Judgment at Proteus

Bayta snorted. “All it’s doing…” She trailed off.

“All it’s doing is what?” I prompted.

“I was going to say all it’s doing is wasting time,” she said slowly. “But then I realized it’s mostly wasting our time. And keeping us away from Terese.”

That was a thought that had been hovering around the edges of my mind ever since Emikai and I discovered the tricked-out hypos. “Well, if that was their plan, it’s about to come to a screeching halt.”

“What are you going to do?” Bayta asked. “Tell someone about the extra drugs they’ve been giving her?”

“Not someone,” I said with a tight smile. “Everyone.”

She frowned at me. “What?”

“You heard me,” I said. “I’m going to write up the whole thing and put it on the station’s main computer network. An hour from now, every pea-picking horse-faced Filly on Proteus is going to know about it.”

“That should certainly stir things up,” Bayta murmured.

“I hope so,” I said. “At this point, stirring is exactly what we want.”

We passed the receptionist at the archway and headed across the dome. Foot traffic seemed a bit lighter than usual, and I wondered briefly if this might be a good time to drop in on Building Twelve and see what the hell was going on in there.

But there were two figures loitering outside that particular building’s main entrance, and I doubted they were just sampling the air. Making a mental note to check on the place again when I headed back to interrogate Blue One, I continued on to Building Eight, courteously opening the door for Bayta and the two watchdogs. I nodded a greeting to the receptionist as we passed, pressed myself against the wall halfway down the corridor to get out of the way of a tech with a loaded equipment cart, and turned into Terese’s room.

To find an empty, neatly made-up bed.

I walked to the side of the bed, my eyes and brain taking a quick inventory. The narrow cabinet that had held a change of clothing was empty. So was the under-bed shelf where she’d kept her reader and music headphones.

I turned around to find Bayta standing just inside the doorway, her eyes wide. “Frank—”

“Come on,” I said, taking her hand and heading back into the hallway. I nearly ran down the same Filly tech along the way and brought us to a halt in front of the receptionist. “Where is she?” I asked shortly.

The Filly gave me a quizzical look. {Who?}

“The Human girl, Terese German,” I said, striving to keep my voice civil. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. “She’s gone. Where did they take her?”

The receptionist dropped her gaze to her computer display and punched a few keys on her board. {Terese German was checked out an hour and twenty minutes ago,} she reported. {Her condition had worsened, and her doctors decided to move her to an intensive-care facility.}

I clenched my teeth. An hour twenty would put it right after Bayta and Minnario had left. Also right after Aronobal had discovered that two of the gimmicked hypos were missing. “Which one?” I asked. “One of the other buildings here in the dome?”

{No,} the receptionist said, her blaze paling a little in confusion as she peered at the screen. {She’s not here.}

“Then where?”

{I don’t know,} she admitted, still studying her screen. {The location should be listed. But the reference point is blank.}

I looked at Bayta’s ashen face. She’d been right. The Shonkla-raa had indeed wanted to keep us away from Terese.

And now they’d succeeded.

ELEVEN

“You must try to calm down, Mr. Compton,” Captain of the Guard Lyarrom said in probably the closest he could get to a soothing voice. “We are doing our best to locate your friend.”

I looked at Bayta, who was sitting in a corner of the security nexus, her face rigid with her efforts to hide her emotions. I looked at Emikai, whom I’d summoned back from Minnario’s room and who was now standing stiffly beside her. “I appreciate your words of concern, Guard Captain Lyarrom,” I said. “You’ll forgive my impertinence if I say that’s not good enough.”

“One’s best is all that one can do,” he said in a sage, grandfatherly way.

“Then maybe it’s time to bring in more people and add their best to the mix,” I countered. “For starters, you could start a trace on Dr. Aronobal’s comm—chances are she’s still with Ms. German. You could bring in patrollers from other parts of Proteus and get them started on a room-by-room search, starting with her quarters—”

“Ms. German’s quarters have already been searched,” he put in. “There is nothing of any help to us there.”

“—and finally, if you can’t or won’t get through the bureaucratic inertia,” I concluded, “I suggest you bring in Chinzro Hchchu to streamline things.”

Lyarrom’s face had grown stiffer, and his blaze darker, with each suggestion. “Mr. Compton, you are seriously overreacting,” he said stiffly. “There is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in this matter. Nor is there any evidence that Dr. Aronobal is in danger, impaired, or engaged in criminal behavior, which are the legal requirements for activating her comm’s tracker. Finally—”

“So get Chinzro Hchchu in here to override those requirements.”

“Finally, your verbal contract regarding Ms. German’s safety ended when she came aboard Kuzyatru Station,” Lyarrom said, raising his volume. “As to your final suggestion, I am not going to call in Kuzyatru Station’s assistant director to deal with a bookkeeping error.”

I took a careful breath, fighting back the urge to punch the complacent idiot in his snout. “Fine,” I said between clenched teeth. “You just stay inside your nice, comfortable guidelines and limitations. When dead bodies start showing up, don’t blame me.”

Without waiting for a reply I stalked over to Bayta and Emikai. “You okay?” I asked Bayta quietly.

“I shouldn’t have left her,” Bayta murmured, her voice on the edge of tears. “I should have just sent Minnario when you called and stayed with her.”

I grimaced. Minnario. If the Nemut hadn’t pulled his own vanishing act that first night, it might have been easier to convince Lyarrom that Terese’s disappearance was something more serious than a bureaucratic glitch. But then, that had hardly been Minnario’s fault.

Nor was Terese’s disappearance Bayta’s. “You had no way of knowing,” I reminded her.

“Didn’t I?” Bayta countered darkly. “I knew Dr. Aronobal knew about the missing hypos. I should have guessed she and the others wouldn’t just leave things the way they were.”

“And what exactly would you have done to stop them?” I shot back, more harshly than I’d intended. I should have anticipated this, too. Even more than Bayta should have. “In fact, I’d go so far to say that, under the circumstances, I’m just as glad you weren’t in their way when they decided to move her. Who knows what they would have done to you?”

“I’m not as helpless as everyone thinks,” she said stiffly. She sighed and lowered her eyes. “But you’re probably right.”

Which wasn’t to say that I was right, or that she believed I was right, or that any of my soothing logic was making her feel better. “Regardless, what’s past is past,” I said. “We need to focus on finding her and getting her back.”

“Right.” Bayta took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go back to our room and start figuring out who Blue One is,” I told her. “If and when you finish with that, start making a list of all medical facilities in this part of Proteus—yes, I know there are a lot of them, but we have to start somewhere. Logra Emikai, would you escort her back to the room?”