The Domino Pattern

compartment, to which strategically placed grips and bars had been added to assist Minnario with his physical challenges. At the front of the room, the dividing wall between compartments had been opened about ten centimeters and a soft light was showing through. “Okay, I’m in,” I called.

“Come over to the divider and take a look,” Kennrick’s voice came through the gap. “But carefully, please. Very carefully.”

I crossed the compartment, stepping past the curve couch frozen midway into its collapse into the divider. I reached the opening and eased an eye around the edge.

Kennrick was all the way across the room, sitting cross-legged on the bed and turning the kwi thoughtfully over in his hands. Between him and me, sitting with unnatural stillness in the computer desk chair, was Bayta, a pair of wire loops wrapped around her neck.

“Let me explain the situation,” Kennrick said. “You’ll note the usual control on the wall beside you that will open the divider the rest of the way. I’d strongly advise you not to bump it.”

“Because if I do, one of those wire loops will strangle her?” I suggested.

“It might,” Kennrick said. “These are actually thinner wires than the garrote I pulled on you a few minutes ago, so it’s possible the loop would slice her head clean off instead of just strangling her. Me, I’m not all that anxious to find out for sure. But if you’re curious, be my guest.”

“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I suppose the other loop is fastened to the corridor door?”

“You suppose correctly,” he said. “Rather clever, if I do say so myself.”

“Oh, it’s brilliant,” I assured him. I’d wondered how he thought he would be able to hold out another two and a half weeks without falling asleep, and thus leaving himself open to attack. With this setup, he could sleep until noon every day without worrying about anyone charging in on him. “Your boss will be proud.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Incidentally, what exactly gave me away? Assuming something did give me away, and that you weren’t just blowing smoke out there.”

“Oh, no, I’m on to you,” I assured him. “You’re my replacement, the man who’s supposed to figure out how to take control of the Quadrail from the Spiders.”

I cocked my head. “So tell me. How is our good friend Mr. Larry Cecil Hardin?”

TWENTY

“I was right,” Kennrick said, shaking his head in admiration. “The minute I saw you getting on my Quadrail I knew you were going to be trouble. So again: what gave me away?”

“Several things,” I said. “Though it wasn’t until I’d collected enough of them that I started to see the pattern. For starters, Colix wasn’t even room temperature when you were blaming the Spiders for incompetence or worse. Given their seven-hundred-year spotless operational record, it was a strange attitude to take. In retrospect, I can see it was just part of the plan to undermine confidence in their ability to run the Quadrail.”

“Yes, I thought you seemed surprised by that,” Kennrick conceded. “I suppose it was a bit of a risk, but with Aronobal and a couple of Shorshians in the room I really couldn’t afford to pass up the chance to start planting seeds.”

“And it was a theme you kept coming back to the whole trip,” I said, trying to visually backtrack the wires around Bayta’s neck. But my field of view was too limited for me to see where and how either of them was attached at the far end. “You also were way too incompetent for the liaison job you’d supposedly been hired for. Quite a few members of your team agreed on that.”

“I thought I already explained that,” he reminded me.

“Yes, and rather badly, too,” I said. “There must be hundreds of people on Earth who are competent at both the legal and the social aspects of Filly and Shorshic cultures. Surely Pellorian could have hired one of them in your place, if that was actually the job you were supposed to be doing.”

“I’m starting to think Mr. Hardin could have hired someone better than me for the real job, too,” Kennrick said calmly. “Fortunately, it’s too late for him to reconsider.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t make assumptions like that,” I warned. “Not with Hardin. And of course, there was the near-riot you sparked by starting the rumor back in third class that I’d done away with Logra Emikai. That whole thing made no sense until I realized its purpose was to maneuver Bayta and me into a situation where you’d get to see the kwi in action again.”

“Now, that one you shouldn’t have caught,” Kennrick commented. “Excellent. I can see why Mr. Hardin was so complimentary about you.”

“He was complimentary about me?”

“Within the context of hating your guts, yes,” Kennrick said. “Anything else? Come on—honest criticism is how we learn to do better the next time.”

Only there wouldn’t be a next time, I knew. The last thing the Spiders could afford—the last thing any of us could afford—was for him to make it to the next station and send a report back to Hardin on the success of his ghoulish little mission. One way or another, Kennrick was going to have to die aboard this train.

Even if Bayta had to die along with him.

“Compton?” Kennrick prompted. “You still there?”

“I’m still here,” I assured him.

“Anything else?”

“Just one more,” I said. “The bit that finally caught my attention. Remember when we hauled Emikai in here two nights ago and he was looking around trying to figure out if I really had a spectroscopic analyzer? He spent a lot of that time looking at my luggage, because obviously something like that would have to take up a lot of space.”

“Obviously,” Kennrick said. “So?”

“It got me thinking about the morning after Colix’s death, when you barged into my compartment also wanting to see the results of my tissue analysis,” I said. “Only unlike Emikai, you never even glanced at my luggage. Your eyes went instantly to my reader. My one-of-a-kind, high-tech, super-spy-loaded reader.” I cocked my head. “Only it isn’t one-of-a-kind anymore, is it?”

“Not anymore, no,” he agreed. “You know, I never even thought about that. Damn, but you’re good.”

“You’re too kind,” I said. “Yours must be even more interesting than mine for you to have sacrificed your high- ground bluff to keep it out of my hands.”

“Oh, it’s probably no more advanced than yours,” Kennrick said. “But I could hardly let you go poking around the encrypted files where my detailed report was hidden. Not with your familiarity with the thing.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Actually, my plan was just to show them that your reader was gimmicked like nothing they’d ever seen before. It never occurred to me that you’d be careless enough to actually have the data sitting in there where someone could find it.”

“You’re kidding,” Kennrick said, looking chagrined. “Well, damn it all. I guess I should have stood my ground a little longer.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said. “We already knew enough about the killings to put you on ice, with or without Worrbin’s approval.”

“Speaking of which, what do you think of the method?” Kennrick asked. “Pretty clever, eh?”

“Hellishly clever,” I agreed, my stomach tightening. Back in my Westali days, I reflected, I could actually sit back and dispassionately discuss techniques for murder and torture without qualms. Not anymore. Not with Bayta’s life in this lunatic’s hands. “Where did you come up with a bacterium that could pack away that much heavy metal, anyway?”

Kennrick barked a laugh. “You want the real irony? That strain was originally designed with an eye toward curing heavy-metal poisoning. You inject the bacteria into the patient and let the little bugs spread out through his system, gobbling up every heavy-metal atom they happen across. Since their own biochemistry actually needs the stuff for reproduction, they multiply like crazy, but only up to the point where the