Judgment at Proteus q-5

by Timothy Zahn

  I looked down at the watchdogs, thinking about Doug’s lack of action when the locals accosted me at Yleli’s funeral. “Actually, that alibi may actually not be as tight as they all think,” I said. “Doug didn’t exactly leap to the defense of all those fine, upstanding citizens who jumped me. I wouldn’t mention that to anyone else, of course.”

  “But why try it at all?” Bayta persisted. “In fact, it’s worse than that. Not only did the frame-up not work, but in a way it actually backfired on them.”

  “How so?”

  “It brought you and your Westali training back to Chinzro Hchchu’s attention,” she said. “I assume that’s why he asked you to investigate the murder.”

  “Which led me to Sector 25-C, where no one knew me, and into an ambush,” I reminded her. “Maybe it didn’t backfire as badly as you think.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

  “But let’s not be hasty,” I continued. “They may have gotten me hired so as to set me up for the ambush. But on the other hand, it could also be that the ambush was their response to me getting hired. In which case, we could argue that there’s something about Yleli or his murder that they don’t want us to find. Or else they want us to think there’s something about the murder they don’t want us to find.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Bayta said slowly. “I don’t know, Frank. This whole thing’s starting to sound like a bizarre game.”

  “Not if Asantra Muzzfor was a representative member of the group,” I said grimly. “He could get as convoluted as the best of us, but there was always a solid core of intent and motive beneath all the foam. If this is a game, there’s some deadly reason for them to be playing it.”

  Bayta snorted. “All it’s doing…” She trailed off.

  “All it’s doing is what?” I prompted.

  “I was going to say all it’s doing is wasting time,” she said slowly. “But then I realized it’s mostly wasting our time. And keeping us away from Terese.”

  That was a thought that had been hovering around the edges of my mind ever since Emikai and I discovered the tricked-out hypos. “Well, if that was their plan, it’s about to come to a screeching halt.”

  “What are you going to do?” Bayta asked. “Tell someone about the extra drugs they’ve been giving her?”

  “Not someone,” I said with a tight smile. “Everyone.”

  She frowned at me. “What?”

  “You heard me,” I said. “I’m going to write up the whole thing and put it on the station’s main computer network. An hour from now, every pea-picking horse-faced Filly on Proteus is going to know about it.”

  “That should certainly stir things up,” Bayta murmured.

  “I hope so,” I said. “At this point, stirring is exactly what we want.”

  We passed the receptionist at the archway and headed across the dome. Foot traffic seemed a bit lighter than usual, and I wondered briefly if this might be a good time to drop in on Building Twelve and see what the hell was going on in there.

  But there were two figures loitering outside that particular building’s main entrance, and I doubted they were just sampling the air. Making a mental note to check on the place again when I headed back to interrogate Blue One, I continued on to Building Eight, courteously opening the door for Bayta and the two watchdogs. I nodded a greeting to the receptionist as we passed, pressed myself against the wall halfway down the corridor to get out of the way of a tech with a loaded equipment cart, and turned into Terese’s room.

  To find an empty, neatly made-up bed.

  I walked to the side of the bed, my eyes and brain taking a quick inventory. The narrow cabinet that had held a change of clothing was empty. So was the under-bed shelf where she’d kept her reader and music headphones.

  I turned around to find Bayta standing just inside the doorway, her eyes wide. “Frank—”

  “Come on,” I said, taking her hand and heading back into the hallway. I nearly ran down the same Filly tech along the way and brought us to a halt in front of the receptionist. “Where is she?” I asked shortly.

  The Filly gave me a quizzical look. {Who?}

  “The Human girl, Terese German,” I said, striving to keep my voice civil. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. “She’s gone. Where did they take her?”

  The receptionist dropped her gaze to her computer display and punched a few keys on her board. {Terese German was checked out an hour and twenty minutes ago,} she reported. {Her condition had worsened, and her doctors decided to move her to an intensive-care facility.}

  I clenched my teeth. An hour twenty would put it right after Bayta and Minnario had left. Also right after Aronobal had discovered that two of the gimmicked hypos were missing. “Which one?” I asked. “One of the other buildings here in the dome?”

  {No,} the receptionist said, her blaze paling a little in confusion as she peered at the screen. {She’s not here.}

  “Then where?”

  {I don’t know,} she admitted, still studying her screen. {The location should be listed. But the reference point is blank.}

  I looked at Bayta’s ashen face. She’d been right. The Shonkla-raa had indeed wanted to keep us away from Terese.

  And now they’d succeeded.

  ELEVEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You think it might?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I don’t know your name.”

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

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

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

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

  “And?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I paused. “And?” Blue One asked.

  “It wasn’t,” I said. “I killed him.”

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

  “Every last bit of him,” I confirmed. It hadn’t been nearly that easy, of course, any more than it had been easy to take down Asantra Muzzfor. And I’d had a lot of help in both situations.<
br />
  But Blue One didn’t know that. And he wasn’t going to. “There’s a reason the Spiders hired me, Shonkla-raa,” I continued. “I’m good at what I do. And if I don’t get some answers about Terese German, I’ll probably have to kill a lot more people. Starting with you.”

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

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

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

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

  He snorted. “What, aboard Kuzyatru Station?”

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

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

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

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

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