Diplomatic Immunity - Lois McMaster Bujold [65]
"Yes?" Miles said encouragingly.
"There was that funny passenger, who came in to ask me about my blood synthesizer. I just figured he was one of the nervous sorts of travelers, although when he explained himself, I also thought he probably had good reason to be."
Miles smiled carefully. "Tell me more about your funny passenger."
"He'd just signed on to the Rudra here at Graf Station. He said he was worried, if he had any accidents en route, because he couldn't take standard blood substitutes on account of being so heavily gengineered. Which he was. I mean, I believed him about the blood compatibility problems. That's why we carry the synthesizers, after all. He had the longest fingers—with webs. He told me he was an amphibian, which I didn't quite believe, till he showed me his gill slits. His ribs opened out in the most astonishing fashion. He said he has to keep spraying his gills with moisturizer, when he travels, because the air on ships and stations is too dry for him." She stopped, and swallowed.
Definitely not "Dubauer," then. Hm. Another player? But in the same game, or a different one?
She continued in a scared voice, "I ended up showing him my synthesizer, because he seemed so worried and kept asking questions about it. I mainly worried about what sorts of tranquilizers were going to be safe to use on him, if he turned out to be one of those people who gets hysterical eight days out."
Leaping about and whooping, Miles told himself firmly, would likely just frighten the young woman more. He did sit up and favor her with a perky smile, which made her shrink back in her chair only slightly. "When was this? What day?"
"Um . . . two days before the quaddies made us all evacuate the ship and come here."
Three days after Solian's vanishing. Better and better. "What was the passenger's name? Could you identify him again?'
"Oh, sure—I mean, webs, after all. He told me his name was Firka."
As if casually, Miles asked, "Would you be willing to repeat this testimony under fast-penta?"
She made a face. "I suppose so. Do I have to?"
Neither panicked nor too eager; good. "We'll see. Physical inventory next, I think. We'll start with the Rudra's infirmary." And just in case he was being led up the path by his nose, the others to follow.
More delays ensued, while Bel negotiated over the comconsole with Venn and Watts for the temporary release from house arrest of the medtechs as expert witnesses. Once those arrangements had been approved, the visit to the Rudra's infirmary was gratifyingly short, direct, and fruitful.
The medtech's supply of synthetic blood base was down by four liters. A phyllopack, with its hundreds of square meters of primed reaction surface stacked in microscopic layers in a convenient insert, was gone. And the blood synthesizing machine had been improperly cleaned. Miles smiled toothily as he personally scraped a tinge of organic residue from its tubing into a plastic bag for the delectation of the Prince Xav's surgeon.
It all rang sufficiently true that he set Roic to collecting copies of the Rudra's security records, with particular reference to Passenger Firka, and sent Bel off with the techs to cross-check the other three infirmaries without him. Miles returned to the Kestrel and handed off his new sample to Lieutenant Smolyani to convey promptly to the Prince Xav, then settled down to run a search for Firka's present location. He tracked him to the second of the two hostels taken up with the impounded ships' passengers, but the quaddie on security duty there reported that the man had signed out for the evening before dinner and had not yet returned. Firka's prior venture out that day had been around the time of the passengers' meeting; perhaps he'd been one of the men in the back of the room, although Miles certainly hadn't noticed a webbed hand raised for questions. Miles left orders with quaddie hostel security to call him or Armsman Roic when the passenger returned, regardless of the time.
Frowning, he called the first hostel to check on Dubauer. The Betan/Cetagandan