Quinn's eyes snapped up to the girl in the vid. Her voice became lower in register, with a clipped hard edge. This one, Ethan thought involuntarily, really has commanded in combat. 'Have you called Station Security?'
'Station Security!' The girl recoiled. 'Elli, what for?'
'Call them now, and tell them everything you've told me. File a missing person report on Teki.'
'For a fellow who's late for a date? Elli, they'll laugh at me. You're laughing at me, aren't you?' she said uncertainly.
'I'm dead serious. Ask to speak with Captain Arata. Tell him Commander Quinn sent you. He won't laugh.'
'But Elli—'
'Do it now! I have to go. I'll check back with you as soon as I can.'
The girl's image dissolved in sparkling snow. Invective hissed under Quinn's breath.
'What's going on?' asked Cee, emerging from the bathroom fastening the wrists of his green coveralls.
'I think Millisor has picked up Teki for questioning,' said Quinn. 'In which case my cover has just gone up in smoke. Damn it! There was no logical reason for Millisor to do that! Is he thinking with his gonads now? That's not like him.'
'The logic of desperation, maybe,' said Cee. 'He was very upset by the disappearance of Okita. Even more upset by Dr. Urquhart's reappearance. He, um—had some very strange theories about Dr. Urquhart.'
'On the basis of which,' said Ethan, 'you went to a great deal of trouble to find me. I'm sorry I'm not the super-agent you were expecting.'
Cee gave him a rather odd look. 'Don't be.'
'I meant to push Millisor off-balance.' Quinn bit through a fingernail with an audible snap. 'But not that far off. I gave them no reason to take Teki. Or I wouldn't have, if he'd done what I told him and turned around immediately—I knew better than to involve a non-professional. Why didn't I listen to myself? Poor Teki won't know what hit him.'
'You didn't have any such scruples about involving me,' remarked Ethan, miffed.
'You were involved already. And besides, I didn't use to baby-sit you when you were a toddler. And besides…' she paused, shooting him a look strangely akin to the one Cee had just given him, 'you underestimate yourself,' she finished.
'Where are you going?' asked Ethan in alarm as she stalked toward the door.
'I'm going to—' she began determinedly. Her hand, reaching for the door control, hesitated and fell back. 'I'm going to think this through.'
She turned and began to pace. 'Why are they holding him so long?' she asked. Ethan was not quite sure if the question was addressed to him, Cee, or the air. 'They could've drained him of everything he knew in fifteen minutes. Let him wake up on a tube car thinking he'd dozed off on the way home, and no one the wiser, not even me.'
'They found out everything I knew in fifteen minutes,' Ethan pointed out, 'but that didn't stop them.'
'Yes, but their suspicions were aroused, sorry, you were quite right, by finding my bug on you. I deliberately put nothing on Teki so that couldn't happen again. Besides, they can check Teki in Kline Station records back to his conception. You were a man without a past, or at least with an inaccessible one, leaving lots of room for paranoid fantasies to grow.'
'As a result of which it took them seven hours to convince themselves they were right the first time,' said Ethan.
Cee spoke. 'And since Okita's disappearance they think you are an agent who successfully resisted seven hours of interrogation. They may be even less willing to take 'I don't know' for an answer now.'
'In that case,' said Quinn grimly, 'the sooner I get Teki out of there the better.'
'Excuse me,' said Ethan, 'but out of where?'
'Odds are, Millisor's quarters. Where you were questioned. Their quiet room, the one I've never been able to bug.' She ran her hands through her hair wildly. 'How the hell am I going to do this? A frontal assault on a defended cube in the middle of a pack of innocent civilians in the delicate mechanical environment of a space station… ? Doesn't sound too efficient.'
'How did you rescue Dr. Urquhart?' asked Cee.
'I waited—patiently—for him to come out. I waited a long time for the best opportunity.'
'Quite a long time, yes,' Ethan agreed cordially. They exchanged tight smiles.
She paced back and forth like a frenzied tigress. 'I'm being stampeded. I know I am. I can feel it. Millisor is reaching out for me through Teki. And Millisor's a man with no inhibitions about applying leverage. Q. E. D.—Quinn Eats Dirt. Gods. Don't panic, Quinn. What would Admiral Naismith do in the same situation?' She stood still, facing the wall.
Ethan envisioned diving Dendarii starfighters, waves of space-armored assault troops, ominous lumbering high-energy weapons platforms jockeying for position.
'Never do yourself,' muttered Quinn, 'what you can con an expert into doing for you. That's what he'd say. Tactical judo from the space magician himself.' Her straight back held the dynamism of zen meditation. When she turned her face was radiant with jubilation. 'Yes, that's exactly what he'd do! Sneaky little dwarf, I love you!' She saluted an invisible presence and dove for the comconsole.
Cee glanced dismayed inquiry at Ethan, who shrugged helplessly.
The image of an alert-looking clerk in pine green and sky blue materialized above the vid plate. 'Ecobranch Epidemiology Hotline. May I help you?' the clerk intoned politely.
'I'd like to report a suspected disease vector,' said Quinn in her most brusque, no-nonsense manner.
The clerk arranged a report panel at her elbow, poised her fingers over it. 'Human or animal?'
'Human.'
'Transient or Stationer?'
'Transient. But he may even now be transmitting it to a Stationer.'
The clerk looked even more seriously interested. 'And the disease?'
'Alpha-S-D-plasmid-3.'
The clerk's tapping hand paused. 'Alpha-S-D-plasmid-2 is a sexually transmitted soft tissue necrosis that originated on Varusa Tertius. Is that what you mean?'
Quinn shook her head. 'This is a new and much more virulent mutant strain of Varusan Crotch-rot. They haven't even bioengineered the counter-virus last I heard. Hadn't you people heard of it yet? You're fortunate.'
The clerk's eyebrows rose. 'No, ma'am.' She tapped furiously, and made several adjustments to her recording equipment. 'And the name of the suspected vector?'
'Ghem-lord Harman Dal, a Cetagandan art and artifacts broker. He has a new agency in Transients' Lounge, just licensed a few weeks ago. He comes in contact with a lot of people.'
Harman Dal, Ethan gathered, was Millisor's alias.
'Oh, dear,' said the clerk. 'We're certainly glad to get this report. Ah…' the clerk paused, groping for phrasing. 'And how did you come to know about this individual's disease?'
Quinn's stern gaze broke from the clerk's face to her own feet, to distant corners of the room, to her twisting hands. She positively shuffled. She'd have blushed if she'd had a chance to hold her breath long enough. 'How would you think?' she muttered to her belt buckle.
'Oh.' The clerk did blush. 'Oh. Well, in that case we are extremely grateful that you chose to come forward. I assure you all such epidemiological matters are handled in the strictest confidence. You must see one of our own quarantine physicians at once—'
'Absolutely,' agreed Quinn, feigning nervous eagerness. 'Can I come down now? But—but I'm terribly afraid that if you don't hurry, Dal is going to put three patients on your hands instead of just two. '
'I assure you, ma'am, our department is adept at handling delicate situations. Please place your ID so the machine can read it—'
Quinn did so, promised again to report directly to Quarantine, was reassured of anonymity and gratitude, and broke off.
'There, Teki,' she sighed. 'Help is on the way. I've signed my real name to a criminal act, but the price was right.'
