by Timothy Zahn
“So is standing at the business end of a shooting gallery,” I said. “What do you think?”
“It could be worse,” he said, looking around. “You sure you don’t want to just give the Modhri the girl and be done with it?”
“That’s the interesting part,” I said. “He told me he didn’t want, quote, any Human females, unquote.”
“Then what does he want?”
“I see two possibilities,” I said. “One, he’s after whatever’s in those metal boxes she’s hell-bent on taking with her when we leave New Tigris.”
“You know what’s in them?”
“Haven’t a clue,” I said. “But that possibility meshes nicely with the fact that Lorelei was apparently able to leave New Tigris without serious trouble. If what he wants is the boxes, then her going off alone wouldn’t have been a problem for him.”
“Then why did he accost her in New York? To get information on Rebekah and the boxes?”
“Probably,” I said. “Possibility two—” I hesitated. This was such a weird thought I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring it up.
“Dramatic silences don’t become you, Compton,” McMicking said. “Spit it out.”
“You asked for it,” I warned. “We know—well, we assume, anyway—that our six Fillies have undergone some extensive genetic manipulation that somehow enabled them to become ranging antennas for locating Rebekah.”
“Right. So?”
“So how far can you manipulate Filiaelian genetic code before the result is no longer Filiaelian?” I asked. “Specifically, how unlike a Filly can a Filly look?”
He stared at me. “Are you suggesting this girl is a Filly?”
“I know, it seems ludicrous,” I agreed. “But if it’s true, it would definitely put her solidly into the Abomination category,” I said. “And remember the Modhri said he didn’t want any Human females.”
McMicking exhaled loudly. “That has to be the most insane idea I’ve ever heard,” he said. “You really think someone could look Human and actually be Filiaelian?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “And we’re sure not getting her in for a full bio-scan any time soon. I just think that until we know what’s going on we should keep our minds as open as possible.”
“Opening them that far is a good way for your brains to fall out,” McMicking warned. “All right, fine—we watch our backs from all directions. What’s your take on our grumpy police lieutenant? I couldn’t hear much of your conversation.”
“He doesn’t like me, and he still thinks there’s a fair chance I offed his fellow cops,” I said. “But he seems willing to be as fair and objective as he can.”
“But you’re not expecting him to come roaring to the rescue if you hit your cop-call button?”
“He might come, but he certainly wouldn’t be in a hurry about it,” I said.
He grunted. “Still, as you said, the Modhri will probably wait until the streets are clear before making his move.”
“Yes, well, that could be a problem,” I said. “Aside from a scattering of sleeping drunks, the streets are already clear. The police presence of the past hour apparently convinced the locals to go do their drinking elsewhere.”
“The firefighters are gone, too?”
“Yes.”
McMicking frowned toward the door and row of windows. “We might want to think about setting up a defensive line.”
“For all the good it’ll do,” I said. “Those tables will work against snoozers, but they’re not going to stop anything heavier.”
“Still, we don’t want the Modhri thinking we’re not being professional about this.”
There was a faint creaking of wood from the office. “Go to sleep,” I murmured.
McMicking nodded and put his head down on his arms again. A moment later, Bayta and Karim emerged through the doorway. “You all right?” I asked Bayta, taking a step toward her. I noticed she had the kwi gripped ready in her hand. “How’s Rebekah?”
“She’s frightened, but otherwise all right,” Bayta said. “We were starting to get worried about you. What’s the situation?”
“Fair to middling bad,” I said. “Our six Fillies could be coming through that door any minute now, guns blazing.”
Her throat tightened. “They’re armed?”
“Courtesy of our late friends Aksam and Lasari,” I said. “Not that either of them had any choice in the matter.”
Bayta looked across at the door. “What do we do?”
“We set up a layered defense and hope for the best,” I said. “Karim, you probably still have time to leave if you want.”
“No,” he said firmly. “This is my bar, and Rebekah is my friend. What do you want me to do?”
“For starters, we move some of those tables in front of the door,” I said, heading across the floor. “No point in making it easy for them.”
A few minutes later we had the door barricaded as best we could and had set up some obstacles to anyone who tried coming in through one of the windows. “That won’t hold anyone very long,” Karim warned as we surveyed our handiwork. “Maybe we should consider calling Lieutenant Bhatami and asking for that protective custody he was offering.”
“And what happens to Rebekah while we’re sitting around our nice safe jail cell?” I asked.
“Why can’t he protect her, too?”
“Where, at his house?” I asked. “The Imani City Police Department isn’t running a hotel, you know. Besides, you heard Bhatami—he wants names and evidence. I haven’t got the latter, and I’m not ready to give up the former.”
“Even if it means getting all of us killed?”
“No one’s going to get killed,” I said, hoping fervently that it was true. “Go tell Rebekah to get herself ready to travel. If we get an opening, we’ll need to grab it.”
“What about her boxes?” he asked. “She won’t leave without them.”
“She may have to,” I told him bluntly. “If it comes to her life or—” I broke off, as a sudden thought occurred to me. “Tell her we’ll do what we can,” I told him. “While she’s getting ready, start bringing the boxes up here. You can stack them behind the bar.”
“All right.” He headed back into the office.
“If it comes to her life or what?” Bayta asked quietly.
I held up a finger, listening. A few seconds later I heard the telltale sounds of Karim heading down into Rebekah’s hideaway. “Okay, now we can talk,” I said. “By the way, say hello to McMicking.”
She jumped as McMicking again lifted his head from his pillowed arms. “Oh,” she said. “Hello.”
“I suddenly realized something,” I told them. “Ever since Yandro the Modhri has been insisting the Abomination has to be destroyed. Right?”
“Right,” Bayta said, glancing again at the front door.
“So why hasn’t he made his move?” I said. “It’s been twenty minutes since Bhatami and the cops pulled out. Why hasn’t he had his walkers steal a car, drive it through the front door, unload his guns at anything that moves, and torch the bar and everything in it?”
“I presume you have an answer?” McMicking invited.
“Because he doesn’t want the Abomination destroyed,” I said. “At least, not right away. There’s something he needs to do first, and he needs the Abomination intact and unharmed to do it.”
“Like they did with Lorelei,” McMicking said, nodding. “The walkers started by using snoozers on her.”
“Exactly,” I said. “He has to handle this with finesse, or the whole thing will have been for nothing.”
“Which gives us a lever,” McMicking said thoughtfully. “We can threaten to destroy the Abomination and leave him with a draw.”
“He’ll never believe it,” Bayta said. “He knows we’d never hurt Rebekah.”
“Which is probably why he offered us the Yandro deal in the first place,” I said. “He figured we’d be able to flush Rebekah into the open, but we wouldn’t hurt her. At le
ast, not until we’d figured out what kind of Abomination she was.”
“She’s not any kind of Abomination,” Bayta said firmly. “She’s a scared little ten-year-old Human girl.”
“Is she?” I countered. “Up to now she hasn’t looked all that scared to me.”
“You weren’t down there just now,” Bayta said coldly. “I don’t know what the Modhri wants with her, but that Abomination tag is just an excuse.”
“You may be right,” I said, sending a warning look at McMicking. Now was not the time to tell Bayta that Rebekah might not be nearly as Human as she looked. “In which case, maybe the Abomination is what’s in all those boxes of hers. Either way, it’s obvious now why the Modhri’s switched from letting me run free to trying to get me arrested for cop-killing. Now that he knows where Rebekah is, he figures that with me out of the picture he can get in here, overpower Karim, and do whatever unseemly things he has in mind.”
There was another creak of wood from the office, a louder one this time. I motioned McMicking to go back to sleep as I headed around the end of the bar. Karim was just coming to the doorway as I reached it, one of the boxes cradled in his arms. “Behind the bar, you said?” Karim asked.
“Change of plan,” I told him. “We’re going to stack them in front of the bar.”
Karim frowned. “In front of the bar?”
“All that metal, you know,” I explained, taking the box from him and walking around to the front of the bar. Fifteen kilos, all right, if it was a gram. “Might as well give ourselves as much protection as we can.”
Karim was still standing in the doorway. “Rebekah won’t like this,” he warned.
“I’m more interested in how much the Fillies won’t like it,” I said. “Go get the rest of them. While you do that, Bayta and I will move your sleeping customers over to the side wall where they’ll be as far out of the line of fire as possible.”
He still looked troubled, but he nodded and disappeared back into the office. “I take it I’m joining the drunks?” McMicking asked, lifting his head again.
“It’s as good a cross-fire position as any,” I said. “Grab a drunk and pick out your spot.”
There were eleven sleeping men scattered around the room, all of them so drunk they didn’t even wake up as we manhandled them out of their chairs and across the bar. That dilivin was potent stuff, all right.
We’d moved five of them, and McMicking had settled himself partially behind one where his hands would be out of sight, when Karim returned.
But this time he wasn’t alone. “Mr. Compton, you can’t put them here,” Rebekah insisted, making a beeline for the box I’d set in front of the bar. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she’d been crying, but the rest of her face was back under firm restraint again. Maybe it was just with Bayta that she let her vulnerable side leak out. “They could be damaged.”
“Better them than us,” I said, watching her closely. Behind the puffy eyes and controlled expression her concern for the boxes seemed genuine. “Besides, I get the impression the Modhri can’t afford to destroy them.”
“He can’t afford to destroy all of them,” she countered. “All he needs is to take one of them intact.”
“Who is this Modhri?” Karim asked.
“The mastermind behind all of this,” I told him, frowning at Rebekah. “Which one does he need?”
“Any of them,” she said. With an effort, she lifted the box and staggered back behind the bar with it.
“What are they, duplicate records of some kind?” I asked.
“In a way,” she said.
“That’s great,” I said. I’d never really believed she needed all twenty of the damn things in the first place. “Pick one out for yourself and we’ll torch the rest.”
“It’s not like that,” she said, giving me a cross look over her shoulder. “I need all of them.”
“That makes no sense whatsoever,” I growled. “What the hell’s in them?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Rebekah said. She set down the box and turned back to face me, a stubbornly defiant look on her face.
“That bar may stop police thudwumpers, Rebekah,” I said. “But it also might not. Are you willing to risk your life for what’s in those boxes?”
“Yes,” she said firmly.
“She already has risked her life,” Karim added grimly. “She and Lorelei both.”
I felt my stomach tighten, thinking back to how Lorelei had died. “Maybe I’m not ready to risk mine,” I said.
“You’re welcome to leave,” Karim invited me tartly. Reaching beneath the bar, he produced an old RusFed P11 military handgun.
“We’re not leaving,” Bayta said firmly. Her face was flushed with emotion, her eyes hard and cold. Whoever Rebekah was, she’d clearly gotten under my partner’s skin.
“Fine,” I gave up with a sigh. “Maybe we can have it both ways.”
Turning, I headed toward the door. “Where are you going?” Karim called after me.
“To plant a few seeds of doubt,” I said over my shoulder. “Go bring up the rest of the boxes. Put them wherever Rebekah wants.”
It took me a couple of minutes to move enough of the table barricade Karim and I had built so that I could get through. Unlocking the door, I opened it a crack. “Modhri?” I called. “You out there?”
My answer was the muffled crack of a low-power gunshot and the slap of a snoozer cartridge against the door beside my cheek. “I guess so,” I said, hastily closing it a couple more centimeters. “I just wanted to tell you that the Abomination is here with us, right in your line of fire. You might want to think about that before you come charging in with guns blazing. Have a nice day.”
I closed the door just as another pair of snoozers shattered themselves into shards against the heavy wood. I locked up again and backed out of the passage I’d created in the barricade. Bayta was waiting, and together we put everything back the way it had been. “Let’s get the rest of the drunks out of the way,” I said when we were finished.
By the time we’d finished and returned to the relative safety of the bar, Karim had finished stacking Rebekah’s boxes behind it. Rebekah herself was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the boxes, a small carrybag beside her. “How are you doing?” I asked her.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice determined but with a little tremble to it. “That won’t stop him, you know. I told you he only needs one of them.”
“True, but it might slow him down a little,” I said, running my eye over the boxes. “They’re not alien sculptures, are they?”
She looked at me in astonishment. “Sculptures?”
“Just a thought,” I said. “Skip it.”
From the other end of the room came a sudden thud. I spun around, yanking my Beretta from its holster. “The window,” Karim said. He was standing near the end of the bar, his P11 gripped in his hand. “They’re seeing if they can break it without having to shoot it out.”
“Can they?” I asked.
There was another thud, a louder one this time. “Probably not,” he said. “It’s glass, not plastic, but it’s tempered.”
There was a third thud, this time from one of the windows on the other side of the door. “Can’t they just shoot them out?” Bayta asked tensely.
“Can, and probably will,” I said. “But guns are noisy things. Not so much with snoozers, but very much with thud-wumpers or other killrounds. The Modhri can’t afford to draw police attention until he’s ready to move.”
“When will that be?” Bayta asked. “It’s already almost midnight.”
“Maybe they’re waiting until—” Karim started.
“Shh!” I hissed, holding up a hand.
The room fell silent. Faintly, in the distance, I heard the sound of multiple sirens. “There’s your answer,” I said grimly. “He’s set up a diversion somewhere across town to keep the police busy.”
“Sounds like paramed and fire sirens, too,” Karim said, cuppi
ng his free hand behind his ear. “It’s either a fire or a massive accident.”
“Either of which would be easy enough for the Modhri to arrange,” I said. “I think we can expect some action soon. Karim, better douse the lights in here. Leave any outside lights on.”
He reached beneath the bar, and the dim lights around us flicked off. I took a deep breath, letting my eyes adjust to the faint glow coming through the windows and settling into combat mode.
The minutes dragged by. We crouched in silence behind the bar, except for Rebekah, who sat in silence in front of the boxes, and McMicking, who lay in silence at the side of the room. “What’s he waiting for?” Karim muttered.
“It’ll be at least another ten or fifteen minutes,” I told him. “He’ll want to make sure the cops are completely engaged in whatever diversion he’s arranged for them before he makes his move.”
Seconds later, the two windows on the far sides of the wall exploded inward.
ELEVEN
Reflexively, I ducked low behind the top of the bar. “Ten minutes?” Karim shouted as a shot slammed into the wall above our heads through one of the shattered windows.
“More or less,” I shouted back irritably. That was twice now, first Yandro and now here, that the Modhri had casually undercut a plan or prediction I’d just taken pains to explain to someone. If he was going to kill me, the least he could do was have the courtesy not to destroy my reputation first.
Another shot whizzed past overhead, this one coming from the other window. It was followed immediately by a third shot from the first window, then a fourth from the second window.
I frowned as the shots settled into a pattern, one shot at a time through alternating windows, each on the heels of the one before, all of them tearing through the wood and drywall at least half a meter above our heads. What was the Modhri up to?
Karim was apparently wondering that, too. “He must be trying to keep us pinned down,” he shouted over the steady blam-blam-blam of the thudwumpers. “Probably trying to infiltrate.”
“From both sides at once?” I shouted back.
“Maybe he’s got more ammo than we thought.”
