Timothy Zahn - The Domino Pattern

We walked through the shower/laundry car, then the storage car, and finally through the vestibule into the third-class dining car. As with all such cars, the aisle here veered all the way to the right side of the car so as to avoid cutting the dining area in half. There were large, slightly tinted windows in the wall that separated the dining room from the corridor, allowing the patrons to watch those passing by and vice versa. “Any sign of her?” I asked, slowing down as I peered in through the windows.

“Not yet,” Kennrick said. “Maybe she went past and has gone to ground somewhere forward.”

“There,” Bayta said, pointing.

I followed her finger. Terese was standing at the bar at the forward end of the car, talking earnestly to a tall Filly I didn’t recognize. “Anyone seen that Filly before?” I asked.

“No.” Bayta said.

“Me, neither,” Kennrick said. “Does he look a little drunk to you?”

“Not really,” I said. “You two stay out here. Be ready to corral her if she makes another break for it.” Squaring my shoulders, I walked through the archway into the dining area.

I was halfway through the maze of tables and chairs when the Filly detached himself from Terese and headed toward me. “May you be well,” I said in greeting as he got within earshot.

“You will not bother the Human female,” he said, his tone flat and unfriendly.

“I’m not bothering her,” I assured him, coming to a halt. “I just want to ask her a few questions.”

“You will not bother the Human female,” he repeated, his hands bunching into fists as he continued toward me.

I sighed. Apparently, Terese hadn’t come here for something to settle her stomach. She’d come here looking for a white knight to protect her.

And she had apparently found one.

“Easy, now,” I cautioned, holding my hands out toward the Filly as I reversed direction, backing toward the archway and the corridor beyond. The last thing I wanted was to get involved in a brawl with one of the other passengers. The very last thing I wanted was for that brawl to take place in a dining room.

But the Filly kept coming, the thought of broken tables, crockery, and bones apparently not bothering him in the least. I continued giving way, still making useless soothing noises. The carefully designed privacy acoustics of Quadrail dining cars meant that none of the other patrons could really make out what either of us was saying, but pretty much everyone facing our direction had spotted the gathering storm and had clued in their dining partners. It I’d ever wanted to get beaten to a pulp in front of an audience, I reflected sourly, this was my big chance.

Apparently, Bayta was thinking along the same lines. The kwi snugged away in my pocket tingled as she telepathically activated the weapon.

I could certainly see her point. The Filly probably outweighed me by ten kilos, and while his species wasn’t known for their prowess at unarmed combat, they weren’t complete slouches at it, either. The chance to drop him where he stood was a very tempting proposition.

Unfortunately, the presence of an audience put that option off the table. Using a weapon, even a nonlethal one, on a supposedly weapons-free Quadrail would draw way too much unwelcome attention.

Fortunately, the kwi wouldn’t be necessary. I’d backed up nearly to the archway now, and had finally reached my goal: a small section of empty floor space.

Time to make my move.

“All right, this has gone far enough,” I said firmly, coming to an abrupt halt with my hands still held out in front of me, my palms toward the Filly. “I’m going to question Ms. German, and that’s all there is to it.”

He took the bait. “You will not bother the Human female,” he said, continuing forward and reaching for my left wrist. As he stretched out his arm, I smoothly withdrew mine, bringing it inward toward my chest. He picked up his pace, reaching even more insistently toward me.

And with his complete attention now focused on the wrist that was somehow managing to remain just out of his grasp, I reached across with my right hand, grabbed his hand and bent the wrist in on itself, then snaked my left hand behind his elbow.

An instant later he found himself pinned upright in place, his arm locked vertically at his side, his weight coming up on his toes as I pulled the bent wrist upward and inward. “Now.” I said softly to the long face and startled eyes fifteen centimeters from my own. “I’m going to ask Ms. German a few questions, and then she can go about her business. Is that all right with you?”

For a couple of heartbeats he remained silent. “A few questions only,” he replied at last. “Thank you,” I said.

Releasing his arm, I took a step backward. I was taking something of a risk, I knew—he was uninjured, he still had those ten kilos on me. and he was perfectly capable of backing out of his verbal agreement if he chose to do so.

But he didn’t. Apparently, he was smart enough to realize that someone who had just showed my brand of restraint in round one was likely to have more painful options available for round two. Stepping to the side, he gestured me back into the dining area.

Terese was still standing by the bar, her mouth hanging slightly open. Apparently, she hadn’t expected her white knight to be vanquished quite so easily.

Which meant she’d had some expectations to begin with, either about me or about the Filly. I tucked away that little bit of data for future consideration. “Hello, Ms. German,” I said, nodding politely as I came up to her. “Remember me?”

She clamped her mouth closed. “What do you want?”

“The answers to a few questions,” I said. “A very few questions.” I gestured her to one of the bar stools. “Have a seat?”

Reluctantly, she plopped down on the stool. I took the next one and sat down facing her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Bayta and Kennrick had now come into the dining area and were watching us from across the room. “I heard a rumor that Master Colix might have brought along some private snacks,” I said. “Did you notice him with anything like that?”

Terese shrugged. “He might have had something.”

“Were they in a bag?” I asked. “A nice box? A tube dispenser?”

“It was a dark brown bag,” she said. “Small, like a meal from a quick-food spot. But I don’t know where it came from.” She gave a flip of her fingertips that somehow managed to take in the entire room. “He could even have gotten it from here, for all I know.”

“We can check on that,” I said. “Did you notice anything specific about the bag or its contents, anything about how either looked? Or were there any strange aromas that might have caught your attention?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, I didn’t really pay much attention to him.”

“So who should I be talking to about this?”

“The Juri on his other side,” she said. “The two of them were jabbering all the time.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was like bad Chinese or something.”

That was actually a pretty fair description of how Juric sounded. “You said he showed you holos of his family?”

“Once,” she said. “Mostly, he just talked about his job.”

I nodded. “How was Master Colix’s English, by the way? I’m told he was trying to brush up on his language skills.”

She wrinkled her nose again. “He still had a long way to go.”

“But you could understand him?”

“As much as I wanted to. Look, can I go now?”

“Sure,” I said, gesturing her toward the exit. “You know, you really ought to see a doctor about that stomach of yours.”