Read Judgment at Proteus for Free Online

[It seems in order,] he said as he handed me the paper. [You may sign.]
    “Thanks.” I took the contract and held out my hand to Hchchu. “My pen left with my reader case.”
    His blaze darkened, but without a word he pulled his contract pen from its tailored pocket in his tunic and slid it across the table to me. I signed on the first line and handed both the paper and the pen back to him. He signed the second line and slid the paper into another slot on the desk. “You may go,” he said, putting the pen away.
    “We first need to know where Ms. German was taken,” I reminded him.
    Hchchu tapped a few keys on the desk’s computer and peered at the display. {Escort them to Sector 25-F,} he said in Fili. “The msikai-dorosli will take you to the proper sector desk,” he added in English.
    I looked down at Doug’s head. “A map would also be handy,” I suggested.
    “They will take you,” Hchchu said. “Good day, Mr. Compton.”
    Apparently, we were dismissed. “Right,” I muttered. “Heel, Doug. Or whatever.”
    {Go,} Hchchu added.
    The two watchdogs turned and trotted toward the door. “You coming?” I asked Minnario.
    [I need to wait until the station’s legal representative arrives,] he said. [After I’ve learned the full weight of the case, I’ll find you.] He eyed me closely. [At that point, we can discuss the matter further.]
    “I’ll look forward to it,” I said. The watchdogs had reached the door and were standing there expectantly, eyeing me over their shoulders. “My masters call,” I murmured, closing our carrybags and setting them on the floor beside us. “Let’s go.”
    *   *   *
    According to the material I’d read aboard the Quadrail, Proteus was divided into a number of sectors of different sizes and shapes, each acting like a combination hospital floor and New York City neighborhood. Most of the medical sectors were arranged with the testing and treatment facilities grouped in the center, surrounded by patient and staff quarters, which were in turn surrounded by shops, restaurants, and entertainment facilities. The non-medical sectors, the ones set up for meetings and conventions, had similar layouts, except that the rooms were considerably fancier and the restaurants and entertainment facilities correspondingly pricier.
    Living areas for the workers were scattered throughout the disk, most of them consisting of a dozen corridors’ worth of apartments grouped around a community-center dome that cut through several decks to give the locals a taste of open space. The brochures were a little vague about how those domes were arranged, and what was in each one, but hinted that the décor was largely up to the inhabitants of the neighborhood.
    All of the various living and working sections were in the hundred and fifty decks that ran through the central part of the station’s disk, with the domed areas above and below the disk dedicated to storage, recycling, power generation, maintenance, and the vectored force thrusters that kept the station from losing position and starting a long, leisurely fall toward the sun a billion kilometers away.
    Sector 25-F was about a quarter of the way around the disk and two kilometers inward from the edge. Fortunately, we didn’t have to walk the whole way. The station was equipped with a network of automated bullet trains that ran along their own array of corridors and covered both center-to-rim and circle routes.
    Even more fortunately, there was no charge for their use. Just as well, since I wasn’t sure where our watchdogs would have carried transit passes.
    The Filly at the reception desk by the 25-F bullet train terminus gave us Terese’s room number, which turned out to be fifteen floors above us and twenty corridors from the edge of the medical treatment cluster. We took an elevator up and finally arrived at her room.
    “I thought you’d been hauled off to jail,” she greeted us sourly as she stood in the middle of her