Diplomatic Immunity

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Graf Station Security Post One, housing most of the security police administrative offices including Chief Venn's, lay entirely on the free fall side of the station. Miles and Roic, trailed by a flustered quaddie guard from the Kestrel 's lock, floated into the post's radially arranged reception space, from which tubular corridors led off at odd angles. The place was still night-quiet, although shift change was surely due soon.

Nicol had beaten Miles and Roic there, but not by much. She was still awaiting the arrival of Chief Venn under the concerned eye of a uniformed quaddie whom Miles took to be the equivalent of a night desk sergeant. The quaddie officer's wariness increased when they entered, and one lower hand moved unobtrusively to touch a pad on his console; as if casually, and very promptly, another armed quaddie officer drifted down from one of the corridors to join his comrade.

Nicol wore a plain blue T-shirt and shorts, hastily donned with no artistic touches. Her face was pale with worry. Her lower hands clenched each other. She returned a short grateful nod to Miles's under-voiced greeting.

Chief Venn arrived at last and gave Miles a look unloving but resigned. He had apparently slept, if not enough, and had pessimistically dressed for the day; no secret hope of getting back into the sleep sack showed in his neat attire. He waved off the armed guard and gruffly invited the Lord Auditor and company to follow him to his office. The third-shift supervisor Miles had spoken with a while ago—might as well start calling it last night —brought coffee bulbs along with her end-of-shift report. Meticulously, she handed the bulbs out to the downsiders, instead of launching them through the air and expecting them to be caught the way she served her crew chief and Nicol. Miles turned the bulb's thermal control to the limit of the red zone and sucked the hot bitter brew with gratitude, as did Roic.

“This panic may be premature,” Venn began after his own first swallow. “Portmaster Thorne's nonappearance may have some very simple explanation.”

And what were the top three complicated explanations in Venn's mind right now? The quaddie wasn't sharing, but then, neither was Miles. Bel had been missing for over six hours, ever since it had dismissed its quaddie guard at a bubble-car stop near its home. By now this panic might just as easily be posthumous, but Miles didn't care to say so aloud in front of Nicol. “I am extremely concerned.”

“Thorne could be asleep somewhere else.” Venn glanced somewhat enigmatically at Nicol. “Have you checked with likely friends?”

“The portmaster stated explicitly that it was heading home to Nicol to rest, when it left the Kestrel about midnight,” said Miles. “A well-earned rest by that time, I might add. Your own guards should be able to confirm the exact time of Thorne's departure from my ship.”

“We will, of course, provide you with another liaison officer to assist you in your inquiries, Lord Vorkosigan.” Venn's voice was a little distant; buying time to think, was how Miles read him. He might be playing deliberately obtuse as well. Miles did not mistake him for actually obtuse, not when he'd cut his sleep shift short and come in for this within little more than minutes.

“I don't want another. I want Thorne. You mislay too damned many downsiders around here. It's beginning to seem bloody careless.” Miles took a deep breath. “It has to have crossed your mind by now, as it has mine, that there were three persons in the line of fire in the hostel lobby yesterday afternoon. We all assumed that I was the obvious target. What if it was something less obvious? What if it was Thorne?”

Teris Three made a stemming motion at him with an upper hand, and interjected, “Speaking of that, the trace on that hot riveter came in a few hours ago.”

“Oh, good,” said Venn, turning to her with relief. “What have we got?”

“It was sold for cash three days back, from an engineering supply store near the free fall docks. Carried out, not delivered. The purchaser didn't fill out the warranty questionnaire. The clerk wasn't sure which customer took it, because it was a busy hour.”

“Quaddie or downsider?”

“He couldn't say. Could have been either, it seems.”

And if certain webbed hands had been covered with gloves as in the vid shot, they might well have been overlooked. Venn grimaced, his hopes for a break plainly frustrated.

The night supervisor glanced at Miles. “Lord Vorkosigan here also called, to request that we detain one of the passengers from the Rudra .”

“Find him yet?” asked Miles.

She shook her head.

“Why do you want him?” asked Venn, frowning.

Miles repeated his own night's news about his interrogation of the medtechs and finding traces of Solian's synthesized blood in the Rudra 's infirmary.

“Well, that explains why we were having no luck at the station hospitals and clinics,” grumbled Venn. Miles imagined him totting up his department's wasted quaddie-hours from the fruitless search, and let the grumble pass.

“I also flushed out one suspect, in the course of the conversation with the Rudra 's tech. All circumstantial speculation so far, but fast-penta is the drug to cure that.” Miles described the unusual Passenger Firka, his own insufficient but nagging sense of recognition, and his suspicions about the creative use of a floater. Venn looked grimmer and grimmer. Just because Venn reflexively resisted being stampeded by a Barrayaran dirtsucker, Miles decided, didn't mean he wasn't listening. What he made of it all, through his provincial Quaddiespace cultural filters, was much harder to guess.

“But what about Bel ?” Nicol's voice was tight with suppressed anguish.

Venn was obviously less immune to a plea from a beautiful fellow quaddie. He met his night supervisor's inquiring look and nodded agreement.

“Well, what's one more?” Teris Three shrugged. “I'll put out a call to all patrollers to start looking for Portmaster Thorne, too. As well as the fellow with the webs.”

Miles nibbled on his lower lip in worry. Sooner or later, that live cargo secreted aboard the Idris must draw the ba back to it. “Bel—Portmaster Thorne did get back to you people last night about resealing the Idris , did it not?”

“Yes,” said Venn and the night supervisor together. Venn gave her a short apologetic nod and continued, “Did that Betan passenger Thorne was trying to help get its animal fetuses taken care of all right?”

“Dubauer. Um, yes. They're fine for now. But, ah . . . I think I'd like to have you pick up Dubauer, as well as Firka.”

“Why?”

“It left its hostel and vanished yesterday evening close to the same time that Firka went out, and also hasn't returned. And Dubauer was the third of our little triumvirate of targets yesterday. Let's just call it protective custody, for starters.”

Venn screwed up his lips for a moment, considering this, and eyed Miles with shrewd disfavor. He'd have to be less bright than he appeared not to suspect Miles wasn't telling him everything. “Very well,” he said at last. He waved a hand at Teris Three. “Let's go ahead and collect the whole set.”

“Right.” She glanced at the chrono on her left lower wrist. “It's oh-seven-hundred.” Shift change, presumably. “Shall I stay?”

“No, no. I'll take over. Get the new missing-person traces started, then go get some rest.” Venn sighed. “Tonight may be no better.”

The night supervisor gave him an acknowledging thumbs-up with both lower hands and slipped out of the little office chamber.

“Would you prefer to wait at home?” Venn said suggestively to Nicol. “You'd be more comfortable there, I'm sure. We'll undertake to call you as soon as we find your partner.”

Nicol took a breath. “I would rather be here,” she said sturdily. “Just in case . . . just in case something happens soon.”

“I'll keep you company,” Miles volunteered. “For a little while, anyway.” There, let Venn try to shift his diplomatic mass.

Venn at least managed to get them shifted out of his office by conducting them to a private waiting space, advertising it as more undisturbed. More undisturbed for Venn, anyway.

Miles and Nicol were left regarding each other in troubled silence. What Miles most wanted to know was if Bel had any other ImpSec business in train at present that might have impinged unexpectedly last night. But he was almost certain Nicol knew nothing of Bel's second source of income—and risk. Besides, that was wishful thinking. If any business had impinged, it was most probably the current mess. Which was now messy enough to raise every hackle Miles owned to quivering attention.

Bel had escaped its former career very nearly unscathed, despite Admiral Naismith's sometimes-lethal nimbus. For the Betan herm to have come all this way, to have come so close to regaining a private life and future, only to have its past reach out like some blind fate and swat it down now . . . Miles swallowed guilt and worry, and refrained from blurting some ill-timed and incoherent apology to Nicol. Something had certainly come upon Bel last night, but Bel was quick and clever and experienced; Bel could cope. Bel had always coped before.

But even the luck you made for yourself ran out sometimes. . . .

Nicol broke the stretched silence by asking some random question of Roic about Barrayar, and the armsman returned clumsy but kind small talk to distract her from her nerves. Miles glanced at his wrist com. Was it too early to call Ekaterin?

What the bloody hell was next on his agenda, anyway? He'd planned to spend this morning conducting fast-penta interrogations. All the threads he'd thought he'd had in hand, winding in nicely, had come to these disturbingly similar cut ends; Firka vanished, Dubauer vanished, and now Bel vanished too. And Solian, don't forget him. Graf Station, for all its maze-like non-design, wasn't that big a place. Were they all sucked into the same oubliette? How many oubliettes could the damned labyrinth have?

To his surprise, his frustrated fretting was interrupted by the night supervisor sticking her head in through one of the round doors. Hadn't she been leaving?

“Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, may we see you for a moment?” she asked in a polite tone.

He excused himself to Nicol and floated after her, Roic trailing dutifully. She led the way back through a corridor to Venn's nearby office. Venn was finishing up a comconsole call, saying, “He's here, he's hot, and he's all over me. It's your job to handle him.” He glanced over his shoulder and cut the com. Above the vid plate, Miles just glimpsed Sealer Greenlaw's form, wrapped in what might be a bathrobe, vanish with a sparkle.

When the door hissed closed again behind them, the supervisor turned in midair and stated, “The patroller that you detailed to escort Postmaster Thorne last night reports that Thorne dismissed him when they got to the Joint.”

“The what?” said Miles. “When? Why? ”

She glanced at Venn, who opened a hand in a go-ahead gesture. “The Joint is one of our main corridor hubs on the free fall side, with a bubble-car transfer station and a public garden—a lot of people meet there, to eat or whatever after their work shifts. Thorne evidently encountered Garnet Five at about oh-one-hundred, coming the other way, and went off to have some kind of conversation.”

“Yes? They're friends, I believe.”

Venn shifted in what Miles recognized after a belated moment as embarrassment, and said, “Do you happen to know how good of friends? I didn't wish to discuss this in front of that distressed young lady. But Garnet Five is known to, um, favor exotic downsiders, and the Betan herm is, after all, a Betan herm. Simple explanations, after all.”

Half a dozen mildly outraged arguments coursed through Miles's mind, to be promptly rejected. He wasn't supposed to know Bel that well. Not that someone who did know Bel would be in the least shocked by Venn's delicate suggestion . . . no. Bel's sexual tastes might be eclectic, but the herm wasn't the sort to betray the trust of a friend. Had never been. We all change. “You might ask Boss Watts,” he temporized. He caught Roic's rolling eye and head-jerk in the direction of Venn's comconsole, affixed to the curving office wall. Miles continued smoothly, “Better still, call Garnet Five. If Thorne's there, the mystery is solved. If not, she might at least know where Thorne was headed.” He tried to decide which would be the worse cause for dismay. The memory of the hot rivets parting his hair inclined him to hope for the first result, despite Nicol.

Venn opened an upper hand in acknowledgment of the point, and half-turned to tap out a search-code on his comconsole with a lower. Miles's heart jumped as Garnet Five's serene face and crisp voice came on, but it was only an answering program. Venn's brows twitched; he left a brief request that she contact him at her earliest convenience, and cut the com.

“She could just be asleep,” said the night-shift woman wistfully.

“Send a patroller to check,” said Miles a little tightly. Remembering he was supposed to be a diplomat, he added, “If you please.”

Teris Three, looking as though a vision of her sleep sack was receding before her eyes, departed again. Miles and Roic returned to Nicol, who turned anxious eyes upon them as they floated back into the waiting chamber. Miles barely hesitated before reporting the patroller's sighting to her.

“Can you think of any reason for them to have met?” he asked her.

“Lots,” she answered without reserve, confirming Miles's secret judgment. “I'm sure she'd want news from Bel about Ensign Corbeau, or anything happening that might affect his chances. If she crossed trajectories with Bel coming home through the Joint, she'd be sure to grab the chance to try to get some news. Or she might have just wanted an ear to vent at. Most of her other friends are not too sympathetic about her romance, after the Barrayaran attack and the fire.”

“All right, that might account for the first hour. But no more. Bel was tired. Then what?”

She turned all four hands out in helpless frustration. “I can't imagine.”

Miles's own imagination was all too wildly active. Need data dammit was becoming his private mantra here. He left Roic to make more distracting small talk with Nicol and, feeling a trifle selfish, took himself to the side of the chamber to call Ekaterin on his wrist com.

Her voice was sleepy but cheerful, and she stoutly maintained that she'd been awake already, and just about to get up. They exchanged a few verbal caresses that were no one's business but their own, and he described what he'd found as a result of the gossip she'd collected about Solian's nosebleeds, which seemed to please her greatly.

“So where are you now, and what have you had for breakfast?” she asked.

“Breakfast is delayed. I'm at the Station Security HQ.” He hesitated. “Bel Thorne went missing last night, and they're putting together a search for it.”

A little silence greeted this, and her return remark was as carefully neutral in tone as his own. “Oh. That's very worrisome.”

“Yes.”

“You are keeping Roic with you at all times, aren't you?”

“Oh, yes. The quaddies have armed guards trailing me around now, too.”

“Good.” Her breath drew in. “Good.”

“The situation's getting pretty murky over here. I may have to send you home after all. We have four more days to decide, though.”

“Well. In four more days we can talk about it, then.”

Between his desire not to alarm her further, and hers not to distract him unduly, the conversation grew limping, and he mercifully tore himself from the calming sound of her voice to let her go bathe and dress and obtain her own breakfast.

He wondered if he and Roic ought, after all, to escort Nicol home, and perhaps after that try quartering the station themselves in the hope of some random encounter. Now, there was a tactically bankrupt plan if ever he'd evolved one. Roic would have a fully justifiable, painfully polite fit at the suggestion. It would feel just like old times. But suppose there was some way to make it less random . . .

The night supervisor's voice floated in from the corridor. Dear God, was the poor woman never to get home to sleep? “Yes, they're in here, but don't you think you ought to see the medtech next to—”

“I have to see Lord Vorkosigan!”

Miles jerked to full alertness as he identified the sharp, breathless female voice as Garnet Five's. The blond quaddie practically tumbled through the round door from the corridor. She was trembling and haggard, almost greenish, an unpleasant contrast to her rumpled carmine doublet. Her eyes, huge and dark-ringed, flicked over the waiting trio. “Nicol, oh, Nicol!” She flew to her friend in a fierce three-armed hug, the immobilized fourth wavering slightly.

Nicol, looking bewildered, dutifully hugged her back, but then pushed her away and asked urgently, “Garnet, have you seen Bel?”

“Yes. No. I'm not sure. This is just insane. I thought we were both knocked out together, but when I came to, Bel wasn't there any more. I thought Bel might have waked up first and gone for help, but the security crew”—she nodded to her escort—”says not. Haven't you heard anything?”

“Came to? Wait—who knocked you out? Where? Are you hurt?”

“I have the most horrible headache. It was some sort of drug mist. Icy cold. It didn't smell like anything, but it tasted bitter. He sprayed it in our faces. Bel yelled, 'Don't breathe, Garnet!' but of course had to breathe to yell. I felt Bel go all limp, and then everything sort of drained away. When I woke up, I was so sick I almost threw up, ugh!”

Nicol and Teris Three both grimaced in sympathy. Miles gathered this was the security woman's second time through this recitation, but her focus didn't flag.

“Garnet,” Miles interjected, “please, take a deep breath, calm down, and begin at the beginning. A patroller reported he saw you and Bel somewhere in the Joint last night. Is that correct?”

Garnet Five scrubbed her pallid face with her upper hands, inhaled, and blinked; a little returning color relieved her gray-greenness. “Yes. I bumped into Bel coming out of the bubble-car stop. I wanted to know if Bel had asked—if you'd said anything—if anything had been decided about Dmitri.”

Nicol nodded in bleak satisfaction.

“I bought us those peppermint teas that Bel likes at the Kabob Kiosk, hoping to get it to talk to me. But we hadn't been there five minutes when Bel went all distracted by this other pair who came in. One was a quaddie Bel knew from the Docks and Locks crew—Bel said he was someone it'd been keeping an eye on, because it suspected him of handling stolen stuff from the ships. The other was this really funny-looking downsider.”

“Tall, lanky fellow with webbed hands and long feet, and a big barrel chest? Looks sort of like his mother might have married the Frog Prince, but the kiss didn't quite work out?” Miles asked.

Garnet Five stared. “Why, yes. Well, I'm not sure about the chest—he was wearing this loose, flippy cape-thing. How did you know?”

“This is about the third time he's turned up in this case. You might say he's riveted my attention. But go on, then what?”

“I couldn't get Bel to stay on the subject. Bel made me turn around and sit facing the pair, so Bel could keep its back to them, and made me report what they were doing. I felt silly, like we were playing spies.”

No, not playing. . . .

“They had some sort of argument, then the quaddie from Dock and Locks spotted Bel and left in a hurry. The other fellow, the funny downsider, left too, and then Bel insisted on following him.”

“And Bel left the bistro?”

“We both left together. I wasn't going to be dumped, and besides, Bel said, Oh, all right, come along, you may be useful . I think the downsider must have been some sort of spacer, because he wasn't as awkward as most tourists usually are on the free fall side. I didn't think he saw us, following, but he must have, because he wandered down Cross Corridor, weaving in and out of any shops that were open at that hour but not buying anything. Then he suddenly zigzagged over to the portal to the grav side. There weren't any floaters in the rack, so Bel boosted me onto its back and kept on after the fellow. He ducked into this utility section, where the shops on the next corridor—over on the grav side—move freight and supplies in and out of their back doors. He seemed to vanish around a corner, but then he just popped out in front of us and waved this little tube in our faces, that spit out that nasty spray. I was afraid it was a poison, and we were both dead, but evidently not.” She hesitated in stricken doubt. “Anyway, I woke up.”

“Where?” asked Miles.

“There. Well, not quite there—I was all in a heap stuck to the floor inside a recycle bin behind one of the shops, on top of a bundle of cartons. It wasn't locked, fortunately. That horrible downsider couldn't have stuffed me into it if it had been, I suppose. I had a bad time trying to climb out. The stupid lid kept pressing down. It almost smashed my fingers. I hate gravity. Bel wasn't anywhere around. I looked, and called. And then I had to walk on three hands back to the main corridor, till I could find help. I grabbed the first patroller I came to, and she brought me right here.”

“You must have been out cold for six or seven hours, then,” Miles calculated aloud. How different were quaddie metabolisms from those of Betan herms? Not to mention body mass, and the erratic dosage inhaled by two variously dodging persons. “You should be seen by a physician right away, and get a blood sample drawn while there are still traces of the drug in your system. We might be able to identify it, and maybe its place of origin, if it isn't just a local product.”

The night supervisor endorsed this idea emphatically, and permitted the downsider visitors, as well as Nicol, to whom Garnet Five still clung, to trail along as she escorted the shaken blond quaddie to the post's infirmary. When Miles had assured himself that Garnet Five had been taken into competent medical hands, and plenty of them, he turned back to Teris Three.

“It isn't just my airy theories any more,” he told her. “You have a valid assault charge on this Firka fellow. Can't you step up the search?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered grimly. “This one's going out on all the com channels, now. He attacked a quaddie. And he released toxic volatiles into the public air .”

Miles left the two quaddie women safely ensconced in the security post's infirmary. He then leaned on the night supervisor to supply him with the patroller who'd brought in Garnet Five to take him on an inspection of the scene of the crime, such as it was. The supervisor temporized, more delays ensued, and Miles harassed Crew Chief Venn in a nearly undiplomatic manner. But at length, he was issued a different quaddie patroller who did indeed escort him and Roic to the spot where Garnet Five had been so uncomfortably cached.

The dimly lit utility corridor had a flat floor and squared-off walls, and while not exactly cramped, shared its cross section with a great deal of duct work, which Roic had to bend to avoid. Around an obliquely angled turn, they found three quaddies, one in a Security uniform and two in shorts and shirts, working behind a stretched-out plastic ribbon printed with the Graf Station Security logo. Forensics techs at last, and about time. The young male rode in a floater broadly stenciled with a Graf Station technical school identification number. An intent-looking middle-aged female piloted a floater that bore the mark of one of the station clinics.

The shorts-and-shirt man in the tech school floater, hovering carefully, finished a laser scan for fingerprints along the edge and top of a large square bin sticking out into the corridor at a convenient height to bang the shins of the unwary passerby. He moved aside, and his colleague moved into place and began to run over the surfaces with what looked to be a standard sort of skin cell– and fiber-collecting hand-vac.

“Was that the bin where Garnet Five was hidden?” Miles asked the quaddie officer who was supervising.

“Yes.”

Miles leaned forward, only to be waved back by the intently vacuuming tech. After extracting promises to be informed of any interesting cross-matches in the evidence, he strolled up and down the corridor instead, hands scrupulously tucked in his pockets, looking for . . . what? Cryptic messages written in blood on the walls? Or in ink, or spit, or snot, or something . He checked the floor, ceiling, and ducts, too, at Bel-height and lower, angling his head to catch odd reflections. Nothing.

“Were all these doors locked?” he asked the patroller who shadowed them. “Have they been checked yet? Could someone have bunged Bel—dragged Portmaster Thorne inside one?”

“You'll have to ask the officer in charge, sir,” the quaddie guard replied, exasperation leaking into his service-issue neutral tone. “I only just got here with you.”

Miles stared at the doors and their key pads in frustration. He couldn't very well go down the row trying them all, not unless the scanner man was finished. He returned to the bin.

“Finding anything?” he inquired.

“Not—” The medical quaddie glanced aside at the officer in charge. “Was this area swept before I got here?”

“Not as far as I know, ma'am,” said the officer.

“Why do you ask?” Miles inquired instantly.

“Well, there isn't very much. I would have expected more.”

“Try further away,” suggested the scanner tech.

She cast him a somewhat bemused look. “That's not quite the point. In any case, after you.” She gestured down the corridor, and Miles hurriedly confided his worries about the doors to the officer in charge.

The crew dutifully scanned everything, including, at Miles's insistence, the ductwork above, where the assailant might have braced himself in near-concealment to drop upon his victims. They tried each door. Fingers tapping impatiently on his trouser seam, Miles followed them up and down the corridor as they completed their survey. All doors proved locked . . . at least, they were now. One hissed open as they passed, and a blinking shopkeeper with legs poked his head through; the quaddie officer interrogated him briefly, and he in turn helped rouse his neighbors to cooperate in the search. The quaddie woman collected lots of little plastic bags of nothing much. No unconscious hermaphrodite was discovered in any bin, hallway, utility closet, or shop adjoining the passageway.

The utility corridor ran for about another ten meters before opening discreetly into a broader cross-corridor lined with shops, offices, and a small restaurant. The scene would have been quieter partway into third shift last night, but by no means reliably deserted, and just as well lit. Miles pictured the lanky Firka lugging or dragging Bel's compact but substantial form down the public way . . . wrapped in something for concealment? It would almost have to be. It would take a strong man to lug Bel far. Or . . . someone in a floater. Not necessarily a quaddie.

Roic, looming at his shoulder, sniffed. The spicy smells wafting into the corridor, into which the eatery cannily vented its bakery ovens, reminded Miles of his duty to feed his troops. Troop. The disgruntled quaddie guard could fend for himself, Miles decided.

The place was small, clean, and cozy, the sort of cheap caf? where the local working people ate. It was evidently past the breakfast rush and not yet time for lunch, because it was occupied only by a couple of legged young men who might be shop assistants, and a quaddie in a floater who, judging by her crowded tool belt, was an electrician on break. They stared covertly at the Barrayarans—more at tall Roic in his not-from-around-here brown-and-silver uniform than at short Miles in his unobtrusive gray civvies. Their quaddie security guard distanced himself slightly—with their party but not of it—and ordered coffee in a bulb.

A legged woman doubled as server and cook, assembling food on the plates with practiced speed. The spicy breads, apparently a specialty of the place, appeared handmade, the slices of vat protein unexceptionable, and the fresh fruit startlingly exquisite. Miles selected a large golden pear, its skin touched with a rose blush, unblemished; its flesh, when he cut into it, proved pale, perfect, and dripping with perfumed juice. If only they had more time, he'd love to sic Ekaterin onto the local agriculture—whatever plant-like matrix this had grown from had to have been genetically engineered to thrive in free fall. The Empire's space stations could use such stocks—if the Komarran traders hadn't snagged them already. Miles's plan to slip seeds into his pocket to smuggle home was thwarted by the fruit being seedless.

A holovid in the corner with the sound turned low had been mumbling to itself, ignored by everyone, but a sudden rainbow of blinking lights advertised an official safety bulletin. Heads turned briefly, and Miles followed the stares to find being displayed the shots of Passenger Firka from the Rudra 's locks that he had downloaded earlier to Station Security. He didn't need the sound to guess the content of the serious-looking quaddie woman's speech that followed: suspect wanted for questioning, may be armed and dangerous, if you see this dubious downsider call this code at once. A couple of shots of Bel followed, as the putative kidnapping victim, presumably; they were taken from yesterday's interviews after the assassination attempt in the hostel, which a newscaster came on to re-cap.

“Can you turn it up?” Miles asked belatedly.

The newscaster was just winding down; even as the caf? server aimed her remote, her image was replaced with an advertisement for an impressive selection of work gloves.

“Oh, sorry,” said the server. “It was a repeat anyway. They've been showing it every fifteen minutes for the past hour.” She provided Miles with a verbal summary of the alarm, which matched Miles's guess in most particulars.

So, on just how many holovids all over the station was this now appearing? It would be an order of magnitude harder for a wanted man to hide, with an order of magnitude more pairs of eyes looking for him . . . but was Firka himself seeing this? If so, would he panic, becoming more hazardous to anyone who crossed him? Or perhaps turn himself in, claiming it was all some sort of misunderstanding? Roic, studying the vid, frowned and drank more coffee. The sleep-deprived armsman was holding up all right for the moment, but Miles figured he would be dragging dangerously by mid-afternoon.

Miles had an unpleasant sensation of sinking in a quicksand of diversions and losing his grip on his initial mission. Which had been what? Oh, yes, free the fleet. He suppressed an internal snarl of Screw the fleet, where the hell's Bel? But if there was any way to use this disturbing development to pry his ships from quaddie hands, it was not apparent to him right now.

They returned to Security Post One to find Nicol waiting for them in the front reception space with the air of a hungry predator at a water hole. She pounced on Miles the moment he appeared.

“Did you find Bel? Did you see any sign?”

Miles shook his head in regret. “Neither hide nor hair. Well, there might be hairs—we'll know when the forensics tech gets her analysis done—but that won't tell us anything we don't already know from Garnet Five's testimony.” The truth of which Miles didn't doubt. “I do have a better mental picture of the possible course of events, now.” He wished it made more sense. The first part—Firka wishing to delay or shake his pursuers—was sensible enough. It was the blank afterward that puzzled.

“Do you think,” Nicol's voice grew smaller, “he carried Bel away to murder someplace else?”

“In that case, why leave a witness alive?” He tossed this off instantly for her reassurance; upon reflection, he found it reassuring too. Maybe. But if not murder, what? What did Bel have or know that someone else might want? Unless, like Garnet Five, Bel had come to consciousness on its own, and gone off. But . . . if Bel had wandered away in some state of dazed or sick confusion, it should have been picked up by the patrollers or some solicitous fellow stationers by now. And if it had gone in hot pursuit of something, it should have reported in. To me, at least, dammit . . .

“If Bel was,” Nicol began, and stopped. A startling crowd heaved through the main entry port, and paused for orientation.

A pair of husky male quaddies in the orange work shirts and shorts of Docks and Locks managed the two ends of a three-meter length of pipe. Firka occupied the middle.

The unhappy downsider's wrists and ankles were lashed to the pipe with swathes of electrical tape, bending him in a U, with another rectangle of tape plastered across his mouth, muffling his moans. His eyes were wide, and rolled in panic. Three more quaddies in orange, panting and rumpled, one with a red bruise starting around his eye, bobbed along beside as outriders.

The work crew took aim and floated with their squirming burden through free fall to fetch up with a thump at the reception desk. A quartet of uniformed security quaddies appeared from another portal to gather and stare at this unwilling prize; the desk sergeant hit his intercom, and lowered his voice to speak into it in a rapid undertone.

The spokes-quaddie for the posse bustled forward, a smile of grim satisfaction on his bruised face. “We caught him for you.”