Judgment at Proteus (2 page)

Did they want to know that the Modhri was determined to take over the galaxy by turning more and more people into his walkers? Especially the people who were his current walkers’ closest friends and associates?

Probably not. Most Humans hated hearing bad news or uncomfortable truths, and I doubted any of the non-Human species of the Twelve Empires were much better at it than we were. They wouldn’t really want to know that the Modhri was nothing less than a sentient weapon, created by a group of master-race types called the Shonkla-raa, who had finally been defeated and destroyed sixteen hundred years ago by a coalition of their conquered peoples.

That was the truth Bayta and I had been living with for the past couple of years as we, the Spiders, and the Chahwyn, who controlled the Spiders from their hidden world of Viccai, fought a quiet war against the Modhri’s plans for galactic conquest. And considering how outnumbered we were, that truth had been bad enough.

Four weeks ago, as Bayta and I traveled aboard the super-express from the Human end of the galaxy, the truth had suddenly gotten a whole lot worse.

Because the Shonkla-raa hadn’t been their own individual species, as the Chahwyn had thought, but merely a genetic variant of the Filiaelians. Someone had apparently figured that out, and had also figured out how to re-create that variant.

And that same someone was currently working on his very own master-race breeding program.

The late
Asantra
Muzzfor had been the first of that group that Bayta and I had tangled with, and it had been purely by the grace of God and some unexpected help that we’d survived the encounter. It was from papers Muzzfor had left behind that we’d learned the center of this new Shonkla-raa operation was somewhere inside Proteus Station, a huge beehive of Filiaelian genetic manipulation and a shining example of Filiaelian diplomatic glory and finesse.

The place Bayta and I were currently headed for.

Emikai was waiting near the shuttle bays with the other two members of our party when Bayta and I joined them. “About time,” Terese German growled as we came up. “What did you do, stop off for a drink?”

I eyed her, a dozen possible sarcastic rejoinders flashing through my mind. Terese was a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Human girl—I’d never pinned down her actual age—of the type I usually thought of as a mystery wrapped up inside an enigma wrapped up inside of herself. In this particular case, there was also an outer layer of imported porcupine skin, with the extra-long-quill option. About all I really knew about her was that she’d been assaulted on Earth, that she was pregnant as a result of that attack, and that Muzzfor had pulled some backstage strings to get her aboard the Quadrail and out here to the Filiaelian Assembly.

The
why
of it all, though, still eluded us. I couldn’t wait to get hold of the hidden nuggets of truth in
that
one. “Our apologies,” I said.

She sniffed. “
Are
we finally ready, then?”

Once again, I resisted the urge to say something sarcastic, and merely gestured toward the shuttle hatchway behind her. She spun on her heel and stalked away, her two small carrybags rolling along behind her. Taking a long step, Emikai settled into place beside her as a good protector should.

“You must forgive her,” a soft voice said from my side.

I turned to look at the speaker. Dr. Aronobal was an older Filly, with a graying brown blaze along her long nose and an air of fatigue about her that had grown more pronounced in the two weeks since we’d left the super-express and started wending our way across Shorshian territory into Filiaelian space. “She has been under increasing stress these past few days.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, studying the good doctor closely. Tired she might be, but her eyes were clear enough, and I had no doubt that her mind was, too. I didn’t know what her role was in this little drama, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be wise to underestimate her. “Any particular reason why?”

“Perhaps merely the additional tension of reaching the journey’s end,” Aronobal said. “Or perhaps the uncertainty of her future.”

“Surely it must be the former,” I protested mildly. “Now that we’re here, I’m sure your colleagues will take good care of her.”

“
My
colleagues?” Aronobal shook her head. “You misunderstand, Mr. Compton. The doctors and genetic surgeons of
Kuzyatru
Station are not my colleagues.
Logra
Emikai and I merely agreed to assist them by looking after Ms. German on her journey here.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. And if I believed
that
, I thought cynically, she undoubtedly had some prime Gobi cropland to sell me. “In that case, we’d better make sure she doesn’t lose us.”

I took Bayta’s arm and headed off after the girl, studying the station around us as we walked, my eyes and mind alert for the slow-moving loiterers or casual conversational clumps that might indicate a Modhran mind segment on sentry duty.

If we’d taken this trip a few months ago I might not have bothered. The Chahwyn, who’d been studying the Modhri a lot longer than I had, had assured me that the Filiaelian Assembly was the only one of the Twelve Empires that the Modhri hadn’t yet penetrated. The reasoning had seemed solid enough at the time: with the widespread Filly obsession for genetic experimentation, it was hard to see how a group of relatively huge coral polyps could slip through the laser-grid pre-testing required in all genetic restructuring procedures without being spotted. And since the Modhri’s best hope for victory was to remain below everyone’s radar as long as possible, it followed that he would avoid Fillies, especially the rich upper-class Fillies who would normally be his prime target.

Unfortunately, that comforting logic had gone out the window three months ago on the Human colony world of New Tigris. There, Bayta and I had tangled with no fewer than six
santra
-class Filly walkers whom the Modhri had clearly had no qualms about taking over. Backtracking those Fillies and finding out what the Modhri was up to out here had been the original reason for our trip to Ilat Dumar Covrey, before Muzzfor and
his
unexpected revelation had even come up.

And given that we now knew there were Shonkla-raa at Proteus as well, it followed immediately that they would have someone keeping a close watch on the local Quadrail station.

Only as far as I could tell, they didn’t. None of the hurrying passengers gave us more than the quick glance one would normally expect between perfect strangers, none of the people poring over schedules or maps looked up as we passed, and there were no head jerks or widened eyes of recognition as the Modhri spotted his two most notorious enemies.

Maybe he’d simply learned how to better hide his presence and reactions from me. That was one of the group mind’s nastiest strengths: as one mind segment got within range of another, the two blended together to form a new, bigger segment, with automatic sharing of experience and memories. That meant that, unless I was able to completely wipe out a given mind segment, anything I did or said would eventually end up as part of the shared memory of every other mind segment in the galaxy. Any trick that worked against him would only work once, and every mind segment knew my face, at least within the limitations of cross-species recognition capabilities.

The other possibility was that the Shonkla-raa and Modhri felt so secure at Proteus that they didn’t even care whether or not Bayta and I showed up.

Like every other shuttle hatchway in the Quadrail system, those at Ilat Dumar Covrey were set into the station floor and rimmed with glowing lights indicating whether or not there was a vehicle ready to carry passengers to the transfer station, where torchliners and torchferries waited to transport them elsewhere in the system. Only one of the hatchways in this part of the station was still lit, the one Terese and Emikai were currently heading for. Maybe she’d been right about Bayta and me being a little slow.

Unlike the Tube and stations, which were under Spider control, shuttle design and organization were the province of the species that owned that particular solar system. I’d never been aboard a Filly shuttle before, and I watched with interest as, halfway down the stairway, Terese got her hand and luggage tagged by a laser scanner, which then lit up a holodisplay in English instructing her to put the bags on the conveyor to her left just below the station floor. She did so, and as the luggage disappeared into a wide slot set into the upper part of the shuttle she finished her trip down the stairs. Emikai followed, getting the same tagging and holodisplay, except that this time the instructions were in Fili instead of English.

“Picking up on the passenger’s DNA,” Bayta murmured from beside me. “Probably marking the luggage with a code based on that.”

I nodded. It made sense, considering the Fillies’ obsession with genetics. It was certainly more convenient than handing out claim tickets, the way the Spiders did for their secure under-train lockboxes.

Briefly, I wondered if the scanner would spot the fact that Bayta was actually a blend of Human and Chahwyn, then put the thought out of my mind. Surely the Chahwyn Elders who had created her had been smart enough to keep the non-Human elements deep below the surface.

Sure enough, the scanner gave no indication that it had noticed anything unusual. Bayta went through the procedure, followed by Aronobal, followed by me. There was plenty of room in the shuttle, I saw as I reached the deck, and we took three of the four empty seats right in front. Terese and Emikai, I noted, were already seated farther back. We strapped in, and I waited for the hatchway to seal so that we could get under way.

Only it didn’t seal. It remained fully open, the muffled sounds of the station drifting down to us. “Hello?” I murmured.

“There’s one more passenger still on his way,” Bayta murmured back, her eyes distant as she did some of her silent telepathic communication with the Spiders.

And Terese thought Bayta and I had been slow. “What is he, crippled?” I growled.

“Actually, yes,” Bayta said, her forehead suddenly wrinkled in concentration.

I looked at the opening. “Trouble?” I asked, lowering my voice.

And then, abruptly, Bayta caught her breath.

“What is it?” I murmured, slipping my hand into my pocket and getting a grip on my
kwi
. Like Bayta herself, the brass-knuckle-shaped weapon was a nearly one-of-a-kind item, this one a relic from the Shonkla-raa war. Once telepathically activated by Bayta or a Spider, it was capable of inflicting three levels of pain or unconsciousness.

Only Bayta wasn’t activating it. The
kwi
was just sitting in my grip, showing no sign of its usual start-up tingle. “Come on, girl, look alive,” I muttered.

“No, it’s all right,” she said. But her voice was as tight as her face. “It’s not that kind of problem.”

I was opening my mouth to ask what kind of problem it was when a shadow fell across the floor and a support chair appeared in the hatchway, descending into the shuttle in the grip of a couple of big drudge Spiders. Seated in the chair was a pale, frail-looking Nemut with an off-center hunch in one of his angled shoulder muscles, slightly watery eyes, and a noticeable distortion in his truncated-cone mouth.

I felt my jaw drop. This wasn’t just some random cripple. This was Minnario, one of the first-class passengers on our ill-fated super-express train. “Minnario?” I called.

He didn’t respond, but as his chair reached the shuttle deck and he started it swiveling around to face forward I saw a flashing light on the small display fastened to the chair’s control box. Minnario was deaf, I remembered now, with the display programmed to transcribe the speech around him. Apparently, it was also keyed to take special note if someone called his name. He continued to turn, bringing his chair around again to face the rest of the passengers, his eyes scanning the crowd for familiar faces. “Here,” I said, lifting my hand chest high. “Frank Compton. We met aboard the super-express from Homshil.”

He peered at me, then looked down at his display’s transcription, and I saw sudden recognition in his face. [Mr. Compton,] he croaked, his Nemuspee marred by a slight lisp. [It’s good to see you again. You no longer chase murderers, I trust?]

I felt a tightening in my stomach as the implications of Minnario’s presence suddenly flooded in on me. “Not right now,” I said carefully. “Tell me, what are you doing here? I thought you were on your way to a clinic for treatment.”

[The most extraordinary thing has happened,] he said, his distorted mouth flattening in a distorted Nemuti smile. [I was traveling to Morak Trov Lemanab when I received a message that the genetic surgeons at Vibrant Station had accepted me for treatment.]

“Vibrant—? Oh, right,” I said. The place officially known as
Kuzyatru
Station actually had thirty different names, one for each of the Twelve Empires’ official languages.
Vibrant
was the Nemuspee version, just as
Proteus
was its name in English. “Congratulations. I understand they’re the best in the Assembly. It was very wise of you to apply there.”

[Ah! Therein lies the irony,] he said as he swiveled his chair around and maneuvered it into a set of clamps along the wall in front of us. [Knowing how few cases Vibrant Station takes, I
didn’t
apply there.]

“Really,” I said. “And, what, the director picked your name out of a hat?”

[I don’t actually know who decided to offer me treatment,] he said as the clamps locked securely around his chair. [The message carried no name, but merely Vibrant’s contract logo.] He swiveled half around, another lopsided smile on his face. [A gift from the heavens, indeed.]

I looked at Bayta, saw the tightness around her mouth. “Indeed,” I murmured.

Only I doubted it was the heavens that had supplied the crippled Nemut with this sudden largesse. This gift had come from much lower down, from the general vicinity of hell.

Sometime during our last two weeks of travel, word of
Asantra
Muzzfor’s death had made it to Proteus … and someone there wasn’t buying my story that he’d died in the violent climax of the series of murders that had taken place aboard our super-express. That same person had apparently decided to hedge his bets by bringing in another witness to those events.