Timothy Zahn - The Domino Pattern

“I was thinking of something even more valuable than that.” Bayta gave a little nod toward me. “You.”

I felt a lump form in my throat. “Worth more even than a trillion dollars, huh?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light. “I’m honored. Remind me to ask you to speak on my behalf the next time the Chahwyn try quibbling with me over the job we’re doing for them.”

“I’ve already done that,” she said simply. “One of the other times I went to bat for you.”

“Oh,” I said, a bit lamely. “Yes, I guess you have.”

“You do miss a lot not being telepathic,” she commented.

I peered at her, wondering if she was being serious or trying to be funny. But her face was its usual neutral, her eyes on the reader in my hand. “I know,” I told her. “I’ve been meaning to work on that.”

Her eyes flicked up, the hint of a frown touching her face. Probably wondering if I was trying to be funny. “What happens now?” she asked, looking back at the reader. “We test the rest of the samples and look for a common element?”

“Exactly.” The sensor beeped, and I watched as the analysis scrolled across the display.

And felt my stomach tighten. “Or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we probably don’t really need to test any of the other samples.” I turned the reader around to face her. “Second line just above the bottom of the display.”

She peered at the line. “Cadmium?”

“A heavy metal,” I told her. “Westali’s standard course on Shorshians was rather cursory, but heavy-metal poisoning was definitely one of the topics that was covered, mainly because it was considered one of the better ways of quietly dispatching members of that particular species. For the record, it’s pretty good against Humans, too.”

Bayta’s lips compressed briefly. “What exactly does that number mean?” she asked.

“That there’s enough in his system to kill a good-sized moose,” I said grimly. “Whoever wanted Master Bofiv dead wasn’t taking any chances.”

Bayta shivered. “Or whoever wanted whoever dead,” she said. “You said that he might have missed his real target.”

“If he did, that was one hell of a miss.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “What do we do now?”

“I suppose we might as well run the rest of the samples, just to make sure there aren’t any surprises,” I said. “After that, we’d better get to bed. Tomorrow’s likely to be a busy day.”

“Shouldn’t we let Dr. Witherspoon and the others know the results?”

I shook my head. “They’ve all gone back to bed. Not much point in waking them up just to give them bad news. Besides, I want some time to think about this before we spring it on them.”

“I thought you said you were going to sleep.”

“I said I was going to bed.” I looked at the cadmium listing on the analysis. “I never said I was going to get much sleep.”

Sure enough, I’d been lying in bed for no more than five hours, and had been asleep for maybe three of those, when I was awakened by someone leaning on my door chime.

Sometimes I hated being right. Stumbling to the door, darkly promising to cripple someone if this wasn’t damned important, I keyed it open.

Kennrick was standing there, looking way too fresh and alert for a man who’d been up almost as late as I had. “Compton,” he greeted me shortly, taking a step forward as if expecting to be invited in.

“Kennrick,” I greeted him in turn, not budging from the doorway and forcing him to stop short to keep from running into me. “Any news?”

“That was my question,” he said, trying to peer past my shoulder into the compartment. “Dr. Witherspoon told me he and Dr. Aronobal gave you the samples from Master Bofiv’s body for analysis.”

“And I told him that I would let all of you know when I had the results,” I said.

“That was over five hours ago,” Kennrick countered. “What are you doing, framing the samples for an art-house display?”

“I’ve been working,” I told him stiffly. “These things take time.”

“Not that much time.” He ran a critical eye over me. “And if you don’t mind my saying so. you don’t exactly look like you just hopped up from your portable lab bench, either.”

Silently, I stepped aside. He strode in, his eyes flicking around the room and coming to rest on the reader I’d left on the curve couch. “So what did you find?” he asked as I closed the door again.

“More or less what we expected,” I said, brushing past him and picking up the reader. I turned it on, called up the analysis file, and handed it to him.

He frowned, tapping the control to scroll the numbers up and down the display. “How do I read this?” he asked.

I lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you worked for a medical company.”

“As an organizer and meeting facilitator.” he said patiently. “Not as a doctor. Come on—tell me what this says.”

“It says cadmium poisoning,” I told him. “Lots of it.”

He ran the scrolling again and found the cadmium line. “Terrific,” he muttered. “Any chance it could have happened by accident?”

“In theory, pretty much any death could have happened by accident,” I said. “But when the string of required coincidences gets long enough, I think you can safely call it murder.”

He flinched at the word. “That’s insane,” he insisted. “Who would have wanted Master Bofiv dead?”

“Wrong question,” I told him. “The right question is, who would have wanted Master Bofiv and Master Colix dead?”

Kennrick stared at me. “Are you telling me they were both murdered? By the same person?”

“Unless you plan to string a few more coincidences together,” I said.

He looked back at the reader. “No,” he said firmly. “No, this just can’t be. It has to have been an accident.”

“You mean like someone accidentally uncapped a bottle of cadmium powder over their dinner plates last night?” I suggested.

“Or they ingested it some other way,” he said. “Cadmium is used in batteries, alloys—all sorts of things. Maybe it flaked off a bad battery in Master Colix’s luggage, got on his fingers, and from there into one of their shared meals. Or it could even have come off someone else’s stuff and gotten into the air system.”

“And then carefully proceeded to target Colix and Bofiv, but not Tririn or any of the other Shorshians in the car?”

“People react differently to infections and toxins all the time,” Kennrick said doggedly. “There are cases on record where a group of Humans have eaten the same salmonella-infested food. Some got sick, some died, some hardly even noticed. Why should Shorshic metabolism be any different?”

I could almost feel sorry for the man, straining this desperately to find an explanation that didn’t include the word murder . But facts were facts, and the sooner we popped all the irrelevant soap bubbles, the sooner we could get down to the unpleasant business at hand. “Because this isn’t some random bug running up against a whole range of different immune systems,” I said. “For Bofiv to have swallowed that much cadmium, the stuff would have had to be raining down like volcanic ash. I guarantee someone at the table would have noticed that.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” he said heavily. “What do we do?”

“We let me get on with my investigation,” I said. “You said last night that you only met him a couple of months ago?”

“Yes, when he and the contract team arrived on Earth,” he said, taking a final look at my reader and then handing it back to me. “Pellorian had invited them in to discuss a proposed joint venture in genetic manipulation.”