Hchchu sighed. “Very well,” he said reluctantly. “Follow me.”
He turned and strode off toward a door on the side of the courtroom. I gave Bayta an encouraging smile and followed.
The door led into a corridor that was similar to all the others I’d traveled through on Proteus, yet at the same time was subtly different. The unobtrusive color scheme was more vibrant, and the patterns of grooves and sculpted florets that decorated the upper walls and ceiling were more elaborate than I’d seen elsewhere. Officers’ country, I decided, the place where Proteus’s senior staff worked and played.
We’d made two turns into an even more elaborate hallway when I suddenly realized that, once again, Ty had deserted me, leaving Doug trotting alone at my side.
Did that mean Bayta going off the rails again? Or was it just a precaution?
Either way, I needed to do something quick before Hchchu noticed I was a watchdog shy of my quota and sent some patroller to bring Ty back. “You definitely have a nice part of the station here,” I commented, picking up my pace a bit.
“This is the main administrative center for Kuzyatru Station,” Hchchu explained, picking up his own pace to keep up with me.
Which was exactly what I’d hoped he would do. Now, with Doug and Minnario both trailing behind us out of Hchchu’s view, he hopefully wouldn’t notice Ty’s absence until it was too late to be worth the effort of getting him back. “How many administrators and staff are there?” I asked.
“Too many administrators; not nearly enough staff,” he said, with the first touch of humor I could remember ever hearing from him. “My office is down here.”
He turned into a short hallway guarded by yet another of the ubiquitous receptionists and receptionist desks that Proteus Station never seemed to run out of. At the far end of the corridor he pushed open the door—a real, hinged, hardwood door, not one of the sterile sliding types—and gestured me inside.
I got three steps before the sheer grandeur of the place brought me to an abrupt halt.
It wasn’t the office per se. The place was nice enough, and certainly roomy enough, but the large central desk and display cases and curved plant stands along the walls and scattered around the floor were of only simple design.
It was the view through the floor-to-ceiling window across from the door that had grabbed my full attention. Against a brilliant blue sky I could see the tops of a cluster of slender, impossibly green trees, surrounded by a ring of pillars that reminded me of stylized Filly hands reaching for the sky, the whole view embedded in a soft, drifting mist. To the right of the trees, the blue sky faded into the star-scattered blackness of deep space.
“You like my view?” Hchchu asked dryly.
“Very much,” I said. Ungluing my feet, I headed across the room for a closer look.
“It is merely one of the many domes scattered around Kuzyatru Station,” Hchchu said as he angled away from me toward the desk. “Though perhaps more elaborately furnished than most.”
It was indeed a standard Proteus dome, I saw as I reached the window, of apparently the same size as Terese’s medical dome and the neighborhood center where Yleli’s funeral services had been held. But unlike both of those, this particular dome was arranged as a park. The trees were part of a central pocket-forest area, surrounded by the sculpted reaching hands I’d seen and, lower down, a series of narrow fountains, the source of the floating mist. Arranged around the fountains were some smaller trees, flower beds, and clusters of bushes, all woven together with meandering pathways lined with chairs and benches. On the far side of the central area, I could see a bit of what looked like a small children’s play area. Other windows lined the rest of the dome at my same level, all of them privacy-shielded to allow the occupants to look at the park without anyone from the park being able to see in.
“Here,” Hchchu said from behind me.
I turned. Hchchu was now seated in the desk chair and was holding a data chip toward me. “What is it?” I asked as I gave the view one last look and walked over to him.
“The itinerary I promised,” Hchchu said.
I glanced at Minnario, who had pulled his chair up to one corner of the desk. He was gazing at the data chip, an intense expression on his face. “You really need to work on your sense of drama,” I told Hchchu as I plucked the chip from between his fingers. “Here you have the perfect chance to sit at your desk, gazing steely-eyed at your computer display as you sift through vast quantities of data—”
“Why should I do that?” Hchchu interrupted. “The itinerary was already prepared because I was the one who sent them.”
I felt my mouth drop open, a sudden chill running through me. If Hchchu had been the one in charge of their mission … “You sent them to New Tigris?” I asked carefully.
“No, nor to any other world in Human space,” he said. “Please; sit down.”
I glanced again at Minnario, resisted the urge to also glance at the closed door behind me, and sat down in one of the guest chairs across from Hchchu. “Maybe we should start at the beginning,” I suggested.
“The beginning is with you and your tale of the Modhri,” Hchchu said, opening one of the desk’s drawers and pulling out a reader. “Here—you will need this.”
Only it wasn’t just any reader, I saw with mild surprise as I took it, but my very own reader, the fancy, gimmicked gadget that Hchchu and the Jumpsuits had taken away from me the minute I’d stepped aboard Proteus. “Thanks,” I said, turning it on and plugging in the chip. “I was telling the truth, you know.”
“Indeed I do,” Hchchu said grimly. “Rumors and stories of this Modhri have circulated for many years throughout the highest levels of the Filiaelian Assembly. Yet we have seen no evidence of penetration into our species, not even in travelers or diplomats who have spent extensive time outside our borders.”
“Actually, that makes perfect sense,” I agreed, pulling up the file.
“How so?” Hchchu asked. “If the Modhri’s goal is to control the galaxy, why leave us untouched?”
“Because he’s ambitious, but he’s not stupid,” I said, skimming the itinerary. The six Fillies had taken a Quadrail from Proteus to Venidra Carvo, boarded a super-express train for Homshil, and from there had visited three more places in the Jurian Collective. There was no mention of New Tigris, just as Hchchu had said, or of any other world, for that matter. “He knows all about the genetic work and biochemical testing you do,” I continued. “Right now, stealth and secrecy are his greatest weapons, and he’s not going to risk certain exposure by infecting a Filiaelian diplomat who’s probably going to be tested the minute he gets back home.”
“Yet if you are right, these six Filiaelians were infected,” Hchchu pointed out. “Why? And where?”
“I don’t know the where,” I said. “It could have been anywhere along the way, basically any time after they left Filiaelian space.” I gestured toward my reader. “Or possibly after this listing ends. I notice that the last stop is over two months before they showed up on New Tigris.”
“Yes, their reports stopped at that point,” Hchchu said heavily. “Their mission, if you hadn’t already guessed, was to search for evidence of this Modhri in Halkan and Jurian space. They had sent back several reports that seemed to indicate they had discovered the rumors were true, and were near to capturing a sample to bring back for study. But then the reports suddenly stopped, and all my subsequent messages to them were left unclaimed.”
“Sounds like they found him, all right,” I said. “And as to the why, they were infected because they were needed. There’s something in Filiaelian physiology that apparently links uniquely with the Modhran hive mind, giving him an ability he apparently can’t get from anyone else.”