Cranking the volume all the way up, I set my teeth and touched the switch.
It was like sitting front-row-center at a live concert where each musician had made a bet with all the others that he could get the most sound out of his instrument. I left the music on maybe a quarter of a second before switching it off again, and even with that short an exposure it felt like the my ears were coming off at the lobes.
But I couldn’t stop now. I fired it up another quarter second, and then another. Then, bracing myself, I turned it on for a full second.
This time, it felt like the top of my head was joining my ears in their attempt to vacate the premises. I gulped a breath, fired off another full second, and another, and then thankfully returned to three more of the shorter quarter-second bursts of agony.
Bayta had had a sheltered upbringing among the Chahwyn, and had been playing a determined game of intellectual catch-up since then. Still, somewhere along the line, surely even she had learned the significance of a classic SOS.
I was midway through the third repeat, and was wondering if my ears were starting to bleed yet. when the canopy was pulled open, and I saw Bayta’s worried face looking down at me.
In the brief time I’d been away, the dispensary had become an emergency room.
Witherspoon was sitting on one of the fold-out seats along the side wall, pressing a cold pack against the back of his head, his posture that of a man who had just gone three rounds with a bulldozer. Two Fillies were twitching in obvious discomfort on fold-out slabs on the other side of the room. One of them turned his head as Bayta and I entered, and I saw it was my friend Rose Nose, the one who’d pulled me out of the scuffle with Strinni earlier in the afternoon, just long enough for Kennrick’s ribs to get cracked instead of mine.
Strinni’s body, which had been on the diagnostic table when I’d left, was nowhere to be seen. In its place, lying ominously still on the treatment table as Aronobal worked feverishly over him, was Usantra Givvrac.
“Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” I said, wincing as the sound of my words assaulted my sore ears. “It won’t work.”
“Compton!” Witherspoon exclaimed, looking up at the sound of my voice. “Are you all right? Someone hit me—”
“Save it,” I cut him off. “You need to get a load of gleaner bacteria from somewhere and inject it into his intestines.”
“What?” Aronobal asked, frowning down her long nose at me.
“Are you deaf?” I bit out. “Their gleaner bacteria’s been wiped out. The unneutralized waste is backing up and flooding their systems—that’s what’s making them sick.”
“Impossible,” Aronobal insisted. “What could they possibly have eaten that could have done so much damage?”
“They didn’t eat it, they inhaled it,” I said, disengaging myself from Bayta’s supporting arm and making my slightly unsteady way to the table. “I took a sample earlier from one of the train’s air filters and found traces of antibacterial sprays.”
“You can’t kill a Filiaelian’s gleaner bacteria that way,” Witherspoon said. “Everything they inhale is filtered through the respiratory system—”
“So is everything Humans inhale.” I interrupted him. “But Bayta and I are both feeling the effects of something on our own gut flora. Whatever this stuff was our killer was spraying around, it digs deep and packs one hell of a punch.”
Witherspoon looked at Aronobal. “Is this reasonable? Or even possible?”
“Do you have any other treatment to suggest?” Aronobal countered. “Very well, Mr. Compton. If your companion will ask the Spiders to find some Filiaelian volunteers, we’ll try your suggestion.”
“No,” a weak Filly voice said.
It took me a second to realize the voice had been Givvrac’s. “No what?” I asked, looking down at him.
“No need to find volunteers,” he said, his eyes nearly closed, his nose blaze gone so dark now as to be nearly black. “My contract team—Esantra Worrbin, Asantra Muzzfor, and Asantra Dallilo. They will provide what is necessary.”
“Works for me,” I said, looking over at Bayta. “Can you get the Spiders on it?”
She nodded. “Already done.”
“Compton?” Givvrac murmured.
I looked back down at him. “Yes?”
“My final wish,” he said softly. “Find this murderer.”
“I will,” I promised, wondering distantly if Filly law listed any penalties for failing to deliver on a deathbed promise. “But you’re a long ways yet from any final wishes,” I added. “Half an hour, and you’ll be as good as new.”
“Find the murderer, Mr. Compton,” Givvrac repeated, his voice trailing off into a whisper. “And kill him.”
I looked at Bayta, then at Witherspoon. then at Aronobal …and there was something in the Filly doctor’s eyes that warned there were indeed penalties for reneging on such a promise. “If it’s within my power,” I said, looking back at Givvrac, “I will.”
His eyes closed, and he gave a microscopic nod. “Then will honor and justice be served,” he murmured.
Five minutes later, he was dead.
TEN
“Hold still,” Witherspoon ordered as he gently pulled on the back of my right ear and eased the tip of his viewer into the labyrinth within.
“You just watch where you’re poking that thing.” I warned, wincing as his touch sent my ears’ background throbbing onto a new and more exciting rhythm.
“Courage. Compton,” Kennrick admonished, glancing around the otherwise deserted first-class bar as he took a sip of his brandy.
Normally this sort of examination would have been held in the dispensary. But the dispensary was more than a little crowded at the moment. Besides, the dispensary didn’t serve brandy, which Kennrick apparently liked a lot.
It also didn’t serve yogurt, which I didn’t like at all, but which my gut badly needed to help replenish its supply of helpful bacteria. “I’m saving my courage for when he pokes something in your ear,” I told Kennrick, taking a last bite and setting my spoon on the table beside my empty bowl.
“In that case, feel free to yell in agony,” Kennrick said agreeably.
“I never scream in front of the help,” I said, gesturing toward the server standing a couple of paces behind Witherspoon. The Spider, I knew, was here to keep an eye on Witherspoon’s medical bag.
Kennrick, I was pretty sure, was here to keep an eye on me.
Witherspoon let go of my ear. “Other side, please,” he instructed.
I swiveled my chair around, putting my back to Kennrick and the table. “We have got to be the saddest lot of travelers in Quadrail history,” Kennrick mused as Witherspoon dug his viewer into my other throbbing ear. “Give us a drum and a couple of fifes and we’d be right at home in a Western Alliance historical painting.”
“It’s worse back in the dispensary,” I reminded him.
“They were included in my list,” he said, his voice grim. “Damn it all. I still can’t believe this is happening.”
“You mean the fact that your contract team is falling over like dominoes?” I asked.
“And the fact that the Spiders haven’t lifted a leg to stop it.” he growled. “I thought they were supposed to keep weapons off their damn trains.”
“What weapons?” I countered. “Like you said earlier, cadmium’s found in any number of gadgets used all over the galaxy. And people bring antiseptic sprays onto Quadrails all the time.”
“Sprays strong enough to penetrate all the way into Filiaelians intestines?”
“I’ll admit that’s a new one.” I conceded. “The point remains that up to now nothing that’s been used has qualified as a standard weapon.”
“They’re supposed to screen for nonstandard weapons, too,” Kennrick growled. “You about done there, Doc?”