The Domino Pattern Read Online Free PDF

settled back in his seat, and once again the inner eyelids came down.
    This time, they stayed there. “What now?” Kennrick asked.
    I frowned at the sleeping Shorshian. Without some idea of what had knocked Colix off his unpronounceable Path, our options were going to he severely limited. “Let’s go talk to his traveling companions,” I said. “Maybe they’ll have some idea of who might have wanted him dead.”
    The crowd in the second/third dispensary had shrunk considerably by the time Kennrick and I returned. Only Bayta, Witherspoon, and Master Tririn were still there. And Colix’s body, of course. “Where’d everyone go?” I asked as Kennrick and I joined them.
    “Dr. Aronobal—she’s the Filiaelian doctor—went off to work up her report on the death,” Bayta said. “Master Bofiv wasn’t feeling well and returned to his seat.”
    “Well?” Witherspoon asked. During our absence, he’d laid out a small sampling kit, complete with scalpel, hypo, and six sample vials.
    “Sorry,” I said. “ Di -Master Strinni wouldn’t give his permission.”
    [Did you explain the situation?] Tririn asked.
    “In detail. Master Tririn,” Kennrick assured him.
    “Unless there’s a Guidesman of the Path around to supervise, we aren’t allowed to cut into Master Colix’s body,” I added.
    “Are we sure there isn’t someone like that aboard?” Witherspoon asked.
    “We’d have to ask the Spiders,” I said, looking at Bayta.
    She gave me a microscopic shrug. “I suppose we could make inquiries,” she said.
    Translation: she’d already asked. Either there wasn’t a Guidesman aboard or else it wasn’t something the Spiders routinely kept track of.
    “Speaking of Spiders,” Kennrick said, “where’s the one that was here earlier?”
    “He’s gone about other duties,” Bayta said. “Did you want him for something?”
    “As a matter of fact, I did.” Kennrick pointed to the drug cabinet. “I notice that none of those bottles are labeled.”
    “Actually, they are,” Bayta said. “The dot patterns along the sides are Spider notation.”
    “If a passenger needs something, the Spider prints out a label in his or her native language,” Witherspoon explained. “Saves having to try to squeeze a lot of different notations onto something that small.”
    “I’m sure it does,” Kennrick said. “But that also means none of the rest of us has any idea what’s actually in any of them.”
    Bayta frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
    “I mean we don’t actually know that the drugs Dr. Witherspoon and Dr. Aronobal injected into Master Colix were actually helpful,” Kennrick said. “It could easily have been just the opposite.”
    “Are you accusing the Spiders of deliberately causing him harm?” Bayta asked, a not-so-subtle challenge in her tone.
    “Maybe,” Kennrick said. “Or else someone might have sneaked in here while the Spider was absent or distracted and changed some of the labels.”
    I stepped around the body on the table and went over to the drug cabinet. I’d noted earlier that the doors were glassed in; up close, I could see now that it wasn’t glass, but some kind of grained polymer. Experimentally, I gave it a rap with my knuckles, then tried the latch.
    The door didn’t budge. “That would have to be one hell of a distracted Spider,” I said, turning back to Kennrick. “Besides, wasn’t Master Colix showing symptoms of poisoning before they even brought him in here?”
    “Symptoms can be counterfeited,” Kennrick said. He looked at the body on the table. “Or faked.”
    “You mean Master Colix might have faked his own poisoning so as to get brought in here so he could get pumped full of something lethal from the Spiders’ private drugstore?” I asked.
    “Well, yes, if you put it that way I suppose it sounds a little far-fetched,” Kennrick admitted. “Still, we need to cover all possibilities.”
    I turned to Tririn. “Did Master Colix have any addictions or