Cultivator
Universe

Pataco ignoredthe ration bar. Instead he pulled up the data display on his visor and asked it to identify the specimen. While it was busy searching, he noticed that more sniffer reports were waiting. Reluctantly he opened the first one, an update on the sample he had picked up out on the ice. He checked to see if it had changed its mind about the girl being dead. It hadn't. “Cause of death?” he queried, never taking his eyes of the frozen creature. “Hyperglycemia,” the readout replied.

“It isn't dead,” Grusti mumbled.

“What?” Pataco spun around to look at his native guide.

“At least, it might not be dead. So don't mess with it.”

“It has to be dead,” Pataco responded. “It's frozen solid. Isn't it?” He switched display modes, and verified that the creature was as cold as ice.

“Frozen doesn't always mean dead. Not for bugs. Germs. Frogs...”

The creature did have a distinctly amphibian look to it. But it also looked sentient. “It's wearing a belt.”

“I noticed that.” Grusti sounded amused.

“You can't freeze people and have them survive,” Pataco protested. “They've tried.”

“You can't freeze humans, zthiirs or adult K!tukuk. You can supercool a hworill, though.”

Pataco did a quick data search on supercooling. It was a means of remaining unfrozen at below freezing temperatures, primarily achieved in fish by the use of glycoproteins, a kind of biological antifreeze. “But why would you think that applies to this thing?” The data search had failed to turn up a match for the creature, and there just weren't that many large bipeds in the universe. “This creature is unique. Have you informed R&E about this?”

Grusti removed his mask and stared solemnly at Pataco, his breath forming a cloud of miniature ice crystals in the frozen air. “I likely saved your life by bringing you here, Captain,” he said, quietly, so that it could barely be heard above the sound of the wind howling above them. “I'd be obliged if you wouldn't tell anyone about this.”

Pataco frowned. “Would you be willing to explain why?”

“No.” Grusti turned away, scratching his beard with gloved fingers.

“I'll have to think about it then.”

“Do that.”

Pataco didn't really feel up to thinking about it yet, so he opened up the other two sniffer reports instead.

The time of death on his first two victims matched very closely to the theoretical time of death on his missing girl. The evident causes of death, broken neck and strangulation, were also expected. What he hadn't expected was that the genetic analysis had come up clean. As far as the sniffer was concerned, only three people had been in that residence at the time of death: the late Gustav Turin, his contract spouse, and someone whose genes weren't in the database. He requested a relationship check and was told that the check was impossible. The third sample belonged to a female pre-adolescent, human “variant”, unregistered.

That was so bizarre, that he asked for two rechecks on it before he could quite bring himself to believe it. If the girl was an illegal genetic construct, that explained why she wasn't in the databanks, but where would a couple of clethaci hunters have picked up an illegal kid? And where was the genetic trace of whoever had killed the Turins? The girl was far too small to make a credible suspect. Pataco requested an increased time span on the genetic analysis from a day before the time of death, until the most recent sampling. The same three samples popped up. “That's impossible!” he remarked aloud. “I should be there.”

“Should be where?”

“In the genetic sampling. So should you. This is insane. I've seen genetic labs with more biological debris. It's as if everyone who ever visited them was wearing a clean-suit.”

“Like this?” Pataco turned to look at Grustigorph and found him holding up his cold mask.

Pataco looked down, his headlight illuminating the layers of insulation that encased his torso. “Oh.” Of course the cold suits would trap skin follicles and hair. Glumly Pataco requested another analysis, this time of all animal genetic matter, just in case whoever had been doing the illegal genetic modifications had been really creative, but that only gave him seven different clethaci to look at, and a much sparser than usual microscopic community.

Seven clethaci. That was interesting. “You said something about Turin bagging a silver? Are silvers are worth more?”

“That K!tukuk importer, whatsisname. He's only interested in the silver furs. There's a worldwide quota of twenty per season, keeps the price high.”

The vital statistics of the seven clethaci popped up on the data view. “You were right. Your friend bagged a silver. Only it's missing. I think we've found our motive.”

“But not the bastard who did it?”

Pataco ran a check on the number of clethaci hunters in Fenris' South Archipelago. Two hundred and forty-three. “At the moment, I haven't even got any suspects,” he confessed. “All I've got is my two victims, a motive of grand theft clethaci, and a missing girl.”

“Three victims.” Grusti corrected. “Stephi's dead. She was dead the moment she ran outside.”

Pataco's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“Alone in the cold, without the proper gear—she didn't have a chance.” He shone his headlight on the frozen creature. “This land is not for the living.”

Pataco nodded. That made perfect sense. It was only the strange results he had gotten from the sniffer that had made him wonder. He looked it up again. Hyperglycemia: too much sugar in the blood—it induced coma. That made no sense either.

“Was there anything odd about Stephi?” he asked.

“How do you mean? She was a kid. A cute kid. She wanted to be a microbiologist.”

“But did she look... different.”