But whatever the answers, we weren’t going to get them tonight. I’d seen Emikai’s type enough times to know that he was going to require a lot more persuasion, or the right lever, before he would give anything up. “Whatever,” I said. “You realize, of course, that you’re going to have to be locked up pending a full investigation.”
“Nonsense,” he said stiffly. “You have not reached the required legal bar for such action.”
“Maybe not by Filiaelian standards,” I said. “But in case you haven’t noticed, we’re aboard a Quadrail. Quadrails run under Spider rules.”
Emikai looked at Kennrick, then Bayta, then back at me, and I could see that the full nature of his situation was starting to sink in. “The Filiaelian Assembly will not tolerate the mistreatment of its citizens,” he warned.
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll have too much of a problem with it,” I said, waving him to his feet. “In general, Filiaelians dislike criminals every bit as much as Humans do.”
Slowly, Emikai stood up. His eyes flicked again to Bayta, probably checking on her alertness. Having been shot from behind, he couldn’t know what exactly she’d done to lay him out on the corridor floor that way. But from his expression and cautious movements it was clear that he wasn’t interested in having another go at it. “Where do you intend to take me?” he asked.
“Well, we don’t have a proper brig,” I said consideringly. “So I guess we’ll have to put you in the morgue.”
“The morgue?”
“Yes,” I said. “Unless you’re ready to have a serious talk?”
He drew himself up. “There is nothing to talk about,” he said. “Show me to my prison.”
“As you wish,” I said. “Bayta, let the mites in, will you?”
She crossed to the door and opened it, and a pair of the little Spiders came in. “What do you want with those?” Emikai asked, a hint of apprehension creeping into his voice as the mites skittered toward us on their seven slender legs.
“Unfortunately, wristcuffs aren’t allowed on Quadrails,” I said. “So we’re going to have to improvise. Turn around, please, and cross your wrists behind your back.”
I actually wasn’t at all sure this was going to work. But Bayta had caught on to the plan, and with a little experimentation—and probably a lot of silent communication—we got the mites wrapped solidly around Emikai’s arms, their slender legs interlocked to keep them in place. “I’ll have to remember this one,” I commented to Bayta as we headed out the door into the corridor.
Bayta nodded toward the waiting conductor. “What did you want him to do?” she asked.
“He’s to keep an eye on our compartments while we’re gone,” I said. “Just in case Logra Emikai and Dr. Aronobal have another friend aboard.”
“I am not associated with Dr. Aronobal,” Emikai insisted.
“Right—I keep forgetting,” I said. “By the way, Bayta, is the good doctor still waiting for me in the dispensary?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Have the server tell her that I’m not coming and to go back to her seat,” I said. “He can tell her I’ll come by in the morning and talk to her then.”
“All right.” Bayta said doubtfully. “You sure you don’t want to deal with this tonight?”
“Positive,” I said. “This way, by the time we get back there, she’ll hopefully have her privacy shield up and won’t see us march Emikai past her. She’ll then have a few hours to miss her friend and wonder what went wrong before I go see her.” I nudged Emikai in the side. “Get moving—we’ve got a long way to go.”
It was a long, but fortunately quiet, walk back to the rear of the train. Emikai, probably still aching from the kwi blast, had apparently opted for the fight-another-day strategy and gave us no trouble along the way. I half expected him to stumble, cough, or otherwise try to signal Aronobal as we passed the doctor’s privacy-shielded seat, but he didn’t even try that.
I’d had Bayta send instructions on ahead, and by the time we reached the third baggage car I found the Spiders had set up everything just as I’d requested. There was a chair, a small table holding a box of emergency ration bars and bottled water, and a spare self-contained toilet the Spiders had scrounged from one of the storage cars, everything laid out neatly in front of one of the stacks of cargo boxes. We settled Emikai on the stool, and using the pieces of safety webbing he’d cut earlier, I tied his wrists to opposite ends of the crate stack. I adjusted the lengths carefully, leaving him enough slack to be able to reach his food tray and to shift himself over onto the toilet, but not enough for either hand to reach the other hand’s rope. With Humans or Shorshians I would also have had to keep him from biting through his bonds, but Filly teeth weren’t configured for that sort of thing.
“There we go,” I said, stepping back to examine my handiwork. “Enjoy the quiet, Logra Emikai. We’ll be checking on you every once in a while, in case you decide you want to tell us what you and Dr. Aronobal are up to.”
“Dr. Aronobal and I have nothing to do with each other.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, pleasant dreams. I hope you can sleep sitting up.”
Ushering Bayta and Kennrick in front of me, we left Emikai to his new home. “Aren’t you going to leave a guard?” Kennrick asked as we reached the vestibule and crossed into the next car forward.
“No need,” I assured him. “He’s not going anywhere.” I carefully avoided looking significantly at Bayta who, I was sure, was similarly smart enough not to look significantly at me. There was a guard team on duty, in fact: a pair of twitters, lurking in nearby shadows where they could watch for visitors or escape attempts.
“I suppose not,” Kennrick muttered. “Anyway, even if he gets loose, it’s not like he can jump from a moving train. You still going to wait until morning to brace Dr. Aronobal about this?”
“Why? You think I should do it now?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Kennrick said. “She has to know that something has gone wrong. If you wait until tomorrow, she’ll have had all those extra hours to come up with a good story.”
“She’ll also have had those same hours to sweat about what’s happened to her accomplice and wonder what went wrong,” I pointed out.
“I still think it’d be better to do it now,” Kennrick said. “If you’re too tired, I could run the interrogation while you watched. I trained in law, remember—I know all the techniques for getting witnesses to say the wrong thing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “It’s still not happening tonight.”
Kennrick hissed out a sigh. “Whatever.” He sent me a sideways glare. “Just remember that it was my contract teammates who were killed. Whenever you’re ready to try and get a confession—out of either of them—I want to be there.”
“You’ll be at the top of the visitors list,” I promised.
“Fine,” he said. “By the way, do you think I could have a look at that bypass mimic of his?”
“What for?”
“Just curious,” he said. “Early on in my career I handled a high-level corporate espionage case, and I ended up learning a lot about gadgets like that. I might be able to figure out if his would actually work.”
“So you can duplicate it?” I asked mildly.
“So I can find out whether I can sleep for the next three weeks,” he retorted. “Once Emikai and his buddies have finished off the rest of the contract team, who’s to say they won’t come after Dr. Witherspoon and me, too?”
“An intriguing thought,” I agreed. “Maybe after the Spiders have checked it out they’ll let you take a look.”
We walked the rest of the way in silence. When we reached our car, I sent Bayta through her compartment door, nodded a good-night to Kennrick as he and I reached mine, and opened my door as he continued forward to his.