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Miles considerately declined to take notice of Roic's distinct blush. "Our frog-man, maybe, but I
guarantee the ba didn't go looking for feminine companionship. There's nothing obvious about any of
this." Decisively, Miles reached for the call pad again.
Instead of Chief Venn, the image of a quaddie woman in a Security gray uniform appeared against the
dizzying radial background of Venn's office. Miles wasn't sure what her rank markings decoded to, but
she looked sensible, middle-aged, and harried enough to be fairly senior.
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"Good morning," he began politely. "Where's Chief Venn?"
"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 Venn's third-shift supervisor, Teris Three. Is
there anything I can do for you?"
"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. Iwant 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 Venn's review. But you'll have to see to the adjudicator as soon as we pick him up."
"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 connection between the two problems. Yet. Perhaps the interrogation of Firka would reveal
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one?
Leaving Venn's myrmidon to get on with it, Miles cut the com. He leaned back in his station chair for a
moment, then brought up the vids of Firka and reran them a couple of times.
"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."
"Helooks 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
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