Or maybe I already had one.
There was a slightly dazed-sounding rumble from somewhere to my left. “Doug?” I called, wanting to look and see how he was doing but not daring to take my eyes off Blue One. “Hey, boy. You okay?”
The watchdog rumbled again. Maybe he’d hit the deck harder than I’d realized. “Yeah, sorry about that,” I apologized.
“A most clever maneuver, by the way,” the Filly commented. “Although I expect Chinzro Hchchu will be annoyed if you permanently damage one of his msikai-dorosli.” He smiled thinly. “If you wish to try throwing him at me as well, feel free to do so.”
“Sorry, I never do a trick twice for the same audience,” I told him. “Speaking of tricks, why did you kill Tech Yleli? If it’s not a professional secret, of course.”
“If anyone bears the blame for his death, it’s you,” he said darkly. “You were the one who disabled the monitors in the dome. That was what allowed him to die unseen.”
I felt my forehead crease. I was the one who’d disabled the monitors? “An act of petty vandalism hardly rises to the level of murder,” I pointed out. “I also notice you’re ducking the question. What did he do? Or did he see something he shouldn’t?”
The Filly snorted again. “You Humans have such a narrow way of viewing the universe,” he said. “You insist on dealing with reality purely in terms of cause and effect.”
“And how should we deal with it?”
“By seeing through to the ultimate goal,” he said. “The path itself is meaningless. You must look to the goal, and to reach it no matter what obstacles lie in your way.”
“Ah, yes—the old end justifying the means,” I said, nodding. “We tossed that one into the ethical ash heap centuries ago.”
“Of course you did,” he said calmly. “You’re an inferior being, among a race of inferior beings. Your goals certainly don’t justify your path.”
“That’s only for superior beings like you, I gather,” I said. “My mistake. So which of your higher goals did Tech Yleli’s death serve?”
The Filly lifted his finger, his head half turned in the direction of the community center. “Wait,” he said. “Do you hear?”
I frowned. Then, drifting down the corridor toward us, came the first strains of music.
It began as a single voice lifted in quiet song. A few bars later a second voice joined in, then a third, then a fourth, and then an entire chorus in full Filiaelian five-part harmony.
“The time of meditation is over,” the Filly said, a grim satisfaction in his voice. “And with the raised voices to mask your screams of agony, we may finally proceed.” Settling his hands into the lock-jointed knives I’d faced aboard the super-express Quadrail, he started toward me. “Or would you prefer to come quietly?” he added.
“Careful,” I warned, backing up at his advance. “You and your friends want me alive, remember?”
“Alive can also mean not quite dead,” he pointed out. “It makes little difference to me.”
“I suppose not,” I said, still backing up. I passed Doug, who was standing more or less where I’d tossed him earlier. He turned to face me as I continued by, his eyes tracking me balefully, his mouth half open to show his teeth. I’d caught him by surprise the last time, but he wasn’t going to fall for my quick-grab tactics again. The Filly picked up his pace, closing the gap.
And I took a long step to my left, putting Doug squarely between the two of us.
The Filly stopped, his blaze paling a little with clear surprise at my maneuver. “You’re not serious,” he said, looking at Doug and then back at me.
“I’m not?” I asked. The Filly took a step to his right, and I responded with a step to mine, keeping Doug between us.
“Please,” the Filly said condescendingly. He did a little two-step, clearly enjoying the novelty and, probably, the ultimate uselessness of my stalling technique.
I did a mirror-image two-step and jammed my hand into my side pocket. “Okay, that’s far enough,” I said in as stern a voice as I could manage. “Back off, right now, or you’ll regret it.”
“You disappoint me,” the Filly said, a tone of regret in his voice as he feinted left and then took another step to the right. “Do you Humans truly believe your skill at bluffing is so potent a weapon? Chinzro Hchchu is barely intelligent enough to qualify as a sentient being, but even he knows how to properly disarm a potential threat to his precious station.”
I grimaced. “Someday you’re going to be wrong,” I said, reluctantly withdrawing my hand from the pocket. “I just hope I’m there—”
Right in the middle of my sentence he leaped toward me, his tucked feet clearing Doug’s head and back by a good half meter as he arced over the oblivious watchdog. I caught a motion-blurred image of his right hand extending toward my throat and his left cocked ready at his waist just in case he needed to kill me after all.
And flipping around the uncapped hypo I’d palmed, I twisted my head and torso out of the Filly’s path and stabbed the needle as hard as I could into his left thigh.
He shrieked, a resonating combination of pain and rage and disbelief that included a set of upper harmonics that nearly took off the top of my head. His left hand knifed reflexively toward me, as he perhaps momentarily forgot he wanted me alive, but the sudden jolt of agony had thrown off his timing and aim and the hand slashed harmlessly past my shoulder. He hit the ground, his newly paralyzed left leg collapsing beneath him and sending him tumbling toward the floor. I took a step toward him, my second hypo ready in my hand.
And dodged back barely in time as he twisted around at the waist and slashed his right hand viciously toward my torso. The blow missed, and he slammed shoulder-first against the deck. His hand slashed out again, this time aiming for my knee, and as I again dodged the blow I reached over and down and buried my second needle in his upper arm.
He was making another attempt to kill me with screeched sound waves as I pushed his long nose to the side with my foot and slammed my fist into the nerve center beneath his right ear. His screech abruptly cut off, and he collapsed limply onto the deck.
For a moment I stood there, one foot on his good wrist, the other on the side of his nose, breathing heavily and trembling as my adrenaline level slowly subsided. “To see it,” I finished my interrupted sentence.
I crouched down beside the Filly and looked over at Doug. “You okay, boy?” I asked. “He attacked first, you know.”
Doug gave a snuffle, and plodded a little unsteadily over to me. I tensed, but he merely pressed his snout against my sleeve as if reminding himself who I was. He had a sort of lopsided, dit-rec-cartoon look in his eyes, and I winced a little as I wondered briefly if my toss had done him any serious damage.
But he merely gave my sleeve another sniff and then sat back on his haunches. “Right,” I agreed. “Back to work.”
The singing from the dome was still going strong, making for an odd but pleasant counterpoint as I went through the unconscious Filly’s clothes. Lady Luck was definitely on my side today: the first two pockets I tried yielded a handful of plastic quick-lock restraints and one of the passkey cards that our Filly escort had used to let Bayta and me into our room two days ago.
I got the restraints securely onto his wrists and ankles, then took a moment to look around. Yleli’s apartment, where Blue One had lain in wait for me, was the one place within reach where I was pretty much guaranteed we wouldn’t be disturbed. On the other hand, it was also the first place his buddies would come looking for him when he failed to bring me in on schedule.
But I didn’t have much choice. The singing down the hall had all the earmarks of a finale, and I absolutely couldn’t be found out here in the open with a turkey-trussed Filly when the funeral broke up and people started returning to their homes. At this point, Yleli’s place was my best bet.