by Timothy Zahn
“And Ms. German herself?”
Aronobal hesitated. “We do not understand what is happening to her,” she admitted. “But her health index is definitely deteriorating.”
“Could whatever you’re doing to the baby be affecting her?”
“We are doing nothing to the baby,” Aronobal said. “We are simply taking fluid and tissue samples and studying his brainwave and metabolic patterns. No genetic work is being performed.”
“Maybe not, but tests themselves can sometimes adversely affect people,” I pointed out. “And you can’t have much experience with treating Humans here.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when I suddenly realized what it was that had been nagging at me.
I looked around the dome again, at the charming EuroUnion Alpine village the Fillies had created. Only this time, I looked at it all with new eyes.
And with new understanding.
Damn them, anyway.
“You forget our consultation work with Pellorian Medical Systems,” Aronobal reminded me. “We have had enough experience with Humans to know what cannot and must not be done.”
“I hope so,” I said, my voice sounding distant in my ears. “I wonder if I could get a full update on Ms. German’s condition, her treatment, and any prognosis you might have.”
Aronobal snorted gently. “Could you read such a document?”
“The computer in my quarters can translate it for me,” I said. “I swore an oath to Asantra Muzzfor—”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” Aronobal interrupted. Apparently, she was as tired of hearing Muzzfor’s name as I was of invoking it. “I will have the appropriate documents sent to you.”
“And similar documents concerning the treatment of Ms. German’s unborn child, too, if you would,” I said. “But I’ve taken up enough of your time. When you get back to Ms. German’s room, will you ask Bayta to join me out here?”
Aronobal gave me an odd look, and I had the feeling that she was surprised by the brevity of the conversation. Apparently, she’d been expecting something longer and more drawn-out. But she merely nodded. “I will,” she said, and went back inside.
I stepped around the corner of the building and sat down with my back to the wall, massaging my calves as if the morning’s travel had left me with tired muscles. As I did so, I once again looked casually around the dome, watching the meager flow of Fillies back and forth. This time, I paid special attention to which buildings seemed to be the centers of attention.
“Frank?” Bayta’s voice came from somewhere near the door.
“Over here,” I called.
Bayta appeared around the corner. Once again, Ty seemed to have inexplicably stayed with her instead of coming outside with Doug and me. “You get anything?” I asked her.
“You didn’t give me much time,” she countered, a little crossly. “Was Dr. Aronobal that anxious to get back?”
“I was that anxious to get rid of her,” I said. “First things first. Come sit down and tell me what you found out from Terese about her attack.”
Bayta frowned, but obediently walked over and sat down beside me. “It happened outside her apartment building as she was coming home from a late party,” she said. “She never saw—”
“Do you have a nail file with you?” I interrupted. “Or anything you can cut or poke with?”
She gave me an odd look. “I have a set of tweezers.”
“No good,” I said. “I need something that can dig into wood or plastic.”
“Chinzro Hchchu already took everything I had like that.” She pointed at Doug, who had settled down a couple of meters away. “If what you want isn’t too complicated, maybe Doug or Ty would let you use their claws.”
I frowned at Doug’s feet. They looked to me like clawless dog feet. “What makes you think they have claws?”
“Because I saw them,” Bayta said. “I woke up last night while Ty was shuddering against the headboard—probably having a dream—and saw them sliding in and out of his paws.”
“Lovely,” I said, wincing at the thought of something with sharp teeth and claws having nightmares that close to Bayta. “Any idea how I would go about asking?”
“I don’t even know what it is you want,” Bayta said. “But I would recommend saying please.”
“Thanks.” I lifted up a hand and beckoned. “Here, Doug. Come here, boy.”
For a moment he just looked at me, displaying all the semi-sentience of a Chesapeake Bay mollusk. Then, he heaved himself to his feet and trotted over. “Right here,” I went on, patting the ground beside me. “Come stand over here.”
Again, he took a moment to think it over before obeying. “I just need to borrow this paw a minute,” I said soothingly, getting a light grip on his front paw. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
To my surprise, he not only didn’t fight me, but readily shifted his weight onto his other three legs and raised the paw I was holding. Maybe his last owner had taught him how to shake hands. “They just slide out, you said?”
“Like cat’s claws, yes,” Bayta said. “Try squeezing the foot just behind the toes.”
“And maybe get my face clawed off,” I muttered. Shifting my hand to the spot Bayta had suggested, I gently squeezed Doug’s foot.
The watchdogs had claws, all right. Big, long, sharp, nasty things. Scary, but exactly what I needed. “Easy, now,” I soothed as I pressed the lifted foot against the wall beside me and began carefully scratching with the extended claws. “Okay, so Terese was heading home from a party and never saw anything?”
“She never saw her attacker,” Bayta said, picking back up on the story. “He hit her from behind and dragged her down off the street into a stairwell. There he must have hit her again, maybe more than once—her memories are pretty foggy. When she came to she was alone, half dressed—” She grimaced. “And, as she found out later, pregnant.”
“Mm,” I murmured, half my attention on Bayta, half on the gouges I was making in the wall with Doug’s claws. “Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Bayta asked. “I’m surprised she was willing to give me that much.”
“She’s sick, she’s a long way from home, and as much as she probably hates it you and I are the most familiar faces around,” I pointed out. “On top of that, I get the impression she’s never been exactly flush with close friends. This thing’s probably been bottled up inside her for a long time.”
“And I’m a fellow woman?”
“With this sort of thing, that’s usually the way it works,” I said. “So she never saw her attacker. Interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“Not sure yet.” I nodded across the dome. “New subject. Remember what Wandek said when I asked him why all these buildings were Human design?”
“He said they were reconfigured for the comfort of the patients.”
“Right,” I said. “So why, if Terese is the only Human patient around, did they bother putting together a whole dome’s worth of buildings? Especially since the things aren’t made of malleable material like he said they were?”
“They’re not?”
“Take a look,” I invited, lowering Doug’s foot back to the ground and pointing to the gouges I’d made in the wall with his claws. “Every malleable material I’ve ever seen automatically heals small tears like this. But not this stuff. This stuff is simple, ordinary wood.” I raised my eyebrows. “Which leads directly to the question of what the hell is going on in here.”
“The Filiaelian who showed us to our first quarters,” Bayta said slowly. “He needed to confirm who you were.” She looked at me. “But he shouldn’t have, should he?”
“Not if I was the only male Human in this part of Proteus.” I nodded across the dome. “I’ve been watching the Fillies going in and out of those buildings. The same buildings, maybe not coincidentally, that were still showing lights after I dropped you off at your first room last night.”
Bayta let out a sort o
f soft hiss. “There are other Humans in there.”
“That’s where the logic is heading.” I levered myself to my feet and offered a hand to her. “What do you say we go and find out?”
We headed across the dome toward the particular chalet I’d tagged as number one on my list of potentially interesting tourist attractions. We were within ten meters of it when the door opened and a Filly dressed in doctor’s tans stepped out.
Only this wasn’t just an ordinary Filly doctor. This was the alien I’d dubbed Tan One, one of the Shonkla-raa at Wandek’s informal interrogation yesterday afternoon.
Tan One hadn’t seemed all that friendly during that meeting. Today, he was even less so. {Where are you going?} he asked sternly.
“Good afternoon,” I greeted him cheerfully, not breaking stride.
{This building is off-limits to visitors,} he growled, planting himself directly in our path three meters in front of the building.
“Sorry, I don’t understand,” I said, still not slowing. I would maintain my course, I decided, until I was about half a pace away from him, at which point I would feint left with my shoulder and try to slip around him to the right.
“He said you were not permitted to enter that building,” Wandek’s voice came from behind me.
I swallowed a curse as I came to a halt and turned around. No chance now of pretending I simply didn’t understand what Tan One was blathering about. “Hello, Usantra Wandek,” I greeted him. “Did you and Logra Emikai sort out the security arrangements?”
“They are being dealt with,” Wandek said, eyeing me closely as he came up to us. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hungry,” I said. “I saw all the people going in and out of this building, and thought there might be a food service here like the one in the security nexus upstairs.”
“There are no public dining places in this area,” Wandek said. “The computer in your quarters can provide a list of nearby facilities.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “I was just hoping we could grab something quick and get back to Ms. German.”
“She is resting now after her treatments,” Wandek said, taking my arm in one of his iron grips and pulling me gently but determinedly back the way Bayta and I had just come. “In an hour, perhaps two, she will be able to receive visitors. This would be a good opportunity for you to seek refreshment elsewhere.”
“And maybe get a little rest ourselves,” I conceded, pulling experimentally against his grip. Now that I was moving in the right direction, Wandek took the hint and let go. “Good day.”
I turned back to face Tan One. “And good day to you, too, Doctor,” I added, giving him a short bow of my head. Under cover of the movement I took a good, hard look at the door behind him.
Turning back again, I took Bayta’s arm, nodded a farewell to Wandek, and headed toward the corridor leading back to our quarters.
We were nearly there before Bayta spoke again. “We’re not really giving up, are we?” she murmured.
“Of course not,” I said. “But I am hungry. Let’s go find something to eat.”
SIX
We didn’t bother going into our room, but simply consulted the green-emblem directory in the main corridor leading out of the dome. With usual Filiaelian efficiency, it pointed us to what turned out to be a very nice row of restaurants of various types three corridors from our quarters. Bayta had no preference, so I chose a small Jurian café that was wafting the familiar scent of braised flirdring out into the corridor.
I found it interesting, considering my suspicions about what was going on in the rest of the chalet village, that there weren’t any Human restaurants among them. We ate, then returned to our room.
There, for the next two hours, I sifted through every bit of data I could find on the medical dome, the corridors and service ducts surrounding it, and the various types of locks used aboard Proteus Station.
Not that everything I needed was just sitting there waiting for the general population to access it. But part of my Westali training had been in the art of taking what was shown and filling in what wasn’t.
And after those two hours were over, mindful of the bugs that I still assumed were planted in our room, I took Bayta out on a nice, long walk.
“The cameras are the big problem,” I told her as we walked. “The locks, the building itself—no sweat. But unless we can disable the cameras, it’s not going to work.”
“They’re not that high off the floor,” Bayta pointed out. “Three meters at the most, at least the two are that are just inside the dome. Could you hit them or push them or something?”
“Theoretically, sure,” I said. “The way they’re set up on those gimbals, a good hard shove upward with a push broom ought to point them toward the top of the dome and away from the buildings. But it would have to be a really good shove, because from the images I saw in the security nexus last night it looks like they’re modified wide-angles, and a small nudge would still leave them with a view of the building we want to get into. And of course, since they’re within each other’s view, they’d both have to be taken out at the same time.”
“So dead end?” Bayta asked.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “There appear to be a whole bunch of service crawlways and ventilation ducts in the area around the dome. I may be able to find one that’ll get me to the cameras from behind, or at least to their power and signal cables. And even if I have to take out the camera itself, the access port ought to be small enough that I won’t be visible.”
“So you can take out one camera without being seen on the other,” Bayta said, nodding. “Then you could circle the dome and take out the other one.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course, that assumes that whatever self-checks the security system has for spotting broken equipment don’t instantly send a tech to the trouble spot. If company arrives on the scene too quickly, the whole thing will be a waste of effort.”
“Even worse if they catch you.”
“There’s that,” I conceded. “But I think it’s worth a try.”
Bayta was silent for another few steps. “When?” she asked at last.
“Tonight,” I said. “I’ll wait a couple of hours after the lights finish their dimming. That ought to have the corridors as empty as they’re going to get.”
“What will you want me to do?”
“Basically, stay in the room,” I said. “If they get someone on the case faster than I can move, I might end up having to play a little hide-and-seek before I can shake them. You’ll need to cover for me when they call to make sure I’m innocently tucked away in bed.” I glanced furtively at her. “I meant, tucked away on my floor cushions.”
“I know what you meant,” she said evenly. “So that’s tonight. What about right now?”
“Let’s see if Terese is up and receiving,” I suggested. “That’ll give us an excuse to go back into the dome and maybe scope out that building some more. If we catch Wandek napping we might even find a way to sneak in right now. That would save us a lot of effort and sleep tonight.”
I sensed her shiver. “You really think the others won’t be watching for us to try that?”
I shrugged. “You never know. They might assume we won’t be dumb enough to try the straightforward approach twice in a row. Sometimes people outsmart themselves.”
Terese was indeed up when we arrived at her room. Not that she was receiving, or at least she wasn’t receiving us. Standing outside in the corridor, I could distinctly hear her tell Aronobal in no uncertain terms that she did not want any company, especially if that company consisted of Bayta and me.
Fortunately, I never let things like that bother me. She was still in the middle of her quiet tirade when I took Bayta’s arm and walked in.
The nap had definitely done Terese some good. Her cheeks had more color in them, and the fire in her eyes as she glared at me was several degrees hotter than the pale glow she’d been able to generate earlier. “Damn it all, Compton,
” she bit out. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”
“It’s tricky, I’ll grant you that,” I conceded. “But enough chitchat. We came by to see how you were feeling.”
“I’ll feel better when you’re gone.”
“Terese,” Aronobal murmured, a hint of disapproval in her voice.
Terese grimaced. “I’m doing a little better,” she said in a marginally more civil tone. “But I’m still pretty tired.”
I looked at Aronobal. “Does she need a longer nap time?” I suggested. “Or is this a reaction to the drugs you’re giving her?”
“We are using no drugs,” Aronobal said. “All we have done so far is take samples for study.”
“Then what’s causing all the trouble?” I persisted. “Her trouble and her baby’s?”
“Do you mind not discussing me like I was a side of beef?” Terese put in crossly. “Look, I know you’re trying to help.” Her eyes flicked to Bayta. “Both of you,” she added, almost grudgingly. “But you’re not a doctor. You’re a—I don’t even know what you are.”
“Troubleshooter?” I suggested. “Fixer?” I cocked my head slightly. “Friend?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Terese said. “My point is that Dr. Aronobal could give you the full names and pedigrees of everything they’re doing, and you still wouldn’t have a clue whether it was helping or hurting me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I pursed my lips. “No, probably not.”
“So stop trying to pretend you understand and let them get on with it,” she said. “Okay?”
“If that’s what you want.” I turned to Aronobal. “I wonder if I might have a moment alone with Ms. German.”
Aronobal hesitated, then bowed her head. “A few moments only,” she said. Nodding to Terese, she backed out of the room. I caught Bayta’s eye and twitched my head toward the door, and she slipped out, too.
“What?” Terese demanded warily.
“I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” I soothed. “First of all, what are they giving you to eat? Is it Human-style food, or something Filly?”
