Judgment at Proteus

by Timothy Zahn

  “It’ll be all right,” I said into the silence. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  “All right.” Bayta paused. “It’s almost like being in the middle of a dit-rec drama, isn’t it?”

  “That does seem to be the way our lives have been going these days,” I agreed. “Any one in particular springing to mind?”

  “I was just thinking tonight about the one you showed me last week,” she said. “The Hitchcock dit-rec where the man was framed for murder and found himself caught up in a huge conspiracy.”

  “Right—The 39 Steps,” I said, making a face. “That one’s definitely hitting a little too close to home tonight. I don’t think Proteus’s bullet trains go anywhere near Scotland, though.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “The landscape looked very pleasant.”

  “I’ll take you there someday,” I promised. “Your choice as to with or without the handcuffs.”

  She exhaled, just loudly enough for me to hear. “If we ever make it there, I think we’ll have had enough of handcuffs.”

  “I suppose,” I conceded. “Joking aside, try not to let any of this worry you. We’ve gotten out of much worse situations. We’ll get out of this one, too.”

  “I know,” she said. “Good night, Frank.”

  “Good night, Bayta.”

  There were some soft creakings as she resettled herself on her cot, and with a grimace I did the same. Maybe she was right. Maybe we would be murdered in our beds. If we were, I’d never forgive myself.

  There was a little woof from across my cell. I opened my eyes to see that Doug had once again settled himself in front of my door, once again keeping me from sneaking out alone. The fact that the lock on this particular door was on the other side had apparently escaped him.

  Still, even a Jumpsuit lynch mob wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill me in their own security nexus. And if Doug was keeping me from getting out, he was also keeping anyone else from getting in. It was, I decided, a fair enough trade.

  Closing my eyes again, I rolled over to face the wall, where the glaring light was the least intrusive, and drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  I slept straight through the night, without any of the disturbances or interruptions that might have been caused by on-duty Jumpsuits “accidentally” dropping tools or equipment where the clatter might startle a prisoner awake. There were no such incidents, I wasn’t murdered in my bed, and when I did wake up it was to the delectable aroma of a hot breakfast on a tray just inside my cell.

  The Jumpsuits might think I was a murderer, but that clearly wasn’t interfering with their professionalism. Genetic engineering, I thought as I ate, could be a wonderful thing.

  I had finished my breakfast, and Bayta was just starting to stir in her cell, when we had a visitor.

  “Good morning,” Logra Emikai said gravely, glancing around the processing room as he walked across to our cells. “I trust your treatment has been proper?”

  “I couldn’t have asked for better,” I assured him, waving around the room. “What do you think? Professionally, I mean.”

  “Very nice,” he said. “More compact than other processing areas I have seen, but well and properly equipped.” He gave my cell a quick once-over. “Though the holding facilities are not as secure as I would prefer.”

  “I doubt they usually have to deal with anything more dangerous than the occasional rowdy,” I pointed out. “I hope you didn’t come here to escort me to my morning court appearance. It looks like I’m going to be tied up for a while.”

  “Indeed,” Emikai agreed. “But not in the way you think.” He half turned. {Lieutenant of the Guard?} he called.

  A Jumpsuit appeared in the doorway, striding toward me with a darkened blaze and a decidedly unhappy expression on his face. He reached the cell and touched the pad, and the door popped open. Turning on his heel, he strode from the room.

  Emikai beckoned to me. “Come.”

  “Come where?” I asked, not moving. “Chinzro Hchchu’s court?”

  “That proceeding has been put on indefinite suspension,” Emikai said. “You have been assigned to investigate last night’s murder.”

  I felt my jaw drop. “I’ve been what?”

  “An unexpected turn of events, to be sure,” Emikai agreed. “But as you yourself already stated, the experience of the Kuzyatru Station patrollers is largely limited to overenthusiastic revelers and threats to property. As it happens, there are only two trained investigators aboard.” He barked a small laugh. “You, and I.”

  “And they’re desperate enough to actually put me in the game?” I asked, still not believing it. “The chief suspect in the case?”

  “You are no longer a suspect,” Emikai said. “Chinzro Hchchu has so ruled.”

  I glanced at Bayta, who was now sitting up on her cot listening to us. “You’re kidding,” I said. “A prosecutor declaring his very own defendant innocent? That’s one for the books.”

  “Only for this particular crime,” Emikai clarified. “The events surrounding the other six murders must still be examined, because at that time you did not have msikai-dorosli observing your actions.” He looked down at Doug, then across to where Ty was still dozing beside Bayta. “Chinzro Hchchu realizes you could not possibly have committed such a crime in their presence.”

  “Glad someone agrees with me, for whatever reason,” I said, turning to Bayta. “You ready to play detective?”

  “Of course,” she said, looking over at her breakfast tray. “Do I have time to eat first?”

  “She can remain here and join us after her meal,” Emikai offered. “Or she could simply stay here. She is not a trained investigator, is she?”

  “No, but she’s terrific at holding the flashlight,” I said. “Just take the tray along, Bayta—you can eat on the way down.” I cocked an eyebrow at Emikai as something suddenly occurred to me. “And I’ll also need my reader, data chips, and the rest of the gear the patrollers took away from me.”

  Emikai’s blaze darkened a bit. He’d seen that reader in action, back on the super-express train, and he knew all about the sensor/analyzer hidden inside its innocent-looking exterior. “I do not know if Chinzro Hchchu will agree to that,” he warned.

  “Then Chinzro Hchchu had better find himself another investigator,” I said bluntly. “I need my data files, investigative templates, pattern dissectors—all the stuff a modern detective relies on.”

  “I shall make that point,” Emikai said. He hesitated. “Do you also demand your weapon be returned?”

  “That would be awfully nice, what with a murderer running around Proteus and all,” I said. “But I doubt even under these circumstances that Chinzro Hchchu would be willing to go that far. If you can get me everything else, we’ll call it even.”

  “I shall do what I can,” he promised. “Are you ready?”

  I looked at Bayta. She was crouching on the floor beside her breakfast tray, feeding one of the fried giggra strips to Ty. I winced—I’d completely forgotten about Doug when I’d eaten my own meal. “Yes, we’re ready,” I said. “Let’s stop by the duty station on our way out and see if there’s something more convenient for Bayta to carry her breakfast in than that tray.”

  I looked down at Doug. He was looking back at me, his mouth open just far enough for me to see the sharp points of his front teeth. “And,” I added, “we should also probably pick up a few more of those giggra strips.”

  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 bec
ause 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.”