“Really?” I said, frowning. “Interesting.”
“How so?”
“Because you’re supposed to be the person riding herd on me,” I said. “Two minutes after I was picked up, someone should have been yelling in your ear about your pet Human having committed a murder and why the hell weren’t you already on top of it. Do we know who’s been in charge of the investigation up to now?”
“Captain of the Guard Lyarrom,” Emikai said. “I have spoken to him by comm, but not yet in person.”
“We should make a point of doing that,” I said. “What do we know about the victim?”
“His name was Tech Yleli, and he worked the evening shift in Building Eight,” Emikai said. “That is the shift from the hours of four until twelve.”
“So he should have already left for home by the time I found him,” I said. “Unless he’d been killed earlier?”
Emikai shook his head. “His death was between twelve and twelve-fifteen.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You can be that accurate?”
“Filiaelian blood coagulation follows a well-known curve,” Emikai explained. “When all the genetic parameters are known, a time of death can be defined to within a single minute.”
“That’s handy,” I said, frowning. “So why do we have a fifteen-minute window on Yleli?”
“Because he was undergoing genetic restructuring at the time of his death and his coagulation curve is no longer valid,” Emikai explained. “But his progress charts have been requested and should be filed soon. At that point, we will be able to considerably narrow down the time of death.”
I looked across the dome toward Terese’s building. “Was his treatment by any chance taking place in Building Eight?”
“No, it was being done in a facility designed specifically for Filiaelian use near his home in Sector 25-C.”
I felt an eyebrow twitch. That was the same sector Bayta’s research had tagged as the location of one of Proteus’s operatic societies. “We’ll want to go take a look at the place later,” I said. “In the meantime, what exactly was his job here? Specifically, did he deal directly with Ms. German?”
“He dealt with her case, but I do not yet know whether he personally interacted with her,” Emikai said. “His job was to analyze tissue and fluid samples to create baselines and search for anomalies.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bayta pull out her comm and hold it up to her ear. “Let’s try a different approach,” I suggested. “Do we know exactly how many patients there are in Building Eight besides Ms. German?”
“I am not certain,” Emikai said, pulling out his reader. “Up to now, I have only been given limited data. If that particular number is not here, we can ask the receptionist.”
“Frank, I have to leave,” Bayta announced, putting away her comm. “Dr. Aronobal says that something’s happening with Terese.”
“What kind of something?” I asked. “Never mind—we’ll go ask in person. Logra Emikai has some questions for the receptionist, anyway.”
We headed back across the dome and into Building Eight. As Bayta and I dropped Emikai off at the receptionist’s desk I looked around, trying to get a sense of activity and tension levels. But everything seemed about the same as it had been on our previous visits.
Everything, that is, except in Terese’s room. Aronobal was there, along with two other Fillies in doctor’s tans and two techs in blue. Aronobal was standing beside Terese, her hand on the girl’s shoulder as she murmured softly to her, while the other two doctors huddled over one of the girl’s attached monitors and talked quietly between themselves. One of the techs was across the room by a narrow table, laying out a series of sampling hypos, while the other tech was carefully taking a blood sample from Terese’s arm. “We seem busy this morning,” I said briskly as we walked in. “Good morning, Terese. How are you feeling?”
“Not so good,” she said, her normal animosity toward me nowhere to be seen. Her face was pale and drawn, even more so than usual. “Dr. Aronobal tells me my baby is dying.”
“May be dying,” Aronobal corrected firmly. “We still have more tests to run.”
Terese nodded, a short, choppy jerk of her head, and closed her eyes. Aronobal caught my eye and nodded to the side, toward the table where the tech had set down his freshly drawn blood sample and was headed back to Terese with another hypo. Bayta and I drifted over in that direction, arriving at the same time as Aronobal. “Well?” I asked softly.
“I do not know,” Aronobal said, her voice anxious and frustrated. “Her physiology is like that of no Human I have ever dealt with. Nor is there anything like it in the literature.”
“In the Filiaelian literature, maybe,” I said. “Earth’s medical community has had a lot more experience with Human genetic disorders than you have.”
“Obviously,” Aronobal said tartly. “But there has yet been no reply to our queries.”
“What can we do to help?” Bayta asked.
“She is frightened,” Aronobal said. “Though she would not admit it, you are the closest people she has to family or friends in this part of the galaxy.” She hesitated. “Perhaps even in her own part of the galaxy. I do not believe she has many people even on Earth she is close to, or who care for her. Certainly not the way you do.”
“That’s very touching,” I said. It was also laid on way too thick, but I decided not to mention that part. “Unfortunately, we’re a bit busy with an important investigation at the moment.”
Aronobal shivered. “Yes—Tech Yleli’s horrible and senseless murder.”
“Horrible, yes,” I agreed. “Senseless, no. We just have to figure out where the sense lies.”
“Perhaps,” Aronobal said. “But surely an hour spent comforting a frightened child could not harm your investigation.”
I gazed at her, an unpleasant feeling tingling the back of my neck. The time constraints of the 24/24 rule were already getting pretty short. And now Dr. Aronobal was proposing that I run down that clock down even more in order to sit here and hold Terese’s hand.
Bayta was obviously thinking along the same lines. “Can you give us a minute?” she asked Aronobal.
“Certainly,” Aronobal said. She looked over her shoulder as Terese gave a little grunt, then turned and hurried back to the girl’s side.
“What do you think?” Bayta asked quietly. “I could stay here with Terese while you and Logra Emikai continue the investigation.”
“I don’t like the idea of leaving you here alone,” I told her, frowning at the line of hypos. Up close, I could see now that the table had lines marked on them, with three of the hypos in each of five hourly boxes, their needles capped by plastic sterilizer sheaths. Apparently, Aronobal was serious about getting up-to-the-minute information on what was going on with Terese’s biochemistry.
Or maybe not. The three hypos in the box labeled for the previous hour were still there, two of them containing bright red blood, the other holding a pale amber liquid I didn’t recognize. Apparently, whoever was supposed to have taken the fluids away for analysis had fallen down on the job.
Maybe that job was supposed to have been Tech Yleli’s.
Whatever the reason for the foul-up, though, the current hour’s draws were now already under way. One of the hypos in the current time box was already filled, with the tech at Terese’s side working on the second.
“I’ll hardly be alone,” Bayta pointed out. “The building is full of Filiaelians, and that’s not likely to change.” She hesitated. “Actually, I’m more concerned about you being alone with Logra Emikai. We still don’t know whether it was he or Dr. Aronobal who told Chinzro Hchchu about your part in the New Tigris events.”