Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

Play Nice by Barbara Paul

© 1994 by Barbara Paul

The author of over a dozen mystery novels, Barbara Paul last contributed to EQMM with her unique blend of fantasy and mystery in 1987. Her new novel The Apostrophe Thief, to be published by Scribners this spring, has already been selected by The Mystery Guild...

The three of them sat fidgeting, waiting for Mother to tell them they could go. Duncan could hear Hartley muttering to himself; not a peep out of Britt, although she was eager to get going. But until Mother gave them the green light, all they could do was sit and wait. And she was taking her time about it. It seemed the older she got, the more cautious she became.

“What’s taking her so long?” Hartley grumbled.

Duncan sighed. Hartley had this need to vocalize, to say out loud what everyone else was thinking. Once he got started, he’d go on and on until Britt lost her patience — which she was doing a lot lately — and told him to shut up.

“What’s she waiting for?” Hartley complained. “Fuss, fuss, fuss. What’s the holdup? Dammit, she’s getting obsessive, scared to let us out of her sight. Hoo, will I be glad to get out of here! Duncan, talk to her. Tell her we’re ready to go.”

Duncan didn’t bother to answer. They’d go when Mother said go.

“You know what I think?” Hartley went on. “I think she just likes to make us wait. Demonstration of power, like that. You think she’s possessive now? The day’s coming when she won’t allow us any independent movement at all, you wait and see. Yeah. We’ll just be puppets, all three of us, doing what Mother says do, going where Mother says go, when she says go—”

“Shut up, Hartley!” Britt snapped.

It was another five minutes before Mother spoke to them. “You may go now,” she said softly. “Be careful.”

Duncan gave a silent cheer. They’d been cooped up too long; everyone was getting edgy. Mother did take good care of them, but sometimes...

His instrument panel gave him the Clear signal; he checked the feed from Britt and Hartley and flipped the switch that completed the disengage sequence. The hatches opened, the anchor grapples uncoupled, and the three single-occupancy shuttles dropped away from the mothership, arcing gracefully into a tight orbit around the strange planet below. See you later, Ma.

“Strange” planet only because unfamiliar; and unfamiliar only to them. The colony world of Pirmacha was prosperous and self-sufficient, able up to now to handle its own problems. But this time the Pirmachans had put in a request to Central for outside help, and Duncan and his team got the nod. Duncan had no worries about Britt, but he wasn’t certain Hartley would settle down in time to get the job done; Hartley rather envisioned himself as a Young Turk when in fact he was merely young.

The shuttles automatically locked in on Pirmacha’s homing beacon and let themselves be guided to the colony’s landing field. Mother’s voice spoke in their ears. “Force wall is up. The Pirmachans wish you to undergo decontamination.”

Hartley said something obscene.

“It’s an obvious requirement, Hartley,” Mother said in a tone of mild reprimand. “You know that. They may have requested your help, but you are a guest on their world and you will behave like one.”

“Yes, Mother,” Hartley said with all the sarcasm at his command. Britt snickered. “I swear to God,” Hartley growled as he climbed out of his shuttle, “on the next circuit, I’m going on a nonsentient ship or I’m not going.”

“You don’t mean that,” Britt said sharply. “Putting your life in the hands of strangers? Relying on quick responses on the part of crew members you don’t even know?”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Hartley grumbled.

“I’m trying to,” Britt replied earnestly. “You’ve never traveled on a nonsentient ship, Hartley — I have. Even a 619-X ship computer can’t handle every emergency without a human initiator. What if somebody forgets to start some necessary repair sequencing? Or is two seconds too slow? You could die, Hartley.”

“Uh—”

“So the artificial intelligences in the motherships take their ‘protector’ function a little too seriously — so what? You put up with it.”

Hartley was silent a moment, and then said, “You’re quite right, Britt. I fell into the trap of taking Mother for granted. It’s a mistake I’ll not make again.” His voice was low and somber.

Duncan swallowed a laugh. He’d seen it before: the minute Hartley got out of physical contact with the mothership, he became more lordly and magisterial. Not that any of them ever truly got away from Mother, thanks to their implanted communicators. She’d been listening to every word.

No Pirmachans were in sight. The three visitors followed flashing green arrows to a small building apart from the regular landing field facilities. Inside, the automatics put them through the standard decontamination procedures, a process that required only twenty minutes.

“The force wall is down,” Mother’s voice spoke in their ears. “A Pirmachan is waiting for you by Exit One.”

Outside the exit, a woman with close-cropped gray hair and angry brown eyes stood glaring at them. “You certainly took your time getting here,” she said abruptly. “Which is the prime arbiter?”

Duncan raised an eyebrow. “I am.” He gestured toward Britt. “Second arbiter.” Then Hartley. “Third arbiter.” They never identified themselves by name when called upon to sit in judgment.

The Pirmachan woman nodded briefly. “My name is Copely. I’ve been delegated by the High Council to be your escort while you are on Pirmacha. This way.” No time wasted on amenities; just let’s-get-on-with-it.

Copely led the three Circuit arbiters to ground transport nearby. Their route to the city led them past one of the planet’s famous horsebreeding facilities, with its bioclean stables and sweeping exercise grounds. Although the breeding and training of racehorses had been only a minor enterprise when the colony was first established, Pirmacha had eventually found itself galaxy-famous as one of the few places left where the purebred Arabian could still be found. Other earth strains had been hopelessly interbred with the multiplicity of equine species encountered in other star systems, from the dragon-sized Donnerpferde on Wagner’s World to those eight-legged oddities in the Aldebaran IV system.

But Pirmacha had no indigenous horses, and the colonists had wisely forbidden the importation of any horses at all once their Arabian stock was established and flourishing. And that decision had made their fortune. An ugly disease called osteodisjunctus, picked up on some outlying world and spread from planet to planet, was able to lie dormant for four or five generations before bursting forth to wipe out horses by the herd. There was no cure, not even a treatment; the disease struck swiftly and inexorably. No case of osteodisjunctus had ever been reported among Pirmachan Arabians, however; and horsebreeders everywhere began turning to Pirmacha for “clean” stock with which to rebuild their stables.

On the other side of a faintly shimmering force wall, a handsome colt with more energy than he knew what to do with easily paced their ground transport. The three newcomers to Pirmacha admired the small head, the graceful sweep of the neck, the seemingly effortless movement of the slender legs. Then suddenly the colt tired of the game and bolted away. It was a safe guess that the reason the tribunal had been summoned to Pirmacha had something to do with the horses. The Pirmachan High Council had been stingy with details in their request for aid. They’d said only that a murder had been committed, and that while Security had narrowed the number of suspects to two, High Council had been unable to determine which of the two was guilty. The Pirmachan request for an outside tribunal had concluded with the assertion that the case was dividing the Pirmachan people and an early resolution was imperative.

“The schism,” Mother prompted.

Right. “Copely,” Duncan said as they entered the city, “exactly how is this murder case dividing the people? Is everyone taking sides, or what?”

Copely snorted. “You could say that. The two suspects are named Roj Kordan and Anita Verdoris. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Owners?” Britt guessed.

“Owners of the two biggest spreads on Pirmacha,” Copely confirmed. “That’s Kordan’s land you’re looking at now. Every small breeder here is dependent in some way on either Kordan or Verdoris — for off-planet animal transport, specialized veterinary medicine, stud service, you name it. Every single person here with any connection to horses whatsoever has a stake in the outcome.”

“And that’s why you asked for us,” Duncan said suddenly. “Whichever way High Council decided, they’d alienate half the population. You’re passing the buck.”

“Duncan!” Mother’s voice said sharply in his ear. “That’s not the kind of judgment you’ve been called on to render here. Apologize to her. Quickly.”

Damn; she was right. “Copely, I’m sorry — that was out of line,” Duncan said hurriedly. “Of course you want outside judges. You’re all too close to the matter to be impartial, and you have the good sense to know it.”

The Pirmachan woman grunted something unintelligible.

“Really, Duncan,” Mother murmured in his ear. “You’re the senior member of this tribunal. You’re supposed to know better.”

Duncan touched the spot behind his right ear where the communicator was implanted and wished, not for the first time, that the thing came with an on/off switch. He exchanged glances with Britt and Hartley. So they’d been handed a political hot potato; it wouldn’t be the first time.

Hartley coughed politely and asked, “What was the victim’s name?”

“Longstride,” Copely told him. “He was found in the Kordan stables with his throat cut. You’ll find all the details in your console brief.”

No attempt to make it look like an accident, then. They came to the High Council Building without further talk. It was there they would hear testimony via remote visuals and ultimately render their verdict.

The hallways were crowded with visitors who’d come to gawk at the three arbiters. They all had that same angry look that Copely had, some of them even seething; the place seemed ready to explode. “Best wrap this up fast,” Duncan said in a low voice to the other two as they entered the judgment chamber.

Copely activated their consoles for them and retired to a corner, making herself available if needed while the three arbiters studied the brief the High Council had prepared for them. Regardless of all that might be going on in the background, the facts of the crime were fairly simple.

At dawn eight days earlier, a stablehand at Roj Kordan’s main facility had been getting ready for the day’s work when he’d caught a whiff of the sickly sweet smell of blood. He’d followed the scent to an unused stall, where he’d found Longstride lying on the floor and bleeding profusely from the deep gash in his throat. By the time the stablehand was able to summon help, Longstride had died; the stablehand must have missed the murderer by only minutes. Suspicion immediately fell upon Verdoris, the woman who was Kordan’s only real rival on Pirmacha.

“Who was this Longstride?” Hartley asked. “Did he work there?”

But Britt had guessed it. “Longstride was a horse,” she said disgustedly. They’d been brought across four star systems to determine who murdered a horse.

“Not just a horse,” Copely spoke up from the corner. “He was the premiere stud on Pirmacha. His get has the best win record in the galaxy, bar none. Kordan had a seven-year waiting list for Longstride.”

Hartley stood up. “I don’t care if he had a seventy-year waiting list. You brought us here through false petition of duress — do you know the penalty for that?”

“There is nothing false about it!” Copely protested. “Longstride’s murder has generated violence here — Kordan’s people and Verdoris’s have already come to blows on a number of occasions. Someone’s going to get killed if this isn’t settled soon. We may even have civil war!”

“Over a horse?” Duncan asked mildly.

“Not just a horse!” Copely was practically screaming at them. “How can you render a just verdict when you don’t even try to understand?”

“We don’t intend to,” Hartley said angrily. “At least, I don’t. I refuse to hear the case.”

“Hartley!” Mother said sharply. “Remember why you’re there!”

“Keep out of this, Mother,” Duncan commanded. “This is our bailiwick.”

“What?” Copely said, confused.

“Talking to the ship,” Britt explained.

Hartley whirled around. “I’m leaving,” he announced.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Mother huffed, ignoring Duncan’s instructions to mind her own business. “You’re on duty — get back there!”

“I’m going on private time as of now.”

“You have no private time coming.”

“Then take it out of next week’s allowance!” Hartley snarled, and slammed out of the room.

The third arbiter calmed down quickly enough, once Duncan and Britt followed him out of the High Council building. They looked for, and found, a quiet watering place where they could talk. Copely trailed in after them, their angry shadow, and took a seat where she could keep an eye on them.

“You aren’t seriously thinking of hearing this case, are you?” Hartley asked Duncan once their drinks had been served.

“I think we’d better find out more of what’s going on here. Mother? Are you there?”

“Of course, Duncan.”

“Can you access the Pirmachan newsnets? Give us a rundown on just how serious a schism has developed here?”

“One moment.”

Britt took a sip of her drink and said, “That should have been included in our briefing.”

“A lot of things should have been included in our briefing,” Duncan agreed. “But it’s clear why the Pirmachans held back. Central would never have sent an arbitration team if they’d known the murder victim was a horse.”

“Not just a horse,” Britt said wryly, mimicking Copely.

Hartley shot a glance at the council woman, who was nursing a drink and glaring at them angrily. “She has a lot of hostility, that one.”

“Personal involvement, you think?” Duncan asked. “More than she’s told us?”

Hartley just shrugged.

Mother had completed her scan of the local newsnets. “Evidently the schism is more serious than we thought.” Duncan winced at the “we.” “Not only have there been outbreaks of violence,” Mother went on, “but normal business operations have been interrupted to a dangerous extent. I’ll give you an example. Off-planet animal transport is handled by a monopoly whose employees all have ties to either Kordan or Verdoris. A docking chief has a brother who supplies feed to Verdoris, a safety inspector moonlights as a scout for Kordan, and so on. When Kordan wanted to ship a consignment of Arabian brood mares to Burleigh’s Planet, all the Verdoris-supporters refused to handle the shipment. The mares are still here, unpaid for. That sort of divisiveness has affected every aspect of Pirmachan life — food, machinery, simple maintenance.”

“Every aspect?” Britt asked dubiously.

“Just about,” Mother replied. “Like the Pirmachan Research Institute. Kordan commissioned them to do some specialized research in horse DNA. But a Verdoris-supporter managed to sabotage the institute’s back-up generator and then cut off the power supply for an hour, until Security broke into the control room and arrested him. But an hour was long enough for the experiments to be ruined — at enormous cost to the institute, which of course was not paid by Kordan.”

“So you’re saying Pirmacha’s economy is in danger?” Duncan asked.

“Most assuredly.”

Hartley snorted. “And all because of a horse named Longstride!”

“Longstride is the excuse, Hartley,” Mother said mildly. “This economic war between Kordan and Verdoris has been building up for a long time.”

The three arbiters were silent for a moment. Then Duncan said, “We’re going to have to hear the case. There’s too much at stake not to.”

The other two reluctantly agreed. Then Britt squinted her eyes and announced, “I think we have company.”

A stocky man in his middle years stood talking to Copely, both of them eyeing the three arbiters. Then the man nodded and headed their way, broadcasting animosity as he came. “What’s this I’ve been told?” he demanded in a bellicose voice. “You’re not even going to hear the case?”

“On the contrary, sir, we have every intention of hearing the case,” Duncan replied with exaggerated courtesy. “And you are...?”

Taken aback, the man pulled out a bright green kerchief and mopped his balding forehead. “Forgive me, Arbiters. You are our last chance to resolve our... difficulties. My name is Thorin Glimm.” He sat down at their table uninvited and said, “I’m Roj Kordan’s Chief of Veterinary Services. I can’t get the medicines I need or even ordinary lab supplies. Shipping is crippled here, virtually nonexistent — Verdoris’s people have seen to that. And with Kordan locked in Security Isolation, nobody’s making the decisions that have to be made.”

“But surely Verdoris has need of shipping, too,” Britt pointed out. “It can’t be all her fault, Dr. Glimm. If you’re aligned with Kordan—”

Glimm laughed shortly. “Arbiter, I am probably the only man on Pirmacha with a foot in both camps. I work for Kordan, but my daughter is married to Verdoris’s eldest son. I’m going to get hurt whichever way you decide.” He sighed. “I don’t want either my employer or my son-in-law’s mother to be blamed. But one of them is responsible for killing Longstride... or having him killed, more likely. And the only way to get this place back on track is to settle once and for all the question of which one.”

Hartley opened his mouth to speak, but Duncan shot him a warning look. They’d all been wondering why Kordan had been accused, why he would want to kill his own superhorse. But Duncan didn’t want Hartley asking about it; all that information would be in the depositions and the testimony. Even this much outside chat was not good. “Doctor, I must ask you not to discuss the facts of the case.”

“Of course, of course.” Glimm marshaled his thoughts. “I’m just trying to impress upon you the importance of reaching a decisive conclusion. ‘Not proved’ or one of those other vague and unhelpful verdicts simply won’t do. People have to know who killed Longstride, they have to be sure in their own minds that the killer didn’t get away with it. It must be settled.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Hartley said blandly.

Glimm looked at each of them in turn. “If you can’t decide which is guilty...” He hesitated.

“If we can’t?” Duncan prompted.

The veterinarian patted his forehead with the green kerchief again. “Then flip a coin. But come up with a name. Settle this.”

Without another word he pushed away from the table and lumbered out of the room, watched by Copely as well as by the three arbiters. “The man must be torn,” Britt said sympathetically. “He lives his life inside the Kordan camp. Yet anything that hurts Verdoris, hurts his daughter. And still he comes here and tells us to chance condemning an innocent person rather than reach no decision.”

“How tough can it be?” Hartley wanted to know. “Reaching a decision. We can demand further investigations if we spot something they overlooked.”

“We may have to do that,” Duncan agreed. “We’ll need to go over Security’s evidence very carefully.”

“Then you’d better get cracking,” said Mother.

In so horse-conscious an environment, Pirmachan law was, quite naturally, severe on those who brought harm to another person’s stock in any way whatsoever. The penalty for the destruction or even incapacitating of a horse was extreme: permanent exile from Pirmacha, with all the goods and property of the offender reverting to the owner of the horse in question. So if Verdoris was guilty of killing Longstride, then Kordan would end up with a virtual monopoly and thus become the most powerful figure on Pirmacha. And vice versa.

“No wonder everybody’s up in arms,” Britt said. “For them, it’s a matter of which one of the two accused is going to end up running the planet. Hell of a way to hold an election.”

Duncan turned to Copely, sitting quietly in her corner of the judgment chamber. “Has this penalty ever been invoked before?”

“In the early years of colonization, frequently,” Copely said. “But in my lifetime, only once. Verdoris was the injured party in that case. A rival breeder hamstrung a promising colt Verdoris had just entered in his maiden race. Verdoris collected enough from that judgment to let her challenge Kordan for dominance of the business.”

“So Verdoris is familiar with the procedure,” Hartley remarked. “That’s interesting.”

“Is it.” Not a question. Copely was a Verdoris-supporter?

They began hearing testimony via remote, the holographic images of the witnesses appearing in the judgment chamber. They heard the stablehand testify how he’d found Longstride bleeding to death. They heard from one of Kordan’s trainers, whom the stablehand had gone running to for help. They listened to various security officers explain how a dropped electronic lock pick had led them to take Verdoris into custody: her fingerprints were all over the gadget.

Then they heard the witness who at last made it clear why Kordan had also been taken into custody, a suspect in the slaughter of his own prize money-making stallion. The witness who explained it all was none other than Thorin Glimm, Kordan’s Chief of Veterinary Services.

Glimm was a reluctant witness, testifying only after being informed by Pirmachan Security that they’d get permission to use a hypnotic drug on him if necessary. The veterinarian’s hologram showed a troubled face and the body language of discouragement. “Longstride was finished,” he said unhappily. “He suffered a viral infection last winter, and ever since then his sperm count has been way down. We tried every treatment known, but Longstride responded to none of them. We even had the Research Institute working on his DNA, until that fool working for Verdoris cut off the power and destroyed the cultures. Those experiments were our only hope.”

Duncan asked, “Couldn’t new experiments have been conducted?”

“Yes, Kordan was scheduled to take new blood and tissue samples to the institute the very day Longstride was murdered. Now, of course, it no longer matters.”

Mother spoke. “Ask who was conducting the experiments.”

Duncan cut off the sound to Glimm. “Mother, I’ve told you before — don’t meddle. We’ll call you when we need you.”

“But you ought to know who—”

“And we’ll get to it. Now butt out.”

Mother sniffed.

“Jeez,” said Hartley, shaking his head.

“Forget Mother,” Britt said curtly. “Now we have a motive for Kordan. Longstride was no longer a valuable animal. If Kordan could kill him and shift the blame to Verdoris, he’d put her out of business.”

“Only if Verdoris didn’t know about Longstride.” Duncan turned the sound back on. “Dr. Glimm, who else knew Longstride’s sperm count was down?”

“Kordan and I were the only ones. I did the lab work myself. Kordan ordered me not to say anything.” Glimm was looking more and more unhappy.

So Verdoris did not know Longstride’s earning capacity was no longer a threat to her own stables. The three arbiters mulled that over, and then Hartley said, “I think it’s time we heard from the two suspects.”

They called Verdoris first. She was a big woman, large-boned and strong-looking. She held her head high as her hologram stared straight at them. “I wish to make a statement,” she announced in a tight voice.

Not an unusual request. “Proceed,” said Duncan.

“I did not kill Longstride,” the big woman said. “I do not know who did. I did not order, hire, or even hint to those around me that I wanted Longstride dead. The electronic lock pick must be mine, since my fingerprints are on it. But I have no idea how it got into Kordan’s stable. I did not leave it there.”

“What were you doing with a lock pick in the first place?” Britt asked.

“We all use them,” Verdoris said. “Everyone who breeds horses keeps a set of picks. They’re handy when you need a quick bypass of your internal security system.”

“But this pick was keyed to Kordan’s security system.”

Verdoris spread her hands. “That, I have no explanation for. It would seem to indicate that one of my employees simply picked it up and used it. But for it to work on Kordan’s system, someone inside Kordan’s organization had to have provided him with the key codes.”

“Conspiracy?”

“It’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“To what benefit? How would one of your employees and one of Kordan’s profit from the death of Longstride?”

“I don’t know, Arbiter. I sincerely hope you will find out.”

They questioned her further but learned nothing germane. Verdoris said she was with her husband at the time Longstride was killed, but she could easily have hired someone to do the deed in spite of her protestations to the contrary. Finally Duncan dismissed her and called Roj Kordan to testify.

Kordan was a dark, bearded man whose image blinked into existence breathing fire. “What have you found out about who killed my horse?” he demanded. When Duncan reminded him that he was one of the suspects, Kordan snorted. “I hadn’t given up on Longstride yet. There were lab tests yet to be run, DNA tests. You don’t understand about Longstride. Even if I were convinced his stud days were over — which I wasn’t — I wouldn’t have had him killed. Never. Not Longstride.”

Hartley asked, “Why did you order Dr. Glimm not to tell anyone about the horse’s low sperm count?”

Another snort. “Is that a serious question? Longstride was a goldmine, Arbiter. I didn’t want any rumors circulating until I was sure beyond all doubt that he’d sired his last foal. And I was still a long way from being sure.”

“Who do you think killed Longstride?”

“It had to be Anita Verdoris. Her prints were on the pick.”

“Couldn’t the pick have been stolen by someone in her employ?”

“Only if she was careless enough to leave it lying around. And Verdoris is not careless.”

Duncan spoke up. “Do you mean to say no one could steal one of your electronic picks if he set his mind to it?”

“Not very likely.”

“But possible.”

Kordan glowered. “Yes.”

“And where were you when Longstride was killed?”

“At Exercise Yard B — there’s a filly I wanted to watch work out. Other people saw me there, plenty of them.”

Same as with Verdoris, then; Kordan could have sent someone else to do the killing while establishing an alibi for himself elsewhere. Duncan let the irate owner go and called the head of the Research Institute.

She had little to tell them. Kordan had asked the institute for a complete work-up of Longstride’s DNA. They’d barely prepared the first batch of cultures when Verdoris’s man cut the power and ruined all their samples. The experiments proper hadn’t even been started.

Duncan dismissed her and sat staring glumly at Copely in her corner; the council woman’s face was impassive. They had no grounds for eliminating either Kordan or Verdoris as a suspect. Nor did they have grounds for convicting either of them. No wonder the Pirmachan High Council had asked for help.

Hartley said, “We’ll have to use B-Aminosine. That’s the only way we’re going to find out who’s telling the truth.”

“We can’t use it,” Britt objected. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s the only hypnotic drug that’s one hundred percent reliable.”

“That doesn’t matter, Hartley. B-Aminosine-induced testimony has been ruled inadmissible. We can’t use it.”

“Wait a minute,” Duncan said. “I’m not sure we’ve got a ruling from Central on that yet. Mother — check on the status of the hypnotics exclusion law, please. See if it’s still in Current Dockets.” Silence. “Mother? Respond, please.”

Her voice, when she spoke, seemed to have lost its usual gentleness. “Are you sure I won’t be butting in?”

Duncan ignored the sarcasm and repeated his request. Mother, still miffed, reported that a ruling excluding the use of B-Aminosine was expected but was not yet on the books.

“Then we can get in under the wire,” Hartley said. “Britt?” She nodded. “Duncan?”

“Let’s do it,” Duncan said. “And this time not by remote. Copely,” he called, “I want Anita Verdoris and Roj Kordan right here in this chamber.”

Anyone injected with B-Aminosine could count on being sick as a dog for anywhere from three days to two weeks: nausea, dizziness, headaches, cold sweats, blurred vision, loss of motor functions. Several cases of partial paralysis of the central nervous system had been reported, and at least one death had been directly attributed to the administration of B-Aminosine. Only an arbiter could order the use of the drug.

The arbiters’ decision to subject the two prime suspects to the possibly detrimental effects of B-Aminosine was met with more relief than apprehension by the Pirmachans who heard about it. Suffering a little temporary illness, no matter how unpleasant, was a small price to pay to get at the truth — especially since it was someone else who’d be doing the suffering. The doctor called in to administer the drug had insisted an adjoining chamber be turned into a recovery room before he would proceed; finally he and his team were ready.

Roj Kordan was first. As soon as he went under, the doctor stepped back to allow the arbiters to question him.

Duncan wasted no time. “Kordan, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Longstride?”

“No.”

“Did you arrange to have him killed?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did kill him?”

“No.”

Duncan nodded. “That’s all we need to know,” he said to the doctor. “Bring him out of it.”

Kordan came back to consciousness retching and shaking. Unable to walk, he was carried by the doctor’s assistants to the recovery room.

The arbiters tried not to give anything away through their facial expressions as their one remaining suspect was brought in. But Anita Verdoris glanced at Copely and read the truth there. “He passed the test, didn’t he?” she asked.

Copely looked away.

Whatever hope the arbiters entertained that they had identified Longstride’s killer was quickly quashed. Verdoris’s B-Aminosine session went exactly the way Kordan’s had gone. Did you kill, did you arrange, do you know. No. No. No. The three arbiters looked at one another despairingly as Verdoris was carried out.

Mother broke her long silence. “Now what are you going to do, Mr. Know-It-All?”

What they did was take a break.

Copely led them to private lodgings, saw they were served a meal, and left them alone. By mutual unspoken agreement, no one mentioned the case they were to decide until they’d finished eating and were indulging in an after-dinner drink.

Duncan took the lead. “It hasn’t all been wasted effort,” he said. “We did succeed in establishing the innocence of both Verdoris and Kordan. Now we know to look elsewhere.”

“Where do we start?” Britt asked.

Hartley scowled. “Did somebody say we ought to wrap this one up fast? Hah. We’re going to have to start over, right from the beginning. Anyone on this horsey planet could have done it.”

“Anyone except Verdoris and Kordan,” Britt said absently.

“We could be here for months! And all because some ex-stud of a racehorse was made into a symbol of the power struggle going on between those two.” Hartley’s voice was rising. “So what do we do, question the entire population?”

“Take it easy, Hartley,” Duncan said. “We won’t have to go that far.”

“Why not?” Hartley asked loudly. “Line ’em up, shoot ’em full of B-Aminosine, and ask ’em one question. Did you do it? Sooner or later somebody will say yes.”

Duncan laughed uncomfortably. “And leave behind us an entire planet full of people too sick to take care of themselves?”

Hartley got up from the table and crossed over to look out a window. “Serve them right,” he muttered. “This is a ridiculous situation they’ve put us in.”

Britt sat motionless, watching the two men.

Duncan rose slowly. “Hartley? You’re not serious?”

“I’m not?” the other man answered enigmatically.

“You can’t be! The entire population... For one thing, the local supply of B-Aminosine—”

“—will be adequate for our purposes,” Hartley finished for him. “You know damned well the guilty person is someone close to either Kordan or Verdoris. We start with them.”

Duncan stared at him, unbelieving. Then he appealed to Britt. “Britt, help me out here!”

She licked her lips, taking her time. “You know, Duncan... he may be right.”

“Britt!”

“All we’d have to do is announce we’re testing everybody,” she said carefully. “And then start testing, to prove it. Whoever’s guilty will most likely come forward and admit it. He’ll know he’s going to be caught anyway — why put himself through the agony of a B-Aminosine illness?”

“And if he doesn’t come forward?”

“Then we do test everybody,” Hartley said harshly. “We requisition more of the drug from Central if we have to.”

Duncan hesitated. “It would work,” Britt said. “Do you know any other way to flush out the killer, Duncan? I’ll listen, if you do.”

Hartley muttered, “There is no other way.”

Duncan was still not convinced. “But to drug-test an entire population — there’s no precedent for that in the entire history of arbitration! And it’s still a dangerous drug!”

Britt smiled wryly. “You didn’t seem too worried about that when we tested Verdoris and Kordan.”

The first arbiter was silent. Then: “I’ll agree to the announcement of planetwide testing. But if early testing doesn’t turn up Longstride’s killer—”

“Why don’t we put off deciding about that until the time comes?” Britt interrupted. “First things first.”

“How about it, Duncan?” Hartley asked. “Are we agreed?”

Duncan pressed his lips together. “Agreed.”

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR PEA-PICKIN’ MINDS?” Mother roared.

All three arbiters winced. “What’s wrong?” Duncan asked.

“You are actually going to use that nasty drug on innocent people — because you’re too unobservant to see what’s staring you right in the face?”

“Now wait a minute,” Hartley said angrily.

“I have never seen such sloppy work in my life,” Mother went on indignantly. “Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! How many times have I told you that if a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well?”

About thirty thousand, Duncan guessed.

Mother switched her mode of speaking; now she spoke slow-ly and care-ful-ly, so the dumb bunnies she was talking to could understand. “You don’t have to drug the entire populace. The answer is right there under your nose. Remember the man who cut the power at the Research Institute? Verdoris’s employee? The one who caused Longstride’s DNA cultures to be ruined. Remember him? Think hard, now.”

Duncan clenched his teeth. “What about him?”

“You never questioned him.”

Britt looked puzzled. “Is there some reason we should have? That was just one of several violent incidents that erupted after Longstride was killed.”

“Was it, now. Try thinking in sequence for a change. What was Kordan planning to do on the day Longstride died?”

Duncan slapped his forehead. “He was planning to take new tissue samples in for testing! The power disruption at the institute came before the horse was killed!”

“And you never even noticed that,” Mother said reprovingly. “As I said, sloppy. All right, then. First Longstride’s DNA is destroyed. Then Longstride himself is destroyed. Does that suggest anything to you?”

The three arbiters exchanged blank looks. Then Britt said: “Someone was trying to remove all traces of Longstride?”

A biomechanical sigh. “Now you’re on the right track. By the way, you didn’t tell me to access financial records, but I did anyway.” Mother paused for effect. “The fellow who cut the power at the institute was paid to do it. A nice sum was transferred to his account the day after the incident, and I traced the source of the transference. I know who paid him.”

The three arbiters waited expectantly. She just has to make us ask, Duncan thought. “Who, Mother?”

Mother took her time, milking it. “Dr. Glimm.”

“The vet?” Britt said. “But why would he...?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Mother said sweetly. “You can always threaten him with B-Aminosine.”

“We can always use B-Aminosine,” Hartley growled.

“That won’t be necessary,” Mother informed them. “The man knows drugs. Just let him see what you have in mind and he’ll talk. There’s one other thing — Longstride’s low sperm count. How many people knew about it?”

“Two,” said Hartley. “Kordan and Dr. Glimm.”

“Exactly. And Security supposedly had to use the threat of drug-testing to get Dr. Glimm to testify about it. So how did Security know to question him in the first place?”

“Ahhhh,” Hartley said. “He had to have leaked it. Kordan sure as hell wouldn’t have said anything. But why would Glimm want Longstride’s condition known?”

“As a cover story,” Duncan said suddenly. “Something else was wrong with Longstride — something so wrong that Dr. Glimm couldn’t even tell the horse’s owner about it. So wrong that the horse had to be destroyed.”

“At last!” Mother said with approval. “I was beginning to think you’d never get there. Well? What are you standing around here for? Get hopping!”

“Yes, Mother,” three voices said.

Mother was right. As soon as Dr. Glimm saw the medical team waiting in the judgment chamber, all the life drained out of him. He was caught and he knew it. Glimm shook his head when Duncan asked if they’d need the drug. The medical team quietly departed, leaving only Copely behind to listen with the arbiters.

“It was osteodisjunctus.” Dr. Glimm slumped down in a chair and stared at his feet. “Do you know what that is? It’s a horse-killer, the worst disease a horse can get. Absolutely virulent, absolutely unstoppable.”

“Longstride had osteodisjunctus?” Duncan asked.

“He was a carrier. I spotted an anomaly in his blood two years ago,” the veterinarian said. “But I didn’t know what it was — it didn’t match the known structure of the disease’s causative organism. It took me two years of off-and-on testing to identify it as a mutated form. And all that time Longstride’s infected sperm was being shipped all over the galaxy. If it ever got out that I had known for two years...” He shook his head sadly, leaving the thought unfinished.

So, he was protecting himself, Duncan thought; not Kordan, not Pirmacha’s reputation as a reliable source of disease-free horses. Himself. “There was nothing wrong with Longstride’s sperm count, was there?”

“Hell, no, it was as high as ever. He had years of stud service left in him. But I had to think of something to make Kordan stop breeding him.”

Mother spoke to the three arbiters. “You should have asked to see the sperm-count test results,” she said reprovingly. None of them answered her; just one more place they’d slipped up.

Britt had a question for the veterinarian. “How did you get hold of Verdoris’s electronic lock pick?”

“From my daughter’s home,” Glimm said. “I mentioned that she’s married to Verdoris’s son, didn’t I? I was visiting one day when he came in carrying his mother’s lock pick — something was wrong with his own and he’d borrowed hers. He happened to be wearing gloves and the thought occurred to me that her fingerprints must be on the pick. I simply took it when no one was looking.”

“And left it at the scene to incriminate Verdoris. Is that the same reason you bribed one of her employees to cut the power at the Research Institute?”

“Yes.” Miserably.

Duncan said, “Dr. Glimm, why so brutal a method of killing the horse? Surely a lethal injection would have been more humane.”

Glimm gave a humorless laugh. “And who would have been the first one to be suspected? No, I had to do it in a way to direct suspicion away from myself.” He was silent a moment, and then added: “Arbiters, you never knew Longstride. He was a magnificent animal, truly magnificent. Killing him was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I felt as if I were cutting my own throat.”

And so you were. Duncan glanced at the other two arbiters. Britt and Hartley shook their heads; no more questions. It was time to pronounce judgment.

“Dr. Thorin Glimm,” Duncan said, “you are hereby sentenced to exile from Pirmacha for the rest of your natural life. If you ever attempt to return to Pirmacha for any reason whatsoever, you will be incarcerated for a period of time to be determined by a later tribunal. Moreover, all your goods and property are forfeit to Roj Kordan in partial recompense for the grievous harm you have done him. Do you understand the sentence?”

Duncan’s tone softened. “Dr. Glimm, you’ll be given time to settle your affairs before your exile begins. But you do understand, don’t you, that you’ll not be allowed to practice veterinary medicine ever again?”

Glimm nodded. “It doesn’t matter. Somehow... somehow I just don’t have the heart for it anymore.”

At Duncan’s signal, Copely summoned the security officers to take Glimm away. His head sagged down on his chest as he left, suddenly an old man.

“Thank God that’s over,” Hartley said with a sigh of relief. “Now we can get out of here.”

But Mother had to have the last word. “At least you cleaned up after yourselves,” she admitted grudgingly. “But don’t you ever, ever make such a mess again!”

Copely was driving them back to the landing field where their shuttles waited. The councilwoman was all smiles, a startling contrast to her dour anger on the trip in. “The only downside is that Glimm’s daughter will lose her inheritance,” she was saying. “Sins of the fathers. But she’s hardly left out in the cold. She’s part of the Verdoris family now.”

“It’s your law,” Hartley said shortly.

“Oh, I wasn’t criticizing,” Copley said with a smile. “In fact, we’re eternally grateful to you. You not only found Longstride’s killer, you also alerted us to a greater danger.”

“You mean the osteodisjunctus,” Duncan said.

“That’s what I mean. We’ll shut down operations for a while, until we can do a thorough testing of all the livestock on Pirmacha. If we find any examples of Dr. Glimm’s ‘anomaly’ in the blood...”

“What will you do?” Britt asked.

“Destroy the carriers, of course,” Copely said. “But in a more humane manner than the way Dr. Glimm dispatched poor Longstride.” She sighed. “I wish you could have met Longstride, Arbiters. He was the greatest horse I have ever known.”

Duncan half expected a sarcastic comment from Mother, but none came.

They reached the landing field. With repeated expressions of gratitude, Copely bade them farewell. The arbiters had been on Pirmacha less than a full real-time day, but to Duncan it seemed like a year. Britt and Hartley looked every bit as drained as he felt, pinch-faced and not at all pleased with themselves. Today had not been the team’s most stellar performance; none of the three would ever be regaling grandchildren with stories of Pirmacha.

Wearily Duncan climbed into his shuttle, wondering if they were going to be sent to bed without their supper.