The Domino Pattern

Master Colix, we need to resolve it before it poisons relations between us.” He winced. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

“I’ll stay here with Master Tririn.” Witherspoon volunteered. “There may be a couple of tests I can do that don’t involve cutting.”

“I’ll stay, too, then.” Bayta said. “I’d like to watch.”

I eyed her. Her face was its usual neutral mask, but there was something beneath the surface I couldn’t quite read. Probably she didn’t like the idea of the body being left alone with a couple of strangers with no Spider present. “Fine,” I said. “Come on, Kennrick.”

THREE

Second-class seats weren’t as mobile as those in first class, but they were movable enough to allow families and friends to arrange themselves into little conversation and game circles. Those circles usually remained into and through the nighttime hours, which gave a cozy sort of sleeping-bags-around-the-campfire look to those cars when everyone set up their privacy shields.

Not so in third. In third, where the seats were fixed in neat rows of three each on either side of the central aisle, the rows of cylindrical privacy shields always looked to me like the neatly arranged coffins from some horrible disaster.

“He’s down there,” Kennrick murmured, pointing.

I craned my neck. Master Bofiv was in one of the middle seats to my right, his seat reclined as far as it would go, his privacy shield open. “I see him,” I confirmed. “Quietly, now.”

We headed back, making as little noise as possible. Third-class seats weren’t equipped with sonic neutralizers like those in first and second, leaving it up to the individual passenger to spring for his or her own earplugs or portable neutralizers or else to hope for quiet neighbors.

Bofiv was lying quietly when we reached his row. One of the passengers three rows up from him had his reading light on, which had the effect of throwing the Shorshian into even deeper shadow than he would have been in without it.

Still, I could see him well enough to tell that his inner eyelids were closed. “I woke up di-Master Strinni.” I whispered to Kennrick. “It’s your turn.”

“But you’re so good at it.” Kennrick said, gesturing. “Please; go ahead.”

“You’re too kind,” I said, frowning. On Bofiv’s left, against the car’s side wall, was an empty scat, presumably that of his compatriot Master Tririn.

But on Bofiv’s right, where I would have expected to find the empty scat of the late Master Colix, was the smooth half-cylinder of a closed privacy shield. “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at it.

“A Nemut,” Kennrick said. “He’s not part of our group.”

“Why isn’t that Colix’s scat?” I asked. “Didn’t he want to sit with his buddies?”

“I don’t know,” Kennrick said, frowning. “Huh. I hadn’t really thought about that. You think maybe the others didn’t like him?”

“Or vice versa,” I said, making a mental note to ask Bofiv and Tririn which of the party had come up with the seating arrangements. “So where was Colix sitting?”

“There.” Kennrick said, pointing to an empty middle seat across the aisle and two rows forward of the sleeping Bofiv.

I backtracked for a closer look. The late Master Colix’s seat was flanked by a pair of privacy shields. Irreverently, I wondered it one of the shields concealed an attractive female Shorshian. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to ditch his colleagues.

And then, as if on cue, the aisle shield retracted to reveal a young Human female.

A really young female, in fact. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, and even that was pushing it. Her face was thin and drawn, with the look of someone who’d just gone two rounds with food that didn’t agree with her.

Make that three rounds. Even before the privacy shield had retracted completely into the armrest and leg-rest storage lip she was on the move, heading toward the front of the car at the quick-walk of the digestively desperate.

I eyed the remaining privacy shield in that particular three-seat block. Maybe that was the knockout Shorshic female.

“Well?” Kennrick prompted.

“Well, what?” I countered, turning around to watch the girl. She reached the front of the car and disappeared into one of the restrooms.

“Are we going to ask Master Bofiv about Master Colix’s habits and appetites?” Kennrick elaborated.

“In a minute,” I said, a sudden unpleasant tingling on the back of my neck as I stared at the closed restroom door. Colix had gotten sick and died …and now one of his seatmates had suddenly made a mad dash tor the facilities?

Kennrick caught the sudden change in my tone. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

“Or?”

“Or maybe something,” I said, glancing at my watch. Five minutes, I decided. If the girl wasn’t back in five minutes I would grab a Spider and send him in to find her.

It was something of an anticlimax when, three minutes later, the door opened and the girl reappeared. She started a little unsteadily back down the aisle toward her seat, looking even more drawn than she had before.

“Or nothing. I take it?” Kennrick murmured.

“So it would seem,” I agreed. The girl’s eyes were fixed on me as she came toward us, a wary and rather baleful expression on her pale face. I waited until she was about five steps from us and then tried my best concerned smile on her. “You all right, miss?” I asked softly.

“I’m fine,” she said, clipping out each word like she was trimming a thorn hedge. If my concerned smile was having any effect, I sure couldn’t detect it. “You mind?”

I wasn’t even close to blocking her way, but I gave her a little more room anyway. “I just wondered if you were unwell.”

“I’m fine,” she said again, brushing past me and flopping down into her seat. She adjusted herself a bit and reached for the privacy shield control.

“Because your seatmate had a bad attack of something,” I went on, kneeling down beside her. No point including any more eavesdroppers in this conversation than absolutely necessary. “You might have noticed when his friends took him to the dispensary?”

She slid the control forward, and the shield started to rotate into its closed position. “The dispensary, where he died?” I finished.

The shield closed. I counted off three seconds; and then, the shield opened again. “What did you just say?” the girl asked, her face suddenly tight.

“I said Master Colix is dead,” I repeated.

For a long moment she just stared at me. Her eyes flicked up to Kennrick, then back to me. “How?” she whispered.

“He was poisoned.” I said. “What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Terese,” she said. “Terese German.”

“Frank Compton,” I introduced myself in return. “How well did you know Master Colix?”

“Hardly at all,” Terese said, looking at Kennrick again.

“You didn’t talk to him?” Kennrick asked.

Terese hunched her shoulders. “Mostly I read or listened to music.”

“But you must have at least occasionally talked to him,” Kennrick persisted. “You’ve been sitting together for the past two weeks, after all.”

“He’s the one who did all the talking,” Terese growled. “Mostly about his job. Oh, and he showed me a few