The Legacy of Lehr (11 page)

The captain glanced at Wallis and Shannon, both now standing to one side of him, then stared suspiciously at the object in Mather's hand.

“You still haven't answered my question, Seton. What is that?”

“Apparently, it's a psychic irritator,” Mather replied. “It's a very sophisticated device, just to make a few Lehr cats feisty. It transmits psychotronic energy on a fairly narrow band. In this case, it was set on a frequency that would be irritating to the cats—and to humanoids, to varying degrees—but that could not be specifically detected otherwise, unless one knew precisely what to look for. Incidentally, this tends to confirm that the cats
do
scream telepathically, Wallis, though I'll still want to check that aspect more specifically, when we have the time.

“But even though the screaming may have had some effect on those within the cats' broadcast range—probably a few hundred meters, at most—I suspect that we'll find the bulk of the irritation—to the cats, the crew, and probably the Aludrans—was due to this transmitter.”

“The Aludrans?” Lutobo said. “But, I just had them—Are you trying to tell me that they may also have been affected by that device?”

Mather cocked his head thoughtfully. “That's possible. It's just occurred to me that their cabins are on Level Five, right above the cargo deck—maybe even right above our hold. That could certainly explain last night. I thought at the time that Muon's reaction was a little excessive to be entirely self-induced. Wally, does that sound plausible to you?”

“Well, they
are
slightly telepathic already, so it makes sense that they'd be more susceptible to that kind of transmission,” Wallis said. “And with Muon being a seer …”

Lutobo rubbed a hand across his jaw and frowned. “Well, could the Aludrans have—damn it, you two! You're getting me away from the point. The Aludrans didn't kill Fabrial! I don't see how the cats could have done it, either, but that's the only evidence we have to go on.”

“Then who put that device in the hold, Captain?” Mather asked. “And why?”

“Well, it certainly wasn't the
Aludrans!
” Lutobo replied. “We all know they're afraid of the cats. They certainly wouldn't want to do anything to stir them up.”

Shannon folded her arms across her chest in speculation. “But remember what Doctor Torrell said about cat legends at dinner last night, Captain. We know that the Aludrans see the cats of their own mythical tradition as demons. Maybe their own discomfort was worth it, to make the cats miserable.”

“Doctor, you're beginning to sound like those two!” Lutobo snapped, gesturing toward Wallis and the electronic image of Mather. “The next thing I know, one of you will be trying to tell me that the cats aren't involved in this at all.”

“Your own technology suggests their innocence, Captain,” Mather said.

Lutobo's jaw tightened and he said nothing for several seconds. Then he carefully clapsed his hands behind his back and looked directly at Mather's image.

“I can't account for that just now, Commodore. I do know one thing, however. I want the guard doubled around those cats.”

“I've already stepped up security, Captain. From now until we reach Tersel, I intend to allow no one besides my Rangers, Wallis, and myself inside the cats' hold. I'm also having additional restraining devices installed around the cages, just to reassure you that the cats cannot possibly be involved in what happened.”

“Yes, well,” the captain said lamely. “I—ah—also intend to confine the Aludrans to their quarters until we reach Tersel. And if I could detain certain other people”—he glanced pointedly at Wallis, then glared into the viewscreen—“you can be sure that I would. As it is, I sincerely hope that both of you will stay out of my way and out of the affairs of my ship. Is that clear, Doctor, Commodore?”

Mather's bland expression betrayed none of his undoubted annoyance.

“I understand perfectly, Captain. If you don't mind, I wish to run some additional tests on this device, here in engineering. After that, if it is your wish, I shall withdraw as much as possible.”

“Just make sure nothing else happens, Commodore!” Lutobo said, before he punched the button to break the circuit.

As the screen went to black, the captain cast one last, disapproving glance at the two physicians, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the surgery. Shannon, with an apologetic shrug of her shoulders, picked up a scalpel and began pulling back the drapes on the body of Fabrial.

“Doctor Hamilton, if you wish to stay for the remainder of this autopsy, I won't ask you to leave,” she said quietly, not looking up. “This is my surgery, and I determine who is qualified to practice medicine aboard this ship.”

“I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with your captain,” Wallis said carefully.

Shannon gave her a wry, sidelong glance and tiny smile. “He didn't order you out of here. He simply expressed the hope that you would stay out of his way. I don't see him around, do you?”

Wallis could hardly argue that point. With a faint grin, she moved to the other side of the table and pulled an overhead light closer, losing herself for the next little while in the
buzz
of force probes, the
whirr
of suction devices, and the always fascinating exploration of the marvel that was a human body.

CHAPTER 6

Shannon and Wallis finished the post mortem an hour later. Their findings confirmed Shannon's original opinion of the cause of death, but they still could not agree on the agent. Shannon grudgingly admitted she was less than convinced that the cats were to blame, despite the physical evidence surrounding the deceased; but there she faltered in an alternate hypothesis, as did Wallis.

“Well, it
was
Lehr cat fur we found in his hand, after all,” Shannon said, frowning over the printout of their report.

“Yes, but is it from one of
our
cats?” Wallis replied. “I know, you can't tell me that until I get you samples to match against the evidence—and I'll do that a little later. But there's
got
to be another explanation. Did Fabrial have enemies? Do we know of anyone who might have wanted to see him dead?”

“I don't know,” Shannon said. “I could ask the same question about the cats. We know the Aludrans hate them. Could they also have some reason to hate Fabrial? Is there
any
chance that one of them somehow killed Fabrial and then deliberately tried to make it look like a cat was responsible?”

“An Aludran? Almost certainly not,” Wallis said. “Violence is completely at odds with their philosophy. That doesn't mean that someone else couldn't have tried to frame the cats, though.”

“But
why?
” Shannon sighed. “Dammit, Wallis, maybe the cats
did
somehow manage to get out and hunt! Torrell says that almost every culture has myths about supernatural cats. Maybe they walk through walls!”

The two racked their brains. They sat in Shannon's office for over an hour after orderlies had come to take Fabrial's body away to cold storage and tried to establish some possible motive for his murder, even if they could not assign suspects to those motivations. In desperation, they pulled Gustav Fabrial's files and set up a computer run to correlate his background against that of everyone else on the ship who had known or had contact with him. They went over their medical findings again and again.

“Try this,” Shannon said, as they sipped hot tea in her office. “You're fairly sure the cats are telepathic screamers. Is it possible that telepathy is not their only psychic talent?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don't know. Maybe some kind of memory-erase? To a certain extent, we can do that with machines. Maybe the cats can do it naturally.”

“Or”—Wallis raised an eyebrow thoughtfully—“maybe some people did it with machines, to cover their tracks. Who has access to yours, besides yourself?”

“Just Deller. We have two machines, but no one else is authorized to use them. And it takes a thumbprint to key them. Also, there's an automatic record made each time either one is used; falsifying it would be very difficult, if not impossible.”

“It isn't impossible,” Wallis said quietly, “believe me. However, I'd think it
is
impossible to have all seven of our Rangers up here, plus your security guards, without someone noticing such a mass troop movement and without at least one of them remembering something odd. Are the machines portable?”

Shannon shook her head. “Not readily. What you see above the tables is only part of the apparatus. The rest is built into the wall.”

Wallis nodded thoughtfully. “That's fairly standard. Let's get back to the cats, then. Unless they're a whole lot more sophisticated than we've been led to believe, I don't see how they could change or erase the perceptions of trained observers without being detected. The gaps in continuity would stand out like supernovas.”

“How about mass hallucinations, then?” Shannon asked. “What if only one cat gets out at a time—don't ask me how—and the others somehow create the impression that he's still there. No gaps, that way.”

“True,” Wallis conceded. “And a hunter who can make his prey think he's where he's not—that could be very useful.” She shook her head and sighed. “But Imperial Rangers and trained security specialists are not the same as game animals, Shivaun. I think my men would know, even if yours didn't. Besides, nothing like that happened on B-Gem.”

Shannon had to agree. For several seconds neither woman spoke, each lost in thought, until finally Wallis looked up and cocked her head to the side. “You know, I just had another idea. It's farfetched, and it's going to sound as if I'm conceding that the cats might be responsible for Fabrial's murder, but there are a couple of people aboard that we might talk to, who know a lot more about Lehr cats than Mather and I do. Vander Torrell is one of them. You heard him expounding on the lost race of Il Nuadi last night at dinner.”

“One of the more boorish men it's been my misfortune to meet,” Shannon observed with a grimace. “I don't suppose I should say that about a passenger, but nothing in my contract says I have to like them all. Come to think of it, he didn't seem to care much for you and Commodore Seton, either.”

Wallis shrugged. “There's some cause, I suppose. Mather and I exerted quite a lot of pressure, trying to persuade him to join our expedition. He won't let us forget that it didn't work. I was hoping you might talk to him.”

“Me?” Shannon rolled her eyes. “The things I do in the line of duty. Who's our other expert?”

Wallis smiled across at her unperturbed. “Believe me, you've got the better end of the bargain. I thought I'd pay a call on Lorcas Reynal. He boarded at B-Gem, too, but I don't think you've met him yet. He keeps pretty much to himself. He was born on Il Nuadi, as he prefers to call it, and he was a member of our expedition, albeit a less than enthusiastic one. He didn't think we should capture the cats, and he especially didn't want to see them taken off-planet.”

“Then why did he help catch them?”

Wallis grinned. “Filthy lucre. Our fee would have been very hard to turn down—and he didn't. He's something of a cultural anthropologist—mostly self-educated, but respected on his own planet. I think he's using his ill-gotten gains to finance a sabbatical on Wezen I, where your friend Torrell did his work. That's why he's aboard. But once the cats were captured and he'd been paid, he made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing further to do with us. Still, he might be able to tell us something.”

“Aren't ‘able' and ‘willing' two different matters, in this case?” Shannon asked.

“Probably. But at least I ought to try—and I've got a better chance than Mather would of learning something. The two of them had a running battle—verbal, fortunately—almost from the first day we arrived on B-Gem. A few of our younger Rangers seemed to get along with him a little better, but even that was a strained truce, at times.”

“Then why did you keep him on?”

“He knew how to track Lehr cats. Men like that are rare.”

Shannon mulled that for a moment, then swiveled toward her console and punched up a medical record. The name at the top was Lorcas Reynal. “I think I know where to find Torrell, this time of day,” Shannon said, skimming down the readout. “You'll probably find Reynal in his cabin—number thirty-nine, Deck Three. I see he's not a well man—but I expect you knew that. He asked for a sterile atmosphere in his cabin, which we gave him. He also wears a contagion force field most of the time. His record says he's extremely susceptible to outside infection off his own planet.”

“I think he's a hypochondriac more than anything else,” Wallis said, getting to her feet, “besides being a master of insults in several different languages.”

“Well, if you think there's going to be any problem, I can send someone from security with you, but they're all a little busy right now,” Shannon said.

Wallis shook her head. “No need. I'll pick up a Ranger on the way and meet you back here when we're finished.”

At Reynal's cabin, Wallis buzzed four times before getting a response. She had begun to think Reynal was out after all, but it was his familiar, unpleasant face that came up abruptly on the door viewer. He did not appear at all pleased, and Wallis suddenly was very glad she had not come alone.

“Good morning, Mister Reynal. Or perhaps I should say good afternoon, since it's past lunchtime. May we come in for a moment?”

Reynal eyed both of them suspiciously, then thumbed the door control and stood aside as the door slid back. He gestured reluctantly for Wallis and Wing to enter. The room was chilly, the lights very low. As Wing took it upon himself to bring up the lights, Wallis was reminded again how unpleasant-looking Reynal was. Tall and long-limbed, almost painfully thin, with dull, mud-colored eyes in a pasty, hairless face, he seemed almost a caricature of a man, even though he was of human stock.