Diplomatic Immunity

unauthorized persons attempted to get past them, the investigation committee was the first live persons the bored men had seen since relieving the prior shift. Venn lingered with his patrollers to make his arrangements for the stunner ambush of the ba, should it appear, and Miles led Roic, Greenlaw, and the adjudicator aboard the ship.

The gleaming rows of replicator racks in Dubauer's leased cargo hold appeared unchanged from yesterday. Greenlaw grew tense about the lips, guiding her floater around the hold on an initial overview, then pausing to stare down the aisles. Miles thought he could almost see her doing the multiplication in her head. She and Leutwyn then hovered by Miles's side as he activated a few control panels to demonstrate the replicators' contents.

It was almost a repeat of yesterday, except . . . a number of the readout indicators showed amber instead of green. Closer examination revealed them as measures of an array of stressor-signals, including adrenaline levels. Was the ba right about the fetuses reaching some sort of biological limit in their containers? Was this the first sign of dangerous overgrowth? As Miles watched, a couple of the light bars dropped back on their own from amber to a more encouraging green. He went on to call up the vid monitor images of the individual fetuses for Greenlaw's and the adjudicator's views. The fourth one he activated showed amniotic fluid cloudy with scarlet blood when the lights came on. Miles caught his breath. How . . . ?

That surely wasn't normal. The only possible source of blood was the fetus itself. He rechecked the stressor levels—this one showed a lot of amber—then stood on tiptoe and peered more closely at the image. The blood appeared to be leaking from a small, jagged gash on the twitching haut infant's back. The low red lighting, Miles reassured himself uneasily, made it look worse than it was.

Greenlaw's voice by his ear made him jump. “Is there something wrong with that one?”

“He appears to have suffered some sort of mechanical injury. That . . . shouldn't be possible, in a sealed replicator.” He thought of Aral Alexander, and Helen Natalia, and his stomach knotted. “If you have any quaddie experts in replicator reproduction, it might not be a bad idea to get them in here to look at these.” He doubted this was a specialty where the military medicos from the Prince Xav were likely to be much help.

Venn appeared at the door of the hold, and Greenlaw repeated most of Miles's orienting patter for his benefit. Venn's expression was most disturbed as he regarded the replicators. “That frog fellow wasn't lying. This is very strange.”

Venn's wrist com buzzed, and he excused himself to float to the side of the room and engage in some low- voiced conversation with whatever subordinate was reporting in. At least, it began as low-voiced, until Venn bellowed, “What? When? ”

Miles abandoned his worried study of the injured haut infant and edged over to Venn.

“About 0200, sir,” a distressed voice responded from the wrist com.

“This wasn't authorized!”

“Yes, it was, Crew Chief, duly. Portmaster Thorne authorized it. Since it was the same passenger it had brought on board yesterday, the one who had that live cargo to tend, we didn't think anything was odd.”

“What time did they leave ?” Venn asked. His face was a mask of dismay.

“Not on our shift, sir. I don't know what happened after that. I went straight home and went to bed. I didn't see the search bulletin for Portmaster Thorne on the news stream till I got up for breakfast just a few minutes ago.”

“Why didn't you pass this on in your end-of-shift report?”

“Portmaster Thorne said not to.” The voice hesitated. “At least . . . the passenger suggested we might want to leave this off the record, so that we wouldn't have to deal with all the other passengers demanding access too if they heard about it, and Portmaster Thorne nodded and said Yes .”

Venn winced, and took a deep breath. “It can't be helped, Patroller. You reported as soon as you knew. I'm glad you at least picked up the news right away. We'll take it from here. Thank you.” Venn cut the channel.

“What was that all about?” asked Miles. Roic had strolled up to loom over his shoulder.

Venn clutched his head with his upper hands, and groaned, “My night-shift guard on the Idris just woke up and saw the news bulletin about Thorne being missing. He says Thorne came here last night about oh-two-hundred and passed Dubauer through the guards.”

“Where did Thorne go after that?”

“Escorted Dubauer aboard, apparently. Neither of them came off while my night-shift crew was watching. Excuse me. I need to go talk to my people.” Venn grabbed his floater control and swung hastily out of the cargo hold.

Miles stood stunned. How could Bel have gone from an uncomfortable, but relatively safe, nap in a recycling bin to this action in little more than an hour? Garnet Five had taken six or seven hours to wake up. His high confidence in his judgment of Gupta's account was suddenly shaken.

Roic, eyes narrowing, asked, “Could your herm friend have gone renegade, m'lord? Or been bribed?”

Adjudicator Leutwyn looked to Greenlaw, who looked sick with uncertainty.

“I would sooner doubt . . . myself,” said Miles. And that was slandering Bel. “Although the portmaster might have been bribed with a nerve disruptor muzzle pressed to its spine, or something equivalent.” He wasn't sure he wanted to even try to imagine the ba's bioweapon equivalent. “Bel would play for time.”

“How could this ba find the portmaster when we couldn't?” asked Leutwyn.

Miles hesitated. “The ba wasn't hunting Bel. The ba was hunting Guppy. If the ba had been closing in last night when Guppy counterattacked his shadowers . . . the ba might have come along immediately after, or even been a witness. And allowed itself to be diverted, or swapped its priorities, in the face of the unexpected opportunity to gain access to its cargo through Bel.”

What priorities? What did the ba want? Well, Gupta dead, certainly, doubly so now that the amphibian was witness to both its initial clandestine operation, and to the murders by which the ba had attempted to completely erase its trail. But for the ba to have been so close to its target, and yet veer off, suggested that the other priority was overwhelmingly more important to it.

The ba had spoken of utterly destroying its purportedly animal cargo; the ba had also spoken of taking tissue samples for freezing. The ba had spoken lie upon lie, but suppose this was the truth? Miles wheeled to stare down the aisle of racks. The image formed itself in his mind: of the ba working all day, with relentless speed and concentration. Loosening the lid of each replicator, stabbing through membrane, fluid, and soft skin with a sampling needle, lining the needles up, row on row, in a freezer unit the size of a small valise. Miniaturizing the essence of its genetic payload to something it could carry away in one hand. At the cost of abandoning their originals? Destroying the evidence?

Maybe it has, and we just can't see the effects yet. If the ba could make adult-sized bodies steam away their own liquids within hours and turn to viscous puddles, what could it do with such tiny ones?

The Cetagandan wasn't stupid. Its smuggling scheme might have gone according to plan, but for the slipup with Gupta. Who had followed the ba here, and drawn in Solian—whose disappearance had led to the muddle with Corbeau and Garnet Five, which had led to the bungled raid on the quaddie security post, which had resulted in the impoundment of the fleet, including the ba's precious cargo. Miles knew exactly how it felt to watch a carefully planned mission slide down the toilet in a flush of random mischance. How would the ba respond to that sick, heart-pounding desperation? Miles had almost no sense of the person, despite meeting it twice. The ba was smooth and slick and self-controlled. It could kill with a touch, smiling.

But if the ba was paring down its payload to a minimum mass, it certainly wouldn't saddle its escape with a prisoner.

“I think,” said Miles, and had to stop and clear a throat gone dry. Bel would play for time. But suppose time and ingenuity ran out, and no one came, and no one came, and no one came . . . ”I think Bel might still be aboard the Idris . We must search the ship. At once.”

Roic stared around, looking daunted. “All of it, m'lord?”

He started to cry Yes! but his laggard brain converted it to, “No. Bel had no