Diplomatic Immunity

“Good morning,” he began politely. “Where's Chief Ve

“Sleeping, I hope.” The expression on her face suggested she was going to do her loyal best to keep it that way, too.

“At a time like this?”

“The poor man had a double shift and a half yester . . .” She squinted at him, and seemed to come to some recognition. “Oh. Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. I'm Chief Ve

“Night duty officer, eh? Very good. Yes, please. I wish to arrange for the detainment and interrogation, possibly with fast-penta, of a passenger from theRudra . His name's Firka.”

“Is there some criminal charge you wish to file?”

“Material witness, to start. I have found reason to suspect he may have something to do with the blood on the floor of the docking bay that started this mess. I want very much to find out for sure.”

“Sir, we can't just go around arresting and drugging anyone we please, here. We need a formal charge. And if the transient doesn't volunteer to be interrogated, you'll have to get an adjudicator's order for the fast-penta.”

That problem, Miles decided, he would bounce to Sealer Greenlaw. It sounded like her department. “All right, I charge him with suspected littering. Incorrect disposal of organics has to be some kind of illegal, here.”

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitched. “It's a misdemeanor. Yes, that would do,” she admitted.

“Any pretext that will fix it for you is all right by me. I want him, and I want him as quickly as you can lay hands on him. Unfortunately, he signed out of his hostel at about seventeen-hundred yesterday, and hasn't been seen since.”

“Our security work gang is seriously overstretched, here, on account of yesterday's . . . unfortunate incident. Can this wait till morning, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan?”

“No.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to go all bureaucratic on him, but after screwing up her lips in a thoughtfully aggravated way for a moment, she relented. “Very well. I'll put out a detention order on him, pending Chief Ve

“Thank you. I promise you won't have any trouble recognizing him. I can download IDs and some vid shots to you from here, if you wish.”

She allowed as how that would be useful, and the task was done.

Miles hesitated, mulling over the even more disturbing dilemma of Dubauer. There was not, to be sure, any obvious co

Leaving Ve

“So,” he said after a time. “How the devil did he keep those long, floppy feet out of the blood puddles?”

Roic stared over his shoulder. “Floater?” he finally said. “He'd have to be damned near double-jointed to fold those legs up in one, though.”

“He looks damned near double-jointed.” But if Firka's toes were as long and prehensile as his fingers suggested, might he have been able to manipulate the joystick controls, designed for quaddie lower hands, with his feet? In this new scenario, Miles needn't picture the person in the floater horsing a heavy body around, merely emptying his gurgling liter jugs overboard and supplying some artistic smears with a suitable rag.

After a few cross-eyed moments trying to imagine this, Miles dumped Firka's vid shots into an image manipulator and installed the fellow in a floater. The supposed amphibian didn't quite have to be double-jointed or break his legs to fit in. Assuming his lower body was rather more flexible than Miles's or Roic's, it folded pretty neatly. It looked a bit painful, but possible.

Miles stared harder at the image above the vid plate.

The first question one addressed in describing a person on Graf Station wasn't “man or woman”? It was “quaddie or downsider”? The very first cut, by which one discarded half or more of the possibilities from further consideration.

He pictured a blond quaddie in a dark jacket, speeding up a corridor in a floater. He pictured that quaddie's belated pursuers, whizzing past a shaven-headed downsider in light garb, walking the other way. That was all it would take, in a sufficiently harried moment. Step out of the floater, turn one's jacket inside out, stuff the wig in a pocket, leave the machine with a couple of others sitting waiting, stroll away . . . It would be much harder to work it the other way around, of course, for a quaddie to impersonate a downsider.

He stared at Firka's hollow, dark-ringed eyes. He pulled up a suitable mop of blond ringlets from the imager files and applied it to Firka's unhandsome head.

A fair approximation of the dark-eyed barrel-chested quaddie with the rivet gun? Glimpsed for a fraction of a second, at fifteen meters range, and truth to tell most of Miles's attention had been on the spark-spitting, chattering, hot-brass-chucking object in his hands . . . had those hands been webbed?

Fortunately, he could draw upon a second opinion. He called up Bel Thorne's home code from the comconsole.

Unsurprisingly, at this ungodly hour, the visual didn't come on when Nicol's sleepy voice answered. “Hello?”

“Nicol? Miles Vorkosigan here. Sorry to drag you out of your sleep sack. I need to talk to your housemate. Boot it out and make it come to the vid. Bel's had more sleep than I have, by now.”

The visual came up. Nicol righted herself and drew a fluffy lace garment closer about her with a lower hand; this section of the apartment she shared with Bel was evidently on the free fall side. It was too dim to make out much beyond her floating form. She rubbed her eyes. “What? Isn't Bel with you?”

Miles's stomach went into free fall, for all that the Kestrel 's grav was in good working order. “No . . . Bel left over six hours ago.”

Her frown sharpened. The sleep drained from her face, to be replaced by alarm. “But Bel didn't come home last night!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Graf Station Security Post One, housing most of the security police administrative offices including Chief Ve

Nicol had beaten Miles and Roic there, but not by much. She was still awaiting the arrival of Chief Ve

Nicol wore a plain blue T-shirt and shorts, hastily do

Chief Ve