“How did he die?” Blake asked.
“I have asked the highest officials in the maseni diplomatic mission,” Galiotor Fils said, “but I have been unable to get a good answer. Invariably, they tell me the same thing—’of natural causes’—which is to tell me nothing at all. They commiserate with me in a false manner, saying what they do not feel, saying they knew him well and miss him too, saying they suffered much grief themselves…. Lies. I see through that.”
“What reason would they have to lie to you?” Jessie asked, pacing yet, not looking at Galiotor Fils, not able to look at him because of those yellow tears trembling on those thick, wiry lashes.
“I believe that they were somehow involved with his death,” the alien said, his sorrow slowly turning to anger, the tone of his voice subtly different as he spoke.
“The maseni at the embassy?”
“Yes,” Galiotor Fils said. “Tesserax worked there; indeed, he was the deputy chief of the embassy staff, the second-ranking maseni on Earth. He was of high position, respect, dignity, with a great future.”
“No history of illness?”
“Nothing worse than an occasional tentacle infection,” the maseni said, looking at his own hands. “He was a sexually unrestrained fellow, you see, and he often indulged in spur-of-the-moment—ah, you’d call it ‘petting’ without first lubricating his tentacles against infection. Our tentacles, you see, are by far the most delicate portions of our anatomies.”
“How old was Tesserax?” Blake asked, looking at the maseni’s twelve little tentacles from the corner of his eye.
“Eighty-six Earth years,” Galiotor Fils said. “But since we are much longer-lived than you, I must translate that—as, say, early middle age.”
“Not quite old enough to just drop off,” Blake said.
“Hardly,” Galiotor Fils said.
Blake said, “But surely the men he worked with at the embassy were the cream of maseni society. Your diplomatic staffs aren’t thugs, mugs, thieves or murderers, are they?”
“No, no!” Galiotor Fils said. His yellow face took on the subtle, greenish hue which indicated embarrassment. He was clearly upset that the detective could even suggest such a thing, as if it were not merely a slur on the diplomatic staff, but on the race itself, and on Galiotor Fils as well. “They are gentlemen of the first mud, I assure you, all intensively tested for psychological abnormalities. Their function is a very delicate one, after all: the introduction of maseni civilization, the establishment of trade and philosophical relations with inferior and superior and equal galactic races. They must be of sound mind.”
Jessie returned to his desk and gripped the back of his shape-changing chair with both hands; it molded around his fingers. He said, “Then how can you suspect these people of murder?”
“I said I thought they were somehow involved in his murder, but I did not say they performed it.”
“Call a spade a spade,” Brutus growled.
Galiotor Fils looked at the hound and said, “What?”
“Make yourself clearer,” Jessie suggested.
“I think my brood brother died in some unconventional manner, and that the embassy is trying to cover it up.” The alient shifted in his chair, too big for it, and said, “Is that better?”
Blake chose not to answer that, but began pacing again. In a few moments, he said, “Thus far, you’ve given us no reason to believe the people at your embassy were lying to you. Certainly, you choose not to believe that he died of natural causes, but that seems to be only opinion. Mr. Galiotor, when one loses a loved one, grief sometimes makes the acceptance of reality too hard to bear, and fantasies of paranoid—”
“There are a number of reasons why I suspect that I am not being told the truth about Tesserax’s death,” the maseni said, a bit angry.
“Name one,” Brutus said.
“I am stationed on Earth for the purpose of sociological research, along with several hundred colleagues. A group of your scientists have been taken to our home world, in exchange for the privilege of unrestricted study here on Earth. Tesserax and I saw each other frequently. Everyone at the Los Angeles embassy knew I was here, who I was, how much I loved Tesserax. Yet, when he died, I was not notified until he was three weeks in the grave!”