Judgment at Proteus Read Online Free PDF Page A

alleged crimes occur?] he asked, keying his chair forward to try to keep up.
    “This is none of your concern, friend Nemut,” Hchchu said, clearly starting to get annoyed.
    [Justice is everyone’s concern,] Minnario countered. [Where did the alleged crimes occur?]
    “It was on New Tigris,” I told him. “One of the worlds of the Terran Confederation.”
    [Then it’s a cross-empire proceeding,] Minnario said firmly. [Mr. Compton will require a legal defender certified in cross-empire law.]
    “ Is that what you need?” Bayta murmured.
    “No idea,” I murmured back. My Westali training had included a unit in interstellar law, but only those sections that dealt with jurisdictional disputes. The fact that the New Tigris authorities didn’t want me for anything kicked this into an area I knew nothing about.
    From the look on Hchchu’s face, I gathered this wasn’t his area of expertise, either. “I will make inquiries,” he said to Minnario. “Perhaps there is someone aboard whom we can consult.”
    [No need.] Minnario reached into a pouch at the side of his chair and extracted a card. [I am Minnario chu-DeHak, Attorney of Blue Stature with the Nemuti FarReach,] he continued, handing Hchchu the card.
    He turned his gaze on me. [If it’s acceptable to Mr. Compton, I will defend him.]
    *   *   *
    We ended up in a small room just off the entry bay, our luggage arriving with two more Jumpsuits half a minute behind us. From the room’s setup, I gathered that Hchchu’s original plan had been to frisk me, frisk my luggage, and then lock me up somewhere out of the way.
    But with Minnario on the scene, all such bets were off. Instead, we all stood around waiting while Hchchu sat at the desk making call after call, trying to locate someone on the Proteus staff who knew something about cross-empire law.
    Midway through the comm marathon Emikai gave up his part of the vigil and left, promising to check in with me again once he and Aronobal had Terese settled wherever she was supposed to go. I used the occasion to again remind Hchchu that I had my own obligations concerning Terese, but the protest didn’t even evoke a reaction, let alone a response.
    And while I listened to Hchchu’s increasingly irritated conversations, I studied Minnario.
    I hadn’t seen much of him during our trip aboard the super-express, partly because I’d had more urgent matters on my mind, mostly because Minnario had been a very solitary traveler. Even the Modhran mind segment aboard that train hadn’t gleaned more than his name and his reason for traveling to Filly space. I’d spoken to the crippled Nemut only once, just after the train’s resident madman had kicked him out of his compartment, and I’d noticed him later among the stream of subdued first-class passengers when they were all finally allowed to return. After that, he’d apparently settled back into his earlier hermit ways.
    Yet now here he was, charging to my rescue, volunteering his professional services to a Human he barely knew.
    And that worried me, because I knew that the late and unlamented Asantra Muzzfor had played his cards very close to his layered tunic. Logra Emikai and Dr. Aronobal had both worked for him, though Emikai hadn’t known that and Aronobal had given no sign that she had either.
    Had Minnario been another of Muzzfor’s minions, knowingly or otherwise? More importantly, did he know about my role in Muzzfor’s death?
    But whatever was going on behind those watery eyes, it wasn’t making it to the surface. He scrolled busily through a series of pages on the reader connected to his chair’s display, all the while sporting the same poker-faced expression that I’d seen on dozens of other lawyers across the galaxy. My knowledge of written Nemuspee was far too limited for me to follow what he was reading, but from the headings I gathered he was skimming through a compilation of cross-empire laws. Maybe it wasn’t really his area of expertise,