”

I grimaced. That threat probably wasn’t a bluff, either. My neck was already in the Shonkla-raa’s noose; there was no point in putting Minnario’s in there with it. “Minnario, turn off your transcriber for a minute,” I said. “Our Filly friend here and I have something we need to discuss in private.”

[Are you sure that’s wise?] Minnario asked, a bit uncertainly.

“No, but I’m sure it’s necessary,” I said. “I’ll let you know when you can turn it back on.”

I heard the faint click of a switch. [It’s off,] he said.

Blue One eyed him another moment, then shifted his gaze back to me. “How much do you know about the original Shonkla-raa?”

“Enough,” I said. “They ruled the galaxy for a thousand years before being defeated and slaughtered by their slaves. There’s a moral in there somewhere.”

“Fables and morals are for inferiors,” the other said contemptuously. “Did it ever occur to you to wonder why Earth wasn’t included in their empire?”

I frowned. Actually, somehow, it hadn’t. It was a damn good question, too. “I’m sure you have an answer,” I said.

“That’s just it: we don’t know,” he said, his blaze darkening. “There are many theories: diseases that frightened the Shonkla-raa away, oppressive climatic or cultural factors, your uselessness as slaves, or simply that there was nothing in your system they couldn’t get more efficiently elsewhere. But it’s something we need to find out before we set out on our road to conquest.” He smiled suddenly. “I’m sorry: on our final road to conquest.”

“No need to apologize,” I assured him. “We’ve had plenty of would-be conquerors of our own who talked about how long their reigns would last. It’s a typical delusion with megalomaniacs.”

“You think we will fail?” he asked, his voice rich with arrogance and challenge.

“Pretty sure,” I said. “Bunny trails over; back to Terese German. Do I get that list of bolt-holes, or do I have to show off my expertise in the fine art of stimulating Filly nerve junctions?”

He sighed. “No need,” he said. “But it will do you no—”

And with a soft snap of plastic he yanked his formerly secured arms from behind his back and shoved off the couch, his hands reaching for my throat.

They’d made it halfway to their target when I snapped my right foot up and slammed my heel hard into his chest.

With a strangled whoof the air went out of him, the impact of the blow killing his momentum and sending him tumbling to the floor, his eyes wide with pain and fury. I kicked him again, just to be sure, then stood up and stepped over to the computer desk and the neat stack of quick-locks I’d left there.

[What is it?] Minnario gasped, and I felt the movement of air as he hurriedly brought his chair up behind me. [What happened?]

“Our clever friend gnawed through his ropes,” I said, selecting three of the quick-locks and returning warily to Blue One’s side. The caution was unnecessary—his whole upper torso must have felt wrapped in cotton right now, his arms pretty well useless. And of course his legs were still securely tied together. He wasn’t going to be starting any more fights for a while, and he certainly wasn’t going to be winning any. “More precisely, he used his nails to dig through parts of his quick-lock,” I continued. “I felt the notches when I checked it after I came in.”

[And you didn’t immediately fix it?] Minnario said, his tone somewhere between incredulous and livid. [You risked both our lives?]

“It wasn’t that much of a risk,” I assured him as I got Blue One’s wrists behind his back again and tightened a fresh quick-lock around them. “With his legs still useless he would have had to take me down in that first attack, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t.”

[But for what end?] Minnario persisted. [What did it gain you?]

“Information,” I said. Pushing the backs of Blue One’s hands together, I looped another quick-lock around his palms, and then another around his upper fingers, immobilizing all his nails where they couldn’t reach any of the restraints. “People get careless when they think they’re in control. They also talk too much.” I raised my eyebrows. “Like, for instance, confessing to Tech Yleli’s murder.”

“It will never be believed,” Blue One spat. “The word of two aliens in collusion, against that of a santra of the Filiaelian Assembly? No court would accept that without physical evidence.”

“That’s okay—physical evidence is the next thing on our scavenger-hunt list,” I said. “See, Minnario? We know now that he’s a santra, too. Okay, he’s ready to be put back to bed. Can you give me a hand?”

Minnario moved his chair close to Blue One’s other side, and between us we got the Filly back up onto the couch. “All nice and comfy again?” I asked as I looked down at him.

“I will kill you, Compton,” he said quietly, gazing up at me with a coldness that even the Modhran walkers I’d faced over the years hadn’t matched. “When the time comes I will personally end your life.”

“Interestingly enough, the Modhran mind segment on Quadrail 219117 said the same thing,” I told him. “Minnario, where’d you put the hypo and sleep juice?”

[Here,] Minnario said, pulling the hypo gingerly from his chair pouch and handing it to me. [It’s already loaded.]

“Thanks,” I said. I confirmed it was the amount Emikai had specified and slipped the needle into Blue One’s arm. “Anything else you’d like to say?” I invited.

“I’ll also kill your friend Bayta,” he said. “You will be there to watch it happen.”

“Got it,” I said, and pressed my thumb on the plunger. “Pleasant dreams.”

Once again, the stuff worked its magic with gratifying speed. Within a minute, Blue One’s breathing had slowed back down again. “Okay,” I said, handing the hypo back to Minnario. “It looks like he’s got a slightly better metabolism than the average Filly, so you’d better not count on him getting a full six hours per dose.”

[I understand,] he said. [I’ll give him another dose in five hours.]

“Thanks,” I said. “Unless you want me to come back and do it.”

[I can manage.] He smiled self-consciously. [For all of a lawyer’s high-sounding talk of searching out the truth while protecting those in need, I have to say that I’ve never before felt so much like I was actually doing that. It’s frightening, but curiously refreshing.]

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” I said, deciding not to ruin his evening by mentioning how quickly that glow of satisfaction faded once you’d actually been in the field for a while. “Call me right away if he looks to be waking up. Or if anything else odd happens.”

[Such as someone attempting to break down my door?] he inquired with a bland smile.

I grimaced. “Something like that.”

The smile faded. [A foolish jest,] he apologized. [My apologies.]

“That’s all right,” I said. “If it helps any, at the end of the day they’re probably not going to bother with you.”

[I know,] he said soberly. [You and Bayta are their real targets. That’s why I apologized.]

“Don’t count us out yet,” I said. “We’ve been in tight scrapes before. By the way, you mind telling me what you and Emikai discussed after we left earlier?”

Minnario shrugged. [Not very much, as it turned out,] he said. [Logra Emikai wished to know what I knew about you and Bayta.] He gave me a half smile tinged with embarrassment. [Which was also what I wished to know from him. As it happened, neither of us knew much more than the other.]

“I’ve always said we have no secrets from our friends,” I said dryly. Which wasn’t even close to being true, of course. “Anyway, get some rest. And be sure to double-lock the door behind me.”