Diplomatic Immunity - Lois McMaster Bujold [88]
Gupta stared. "What are you, some kind of psychic?"
Check. "Why the faked blood on the docking bay floor?"
"Well . . . I'd heard the fleet was pulling out. They were saying that the poor bugger I'd got melted was supposed to have deserted, and they were writing him off, just like . . . like he didn't have a House or a Baron to put up any stake for him, and nobody cared. But I was afraid the Cetagandan bastard would pull another mid-space transfer, and I'd be stuck on the Rudra, and he'd get away . . . I thought it would focus attention back on the Idris, and what might be on it. I didn't dream those military morons would attack the quaddie station!"
"There were concatenating circumstances," Miles said primly, made conscious, for the first time in what seemed a small eternity of evoked horrors, of the hovering quaddie officialdom. "You certainly triggered events, but you could not possibly have anticipated them." He, too, blinked and looked around. "Er . . . did you have any questions, Chief Venn?"
Venn was giving him a most peculiar stare. He shook his head, slowly, from side to side.
"Uh . . ." A young quaddie patroller Miles had barely noticed enter during Guppy's urgent soliloquy held out a small, glittering object to his chief. "I have the fast-penta dose you ordered, sir . . . ?"
Venn took it and gazed over at Adjudicator Leutwyn.
Leutwyn cleared his throat. "Remarkable. I do believe, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, that is the first time I've ever seen a fast-penta interrogation conducted without the fast-penta."
Miles glanced at Guppy, curled around himself in air, shivering a little. Smears of water still glistened at the corners of his eyes. "He . . . really wanted to tell somebody his story. He's been dying to for weeks. There was just no one in the entire Nexus he could trust."
"Still isn't," gulped the prisoner. "Don't get a swelled head, Barrayaran. I know nobody's on my side. But I missed my one shot, and he saw me. I was safe when he thought I was melted like the others. I'm a dead frog now, one way or another. But if I can't take him with me, maybe somebody else can."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chief Venn said, "So . . . this Cetagandan bastard Gupta here is raving about, that he says killed three of his friends and maybe your Lieutenant Solian—you really think this is the same as the Betan transient, Dubauer, that you wanted us to pick up last night? So is he a herm, or a man, or what?"
"Or what," answered Miles. "My medical people established from a blood sample I accidentally collected yesterday that Dubauer is a Cetagandan ba. The ba are neither male, female, nor hermaphrodite, but a genderless servant . . . caste, I guess is the best word, of the Cetagandan haut lords. More specifically, of the haut ladies who run the Star Crèche, at the core of the Celestial Garden, the Imperial residence on Eta Ceta." Who almost never left the Celestial Garden, with or without their ba servitors. So what's this ba doing way out here, eh? Miles hesitated, then went on, "This ba appears to be conducting a cargo of a thousand of what I suspect are the latest genetically modified haut fetuses in uterine replicators. I don't know where, I don't know why, and I don't know who for, but if Guppy's telling us the straight story, the ba has killed four people, including our missing security officer, and tried to kill Guppy, to keep its secret and cover its tracks." At least four people.
Greenlaw's expression had grown stiff with dismay. Venn regarded Gupta, frowning. "I guess we'd better put out a public arrest call on Dubauer, then, too."
"No!" Miles cried in alarm.
Venn raised his brows at him.
Miles explained hastily, "We're talking about a possible trained Cetagandan agent who may be carrying sophisticated bioweapons. It's already extremely stressed by the delays into which this dispute with the trade fleet has plunged it. It's just discovered it's made one bad mistake at least, because Guppy here is still alive. I don't care how superhuman it is, it has to be rattled by now. The