Judgment at Proteus

onto the floor.

I was still goggling at the sheer unexpectedness of it when Wandek took another two steps to Hchchu’s side and drove his stiffened hand into the assistant director’s torso.

“Don’t,” Wandek warned, turning to face me as Hchchu collapsed without a sound onto his desk.

I was already scrambling to my feet, kicking my chair backward out of my way. A quick leap up onto the desktop, a kick to Wandek’s head or torso before he could move away—

“No, no—let him try,” another voice came from the door.

I froze, my knees still bent for my leap, and turned my head. Stalking across the room toward me were a pair of Shonkla-raa. The one in the lead, the one who had spoken, was Blue One. “Please,” he said softly, his eyes burning with hatred as he stared at me, “let him try.”

FOURTEEN

I didn’t try. At three against one, trying would be suicide, and I wasn’t yet ready to die. Slowly, I straightened up again and stood perfectly still, raising my arms slightly away from my body just to prove I knew the proper drill. The second Shonkla-raa, thinner than the others and with an unattractive, jagged-edged nose blaze, strode up to me, gave me a quick pat-down, and took away my comm and my newly reacquired reader. Stuffing them into his belt bag, he headed over to Minnario, who was sprawled unmoving on the floor, his eyes closed, blood seeping through his skin beside his snout where Wandek had hit him. Jagged Nose patted him down as he had me, then crossed to the Nemut’s chair and started unfastening the storage pouches.

“Three of you this time, huh?” I said, looking at each in turn. “Is that your typical pattern, then? First you send one of you after me, then you send two, and now three. I suppose next time it’ll be four?”

“There will be no next time,” Wandek said. He waved toward my overturned chair, a few drops of Hchchu’s blood spattering from his hand onto the desk as he did so. “Please sit down, Mr. Compton. You have nothing to fear from us. As I’m sure Isantra Kordiss told you, we’d prefer to keep you alive for the moment.”

He looked over at Blue One. “Though he himself may not be feeling so generous at the moment. He didn’t appreciate the way you treated him, locking him in that file cabinet.”

“I’m sorry he feels that way,” I said, looking at Kordiss. His expression was still begging me to start trouble. “But if he’s not ready to run with the big dogs, he needs to stay on the porch.”

Kordiss took a step toward me, his blaze darkening almost to black. “What does that mean?” he demanded.

“Please,” I said, putting a little condescension in my voice. It was risky, I knew, goading him like this. But Wandek had already said they wanted me alive, and getting an opponent angry was still one of the best ways to get him to make a mistake. Right now, I desperately needed one of them to make a mistake.

But if Kordiss was poised on the brink of stupidity, Wandek wasn’t. “An excellent try, Mr. Compton,” he said approvingly. “But there’s no need. You can’t possibly win a fight, certainly not against three of us. And we really aren’t going to kill you. Not unless you absolutely insist on it.”

I eyed Kordiss. But Wandek’s interruption had given him time to think, and already I could see the blind fury fading from his face. I flicked a glance to the side, where Doug was watching the situation with the oblivious interest of a dumb animal who hasn’t realized that the situation requires him to act outside of his official orders. Still, if I could get to him and throw him at one of the Shonkla-raa …

“And I wouldn’t count on your msikai-dorosli to intervene on your behalf either,” Wandek added. “I’m fairly certain Chinzro Hchchu ordered him to prevent you from attacking others aboard Kuzyatru Station, not vice versa. Is that the correct use of the term, by the way? Vice versa?”

“Close enough,” I said. Reaching down, I picked up my chair from where I’d kicked it and set it upright again. “Tech Yleli showed you weren’t shy about murder,” I said as I sat down. “I wouldn’t have guessed you’d go as far as killing the assistant director of the whole station, though.”

“Great rewards are worth great risks,” Wandek said.

{Usantra Wandek?} Jagged Nose spoke up. He was peering into one of Minnario’s bags, his fingers sifting through the contents. {His comm is missing.}

{You’ve checked his clothing?} Wandek asked.

{Thoroughly,} Jagged Nose confirmed. {It’s not here.}

Wandek eyed me, probably wondering if he should have the other Shonkla-raa search me again, just in case I had somehow teleported the comm out of Minnario’s pocket and into mine. But he merely shrugged. {He must have left it in his quarters,} he said. {Get to your main task.}

{As ordered.} Closing up the bags, Jagged Nose tied them to his own belt like saddlebags, then crossed to the desk. Casually shoving Hchchu’s body out of the chair onto the floor, he sat down and started typing on the desk computer. “But then, you already know the magnitude of the rewards we seek,” Wandek continued, coming around the end of the desk and settling himself on the corner facing me.

“You’ve got ambition to burn, I’ll give you that,” I said. “But if you’ll pardon the observation, your methods stink like three-day-old fish. What exactly do you think Chinzro Hchchu’s murder is going to gain you? Control of the station?”

Wandek gave what was probably supposed to be a chuckle. “We’ve badly overestimated your intelligence, Mr. Compton,” he said sadly. “Even now, with all you’ve learned, you still have no idea what we’re actually doing.”

“You’re probably right,” I agreed, listening to my heartbeats count off the seconds. Even as we sat here talking, Hchchu’s blood would be coagulating along the well-defined curve Emikai had told me about yesterday. If I could keep the conversation going, the patrollers and techs who investigated the murder should be able to narrow down the time of death to the exact period when Wandek and his buddies were here in the room. I didn’t know how much that would help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. “But I imagine you’re dying to tell me.”

“As it happens, I am,” Wandek agreed. “And since we have a few minutes to spare, I’ll indulge your curiosity. Do you have any idea why the Shonkla-raa left Earth alone two thousand years ago when they were busy conquering the rest of the galaxy?”

“No, and neither do you,” I said. “That’s why you’re experimenting with all those Humans in Building Twelve.”

“In point of fact, we do know why,” Wandek corrected. “We also know how to correct that deficiency. That’s why we brought the Human females here, so that we could turn their babies into our future servants.”

I stared at him. “Are you saying Building Twelve is full of pregnant women?”

“Building Twelve, and two of the others,” Wandek said. “You understand now why, after your confederates disabled the cameras and we realized you would soon be arriving, I ordered Isantra Kordiss to kill the first likely person he could find and leave him in your path. If you’d seen the other pregnant Humans, even you couldn’t have failed to realize what it was we wanted with Ms. German.”

He waved again, a more expansive gesture this time. “You see, Mr. Compton, we of the Shonkla-raa don’t rule the way Humans or even most Filiaelians do, by way of spoken orders and written contracts. We are telepathic. Not very strongly, admittedly, but strongly enough to impress our thoughts and commands on other beings.” He lifted a bloody finger like a college professor trying to underline an important point for a dull pupil. “But only if those other beings have some telepathic ability of their own. Reception and transmission.”

“Like the Modhri,” I murmured.

Wandek’s face brightened. The dull pupil had gotten one. “Exactly like the Modhri,” he agreed. “Except that the Modhri is much more telepathic than most species—designed that way, of course—which gives him a higher resistance to us than other species. That’s where this”—he tapped his throat—“or rather those,” he corrected, pointing at Kordiss’s and Jagged Nose’s oversized throats, “come in.”

“Let me guess,” I said. I knew perfectly well what the throats were for, having seen Muzzfor in action aboard the super-express. But I wasn’t ready yet to show him that particular card. “You sing grand opera to calm him down?”