Timothy Zahn - Judgment at Proteus

In some solar systems new arrivals had to go through customs twice, once on the transfer station and a second time at their final destinations. Fortunately, the Fillies had dispensed with that nonsense. Outside the wide doors leading out of the docking bay was a long line of desks that served merely as luggage-distribution points. A reader at the door scanned the marks that the passengers had been tagged with at the Quadrail shuttle, and holodisplays then directed each person to the proper pickup desk. Bayta and I were routed to a desk midway down the line, while Emikai, Terese, and Aronobal headed to one a few places farther over.

I maneuvered us through the crowd to our desk and smiled at the female Filly seated there. From the hovering presence of a much older male Filly behind her, I guessed this was probably her first day on the job and he was there to vet her performance. “I greet you,” I said, offering my hand to the reader to confirm my identity. “You have a very efficient—”

“Mr. Frank Compton?” the older Filly interrupted as he strode up to the desk.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “My bags are those two over—”

“I am Chinzro Hchchu, assistant director of Kuzyatru Station,” he interrupted, raising his hand like the Pope delivering a blessing. In response, three tall Fillies wearing gray and black jumpsuits, who had been loitering behind the row of desks to either side of us, started forward.

“Is there a problem?” I asked carefully, watching the approaching Fillies out of the corner of my eye. In my pocket, I could feel the kwi tingling as Bayta activated it.

“A very serious problem,” Hchchu said sternly. “You are under arrest.” He paused dramatically. “For murder.”

The entry bay was deathly silent by the time the three jumpsuited Fillies reached us. Two of them took my upper arms in a standard police control hold, while the third got a slightly more polite grip on Bayta’s arm. With Hchchu in the lead, we were marched off through the frozen tableau of our fellow torchferry passengers toward a door at the far end.

Which wasn’t to say that we went quietly.

“This is absurd,” I insisted loudly as we walked, trying to sound bewildered and outraged at the same time. “You obviously have me confused with someone else.”

“You are Mr. Frank Compton, New York City, New York, Western Alliance, Earth, Terran Confederation?” Hchchu asked over his shoulder.

“I’m a Frank Compton of New York,” I acknowledged. “But there must be dozens of us. Besides—”

“Then there is no mistake,” he said firmly.

“You have the wrong person,” I said, just as firmly. If the Modhri was on to me, none of this protesting would do any good. But it was the way an innocent man would behave and I had to play it through.

Besides, any doubt I could create would only help me. The local Modhran mind segment had only Filly eyes and vision centers to work with, and Fillies in general weren’t all that good at distinguishing among Human faces. No matter how suspicious the Modhri might be, he couldn’t possibly be as certain as Hchchu sounded. At least, not unless he already had a sample of my DNA aboard.

“What are the specifications of the charge?” a new voice cut in, and I turned to see that Emikai had left Terese and Aronobal and had joined our little procession.

“And you are?” Hchchu challenged.

“ Logra Emikai,” Emikai said. “These Humans are our escort.”

Hchchu did a sort of double take, and I caught a brief darkening of his nose blaze as he looked more closely at Emikai. “I welcome you, Logra Emikai,” he said. “I have words to speak with you, as well. But those words will wait.”

“As you wish, Chinzro Hchchu,” Emikai said. “Again I ask: what are the specifications of the charge against Mr. Compton?”

“Actually, this whole nonsense can wait,” I put in. “ Logra Emikai and I have a task that we’ve promised to perform, to escort Terese Ger—”

“The charges are plural,” Hchchu said, his eyes still on Emikai. “Six counts of murder against citizens of the Assembly.”

Emikai looked at me, his blaze paling with surprise. “ Six murders?” he repeated, sounding sandbagged.

I was feeling a little sandbagged myself. I’d assumed this whole thing was coming from Asantra Muzzfor’s death aboard our super-express. Where in the world had Hchchu found five more dead Fillies?

[I protest,] a thin voice called distantly from behind us.

I turned my head. It was Minnario, floating through the bay toward us, clearly gunning his support chair for all it was worth. On his distorted face was an expression of full-blown righteous indignation.

But all the determination in the world couldn’t make his chair go any faster, and at the rate we were walking he had no hope of catching us before we left the bay. Even if he decided to pursue this further, he wasn’t going to get to Hchchu until after Bayta and I had been dealt with and presumably sent elsewhere in Proteus.

And that would be a shame, because I was rather interested in hearing what the crippled Nemut had to say. Bracing myself, I abruptly leaned backward and dug my heels into the floor.

My two attached Fillies came to a jerking halt, stumbling as my unexpected move threw them both off-balance. “What do you do?” Hchchu demanded, spinning around.

“Someone’s calling you,” I said mildly. “It’s rude to ignore him.”

Hchchu’s eyes shifted to Minnario, still trundling determinedly toward us. “What does he wish to say?” he asked, looking back at me.

“If I knew that, we wouldn’t need to wait and hear him, would we?” I said, still leaning back against my handlers’ grips.

Hchchu looked at Minnario again, then gestured to my guards. Their pull eased, and I straightened up again.

[You must not do this,] Minnario said as he came up to us, bringing his chair to a gliding halt. [He’s an honorable Human, who risked his life to save all of us aboard the galaxy-crosser. He chased down a murderer who would have killed us all—]

“Peace, visitor,” Hchchu said. He really needed to work on his habit of interrupting people. “Mr. Compton is not under investigation for activities aboard your galaxy-crosser or any other Quadrail.”

[Then what do you do?] Minnario demanded.

“He is charged with the murders of six santra -class Filiaelians,” Hchchu said. “Specifically, the murders of Isantra Snievre, Isantra Golovek, Esantra Chavine, Asantra Morloo, Asantra Crova, and Asantra Vaermas.”

I frowned as he rattled off the names. This was getting more absurd by the minute. I’d never even heard of those Fillies.

“ Isantra Golovek,” Bayta murmured suddenly. “New Tigris.”

I grimaced. Of course. I hadn’t known most of those Fillies, at least not by their actual names. But now I did recall Isantra Golovek’s name going by once or twice. He’d been one of the six Filiaelian walkers who’d tried to keep Bayta and me from sneaking a ten-year-old girl named Rebekah Beach off New Tigris and out of the Modhri’s grasp.

Which made the multiple murder charge even more ridiculous. I hadn’t killed more than one of those Fillies, and that had been in the middle of a firefight that the Modhri himself had started. In fact, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember more than four of the six actually dying. The other two had been taken down with snoozers and subsequently hauled off by the local cops to the Imani City lockup.

So I’d been told, anyway. At the time my main concern had been getting Bayta and Rebekah off the planet before the Modhri could regroup for another crack at us.