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"Shut up, Teki!" snarled Helda desperately.
"It's not as bad as what Vernon did with the white mice -"
"Stop," growled Millisor in exasperation out of the corner of his mouth. Teki
subsided and sat blinking.
Ethan spread his hands and asked Helda more gently and urgently, "Why? I have
to understand."
The concentrated venom in her posture broke into speech almost despite her
will. "Why? You even need to ask why? It was to cut you motherless unnatural
bastards off, that's why. I meant to get the next shipment too, if there was
one, and the next, and the next, until -" She was choking now. On her rage?
No, Ethan realized, his buoyant intellectual triumph turning sickly-sour in
his stomach; on tears. "Until I'd hooked Simmi out of there, and he came to
his senses and came home and got a real woman, I swear
I wouldn't criticize a hair on her head this time, I'll never be allowed to
even see my own grandchildren on that dreadful dirty planet..." She turned her
back and stood stiff-legged, defiant but for her hands over her red, smeared
face, ugly and helpless and snorting.
Ethan thought he understood how a propaganda-stuffed young soldier must feel
the first time in combat, stumbling by some sudden chance over his enemy's
human face. He had gloried for a red moment in his power to break her. Now he
stood foolishly with the pieces in his hands. Not at all heroic.
"Ye gods," muttered the Security man, in awe touched with glee, "I have to
arrest an eco-cop... ?"
Teki giggled. The other ecotech, clearly taken aback by Helda's confession,
looked as though he didn't know whether to argue or try to become invisible.
"But what did you do with the other?" Millisor rocked forward, teeth clenched.
"Other what?" Helda sniffed.
"The frozen human ovarian cultures you took out of the boxes for Athos, "
Millisor ground out, carefully, like a man speaking in words of one syllable
to a mutant.
"Oh. I threw them out."
The veins stood out on the Cetagandan's forehead. Ethan could name each one.
Millisor seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Idiot bitch," he panted.
"Idiot bitch, do you know what you've done... ?"
Quinn's laughter rang over them all like morning bells. "Admiral Naismith will
love it!"
The ghem-colonel's steel self-control broke at last. "Idiot bitch!" he
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screamed, and launched himself toward Helda, clawed hands outstretched. Both
Quinn's and the Security man's stunner beams caught him in a neat cross-fire,
and he crashed as trees do.
Rau just stood shaking his head and muttering over and over, "Shit. Shit.
Shit..."
"Attempted assault," the Security man paused to croon over his report panel,
"on a Biocontrol Warden carrying out her duties..."
Rau sidled toward the door.
"Don't forget breaking Detention," Quinn added helpfully. "This here's the
fellow," she gestured at Rau, "that you were all looking for who evaporated
out of C-9 the other day. And I bet if you search this room you'll find all
sorts of military goodies that
Kline Station Customs never authorized."
"Quarantine first," said the other ecotech, after a nervous glance at his
still emotionally incapacitated superior.
"But surely Ambassador Urquhart will wish to lay charges for the admitted
theft and destruction of Athosian property,"
suggested Quinn. "Who's going to arrest whom?"
"We're all gonna go to Quarantine, where I can make you all hold still till I
get to the bottom of this," said the Security man firmly. "People who
disappear out of C-9 will find that slipping Quarantine is quite another
matter."
"Too true," murmured Quinn.
Rau's lip rippled silently as another pair of heavily-armed Security officers
appeared in the doorway, cutting off retreat. The room seemed suddenly
crowded. Ethan hadn't seen the burly Security man call for reinforcements, but
it must have been some time earlier. His estimation of the slow-seeming man
went up a notch.
"Yes, sir?" said one of the new officers.
"Took you long enough," said the Security man. "Search that one," he pointed
to Rau, "and then you can help us run 'em all to
Quarantine. These three are accused of vectoring communicable disease. That
one's been fingered as the jail break from C-9. This one's accused of theft by
that one, who appears to be wearing a Station code-uniform to which he is not
entitled, and who also claims that one over there was kidnapped. I'll have a
printout as long as I am tall of charges for the one out cold on the floor
when he wakes up. Those three are all gonna need first aid -"
Ethan, reminded, slipped up to Teki and pressed the hypospray of fast-penta
antagonist into his arm. He felt almost sorry for the young man as his foolish
grin was rapidly replaced by the expression of a man with a terminal hangover.
The Security team in the meanwhile were shaking all sorts of glittering
mysterious objects out of the unresisting Rau.
"- and the pretty lady in the grey outfit who seems to know so much about
everybody else's business I'm holding as a material witness," the Security man
concluded. "Ah - where is she?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
In Quarantine, Rau followed the supine form of his still-stunned superior off
for whatever short-arm inspection Biocontrol demanded without a word. He had
said nothing, in fact, since they'd left the hostel room under heavy guard,
but had remained close to Millisor with a sort of grim loyalty, like a dog
refusing to leave its encoffined master.
Ethan wasn't sure what tests were required for detecting Alpha-S-D-plasmid-2 -
or its mythical mutation-3 - but from the dour look on Rau's face he suspected
they were rather invasive. He'd have felt better if Rau had shown the least
sign of possessing a sense of humor. The light in Rau's eyes as he glanced
back one last time at Ethan was like reflections off knife blades.
Ethan was in turn carried off to an office for a long, long talk with Security
in the persons of the burly arresting officer and a female officer who was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]