"The bays aren't that closely controlled or patrolled," Bel admitted. "We let crew and passengers use the empty ones for exercise spaces or games, sometimes."
"Hm." Someone had certainly used one to play games with that synthesized blood, later.
After their utilitarian dinner, Miles had Bel conduct him back through the customs checkpoints to the hostel where the impounded ships' crews were housed. These digs were notably less luxurious and more crowded than the ones devoted to the paying galactic passengers, and the edgy crews had been stuck in them for days with nothing but the holovid and each other for entertainment. Miles was instantly pounced upon by assorted senior officers, both from the two Toscane Corporation ships and the two independents caught up in this fracas, demanding to know how soon he was going to obtain their release. He cut through the hubbub to request interviews with the medtechs assigned to the four ships, and a quiet room to conduct them in. Some shuffling produced, at length, a back office and a quartet of nervous Komarrans.
Miles addressed the Idris's medtech first. "How hard would it be for an unauthorized person to gain access to your infirmary?"
The man blinked. "Not hard at all, Lord Auditor. I mean, it's not locked. In case of an emergency, people might need to be able to get in right away, without hunting me up. I might even be the emergency." He paused, then added, "A few of my medications and some equipment are kept in code-locked drawers, with tighter inventory controls, of course. But for the rest, there's no need. In dock, who comes on and off the ship is controlled by ship's security, and in space, well, that takes care of itself."
"You haven't had trouble with theft, then? Equipment going for a walk, supplies disappearing?"
"Very little. I mean, the ship is public, but it's not that kind of public. If you see what I mean."
The medtechs from the two independent ships reported similar protocols when in space, but when in dock both were required to keep their little departments secured when they were not themselves on duty there. Miles reminded himself that one of these people might have been bribed to cooperate with whoever had undertaken the blood synthesis. Four suspects, eh. His next inquiry ascertained that all four ship's infirmaries did indeed keep portable synthesizers in inventory as standard equipment.
"If someone snuck in to one of your infirmaries to synthesize some blood, would you be able to tell that your equipment had been used?"
"If they cleaned up after themselves . . . maybe not," said the Idris's tech. "Or—how much blood?"
"Three to four liters."
The man's anxious face cleared. "Oh, yes. That is, if they used my supplies of phyllopacks and fluids, and didn't bring in their own. I'd have noticed if that much were gone."
"How soon would you notice?"
"Next time I looked, I suppose. Or at the monthly inventory, if I didn't have occasion to look before then."
"Have you noticed?"
"No, but—that is, I haven't looked."
Except that a suitably bribed medtech ought to be perfectly capable of fudging the inventory of such bulky and noncontrolled items. Miles decided to turn up the heat. He said blandly, "The reason I ask is that the blood that was found on the loading bay floor that kicked off this unfortunate—and expensive—chain of events, while it was indeed initially DNA typed as Lieutenant Solian's, was found to be synthesized. Quaddie customs claim to have no record of Solian ever crossing into Graf Station, which suggests, although it does not alas prove, that the blood might have been synthesized on the outboard side of the customs barrier too. I think we had better check each of your supply inventories, next."
The medtech from the Idris's Toscane-owned sister ship, the Rudra, frowned suddenly. "There was—" She broke off.
"Yes?" Miles said encouragingly.
"There was that funny passenger, who came in to ask me about my blood synthesizer. I just figured he was one of the nervous sorts of travelers, although when he explained himself, I also thought he probably had good reason to be."
Miles smiled carefully. "Tell me more about your funny passenger."
"He'd just signed on to the Rudra here at Graf Station. He said he was worried, if he had any accidents en route, because he couldn't take standard blood substitutes on account of being so heavily gengineered. Which he was. I mean, I believed him about the blood compatibility problems. That's why we carry the synthesizers, after all. He had the longest fingers—with webs. He told me he was an amphibian, which I didn't quite believe, till he showed me his gill slits. His ribs opened out in the most astonishing fashion. He said he has to keep spraying his gills with moisturizer, when he travels, because the air on ships and stations is too dry for him." She stopped, and swallowed.
Definitely not "Dubauer," then. Hm. Another player? But in the same game, or a different one?
She continued in a scared voice, "I ended up showing him my synthesizer, because he seemed so worried and kept asking questions about it. I mainly worried about what sorts of tranquilizers were going to be safe to use on him, if he turned out to be one of those people who gets hysterical eight days out."
Leaping about and whooping, Miles told himself firmly, would likely just frighten the young woman more. He did sit up and favor her with a perky smile, which made her shrink back in her chair only slightly. "When was this? What day?"
"Um . . . two days before the quaddies made us all evacuate the ship and come here."
Three days after Solian's vanishing. Better and better. "What was the passenger's name? Could you identify him again?'
"Oh, sure—I mean, webs, after all. He told me his name was Firka."
As if casually, Miles asked, "Would you be willing to repeat this testimony under fast-penta?"
She made a face. "I suppose so. Do I have to?"
Neither panicked nor too eager; good. "We'll see. Physical inventory next, I think. We'll start with the Rudra's infirmary." And just in case he was being led up the path by his nose, the others to follow.
More delays ensued, while Bel negotiated over the comconsole with Venn and Watts for the temporary release from house arrest of the medtechs as expert witnesses. Once those arrangements had been approved, the visit to the Rudra's infirmary was gratifyingly short, direct, and fruitful.
The medtech's supply of synthetic blood base was down by four liters. A phyllopack, with its hundreds of square meters of primed reaction surface stacked in microscopic layers in a convenient insert, was gone. And the blood synthesizing machine had been improperly cleaned. Miles smiled toothily as he personally scraped a tinge of organic residue from its tubing into a plastic bag for the delectation of the Prince Xav's surgeon.
It all rang sufficiently true that he set Roic to collecting copies of the Rudra's security records, with particular reference to Passenger Firka, and sent Bel off with the techs to cross-check the other three infirmaries without him. Miles returned to the Kestrel and handed off his new sample to Lieutenant Smolyani to convey promptly to the Prince Xav, then settled down to run a search for Firka's present location. He tracked him to the second of the two hostels taken up with the impounded ships' passengers, but the quaddie on security duty there reported that the man had signed out for the evening before dinner and had not yet returned. Firka's prior venture out that day had been around the time of the passengers' meeting; perhaps he'd been one of the men in the back of the room, although Miles certainly hadn't noticed a webbed hand raised for questions. Miles left orders with quaddie hostel security to call him or Armsman Roic when the passenger returned, regardless of the time.
Frowning, he called the first hostel to check on Dubauer. The Betan/Cetagandan herm/ba/whatever had indeed returned safely from the Idris, but had left again after dinner. Not in itself unusual: few of the trapped passengers stayed in their hostel when they could vary their evening boredom by seeking entertainment elsewhere on the station. But hadn't Dubauer just been the person who'd been too frightened to traverse Graf Station alone without an armed escort? Miles's frown deepened, and
he left orders to this quaddie duty guard to notify him when Dubauer, too, came back.
He rescanned the Idris's security vids on fast forward while waiting Roic's return. Paused close-up views of the hands of a number of otherwise unexceptionable visitors to the ship revealed no webs. It was nearing station midnight when Roic and Bel checked in.
Bel was yawning. "Nothing exciting," the herm reported. "I think we got it in one. I sent the medtechs back to the hostel with a security escort to tuck 'em into bed. What's next?"
Miles chewed gently on the side of his finger. "Wait for the surgeon to report identifications on the two samples I sent over to the Prince Xav. Wait for Firka and Dubauer to return to their hostels, or else go running all over the station looking for them. Or better yet, make Venn's patrollers do it, except that I don't really want to divert them from hunting for my assassin till they nail the fellow."
Roic, who had begun to look alarmed, relaxed again. "Good thinking, m'lord," he murmured gratefully.
"Sounds like a golden opportunity to sleep, to me," opined Bel.
Miles, to his irritation, was finding Bel's yawns contagious. Miles had never quite mastered their old mercenary colleague Commodore Tung's formidable ability to sleep anywhere, any time a break in the action permitted. He was sure he was still too keyed up to doze. "A nap, maybe," he granted grudgingly.
Bel, intelligently, at once seized the chance to go home to Nicol for a time. Overriding the herm's argument that it was a bodyguard, Miles made Bel take a quaddie patroller along. Regretfully, Miles decided to wait until he had heard back from the surgeon to call and wake up Chief Venn; he could not afford mistakes in quaddie eyes. He cleaned up and lay down himself in his tiny cabin for whatever sleep he could snatch. If he had a choice between a good night's uninterrupted sleep, and early news, he'd prefer news.
Venn would presumably let him know at once if Security effected an arrest of the quaddie with the rivet gun. Some space transfer stations were deliberately designed to be hard to hide in. Unfortunately, Graf wasn't one of them. Its architecture could only be described as an agglomeration. It had to be full of forgotten crannies. Best chance of catching the fellow would be if he attempted to leave; would he be cool enough to go to some den and lie low, instead? Or, having missed his target the first time—whoever his target had been—hot enough to circle back for another pass? Smolyani had disengaged the Kestrel from its lock and taken up position a few meters off the side of the station, just in case, while the Lord Auditor slept.
Replacing the question of who would want to shoot a harmless elderly Betan herm shepherding, well, sheep, with the question of who would want to shoot a Cetagandan ba smuggling a secret human—or superhuman—cargo of inestimable value, at least to the Star Crèche . . . opened up the range of possible complications in an extremely disturbing fashion. Miles had already quietly decided that Passenger Firka was due for an early rendezvous with fast-penta, with quaddie cooperation if Miles could get it, or without. But, upon reflection, it was doubtful that the truth drug would work on a ba. He entertained brief, wistful fantasies of older interrogation methods. Something from the ancestral era of Mad Emperor Yuri, perhaps, or great-great-grandfather Count Pierre "Le Sanguinaire" Vorrutyer.
He rolled over in his narrow bunk, conscious of how lonely the silence of his cabin was without the reassuring rhythmic breath of Ekaterin overhead. He had gradually become used to that nightly presence. This marriage thing was getting to be a habit, one of his better ones. He touched the chrono on his wrist, and sighed. She was probably asleep by now. Too late to call and wake her just to listen to his blither. He counted over the days to Aral Alexander and Helen Natalia's decanting. Their travel margin was narrowing each day he fooled around here. His brain was putting together a twisted jingle to an old nursery tune, something about fast-penta and puppy dog tails early in the morning, when he mercifully drifted off.
* * *
"M'lord?"
Miles snapped alert at Roic's voice on the cabin intercom. "Yes?"
"The Prince Xav's surgeon is on the secured comconsole. I told him to hold, you'd wish to be wakened."
"Yes." Miles glanced at the glowing numerals of the wall chrono; he'd been asleep about four hours. Plenty enough for now. He reached for his jacket. "On my way."
Roic, again—no, still—in uniform, waited in the increasingly familiar little wardroom.
"I thought I told you to get some sleep," Miles said. "Tomorrow—today, it is now, could be a long one."
"I was checking through the Rudra's security vids, m'lord. Think I might have something."
"All right. Show me them after this, then." He slid into the station chair, powered up the security cone, and activated the com vid image.
The senior fleet surgeon, who by the collar tabs on his green uniform held a captain's rank, looked to be one of the young and fit New Men of Emperor Gregor's progressive reign; by his bright, excited eyes, he wasn't regretting his lost night's sleep much. "My Lord Auditor. Captain Chris Clogston here. I have your blood work."
"Excellent. What have you found?"
The surgeon leaned forward. "The most interesting was the stain on that handkerchief of yours. I'd say it was Cetagandan haut blood, without question, except that the sex chromosomes are decidedly odd, and instead of the extra pair of chromosomes where they usually assemble their genetic modifications, there are two extra pairs."
Miles grinned. Yes! "Quite. An experimental model. Cetagandan haut indeed, but this one is a ba—genderless—and almost certainly from the Star Crèche itself. Freeze a portion of that sample and mark it top secret, and send it along home to ImpSec's biolabs by the first available courier, with my compliments. I'm sure they'll want it on file."
"Yes, my lord."
No wonder Dubauer had tried to retrieve that bloodied handkerchief. Quite aside from blowing its cover, high-level Star Crèche gene work was not the sort of thing the haut ladies cared to have circulating at large, not unless they'd released it themselves, filtered through a few select Cetagandan ghem clans via their haut trophy wives and mothers. Granted, the haut ladies saved their greatest vigilance for the genes they gated in to their well-guarded genome, generations-long work of art that it was. Miles wondered how tidy a profit one might make, offering pirate copies of those cells he'd inadvertently collected. Or maybe not—this ba wasn't, clearly, their latest work. A near-century out of date, in fact.
Their latest work lay in the hold of the Idris. Urk.
"The other sample," Clogston went on, "was Solian II—that is, Lieutenant Solian's synthesized blood. Identical to the earlier specimen—same batch, I'd say."
"Good! Now we're getting somewhere." Where, for God's sake? "Thank you, Captain. This is invaluable. Go get some sleep, you've earned it."
The surgeon, disappointment writ plainly on his face at this dismissal without further explication, signed off.
Miles turned back to Roic in time to catch him stifling a yawn. The armsman looked embarrassed, and sat up straighter.
"So what do we have?" Miles prompted.
Roic cleared his throat. "The passenger Firka actually joined the Rudra after it was first due to leave, during that delay for repairs."
"Huh. Suggests it wasn't part of a long-laid itinerary, then . . . maybe. Go on."
"I've filtered out quite a few records of the fellow passing on and off the ship, before it was impounded and the passengers evicted. Using his cabin as his hostel, it seems, which a lot of folks do to save money. Two of his trips bracket times Lieutenant Solian was away from the Idris—one overlaps his last routine cargo inspection, and t'other exactly brackets that last forty minutes we can't account for."
"Oh, very nice. So what does this self-declared amphibian look like?"
Roic fiddled a moment with the console and brought up a clear full-length shot from the Rudra's lock vid records.
The man was tall, with pale unhealthy-looking skin and dark hair shaved close to his skull in a patchy, u
nflattering fuzz, like lichen on a boulder. Big nose, small ears, a lugubrious expression on his rubbery face—he looked strung out, actually, eyes dark and ringed. Long, skinny arms and legs; a loose tunic or poncho concealed the details of his big upper torso. His hands and feet were especially distinctive, and Miles zoomed in for close-ups. One hand was half-concealed in a cloth glove with the fingertips cut out, which hid the webs from a casual glance, but the other was ungloved and half-raised, and the webs showed distinctly, a dark rose color between the over-long fingers. The feet were concealed in soft boots or buskins, tied at the ankles, but they too were about double the length of a normal foot, though no wider. Could the fellow spread his webbed toes, when in the water, as he spread his webbed fingers, to make a broad flipper?
He recalled Ekaterin's description of the passenger who had accosted her and Bel on their outing, that first day—he had the longest, narrowest hands and feet. Bel should get a look at this shortly. Miles let the vid run. The fellow had a somewhat shambling gate when he walked, lifting and setting down those almost clownish feet.
"Where did he come from?" Miles asked Roic.
"His documentation claims he's an Aslunder." Roic's voice was heavy with disbelief.
Aslund was one of Barrayar's fairly near Nexus neighbors, an impoverished agricultural world in a local space cul-de-sac off the Hegen Hub. "Huh. Almost our neck of the woods."
"I dunno, m'lord. His Graf Station customs records show him disembarking from a ship he'd joined at Tau Ceti, which arrived here on the day before our fleet was originally due to leave. Don't know if he originated there or not."
"I'd bet not." Was there a water-world being settled somewhere on the fringes of the Nexus, whose colonists had chosen to alter their children instead of their environment? Miles hadn't heard of one, but it had to happen sometime. Or was Firka a one-off project, an experiment or prototype of some sort? He'd certainly run into a few of those, before. Neither exactly squared with an origin on Aslund. Though he might have immigrated there . . . Miles made a note to request an ImpSec background search on the fellow in his next report, even though any results were likely to trickle back too late to be of any immediate use. At least, he certainly hoped he'd have this mess wrapped up and shipped out before then.