Judgment at Proteus

EIGHT

As was traditional in these things, the first stop on our tour was the crime scene.

I’d suggested last night, admittedly in a rather snide way, that the Jumpsuits swarming around the victim had probably trampled any useful clues into oblivion. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I’d been right.

“So they didn’t find anything?” I asked, gazing down at the dried blood still staining the ground.

“Not once they finally began searching,” Emikai said, an edge of contempt in his tone. “If I had been informed in time, perhaps something could have been salvaged. But they did not call me until several hours had passed.”

“Really?” I said, frowning. “Interesting.”

“How so?”

“Because you’re supposed to be the person riding herd on me,” I said. “Two minutes after I was picked up, someone should have been yelling in your ear about your pet Human having committed a murder and why the hell weren’t you already on top of it. Do we know who’s been in charge of the investigation up to now?”

“Captain of the Guard Lyarrom,” Emikai said. “I have spoken to him by comm, but not yet in person.”

“We should make a point of doing that,” I said. “What do we know about the victim?”

“His name was Tech Yleli, and he worked the evening shift in Building Eight,” Emikai said. “That is the shift from the hours of four until twelve.”

“So he should have already left for home by the time I found him,” I said. “Unless he’d been killed earlier?”

Emikai shook his head. “His death was between twelve and twelve-fifteen.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You can be that accurate?”

“Filiaelian blood coagulation follows a well-known curve,” Emikai explained. “When all the genetic parameters are known, a time of death can be defined to within a single minute.”

“That’s handy,” I said, frowning. “So why do we have a fifteen-minute window on Yleli?”

“Because he was undergoing genetic restructuring at the time of his death and his coagulation curve is no longer valid,” Emikai explained. “But his progress charts have been requested and should be filed soon. At that point, we will be able to considerably narrow down the time of death.”

I looked across the dome toward Terese’s building. “Was his treatment by any chance taking place in Building Eight?”

“No, it was being done in a facility designed specifically for Filiaelian use near his home in Sector 25-C.”

I felt an eyebrow twitch. That was the same sector Bayta’s research had tagged as the location of one of Proteus’s operatic societies. “We’ll want to go take a look at the place later,” I said. “In the meantime, what exactly was his job here? Specifically, did he deal directly with Ms. German?”

“He dealt with her case, but I do not yet know whether he personally interacted with her,” Emikai said. “His job was to analyze tissue and fluid samples to create baselines and search for anomalies.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bayta pull out her comm and hold it up to her ear. “Let’s try a different approach,” I suggested. “Do we know exactly how many patients there are in Building Eight besides Ms. German?”

“I am not certain,” Emikai said, pulling out his reader. “Up to now, I have only been given limited data. If that particular number is not here, we can ask the receptionist.”

“Frank, I have to leave,” Bayta announced, putting away her comm. “Dr. Aronobal says that something’s happening with Terese.”

“What kind of something?” I asked. “Never mind—we’ll go ask in person. Logra Emikai has some questions for the receptionist, anyway.”

We headed back across the dome and into Building Eight. As Bayta and I dropped Emikai off at the receptionist’s desk I looked around, trying to get a sense of activity and tension levels. But everything seemed about the same as it had been on our previous visits.

Everything, that is, except in Terese’s room. Aronobal was there, along with two other Fillies in doctor’s tans and two techs in blue. Aronobal was standing beside Terese, her hand on the girl’s shoulder as she murmured softly to her, while the other two doctors huddled over one of the girl’s attached monitors and talked quietly between themselves. One of the techs was across the room by a narrow table, laying out a series of sampling hypos, while the other tech was carefully taking a blood sample from Terese’s arm. “We seem busy this morning,” I said briskly as we walked in. “Good morning, Terese. How are you feeling?”

“Not so good,” she said, her normal animosity toward me nowhere to be seen. Her face was pale and drawn, even more so than usual. “Dr. Aronobal tells me my baby is dying.”

“May be dying,” Aronobal corrected firmly. “We still have more tests to run.”

Terese nodded, a short, choppy jerk of her head, and closed her eyes. Aronobal caught my eye and nodded to the side, toward the table where the tech had set down his freshly drawn blood sample and was headed back to Terese with another hypo. Bayta and I drifted over in that direction, arriving at the same time as Aronobal. “Well?” I asked softly.

“I do not know,” Aronobal said, her voice anxious and frustrated. “Her physiology is like that of no Human I have ever dealt with. Nor is there anything like it in the literature.”

“In the Filiaelian literature, maybe,” I said. “Earth’s medical community has had a lot more experience with Human genetic disorders than you have.”

“Obviously,” Aronobal said tartly. “But there has yet been no reply to our queries.”

“What can we do to help?” Bayta asked.

“She is frightened,” Aronobal said. “Though she would not admit it, you are the closest people she has to family or friends in this part of the galaxy.” She hesitated. “Perhaps even in her own part of the galaxy. I do not believe she has many people even on Earth she is close to, or who care for her. Certainly not the way you do.”

“That’s very touching,” I said. It was also laid on way too thick, but I decided not to mention that part. “Unfortunately, we’re a bit busy with an important investigation at the moment.”

Aronobal shivered. “Yes—Tech Yleli’s horrible and senseless murder.”

“Horrible, yes,” I agreed. “Senseless, no. We just have to figure out where the sense lies.”

“Perhaps,” Aronobal said. “But surely an hour spent comforting a frightened child could not harm your investigation.”

I gazed at her, an unpleasant feeling tingling the back of my neck. The time constraints of the 24/24 rule were already getting pretty short. And now Dr. Aronobal was proposing that I run down that clock down even more in order to sit here and hold Terese’s hand.

Bayta was obviously thinking along the same lines. “Can you give us a minute?” she asked Aronobal.

“Certainly,” Aronobal said. She looked over her shoulder as Terese gave a little grunt, then turned and hurried back to the girl’s side.

“What do you think?” Bayta asked quietly. “I could stay here with Terese while you and Logra Emikai continue the investigation.”

“I don’t like the idea of leaving you here alone,” I told her, frowning at the line of hypos. Up close, I could see now that the table had lines marked on them, with three of the hypos in each of five hourly boxes, their needles capped by plastic sterilizer sheaths. Apparently, Aronobal was serious about getting up-to-the-minute information on what was going on with Terese’s biochemistry.

Or maybe not. The three hypos in the box labeled for the previous hour were still there, two of them containing bright red blood, the other holding a pale amber liquid I didn’t recognize. Apparently, whoever was supposed to have taken the fluids away for analysis had fallen down on the job.

Maybe that job was supposed to have been Tech Yleli’s.

Whatever the reason for the foul-up, though, the current hour’s draws were now already under way. One of the hypos in the current time box was already filled, with the tech at Terese’s side working on the second.

“I’ll hardly be alone,” Bayta pointed out. “The building is full of Filiaelians, and that’s not likely to change.” She hesitated. “Actually, I’m more concerned about you being alone with Logra Emikai. We still don’t know whether it was he or Dr. Aronobal who told Chinzro Hchchu about your part in the New Tigris events.”

“True,” I agreed, running a finger gently over the sterilizer cap on one of the empty hypos. Something about this wasn’t adding up, somehow. “And the main reason we don’t know that is because Tech Yleli’s untimely death has canceled today’s hearing, where Hchchu was supposed to give us the name. Coincidence?”

Bayta’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that’s why Tech Yleli was murdered?”

“It does seem rather ludicrous, given all the simpler stalling tactics in a lawyer’s repertoire,” I conceded, my eyes still on the damn hypos. “But crazier things have happened. And we know our friends don’t seem to have a problem with multiple murders when it suits them…”

I trailed off, my vague uneasiness suddenly snapping into focus. Multiple.

Why the hell were there two different hypos with blood in them? Why not just draw twice the amount in a single, larger hypo?

One from Terese and one from her baby? But Aronobal had said they were concentrating on the baby right now. And even if they were sampling from Terese, too, why only one hypo with the other fluid instead of two of them?

I looked over my shoulder at the tech. He was just finishing the draw, this one from an access port taped to Terese’s abdomen. “Move over here,” I murmured to Bayta.

Obediently, she stepped close beside me. With her body blocking the Filly’s view, I reached over and took one of the blood hypos from the previous hour’s box, flipping it around and sliding it deftly up my sleeve. I glanced back again as the tech arrived and courteously moved out of his way. He set down his full hypo, picked up the last remaining empty one, and hurried away again.

“Better take all three,” Bayta advised quietly, once again moving to block everyone’s view of the hypos.

I smiled tightly. She was definitely getting good at this skulking stuff. One missing hypo would raise eyebrows, but three missing hypos would naturally imply that someone had collected them for processing. Scooping up the other two hypos of the group, I slipped them up my other sleeve.

“So am I staying with Terese?” Bayta asked.

I’d almost forgotten the reason we’d been alone over here in the first place. “If you think it would be helpful,” I said reluctantly. “I suppose it might give you a chance to prod her for more information about the aftermath of her attack.”

“Yes, I can do that,” Bayta agreed. “What do you want to know?”

I turned around again, watching Aronobal trying to soothe the girl. “For starters, where and when exactly Aronobal and Emikai came into her story,” I said. “I want to know how fast they were on the scene, where they come from, how quickly they offered the Assembly’s aid—that sort of thing.”

“Should I also find out if she ever met Tech Yleli?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “And if she did, how much interaction did they have, and how much interaction did she see between him and Aronobal or him and Wandek.” There was a motion at the door, and I looked over to see that Emikai had returned from his conference with the receptionist and was waiting unobtrusively out in the corridor. “Looks like Emikai’s ready,” I continued. “I should be back in a couple of hours. If it looks like it’s going to take longer, I’ll call you.”

I fixed her with a stern look. “And if anything happens here—anything—you call me. Immediately.”

“I understand,” Bayta said. Her voice was solid enough, but I could see the worry in her eyes. Not for herself, but for me. “Be careful.”

“Trust me,” I said dryly. Reaching down, I took her hand. “And don’t forget what I said. You get so much as a strange shiver, you get on the comm.”

“You, too,” she said, making no attempt to withdraw her hand. “Don’t worry about me, Frank. They want the baby alive, remember? Usantra Wandek’s reaction earlier proved that much. They wouldn’t do anything to me when there was a chance that Terese or the child would be put at risk.”

“I suppose,” I said. “Stay alert anyway.” Giving her hand a final squeeze, I let go and slipped out of the room.

Emikai caught my eye with a questioning look. I gestured silently toward the exit, and he nodded and strode off. I followed, Doug as always padding along at my side. Halfway down the corridor, I slipped the purloined hypos from my sleeves into more permanent carrying places in my side jacket pockets. “Well?” I murmured.

“Ms. German is the only patient in this building,” he murmured back. “I was told she is a special case.”

I grunted. “I’m sure she is.”

We were nearly to the receptionist’s station when the outside door opened, and to my surprise Minnario floated into the building on his support chair. He started to turn to the receptionist, caught sight of me, and changed course to head instead in our direction. [Mr. Compton,] he greeted me. [The very Human I wanted to see.]

“Good morning, Minnario,” I greeted him back. “What can I do for you?”

He warbled a brief, growling laugh. [You may do for me what you may do for everyone else aboard Kuzyatru Station,] he said grimly. [Find and imprison this murderer who’s arisen among us.]

“Have you any thoughts as to who it might be?” Emikai asked.

Minnario seemed taken aback by the question. [I hardly even know my way around the station, let alone any of its people or politics. I couldn’t even begin to guess why anyone would want the late Tech Yleli dead.]

“Of course,” I said. Though the murder had occurred only two days after Minnario had come aboard. Timing like that was always a little suspicious.

But of course, that same logic could also be applied to Bayta and me. Probably better not to bring it up. “So what brings you here this morning?” I asked. “You come by to offer moral support?”

[I actually had something more practical in mind,] he said. [I’m told your murder trial is on hiatus for the moment. But of course, that moment will last only until you have captured the murderer. I know you’re busy, but I thought that if you could spare Ms. Bayta for a while, I’d like to hear her version of the events on New Tigris.]

I suppressed a grimace. So now Bayta would not only be closeted with Aronobal, whom I didn’t especially trust, but also with Minnario, whom I also didn’t especially trust. Terrific. “Well, actually—” I began.

“He did not commit the murder,” Emikai murmured.

I frowned at him. “And you know this how?”

The Filly nodded at Minnario’s chair. “His vectored thrusters would have left a ripple pattern in Tech Yleli’s spilled blood.”

I felt my face warm with embarrassment. Of course they would have. I should have spotted that one myself. “Right,” I said. “My apologies, Minnario.”

[No offense taken,] Minnario assured me. His face seemed to darken. [And no need to apologize for your concern for Bayta, either. The first test of every person, whether Nemut or Human, is how he guards and protects his friends and companions. I honor you for taking that duty so seriously.]

They were fine words, and laid on almost as thickly as Aronobal had delivered her speech a few minutes ago. Unlike hers, though, Minnario’s I actually believed, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. “She’s down the hall in Terese German’s room,” I told him. “Feel free to stay as long as you’d like.”

[Thank you,] he said, leaning over the side of his chair and patting Doug on the head. [Good hunting to you.]

Emikai and I had made it out of the building and halfway to the outbound corridor when my comm vibrated: Bayta calling to check whether I’d indeed sent Minnario to talk to her. I confirmed that I had, told her to cooperate with him as best she could while still comforting Terese, and signed off.

“An excellent assistant,” Emikai commented as we reached the end of the dome. “The ability to take on several tasks at once is rare indeed.”

“She’s definitely good at that,” I agreed. “Wait a second—I want to check out the camera.”

“An effective bit of sabotage, was it not?” Emikai asked, pointing up at the monitor camera still angled toward the top of the dome. “I have only had a moment to study it, and insufficient time for a full examination.”

“We’ll want to find a ladder and do that sometime,” I said, craning my neck. “Any idea what was used to push it?”

“I do not see any obvious marks that would indicate the method,” Emikai said. “But from the stress lines on the metal gimbals, I believe it was done in a single, solid thrust instead of via several smaller ones.”

“That would make sense,” I said. “Standing here nudging the thing would be a little obvious.” I turned around to look at the far side of the dome and the corridor that led toward my quarters. “What about the other one?”

“It was removed completely,” Emikai said.

“That much I know,” I said. “I meant, why it was removed instead of simply pushed up like this one?”

Emikai shook his head. “That I cannot say. Though it surely would have been more difficult to remove than simply push out of line.”

“Unless the plan was to remove both of them, only some of their equipment failed,” I said. “And no one up in the security nexus monitor room noticed any of this?”

“As you must have noticed last night, the images on the displays rotate among many cameras and status boards,” Emikai said. “The patroller on duty would have first had to notice that the dome camera was misaligned.”

“Which he obviously didn’t.”

“Or he noticed and was unable to fix it,” Emikai went on. “It is likely the twisted gimbals would not permit a remote adjustment. In that case, a repair order would automatically be logged.”

“As I assume would also be the case with the camera that was suddenly missing,” I said, eyeing the remaining camera closely. “How soon after the orders were logged would there have been someone on the scene?”

“Normally within thirty minutes,” Emikai said. “In this case, of course, the murder of Tech Yleli intervened.”

I looked across the dome at Building Eight. “And now that the whole place has become a crime scene, I assume they’ll be left just the way they are. Conveniently leaving the whole dome unwatched.”

“Hardly that,” Emikai said. “I am told there have been extra patrollers assigned to the area.”

“Really?” I made a show of looking around. “Where?”

“I presume they are stationed inside the buildings,” Emikai said. But he was looking around, too, and he didn’t sound so sure anymore.

“I didn’t see any hanging around Building Eight,” I pointed out.

“Nor did I,” he conceded. “Perhaps I should call the security nexus and inquire.”

“That’ll only help if it’s an honest oversight,” I said. “Otherwise, all you’ll get will be more empty promises.”

“Let us see which,” he said, pulling out his comm.

I listened with half an ear while Emikai spoke to the controller, studying the twisted camera mount as I did so. A single, solid punch, Emikai and I had both concluded. But as Emikai had said, there was no sign of denting in any part of the mounting hardware. Whatever the tool was that our mystery man had used, he’d made sure its business end was well padded.

I looked back as Emikai put his comm away. “The controller agrees that the assigned patrollers have not taken their posts,” he said. “Other security matters took priority.”

“What other security matters?” I asked.

“He did not list them,” Emikai said. “But he has promised they will be here as quickly as possible.”

“Of course they will,” I growled.

Emikai eyed me closely. “We could examine the cameras and mounts now,” he suggested. “By the time we finish, the patrollers might be ready to return to their posts. Regardless, we could then allow the maintainers to replace the cameras and thus restore monitor service to the area.

“And Tech Yleli’s acquaintances?” I asked.

“We would speak with them after that.”

I chewed at my lip. I would definitely feel safer with Bayta in the middle of a milling group of genetically engineered Filly cops. But we also had a murder to investigate, and the sand was rapidly running out of our 24/24 hourglass. “No,” I said, coming abruptly to a decision. “Our first priority is to nail down the victim’s movements as quickly as we can, before anyone’s memory starts to fog up. Let’s go.”

Besides, I reminded myself firmly as we left the dome and headed down the corridor, the Shonkla-raa wanted Terese’s baby alive and unharmed. They wouldn’t try anything against Bayta here.

Surely they wouldn’t.

* * *

The foot traffic in the area around our quarters and Terese’s medical dome had always been rather on the sparse side. Not so elsewhere in the station. As Emikai and I took the elevator to the bullet train deck and headed outward, we found ourselves traveling amid Manhattan-level crowds of Fillies. Most of them gave us a quick glance as we passed, apparently impressed by the novelty of having a Human aboard Proteus, while other no doubt more cosmopolitan residents ignored us completely. In contrast, there was one couple aboard the bullet train who stared at me the entire time, whispering back and forth to each other. I felt more than a little relieved when we left the train and they went off in one direction while Emikai and I headed off the other.

Twenty decks down, we finally reached the late Tech Yleli’s neighborhood.

Up to now all my time on Proteus had been spent in the official and medical sections of the station, which also turned out to be the areas that had been photographed for the professionally prepared pamphlets and brochures I’d seen. Nowhere in any of those publications had I seen pictures of what the staff and worker residence areas looked like.

As we walked into Yleli’s community-center dome, I finally understood why.

It wasn’t that the center was squalid, or unkempt, or even unphotogenic. It was that it was so utterly alien.

For a long moment I just stood there at the archway leading into the dome, my mind spinning as I tried to take it all in. The curved dome surface caught my eye first: patterned with odd splotches of subtle color and an asymmetric pattern of clinging vines that climbed nearly to the top. Birds of some sort perched on the vines, and small creatures, half caterpillar and half slug, crawled slowly along both the vine network and the dome surface itself. Where Terese’s medical dome featured a calmness of blue sky and white clouds, the top of this dome was done in brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges, an image of flaming death that could have been either a representation of a volcanic explosion about to rain down on the landscape below or else a Filly interpretation of Dante’s hell.

The stores and parkland lying beneath the frozen waves of fire were no better. Buildings were buildings, I’d always assumed, with form following function and all that. But even given that purely practical basis, there was still something about the shops, community buildings, and meeting clusters that took me a long moment to wrap my mind around. The angles, textures, and perspective seemed to be at war with one another, leaving the sort of feeling I always got looking at an optical illusion and watching it go from a pair of faces to a vase and back again. Above the buildings were probably thirty helium-filled balloons of various sizes, shapes, and colors, arranged in three separate vertical levels as they circled the dome slowly in the air currents. Arranged on the ground outside their three-level circle was a ring of blazing torches, whose updrafts were apparently designed to keep the balloons contained within their proper flight area.

And then, as my brain finally got all the rest of it more or less sorted out, I focused for the first time on the Fillies themselves.

I’d seen Fillies hundreds of times before, in person, in holos, or in recordings. And yet, suddenly I felt as if I was seeing them for the very first time. There were at least two hundred of them in the dome, dressed in brightly colored clothing, walking stolidly among the dome’s structures. At first glance it looked like just random pedestrian milling, but as I studied it I saw that the crowd was divided into linear groups, rather like hands-free conga lines. Each line was making its own version of a solemn procession across the dome floor, curving and weaving like a Chinese New Year dragon, each group moving in a different direction and with a different flow pattern. As two lines met they might combine, or pass through one another, or simultaneously veer off in brand-new directions. It was like a huge field-show marching squad pageant, mixed with a dit-rec costume drama of an eighteenth-century royal ball, with a bit of Japanese kabuki tossed in. Another couple of hundred Fillies were standing around the dome’s perimeter watching the performance, most of them in pairs or small clumps set in between the six corridors leading into the dome.

And the whole group of them were doing everything in perfect silence. “Tech Yleli’s funeral service?” I murmured.

“His remembrance processional, yes,” Emikai answered. “I believe the movements are designed to represent various aspects of his journey, as well as the people whose lives he touched. This particular cultural form is one I am not very familiar with.” He paused, and I could feel his eyes on me. “You probably find it quaint.”

With a supreme effort, I forced back the chilling alienness of the scene. “Not at all,” I assured him. “I’ve just never seen anything like this before. From Filiaelians or anyone else.”

“Our private cultural lives are not to be set out for strangers to witness,” Emikai said grimly. “My error. I should have called before we came.”

“If it helps any, I promise not to tell anyone about it,” I offered. “Actually, I doubt I could do it proper justice even if I wanted to.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That would be appreciated.”

I nodded, a tightness forming in the pit of my stomach. Cops were supposed to try to put aside any emotions they might feel for the victims in their investigations. But nevertheless I could feel anger-tinged sadness as I gazed at the spectacle before me. From the number of people who’d showed up to act out his life, it was clear that he’d been a well-liked member of his community.

And yet, someone had killed him. Possibly because of Terese, and whatever the hell the Shonkla-raa wanted with her and her baby.

Or maybe he’d been murdered because of me.

“They have noticed us,” Emikai murmured.

I snapped out of my gloomy thoughts. Sure enough, a handful of the spectators, mostly the ones nearest us, had turned in our direction and were staring at us, still in eerie silence. “We should go,” Emikai continued, taking a tentative step backward. “We can come back later and ask the necessary questions.”

I was opening my mouth to agree when one of the Fillies who had spotted us turned and sidled casually to the next corridor clockwise from us around the dome’s perimeter. As he reached it, he threw one last look at us and disappeared around the corner.

And though I couldn’t be positive at that distance, it had sure looked like he had an enlarged throat. The kind favored by professional singers and Shonkla-raa.

“Better idea,” I murmured to Emikai, taking a couple of backward steps of my own. “I’ll go. You can stay until the end of the performance and then talk to them about Tech Yleli.”

He frowned at me. “Are you certain?”

“Absolutely,” I assured him, backing up a couple more steps and then turning around and heading at a fast walk down the corridor. “I’ll talk to you later,” I added over my shoulder.

The corridors in this particular part of Proteus had a slight bend to them, and by the time I was halfway to the next major intersection the dome itself was no longer visible around the curve. Now that I was out of view, I picked up my pace. The whole area seemed to be deserted, with everyone in the neighborhood apparently in the dome at Yleli’s funeral performance.

The silent part of the proceedings had apparently ended. Wafting down the corridor from behind me was the sound of someone giving a speech or eulogy or something of the sort, his voice rising and falling in an odd singsong pattern. I wondered if it was their particular cultural form, or something out of the Slisst Protocols, or neither.

The next major intersection was two more corridors away. I reached it and tapped the green emblem on the wall. “Neighborhood map,” I ordered.

The wall lit up with a map, complete with a helpful mark showing my current location. Unlike the more prosaic rectangular pattern around Terese’s dome, this part of Proteus was arranged like a wheel, with the six curved corridors I’d already noted radiating outward from the community center and all the cross-corridors arranged in concentric circles centered on the dome. The corridor the Filly had taken had also already passed two other intersections, but assuming he was still on that path, the cross-corridor I was currently standing beside ought to give me a fair chance of cutting him off. Taking one final look at the map, making quick note of the various public places the Filly might have ducked into if he wasn’t still in his original corridor, I headed out.

The cross-corridor was just as deserted as the previous one had been, and I took advantage of the lack of obstacles to break into a fast jog. Fortunately, Doug didn’t jump to the wrong conclusion, like that I might be trying to ditch him, but merely trotted along beside me, with no indication that he thought a nice afternoon run was anything out of the ordinary. Probably he was enjoying the exercise. I reached the end of the curved corridor and turned into the main radial one.

I’d been wrong earlier about everyone in the neighborhood being at the funeral. There were three of them waiting twenty meters down the radial corridor from my intersection: big, strong males, all of them dressed in the same style as those I’d seen in the dome. Apparently, they’d been at the funeral and had decided to duck out of the proceedings early. They were clustered together in the middle of the corridor, glowering at me as I came skidding around the corner. Directly behind them was an apartment door decorated with an archway made of pieces of colored paper, in the same color gradation from bottom to top that I’d noticed with the floating balloons in the dome.

{You desecrate Yleli’s former place of life,} the Filly in the center of the group said, his thin nose blaze darkening with anger, his voice just loud enough to be audible above the eulogy still going on down in the dome. {You will leave here at once.}

“Hello there,” I said cheerfully, slowing to a casual walk and continuing toward them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Doug suddenly turn his head to look behind us. “Any of you speak English?”

The three Fillies exchanged quick and slightly confused glances. Apparently, my presumed lack of understanding of their challenge was something they hadn’t expected. {You desecrate Yleli’s former place of life,} Thin Blaze tried again, his voice still angry but now with a tinge of uncertainty. {You must leave at once.}

“Did you see one of your fellows come this way?” I asked, picking up my pace a little. Walking up to three angry Fillies, all of whom were bigger than I was, was not my first choice on how best to spend a quiet morning. But Doug’s over-the-shoulder look a moment ago strongly implied there was a fourth member of the group back there, and stopping or slowing would just give him time to catch up and jump me from behind. Better to play the ignorant tourist as long as I could and hope for a decent opening before I reached the point of no return.

I made it three more steps, and was just starting to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all, when I got my break. Stepping away from his fellows, Thin Blaze started toward me. {You will leave at once!} he snarled, bunching his hands into fists.

I smiled grimly to myself. Now, instead of facing three-to-one odds, I would have a one-to-one followed by a two-to-one. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I was going to get.

I was two steps from combat range with Thin Blaze when I suddenly remembered Doug.

They will keep you from traveling where you should not go, Hchchu had said about the watchdogs’ job, and prevent you from harming anyone.

And suddenly, I realized this might not be a simple single and duo after all. It might instead end up as a single and a duo plus a pineapple-backed dog under strict orders and with the teeth to back them up. I had no idea how far Doug would go to prevent me from taking out the Fillies, but even if he just hung on to my ankle he was going to severely cramp my style, possibly badly enough to get me killed.

Unless I got creative.

Thin Blaze was almost to me now. I extended my right arm toward him, as if offering to shake hands. Back on the super-express Quadrail I’d successfully nailed Emikai with this one. Time to see if the average non-cop Filly would fall for it, too.

He did. He reached for my extended arm, and as he did so I smoothly withdrew it, forcing him to lean forward as he tried to chase it down.

His full attention was still on the annoyingly elusive arm when I reached across with my left hand, grabbed his right hand, and twisted it up and back. Simultaneously, I grabbed and locked his elbow with my right hand and swiveled around on my left foot, twisting the trapped arm upward and forcing the Filly to bend forward at the waist.

During my sparring sessions with Emikai aboard the Quadrail, I’d always stopped at that point. Here, with three-plus assailants whose ultimate intentions were still unknown, I couldn’t afford to be so charitable. Turning the helpless Filly another ninety degrees, I gave his arm a hard shove and sent him flying straight into his two startled friends.

Their shrieks of surprise, protest, and anger were drowned out as Doug let out a howl of his own, possibly a shot-across-the-bow warning that I’d just crossed the line. The howl turned suddenly into a startled yip as I reached down, scooped him up by his midsection, and hurled him as hard as I could behind me.

My aim and timing were perfect. The two Fillies who were hurrying in from that direction had just enough time to goggle in disbelief before Doug slammed across both their torsos. The impact sent all three of them sprawling in a confused tangle of arms and legs and claw-tipped paws.

There was a farcical aspect to it, but I didn’t have time to properly appreciate the show. Spinning around again, I charged into the first group of Fillies, still off-balance after having had their spokesman slammed into them. Thin Blaze still had his back to me, so I took him first, hammering a blow into one of his upper-leg nerve centers and dropping him hard onto the deck. One of the others, attempting to do a tiger leap at me, instead caught a foot on his friend’s shoulder and took himself down even more efficiently than I could have done. The third managed to actually get off a punch, which I dodged with relative ease before taking him down with a pair of jabs of my own. Leaping over the twitching bodies, putting them between me and my final two opponents, I turned around and prepared for round two—

Only to discover that the fight was over. The two who’d been trying to sneak up on me were still extricating themselves from their entanglement with a dazed-looking Doug, but already they were backing as quickly as they could toward the cross-corridor behind them. By the time they disappeared around the corner the three at my feet were heading in the same direction, crawling then hobbling and finally limping as feeling and function began returning to the relevant parts of their bodies. I watched them go, ignoring their looks of impotent rage, until the last of them had vanished around the corner.

{Incompetent fools,} a voice growled from behind me.

I turned around, simultaneously taking a long step away from the voice toward the middle of the corridor. The door to Yleli’s apartment had slid open, and standing beneath the arch of multicolored paper was the Filly whose furtive exit from the funeral ceremony had caught my attention and sparked this whole thing in the first place.

And now, up close, I saw that I’d been right. Sticking prominently through the V-neck of his tunic was the oversized throat the Filly genetic engineers had given him. The mark of professional singers and Shonkla-raa.

{So be it,} he said, taking a step out of the apartment toward me and letting the door slide closed behind him. {I’ll simply have to do this myself.}