“I know. I took the liberty of monitoring her while I was waiting for you. I suppose Deller told you I made him let Bana in to be with her. I hope you don’t mind.”
Shannon opened her eyes look at Wallis, then shook her head, though she made no effort to rouse from her comfortable position. “Of course not. He should have been there all along. In all the confusion, somebody obviously forgot to move him. We pulled quite a lot of blood from him when he first came in, hoping it might buy her a little more time, but the poor fellow could only give so much. She was pumping it out almost as fast as we could pump it in.”
“I know. It won’t be much longer.” Wallis sighed and leaned over the desk to punch up Ta’ai’s readings again. “Damn, look at that. She’s started to go flat already.”
Shannon grimaced, then sat forward far enough to insert her data cassette and order a correlation run between this one and the previous day’s report. She glanced at Wallis again as she sat back and waited for the readout.
“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a company doctor, Wallis,” she said, rubbing a hand over her eyes. “Do you know what the captain had the audacity to remind me, when we were floating Ta’ai into surgery? That the murder of a passenger aboard a Gruening ship can do terrible things to the company’s reputation. Not a word about Ta’ai. He was worried about the company’s image.”
“Well, I suppose that’s part of his job,” Wallis ventured. “He doesn’t strike me as a hard-hearted man. Rigid, perhaps, but—”
Shannon sighed explosively and sat forward to watch the readout begin crawling up the screen.
“Oh, I don’t suppose I should really blame him,” she said. “Don’t let on that you know, but he’s marking time until he can retire to a planetside assignment. He’s developed a heart condition that—”
She broke off and sighed again as she continued to read the data, shaking her head as she tapped the screen with a fingernail. “Wallis, look at this report. You’re going to have to face facts. Throats torn out, chests and arms slashed to ribbons, the bodies nearly drained of blood—and each one, Ta’ai included, had a tuft of blue cat hair in his or her fist. It’s almost as if the beasts left a calling card!”
Wallis stood up for a better angle on the screen. “Yes, almost a little too perfect, don’t you think?”
Sighing wearily, Shannon shook her head. “Come on, Doctor. I know you want to believe that the cats didn’t do it, but we’ve been over this before. The blue fur is definitely Lehr cat fur. And what else could rip those bodies like that? Phillips’s neck was snapped like a twig.”
“I know what it looks like,” Wallis answered, continuing to scan over the readout. “I still want to run a comparison of the fur found on the bodies with samples from our cats.”
Shannon looked at her in disbelief, then sat back and exhaled violently, chasing a stylus around the desk top with one forefinger.
“When someone can get into the hold to get those samples, I’ll be happy to do that, Doctor! And when I do, are you next going to tell me that, sure, the victims were killed by a Lehr cat, only it wasn’t one of your Lehr cats? I wonder if you’d care to speculate as to where a fifth cat could be hiding aboard the Valkyrie, or how it would have gotten here!”
“All right, I agree, it’s farfetched,” Wallis said. “When none of the logical explanations fits, though, one has to try the illogical ones.” She scanned over the next few lines in the report, then glanced across at Shannon again. “I understand that there were cat tracks on the floor near Phillips’s body and that he had a bloody force-blade in his hand. Cat blood?”
“I’m still waiting for the lab work on that,” Shannon replied sullenly. “But frankly, that’s the least of my worries just now. We’ve got nearly eleven hundred passengers aboard this ship, and eight hundred crew, and every one of them is getting jumpy. The word has gotten out, and a lot of them can’t sleep—or don’t want to—and there were a couple more witnesses who found or saw this morning’s victims before we could secure the scenes. They’re sedated now, and I’ll have to do memory wipes on them before too many more hours pass, but—damn it, Wallis, I can’t wipe out the memories of everyone aboard this ship!”
“I don’t envy you your job,” Wallis said lamely. “If there were something more I could do, you know I would.” She shrugged helplessly, and Shannon sighed and managed a wan smile.
“Look, I’m not blaming you. I guess I’m not even really blaming your cats, for certain—though you have to admit that the evidence looks pretty damning. At this point, I’m almost tired and desperate enough to even believe your vampire hypothesis, if you could produce a likely suspect.” She grinned wearily. “You see what measures I’ll stoop to, to get this situation off my back?”
“You’re exhausted. You don’t know what you’re saying,” Wallis said with a smile.
Shannon almost laughed as she agreed. “I’ll say. I’m exhausted. My staff is exhausted. Not counting Deller and me, I’ve only got twenty people, and nearly half of those are orderlies. Deller was on call last night, so he’s in even worse shape than I am, but he’s got to last at least as long as Ta’ai. But the regular functions of medical service don’t stop just because there’s a crisis, you know.”
“That’s true. And if you don’t get some rest while you can, you’re going to need medical service. Why don’t you lie down and have a nap? I’ll cover for you while you sleep.”
“Thanks, but I can’t let you do that,” Shannon said with a yawn, weaving to her feet to lean against the desk. “It’s my responsibility. I’ve got to wait for that blood workup, and then someone will have to—”
“Someone else can handle things for a few hours,” Wallis insisted, pulling the younger woman out from behind the desk and closer to the couch along the wall. “Sit down. I’m indirectly responsible for your situation. The least you can do is let me help.”
“Wallis, I can’t—really,” Shannon protested weakly.
“Oh, yes, you can.”
Wallis passed one hand close in front of Shannon’s eyes, catching her attention, and snapped her fingers. “Relax and let go, Shivaun. Look at my hand and let your mind go blank for a little while. Watch the end of my finger. As it comes closer to your forehead, your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier—and when it touches, you will go to sleep.”
And as her finger touched Shannon between the eyes, her other hand moved from its supportive position on the younger woman’s shoulder to a spot just between the shoulder blades, which she pressed. The combination of suggestion, fatigue, and a pressure point that Wallis had learned years before from a monk of Tel Taurig was more than Shannon could resist. As she started to slump, relaxing in sleep, Wallis eased her back to lie down on the couch and pulled a thermal blanket loosely around her.
Then she went to the desk console and tapped out a request for information, keying with the access code she had seen Shannon use. Almost immediately, the readout began clicking up the screen.
Blood specimen taken from force-blade in hand of victim Phillips: homo sapiens, type B-positive. Further breakdown of variants still in progress, due to small quantity of sample.
Blood specimen taken from victim Phillips: homo sapiens, type O-positive, accounting for all samples thus far analyzed from paw prints and other blood seepage at scene. Further analysis and comparisons progressing.
“And no mention of cat blood,” Wallis muttered to herself, straightening from the console to glance briefly at the sleeping Shannon.
So. That knowledge alone was a gem of great worth, for it meant that Phillips’s attacker almost certainly had not been one of the cats—not with type B-positive blood on the blade. Nor was it Phillips’s own blood. And homo sapiens blood of whatever type excluded the alien Aludrans from the reckoning—though Wallis had never suspected them of such physical violence, anyway.
Which meant that Phillips’s attacker almost certainly was a human with type B-positive blood—which, since close to ten percent of
a given human population could be expected to fall into that general blood grouping, narrowed any potential list of suspects to only around two hundred of the Valkyrie’s nearly two thousand passengers and crew. Unless the computer could refine its parameters further, which seemed less and less likely as a readout was not forthcoming, that was still a lot of suspects, even putting the crew right at the bottom of the list.
Impatient, Wallis asked for a status check, only to confirm that the computer was having difficulty reading more than a very gross profile of the B-positive blood sample. The scant quantity of the specimen from the blade seemed to be part of the problem, but some other factor was also at work—almost as if the secondary blood characteristics were being screened by some unusual chemical bonding.
She decided not to wait in Shannon’s office any longer, though. After directing the computer to kick out separate lists of passengers and crew who fit the suspect profile—however gross that might turn out to be, given the incomplete profile it had to match against medical records—and to print out in the hold’s security office as well as in Shannon’s, Wallis left a progress report for Shannon to find when she awoke, and left for the hold. She wondered how her new information would fit with what Mather had found.
Other than his initial discovery of the butchered cat, however, Mather had learned very little. After partitioning off that end of the cage—which enraged the remaining cats and set off a new chorus of screaming—Mather set the big cage scanners to record the most obvious trauma to the dead cat’s body. But he suspected that Wallis would need to do a proper post mortem to learn any real details of what had happened.
So he concentrated on how it had happened, questioning his Rangers and running yet another check of all their security equipment while he waited for Wallis to show up.
But he turned up no discrepancies. The tapes showed no break in service, from the time the phase nets were set the night before, until Mather himself had ordered them shut down and found the dead cat. All equipment seemed to be functioning perfectly, with no reason to suspect that it had not always done so. And independent interviews of all his men by himself and Perelli, his interrogation expert, failed to disclose any variance in individual reports of the night’s events. By all outward evidence, nothing unusual had occurred in the security hold.
Except that the Lehr cat they called Rudolph lay slaughtered in a pool of his own blood at the end of a plasteel cage, his companions’ voices lifted in mournful howls as the humans who had brought them there tried to discover the cause of his death.
Thus it was that Wallis found her husband crouching in front of the dead cat’s cage and running tests with a portable scanner balanced on one knee. She glanced at his readings as she laid both hands on his shoulders and leaned down to kiss the top of his head.
“What do you want to bet that at least some of the blood in that cage is humanoid, type B-positive?”
“Mmmm?” Mather blinked, emerging only partially from his perplexed study of the dials on his scanner.
“That’s right—though some of it is A-positive. Most of it is cat blood, of course.” He blinked again, then turned enough to actually look up at her. “You don’t even seem surprised. And how did you know that there would be B-positive?”
“There was B-positive blood on the dead engineer’s force blade—and no cat blood anywhere. I wish you hadn’t found A-positive, though. It means we must have two suspects instead of one. The engineer was type O.”
“Wonderful,” Mather muttered. “Now nothing connects.”
“Yes, it does—it has to. We just don’t have the connections figured out yet,” Wallis said, kneeling down beside him. “Do you want me to take over here for a while? You look as if you could use a few minutes to unwind and try for a fresh approach.”
With a grunt of agreement, Mather handed the scanner to Wallis and stood up stiffly to stretch.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I know there has to be some rational explanation, but damned if I can find it. About the only thing I know for certain right now is that old Rudolph didn’t commit suicide. Nor did his mate rip him to shreds.”
The mate in question, the cantankerous Matilda, let out a particularly grating screech, as if to underline his statement.
But merely pacing and looking at the remaining cats from other visual angles did not bring the inspiration Mather hoped for. In a very short time, he found himself standing silently in front of the slain Rudolph’s cage again. Wallis had opened the end of the cage to examine the body more closely and collect more blood samples, and the other cats had finally stopped their howling, except for an occasional mournful cry from Matilda.
“Anything new?” Mather said quietly.
Wallis half turned in his direction. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Tell me, did you find any discrepancies among the men?”
Chilled, Mather crouched down beside her.
“No. Why? Do you think it was an inside job?”
“I hope not,” Wallis replied, “but if our security arrangements are as good as we’ve been saying all along, we certainly have to consider that possibility. I can tell you that old Rudolph here didn’t die of his wounds, however.” She held out a tiny needler dart, its tufted drug receptacle clear and empty. “It’s the same manufacturer we use, Mather—which is not to say that someone else couldn’t have bought from the same source. This is the only one I found, but from the level of tranquilizer in his bloodstream, I’d say he took five or six of these before his killer settled down to cut him up. Somebody didn’t want to take any chances. His breathing would have been paralyzed very quickly, and he must have suffocated.”
“A low-load needler, eh? The poor critter didn’t have a chance.”
“Well, at least he got in a few swipes at his killer or killers,” Wallis said. “You were absolutely right about the blood, too. There are traces of B- and A-positive blood on his claws and in the cage—which tends to confirm that our prime suspect is probably the same person who tangled with Phillips’s knife. We should have a printout of B-positive suspects any time.”
Sighing, Mather glanced at the three remaining cats, who had massed just on the other side of the separating partition and were watching him intently.
“I sure wish you guys could talk,” he said softly, a little surprised to see them so quiet. “Or—can you?” he added, after a beat. “Wally, I’ve just gotten an idea. Do you suppose you could get everybody out of here for a few minutes? I’ll want the force nets back in place, too. And have Perelli go get Doctor Shannon, just in case we have more trouble with this than I think we’re going to have. This is a long shot, but I think it’s worth a try, under the circumstances.”
Wallis considered it more than a long shot, but she was not about to argue. After dispatching Pirelli as requested, she had Webb round up the remaining Rangers in the security room and cut in the shields. The not-black shimmer of the Margall force field made everything beyond it blur disconcertingly, and she blinked and shook her head to clear her vision as she turned back to the cages. Mather had already lured an oddly docile Matilda into the section of the cage nearest her dead mate and shut her off from the other pair, who seemed not to mind. Wallis turned on the cage scanner overhead, then began rummaging in her medical kit for a hypospray as Mather calmly drew his needler and shot Matilda.
As the dart struck, the big cat spat and hissed, licked furiously at the spot, then reeled drunkenly against the side of the cage and peered out at them with wide, startled eyes.
“Give her a minute or two,” Wallis said, glancing at the scanner readouts and handing a loaded hypospray to Mather. “This shouldn’t hurt her, but it’s one thing you don’t want to rush.”
Holstering his weapon, Mather sat down heavily on the floor beside the cage, watching as Matilda’s big, night-seeing pupils contracted to merest slits and the animal’s legs collapsed, letting her down with a whoof. Cautiously, Mather reached the hypospray toward the cat’s nearer forepaw, where
the fur was shorter and thinner, and triggered it. Matilda hissed back at it, but her head was already weaving as it sank slowly to rest on the wide, hairy paws. As Wallis scanned the cat again, Mather reset the hypo and unsnapped the cuff of his left sleeve.
“You’re sure you want to go through with this?” Wallis asked, turning the scanner on him and reaching to check his hypo setting before he could set it to his wrist.
“I’m sure I want to find out what happened,” Mather countered with a wry little smile. “Our fuzzy friend, here, saw everything.”
Briefly, he reached over to stroke the blue fur pooching through the mesh of the cage, then glanced at the setting of the hypo one more time before triggering it against his inner wrist. He winced at the cold that immediately began spreading up his arm from the injection site, but he managed a ghost of a smile as he handed the hypo back to Wallis.
“Don’t worry. You know the drug isn’t going to hurt me in such a low dose; and if I start to get into trouble otherwise, I promise to come right back.”
“Sure,” Wallis murmured, readying another hypo, just in case, “as long as you know you’re risking your life to save a cat.”
But Mather had ceased to pay attention to her. Easing himself back to lean against the side of the cage, his shoulders resting against the mesh and the soft blue fur, he stretched out his right arm toward Matilda’s head, hooking two fingers through the mesh to burrow in the fur of one great forepaw. His eyelids fluttered and then closed as he laid his head back against the mesh of the cage.
By the time Wallis had scanned him again, verifying a steady pulse with her hand on his free left wrist, Mather was no longer aware of what was going on around him. He sensed only the odd play of light and shadow against his closed eyelids as the Margall field fluctuated and shimmered; the pleasant, musky smell of cat in his nostrils; the softness of fur beneath his fingers.
And then, the touch of a totally alien mind.
CHAPTER 9
The contact was different from any Mather had ever attempted before. Lehr cats, though the most cunning of hunters and stealthy of carnivores, were relatively uncomplicated beasts. Despite the fact that their brains were geared for lightning reflexes, killer instincts, and fine-honed sensory awareness, their reasoning ability had always been thought limited—and this one was sluggish from the drugs that Mather had risked to bring her to this state.
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