Judgment at Proteus q-5

by Timothy Zahn

  “It’s Human,” she said. “Bland stuff, mostly—soup, whole-grain bread, and crackers. Oh, and dinner last night was a fillet of something that tasted like chicken.”

  “Any odd tastes to any of it?” I asked. “Especially bitter tastes?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. Like I said, it’s all pretty bland. The chicken had a sort of glaze on it, but it was more sweet and sour than bitter.”

  “What about liquids?” I asked. “They’re mostly giving you water, I assume, but are there any odd tastes in that?”

  “No,” she said, an edge of exaggerated patience creeping into her voice. “What, you think they’re trying to poison me or something?” She gestured at the rolling stand beside her bed, with its impressive array of hypos and drawers full of medicine vials. “With my food?”

  “I guess it really doesn’t make much sense,” I conceded. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d pay close attention to what you eat. Especially anything about the food that smells or tastes odd.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” Terese growled.

  “Thanks,” I said. “One more thing. If Dr. Aronobal or anyone else asks what we just talked about, tell them I wanted to know where I could find Human-style food aboard Proteus, and that you told me you didn’t know.”

  Terese stared at me, a sudden uncertainty in her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she murmured. “You really think I’m being poisoned?”

  “Actually, I can’t see any logical reason why anyone would do that,” I assured her. “I just believe in covering all the bases.” I gave her my best the-policeman-is-your-friend smile. “But don’t worry. We’re watching out for you, Bayta and I.” Beside me, Doug picked that moment to make a snuffling noise. “And Doug and Ty, too, of course,” I added.

  Terese looked down at the watchdog. “Right,” she said dryly.

  “I’ll be back later,” I said. “Try to get some rest.” With another smile, I left.

  Bayta was waiting just outside the room. Again, I noticed, Ty had elected to go with her instead of stay with me. “Anything?” she asked quietly.

  “Later,” I said. “Where’s Dr. Aronobal?”

  She nodded toward one of the doors halfway to the reception desk. “Checking on some tests.”

  “Good.” I took Bayta’s arm and turned in the opposite direction. “Let’s see if we can get out this way.”

  No such luck. We’d gotten maybe five steps when Aronobal’s voice boomed out from behind us. “Mr. Compton! A moment, if you please.”

  With a sigh, I stopped. I’d hoped to avoid any questions about what exactly Terese and I had talked about, preferring to let Terese’s version be the only one she got to hear. No getting around it now. “Yes, Dr. Aronobal?” I said politely as she caught up with us.

  But to my surprise, the doctor didn’t launch into an inquisition. Instead, she glanced furtively behind her and then gestured quickly to an open door nearby. Frowning, I stepped in, nearly tripping over Doug as he scampered in ahead of me. Bayta followed, followed by Ty, followed by Aronobal. “My apologies,” the doctor said quietly as she closed the door behind us. “I understand this is not your concern. Nor perhaps is it mine. But I am troubled, and I have no one else to turn to.”

  “I’ll of course do whatever I can to help,” I said, putting on my earnest face. This was some kind of trick, of course, but I didn’t mind playing it straight and dumb until I spotted the hook. “What seems to be the problem?”

  Aronobal hesitated. “Building Twelve,” she said. “The one you tried to enter earlier.”

  “Before Usantra Wandek stopped me?”

  “Yes, that one,” she confirmed. “Something is being done in there, Mr. Compton. Something terrible.”

  “What sort of something?” I asked. “And to whom?”

  “I have neither answer,” Aronobal said. “But I heard Usantra Wandek when he returned. He was very upset, and made it clear to all that you were not to enter any building in the dome but this one.”

  “Really,” I said, adding some interest to my earnestness and carefully filtering out the bemused disappointment. Did they really think I was this easy to manipulate? “Have you spoken to Chinzro Hchchu about it?”

  Aronobal gave a sort of two-toned snort. “How can I?” she countered. “I am a mere doctor. He is chinzro.”

  “That might make sense if I knew what it meant,” I said. “What kind of title is chinzro, anyway?”

  “It is an ancient and noble title,” Aronobal said. She’d been speaking softly already, but now she lowered her voice even more, as if she fully expected Hchchu to hear her all the way over in Sector 16-J. “It means guardian, leader, and lord highest.”

  “Impressive,” I said. “An old title from the Slisst Protocols, I assume?”

  Aronobal drew back sharply, her blaze paling. “You have heard of the Protocols?”

  “It’s what Proteus is running on at the moment,” I said. “I assumed you knew that.”

  Aronobal shook her head. “I deal with illness, not philosophies.”

  “Yeah, I have that in my business, too,” I said. “So I gather that you, a mere doctor, can’t talk to someone as lofty as the chinzro of this whole place?”

  “Not when my suspicions involve one of usantra rank,” she said. “Not without evidence of wrongdoing.”

  And there it was: the hook. Cue the earnest but gullible Human. “Well, maybe that’s something I can help with,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Aronobal said quietly. “I knew that one who stands faithfully by his duty to protect the Human Terese German would be trustworthy.”

  “Just call me Logra Compton,” I said dryly. “That means—what does it mean again?”

  “I believe the title translates to the Human word bulwark,” Aronobal said.

  “Right,” I said, nodding. “A defender of the people, or some such, I think was how Logra Emikai defined it for me once.” I reached up and gave Aronobal a conspiratorial pat on her shoulder. “You just concentrate on taking care of Ms. German. I’ll poke around and see what I can come up with.”

  We had left the dome and were walking along the corridor toward our quarters before Bayta spoke again. “You’re not serious,” she said.

  “Oh, come now,” I said reproachfully. “I get a perfectly good, wonderfully polite invitation into a trap, and you want me to just ignore it?”

  “You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” Bayta said, her tone suddenly tight.

  I looked sideways at her. Her face was grim, her eyes shiny with suppressed tears. “Hey,” I said softly. “You okay?”

  “Of course I’m not okay,” she bit out. “They’re here, Frank. The people who once enslaved half the galaxy, slaughtered billions—”

  “Hey, hey,” I interrupted, catching her hands and pulling her to a stop facing me. “Calm down. I may not have had the same history course you did, but we really are on the same page here.”

  “Are we?” she shot back, glaring at me with a simmering passion that looked to be equal parts anger, frustration, and fear.

  This time I didn’t say anything, but just held her hands in silence and watched as she pulled herself back together. “Here’s the deal,” I said when her emotions were safely back in the dark trunk where she usually stored them. “Someone who was on Earth when the New Tigris reports came in brought a heavily edited version of those reports to Proteus. The most likely candidates for that role are Emikai and Aronobal.”

  “I know that.”

  “Right,” I acknowledged, glancing both ways down the corridor. This particular hallway didn’t seem all that well-traveled, and there was currently no one else in sight. But sooner or later that would change. “In the same way, Aronobal’s pitch just now has two possibilities. It could be an innocent concern over something she’s seen in Building Twelve, or it could be deliberate bait. We don’t know which, so we play along. If it is a trap, it’ll eventually get sprung, at which point we can probably safely assume
that Aronobal was the one who fingered me. Does that make sense?”

  “Everything except the part about the trap springing,” she said. “What if you get caught inside it?”

  “That’s the tricky part,” I admitted. “The usual technique is to do something they don’t expect and hopefully haven’t prepared for.”

  “Like going in through the service crawlways?”

  “Exactly.” A motion caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to see a pair of Fillies strolling toward us down the corridor. “So for now we head back to our room,” I continued, shifting to a one-handed grip on Bayta’s arm and starting us moving again toward our quarters. “Actually, it might be smart to start by messaging Minnario that I have someone who would like an audience—or whatever the Protocols call it—with His Royal Highness Chinzro Hchchu.”

  “You want to bring Minnario into this?” Bayta asked, puzzled.

  “Sure, why not?” I said. “It’s not like defending me hasn’t put him into the crosshairs alongside us anyway. Besides, making an effort to go through proper channels is the sort of thing a helpful but naive bystander might do.”

  “Thereby adding a little extra confusion to Usantra Wandek’s assessment of who and what you are?”

  I shrugged. “Every little bit helps.”

  * * *

  Minnario, when I finally got through to him, wasn’t very encouraging about my chances of getting a meeting with Hchchu, particularly since I wouldn’t give him the name of the party requesting the audience. But he promised to do what he could. He reminded me that we were due in court at ten o’clock the next morning, and bade me a pleasant evening and a restful night’s sleep.

  Bayta and I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening poring over the various station schematics I’d been able to access, looking for any possibilities I might have missed. The level immediately above the dome floor would be my best shot, and I considered taking a stroll around the dome area to see if I could spot the access hatchways. But Bayta didn’t like the idea of me roaming around looking devious before the bulk of the Proteus populace retired to their quarters, and I wasn’t sure how much it would gain me, either, so we dropped that part.

  We’d had a large and late lunch, so instead of going back to restaurant row we found a small grocery store and bought the makings for sandwiches and fruit salad. Doug and Ty had shown themselves to be connoisseurs of Jurian cuisine at lunch, and now demonstrated an equal fondness for roast quipple on toasted poro bread. Between their eagerness and my generosity, they ended up polishing off an entire sandwich each.

  Bayta pointed out that getting them used to expecting table scraps would probably not be appreciated once we returned them to the Proteus security force. As far as I was concerned, that was just one more reason to encourage them.

  I’d already decided to start my foray two hours after the end of the lights-down ritual, which the computer’s day schedule informed me would begin at ten o’clock and be completed forty-five minutes later. I set the computer’s clock for a twelve-thirty wake-up call and lay down on my floor cushions to get some rest. Well before I drifted off to sleep Ty and Doug also settled into their preferred spots, the former at the head of Bayta’s bed, the latter curled in front of the door.

  Bayta stayed up a while longer, working silently at the computer. I thought about asking what she was doing, but the set expression on her face wasn’t one that encouraged conversation. Besides, I was likely to be up half the night, and this might be my only chance to get some sleep for a while. Closing my eyes against the soft glow of reflected light from the computer display, I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  And awoke with a jolt.

  Through my closed eyelids I could tell the room was dark and quiet. For a few seconds I lay still and listened, locating the three soft sounds of breathing coming from where Bayta and the two watchdogs should be. There were no stealthy footsteps, no extra sounds of breathing, no buzz of a sonic weapon or the scent of a gaseous one. Everything seemed fine.

  Only it wasn’t. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t.

  I eased my eyes open. Only then did I spot it: a subtle hint of red light flashing slowly across the walls and door. I studied as much of the room as I could without moving, then carefully rolled over.

  It was the computer. Something on the display, which Bayta had left turned toward the wall, was flashing red.

  I looked around the room one last time, using the light from the slow flashes to confirm that Bayta and Ty were indeed curled up on their parts of the bed and Doug was by the door. Rolling off my cushions, I went over to the computer desk.

  There, in the lower corner of the display, were the flashing red words MESSAGE WAITING.

  I sat down in the chair, mouthing a curse. The computer’s clock read 12:02, which meant the stupid message indicator had robbed me of half an hour of sleep. Mentally flipping a coin between a reminder from Minnario of our morning court date and a worried pestering from Aronobal about the mysterious Building Twelve, I keyed for the message.

  The way is clear. Go now, before the evil ones close the path. The way is clear. Go now.

  There was no signature.

  I stared at the display, reading the message twice more, my brain skidding on its tracks. The way is clear? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  And then, abruptly, I got it.

  I looked over at the door. My movements had awakened Doug, who was looking at me with the expectant air of a dog whose master has just picked up the leash. “Sure, why not?” I murmured. A midnight stroll through the quiet Proteus night was hardly a crime, and if my walk happened to take me through the medical dome, that wasn’t a crime, either.

  And if the way to Building Twelve was indeed clear …

  The corridors were as empty of pedestrians as they’d been the previous night. Actually, they were noticeably more deserted, since with Minnario no longer AWOL the extra groups of Jumpsuits who’d been prowling around were no longer in evidence.

  The medical dome was similarly deserted, though once again there were a scattering of lights in several of the buildings, including Building Twelve. I stayed on my path, heading straight across the dome as if aiming for the exit corridor on the far side.

  I was halfway across the dome when I noticed that the security camera I was walking toward looked odd. I continued toward it, trying to pierce the twilight darkness and see what it was that had caught my attention.

  Two steps later, I got it. Talking earlier with Bayta, I had commented that someone with a push broom could shove the camera up on its gimbals and aim it out of line with the dome floor.

  Apparently, someone had done just that.

  “That’s interesting,” I murmured aloud. Turning, I looked toward the other camera, the one I’d just walked beneath, wondering if the fellow with the broom had had a similarly equipped friend.

  He’d had a friend, all right. Only the friend seemed to have had a pocket chain saw instead of a broom. The other camera was completely missing.

  I felt a shiver run up my back. The way is clear, my mysterious correspondent had said. The only question now was whether the way was clear for me to investigate Building Twelve, or clear for me to incriminate myself by breaking and entering.

  Or clear for me to casually walk to my death.

  I took a deep breath. So we play along, I’d told Bayta. Unfortunately, that was still the best strategy I had. “Heel, boy,” I murmured to Doug, and started across the dome.

  With the soft glow from the handful of lit windows throwing the front of Building Twelve into comparatively deeper shadow, I was nearly there before I spotted the body lying crumpled in front of the door.

  I should have simply stopped in my tracks and punched the emergency button on my comm. But I’m never that smart. Besides, if the victim wasn’t quite dead, a few minutes’ delay could mean all the difference in the world.

  And so instead of stopping I broke into a run, closed the last five met
ers, and dropped to my knees beside the body. It was a male Filly, I noted automatically, dressed in either a green or blue medical tech’s outfit, I couldn’t tell which in the dim light. His body was limp, he was still warm, and he was lying in a pool of blood.

  He was also very dead.

  I was reaching for my comm when the door in front of me abruptly opened, flooding the crime scene with a blaze of light coming at me from around the silhouette of a second Filly.

  I sprang sideways, squeezing my eyes shut against the blinding glare, trying desperately to get out of the line of fire. If I could get around the side of the building before my assailant got his weapon lined up, I might still have a chance.

  I hadn’t gotten two steps when I caught Doug’s side with my leg and went sprawling face-first over him onto the ground. I got my hands under my chest to try to push myself back up—

  {Help!} a female Filly voice screeched from the direction of the doorway, the harmonics from her terrified shout rising well into the ultrasonic range. {Assault! Death! Murder! Help!}

  And even as I shakily made it back to my feet, more lights in the buildings around me began to come to life.

  With a sigh, I pulled out my comm and punched for Bayta. “It’s me,” I said when she answered. “Get dressed and get up to the security nexus. I’m about to head that direction myself.”

  I looked back at Building Twelve. Three husky Filly males had now appeared, two of them dropping down beside the dead body, the third striding purposefully toward me. “And you’d better give Minnario a call,” I added. “I think I’m going to need my lawyer.”

  SEVEN

  I’d already discovered that the security nexus upstairs had an employee snack area. Now, I learned they also had a processing room complete with a pair of holding cells.

  The cells weren’t much in the way of prisoner restraint, actually, certainly not compared to some of the high-tech prisons I’d seen across the galaxy. They were composed of plain high-impact plastic bars, with simple DNA-key locks, and extremely spare accommodations, each boasting a cot and sink/toilet combo. A single monitor camera covered the doors of both cells, and probably not much else. My guess was that the whole setup had been designed more as a drunk tank than with any expectations that they would someday play host to an actual accused felon.