The Domino Pattern

“He’s not insane, and it does make sense,” I said firmly. “We just have to find the right way to put the pieces together.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry I’m not being more help,” she said. “Putting people’s motives and thoughts under a microscope—that’s not something I’m good at.”

I stared at her, my stomach tightening as a memory abruptly popped into my mind: Emikai, still twitching from the aftereffects of the kwi, studying my luggage as if he could see through it to the spectral analysis equipment he assumed was inside.

There it was, the nagging feeling I’d been wrestling with. And with it, the clue I hadn’t even known I’d been missing. Not what had been done, but what hadn’t been done.

And suddenly, I had it. I had it all.

“Too bad Korak Fayr isn’t here—” Bayta broke off with a muffled gasp as I grabbed her arm and picked up my pace, dragging her forward. “Frank?”

“Come on,” I told her grimly. “We’ve got work to do.”

“You’ve figured it out?” she asked, a flicker of hope in her voice.

“I think so,” I said, my mind flashing back to the very beginning of our journey. Bayta had called it, all the way back then. She’d called it exactly.

My past had indeed come back to haunt me.

“It’s the Modhri?” she asked, her arm tensing inside my grip.

“No,” I said. “Actually, it’s worse.”

———

We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the case, and laying out the facts to test against my new theory. By the time we broke for dinner, I was ninety percent convinced I was right.

With luck, I would get that final ten percent tonight.

———

I waited until two in the morning by the train’s clocks, when even the most dedicated night owls among the passengers were probably thinking about turning in. Bayta offered to come with me, but I told her to go back to bed. There was nothing that could put the damper on a heart-to-heart, off-the-record conversation like having a third party present.

And so I made my solitary way back through first, through second, and through third, until I was in the baggage car by the dead bodies, standing in front of Logra Emikai.

I’d left the Filly in a fairly awkward and uncomfortable position when I’d retied his bonds, mainly because with my limited resources I hadn’t had a lot of alternatives. To my mild surprise, I found he’d risen to the challenge of his situation. With strategic repositioning of the chair, toilet, and table, he’d been able to stretch out instead of having to sleep sitting upright. His head was pillowed, hammock-style, on one of his pinioned arms, while the other hung free. It looked tolerable, even marginally comfortable.

Of course, if he turned over in his sleep he would instantly roll off his makeshift three-point bed and land on the floor, which would snap him fully awake as well as possibly giving one or both of his arms a nasty sprain. Still, it was an ingenious use of resources. One more indication, I reminded myself, of the kind of person I was dealing with.

“Are you here to watch me sleep?”

Mentally, I tipped him a salute. His eyes still appeared closed, but I could see now the small slits he was watching me through. Professional, indeed. “Sorry—-just me,” I said. “I gather you were hoping for someone else?”

“Indeed,” he said, opening his eyes all the way and shifting back up to a sitting position on the chair. “Still, a clever perpetrator seldom tries the same trick twice on the same person.”

“You know something about perpetrators, do you?” I suggested, pulling out my multitool and flicking out the small knife blade as I walked toward him. “I thought you probably did.”

He drew back as he watched me approach, his eyes on the knife. “What do you do?” he asked cautiously.

“Not what you’re thinking,” I assured him. Setting the blade against the safety webbing tying his left wrist to the crate stack, I carefully sliced through it. “I think I know what’s going on,” I said as I stepped to his other side and cut his right arm free, too. “But I need your help and expertise to prove it.”

“What expertise is that?” he asked suspiciously as he massaged his wrists.

“The kind I’d expect,” I said, “from a fellow cop.”

He stiffened, just enough to show I’d hit the mark. “You misread,” he said. “I am not an enforcement officer.”

“Former cop, then,” I said. “Come on—we both know I’m right. Back in my compartment you talked about not believing something until you had evidence of its existence, and of needing to reach the required legal bar for action. Those are both phrases I’ve heard before from Filiaelian security officers.”

“That hardly constitutes compelling evidence.”

“We Humans are pretty good with hunches,” I said. “And of course, your current evasiveness just adds weight to my conclusion.”

For a moment he eyed me. “Very well,” he said. “I was indeed once an enforcement officer. But no longer. I am retired, with no official authority from any Filiaelian governmental body.”

“Close enough,” I said. “Let me try another hunch on you. Before your retirement, you were a forensic investigator.”

His nose blaze darkened with surprise. “That was indeed my specialty. Remarkable. May I ask how you reached that conclusion?”

“It was a combination of things,” I said. “You seemed very interested in my technique as I was taking samples from the air filter in Terese German’s car. You also didn’t fall for that ‘congenital disease after-elements’ soap bubble I spun for the rest of the passengers, either. More interestingly, you knew roughly how big a standard spectroscopic analyzer was, which was why you were studying my luggage last night in my compartment. You were trying to figure out if I’d lied about that, too.”

I gestured behind me. “But mostly because Bayta and I nearly caught you snooping around back here a couple of days ago. My first thought was that you were returning Master Colix’s ticket to him after having used it to steal the lozenges from his storage compartment.”

“The tablets were medicine?” Emikai asked, looking surprised again. “Ms. German said they were foodstuffs.”

“Ms. German is not the most observant person in the galaxy,” I said dryly. “Though to be fair, Master Colix wasn’t exactly advertising it, either. Speaking of Ms. German, what exactly is going on with her, anyway?”

He shook his head. “I cannot tell you.”

“Come on, Logra Emikai,” I cajoled. “This is just between two ex-cops, remember? By the way, what kind of title is logra? It obviously doesn’t come from lomagra, as my partner thought.”

“It is a new rank, a title given me by my current employers,” he said. “It refers to the ancient Filiaelian name for a bulwark, or a protector of the people.”

“Ancient Filiaelian, eh?” I commented. “We have people who like mining old languages, too. Anyway, the point is that I already know Ms. German is pregnant, which is why you were concerned enough about the air quality in her car to try to break into my compartment to see what I’d found out about that. I also know that you and Dr. Aronobal are escorting her from Earth to Filiaelian space. I just want to know why.”

He gazed at me for a long moment. I waited, keeping my best encouraging expression in place. Finally, he shrugged. “I suppose it cannot hurt. Several weeks ago Ms. German was assaulted near her home in the Western Alliance and impregnated by her attacker. Dr. Aronobal and I were already on Earth, seeking Human subjects for genetic testing, and we received orders to offer her our assistance and invite her to accompany us back to the Filiaelian Assembly for medical treatment and study.”

“Who exactly did these orders come from?” I asked.

“One of Dr. Aronobal’s superiors, I presume,” he said. “I was never shown the actual message. We offered Ms. German our assistance, which was accepted, and we are now returning to the Filiaelian Assembly with her.”