by Timothy Zahn
“What do you do here?” the Filly asked, his long nose pointing toward the filter assembly.
“Just a routine maintenance sampling,” I said in my best authoritative-but-soothing voice. “Nothing you need to be concerned about.”
I’d used that voice to good advantage many times over the years. Unfortunately, this particular Filly wasn’t buying it. “Is there danger in the air?” he demanded. “Is there risk to us all?”
“There’s no risk to anyone,” I said firmly if not entirely truthfully. “As I said, this is just a routine maintenance check.”
But it was no use. A low-level murmur was already rippling through the rest of the onlookers, some of whom had probably ridden this line before and knew that there was nothing routine about what we were doing. “If there is risk, we deserve to know the truth,” the Filly said firmly, his volume rising to a level that would reach most of the car instead of just the group assembled here at the rear.
“There is no risk,” I said again, letting my gaze drift over the crowd as I tried to think up an answer that would satisfy them. “But you’re right, you deserve to know the truth. If you’ll all be quiet a moment?”
I stopped, waiting for them to pick up on the cue. I could feel Bayta’s eyes on me, and her concern as she wondered what exactly I was doing.
I wondered what I was doing, too. Telling them there was a murderer aboard the train was definitely out—we could wind up with a riot on our hands, with nowhere anyone could escape to. But I’d had enough experience with rumor mills to know that if we didn’t give them something the situation would only get worse, possibly leading to the same riot I was hoping so hard to avoid.
Ergo, I had to give them some truth. The trick, as always, would be to figure out how much.
Slowly, in bits and pieces, the mutterings faded away. “Thank you,” I said. “I presume you’re all aware that two of your fellow travelers died yesterday.”
The last mutterings abruptly vanished. I had their full attention now, all right. I heard Bayta mutter something under her breath, but it wasn’t like the rest of the passengers wouldn’t have noticed the two newly empty seats. “What I’m doing here is checking for the presence of what are called after-elements,” I went on. “Those are bits of nucleic acid residue, antibodies, mucousids—the sorts of things that might have been exhaled by a person in his last battle against a lethal congenital defect.”
The Filly’s nose blaze darkened a bit. “A congenital defect? In both victims?”
“I can see no other likely conclusion,” I said, noting in passing his unusual use of the word victims. “No one else in the car has shown any signs of illness, which eliminates the possibility that they died from some contagious disease.”
I gestured toward a pair of Shorshians near the rear of the crowd. “It can’t even be something specific to Shorshians, since other Shorshians in the car haven’t been affected.”
“So you say it was a congenital disease,” the Filly said, his tone a bit odd.
“As I said, there’s no other likely conclusion,” I repeated. “Nothing for any of you to be concerned about. So please, return to your seats and try to put these unfortunate events from your minds.”
A fresh set of mutterings began to circulate through the onlookers. But the tone was definitely calmer, and at the rear of the group the passengers began obediently heading back toward their seats. Within a minute, the whole crowd had joined the mass migration.
Everyone, that is, except the Filly whose questions had gotten everyone riled up in the first place. He stayed right where he was, his eyes never leaving my face, as the rest of the passengers dispersed. “Was there something else?” I asked.
He took a step closer to me. “You are lying,” he said quietly. “If you sought a congenital disease, a proper investigation would begin with samples taken from the bodies of the victims.”
“I’d like nothing better,” I said. “But there are questions of religious protocol, and the leader of their group has prohibited me from taking direct samples.”
The Filly looked at Bayta, his blaze darkening a little more. “Perhaps that prohibition will yet be lifted,” he said.
“Perhaps,” I said.
He took another step toward me. “But should you discover a different cause of death,” he went on, lowering his voice still more, “I would urge you to let me know at once.”
“In such an unlikely event, I’m sure the Spiders will let everyone know at the same time,” I assured him.
“I would appreciate it very much,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last two words. “Even small bits of preliminary knowledge would be worth a great deal to me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised. “If I should happen to learn anything, whom shall I ask for?”
He studied me another couple of heartbeats. “I am Logra Emikai,” he identified himself. “My seat is four coaches forward, in the car just to the front of the dining car.”
“Understood,” I said. “A pleasant evening to you, Logra Emikai.”
“And to you.” With a brief nod of his head, he turned and headed down the aisle toward the front of the car and his own seat four coaches away.
“Interesting,” I murmured, catching Bayta’s eye and nodding toward the departing Filly. “You catch all that?”
“You mean the fact that he just tried to bribe us?” Bayta asked, her voice stiff.
“Well, yes, that too,” I said, turning back to watch Emikai’s progress. He was moving briskly, adroitly dodging around the slower-moving passengers who weren’t in nearly so much of a hurry. “I was mostly referring to the fact that he seemed to know we’d already taken samples from Master Bofiv’s body.”
“How do you know that?” Bayta asked, her moral outrage at the bribery attempt starting to fade into fresh interest.
“From his reaction to my comment that di-Master Strinni hadn’t let us take samples,” I said. “The question is, how did he know? Okay—let’s see what he does.”
“With what?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to see over the crowd.
“Not with what,” I corrected. “With whom. Specifically, with Master Tririn. Or hadn’t you noticed that Tririn didn’t bother to come back here to see what we were doing?”
“Maybe he’s just tired.”
“Or he already knows what we will or won’t find,” I said. “Or he didn’t need to come himself because he already had a friend on the scene.”
“Logra Emikai?”
“Could be,” I said. “You have any idea what sort of rank logra is?”
“Not in that form,” Bayta said. “It could be a dialectal variant of lomagra, one of the middle artisan classes.”
“Or else it’s something new, something private, or something he made up out of thin air,” I said.
“And you think he and Master Tririn are working together?”
“We’ll know in a second,” I said. “Even if they just know each other, there ought to be some signal or at least recognition as Emikai passes him.”
But to my disappointment, the Filly passed by Tririn’s seat without so much as a sideways glance in the Shorshian’s direction. “Or not,” I said. “Well, that tells us something, too,” I added, turning away.
“Wait a second,” Bayta said, her voice suddenly urgent.
“What?” I asked, turning back.
“Logra Emikai’s head dipped to his right just there,” Bayta said. “Like he was saying something to—”
And right on cue, Terese German stood up and stepped into the aisle.
“To our young friend with the bad stomach?” I suggested.
“Exactly,” Bayta said. Terese made a show of stretching as she casually but carefully looked around her, then headed after the departing Filly. Logra Emikai reached the vestibule and disappeared inside, heading for the next car. A few steps behind him, Terese did likewise. “Coincidence?” Bayta asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been
assuming that when we were in the bar earlier she just grabbed the first likely-looking lug to protect her from me. The whole incident makes a lot more sense if the choice wasn’t nearly that spur-of-the-moment.”
Bayta pondered that for a moment. “Thought it still could be perfectly innocent,” she pointed out. “They’ve been passengers on the same train for the past two weeks. If they’d already gotten to know each other, she would naturally go to him for help.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But she’s never struck me as the gregarious sort. Come on—time to go.”
“Where?” Bayta asked as I took her arm and steered us forward down the aisle. “We’re not going to follow them, are we?”
“We just happen to be going the same direction, that’s all,” I assured her as we wove our way around the other passengers wending their way to and fro down the aisle. “Tell the Spiders they can put the filter equipment back together again. We’re done here.”
My original plan—actually, at this point we were probably on my second or third original plan—had been to have a look at the late Master Colix’s storage compartments while we were checking on the air filter. But again, things weren’t working out the way I’d hoped. This time, it was the large number of passengers still watching our every move that persuaded me to put off the compartment exam a little longer. Convincing them that two deaths a few hours apart had been just an unhappy happenstance would be a much harder sell if I was seen rooting through the personal effects of one of the dearly departeds. Hopefully, we could come back later tonight when things had quieted down.
As I’d promised Bayta, we did indeed follow Terese and Emikai toward the front of the train, but only because we all happened to be going in the same direction. The girl and the Filly only made it as far as the bar end of the dining car, I noted as we passed, whereas Bayta and I were going four cars farther, to the second/third dispensary.
“What are we doing here?” Bayta asked as I ushered her into the small room.
“Finding a place where we can be alone,” I said. “Is there a curtain or something we can close over this doorway?”
In response, the server Spider standing his post by the drug cabinet skittered over and slid a cleverly hidden pocket door over the opening. “Thank you,” I said, stepping over to the treatment table and laying out my newly filled sample vials. “More importantly, I wanted someplace I could do a quick analysis without a lot of people looking over our shoulders.”
“Why don’t we just go back to our compartments?” Bayta asked as I pulled out my reader and lighter.
“Because our next real stop is the first-class dispensary to check on Strinni, and I don’t want to go all the way forward and then have to backtrack,” I told her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all this walking.”
I started with Givvrac’s untouched drink. I hadn’t really expected to find anything sinister lurking there, and for once I was right. “As I said, even if Kennrick is involved, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to lace a drink only he had access to,” I reminded Bayta as I set the vial aside. “These others may be more interesting.”
They were. But not in the way I’d expected.
“What is all that?” Bayta asked, staring in bewilderment as the chemical list scrolled across my reader’s display.
And scrolled some more, and then kept on scrolling, for another four pages. Whatever the Spiders’ third-stage filter was collecting, it was collecting a lot of it. “Whatever it is, the good news is that the air isn’t the source of the poisoning,” I said. “You can see—right, there—that there’s barely a trace of cadmium in the whole mix.”
“Not enough to kill them?”
“Not even enough to make them sick,” I said. “As to the rest of this soup, be patient. The analyzer has a huge database, and it’ll take some time for it to sort through everything.”
I watched the reader as the first trace compound ID came up, a type of perfume used by Fibibibi to mask some of the pheromones that appeared in females at potentially awkward times. “We’ve got a make on Contestant Number Two,” I said as the next part of the analysis came up. “Actually, make that Contestants Two through Eight. It’s a cluster of digestive exhalation products. Pirkarli, mostly.”
Bayta wrinkled her nose. “There were two Pirks back there.”
“And I’m sure the rest of the car is grateful for the focused ventilation system you have by Pirk seats,” I said, looking over at the locked drug cabinet. Neither Witherspoon’s nor Aronobal’s kits were there. “I thought doctors’ kits were supposed to be kept locked up.”
“They are,” Bayta said. “Both kits are in the first-class dispensary right now.”
I frowned. As third-class passengers, neither doctor had normal access to that part of the train. “Are their owners up there with them?”
“Dr. Witherspoon is,” Bayta said. “He’s monitoring di-Master Strinni. Dr. Aronobal left her bag in first so it would be available in case she was called on again to treat Usantra Givvrac’s stomach trouble.”
“Digestion has always been the Fillies’ weak spot,” I commented, looking down at my reader. “Our next mystery guest has now signed in. Looks like this one’s actually a group, too.”
“More Pirkarli emissions?”
“Not unless our Pirks are also hypochondriacs,” I said. “These are three different antibacterial sprays, the kind people like to waft around themselves to protect against alien germs.” I cocked an eyebrow. “I wonder if one of them might belong to our friend Logra Emikai. He certainly seemed concerned about the train’s overall air quality.”
“He’s not seated in that car.”
“But his friend Terese is,” I reminded her. “Maybe he gave her some of his spray. Or maybe they’re both hypochondriacs.” I gestured to the reader. “One more to go. How’s di-Master Strinni doing?”
“He’s conscious,” Bayta said slowly, her eyes unfocusing as she communicated with the server in the first-class dispensary. “He seems to have calmed down, too.”
“Good,” I said. “As soon as this is done—” I broke off, glaring at the display. “Oh, for—”
“What is it?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to see.
“Contestant Number Whatever turns out to be nothing but fragmented Juriani scale material,” I said, pointing to the line. “Apparently fragmented small enough to sneak through the other filters.”
“Is that a problem?” Bayta asked, frowning.
“Hardly,” I said, shutting down the reader and putting it back into my pocket. “But I doubt Larry Hardin’s high-end techs worked this hard to design and build this thing just so I could use it to identify Jurian dandruff.”
I took the sample vials and dropped them into my pocket beside the reader. “Come on—let’s see if di-Master Strinni is up to answering some questions.”
We arrived at the first-class dispensary to find Strinni lying quietly on the diagnostic table, his skin showing the same mottling that Master Colix and Master Bofiv had demonstrated just prior to their deaths. Not a good sign. The Shorshian’s breathing was labored, his eyes dull and listless. But at least he no longer looked inclined to throw the furniture around. “Good evening, di-Master Strinni,” I greeted him, glancing around. Aside from Strinni himself and the server standing by the drug cabinet there was no one else in the room. “How do you feel?”
[Like I’m dying,] he said grimly. [It’s good of you to come, Mr. Compton. And you,] he added, giving Bayta a small acknowledging nod. [I very much wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier.]
“No problem,” I assured him. “I’m sure that was just the necrovri talking. You use the stuff often?”
A bit of fire came into his eyes. [I do not use any such poisons,] he said, the words coming out as crisp and emphatic as individual thudwumper rounds. [I don’t know how it came to be in my body. But I assure you it was none of my doing.]
“I believe you,” I assured him. Actually, I only believed him about e
ighty percent, but I wasn’t going to call him a liar to his face. “Any idea how it could have gotten into your system?”
His brief surge of passion faded away. [Perhaps it was placed within my food without my noticing,] he said.
“Perhaps,” I agreed. “Who have you shared a meal or drink with over the past three or four days?
[Only the others of my contract team,] he said. [Those in first class, of course.]
“No one else?” I asked.
[Do you accuse me of lying?]
“Just double-checking,” I soothed. “Do you happen to know where Dr. Witherspoon is, by the way?”
[He went for food,] Strinni said.
“For food?” I asked, frowning. Bayta and I had just come up from the rear of the train, and we hadn’t passed Witherspoon along the way. “When did he leave?”
[A few minutes only before your arrival.]
“He didn’t go back to third,” Bayta spoke up. “The Spiders are letting him eat in first tonight.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. Unlike the third-class dining car, which was half a train back, the first-class dining car was just three cars away toward the front. All the same, I found it damned odd that Witherspoon would just take off and leave a desperately ill patient all alone this way. “He didn’t ask Dr. Aronobal to take over while he was gone?” I asked Strinni.
[I didn’t want Dr. Aronobal to take over,] Strinni said, a flicker of life again peeking through the weariness. [I sent Dr. Witherspoon for his food, Mr. Compton. He didn’t abandon me, as you so obviously think. He’s already done all that he can for my broken body.]
“My apologies,” I said, not feeling particularly apologetic. Hungry or not, ordered out or not, Witherspoon still shouldn’t have deserted his patient. “If I may suggest, though, in a case like this two sets of eyes and minds are always preferable to one. I’m sure Dr. Aronobal would be happy—”
[I will not be treated by that Filiaelian,] Strinni cut me off. [I will not be so debased.]
