Odd Girl Out

by Timothy Zahn

  He gave me a lopsided smile. “You really think I know anyone I trust that far?” he asked. “But don’t worry about me. I meant what about you?”

  I thought about what Lorelei had said about her sister being in danger on New Tigris. I thought about the fact that her murder pretty well proved she hadn’t been just blowing smoke. I though about the Modhri, and his obvious interest in whatever the hell was going on here.

  And I thought about the fact that the man standing in front of me had just put up half a million dollars of Larry Hardin’s money to guarantee I’d stay in New York until the legal system took its crack at me. “First thing I’m going to do is get some sleep,” I said. “After that, maybe I’ll poke around a little and see if I can backtrack Lorelei’s movements.”

  “Sounds good,” McMicking said, gazing a little too intently at me. “I’ll keep tabs on the autopsy. I’ll also try to see if I can find anything on her from official sources.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I told him. “And thanks again for bailing me out. I know the kind of bind you’ve just put yourself into over this.”

  “No problem,” he said, his eyes lingering on my face another second before he gave the street another sweep. “Get some sleep. I’ll call you later.” Giving me a quick nod, he turned and strode away down the sidewalk.

  I watched him for a moment, wondering if I should offer to backstop him. But McMicking was a big boy, and quite capable of taking care of himself. More to the point, I was dead tired. Turning away, I headed back to my apartment.

  It was just before two o’clock in the afternoon when I finally woke up again. I checked for messages—there weren’t any—and then heated up another of my repertoire of soup cans, washing down the meal with a glass of sweet iced tea. By the time I finished I felt more alive and refreshed than I had in days.

  Time to get to work.

  My first task was to write a brief message for transmission to the Tube station hanging out there in the outer system just past the orbit of Jupiter. Unless Lorelei had always been in Terra system, she had to have come here by Quadrail, which meant that the Spiders should have a record of her movements. I asked for that record to be put together for me, and threw in a request that Bayta be located and notified that I would shortly be on my way.

  Encrypting the whole thing with one of the Spiders’ special codes, I uploaded it to the message center, noted it would be lasered to the transfer station within the hour, and got busy on a general computer search.

  I’d been at it an hour, and was still sifting through all the unrelated information on all the unrelated Lorelei Beaches, when my door chimed.

  I approached the door as one might approach a sleeping tiger: quietly, cautiously, and with Glock in hand. Standing well off to the side, I keyed the viewer.

  The uniform was that of a package messenger, complete with book-sized package in hand. The hair was that of an aging new-drift klivner trying to relive the glory days of his youth.

  The face was McMicking’s.

  I unlocked the door, and he slipped inside. “Still alive, I see,” he said approvingly as I closed the door behind him. “Anything else happen last night?”

  “Not to me,” I said. “You?”

  He shook his head and handed me the package. “Here.”

  “You get something already?” I asked, frowning as I pulled open the tab. There was nothing inside but a set of official-looking cards.

  “Not on the woman, no,” he said. “I thought you might need these.”

  I swallowed hard as I focused on the top card. It was an official Western Alliance ID card, complete with my face and fingerprints and other data.

  Only it was made out to someone named Frank Abram Donaldson.

  I looked up again to find McMicking gazing at me, an all too knowing look in his eyes. “This is . . .” I paused, searching for the right words.

  McMicking, typically, didn’t have to search. “This is going to get my butt in serious trouble,” he said calmly “But this is war. And I owe you. You and Bayta both.”

  “Mostly Bayta,” I said, rubbing my thumb across the ID. It even felt real. “She’s the one the Spiders listen to, and mostly obey.”

  “But you’re the one she listens to,” McMicking pointed out. He smiled faintly. “And mostly obeys.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” I demurred.

  “I would,” McMicking said. “And one of these days I’m hoping you’ll be able to explain just how all of that works.”

  “Definitely,” I promised, though I didn’t have the vaguest idea when that day would come. Bayta’s close relationship with the Chahwyn and Spiders was a closely guarded secret, but at least it was something I could vaguely understand. Bayta’s relationship with me, on the other hand, I was still trying to get a handle on. “Meanwhile, I’ll do whatever I can to get back before my court date,” I added. “If I do, hopefully you’ll be able to sneak the bail money back into your department account with no one the wiser.”

  “You just focus on figuring out what the Modhri is up to and nail him,” McMicking said grimly. “Mr. Hardin can absorb the loss if he has to.”

  “Mr. Hardin isn’t the one I’m worried about,” I said, sliding the ID to the back of the stack. Behind it was a torchliner ticket, with the shuttle from Sutherlin scheduled to leave that evening for its long voyage across the inner system to the Quadrail station. “I didn’t think I was nearly this easy to read,” I commented.

  He shrugged. “It’s not like the Modhri is doing serious work down here,” he said. “At least, I hope not. Therefore, wherever you need to go for follow-up on Lorelei will probably be somewhere out-system. I hope the timing isn’t going to be too tight.”

  “No, it’s perfect,” I assured him. “The sooner I get out of town, the better.”

  I rotated the ticket to the back of the stack and thumbed through the rest of my brand-new credentials. There was a universal pilot’s license, an import/export license, a rare-collectables dealer’s certificate, and a notarized security bond. “No plumber’s certificate?” I asked.

  “Never hurts to be prepared,” he said equably. “You may find the last one particularly useful.”

  I flipped to it, and stopped cold, about as surprised as I’d been in many a day. It was a card identifying Frank Abram Donaldson as a member in good standing in the Hardin Industries security force.

  I looked up at McMicking again. This time there was a puckish smile on his face. “And that one’s even legit,” he said. “I have standing authority to hire any security personnel I want.”

  “Oh, he’s going to be pleased about this one,” I said. “What exactly is my salary, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Don’t mind at all,” he said. “You’re on staff at a dollar a year. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  “Not a problem,” I assured him. “It’s the prestige of the thing that matters.”

  “The hell with the prestige,” McMicking countered. “What matters is that that ID includes a carry permit.”

  I frowned down at the card. He was right—the proper legal phrasing was there at the bottom. “The hell with the prestige, indeed,” I agreed. “That could come in very handy.”

  “And unlike your residence permit, it doesn’t require you to load with snoozers, either,” he added, moving back toward the door. “I have to get going—Mr. Hardin’s briefing me on a new assignment this afternoon. If I get anything more on Ms. Beach before you hit the Quadrail, I’ll send it on ahead.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sliding the stack of documents into my inside pocket. “For everything. I owe you.”

  “Just let me know how it comes out,” McMicking said. He paused with his hand on the knob. “Or at least let me know as much as the Spiders will let you tell me.”

  “You’ll get it all,” I promised. “I know how to push the boundaries, too.”

  He gave me a lopsided smile, then opened the door and checked the hallway outside. With a
final glance and nod, he was gone.

  I double-locked the door behind him, feeling a not entirely pleasant warmth flowing through me. Sometimes it felt like Bayta and I were all alone in this war, with no one but the Spiders and the Chahwyn even cheering from the sidelines. It was nice to know that McMicking was treating the whole thing seriously, too.

  On the other hand, the Modhri had a little trick called thought viruses that he could use to plant subtle suggestions into those who weren’t already under his control. And thought viruses transferred best between friends, allies, associates, and compatriots.

  It was nice to have McMicking as an ally. It was also potentially very dangerous.

  But in a few hours I would be aboard a torchliner, out of reach of him and anything the Modhri might be able to do to me through him. In this case, at least, having an ally had proved to be a worthwhile gamble.

  Setting my Glock on the tea table, I headed to the bedroom to pack.

  THREE

  I waited until evening, and then headed outside and caught an autocab. No one was loitering outside my apartment as I left, nor was anyone waiting for me when I arrived at Sutherlin Skyport. I watched my fellow passengers closely as they came aboard, but given that the only view I’d had of the two Modhran walkers had been a nighttime glimpse of heads inside a car, I wasn’t really expecting to recognize either of them. Sure enough, I didn’t recognize anyone.

  We lifted from the field and headed for our orbital rendezvous with the torchliner that would take us to the Tube cutting across the outer solar system. At Earth’s current position in its own orbit, the trip would take a little under eight days.

  I spent most of those days in my tiny shipboard stateroom, avoiding the rest of the passengers and reading everything I could find on the thriving colony world of New Tigris, the first of the Terran Confederation’s four colony worlds as you headed inward toward the center of the galaxy. It was about three hundred light-years away, which translated to a nice comfortable five-hour Quadrail trip from Terra Station.

  My research on the place, unfortunately, didn’t take nearly all of those eight days. The colony had been officially founded twenty years ago, and in that time the population had grown to nearly two hundred thousand people. That sounded impressive, but I knew the truth: most of that growth had been pushed and prodded and possibly bribed by UN officials desperate to bring Earth to the level of the other eleven empire-sized alien civilizations.

  Unfortunately, all that prodding had yet to produce much in the way of tangible results. Of the four colony worlds, all but Helvanti were still little more than charity cases, heavily subsidized by the mother world, with little prospect of ever becoming anything more.

  Fortunately for Earth’s taxpayers, among whom I was so very honored to count myself, it wasn’t only public money that was being poured down the rabbit hole. The UN had managed to persuade a number of corporations, both the superlarge as well as the merely large, to add some of their own cash to the pot.

  On the firms’ balance sheets they were probably called investments, with an eye toward future advancements or discoveries. A more honest approach would be to write them off as favorable publicity and general goodwill.

  More cynically-minded types might even consider the donations as a form of other-directed bribes designed to soothe the UN’s regulators into looking elsewhere for someone to scrutinize.

  I had to admit, though, that New Tigris’s founding fathers had done a decent job with all the money flowing into their coffers. They’d built a single major town, Imani City, for those who liked a variety of restaurants and clubs, plus several smaller outlying towns and rural farming communities for those who preferred their companionship in smaller doses and were more casual about haute cuisine.

  But even the colony’s relative youth, the constant influx of public money, and the leadership’s good intentions hadn’t prevented a dark underbelly from forming on their new world. There were a couple of districts in Imani where the poor, the frustrated, and the otherwise disenchanted among the populace had developed a habit of gathering to express their grievances. Many of those malcontents already lived there, and as the like-minded were drawn in the more upstanding citizens had found it advisable to go elsewhere. Slums, in everything but name.

  Zumurrud District, where Lorelei had said her sister was hanging out, was naturally one of those garden spots.

  It was probably a good thing, I reflected more than once, that McMicking had given me that carry permit.

  The permit, of course, didn’t extend to the Quadrail station itself. The Spiders didn’t allow weapons into their Tube, either obvious weapons or more subtle items that might easily be combined into instruments of mayhem. All such devices had to be put in lockboxes at the transfer station, which the Spiders would carry across in their own shuttles and subsequently stow in special compartments beneath the train cars where they’d be out of anyone’s reach during the trip.

  Agent of the Spiders though I might be, I still wasn’t exempt from those particular rules. Mostly I wasn’t, anyway So I put my Glock in a lockbox as directed, accepted my claim ticket from the Customs official, and headed through the door into the main part of the transfer station and the shuttle docking stations at the far end.

  Quadrail passengers had the option of either going directly to the Tube and doing their waiting there, or else staying on the transfer station until their trains were called. Since I wasn’t scheduled for any train in particular, I took the first available shuttle across the hundred-kilometer gap. With luck, I could touch base with the Spider stationmaster and use my special pass to book a seat or compartment on the next train for New Tigris.

  With even more luck, Bayta would have gotten my message and be waiting for me.

  For once, luck was indeed with me.

  “I only arrived about two hours ago,” Bayta said as we sat down at a table in one of the outdoor cafes. “I wasn’t sure when you were due in, so when the stationmaster told me you had a data chip waiting I went ahead and picked it up.” She handed me the chip.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the chip and pulling out my reader, my eyes tracing the lines and contours of her face as I did so. Sometimes it wasn’t until you got something back that you realized just how much you’d missed it.

  To my surprise, and maybe a little to my consternation, I suddenly realized how much I’d missed Bayta. She’d become such a permanent part of my life and my work over the past eleven months that it had felt strange to spend a couple of weeks all alone without her.

  But only because she was my colleague and ally, I told myself firmly. I needed her, and she needed me, in this shadowy war against the Modhri. There’d been a time once when she might have been drifting toward feeling something more than that for me. But that time was past. We were colleagues and allies. Nothing more.

  “You all right?” Bayta asked.

  To my embarrassment, I realized I’d been staring at her. “Just a bit tired,” I said, lowering my eyes to my reader and plugging the chip into the reader’s slot. “First things first. Were you able to figure out where all that coral was going?”

  She shook her head. “As far as the Spiders’ records go, it looks like no crates of their description ever made it to the Cimmal Republic. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” I assured her, trying not to be too annoyed. It had been almost a month ago that the Modhri had dangled all that coral temptingly in front of us on the train ride between Ghonsilya and Bildim in the Tra’hok Unity. The choice had been clear: follow the crates and see where he was moving it, or stay with the mission we were already on.

  We’d stayed with the mission, and it was probably just as well that we had. Still, I’d hoped we might get to have it both ways. “It was still worth a try,” I said, keying the reader. The decryption program had done its magic, and there was Lorelei’s Quadrail itinerary.

  Some itinerary. Twenty days ago the woman had left New Tigris Station and headed to Earth. Ad
ding in the torchliner trip, it looked like she’d gotten to my apartment only a couple of days before I had.

  And that was it. There was no record of her arrival into the New Tigris system, or of her departure from anywhere else in the galaxy. The woman might have been born on New Tigris for all the travel data the Spiders had been able to dig up.

  “What is that?” Bayta asked.

  “Apparently, a huge waste of Spider time,” I said, handing the reader to her. “You ever hear of this woman?”

  “Lorelei Beach,” Bayta murmured as she glanced over the report. “I don’t think so. Should I have?”

  McMicking’s suggestion that Lorelei might have been another Spider agent flashed to mind. “Just thought you might have met her somewhere,” I said. “She was killed in New York a little over a week ago.”

  “Was she a friend of yours?”

  I shook my head. “I met her for the first time a few hours before she died. She was shot with one of my guns, by the way.”

  Bayta’s eyes were steady on me. “I think you’d better start at the beginning.”

  I laid it all out for her, starting with the gun in my face and pausing only when the waiter brought over our lemonade and iced tea. Bayta listened in silence the whole time, not interrupting even once with a question or comment. Her knack for keeping quiet at the right time was one of her most endearing talents.

  “So what are we going to do?” she asked when I had finished.

  “Well, I’m going to go hunt up this sister of hers,” I said. “Not sure what you’re going to do.”

  “You don’t want me with you?”

  Her face was expressionless, the words nearly so. But just the same the hurt behind her eyes managed to make it out into the open. Another of her many talents. “Don’t get me wrong,” I assured her hastily. “Under normal circumstances I’d love to have you along. But this is likely to be dangerous.”