promises.”
“Let us see which,” he said, pulling out his comm.
I listened with half an ear while Emikai spoke to the controller, studying the twisted camera mount as I did so. A single, solid punch, Emikai and I had both concluded. But as Emikai had said, there was no sign of denting in any part of the mounting hardware. Whatever the tool was that our mystery man had used, he’d made sure its business end was well padded.
I looked back as Emikai put his comm away. “The controller agrees that the assigned patrollers have not taken their posts,” he said. “Other security matters took priority.”
“What other security matters?” I asked.
“He did not list them,” Emikai said. “But he has promised they will be here as quickly as possible.”
“Of course they will,” I growled.
Emikai eyed me closely. “We could examine the cameras and mounts now,” he suggested. “By the time we finish, the patrollers might be ready to return to their posts. Regardless, we could then allow the maintainers to replace the cameras and thus restore monitor service to the area.
“And Tech Yleli’s acquaintances?” I asked.
“We would speak with them after that.”
I chewed at my lip. I would definitely feel safer with Bayta in the middle of a milling group of genetically engineered Filly cops. But we also had a murder to investigate, and the sand was rapidly running out of our 24/24 hourglass. “No,” I said, coming abruptly to a decision. “Our first priority is to nail down the victim’s movements as quickly as we can, before anyone’s memory starts to fog up. Let’s go.”
Besides, I reminded myself firmly as we left the dome and headed down the corridor, the Shonkla-raa wanted Terese’s baby alive and unharmed. They wouldn’t try anything against Bayta here.
Surely they wouldn’t.
* * *
The foot traffic in the area around our quarters and Terese’s medical dome had always been rather on the sparse side. Not so elsewhere in the station. As Emikai and I took the elevator to the bullet train deck and headed outward, we found ourselves traveling amid Manhattan-level crowds of Fillies. Most of them gave us a quick glance as we passed, apparently impressed by the novelty of having a Human aboard Proteus, while other no doubt more cosmopolitan residents ignored us completely. In contrast, there was one couple aboard the bullet train who stared at me the entire time, whispering back and forth to each other. I felt more than a little relieved when we left the train and they went off in one direction while Emikai and I headed off the other.
Twenty decks down, we finally reached the late Tech Yleli’s neighborhood.
Up to now all my time on Proteus had been spent in the official and medical sections of the station, which also turned out to be the areas that had been photographed for the professionally prepared pamphlets and brochures I’d seen. Nowhere in any of those publications had I seen pictures of what the staff and worker residence areas looked like.
As we walked into Yleli’s community-center dome, I finally understood why.
It wasn’t that the center was squalid, or unkempt, or even unphotogenic. It was that it was so utterly
For a long moment I just stood there at the archway leading into the dome, my mind spinning as I tried to take it all in. The curved dome surface caught my eye first: patterned with odd splotches of subtle color and an asymmetric pattern of clinging vines that climbed nearly to the top. Birds of some sort perched on the vines, and small creatures, half caterpillar and half slug, crawled slowly along both the vine network and the dome surface itself. Where Terese’s medical dome featured a calmness of blue sky and white clouds, the top of this dome was done in brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges, an image of flaming death that could have been either a representation of a volcanic explosion about to rain down on the landscape below or else a Filly interpretation of Dante’s hell.
The stores and parkland lying beneath the frozen waves of fire were no better. Buildings were buildings, I’d always assumed, with form following function and all that. But even given that purely practical basis, there was still something about the shops, community buildings, and meeting clusters that took me a long moment to wrap my mind around. The angles, textures, and perspective seemed to be at war with one another, leaving the sort of feeling I always got looking at an optical illusion and watching it go from a pair of faces to a vase and back again. Above the buildings were probably thirty helium-filled balloons of various sizes, shapes, and colors, arranged in three separate vertical levels as they circled the dome slowly in the air currents. Arranged on the ground outside their three-level circle was a ring of blazing torches, whose updrafts were apparently designed to keep the balloons contained within their proper flight area.
And then, as my brain finally got all the rest of it more or less sorted out, I focused for the first time on the Fillies themselves.
I’d seen Fillies hundreds of times before, in person, in holos, or in recordings. And yet, suddenly I felt as if I was seeing them for the very first time. There were at least two hundred of them in the dome, dressed in brightly colored clothing, walking stolidly among the dome’s structures. At first glance it looked like just random pedestrian milling, but as I studied it I saw that the crowd was divided into linear groups, rather like hands-free conga lines. Each line was making its own version of a solemn procession across the dome floor, curving and weaving like a Chinese New Year dragon, each group moving in a different direction and with a different flow pattern. As two lines met they might combine, or pass through one another, or simultaneously veer off in brand-new directions. It was like a huge field-show marching squad pageant, mixed with a dit-rec costume drama of an eighteenth-century royal ball, with a bit of Japanese kabuki tossed in. Another couple of hundred Fillies were standing around the dome’s perimeter watching the performance, most of them in pairs or small clumps set in between the six corridors leading into the dome.
And the whole group of them were doing everything in perfect silence. “Tech Yleli’s funeral service?” I murmured.
“His remembrance processional, yes,” Emikai answered. “I believe the movements are designed to represent various aspects of his journey, as well as the people whose lives he touched. This particular cultural form is one I am not very familiar with.” He paused, and I could feel his eyes on me. “You probably find it quaint.”
With a supreme effort, I forced back the chilling alienness of the scene. “Not at all,” I assured him. “I’ve just never seen anything like this before. From Filiaelians or anyone else.”
“Our private cultural lives are not to be set out for strangers to witness,” Emikai said grimly. “My error. I should have called before we came.”
“If it helps any, I promise not to tell anyone about it,” I offered. “Actually, I doubt I could do it proper justice even if I wanted to.”
“Thank you,” he said. “That would be appreciated.”
I nodded, a tightness forming in the pit of my stomach. Cops were supposed to try to put aside any emotions they might feel for the victims in their investigations. But nevertheless I could feel anger-tinged sadness as I gazed at the spectacle before me. From the number of people who’d showed up to act out his life, it was clear that he’d been a well-liked member of his community.
And yet, someone had killed him. Possibly because of Terese, and whatever the hell the Shonkla-raa wanted with her and her baby.
Or maybe he’d been murdered because of me.
“They have noticed us,” Emikai murmured.
I snapped out of my gloomy thoughts. Sure enough, a handful of the spectators, mostly the ones nearest us, had turned in our direction and were staring at us, still in eerie silence. “We should go,” Emikai continued, taking a tentative step backward. “We can come back later and ask the necessary questions.”
I was opening my mouth to agree when one of the Fillies who had spotted us turned and sidled casually to the next corridor clockwise from us around the dome’s perimeter. As he reached it, he threw one last look at us and disappeared around the corner.
And though I couldn’t be positive at that distance, it had sure looked like he had an enlarged throat. The kind favored by professional singers and Shonkla-raa.
“Better idea,” I murmured to Emikai, taking a couple of backward steps of my own. “I’ll go. You can stay until the end of the performance and then talk to them about Tech Yleli.”
He frowned at me. “Are you certain?”
