The Domino Pattern

“I did nothing.” Aronobal insisted. “They were like this when I first reached him.”

“Were they, Frank?” Bayta murmured as she came to my side.

“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “I wasn’t focusing on his hands at the time.”

“Was he holding anything earlier?” Aronobal asked. “In either hand?”

“No,” I said. That much I was sure of. “There was nothing within reach, either.”

“Your arm, perhaps?” Aronobal suggested, reaching over the table and wrapping her hand experimentally around my wrist.

“No,” I said again. “I have no idea why his hands would have curled—”

“It’s sign language,” Witherspoon said suddenly.

I studied Strinni’s hands. Now that Witherspoon mentioned it, they did look like finger-spelling letters. The letters F and C, in fact.

My initials.

“Can you read them?” Aronobal asked.

“Just a second,” Witherspoon said as he started contorting his own hand. “The left hand is the letter C,” he said. “The right hand …that’s an F.”

“CF,” Aronobal murmured thoughtfully.

“More likely FC,” Witherspoon said. “That’s the order they’re in as you look down at them.”

“Or even more likely pure coincidence,” I said. Whatever had happened with Strinni’s hands, the last thing I wanted was for Witherspoon or Aronobal to think there was a connection there to me. “Some trick of that last set of convulsions. He had enough breath to warn us not to autopsy his body, after all—if he’d wanted to leave a dying clue, he could have just said something.”

Witherspoon looked sharply at me. “FC,” he said. “Frank Compton.”

I held his gaze, a sinking feeling running through me. Damn. “That’s ridiculous,” I insisted.

“Is it?” Witherspoon countered. “Of course he couldn’t say anything, not with you and your friend the only ones in the room. What other clue could he leave?”

“Okay, fine.” I said. “Let’s say those really are F and C signs—”

“Oh, please,” Witherspoon growled. “There must be a hundred encyclopedias aboard that can confirm that.”

“I meant as opposed to random hand configurations.” I said patiently. “That still leaves the question of how di-Master Strinni learned Human sign language in the first place. Come to think of it, if we’re going down that road, we ought to be looking into what those mean in Shorshic sign language.”

“There is no such thing,” Aronobal said. “Deafness is curable or treatable among Shorshians, and hence is essentially unknown. Any signing system would have been lost generations ago.”

“Ditto for most other species,” Witherspoon agreed. “If di-Master Strinni knew any sort of sign language, it would be the Human variety.”

“Which still doesn’t prove he actually did know it,” I said. “Besides, I only met him yesterday. What possible motive would I have for killing him?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Witherspoon said, his tone going all dark and ominous. I le would have been great in a dit rec mystery. “Perhaps we should get Mr. Kennrick in here and see if he can shed some light on this.”

“Mr. Kennrick isn’t an investigator,” I said.

“No. but he seems to know something about you,” Witherspoon said. “Maybe there are some dark secrets in your past—”

“Just a minute,” Bayta spoke up suddenly, her eyes unfocusing. “Usantra Givvrac is in great pain. He’s asked a conductor to bring him a doctor.”

“You sure it’s Usantra Givvrac, and not one of the other Filiaelians?” Witherspoon asked, a sudden anxiety in his voice.

“I’m sure,” Bayta said. “But one of the other Filiaelians in his car is also feeling ill.”

“I’d better go,” Witherspoon said, gesturing to the Spider to hand him his bag.

“I’ll do it,” Aronobal said calmly, laying a hand on Witherspoon’s shoulder. “I have more experience with Filiaelian medicine than you.”

“You both need to go,” Bayta said. “A Filiaelian four cars back, Osantra Qiddicoj, is also calling for a doctor.”

“Four back?” I repeated, mentally doing my own count of the cars. “Di-Master Strinni’s car?”

“Yes,” Bayta confirmed.

Where Strinni had been poisoned with both heavy metal and a hallucinogen. Interesting. “Sounds like we suddenly have plenty of patients to go around,” I said, looking back and forth between Witherspoon and Aronobal. “How do you want to sort it out?”

“Dr. Witherspoon can treat Osantra Qiddicoj,” Aronobal said, already halfway to the door. “I will treat Usantra Givvrac and the other in his car.”

“And I’ll go with Dr. Witherspoon,” I volunteered, falling into step behind Witherspoon as he headed toward the door.

“That’s not necessary,” Witherspoon said.

“I don’t mind,” I assured him.

Witherspoon stopped dead in his tracks. “Let me make it clearer,” he said coldly. “I don’t want you along.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Let me make it clearer: I don’t give a damn what you want. You’ve got a sick patient. We both want to see him. You want me to stay here, you’re welcome to try and make me. Otherwise, stop complaining and get moving.”

He pressed his lips tightly together. “Fine,” he said. “You first.”

I rolled my eyes and moved into the doorway in front of him. “Bayta, stay here and watch di-Master Strinni’s body,” I said. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

We headed out, Aronobal hitting the corridor and branching left. Witherspoon and I branching right. “What is it with all this Filly stomach trouble?” I whispered over my shoulder to Witherspoon as we reached the first coach car and passed through the sea of canopied seats and sleeping passengers. “More heavy-metal poisoning?”

“It’s not acting like it,” Witherspoon whispered back. “But with gleaner bacteria in their intestines doing the bulk of waste processing and removal, Filiaelians are highly susceptible to digestive trouble.”

“Like Terese German?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. “I said—”

“I heard you,” he interrupted. “And I already told you my dealings with her are confidential. Quiet, now—we don’t want to wake anyone.”

We passed through the rear vestibule and entered the first-class entertainment car. From the faint reflections of flickering light I could see from the various dit rec cubicles as we passed, it was clear there were still a few night owls up and about. We finished with that car, passed through another coach car full of canopied seats and sleeping travelers, and arrived at last at Osantra Qiddicoj’s car.

Most of the passengers here had deployed their canopies, though a few seats contained Shorshians who, like di-Master Strinni, apparently preferred sleeping in the open air. Near the rear of the car, I spotted the soft glow of a conductor call light on one of the uncanopied seats. The scat itself was turned away from us, hiding its occupant from view, but I doubted that the call light was marking someone who merely wanted to know when the dining car started serving breakfast. “There’s our boy,” I murmured, heading toward it.

We were halfway back when I heard a soft thud behind me. Frowning, I started to turn—

Something exploded against the side of my neck, and the darkened Quadrail car went completely black.

———

I woke up slowly, with the nagging but persistent feeling that I wasn’t at all comfortable.

I tried to bring my hands up to my eyes to help rub them open. But the hands didn’t want to move. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where exactly my hands were. I tried turning my head to look tor them, but my head wouldn’t move either.