"Oh, great." David leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "I think I"d better get some legal help here."

The Niruto turned away and headed for the door. the robots flanking him. "That would be an unprofitable use of your time," it said. "We do not follow human law here. Your law- yer would not be able to counter the word of the T*klar am- ba.s.sador."

"You"ll understand if I try anyway."

"You may try anything you wish," the Niruto said. "You will have little success, however, from within a closed cell." The door slid aside for him, then closed with a thump behind him and the robots, leaving David alone in his undiffercntiated room.

The human delegate to the peace conference showed up a few hours later. David had no idea what had brought him; he"d tried shouting for help, he"d banged the chair on the wall until he"d broken it, he"d even given in to biological pressure and urinated on the floor in the hopes that the room sensors would realize someone was there and create a bathroom for him-and maybe an intercom with it-but he"d given up long ago.

He"d been trying to steep and failing even at that when the door slid open to reveal a trim, gray-haired man in his early hundreds, dressed conservatively in a brown one-piece body- suit.

"I"m Trevor DeLange," he said, stepping inside and ex- tending a hand to help David to his feet.

"David Wikondu. I"d offer you a chair, but it broke while I was rapping out an S-O.S. with it." He waved at the broken pieces of plastic or alien wood or whatever they were scat- tered on the floor.

DeLange smiled a thin smile. "I"m sony to have left you here so long. I"ve been in contact with our emba.s.sy for the last few hours, trying to get you extradited to human s.p.a.ce, but so far we haven"t had any luck. The Ranthanik want to try you here, during the peace conference."

"I"m not even responsible!" David said. "I was walking VOLATILE Mix 235 toward the restaurant when I heard a scream, so I ran up to see what was the matter and I got arrested for murder."

"They would have arrested whoever was closest," DeLange said. "Niruto provide the security here, and Niruto law relies heavily on circ.u.mstantial evidence. They"re more interested in finding a scapegoat than finding the real culprit. So long as someone is punished for every crime, they figure the deterrent factor is the same."

"You"re kidding."

"I wish 1 were." DeLange sounded sincere enough, but Da- vid figured he"d have sounded a great deal more concerned if he"d been the one arrested.

"The killer is still loose," David pointed out "He may not stop with one delegate."

"Hotel Security has begun recording everyone"s movements.

If the a.s.sa.s.sin strikes again, they"ll know for sure who did it"

David paced to the wail and back again. "That"s smart.

Why weren"t they tracking everyone before?"

DeLange shrugged. He seemed a little uncomfortable standing in an empty room with a broken chair scattered on the floor and a puddle of urine in one corner. He"d been fold- ing and refolding his arms across his chest; now he tucked them into his suit"s side pockets as if to get them out of the way. He said, "They claim it"s not hotel policy to monitor their guests" activities. It scares away business. The truth is, this whole multi-species life system is still in the testing stage, and they may simply not have thought of it before."

"Hmm." David worked for a hotel; he suspected the real reason was liability. Data that didn"t exist couldn"t be stolen and used by someone else, say a journalist or politician look- ing for a little dirt on an opponent. He made another trip to the wall and back, then asked, "Why are you here if you know it"s still an experimental system? Why let them test it on some of the top officials from every species?"

DeLange laughed. "We had no choice. After the Androm- eda announced they"d built a new conference wing just for the peace talks, staying away for safety reasons would have been political suicide. We"ve all been saying how much we want to settle our differences peacefully; it was time to put up or shut up. So here we are."

"How are the talks going?" David asked. He was surprised 236 Jerry OWon he could feel any curiosity about anything other than his own predicament, but he knew that humanity was not necessarily a major player in galactic politics, and several other species- including the Ranthanik-were trying to edge in on human territory. The peace talks could help humanity"s chances of holding on to some of the disputed colonies, DeLange*s expression darkened. "We"re not accomplishing a whole lot. Mostly airing old arguments in public. Probably the only valuable thing to come of this whole process will be the precedent it sets for later talks. Of course, now that one of the delegates has been a.s.sa.s.sinated, there"s an entirely dif- ferent message being presented. That"s why the Nirutp are so eager to crucify you. They want the rumors stopped as soon as possible."

"Whether I"m guilty or not" David realized his only hope lay in die a.s.sa.s.sination of another delegate. If someone else were murdered while he was still locked up, then they would know he wasn"t the a.s.sa.s.sin. That didn"t seem likely, though. Presum- ably the a.s.sa.s.sin would know he was being traced now, too.

"What"s humanity"s official stance on this?" he asked.

"How far will you go to get me out of here?"

DeLange reddened. "Well, naturally we"ll do everything we can to, um, delay any hasty actions on the Niruto"s part, but the situation is delicate. We have to consider-"

"In other words, nothing. You"ll let them have me rather than start an interstellar incident over it, won"t you?"

"Mr. Wikondu," the amba.s.sador said coldly, "we are trying to develop a plan of action. Your welfare will figure as high as possible in that plan, but we must consider the entire hu- man race. We will do everything we can, short of open hos- tilities- We will not go to war over one individual."

"That"s what I thought" David paced toward the wall again, pa.s.sing the broken pieces of chair. He swiveled around, took a step forward, and kicked one of the chair legs as if by accident, sending it sliding toward DeLange. "Oops, sony," he said, bend- ing down to retrieve it He made as if to toss it out of the way, but halfway through the motion he swung around and brought it down on DeLange"s head with a sharp crack.

The delegate dropped like a short-circuited robot. David caught him before he whacked his head again on the floor, and laid him out on his back.

VOLATILE Mix 237 "They need a scapegoat, eh?" he muttered, bending down to feel for a pulse at DeLange"s neck. "Well, let "em have one. All humans look alike, after all."

The delegate"s heart still beat steadily. David quickly un- sealed his brown suit and peeled it off him, stripped off his own clothing, and put DeLange"s clothing on himself. It was " a little tight around the middle, but he sucked in his gut and got it closed. He put his own clothing on DeLange, making sure his ID card went with it, then dragged him over to the wall across from the door.

Then, taking a deep breath to calm down, he walked to the door, prepared to knock on it to be let out, but it slid open be- fore him and he stepped on through.

The robots were standing just on the other side, but the Nimto was nowhere in evidence. David stalked past the robots without a sideways glance and headed up Ae corridor toward the lobby.

Only after he"d turned the comer did he breathe.

He had bought himself anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours, depending on how soon DeLange awakened and how long it would take him to attract the attention of his jailers and convince them he was the human amba.s.sador. The way David saw it, he had two choices. He could either try to bluff his way through Hotel Security, catch the next ship out of the Andromeda, and disappear into deep s.p.a.ce, or he could use his temporary freedom to clear his name. Running for it seemed the least complicated in the short term, but the idea of skipping out on his entire life and starting over again some- where else didn"t exactly appeal to him, either. Not over a simple misunderstanding.

No, he would at least try to exonerate himself first. Of course there would still be charges for a.s.saulting DeLange, but he would probably be able to survive that if he exposed the real a.s.sa.s.sin.

Where to start? Well, the most d.a.m.ning evidence against him had to be the T"klar"s testimony. If he could convince her she was mistaken about him, then that should take care of it right there.

There was a Cheedon behind the front desk. David had never seen one up close before; they were ammonia breathers and normally required a separate habitat. They looked a little 238 Jerry Ottion like a stack of seven or eight long-armed starfish scaled up to stand about three feet high; this one rested atop a pedestal be- hind the counter. As David approached it he smelted a faint hint of ammonia, like a cat"s litter box gone uncleaned a day too long. Evidently the force coc.o.o.ns weren"t perfectly tight; when someone stayed in one place long enough, some of their air must leak across the barrier to permeate the surrounding atmosphere, and when someone else moved through it a little must get swept up in their own. It wouldn"t take much; a few molecules of ammonia is enough for a human nose to detect.

Half a dozen arms waved in greeting when he stepped up to the counter. "May I help you?" his translator said.

"I need to carry a message to the T"ktar delegate. Can you tell me where I could find her, please?"

More arms waved. "I"m sorry, but that information isn"t available-"

"Not true. I"ve just talked with your chief of security, who told me all the guests in this wing were being monitored.

Where is she?"

The Cheedon froze for a moment, then another ripple of movement played through its arms. "I apologize, Amba.s.sa- dor. She is in her suite."

"Where is that?"

"Level nine. Room twelve."

"Thanks." David dug into DeLange"s pocket and found a handful of change. He slid a steel half-solar across the countertop to the Cheedon and headed for a lift.

There were dozens of lift shafts and drop shafts in the ho- tel, most of them simple vertical corridors with force fields to support pa.s.sengers who stepped into them. It was old technol- ogy, enhanced with the ability to maintain the coc.o.o.n of air around people while they moved from floor to floor, but alongside the shafts was a different kind of lift that David hadn"t seen until his stay in the Andromeda. It was evidently made for burrowing creatures, and was basically a pulsing hole in the wall that would push them along in close confine- ment. When David had first seen one he"d been tempted to try it until he"d seen a ten-foot caterpillar crawl out of one and slide off down the corridor on hundreds of foot-long legs.

He stepped into the open air shaft, pausing to avoid another guest rising up from a lower deck. This one was a more fa- VOLATILE MIX.

239.

miliar form, a Bajoda, humanoid save for a smaller head and spindlier arms. They had been one of the first alien species humanity had encountered, and they could coexist with hu- mans, though they seldom did. There was speculation among some exobiologists that the two species had come from a common ancestor left behind by some earlier s.p.a.ce-faring race, but whatever the reason for their similarities, millennia of separate evolution had left them direct compet.i.tors. Their empires were too close together in s.p.a.ce and too similar in re- quirements for comfortable coexistence. The one in the lift shaft eyed David distrustfully as it rose, and David was glad when it got off on level seven.

There was one species that could probably tell humans apart, though, he thought.

He stepped out on level nine, checked the holomap in the foyer, and headed down the corridor for room 12. One of the doors halfway down had a robot guard on either side of it, and as he approached it he had a sinking suspicion that it was the T"klar"s. Sure enough, his quick door count ended with them. Should he walk on past, or try to brazen it out?

The robots made his choice for him. When he was still a couple of steps from the door, one of them slid out to block his path. "I"m sorry, sir," it said, "but I must ask you to state your business in this section."

David swallowed the lump in his throat. "I"ve come to talk with the T"klar amba.s.sador. About the, uh, murder suspect."

"Amba.s.sador Sarell does not wish to be disturbed."

"Tell her it"s important. It could, uh, mean considerable embarra.s.sment for her if she ignores what I have to tell her."

The robot paused, no doubt relaying the message. Then it abruptly slid back and the door opened. "She will see you, but only if one of us accompanies you."

"Fine." David followed the robot into the T"klar"s suite.

She stood before the window, her back to the stars. To her left, another doorway led off into the rest of the suite. The en- tire room sparkled with the blue fluorescence peculiar to her atmosphere, and up close David could see that her fur was also a light shade of blue, and as fuzzy as a kitten"s. Her ears were high and rounded, half buried in fur, and though her eyes were in the right place they were twice the size of Da- vid"s and irised in six segments like star sapphires. She wore 240 Jerry Olfion a single piece of clothing, a strip of green cloth wound once around her waist and looping up over her right shoulder.

The robot took up station between David and her, slightly to the side.

"Amba.s.sador Sarell," David said.

Her head whipped around like an owl"s, back and forth from David to the robot and back in a motion almost too fast to see. "You are not Amba.s.sador DeLange." she replied.

Uh-oh. So all humans didn"t look alike, at least not to all aliens. "He"s, uh, indisposed at the moment," David said.

"I"m one of his aides. He sent me to tell you that he visited with the man you accused of killing the Ranthamk, and he"s convinced that David Wikondu is innocent."

"That"s ridiculous," she said. "I saw him fire the shot."

"You watched a being wearing a human mask fire the shot.

Then he turned and ran, but collided with m-David. The real a.s.sa.s.sin got away, while David tried to see if he could help the Ranthanik."

"He ran back for the gun he"d dropped," Sarell said.

"The gun? Wait a minute. The gun!" David suddenly real- ized he had a chance. "I-David never touched the gun. Fin- gerprints would prove that."

"Fingerprints?"

David nodded eagerly, "Right, fingerprints! Human hands are each unique. They leave their pattern on whatever they touch. We can check the gun for fingerprints and prove that David didn"t shoot it.*"

"You"re calling me a liar? The T"klar amba.s.sador?" Her eyes seemed to blaze at him.

"I-no, of course, I-" David spluttered to a stop. Was he about to create another interspecies incident here? He looked away from her hypnotic eyes, checked the robot to see if it might be about to toss him out the door. Wait a minute, he thought. The robot.

In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. Aloud he said, "You call yourself a liar. Why else are you under guard if you"re so sure you"ve caught the a.s.sa.s.sin?"

Sarell snorted something that didn"t translate. What did translate was, "There may have been more than one of them.

I"m a potential witness against them all. I"m sure they would VOIATILE Mix 241.

like to keep me silent." She started to say something else, but a thumping noise from the hallway made her pause.

"What was that?" David asked, but he got his answer when the robot that had been stationed outside the door teetered over and fell with a crash to the floor.

"We are under attack," the remaining robot said with a calmness that belied its words. "Take cover." It rolled for- ward, pushing David behind it with one arm while another snaked forward with a heavily finned, glistening beam weapon of some sort.

The T"klar whipped her head around to look at David for a moment, then she grabbed his arm and pulled him into the next room, which proved to be a reasonably realistic re- creation of some kind of enormous flower, opened to make a sort of bowl-shaped bed. She led him across its spongy sur- face, shoved one of the five-foot petals aside, and pulled him into darkness beyond.

The crackle and thump of fighting echoed from the other room, then another crash that sounded suspiciously like the second robot going down.

"Uh-oh," David muttered. "I think we"re in trouble."

"Quiet!" She pulled him across an uneven floor littered with what felt like rocks underfoot; David noticed faint flashes of light as they grated against the floor. He stooped and picked up one in either hand. They were hot to the touch, but not so hot he couldn"t hold them. He felt silly defending his life with rocks, but they would be better than nothing.

Sarell had other plans, though. She had better night vision than he did; she reached for something on the wall and a nar- row crack of light grew before them. A door. Of course; the rooms were all the same, the hotel just connected more of them to make bigger suites. And each one had its own door.

She stuck her head out cautiously, then pulled David into the hallway and took off running toward the lift. David glanced the other way and saw the dead robot, plus a headless body mat might have been human or Bajoda lying half in the doorway. It had been wearing an air tank, too, David noticed. Evidently the other robot had killed him before being downed in turn. David wondered how many more of them had made it into the suite.

He and Sarell had emerged from room 10"s door; David heard a shout from behind him when they reached about room 242 Jerry Oltion 3, then a piece of the wall exploded in fragments just to his left. He dodged, took half a dozen more bounding steps, and leaped for the lift shaft just as another shot sent searing pain screaming through his right side.

Sarell reached the lift field and shot up out of sight. David stumbled into it, falling, and found himself careening upward feetfirst.

Sarell s.n.a.t.c.hed him out of the air four or five floors up, spinning him halfway around before the floor"s gravity caught him, and he landed with a thump on his injured side. He bit down on a scream.

"You"re hurt," she said, helping him to stand.

He looked down to see a charred patch of cloth a hand"s width across just below his lowest rib. It felt as if the b.u.m had penetrated halfway through his body, but he knew that was probably not true. If he"d been hit with a microwave la- ser, it would only have penetrated an inch or two at the most.

"I"ll live." he said through clenched teeth. "Come on, we"ve got to lose whoever was shooting at us or we might not get so lucky a second time."

They ran down the corridor, sending the few other guests in their way leaping for doorways and howling curses in their wake. They turned left at the first cross corridor and kept run- ning. David wasn"t making near as good a time as Sarell was; he glanced back at the next turn, hoping they might have con- fused the trail enough to duck into a doorway and hide out, but there behind them floated a trail of telltale blue sparkles glimmering in the air.

He ran to catch up with her, wincing at the pain in his side and shouting "Stop! The force fields aren"t tight enough to hold all your air in when we run. They"ll be able to track us wherever we go."

She skidded to a halt and looked back. The short word she spoke translated as "Snow." For someone who slept in flow- ers and basked on hot rocks, David supposed that made a pretty good swear word.

He Jogged up to her and they stood there for a moment, looking at the glittering trail, then Sarell said, "Leave me. I think they"re after you anyway."

David shook his head. "Ha, nice try, but they came to your room, not mine."

VOLATILE Mix 243 "There"s no sense in both of us getting killed."

"Look, if you get killed, I might as well be, too. You"re the only one who can clear my name."