I looked back at Heleb. He met my eye. I looked away immediately, but I knew that it was too late.
“Hello again,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m still thinking about your offer.”
The bartender closed the door behind him, leaving Heleb and Lema on the inside. It was the only door there was, and the room had no window. I looked at the two Zabarans, but they were backing off. The Sleath had been right. They were all in it together—but he wasn’t the sucker the trap had been set to catch.
“I get the message,” I said to Heleb. “You really want me to join your expedition. This wasn’t necessary, you know—it was probably the best offer I was going to get.”
“Everyone knows that humans are barbarians,” Heleb observed, in his scrupulously-pronounced parole, “but cheating at cards is not the kind of conduct that can be tolerated in a civilized society.”
The Sleath was getting to his feet now, with a new gleam in his eye. He didn’t seem to be in on the conspiracy—he thought his irrational convictions had just been proved right. He didn’t pick up the knife, though—he just leaned over the table to pick up the money I’d had in front of me.
“It’s not all yours,” I pointed out, mildly.
“It would have been,” the Sleath said, “if the game had been honest.”
“No it wouldn’t,” I said, speaking softly even though it was pure indignation that made me do it. “You’re a truly terrible player, and the sooner you face up to that, the better.”
He probably sneered, but I couldn’t tell. He picked up the money—all of it.
I didn’t try to stop him. I knew that it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t look directly at Heleb again, either—but I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye. I still had the chair in my hand, so I lashed out with all the force I could muster.
Unfortunately, I was cramped for room. He was expecting it, of course, and he was trained in unarmed combat. He grabbed the chair legs and twisted, adding his own strength to the force of my awkward thrust. If I hadn’t let go, I’d have gone crashing into the wall.
I dived for the door, but even if I’d got past Heleb, Lema would still have been in the way. One of them hit me on the back of the neck with a rigid hand.
I was on my knees, dazed but not unconscious. I put both my hands on top of my head and tried to curl up into a ball, but it was no good. Stiff fingers closed on my neck, groping for the carotid arteries.
The trouble with convergent evolution, I thought, as I passed out, is that it makes us all anatomically similar without making us all equal. It just gives the bad guys transferable skills.
5
I woke up with a terrible hangover, reeking of some kind of aromatic liquor. It took me several seconds to remember that I’d only had a couple of drinks, and that neither of them had contained anything that human taste-buds would deem exotic.
The insides of my eyelids were red, and I spent another few seconds wondering whether that might be a symptom of something dreadful. Then I realised that, wherever I was, the lights were on—and very bright. I struggled to unglue the eyelids, squinting until the dazzle faded. Unfortunately, the headache didn’t. When I managed to sit up and look around, I discovered that I was in a cell. The floor and walls—one of which was made of clear glass—were spotlessly clean. There was no mistaking the Tetron workmanship.
I was on a low-slung bunk. There was no mattress, but the surface was smart enough to soften up when someone lay down on it; the dent my recumbent body had left was slowly evening out. At the third attempt I managed to stand up. The glass wall was solid, although there was a marbled section just above head height that was emitting a stream of fresh, cool air. I stood on tiptoe to let the current stir my hair. I contrived a couple of deep breaths that didn’t fill my lungs with the sickly stench. Then I banged on the glass with my fist.
During the two minutes that it took for the guard to respond to my summons I reconstituted the memory of the fight in the bar. It didn’t seem so terrible—but I knew that I’d been set up by Amara Guur, and I knew that things had to be a lot worse than mere memory could tell me.
The guard was a Tetron, dressed in the sort of informal uniform that almost all Tetrax wear, whether they’re street-sweepers, public administrators or schoolteachers—except, of course, for the ones that are wearing formal kinds of uniforms, like policemen.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Thirty-two ninety,” he replied. I’d slept through most of yesterday and a fair slice of today.
“How did I get here?”
“The police brought you.”
The answer was a trifle over-literal, but my head was hurting too much to allow me to frame one that might elicit the information I needed. All I could manage was: “Where from?”—which was pretty stupid, because I knew that too.
He didn’t. “I’m afraid that I haven’t read the arresting officer’s report, Mr. Rousseau. Would you like me to display a copy on the wallscreen?”
“Later,” I said. “Do you happen to know what I’m charged with?”
“Murder,” he told me.
It should have been a lot more surprising than it was. Even though it wasn’t particularly surprising, the sound of the word made me want to vomit.
“Who am I supposed to have murdered?” I asked, hoarsely.
“A person named Atmin Atmanu.”
“The Sleath?” I hadn’t even known his name; somehow, slimy Simeon Balidar had forgotten to introduce us.
“I believe Mr. Atmanu was a Sleath.”
I groaned, but I didn’t bother to tell him that I had been framed. He was a Tetron, and he would simply have reminded me that I would be presumed innocent until I’d actually been proven guilty in a court of law, just like any other item of filthy scum the peace-officers swept up from the gutter. Not that he’d actually have said the last part, but he’d have reminded me anyway.
“I need to get cleaned up,” I told him. “Then I need something to soothe my aching head. Then I need a lawyer—can you find me one?”
“The control-panel operating the bathroom facilities is located at the head of the bed,” he told me, patiently. “The cubicle has a medicare facility, although you will have to volunteer a second blood sample if you require controlled drugs. Did you have any particular lawyer in mind?”
“No. Can you call Aleksandr Sovorov at the Co-ordinated Research Establishment and tell him that I’m here? He probably knows half a dozen lawyers who’ll take humans as clients, if there are that many in Skychain City.”
“I will do that,” the guard said. “Is there anyone else you would like me to notify regarding your arrest and incarceration?”
“Saul Lyndrach,” I said. “He lives in sector six. I can’t remember his number, but he’s on the database. I can get a drink of water in the bathroom, I suppose?”
“Of course,” he said, seeming mildly offended at the implied slur on the quality of Tetron prisons. “There is also a laundry facility. Do you need instruction in the operation of these fitments?”
“No, I live in a Tetron-built apartment—it’s not as luxurious as this, of course, but I think I can figure out which virtual buttons to press. Thanks. What’s your name, by the way?”
“69-Aquila,” he told me, with a slight inclination of the head.
When he’d gone, I went to the bed head control panel and found the button that would open the bathroom. Once I’d managed to display the virtual keyboard underneath the bathroom wallscreen, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out how to activate the water-fountain, open the laundry chute and switch on the shower. I didn’t bother with the medicare facility; I figured that it would be simpler to live with the headache than work my way through an interrogation in parole, complete with blood samples, just to get a Tetron aspirin. By the time my clothes and I had both been thoroughly cleaned I felt better anyway—or would have done, if I hadn’t been so acutely conscious of the fact that I’d been fitted up for murder.