Judgment at Proteus

in front of my door, once again keeping me from sneaking out alone. The fact that the lock on this particular door was on the other side had apparently escaped him.

Still, even a Jumpsuit lynch mob wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill me in their own security nexus. And if Doug was keeping me from getting out, he was also keeping anyone else from getting in. It was, I decided, a fair enough trade.

Closing my eyes again, I rolled over to face the wall, where the glaring light was the least intrusive, and drifted off to sleep.

*   *   *

I slept straight through the night, without any of the disturbances or interruptions that might have been caused by on-duty Jumpsuits “accidentally” dropping tools or equipment where the clatter might startle a prisoner awake. There were no such incidents, I wasn’t murdered in my bed, and when I did wake up it was to the delectable aroma of a hot breakfast on a tray just inside my cell.

The Jumpsuits might think I was a murderer, but that clearly wasn’t interfering with their professionalism. Genetic engineering, I thought as I ate, could be a wonderful thing.

I had finished my breakfast, and Bayta was just starting to stir in her cell, when we had a visitor.

“Good morning,” Logra Emikai said gravely, glancing around the processing room as he walked across to our cells. “I trust your treatment has been proper?”

“I couldn’t have asked for better,” I assured him, waving around the room. “What do you think? Professionally, I mean.”

“Very nice,” he said. “More compact than other processing areas I have seen, but well and properly equipped.” He gave my cell a quick once-over. “Though the holding facilities are not as secure as I would prefer.”

“I doubt they usually have to deal with anything more dangerous than the occasional rowdy,” I pointed out. “I hope you didn’t come here to escort me to my morning court appearance. It looks like I’m going to be tied up for a while.”

“Indeed,” Emikai agreed. “But not in the way you think.” He half turned. {Lieutenant of the Guard?} he called.

A Jumpsuit appeared in the doorway, striding toward me with a darkened blaze and a decidedly unhappy expression on his face. He reached the cell and touched the pad, and the door popped open. Turning on his heel, he strode from the room.

Emikai beckoned to me. “Come.”

“Come where?” I asked, not moving. “Chinzro Hchchu’s court?”

“That proceeding has been put on indefinite suspension,” Emikai said. “You have been assigned to investigate last night’s murder.”

I felt my jaw drop. “I’ve been what?”

“An unexpected turn of events, to be sure,” Emikai agreed. “But as you yourself already stated, the experience of the Kuzyatru Station patrollers is largely limited to overenthusiastic revelers and threats to property. As it happens, there are only two trained investigators aboard.” He barked a small laugh. “You, and I.”

“And they’re desperate enough to actually put me in the game?” I asked, still not believing it. “The chief suspect in the case?”

“You are no longer a suspect,” Emikai said. “Chinzro Hchchu has so ruled.”

I glanced at Bayta, who was now sitting up on her cot listening to us. “You’re kidding,” I said. “A prosecutor declaring his very own defendant innocent? That’s one for the books.”

“Only for this particular crime,” Emikai clarified. “The events surrounding the other six murders must still be examined, because at that time you did not have msikai-dorosli observing your actions.” He looked down at Doug, then across to where Ty was still dozing beside Bayta. “Chinzro Hchchu realizes you could not possibly have committed such a crime in their presence.”

“Glad someone agrees with me, for whatever reason,” I said, turning to Bayta. “You ready to play detective?”

“Of course,” she said, looking over at her breakfast tray. “Do I have time to eat first?”

“She can remain here and join us after her meal,” Emikai offered. “Or she could simply stay here. She is not a trained investigator, is she?”

“No, but she’s terrific at holding the flashlight,” I said. “Just take the tray along, Bayta—you can eat on the way down.” I cocked an eyebrow at Emikai as something suddenly occurred to me. “And I’ll also need my reader, data chips, and the rest of the gear the patrollers took away from me.”

Emikai’s blaze darkened a bit. He’d seen that reader in action, back on the super-express train, and he knew all about the sensor/analyzer hidden inside its innocent-looking exterior. “I do not know if Chinzro Hchchu will agree to that,” he warned.

“Then Chinzro Hchchu had better find himself another investigator,” I said bluntly. “I need my data files, investigative templates, pattern dissectors—all the stuff a modern detective relies on.”

“I shall make that point,” Emikai said. He hesitated. “Do you also demand your weapon be returned?”

“That would be awfully nice, what with a murderer running around Proteus and all,” I said. “But I doubt even under these circumstances that Chinzro Hchchu would be willing to go that far. If you can get me everything else, we’ll call it even.”

“I shall do what I can,” he promised. “Are you ready?”

I looked at Bayta. She was crouching on the floor beside her breakfast tray, feeding one of the fried giggra strips to Ty. I winced—I’d completely forgotten about Doug when I’d eaten my own meal. “Yes, we’re ready,” I said. “Let’s stop by the duty station on our way out and see if there’s something more convenient for Bayta to carry her breakfast in than that tray.”

I looked down at Doug. He was looking back at me, his mouth open just far enough for me to see the sharp points of his front teeth. “And,” I added, “we should also probably pick up a few more of those giggra strips.”

EIGHT

As was traditional in these things, the first stop on our tour was the crime scene.

I’d suggested last night, admittedly in a rather snide way, that the Jumpsuits swarming around the victim had probably trampled any useful clues into oblivion. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I’d been right.

“So they didn’t find anything?” I asked, gazing down at the dried blood still staining the ground.

“Not once they finally began searching,” Emikai said, an edge of contempt in his tone. “If I had been informed in time, perhaps something could have been salvaged. But they did not call me until several hours had passed.”

“Really?” I said, frowning. “Interesting.”

“How so?”

“Because you’re supposed to be the person riding herd on me,” I said. “Two minutes after I was picked up, someone should have been yelling in your ear about your pet Human having committed a murder and why the hell weren’t you already on top of it. Do we know who’s been in charge of the investigation up to now?”

“Captain of the Guard Lyarrom,” Emikai said. “I have spoken to him by comm, but not yet in person.”

“We should make a point of doing that,” I said. “What do we know about the victim?”

“His name was Tech Yleli, and he worked the evening shift in Building Eight,” Emikai said. “That is the shift from the hours of four until twelve.”

“So he should have already left for home by the time I found him,” I said. “Unless he’d been killed earlier?”

Emikai shook his head. “His death was between twelve and twelve-fifteen.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You can be that accurate?”

“Filiaelian blood coagulation follows a well-known curve,” Emikai explained. “When all the genetic parameters are known, a time of death can be defined to within a single minute.”

“That’s handy,” I said, frowning. “So why do we have a fifteen-minute window on Yleli?”