The Domino Pattern (3 page)

The Human doctor’s name was Witherspoon. “Well?” I asked as he scrubbed his hands in the dispensary’s cleansing sink.

“Well, what?” he countered. His voice was tired and bitter, with the frustration of a professional healer who’s just lost one.

But through the frustration I could also hear an uneasiness that I suspected had nothing to do with possible malpractice charges. “What did he die of?” I asked.

He looked up at me from under bushy eyebrows. “You a relative of the deceased?” he asked, an edge of challenge in his tone.

“My name is Compton,” I said. “I do investigations for the Spiders.”

“What kind of investigations?”

“Investigations they need me to do.” I said. “Was he poisoned, or wasn’t he?”

Witherspoon looked at the server still standing silently across the room, then back at me, then over at the other side of the room, where Kennrick and the other two Shorshians were consulting in low voices with the Filly doctor. “He was definitely poisoned,” he said, lowering his own voice. “The problem is that Shorshians are highly susceptible to poisons, and there are a thousand different ones that can create symptoms like this. Without an autopsy, there’s no way to know which one killed him.”

I nodded and turned to Bayta. “Where can we set up for an autopsy?” I asked her.

“Wait a minute,” Witherspoon protested before Bayta could answer. “Even if I was practiced at non-Human autopsies, we don’t have the kind of equipment aboard to handle something like that.”

“How about just a biochem autopsy?” I asked.

“That takes almost as much equipment as the regular version,” he said. “Not to mention a truckload of specialized chemicals and reagents.”

“A spectroscopic test, then?” I persisted.

“Mr. Compton, just how well equipped do you think Quadrail trains are?” he asked, his patience starting to crack at the edges.

“Obviously, not very,” I conceded. “Luckily for us, I happen to have a spectroscopic analyzer in my compartment.”

“Right,” Witherspoon said with a sniff. He took another look at my face, his derision level slipping a notch. “You
are
joking, aren’t you?”

The conversation between Kennrick, the Filly, and the two Shorshians had faded away into silence. “Not at all,” I assured the whole group. “I trust you at least know which tissue samples would be the most useful?”

“Yes, I think so,” Witherspoon said, still staring at me. “You have a
spectroscopic analyzer
? In your
compartment
?”

“I use it in my work,” I explained. “Do you have the necessary equipment for taking the tissue samples, or will the Spiders need to scrounge something up?”

“The Spiders have sampling kits.” Bayta put in.

“I also have a couple in my bag,” Witherspoon said, gesturing to the cabinet where a traditional doctor’s bag was sitting on one of the shelves. “May I ask what kind of investigations you do that you require a spectroscopic analyzer?”

“Show me the medical relevance of that information and I may share it with you,” I said. “Otherwise, let’s get on with it.”

Witherspoon’s lip twitched. “Of course.” He looked over at the Shorshians. “but I’ll need permission for the autopsy.”

Kennrick, who’d been staring at me in much the same way Witherspoon had been, belatedly picked up on the cue. “Master Bofiv?” he asked, turning to the taller of the two Shorshians. “Can you advise me on Shorshic law and custom on such things?”

[It is not proper that such be done by strangers,] Master Bofiv said, his Shishish sounding harsher than usual here in the dead of night. Or maybe it was the presence of the recently deceased that was adding all the extra corners to the words.

“I understand your reluctance,” Kennrick said, giving a respectful little duck of his head. “But in a case of such importance, surely an exception can be made.”

“And indeed
must
be made,” I put in.

[We cannot grant this permission,] Bofiv said. [We are not kin, nor of similar path.]

“What about
di
-Master Strinni?” Kennrick asked. “I believe he and Master Colix were of similar paths.”

The two Shorshians looked at each other. [That may perhaps be proper,] Bofiv said, a little reluctantly. [But the approach is not mine to make.]

[Nor mine,] the other Shorshian added.

“I understand. Master Tririn,” Kennrick said, nodding to him. He looked over at me. “It was Mr. Compton’s idea. Mr. Compton can ask
di
-Master Strinni.”

[That is acceptable,] Bofiv said before I could protest.

I grimaced. But there was no way out of it. Not if we wanted to find out what had killed the late Master Colix. “Where’s
di
-Master Strinni now?” I asked.

“He has a seat in first class,” Kennrick said. “I’ll take you there.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Bayta, you might as well wait here.”

“I could—” she began, then broke off. “All right,” she said instead.

I gestured to Kennrick. “After you.”

We left the dispensary and headed down the darkened, quiet corridor toward the front of the train. “Thanks so very much for this,” I murmured to him as we walked.

“My pleasure,” he said calmly. “I still have a business relationship with these people. If they end up being mortally offended at someone, I’d rather it be you than me.”

“Can’t fault the logic,” I had to admit. “What exactly is this
similar path
thing Bofiv mentioned, and how come he and a
di
-Master are at the same place on it.”

“It’s a religious thing.” Kennrick said. “The Path of something unpronounceable and untranslatable. Very big among the professional classes at the moment.”

“Really,” I said, frowning. Major changes in alien religious alignments were one of the things Human intelligence agencies worked very hard to keep tabs on. “I don’t remember any briefings on that.”

“It really only took off in the past couple of years,” Kennrick said. “A lot of Shorshians call it a cult and look down their bulbous snouts at it.”

“What’s
your
take?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m just a lowly Human. What do I know?”

Di
-Master Strinni’s seat was near the center of the rear first-class car. Unlike the seats in second and third, those in first could be folded completely flat for sleeping, with extendable canopies instead of the far less roomy cylindrical roll-over privacy shields that were standard in the lower classes. Strinni himself hadn’t bothered with the canopy tonight, but was merely lying asleep with his inner eyelids closed against the soft glow of the car’s night-lights and the scattered handful of reading lamps still operating.

I’d never had cause to try waking a Shorshian from a sound sleep, and it turned out to be harder than I’d expected, But with Kennrick’s encouragement I persisted, and eventually the inner eyelids rolled back up and Strinni came fully conscious.

He wasn’t at all happy at being woken up out of his sleep. But his annoyance disappeared as soon as he heard the grim news. [You believe this not merely a random tragedy?] he asked after I’d explained the situation.

“We’re not sure,” I said. “That’s why we need to test some tissue samples.”

[Might there be a Guidesman of the Path aboard?]

“No idea,
di
-Master Strinni,” Kennrick said.

“I could ask one of the conductors,” I offered.

The inner eyelids dipped down. I was just wondering if he’d gone back to sleep when they rolled up again. [No need,] he said. [If there was one, that truth would have been made known to me.]

Kennrick and I looked at each other. “So is that a yes?” I suggested.

[No.] he said flatly. [You may not cut into Master Colix’s flesh.]

I braced myself. “
Di
-Master Strinni—”

[The subject is closed,] he cut me off. He settled back in his seat, and once again the inner eyelids came down.

This time, they stayed there. “What now?” Kennrick asked.

I frowned at the sleeping Shorshian. Without some idea of what had knocked Colix off his unpronounceable Path, our options were going to he severely limited. “Let’s go talk to his traveling companions,” I said. “Maybe they’ll have some idea of who might have wanted him dead.”

The crowd in the second/third dispensary had shrunk considerably by the time Kennrick and I returned. Only Bayta, Witherspoon, and Master Tririn were still there. And Colix’s body, of course. “Where’d everyone go?” I asked as Kennrick and I joined them.

“Dr. Aronobal—she’s the Filiaelian doctor—went off to work up her report on the death,” Bayta said. “Master Bofiv wasn’t feeling well and returned to his seat.”

“Well?” Witherspoon asked. During our absence, he’d laid out a small sampling kit, complete with scalpel, hypo, and six sample vials.

“Sorry,” I said. “
Di
-Master Strinni wouldn’t give his permission.”

[Did you explain the situation?] Tririn asked.

“In detail. Master Tririn,” Kennrick assured him.

“Unless there’s a Guidesman of the Path around to supervise, we aren’t allowed to cut into Master Colix’s body,” I added.

“Are we sure there
isn’t
someone like that aboard?” Witherspoon asked.

“We’d have to ask the Spiders,” I said, looking at Bayta.

She gave me a microscopic shrug. “I suppose we could make inquiries,” she said.

Translation: she’d already asked. Either there wasn’t a Guidesman aboard or else it wasn’t something the Spiders routinely kept track of.

“Speaking of Spiders,” Kennrick said, “where’s the one that was here earlier?”

“He’s gone about other duties,” Bayta said. “Did you want him for something?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.” Kennrick pointed to the drug cabinet. “I notice that none of those bottles are labeled.”

“Actually, they are,” Bayta said. “The dot patterns along the sides are Spider notation.”

“If a passenger needs something, the Spider prints out a label in his or her native language,” Witherspoon explained. “Saves having to try to squeeze a lot of different notations onto something that small.”

“I’m sure it does,” Kennrick said. “But that also means none of the rest of us has any idea what’s actually in any of them.”

Bayta frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean we don’t actually
know
that the drugs Dr. Witherspoon and Dr. Aronobal injected into Master Colix were actually helpful,” Kennrick said. “It could easily have been just the opposite.”

“Are you accusing the Spiders of deliberately causing him harm?” Bayta asked, a not-so-subtle challenge in her tone.

“Maybe,” Kennrick said. “Or else someone might have sneaked in here while the Spider was absent or distracted and changed some of the labels.”

I stepped around the body on the table and went over to the drug cabinet. I’d noted earlier that the doors were glassed in; up close, I could see now that it wasn’t glass, but some kind of grained polymer. Experimentally, I gave it a rap with my knuckles, then tried the latch.

The door didn’t budge. “That would have to be one hell of a distracted Spider,” I said, turning back to Kennrick. “Besides, wasn’t Master Colix showing symptoms of poisoning before they even brought him in here?”

“Symptoms can be counterfeited,” Kennrick said. He looked at the body on the table. “Or faked.”

“You mean Master Colix might have faked his own poisoning so as to get brought in here so he could get pumped full of something lethal from the Spiders’ private drugstore?” I asked.

“Well, yes, if you put it that way I suppose it sounds a little far-fetched,” Kennrick admitted. “Still, we need to cover all possibilities.”

I turned to Tririn. “Did Master Colix have any addictions or strange tastes?”

[I don’t truly know,] Tririn said, a bit hesitantly. [I wasn’t well acquainted with him.]

“You
were
business colleagues, correct?”

[True,] Tririn said. [But he had only recently joined our contract team.] He ducked his head to Kennrick. [I would say that Master Kennrick probably knew him as well as I did.]

“And I only met him a couple of months ago.” Kennrick put in.

Mentally. I shook my head in disgust. Between
di
-Master Strinni, Kennrick, and Tririn, this was about as unhelpful a bunch as I’d run into for some time. “How about Master Bofiv, then?” I asked. “Did
he
know Master Colix?”

[I don’t know,] Tririn said. [I believe
di
-Master Strinni knew him best.]

I looked at my watch. I’d already had to awaken Strinni once tonight, and I wasn’t interested in trying it again. “We’ll start with Master Bofiv,” I decided. “Where is he?”

“Four cars back,” Kennrick said. “I’ll take you.”

“Just tell me which seat.” I said, taking Bayta’s arm and steering her toward the door. “You should stay with Master Tririn.”

“I’m going with you,” Kennrick said firmly. “These people are my business colleagues. Whatever happened to Master Colix, we need to resolve it before it poisons relations between us.” He winced. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”

“I’ll stay here with Master Tririn.” Witherspoon volunteered. “There may be a couple of tests I can do that don’t involve cutting.”

“I’ll stay, too, then.” Bayta said. “I’d like to watch.”

I eyed her. Her face was its usual neutral mask, but there was something beneath the surface I couldn’t quite read. Probably she didn’t like the idea of the body being left alone with a couple of strangers with no Spider present. “Fine,” I said. “Come on, Kennrick.”

Second-class seats weren’t as mobile as those in first class, but they were movable enough to allow families and friends to arrange themselves into little conversation and game circles. Those circles usually remained into and through the nighttime hours, which gave a cozy sort of sleeping-bags-around-the-campfire look to those cars when everyone set up their privacy shields.

Not so in third. In third, where the seats were fixed in neat rows of three each on either side of the central aisle, the rows of cylindrical privacy shields always looked to me like the neatly arranged coffins from some horrible disaster.

“He’s down there,” Kennrick murmured, pointing.

I craned my neck. Master Bofiv was in one of the middle seats to my right, his seat reclined as far as it would go, his privacy shield open. “I see him,” I confirmed. “Quietly, now.”

We headed back, making as little noise as possible. Third-class seats weren’t equipped with sonic neutralizers like those in first and second, leaving it up to the individual passenger to spring for his or her own earplugs or portable neutralizers or else to hope for quiet neighbors.

Bofiv was lying quietly when we reached his row. One of the passengers three rows up from him had his reading light on, which had the effect of throwing the Shorshian into even deeper shadow than he would have been in without it.

Still, I could see him well enough to tell that his inner eyelids were closed. “I woke up
di
-Master Strinni.” I whispered to Kennrick. “It’s your turn.”

“But you’re so good at it.” Kennrick said, gesturing. “Please; go ahead.”

“You’re too kind,” I said, frowning. On Bofiv’s left, against the car’s side wall, was an empty scat, presumably that of his compatriot Master Tririn.

But on Bofiv’s right, where I would have expected to find the empty scat of the late Master Colix, was the smooth half-cylinder of a closed privacy shield. “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at it.

“A Nemut,” Kennrick said. “He’s not part of our group.”

“Why isn’t that Colix’s scat?” I asked. “Didn’t he want to sit with his buddies?”

“I don’t know,” Kennrick said, frowning. “Huh. I hadn’t really thought about that. You think maybe the others didn’t like him?”

“Or vice versa,” I said, making a mental note to ask Bofiv and Tririn which of the party had come up with the seating arrangements. “So where
was
Colix sitting?”

“There.” Kennrick said, pointing to an empty middle seat across the aisle and two rows forward of the sleeping Bofiv.

I backtracked for a closer look. The late Master Colix’s seat was flanked by a pair of privacy shields. Irreverently, I wondered it one of the shields concealed an attractive female Shorshian. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to ditch his colleagues.

And then, as if on cue, the aisle shield retracted to reveal a young Human female.

A
really
young female, in fact. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, and even that was pushing it. Her face was thin and drawn, with the look of someone who’d just gone two rounds with food that didn’t agree with her.

Make that three rounds. Even before the privacy shield had retracted completely into the armrest and leg-rest storage lip she was on the move, heading toward the front of the car at the quick-walk of the digestively desperate.

I eyed the remaining privacy shield in that particular three-seat block. Maybe
that
was the knockout Shorshic female.

“Well?” Kennrick prompted.

“Well, what?” I countered, turning around to watch the girl. She reached the front of the car and disappeared into one of the restrooms.

“Are we going to ask Master Bofiv about Master Colix’s habits and appetites?” Kennrick elaborated.

“In a minute,” I said, a sudden unpleasant tingling on the back of my neck as I stared at the closed restroom door. Colix had gotten sick and died… and now one of his seatmates had suddenly made a mad dash tor the facilities?

Kennrick caught the sudden change in my tone. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

“Or?”

“Or maybe something,” I said, glancing at my watch. Five minutes, I decided. If the girl wasn’t back in five minutes I would grab a Spider and send him in to find her.

It was something of an anticlimax when, three minutes later, the door opened and the girl reappeared. She started a little unsteadily back down the aisle toward her seat, looking even more drawn than she had before.

“Or nothing. I take it?” Kennrick murmured.

“So it would seem,” I agreed. The girl’s eyes were fixed on me as she came toward us, a wary and rather baleful expression on her pale face. I waited until she was about five steps from us and then tried my best concerned smile on her. “You all right, miss?” I asked softly.

“I’m fine,” she said, clipping out each word like she was trimming a thorn hedge. If my concerned smile was having any effect, I sure couldn’t detect it. “You mind?”

I wasn’t even close to blocking her way, but I gave her a little more room anyway. “I just wondered if you were unwell.”

“I’m fine,” she said again, brushing past me and flopping down into her seat. She adjusted herself a bit and reached for the privacy shield control.

“Because your seatmate had a bad attack of something,” I went on, kneeling down beside her. No point including any more eavesdroppers in this conversation than absolutely necessary. “You might have noticed when his friends took him to the dispensary?”

She slid the control forward, and the shield started to rotate into its closed position. “The dispensary, where he died?” I finished.

The shield closed. I counted off three seconds; and then, the shield opened again. “What did you just say?” the girl asked, her face suddenly tight.

“I said Master Colix is dead,” I repeated.

For a long moment she just stared at me. Her eyes flicked up to Kennrick, then back to me. “How?” she whispered.

“He was poisoned.” I said. “What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Terese,” she said. “Terese German.”

“Frank Compton,” I introduced myself in return. “How well did you know Master Colix?”

“Hardly at all,” Terese said, looking at Kennrick again.

“You didn’t talk to him?” Kennrick asked.

Terese hunched her shoulders. “Mostly I read or listened to music.”

“But you must have at least occasionally talked to him,” Kennrick persisted. “You’ve been sitting together for the past two weeks, after all.”

“He’s the one who did all the talking,” Terese growled. “Mostly about his job. Oh, and he showed me a few holos of his family, too.”

“He was married?” I asked.

A shadow of something crossed her face. “No, they were pictures of his parents and brothers,” she said.

“Are
you
married?” Kennrick asked.

“Is that any of your business?” she countered stiffly, giving him an icy look.

“I was just wondering if you were traveling alone.” he said in a tone of slightly wounded innocence.

“Then
ask
that,” the girl bit out.

“Our apologies,” I said hastily. “
Are
you traveling alone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you remember Master Colix mentioning feeling ill prior to tonight?” I asked.

“Not to me,” she said. She let her glare linger on Kennrick another couple of seconds, apparently making sure he got the message, then looked back at me. “As far as I could tell, he felt fine. At least, up to a couple of hours ago.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “But he was shifting in his seat a lot and making these funny noises.”

“What kind of noises? What did they sound like?”

“Mostly uncomfortable-sounding grunts,” she said. “Like his stomach was bothering him.”

I gestured toward her abdomen. “Like the way your stomach was bothering you a minute ago?”

“It’s not the same thing.” she said tartly.

“How do you know?” I countered.

“I’ve got some stomach trouble, that’s all,” she insisted. “Nothing I’m going to die from.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering if Colix had been thinking the same thing up to the point where the doctors started poking hypos into him. “What happened then?”

“I was just wondering it I should give up and go to the bar for a while to get away from the noise when he got out of his seat and headed back to his friends,” she said.

“How long ago was this?” Kennrick asked.

“Like I said, a couple of hours,” she told him.

“Any chance you can pin it down a little more closely?” he asked.

“No, I can’t,” she said. “I was trying to sleep. I wasn’t exactly looking at my watch.”

“That’s all right,” I assured her. “Did anything in particular happen just prior to that time? Had he just returned from the dining car, or had a snack?”

“Or had he been talking to anyone other than you and his other seatmate?” Kennrick asked.

“He hadn’t been anywhere or done anything that I saw.” Terese nodded at Kennrick. “And the only visitor I saw was you.”

I frowned at Kennrick. “You were back here this evening?”

“Early afternoon,” he corrected. “I was working on the plans for a traditional Shorshic halfway-celebration meal for next week and wanted Master Colix’s advice on menu and procedure.”

“I low long was this before the uncomfortable grunts started?” I asked Terese.

“Oh, hours,” she said. “He had dinner afterwards. And if he had any snacks, I didn’t see them.”

Dead end. “Did Master Colix go anywhere else this evening? Maybe back to talk with his colleagues a couple of rows back?”

“No.” Terese hesitated. “Actually, I had the feeling he didn’t get along too well with them.”

“How so?”

“For one thing, he didn’t want to sit with them,” she said. “The Nemut in the aisle seat offered to trade with him right after we left Homshil, but he turned him down.”

I looked at Kennrick. “And you didn’t notice any of this undercurrent during your meetings on Earth?”

“No. but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” he said. “Shorshians are very good at social compartmentalization. They can all behave in a perfectly friendly way in a business setting even if they personally can’t stand each other.”

“Not even now that they’re on their way home?” I asked. “Wouldn’t one of them have at least mentioned it?”

“They wouldn’t have mentioned it to me,” Kennrick said. “I work for Pellorian Medical, so wherever I am is by definition a business setting. Ditto whenever the Shorshians are with any of the four Filiaelians in our group.”

“Are any of the Filiaelians in this car?” I asked, glancing around.

“No, they’re all up in first,” he said. “And I doubt any of them has made the trek back here since the trip started.” He cocked an eyebrow. “But the fact the Shorshians won’t talk about their problems to
me
doesn’t mean they won’t open up to
you
.”

I made a face. “In other words, it’s time for me to nudge, shake, or otherwise drag Master Bofiv back to the land of the living?”

“Just be persistent,” Kennrick advised. “As you saw, they
do
wake up eventually.”

He headed back toward Bofiv’s scat. “Nice guy,” Terese muttered.

“He’s all that,” I agreed, getting back to my feet. “Thanks for your time.”

I joined Kennrick at Bofiv’s row. The Shorshian was still lying on his back, his inner eyelids closed. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved at all since our arrival. “Master Bofiv?” I called softly, giving his arm a cautious shake.

There was no response. “Master Bofiv?” I called again, wiggling the arm a little harder.

Still nothing. I glanced toward the front of the car, wondering if there might be a Spider nearby who I could commandeer for this duty. There wasn’t, but I did note that Terese was leaning around her seat watching us.

I turned back to Bofiv. “Master Bofiv, I need to talk to you,” I said. I shook his arm again, still without effect, then reached up to try patting the side of his neck.

It was cold. Not cold in the way a sleeping person’s skin might get if he forgot to tuck his blanket all the way up to his chin. Bofiv’s skin was much colder.

I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on. The deep shadows had hidden his skin earlier, but I could see now that it had the same mottling that Colix’s skin had shown there at the end.

I gazed down at his empty face, a hard knot forming in my stomach. No one was going to be nudging, shaking, or otherwise dragging Bofiv back to the land of the living. Not anymore.

I looked back at Terese. She was still peering around the side of her seat, her curiosity starting to drift over into uncertainty. “What’s the matter?” she stage-whispered.

“Do me a favor,” I told her. “Go find a conductor and tell him that I need him and another Spider back here right away. And have them get Dr. Witherspoon out of the second/third dispensary and bring him along.”

Terese got out of her seat, her eyes on Bofiv’s still form. “Is he sick?” she asked.

“No,” I told her. “He’s dead.”