The Domino Pattern

EIGHT

It was getting toward train’s evening, and the third-class passengers were starting to drift back to their seats after a busy day in the entertainment car, the exercise area, or the bar.

Which meant there was a large and curious audience already in place when Bayta and I moved toward the rear of the car and the disassembled air filter system waiting there for us.

I’d never asked Bayta what exactly the disassembly procedure entailed. Now, as we joined a group of knee-high mite Spiders and a pair of the larger conductors, I could see why the job had taken this long. A section of ceiling nearly a meter square had been taken down, probably with the help of the two conductors, and was currently hanging by thin support wires attached to its four corners at about throat level over the back row of seats. The occupants of those seats, not surprisingly, had found somewhere else to be for the moment.

“We couldn’t bring in a couple of cameras so the whole train could watch?” I grumbled as we passed our third knot of rubberneckers.

“I thought you’d want to take the sample yourself,” Bayta countered, a slight edge to her voice. Clearly, she didn’t like having the Quadrail’s innards exposed to the paying customers this way any more than I did, and she didn’t appreciate me getting on her case about it. “There’s no way you could have reached the filter while it was still in place.”

And given the tight tolerances of Quadrail floor space, there was probably nowhere more private where they could have lugged the filter assembly for the procedure. “I suppose,” I conceded.

We reached the hanging plate, and I took a moment to study its upper side. The filter assembly consisted of about a dozen boxes of various sizes and shapes scattered across the plate, all of them marked with incomprehensible dot codes. They were connected to each other by a bewildering and colorful spaghetti of tubes, ducts, cables, and wires. Other tubes and conduits, carefully sealed off, ran to the edges of the plate, where presumably they connected to equipment tucked away above the rest of the ceiling. The plate itself had sixteen connectors, four per side, for fastening it to the rest of the ceiling. The connectors, I noted, were accessible only from above. It was pretty clear that no one was going to tamper with the system without Spider help. “Which one do I want?” I asked Bayta.

“That one,” she said, pointing to the largest of the boxes. “The Spiders will take off the cover for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking down at the mites grouped around us like shiny seven-legged lap dogs. “Do they need a boost?”

“No,” Bayta said, and I quickly stepped back as a pair of fist-sized twitters appeared from inside the ceiling and deftly slid down the corner lines onto the exposed machinery. Picking their way across the miniature landscape, they reached the box Bayta had indicated and started removing one of its sides.

“Here,” Bayta said, pressing a pair of sample vials into my hand. “Will you need a hypo or scraper?”

“Got one, thanks,” I said, pulling out my multitool and selecting one of the blades. The twitters got the filter’s side off, and I leaned in for a closer look.

I’d expected to find some sort of thin but tangible layer of fluffiness, the sort of thing you might find in an office building air filter that hadn’t been replaced for a few weeks. But the dimpled white material sitting in front of me looked as clean and fresh as if it had come right out of the box.

It looked, in fact, like some industrious Spider had given it a thorough cleaning sometime in the past few hours. And if one of them had, this whole thing was going to be a complete waste of time. “You did warn the Spiders not to clean it, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Bayta said. “It hasn’t been touched since Homshil.”

“Looks pretty clean to me,” I pointed out.

“It’s the third-stage filter,” she said. “It always looks clean.”

I suppressed a grimace. Of course it did. All the larger dust and lint particles would have been captured by a larger-mesh filter somewhere upstream in the system. But it was this filter that would have a shot at trapping impurities the size of cadmium atoms and compounds. “Just making sure,” I said, trying to salvage a little dignity.

Experimentally, I gently scraped the multitool blade along one edge of the filter. A small cascade of fine white powder appeared and drifted slowly downward. Moving the blade to a different part of the filter. I held one of the vials in position and scraped more of the white powder into it. I waited until the dust had settled and then handed the vial to Bayta for sealing. I repeated the operation on a third section of the filter, again handing the vial to Bayta when I was done. “That should do it.” I told her. Folding the blade back into the multitool, I turned around.

And stopped short. Standing three meters away, right in the center of the ring of gawkers, was the Filly I’d had the brief tussle with earlier that day in the third-class bar. He was Staring at me with an intensity I didn’t at all care for. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“What do you do here?” the Filly asked, his long nose pointing toward the filter assembly.

“Just a routine maintenance sampling,” I said in my best authoritative-but-soothing voice. “Nothing you need to be concerned about.”

I’d used that voice to good advantage many times over the years. Unfortunately, this particular Filly wasn’t buying it. “Is there danger in the air?” he demanded. “Is there risk to us all?”

“There’s no risk to anyone,” I said firmly if not entirely truthfully. “As I said, this is just a routine maintenance check.”

But it was no use. A low-level murmur was already rippling through the rest of the onlookers, some of whom had probably ridden this line before and knew that there was nothing routine about what we were doing. “If there is risk, we deserve to know the truth,” the Filly said firmly, his volume rising to a level that would reach most of the car instead of just the group assembled here at the rear.

“There is no risk,” I said again, letting my gaze drift over the crowd as I tried to think up an answer that would satisfy them. “But you’re right, you deserve to know the truth. If you’ll all be quiet a moment?”

I stopped, waiting for them to pick up on the cue. I could feel Bayta’s eyes on me, and her concern as she wondered what exactly I was doing.

I wondered what I was doing, too. Telling them there was a murderer aboard the train was definitely out—we could wind up with a riot on our hands, with nowhere anyone could escape to. But I’d had enough experience with rumor mills to know that if we didn’t give them something the situation would only get worse, possibly leading to the same riot I was hoping so hard to avoid.

Ergo, I had to give them some truth. The trick, as always, would be to figure out how much.

Slowly, in bits and pieces, the mutterings faded away. “Thank you,” I said. “I presume you’re all aware that two of your fellow travelers died yesterday.”

The last mutterings abruptly vanished. I had their full attention now. all right. I heard Bayta mutter something under her breath, but it wasn’t like the rest of the passengers wouldn’t have noticed the two newly empty seats. “What I’m doing here is checking for the presence of what are called after-elements,” I went on. “Those are bits of nucleic acid residue, antibodies, mucousids—the sorts of things that might have been exhaled by a person in his last battle against a lethal congenital defect.”

The Filly’s nose blaze darkened a bit. “A congenital defect? In both victims?”

“I can see no other likely conclusion,” I said, noting in passing his unusual use of the word victims. “No one else in the car has shown any signs of illness, which eliminates the possibility that they died from some contagious disease.”

I gestured toward a pair of Shorshians near the rear of the crowd. “It can’t even be something specific to Shorshians, since other Shorshians in the car haven’t been affected.”

“So you say it was a congenital disease,” the Filly said, his tone a hit odd.

“As I said, there’s no other likely conclusion.” I repeated. “Nothing for any of you to be concerned about. So please, return to your seats and try to put these unfortunate events from your minds.”

A fresh set of mutterings began to circulate through the onlookers. But the tone was definitely calmer, and at the rear of the group the passengers began obediently heading back toward their seats. Within a minute, the whole crowd had joined the mass migration.

Everyone, that is, except the Filly whose questions had gotten everyone riled up in the first place. He stayed right where he was, his eyes never leaving my face, as the rest of the passengers dispersed. “Was there something else?” I asked.

He took a step closer to me. “You are lying,” he said quietly. “If you sought a congenital disease, a proper investigation would begin with samples taken from the bodies of the victims.”

“I’d like nothing better,” I said. “But there are questions of religious protocol, and the leader of their group has prohibited me from taking direct samples.”

The Filly looked at Bayta, his blaze darkening a little more. “Perhaps that prohibition will yet be lifted,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said.

He took another step toward me. “But should you discover a different cause of death.” he went on, lowering his voice still more, “I would urge you to let me know at once.”

“In such an unlikely event, I’m sure the Spiders will let everyone know at the same time,” I assured him.

“I would appreciate it very much,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last two words. “Even small bits of preliminary knowledge would be worth a great deal to me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised. “If I should happen to learn anything, whom shall I ask for?”

He studied me another couple of heartbeats. “I am Logra Emikai,” he identified himself. “My seat is four coaches forward, in the car just to the front of the dining car.”

“Understood,” I said. “A pleasant evening to you, Logra Emikai.”

“And to you.” With a brief nod of his head, he turned and headed down the aisle toward the front of the car and his own seat four coaches away.

“Interesting,” I murmured, catching Bayta’s eye and nodding toward the departing Filly. “You catch all that?”

“You mean the fact that he just tried to bribe us?” Bayta asked, her voice stiff.

“Well, yes, that too,” I said, turning back to watch Emikai’s progress. He was moving briskly, adroitly dodging around the slower-moving passengers who weren’t in nearly so much of a hurry. “I was mostly referring to the fact that he seemed to know we’d already taken samples from Master Bofiv’s body.”

“How do you know that?” Bayta asked, her moral outrage at the bribery attempt starting to fade into fresh interest.

“From his reaction to my comment that di-Master Strinni hadn’t let us take samples,” I said. “The question is, how did he know? Okay—let’s see what he does.”

“With what?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to see over the crowd.

“Not with what,” I corrected. “With whom. Specifically, with Master Tririn. Or hadn’t you noticed that Tririn didn’t bother to come back here to see what we were doing?”

“Maybe he’s just tired.”

“Or he already knows what we will or won’t find,” I said. “Or he didn’t need to come himself because he already had a friend on the scene.”

“Logra Emikai?”

“Could be.” I said. “You have any idea what sort of rank logra is?”

“Not in that form,” Bayta said. “It could be a dialectal variant of lomagra, one of the middle artisan classes.”

“Or else it’s something new, something private, or something he made up out of thin air.” I said.

“And you think he and Master Tririn are working together?”

“We’ll know in a second,” I said. “Even if they just know each other, there ought to be some signal or at least recognition as Emikai passes him.”

But to my disappointment, the Filly passed by Tririn’s seat without so much as a sideways glance in the Shorshian’s direction. “Or not,” I said. “Well, that tells us something, too,” I added, turning away.

“Wait a second,” Bayta said, her voice suddenly urgent.

“What?” I asked, turning back.

“Logra Emikai’s head dipped to his right just there,” Bayta said. “Like he was saying something to—”

And right on cue. Terese German stood up and stepped into the aisle.

“To our young friend with the bad stomach?” I suggested.

“Exactly,” Bayta said. Terese made a show of stretching as she casually but carefully looked around her, then headed after the departing Filly. Logra Emikai reached the vestibule and disappeared inside, heading for the next car. A few steps behind him, Terese did likewise. “Coincidence?” Bayta asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been assuming that when we were in the bar earlier she just grabbed the first likely-looking lug to protect her from me. The whole incident makes a lot more sense if the choice wasn’t nearly that spur-of-the-moment.”

Bayta pondered that for a moment. “Thought it still could be perfectly innocent,” she pointed out. “They’ve been passengers on the same train for the past two weeks. If they’d already gotten to know each other, she would naturally go to him for help.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But she’s never struck me as the gregarious sort. Come on—time to go.”

“Where?” Bayta asked as I took her arm and steered us forward down the aisle. “We’re not going to follow them, are we?”

“We just happen to be going the same direction, that’s all,” I assured her as we wove our way around the other passengers wending their way to and fro down the aisle. “Tell the Spiders they can put the filter equipment back together again. We’re done here.”

My original plan—actually, at this point we were probably on my second or third original plan—had been to have a look at the late Master Colix’s storage compartments while we were checking on the air filter. But again, things weren’t working out the way I’d hoped. This time, it was the large number of passengers still watching our every move that persuaded me to put off the compartment exam a little longer. Convincing them that two deaths a few hours apart had been just an unhappy happenstance would be a much harder sell if I was seen rooting through the personal effects of one of the dearly departeds. Hopefully, we could come back later tonight when things had quieted down.

As I’d promised Bayta, we did indeed follow Terese and Emikai toward the front of the train, but only because we all happened to be going in the same direction. The girl and the Filly only made it as far as the bar end of the dining car. I noted as we passed, whereas Bayta and I were going four cars farther, to the second/third dispensary.

“What are we doing here?” Bayta asked as I ushered her into the small room.

“Finding a place where we can be alone,” I said. “Is there a curtain or something we can close over this doorway?”

In response, the server Spider standing his post by the drug cabinet skittered over and slid a cleverly hidden pocket door over the opening. “Thank you,” I said, stepping over to the treatment table and laying out my newly filled sample vials. “More importantly, I wanted someplace I could do a quick analysis without a lot of people looking over our shoulders.”

“Why don’t we just go back to our compartments?” Bayta asked as I pulled out my reader and lighter.

“Because our next real stop is the first-class dispensary to check on Strinni, and I don’t want to go all the way forward and then have to backtrack,” I told her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all this walking.”

I started with Givvrac’s untouched drink. I hadn’t really expected to find anything sinister lurking there, and for once I was right. “As I said, even it Kennrick is involved, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to lace a drink only he had access to,” I reminded Bayta as I set the vial aside. “These others may be more interesting.”

They were. But not in the way I’d expected.

“What is all that?” Bayta asked, staring in bewilderment as the chemical list scrolled across my reader’s display.

And scrolled some more, and then kept on scrolling, for another four pages. Whatever the Spiders’ third-stage filter was collecting, it was collecting a lot of it. “Whatever it is, the good news is that the air isn’t the source of the poisoning,” I said. “You can see—right there—that there’s barely a trace of cadmium in the whole mix.”

“Not enough to kill them?”

“Not even enough to make them sick,” I said. “As to the rest of this soup, be patient. The analyzer has a huge database, and it’ll take some time for it to sort through everything.”

I watched the reader as the first trace compound ID came up, a type of perfume used by Fibibibi to mask some of the pheromones that appeared in females at potentially awkward times. “We’ve got a make on Contestant Number Two,” I said as the next part of the analysis came up. “Actually, make that Contestants Two through Eight. It’s a cluster of digestive exhalation products. Pirkarli. mostly.”

Bayta wrinkled her nose. “There were two Pirks back there.”

“And I’m sure the rest of the car is grateful for the focused ventilation system you have by Pirk seats,” I said, looking over at the locked drug cabinet. Neither Witherspoon’s nor Aronobal’s kits were there. “I thought doctors’ kits were supposed to be kept locked up.”

“They are,” Bayta said. “Both kits are in the first-class dispensary right now.”

I frowned. As third-class passengers, neither doctor had normal access to that part of the train. “Are their owners up there with them?”

“Dr. Witherspoon is,” Bayta said. “He’s monitoring di-Master Strinni. Dr. Aronobal left her bag in first so it would be available in case she was called on again to treat Usantra Givvrac’s stomach trouble.”

“Digestion has always been the Fillies’ weak spot,” I commented, looking down at my reader. “Our next mystery guest has now signed in. Looks like this one’s actually a group, too.”

“More Pirkarli emissions?”

“Not unless our Pirks are also hypochondriacs,” I said. “These are three different antibacterial sprays, the kind people like to waft around themselves to protect against alien germs.” I cocked an eyebrow. “I wonder if one of them might belong to our friend Logra Emikai. He certainly seemed concerned about the train’s overall air quality.”

“He’s not seated in that car.”

“But his friend Terese is,” I reminded her. “Maybe he gave her some of his spray. Or maybe they’re both hypochondriacs.” I gestured to the reader. “One more to go. How’s di-Master Strinni doing?”

“He’s conscious,” Bayta said slowly, her eyes unfocusing as she communicated with the server in the first-class dispensary. “He seems to have calmed down, too.”

“Good,” I said. “As soon as this is done—” I broke off, glaring at the display. “Oh, for—”

“What is it?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to see.

“Contestant Number Whatever turns out to be nothing but fragmented Juriani scale material,” I said, pointing to the line. “Apparently fragmented small enough to sneak through the other filters.”

“Is that a problem?” Bayta asked, frowning.

“Hardly,” I said, shutting down the reader and putting it back into my pocket. “But I doubt Larry Hardin’s high-end techs worked this hard to design and build this thing just so I could use it to identify Jurian dandruff.”

I took the sample vials and dropped them into my pocket beside the reader. “Come on—let’s see if di-Master Strinni is up to answering some questions.”

We arrived at the first-class dispensary to find Strinni lying quietly on the diagnostic table, his skin showing the same mottling that Master Colix and Master Bofiv had demonstrated just prior to their deaths. Not a good sign. The Shorshian’s breathing was labored, his eyes dull and listless. But at least he no longer looked inclined to throw the furniture around. “Good evening, di-Master Strinni,” I greeted him, glancing around. Aside from Strinni himself and the server standing by the drug cabinet there was no one else in the room. “How do you feel?”

[Like I’m dying,] he said grimly. [It’s good of you to come, Mr. Compton. And you,] he added, giving Bayta a small acknowledging nod. [I very much wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier.]

“No problem,” I assured him. “I’m sure that was just the necrovri talking. You use the stuff often?”

A bit of fire came into his eyes. [I do not use any such poisons,] he said, the words coming out as crisp and emphatic as individual thudwumper rounds. [I don’t know how it came to be in my body. But I assure you it was none of my doing.]

“I believe you,” I assured him. Actually, I only believed him about eighty percent, but I wasn’t going to call him a liar to his face. “Any idea how it could have gotten into your system?”

His brief surge of passion faded away. [Perhaps it was placed within my food without my noticing,] he said.

“Perhaps,” I agreed. “Who have you shared a meal or drink with over the past three or four days?”

[Only the others of my contract team,] he said. [Those in first class, of course.]

“No one else?” I asked.

[Do you accuse me of lying?]

“Just double-checking,” I soothed. “Do you happen to know where Dr. Witherspoon is, by the way?” [He went for food,] Strinni said.

“For food?” I asked, frowning. Bayta and I had just come up from the rear of the train, and we hadn’t passed Witherspoon along the way. “When did he leave?”

[A few minutes only before your arrival.]

“He didn’t go back to third,” Bayta spoke up. “The Spiders are letting him eat in first tonight.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. Unlike the third-class dining car, which was half a train back, the first-class dining car was just three cars away toward the front. All the same, I found it damned odd that Witherspoon would just take off and leave a desperately ill patient all alone this way. “He didn’t ask Dr. Aronobal to take over while he was gone?” I asked Strinni.

[l didn’t wont Dr. Aronobal to take over,] Strinni said, a flicker of life again pecking through the weariness. [I sent Dr. Witherspoon for his food, Mr. Compton. He didn’t abandon me, as you so obviously think. He’s already done all that he can for my broken body.]

“My apologies,” I said, not feeling particularly apologetic. Hungry or not, ordered out or not, Witherspoon still shouldn’t have deserted his patient. “If I may suggest, though, in a case like this two sets of eyes and minds are always preferable to one. I’m sure Dr. Aronobal would be happy—”

[I will not be treated by that Filiaelian,] Strinni cut me off. [I will not be so debased.]

He’d said the same thing earlier, during the drug-driven fracas in his coach car. At the time, I’d assumed it was the necrovri talking. Apparently, it wasn’t. “I understand your reluctance,” I said. “But still—”

“Frank,” Bayta said, touching my arm warningly.

Grimacing, I nodded and shut up. There was a lot of specism in the galaxy, lurking in the dark corners where supposedly civilized people didn’t like to look. In general, Shorshians and Fillies got along reasonably well, but there were fringe elements in any group. “Fine,” I said to Strinni. “I gather you don’t have any such reservations about Dr. Witherspoon?”

[Why would I?] he asked. [Dr. Witherspoon is part of our group.]

I stared down at him. “He’s what?”

[He’s a physician with Pellorian Medical Systems,] Strinni said. [He sat in with the contract team during many of our meetings, and travels now with us to Rentis Tarlay Birim to examine our facilities.]

“I didn’t know that,” I said, giving Bayta a quick look. Judging by her expression, this was news to her, too. “How come no one ever mentioned this to me?”

[Why was it any of your concern?] Strinni countered. [You’re not part of our group. Neither have you any official authority or investigative position—]

He broke off in a fit of loud, wet-sounding coughs. “Are you all right?” I asked as the coughing showed no sign of stopping.

And then, abruptly, the mottling of his skin dissolved into a chaotic flow of black, white, and gray as all semblance of a normal Shorshic color pattern disappeared. “Bayta!” I snapped, grabbing for Strinni’s arm as his body began convulsing.

“One of the conductors is getting him,” she said tightly. “Shall I have Dr. Aronobal brought up, too?”

“Yes,” I said. The hell with Strinni’s prejudices—his life was on the line here. “Where is she?”

“In her normal seat,” Bayta said. “Eighteen cars back.”

I swore under my breath. Eighteen cars was a long ways away. “Yes, get her here,” I ordered. Maybe Strinni was in better shape than he looked.

I had barely completed that thought when the Shorshian gave a final convulsion and collapsed into an unmoving heap on the table.

Not breathing at all.

“Get Witherspoon here now,” I snarled at Bayta as I grabbed the bright orange LifeGuard unit off the wall by the drug cabinet. I punched the selector for Shorshic configuration and hurried back to the table. “Here,” I said, pulling the arm cuff free of its holder.

Bayta took the cuff and fastened it around Strinni’s arm. “Ready,” she said. I made a final check of the breather mask I’d set over Strinni’s face and punched the start button.

The LifeGuard chugged to life. I gazed down at Strinni’s face, knowing full well that this was almost certainly an exercise in futility. But I had to do something.

And then, to my astonishment, Strinni’s eyes stirred and opened to slits. [Compton,] he murmured, his voice muffled by the mask.

I frowned at the LifeGuard. The device hadn’t finished running its diagnosis, but red lights were already beginning to wink on all across the display. This had to be the most heroic effort at last words on the books. “I’m here,” I said, leaning closer to him as I gazed into those half-closed eyes. “What is it?”

[Don’t desecrate …my …body,] he said, his voice fading until it was almost too soft to hear. His eyes closed again, and the lights on the LifeGuard’s display went solid red.

I looked at Bayta. “Don’t desecrate my body?” I echoed. “What in the world does that mean?”

“Probably that he doesn’t want an autopsy,” she said, her eyes aching as she gazed at this, the third dead body she’d seen in two days. “He’s a member of the Path of Onagnalhni, remember?”

“Right,” I murmured. “I’d forgotten.”

There was the sound of racing footsteps out in the corridor, and I turned as Witherspoon burst panting into the dispensary. “Don’t bother,” I told him as I stepped aside to let him see the unmoving figure on the table. “He’s dead.”