The Domino Pattern q-4

by Timothy Zahn

  “Did you ever take straw votes at these discussions?” I asked.

  “They never did while I was present,” Kennrick said. “But they might have done so after I left. They never talked about things like that in front of me.”

  “Or me,” Witherspoon seconded.

  “Understandable,” I said. “I’ll try asking Master Tririn about it in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry, but this still doesn’t make sense,” Witherspoon said. “If it’s about whether the contract succeeds or fails, shouldn’t the killer be eliminating only the team members who are opposing him?”

  “In theory, sure,” I said. “In actual practice, focusing exclusively on his opponents would be about as clever as taking out a full-page ad announcing his intentions. He’ll need to muddy the water by killing at least one of his own side.”

  “Which fits the current situation exactly,” Kennrick murmured.

  “So you think he wants to defeat the contract?” Witherspoon asked.

  “Possibly,” I said, eyeing Kennrick. He was gazing off into space, a thoughtful look on his face. “But we’ve got a long way to go before we start jumping at that kind of conclusion. Something else, Kennrick?”

  “I don’t know.” Kennrick said slowly. “I was just wondering if Dr. Witherspoon might be right about this being a revenge thing, only the killer was only after one of the victims, not all four of them. Is it possible that he killed the others just to make his real target less apparent?”

  Witherspoon hissed between his teeth. “Good God.”

  “It has been done before,” I agreed. “But again, without knowing anything about the victims’ backgrounds, that theory won’t get us very far.”

  “Probably not,” Kennrick conceded. “I just thought I should mention it.”

  “Consider it mentioned,” I said. “Let’s switch gears a minute. Dr. Witherspoon, can you tell me anything about what happened earlier back in Osantra Qiddicoj’s coach car?”

  “Not really,” Witherspoon said, fingering his neck gingerly. “I was following you to his seat when something hit me. The next thing I knew, your friend Bayta and a conductor were standing over me, trying to get me to wake up.”

  “Did you hear anything before you were hit?” I asked. “The sound of the vestibule door opening behind you, stealthy footsteps, heavy breathing—anything?”

  Witherspoon shook his head. “He could have materialized out of thin air for all I know.”

  “Did you see or hear anything odd alter you woke up?”

  “Again, no,” Witherspoon said. “Bayta and the conductor helped me back to the dispensary—and took Osantra Qiddicoj in there, too, of course—then went back to look for you.” He grimaced. “And before you ask, I have no idea why anyone would want to attack me.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t you he was after, Doc,” Kennrick suggested, eyeing me speculatively. “Maybe he wanted Compton, and you were just in his way.”

  “That is a thought,” Witherspoon agreed, giving me a speculative look of his own. “After all, you were the one who figured out what was wrong with the Filiaelians. If he wanted Usantra Givvrac dead, you were the one he needed to shut up.”

  “Except that at the time no one knew I had the answer,” I reminded him. “Including me.”

  “The attacker still might have thought you were getting close,” Witherspoon said.

  “Or maybe you had something he wanted,” Kennrick said suddenly. “You still have those tissue samples from Master Colix and Master Bofiv?”

  “I assume they’re still in my room,” I lied, shifting my elbow slightly against my chest to press reassuringly against the vials in my pocket. The samples from the air filter and Givvrac’s drink were indeed an obvious target for the killer to go after, which is why they’d been the first thing I’d checked when Bayta and the Spider got me out of that chair. “Any of your stuff gone, Doc?”

  Witherspoon shook his head. “If it is, it’s nothing important.”

  “What do you mean, if it is?” Kennrick asked, frowning. “Haven’t you checked your pockets and your bag?”

  “Of course I have,” Witherspoon said. “My pockets haven’t been touched, and he made a mess of my bag when he was looking for tape to tie up Mr. Compton with.”

  I focused on the medical bag still silting in the middle of our table. “What kind of mess?” I asked carefully.

  “A mess kind of mess,” Witherspoon said with a touch of impatience. “Everything got moved or shifted around, with vials and pill cartridges and all dumped in the bottom. That sort of thing.”

  “He dumped everything in the bottom while he was looking for tape?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Witherspoon said, frowning. “What’s your point?”

  I looked at Kennrick, saw the light starting to dawn there. “Doc, no one throws a bunch of vials around when they’re looking for a roll of tape,” I said. “He wanted something else in there.”

  “Kindly credit me with a little intelligence, Mr. Compton.” Witherspoon growled. “I’ve checked on all my painkillers and other potentially dangerous drugs. They’re all still there. I doubt anyone would go to this much effort just to steal a packet of QuixHeals.”

  “So let’s find out what was worth this much effort.” I reached over and opened the bag. “Inventory. Now.”

  Witherspoon grimaced. “Fine,” he said. “But I can tell you right now that we’re not going to find anything significant.”

  “Five bucks says I will,” I said nudging the bag a little closer to him.

  For possibly the first time that day, I was right.

  ———

  Bayta was alone in the dispensary, sitting on one of the foldout seats and gazing wearily at Usantra Givvrac’s body, when the Spider and I finally returned. “You all right?” I asked, peering at her as the Spider crossed the room and put Witherspoon’s bag back under lock and key.

  “I was just thinking about this afternoon, in the bar,” she said. “When you told me that putting off a conversation usually meant that person will be the next to die.”

  I winced. “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “I’m sorry he’s dead.” Bayta paused. “The killer’s not finished yet, is he?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” I conceded. “You listened in on our inventory of Witherspoon’s bag?”

  She nodded again. “There’s a hypo missing.”

  “Right,” I said. “Inevitable, I suppose, in retrospect. The three basic ways of delivering poisons are inhalation, ingestion, and injection. With the first two mostly off the table, that leaves only the last.”

  “What do you mean, mostly?” Bayta asked.

  “We still haven’t totally eliminated the possibility that someone added the cadmium to the Shorshians’ food after it was delivered.” I said. “Did you check with the servers, by the way, on whether Colix and Bofiv always used the same reaches for the common dish?”

  “They didn’t,” Bayta said. “All three Shorshians switched off between galla bread, prinn scoops, and rokbi sticks, with no particular pattern the servers noticed.”

  “So no one could have poisoned the reaches, at least not if he was targeting specific victims,” I concluded. “That leaves our killer with a choice of poisoning the common dish—or, rather, half the common dish, since Tririn wasn’t affected—or two separate individual dishes. And all that without anyone at the table noticing. Not impossible, but pretty damn difficult.”

  “Unless Master Tririn himself is the killer,” Bayta said slowly. “According to Usantra Givvrac, he was one of the four members of the team opposed to the contract with Pellorian Medical. Three of the four victims were for the contract.”

  “True,” I agreed. “But that runs us immediately into another problem. Two problems, actually. If he was trying to stack the vote in his favor, Master Colix’s death already accomplishes that. So why keep killing? Especially since the second death. Bofiv’s, evens up the vote again?”

  “It doesn’t make
sense, does it?” Bayta admitted.

  “Not yet,” I conceded. “A bigger problem with Tririn is that you’ve already proved he hasn’t been up to first class since we left Homshil, which means he had no access to Strinni or Givvrac.”

  Bayta winced. “Actually, that might not be true,” she said reluctantly. “It occurred to me—a little late, I’m afraid—to ask the conductors about unlimited first-class passes. They tell me eight passes came aboard the train, but only seven of the holders are actually riding in first class.”

  I stared at her. “Oh, hell.”

  “I’m sorry.” Bayta apologized. “I should have asked about that sooner.”

  “Not your fault,” I told her. So someone else had the same ability we did to flit back and forth between classes without a single locked door or raised eyebrow. Terrific. “If Spiders were smart enough to volunteer this stuff on their own instead of having to be asked—” I broke off. “Never mind. Water under the bridge. Very interesting water, too.”

  “Because it shows that the killer had everything planned in advance?”

  “And because it shows he has some serious financial backing,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way of finding out who has this eighth pass?”

  Bayta shook her head. “If it wasn’t used to board, the conductors won’t have that information.”

  “Who would have it?” I persisted. “The stationmaster back at Homshil?”

  “Yes, he would have been the one who informed the conductors about the eight passes in the first place,” she said. “But there’s no way to get a message back there until we reach Venidra Carvo.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “There must be a few of your secret little sidings scattered along the way. Can’t you shoot the Spiders a telepathic message as we pass, like we did on our last trip back to Earth? They could then load the request onto a message cylinder and send it back to Homshil via one of their tenders.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Bayta said doubtfully. “We don’t get very close to the Spiders when we pass a siding. That’ll make the contact difficult. We’re also going much faster then we do when we pass through a station, so we won’t be able to send anything very long or detailed.”

  “Then we’ll just have to be clever.” I said, trying to kick a few of my comatose brain cells back to life. “What if we give all the conductors aboard the same message and have them line up along the length of the train? Hell, let’s give it to the servers, mites, and twitters, too. Maybe between all of them we can get enough of it across to make sense.”

  For a moment Bayta was silent, either thinking it over or consulting with the Spiders. “It might work.” she said at last. “No guarantees, but it might.”

  “No guarantees expected.” I assured her. “When will we pass the next siding?”

  “In about six hours,” she said. “It’ll still take a while for a message cylinder to get from there to Homshil Station, though. And of course the only way to get the information back to us will be though a tender, and depending on where they have to send it from—”

  “Yes, yes, I get it,” I cut her off. “But even limited information will be better than nothing. Let’s figure out the shortest way to phrase the message and then start rehearsing the Spiders.”

  “All right,” she said, running a critical eye over me. “But I can do that. You’d better get to bed.”

  “I’m on my way,” I promised. “One other thing.”

  I hesitated, wondering if I really wanted to do this. During my last private conversation with a Chahwyn Elder I’d promised that I would hold on to their new secret as long as I could. Not just because he hadn’t wanted Bayta to know about it, but also because I agreed with him that the truth would be a troubling shock for her. Besides, at the time I’d made the promise there wasn’t any particular reason she needed to know.

  But circumstances had changed. We were locked aboard a super-express Quadrail, four weeks from our destination, with a shadowy killer who’d made an art out of sneaking death past the Spiders’ sensors. We needed reinforcements, and we needed them now. “Along with the unlimited-pass information,” I said, “I want you to put in a request for a couple of the Chahwyn’s newest class of Spider.”

  “There’s a new class?” she asked, frowning. “When did you hear about this?”

  “When we were delivering Rebekah to her friends,” I told her. “There was a Chahwyn aboard the tender, and he and I had a little chat.”

  Bayta’s face had gone very still. “You never told me about that,” she said.

  “I was asked not to,” I said, wincing. The hurt in her eyes was radiating at me like a heat lamp on a bad sunburn. “There was some concern about your possible reaction to the new Spiders.”

  “But you’re telling me about them now,” she said slowly. “That means you think I need to know. Because we’re in danger, or because the train’s in danger. We’re alone against a killer—”

  She broke off, her face suddenly stricken. “Oh, no.” she said. “The defenders?”

  I blinked. “You know about them?”

  She closed her eyes, a wave of pain crossing her face. “The Chahwyn Elders have talked about the idea for years,” she said, her voice tight. “Since long before you were brought in to help us.”

  “Really,” I said, trying very hard not to be annoyed and not succeeding very well. Here I’d been walking around with tape over my mouth for a solid month, worried that I’d let something slip. And now I find out Bayta had known the essentials all along? “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she shot back, opening her eyes again to shoot a glare squarely between my eyes. “As far as I knew, the Elders were still just talking about the idea. You knew they’d actually created some of them.” The glare suddenly evaporated. “I thought you trusted me,” she said in a suddenly quiet voice.

  “I do trust you, Bayta.” I said, once again wanting to reach out and take her hand. Once again, I resisted the impulse. Thought viruses …“I was told to keep it quiet, and I’m sure you were too. It’s the Elders’ fault, not yours or mine.”

  “I suppose,” she said. But I could still hear the quiet hurt in her voice.

  “But I’m glad it’s out in the open,” I continued, searching for a way to deflect her mind away from thoughts of distrust or betrayal. “I gather you don’t think much of the project?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “It would change the character of the Spiders forever. I don’t want that.”

  “Unless they only make a few of them.”

  “You really think they’ll stop there?” she countered. “With the Modhri threat the way it is? I’ve read about arms races, Frank. They never stop. Ever.”

  “Not until one side or the other goes down, anyway,” I conceded. “Maybe the Elders don’t think they’ve got any other choice.”

  “Of course we have a choice,” Bayta said, her voice suddenly the color of despair. “We can end it. We can retreat back to Viccai and end everything.”

  I winced, glancing at the open dispensary door. We really shouldn’t be talking about things like this in the middle of a crowded train. But the Spider who’d dropped off Witherspoon’s case was standing just outside in the corridor, clearly on guard against eavesdroppers.

  As well he should be. The Quadrail was essentially a fraud, the reality of its magic a closely kept secret I’d stumbled across on my first mission for the Spiders. The Tube and trains were nothing more than window dressing for the exotic quantum thread that ran down the center of the Coreline. Traveling close to the Thread was what allowed a vehicle to travel at speeds of a light-year per minute or better, the actual speed depending on how close the closest part of the vehicle was to the Thread. Anything inside the vehicle, connected to it, or even just touching it ran at the same speed, with no tidal or other nasty effects to deal with.

  The problem the Chahwyn had faced when hoping to restart interstellar travel after the defeat of t
he Shonkla-raa was that you didn’t need a train for the Thread to do its magic. You could just cozy up to it with a torchliner or torchyacht or even a garbage scow, and you’d be off to the races.

  Which would have been fine if the Chahwyn could have trusted everyone in the Twelve Empires to stick with torchliners and garbage scows. Unfortunately, they couldn’t. That was how the Shonkla-raa had conquered the galaxy in the first place, sending their warships along the Thread to the galaxy’s inhabited systems, destroying or enslaving everything in their path.

  And if the Threads secret became common knowledge, there was no reason to believe someone else wouldn’t take a crack at replicating that achievement. Hence, the Quadrail, with its limited points of entry, its massive station-based sensor arrays, and its strict no-weapons rules.

  But if the galaxy ever got a whiff of the truth, it would be all over. “You can’t be serious,” I said to Bayta. lowering my voice despite the presence of our Spider watchdog. “You destroy the Tube and the Quadrails, and someone’s bound to figure out the secret.”

  “I said we end everything, Frank,” she repeated, her voice weary in a way I’d never heard it before. “Everything. Including the Thread.”

  I felt my jaw drop. “You can destroy the Thread?”

  She nodded. “You already know we can ravel off pieces of it—that’s how we create loops and spurs. It’s thought that if we ravel the Thread too many times, its mass will drop below a critical level and it will simply evaporate.”

  I felt a chill run up my back. “And what about the people who would be trapped off their worlds? How would they get home?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Bayta said. “But exile is better than becoming slaves to the Modhri.”

  Except that most of the worlds where the new exiles would find themselves already had a Modhran presence, and a lot of those worlds also had at least one Modhran coral outpost. The Quadrail would be gone, but the Modhri would go merrily on his way, making slaves of anyone who crossed his path. The only difference would be that he would have to settle for being a whole lot of small, isolated, local despots instead of a single, vast galaxy-wide despot. I couldn’t really see what difference that would make for his thousands of small, isolated, local groups of slaves.