by Timothy Zahn
She smiled wanly. “Like everything else we’ve done together hasn’t been?”
“Point,” I conceded. “But there’s a particular edge of nasti-ness to this one. You didn’t see what they did to Lorelei. I did.”
“I thought you’d decided the Modhri did that to cover the fact that he needed to destroy the walker’s polyp colony,” she reminded me.
“That’s one possibility,” I said. “Problem is, he’s never done anything like that before with any of the other walkers he’s had to sacrifice for one reason or another. At least, not with anyone he’s sacrificed in our presence. It seems out of character for him, and it’s definitely a change of pattern. Either of those alone would be enough to worry me. Both of them together get my shivers up.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ve had a few days to think, and a couple of possibilities have occurred to me.”
I drank down half my iced tea in a single swallow. Talking about death and mutilation always made my throat dry. “One: the whole thing could have been staged for my benefit. A ploy to get my attention, but good, and make me curious enough to keep digging.”
“Why?”
“I won’t know that until I find something,” I said. “Scenario two: framing me for a gruesome double murder was intended to put me out of circulation long enough for the Modhri to pull off some other stunt.”
“Maybe related to all that coral he was moving?” Bayta suggested.
“Could be,” I said. “Of course, that would require Lorelei to also have been a walker who went to my apartment to snag one of my guns. Scenario three is that the whole thing was a setup to get me to flush McMicking out into the open for him.”
Bayta took a thoughtful sip of her lemonade. “You did say the walkers following you seemed more interested in him than in you.”
“True,” I agreed. “On the other hand, we could still be on scenarios one or two, and deciding to follow us was just something the Modhri decided on the fly after seeing McMicking bail me out.”
“I don’t know,” Bayta said thoughtfully. “Something about the last two scenarios bothers me.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Starting with the fact that if Lorelei was a walker there was no reason for her to keep hanging around my apartment after she’d stolen my gun. There was certainly no reason for her to spin me that story about a kid sister in trouble.”
“So what you’re saying is that, for good or evil, someone wants you to go looking for her,” she concluded slowly.
I cocked an eyebrow. “ ‘For good or evil’?”
She colored slightly. “I’ve been reading Earth literature lately,” she admitted. “I thought it would help me to understand . . . all of us . . . a little better.”
I suppressed a grimace. Bayta was in effect a hybrid, a Human who’d grown up with a full-blown alien Chahwyn similarly growing up inside her. They shared much the same sort of dual mind as a walker and his Modhran colony, except that in Bayta’s case it was a true symbiosis and not simply a parasitical relationship. The Chahwyn part gave her a stamina beyond normal Human capacity, and let her communicate telepathically with the Chahwyn and the Spiders, an ability that came in handy on a regular basis.
If I thought about it too hard, it could become a little unsettling. But for her, obviously, it worked.
But partly because of that, and partly because Bayta had been raised by the Chahwyn, there were certain gaps in her Human cultural understanding. I’d been doing my best to help fill those gaps over the past few months by showing her some of the classic dit rec dramas by Hitchcock and Kurosawa and Reed. Now, it seemed she’d decided to branch out into literature, as well.
Still, there was something vaguely embarrassing about her admission, composed as it was of equal parts childlikeness and the painful awareness that for all her Human appearance she still wasn’t fully Human. I turned my eyes away from her, pretending I was just checking out the area around us.
My eyes halted their sweep, Bayta’s discomfiture abruptly forgotten. Sitting on a bench fifty meters away, his left profile turned to me, was a Pirk.
There was nothing unusual about that per se. Pirks loved to travel, and were reputed to spend more of their income on that than anything else except housing. This particular Pirk was typical of his people: wiry, covered with goose-like feathers, wearing the simple headdress that denoted modest means and social standing. He was gazing across the platforms that straddled the various four-railed Quadrail tracks running along the inside of the Tube.
But there was something else about him, something that was decidedly atypical of the species. The bubble of empty space that typically surrounded every Pirk wasn’t there. Other travelers, Humans as well as non-Pirk aliens, were passing by his bench without veering away, some of them getting as close as a meter before they even seemed to notice he was there.
Either Terra Station was witnessing a mass paralysis of the olfactory organs, or else we’d stumbled across the galaxy’s first non-aromatic Pirk.
“Frank?” Bayta asked.
“Take a look,” I said, nodding fractionally toward the bench. “The Pirk over there with the yellow-and-pale-blue headdress.”
Lifting her lemonade, she casually looked that direction. “Looks fairly young,” she said. “Lower-middle-class, probably, from the headdress. Maybe even a bit lower . . .” She trailed off.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I agreed. “Did the Pirks suddenly discover deodorant when I wasn’t looking?”
“Deodorants don’t do any good,” she said, frowning at him. “The distinctive Pirk aroma comes from the food they eat. The by-products are metabolized and excreted through the skin pores—”
“I was being facetious,” I interrupted. Cultural gaps aside, Bayta’s general book learning was very much up to date. “So does that mean this one’s on a special diet or something?”
“I don’t know,” Bayta said. Her eyes shifted a little to the left. “Do you know those Humans he’s staring at?”
Caught up in the novelty of it all, I hadn’t even picked up on the fact that he was looking at something across the way. I tracked along his sightlines, and found myself facing a similar bench two platforms over.
There, chatting amiably together, were two men I did indeed recognize. “They’re a couple of my fellow torchliner passengers,” I said. “I don’t know their names.”
Bayta tapped thoughtfully on our table. “There’s something about them that bothers me.”
I took a sip of my tea. Now that she mentioned it, there was something about them that bothered me, too. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure it out. They were both in their late forties, with similar bland facial features and rotund physiques that put them halfway to the dit rec cartoon version of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They were nicely dressed but not ostentatiously so, with none of the look of the superrich that were the Modhri’s favored target for planting colonies inside.
Still, I knew that up to now he hadn’t launched that kind of campaign against humanity, contenting himself with keeping an eye on us via low- and mid-level governmental functionaries. The two Tweedles could easily fit into that category.
But then, so could any number of other people.
So what was it about them that had caught our attention?
And then, suddenly, it hit me. Since I’d been watching them neither man had checked his watch, or looked up at one of the floating schedule holodisplays, or even glanced down the track whose platform they were sitting beside.
They had, in short, a settled look. Like two men who weren’t really anticipating the arrival of their train, but were simply hanging around the station enjoying the ambience.
It was much the same look as our non-stinky Pirk had, now that I thought about it. For that matter, it was the same look Bayta and I probably had. Three sets of travelers, none of whom had anywhere to go.
I lowered my eyes to the lug
gage nestled beside the two Tweedles. Four reasonably large rolling bags, plus two shoulder bags. Enough carrying capacity for someone who was traveling light to go anywhere in the galaxy. “Do me a favor,” I said to Bayta. “Find out when the next train is due to arrive on that track, and where it’s going.”
Bayta’s eyes took on a slightly glazed look as she sent out a telepathic message to the station’s Spiders. “It’s an express heading outward toward the Bellidosh Estates-General,” she said after a moment. “It doesn’t arrive for nearly two hours.”
“Ah,” I said. “Okay. Well, the good news is that your instincts are working perfectly.”
I quirked a lip toward the Tweedles. “The bad news is that our friends over there seem to be waiting patiently for us to make our move.”
Bayta nodded, a typically calm acceptance. “Do we have one yet?”
I ran a finger idly up the side of my now nearly empty glass. “I think so,” I told her. “We’re going to need two different trains. The first will be a local going coreward to Yandro and Jurian space.”
“Where are we going?”
“Yandro,” I said. “The second will be another local passing outward through Yandro back here.”
Her forehead creased for a moment as she studied my face. Then the wrinkles smoothed out again. “All right,” she said. “Let me see what’s available.”
Her eyes glazed over again. Her lemonade was also gone, and I wondered briefly whether or not I should get us some food when I ordered refills.
“Got it,” she said, her eyes coming back to focus. “The train for Yandro leaves from Platform Seven in forty minutes.”
So much for getting food or even more drinks. But there would be plenty of both on the train. “And the other?”
“It’ll leave Yandro two hours after we arrive.”
“Perfect,” I said. “We have compartments on both?”
“Of course,” she said, as if I even had to ask.
“Good,” I said. Pulling out a cash stick, I plugged it into the payment slot in our table. “Let’s go.”
“Already?” she asked, frowning. “There’s still forty minutes.”
“I know,” I said. “But our friends over there are going to need time to buy their tickets, too. No point in making them rush.”
She gave a quiet sigh. “I suppose not. Oh, and you’ll probably want this back.” Pulling a folded handkerchief from her pocket, she pushed it across the table toward me.
I closed my hand over it, feeling the reassuring weight of the Chahwyn kwi weapon as I picked it up. “Thanks,” I said, slipping it into my own pocket. “Did you have to use it?”
She shook her head. “The Modhri seems to be avoiding me.”
“I don’t blame him,” I said. The kwi had two basic settings—unconsciousness and pain—both of which worked quite well against Modhran walkers.
Of course, it was anyone’s guess as to how long the thing would last. The kwi was over a millennium old, a relic from the war that had originally spawned the Modhri in the first place. The Chahwyn who’d dug up the kwi didn’t know an awful lot about it, including if or when it might suddenly pop a vital circuit and become nothing more than a flexible and rather decorative set of brass knuckles.
Still, for now the thing worked, and it worked well, and the Chahwyn had given me permission—albeit grudgingly—to carry it aboard the Quadrail. For that I was grateful.
Grateful enough that I didn’t even resent the fact that Bayta and I seemed to be field-testing the thing for them.
Retrieving my cash stick, I stood up and keyed the leash control inside my jacket. Obediently, the two bags at my feet aligned themselves, ready to roll as soon as I started moving. Bayta also stood up, her bags similarly preparing themselves for duty. “Okay, let’s go,” I said. “Nice and easy and casual.”
“I know the routine,” Bayta said. “By the way, Frank . . .”
I looked at her, seeing the sudden discomfort and embarrassment in her face. “Yes?” I asked.
Her lip twitched. “Nothing,” she murmured. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I assured her. “I’m glad we’re back in the trenches together, too.”
A flicker of surprise crossed her face, followed rapidly by relief and then a second surge of embarrassment. “Right,” she said. “Me, too.”
“So let’s get to it,” I said, gesturing her ahead of me like a proper gentleman.
As we headed away from the table toward Platform Seven, out of the corner of my eye I saw our settled-looking Pirk get up off his bench. He fussed for a moment with his headdress, then started off in the same direction we were also going. I didn’t want to turn around and check on the two Humans, but I suspected they had joined the parade as well.
Fourteen hours to Yandro, another eleven back to New Tigris, then probably five to eight days to get to New Tigris proper via torchliner. Add in the twenty days since Lorelei had left New Tigris Station, plus the five to eight days up from the planet itself, and by the time we reached her kid sister Rebekah it would be a month or more that the girl had been on her own.
I just hoped she wasn’t in any pressing hurry to be rescued.
FOUR
Sure enough, forty minutes later when our Quadrail pulled into the station, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and the Pirk were all waiting on our platform.
Though at very different positions along that platform. Bayta and I were at the head of the line, where the first-class compartment car would be stopping. The two Humans were farther back in the group waiting for the second-class cars. The Pirk, in contrast, was all the way at the far end of the line, poised for the last of the third-class cars, the one just in front of the baggage cars.
The incoming Terra Station passengers got off the train, we all got aboard, and a few minutes later we were on our way.
The trip proved surprisingly uneventful. Neither the Tweedles nor the Pirk would have been allowed in first-class territory, of course, not with second- and third-class tickets. But if any or all of them were walkers their colonies would be part of the train’s overall Modhran mind segment, and there ought to be at least one walker basking in the luxury of first-class. I half expected to be accosted somewhere along the line by some genteel ultra-rich traveler, probably as Bayta and I were walking back to the dining car.
But there was nothing. A few of the other passengers deigned to glance up as we passed by, but most of them ignored us completely.
Still, that didn’t mean the Modhri wasn’t aboard, or that he hadn’t spotted and identified us. He could easily be playing it coy, waiting to see where we were going before making any moves. Under that scenario, we would probably find a crowd getting off with us at Yandro Station.
This time, I was right. Not only did the two Tweedles join us on the platform, but so did four of our fellow first-class passengers: three Juriani and a Bellido. Yandro was hardly the kind of place to attract that kind of attention, which strongly suggested that all four of the latter had been heading elsewhere when the local Modhran mind segment had changed their plans for them. Idly, I wondered what kind of pretzel logic his unsuspecting hosts would use to rationalize this one.
To my mild surprise, the non-aromatic Pirk didn’t join us.
Bayta and I had two hours before we could catch the train heading back again toward New Tigris. With only eight of us getting off, it would have been highly suspicious if she and I had opted to wait at the station while the other six boarded the shuttle and headed across to the transfer station. It might even have induced the Modhri to take charge of his hosts long enough to find out what game I was playing this time.
Fortunately, I had something a little more subtle in mind. Trying to keep an eye on all six of the others as we trooped across to the shuttle hatchway, I ran the numbers and timings through my mind. It should be just about right.
“You must be joking,” I said, leveling one of my best Westali glares at the hapless Customs official on the other side of the counte
r. “You lost my lockbox?”
“I’m sure it’s not actually lost,” he assured me, trying to sound calm and confident as he punched keys on his terminal. It wasn’t a very convincing act. “It could have gotten mixed in with the crates from the last cargo train—”
“I don’t want excuses,” I cut him off. My act, unlike his, was superb, if I did say so myself. “I want my lockbox. I’m not leaving here without it.”
“I understand, Mr. Compton,” he assured me, still poking at his keys. “Fortunately, the torchferry for Yandro won’t be arriving until tomorrow That should be more than enough time to get this sorted out.”
“Really?” I countered. “What if it’s still aboard the Quadrail? What if it’s even now heading for Kerfsis or Jurskala or who the hell knows where? You still going to get it to me by tomorrow?”
“Sir, as far as I know the Spiders have never lost a piece of luggage,” he said, his confident tone beginning to fray at the edges.
“That’s not much comfort for the person who gets to be the first blot on their record, is it?” I said icily.
“No, sir, not really,” he conceded. “Let me call over to the stationmaster and get the Spiders looking for it over there.”
Finally; the cue I’d been waiting for. “Don’t bother,” I growled. “We’ll go talk to him ourselves. Is the shuttle still at the docking station?”
“Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “But there aren’t any outgoing passengers right now.”
“It can make a special trip,” I said. “You owe me. Where can we leave our luggage?”
“You can’t go back to the Tube,” the clerk said.
“Why not?” I asked.
For a second he fumbled, the mark of a man who had just said something that surprised even him and was searching madly for the reason why he’d said it. “Well, you’re here,” he said at last. “I mean here, on this side of the station. You’ve already passed through Customs.”
“So we’ll pass through again,” I said. “You don’t look all that busy.”
