by Timothy Zahn
“Well, no, sir, but that’s not the point. It’s just . . .” He trailed off, still looking confused.
No doubt he was, and I could almost sympathize. Clearly, the man was a walker, a leftover from the days when the Modhri had actually cared about what happened in Yandro system. Just as clearly, the mind segment currently consisting of the polyp colonies in him and our fellow travelers didn’t want me out of his collective sight.
Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t any official reason the official could point to forbidding me to go back to the Tube. And even the Modhri could only push his powers of rationalization so far. He could take over the man’s body, of course, but I didn’t think he was ready to go quite that far. “So where can we leave our luggage?” I asked again.
The clerk’s lip’s compressed. “You can leave it here behind the counter,” he said, his face still working with the strange internal conflict going on inside him. “There’s no secure holding area this side of Customs.”
“This’ll do fine,” I said. Shutting off my leash control, I picked up my bags and heaved them around the end of the counter, stacking them as far to the back as the narrow space allowed. “Give me your bags, Bayta.”
Silently, she handed me her bags, and I added them to the pile. “Now you just need to check us back through,” I told the clerk.
“Yes, sir.” Shutting down his terminal, he came out from behind the counter and crossed to the Customs counter five meters away. “I’ll need to see your IDs again.”
We showed him our IDs and allowed his body scanner to do its work. “And we’ll want a double room when we get back,” I added as he reluctantly waved us through. “And sleeping rooms on the torchferry, of course.”
“Of course,” the clerk said. His expression was mostly neutral, but there was a quiet watchfulness beneath it. Taking Bayta’s arm, I steered us through the doorway back into the outbound section of the transfer station.
And as we did so, I threw a casual glance back at our fellow travelers.
All six of them were watching us, their expressions a mix of concern and bemusement and sympathetic outrage for our unheard-of dilemma.
But beneath it all, on every one of those faces, I could see a hint of the Customs official’s same quiet watchfulness.
The Modhri wasn’t happy with me. Not a bit.
Bayta was obviously thinking the same thing. “He knows what we’re up to, you know,” she murmured as we headed for the shuttle bay.
“He thinks he knows what we’re up to,” I corrected. “The problem is, right now he can’t do anything about it.”
“He could send his walkers after us,” she reminded me. “They all must have come up with rationalizations as to why they were getting off at Yandro in the first place. Surely they wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with equally good reasons to leave again.”
“Right, but in order to do that, they’d have to clear their luggage through Customs again,” I pointed out. “That’ll take time, and we’ll be on our way to the Tube long before then.”
“Even with another walker in charge of giving them that clearance?”
So she’d noticed that, too. I’d expected she would. “That won’t help him any,” I said. “Human Customs routines are largely computerized, with no way for a mere clerk to bypass the routine and speed up the process. In theory, he could call in his supervisor for an override, but that would probably take more time than he’s got.”
“Couldn’t they leave their bags here, like we did?”
“Even the Modhri would have a hard time coming up with a rationalization for that one,” I said. “And I doubt he wants to risk taking over the hosts. Not six of them at once, not for the length of time this would take. If they compared notes afterward and discovered simultaneous blackouts, they might finally start to wonder.”
I smiled tightly. “Besides, lurking in the back of his ethereal little mind is probably the thought that I might be goading him into precisely that move. We could be pretending to head back to the Tube, then planning to double back and make off with their luggage when they hurry after us.”
She gave me a puzzled frown. “What in space would we want with their luggage?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But if the Modhri has learned anything, it’s not to underestimate how convoluted our plans can get.”
“How convoluted your plans can get.” “Whatever.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. “He might still think it’s a risk worth taking.”
“What for?” I countered. “So we’re dumping this group. So what? We’re probably about to get back on the Quadrail, and he’s got eyes all over the Quadrail. He’ll just have the Customs agent or one of the passengers send messages both directions down the line to alert other mind segments, and figure he’ll pick up our trail again before we get too far.”
“Excuse me?” a voice called from behind us.
I set my teeth together and turned around. The Modhri might at least have had the common decency to make his move before I’d gone so firmly on record with my prediction that he wouldn’t. “Yes?” I asked, turning around.
It was one of my rotund fellow Humans, the one I’d dubbed Tweedledum. “My name’s Braithewick,” he said, puffing a bit as he came up to us. His luggage, I noted, was nowhere to be seen. Left behind, as I’d just explained to Bayta wouldn’t happen. “I’m an associate negotiations researcher at the UN.”
A glorified computer clerk, in other words. “And?” I prompted.
He seemed a bit surprised by my unenthusiastic response. “I work at the UN,” he repeated. “I wanted to offer my service in your negotiations with the stationmaster.”
“What negotiations?” I said. “I’m going to make him find my lockbox and send it over here, and that’ll be that.”
He chuckled. “You amateurs,” he said with a typical mid-level bureaucratic air of self-importance. “You always think it’s going to be that easy.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” I asked. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
He smiled cherubically . . . and suddenly the smile faded, and the flabby skin of his cheeks and throat seemed to sag. “Don’t play games, Compton,” he said, his voice subtly changed.
“Hello, Modhri,” I said, the skin at the back of my neck tingling unpleasantly. No matter how many times I watched a Modhran mind segment take over one of its hosts, it still creeped me out. “If you’re still looking for the Lynx, you’re out of luck. I haven’t got it.”
“You know what I seek,” the Modhri said. “I offer you a bargain: step back, and allow me to deal with it.”
“Is that a bargain, or a threat?” I asked. “What exactly is it you’re looking for?”
“You know what I seek,” he said again. “The Abomination.”
“Ah—that,” I said, nodding sagely as I wondered what he was talking about. “And what are you going to do when you find it?”
“It must be destroyed.”
“Like you destroyed the Human female back in Manhattan?” I asked. “Why did you kill her, anyway? Too heavy to take with you?”
“The Abomination must be destroyed,” he repeated, ignoring my questions. “For once, Compton, you and I will agree on this. You will want it destroyed as well as I.”
Another tingle tickled the back of my neck. False sincerity was a dollar a ton in this business, but there was something about the Modhri’s expression that half inclined me to believe him. “An interesting assumption,” I said. “You really believe that?”
“I do,” he said firmly.
“In that case, let me make you a counteroffer,” I said. “You back off, and let me find it.”
His sag-faced expression actually shifted a bit. Surprise? Suspicion? “Why?” he asked.
“For one thing, because I’m the one offering the deal,” I said. “For another, I’m better at finding things than you are.” I cocked my head. “Or hasn’t your particular mind segment caught up with the news of the past few week
s?”
The Modhri shifted his gaze to Bayta. “I am aware of those events.”
“Good,” I said. “Really does save time when everyone’s up to speed. Is it a deal?”
His eyes searched my face, shifted again to Bayta, then came back to me. “It is,” he said. “I will accompany you to the Tube and pass on word of our new agreement.”
“You can pass it on later, after we’re on our way” I gestured back toward the Customs area. “Speaking of being on one’s way . . .?”
“It would be a gesture of good faith,” he said, not budging. “On your part as well as mine.”
“I said no,” I told him, dipping my hand into my pocket and getting a grip on the kwi. “Don’t make me insist.”
“Violence will not help you,” he pointed out calmly. “Not now. If you had shot all my Eyes when they stood together by the Customs counter, you might have achieved something. But not now. Not when another of my Eyes can immediately call the pilot and alert him that there is a madman loose in the station.”
I grimaced. But he was right. As soon as I realized the clerk was a walker, I should have zapped the whole bunch of them unconscious.
But wild and possibly indiscriminate shooting wasn’t a good idea even at the best of times, not even with a nonlethal weapon. Besides, I couldn’t have been sure there weren’t more walkers lurking elsewhere among the station’s personnel and guests.
For that matter, I still couldn’t. “So I have to zap the pilot, too,” I said, wondering why I was even bothering to run with this bluff. “I can fly the shuttle myself if I have to.”
He gave me a faint smile. “Come now, Compton,” he chided. “Do you really wish to draw that kind of attention to yourself? Besides, what would it gain you?”
“Apart from the satisfaction, it would let us start our trip with a little peace and quiet,” I said.
“Is that your concern?” he said. “Very well, then. As I said: a gesture of good faith.” He nodded behind him. “Shall I bring you your luggage?”
“If you’d like,” I said.
Actually, there wasn’t anything in the carrybags except some tablecloths we’d scrounged from the server Spiders in our last train’s dining car. Our clothing and other personal items were currently in plastic bags in the stationmaster’s office, along with my allegedly missing lockbox.
Still, as long as the play was blown anyway, we might as well have our bags back.
“Frank?” Bayta murmured tautly.
“I don’t like it either,” I conceded. “But there isn’t much we can do about it. The station has a crew of probably twenty or thirty, at least some of whom are probably walkers. We can’t take down everyone, and it would be lunacy to try.”
“Besides, there’s no need,” the Modhri added. “For the moment, at least, we have a common goal.”
“The destruction of the Abomination.”
“Correct.” He reached into his pocket. “Oh, and you may find this useful.” He opened his hand.
My stomach wrapped itself into a tight knot. Nestled in his pudgy palm was a silver necklace. The match to the ring I was carrying in my own pocket.
The necklace Lorelei had been wearing when she was killed.
“Thanks,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm as I plucked it out of his hand. If the Modhri was looking for a reaction from me, he wasn’t going to get the satisfaction.
“You’re welcome.” He turned his head to look behind us.
And as he did so, the skin of his face tightened up again out of its sag. “Sorry,” Braithewick said, his voice back to normal. “Sorry. Zoned out on you there for a minute.”
“That’s okay,” I murmured, slipping the necklace into my pocket. “I wasn’t saying anything important.”
“At any rate, as I was starting to say, dealing with the Spiders can take a little professional finesse,” he said briskly. “I was thinking that it might take some time and—ah; your luggage.”
The Customs official came into sight, looking like a dit rec comedy bellhop as he struggled with two people’s worth of travel bags. “I took the liberty of suggesting to him that it would look better if you had your bags with you,” Braithewick explained, a slight frown creasing his forehead.
To me, that made no sense whatsoever. Judging by Braithewick’s frown, it didn’t make any sense to him, either. I thought about calling him on it, decided I’d heard enough Modhran pretzel logic for one day, and merely switched on my leash control. Bayta did the same, and as the clerk thankfully lowered the bags to the floor they rolled over to us. “There you go,” the clerk said, his own forehead a little furrowed. “Have a good trip.”
He turned and walked back around the curve and out of sight. “Shall we?” Braithewick asked, gesturing ahead.
“Certainly,” I said. “After you.”
We reached the Tube without incident and collected our clothing bags from the Spiders. We couldn’t get the lockbox, of course—no weapons allowed in the Tube, and all that—but the stationmaster confirmed that it would be put aboard our next train.
“Well, that went well,” Bayta commented evenly as we stood together watching the laser light show playing between our incoming train and the Coreline that ran down the center of the Tube. “Tell me again what this stop at Yandro was supposed to accomplish?”
“Anyone ever tell you that sarcasm ill befits you?” I countered.
“I was just wondering,” she murmured. “I was also thinking that if the Modhri hadn’t been alerted before to what we were up to, he certainly is now.”
“No, all that he knows is that we’re on the move,” I corrected. “But he knew that way back in New York, when those walkers followed me home from the precinct house. Maybe he knew it even sooner, when he saw Lorelei leave my apartment. But none of that means he actually knows what we’re up to.”
“He will soon,” Bayta said, an edge creeping to her voice. Clearly, she was blaming me for this fiasco. “Now, instead of us just slipping away quietly, we’ll have an entire Quadrail’s worth of walkers watching.”
“We’d probably have had that anyway,” I pointed out, putting a bit of an edge in my voice, as well. It wasn’t my fault my gambit hadn’t worked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you and I are living in a fishbowl these days.”
Bayta sighed. “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. Braithewick was standing well back from our platform, giving us at least the illusion of privacy. “Don’t worry. Whatever he’s got up his sleeve, we’ll be ready for him.”
The train pulled up beside us and came to the usual brake-squealing stop.
And I was treated to the most extraordinary sight I had ever seen.
The train began disgorging passengers. Not just the one or two who might be expected to disembark at a minor Human colony world like Yandro, but an entire stream of them. Passenger after passenger stepped out of the cars, their bags rolling behind them: Juriani, Bellidos, Halkas, even a pair of Shorshians from the far end of the galaxy. Some of them glanced around the station as they stepped onto the platform, but most of them gazed straight ahead as they walked stolidly out into the Coreline’s pulsating glow.
And every one of them was coming from the train’s first-class cars.
Walkers.
Bayta pressed tightly against me, her hands squeezing my left upper arm in a death grip as the walkers continued to come. My right hand had a similar grip on the kwi in my pocket, and I could feel the familiar tingling as Bayta telepathically activated the weapon.
But the walkers merely continued to file past us, none of them so much as looking in our direction as they headed away from the train. Not toward the shuttle hatchways, I noted, or even toward Braithewick, but just away from the train.
Finally, with two minutes left before the train’s scheduled departure, the streams slowed to a trickle and then ended. The Juri bringing up the rear paused as he passed us, an
d for the first time one of them actually looked at me. “You wished to begin your trip in peace and quiet,” he said in a flat Modhran voice. “Now you may.”
“So I see,” I said, the skin at the back of my neck creeping. Had he really just taken all his walkers off this train? For us? “I appreciate it.”
“Remember our bargain,” he said, and walked off to join his fellow walkers.
I took a deep breath. “Come on,” I said to Bayta. “Let’s get aboard before he changes his mind.”
Ninety seconds later, we stood at my compartment’s display window, watching the group of walkers standing at their inhumanly stiff attention as the Quadrail pulled out of the station. We continued to watch them as the train picked up speed, until we angled up the far end into the main part of the Tube and our view was cut off by the station’s atmosphere barrier.
“I’d say the Yandro stationmaster’s got some serious rebooking to do,” I commented to the universe at large.
“I don’t believe it,” Bayta murmured. She was still staring out the window, even though there was nothing to see anymore except the curve of the Tube. “Why would he take all those walkers off the train?”
“You heard him,” I said. “A gesture of goodwill.”
“Of course,” she said with an edge of bitterness. “Like giving you that necklace?”
I felt my throat tighten. “It was Lorelei’s,” I said briefly. “He probably hoped he could use it to track down her sister.”
“Only now he’s got us to do that for him?”
“Something like that.”
She shivered. “I don’t like it, Frank. This isn’t like him. None of this is like him.”
“He does seem to be tweaking his usual style a bit,” I conceded. “Maybe this Abomination thing has him rattled.”
“You think it has something to do with Lorelei’s sister?”
I grimaced. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” I said. “Come on, I’m hungry. Let’s see how many non-walker first-class passengers we have left.”
We left the compartment and headed back toward the dining car. Ten minutes ago, I reflected, I’d agreed with Bayta’s assessment that the trip to Yandro Station and our failed attempt to lose the Modhri had been a complete waste of time and effort.
