“Very noble,” I said, watching him closely. “Yet the baby is Ms. German’s, not yours. Doesn’t she have a say in the matter? Especially since the baby is now getting in the way of her own treatment?”
Wandek drew himself up, his blaze mottling again. “The baby
“Of course,” I said, ducking my head humbly. I’d gotten what I’d been looking for. Time to backpedal. “Naturally, I agree. It’s just that there are many regions on Earth, with laws that vary widely from place to place.”
“This is the Filiaelian Assembly, not Earth,” Wandek said frostily, the mottling of his blaze slowly fading back to normal. “Only Filiaelian law has any bearing.”
“Of course,” I said again as I turned back to Aronobal. “Any idea how long the tests on Ms. German’s baby will take?”
“No,” Aronobal said. “If you like, I can put your name and comm number on the list of those to be informed of progress.”
“I’d appreciate that.” I gave her my number and Bayta’s and watched as she keyed them into her comm. “Can you tell me who we talk to about getting accommodations somewhere in this sector?” I asked when she’d finished.
“That has already been arranged,” Wandek said. “Speak with the receptionist at the door where we entered.”
“Thanks.” I started to turn away. “Oh. Does she happen to speak English?”
“You Humans,” Wandek said, his tone more resigned than angry. “So many of you seem to believe the galaxy must necessarily accommodate your needs and desires.”
“Yes, we’re funny that way,” I agreed. “Does she speak English, or doesn’t she?”
Wandek made an impatient-sounding rumble deep in his throat. “I will send an English-speaker to meet you at her desk,” he said, pulling out his comm. “I must return now to my work.”
“And I to observe the work on Ms. German’s child,” Aronobal added.
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you. Both of you.”
Whatever else one might say about Wandek, he definitely got fast results. By the time we reached the receptionist’s desk there was a young Filly in a pale green outfit already waiting for us. “You are the Human Compton?” he asked.
“Yes,” I acknowledged.
“Come with me,” he said, walking toward one of the corridors and motioning for us to follow. “Your quarters have been assigned.”
“Are they near Ms. German’s?” I asked, making no move to follow. “They have to be near Ms. German’s.”
“Your quarters have been assigned,” he repeated. “Come with me.”
He headed down the corridor, not checking to see if we were following or not. Taking Bayta’s arm, I headed us off after him.
We retraced our steps out of the dome, down the ramp to the traffic corridor, along the glideway, and back to Terese’s room. The door our guide led us to was two doors farther down. “Here,” he said, gesturing toward a plate beside the door. “It is already keyed to your nucleics.”
“Thank you,” I said. I touched my hand to the plate, and with a soft click the door slid open. With my watchdogs crowding at my sides, I went inside.
And stopped. The room was a photocopy of Terese’s, right down to the color scheme on the blankets on the bed.
The single, barely double-size bed.
One.
I felt the movement of air as Bayta came in and stopped beside Doug. “Cozy,” I commented.
She didn’t say anything. But I suspected that she wasn’t looking at me just as hard as I wasn’t looking at her.
I should have expected this, of course. I hadn’t, but I should have. One of the Modhri’s best and most insidious methods of infiltration was through something called thought viruses: subtle suggestions—sometimes not so subtle—that were passed telepathically from a Modhran walker to an uninfected person. Usually the suggestion was geared to get the victim to touch a piece of Modhran coral, which would get a polyp hook into his bloodstream and eventually grow him an internal Modhran colony of his own.
The most horrific part of the technique was the fact that thought viruses transmitted best between those who already had emotional attachments. That meant friends, allies, confidants, and coworkers.
And lovers.
I stared at the single bed, feeling a cold and angry sweat breaking out on the back of my neck. Did the Modhri think Bayta and I were lovers? We weren’t, and weren’t likely to go that route any time soon, either—we both knew how thought viruses worked, and neither of us was stupid enough to increase our risks that way. We’d shared only a single kiss, and even that had been driven more by lingering fear and pain and exhaustion than anything else.
Even now, I still wasn’t sure how much of that kiss had been affection on Bayta’s part and how much had simply been that same shared fear and exhaustion coming through. In many ways, the deepest core of Bayta’s mind was still a mystery to me.
But she and I had been living and fighting side by side for a long time now, and the Modhri certainly knew enough about human biology to know we were ripe for that kind of attachment if we weren’t there already. Apparently, he was hoping a little nudge might be enough to push us the rest of the way.
Well, he could just keep hoping.
I turned to the Filly, waiting expectantly in the corridor like a dit-rec comedy bellhop expecting a tip. “Unacceptable,” I told him. “This room is designed for one. We are two.”
It was clearly not the response he’d been expecting. He drew back a little, his eyes darting uncertainly from me to the room to me again. “Call your superiors,” I said. “Tell them we need a larger room or a second room in this same area.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, finally unfreezing enough to pull out his comm. {The Human wants a larger room,} he reported to whoever picked up at the other end. He listened a moment— {No, he also wishes it to be near the Human Ms. German.} There was another pause, and I watched his blaze for signs of emotional distress. But the blaze remained unchanged. {I’ll tell him,} he said, and shut down the comm. “There is a second room available,” he told us. “But it is on the other side of the medical dome, the inward side.”
I looked at Bayta. The far side of the medical dome would put whichever of us took that room over half a kilometer away from Terese. More importantly, it would put us that same half kilometer away from each other. “I’m afraid—”
“Would you show it to us, please?” Bayta asked.
“Certainly,” the Filly said. “Follow me.”
He led the way to the glideway, and we wended our way back to the dome. The receptionist looked up as we passed, but neither she nor our guide said anything to each other. The Filly led us into the dome, past the building where they were presumably still working on Terese and her unborn baby, and out into the corridor on the far side. Two corridors later, he stopped at another door. “This is the one,” he said, gesturing to it.
I nodded. “Open it.”
“It is not yet keyed to your nucleics.”
“I realize that,” I said patiently. “That’s why I asked you to use your passkey.”
For a moment he hesitated, perhaps wondering if he was supposed to admit he even had a passkey. Then, silently, he pulled a card from inside his tunic and waved it past the touch plate. The door slid open, and he gestured us through.
The room, as I’d expected, was exactly like the other two we’d already seen. “This is good,” Bayta said briskly, turning to block the Filly as he started to come in behind us. “We’ll take both rooms. How long will it take to key the lock to our nucleics?”
“I will call a room server immediately,” the Filly said, clearly relieved that the awkward situation had been resolved. “It will be ready within the hour.”
“Thank you,” Bayta said, putting a hand on his shoulder and easing him gently but inexorably all the way out
