Odd Girl Out

by Timothy Zahn

  “Don’t worry,” she said, pulling the kwi out of her pocket. “I’ll see you soon.”

  She opened the door, and I caught a glimpse of a forest of Spider legs out in the corridor before it closed again behind her. Pulling out my reader, I settled down in a comfy chair by the window and pulled up a station schematic. When setting up a diversion, the first thing to consider was geography.

  I’d been working for about half an hour when the door chime sounded.

  I looked up, frowning. Bayta wouldn’t bother ringing—one of the Spiders out there had a key, and she would have no problem ordering him to open up.

  The chime came again. Tucking my reader away, I got up and went to the door.

  It was the Jurian Resolver, Tas Yelfro. “Mr. Compton,” he greeted me solemnly. “May I come in?”

  “Certainly,” I said, stepping back out of his way and wondering what the Modhri was up to this time. Tas Yelfro came in, glancing around as if making sure I was alone.

  And as I watched, the scales around his beak seemed to sag a little, and the sweep of his shoulders hunched just a bit farther back, and his head straightened and then settled back into its original position.

  The Modhri had taken over.

  “Greetings, Mr. Compton,” he said, his voice altered as subtly but as indisputably as his appearance. “I bring news and an offer.”

  “Do you, now,” I said. “If it’s anything like the last seven or eight offers you’ve pitched to me, I think I’ll pass.”

  “But first,” the Modhri said, ignoring the gibe, “I bring you a conversation piece.” Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out something small and lobbed it toward me.

  Automatically, I reached out and caught it. It was a kwi, just like the one I’d conned out of the Chahwyn.

  I felt my breath freeze in my chest. No. It wasn’t just like my kwi. It was my kwi.

  The kwi Bayta had been carrying.

  I looked up at the mocking Jurian eyes gazing at me. “Where is she?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay quiet and controlled.

  “She is safe,” the Modhri said. “There’s no need to worry.” He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Yet.”

  I took a step toward him. “Where is she?” I repeated, my voice quavering slightly with black anger. My brain was spinning at Quadrail speeds, trying desperately to come up with a plan.

  “I said she is safe,” the Modhri said, matching my tone. “For now, that’s all you need to know.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, taking another step toward him. Most people, I reflected grimly, would have started backing up about now, possibly doing a quick reevaluation on whether they really wanted to cross me or not.

  But the Modhri didn’t think like that. To him, Tas Yelfro was just another of his slaves, one more disposable body in his collection. If he died at my hand, the Modhri would simply find or make a replacement.

  And then, as I continued moving toward him, the germ of an idea finally surfaced. A risky, shaky idea, way too heavy on speculation and suspicion and way too light on actual fact. But it was the best I had, and it would have to do. “You’ll tell me where she is, and you’ll tell me now,” I continued, taking the one final step that put me within arm’s reach of him.

  His beak cracked open in a mocking smile. “Really, Mr. Compton—”

  The rest of the sentence disintegrated in an explosive gasp of surprise and pain as I drove my fist hard into his abdomen.

  EIGHTEEN

  The typical Human response when hit like that would be to fold, jackknife-style, around the point of impact. The typical Jurian response, in contrast, was to go stiff as a board and fall backward. Except for his Modhran polyp colony, Tas Yelfro was indeed a typical Juri. He gasped again as he toppled backward like a frozen mannequin, the crash of his fall muffled by the thick carpet.

  For a second he just lay there, looking like a molded lugeboard, staring at me in disbelief. I knelt down beside him and, just to show it hadn’t been an accident, I hit him again in the same spot.

  He shook with the impact, his eyes and beak widening with agony and even more disbelief and the beginnings of genuine anger. “I’m going to go find her now,” I told him, gazing into his eyes with the most intimidating stare in my Westali arsenal. “If you try to stop me, I’ll just have to hurt more of your walkers.”

  I lowered my face until it was only a few centimeters from his. “And if you hurt her,” I added quietly, “I’ll kill every walker in this station. You hear me? Every last one of them.”

  He was still staring back at me, his eyes still swimming with pain. Only now, I could see the first stirrings of fear, as well. If I really succeeded in killing all his walkers, this particular mind segment would die, vanishing without a trace and leaving the overall Modhran mind to forever wonder what had happened here today.

  It wasn’t an idle threat, either. I’d done it before, destroying the mind segment on an entire Quadrail train.

  Or so he believed.

  I held his gaze another couple of seconds, just to make sure he knew I was serious, pushing the bluff to the limit. Then, wrapping the kwi around my right hand, I stood up, crossed to the door, and eased it open.

  My four Spider guards were still standing out there where I’d left them. Slipping out into the hallway, I closed the door behind me. “Can you locate Bayta?” I asked.

  “You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” one of the Spiders said.

  “I know that,” I said. “Can you locate Bayta? Yes or no?”

  “No,” he said.

  I felt my stomach tighten. For one telepath not to be able to locate another telepath meant one of three things: out of range, unconscious, or dead.

  Not dead, I told myself firmly. Not dead. The Modhri was way too smart to throw away his best leverage against me by killing her out of hand. No, she was surely only unconscious.

  Unfortunately, she could also be literally anywhere on the station. “Alert the rest of the Spiders to watch for her,” I ordered him. “You four start searching the passenger areas between here and the medical center.”

  None of them so much as budged. “Did you hear me?” I demanded.

  “You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” the Spider said.

  “I have authority in Bayta’s name to give you orders,” I said, easing myself to the side where I would have a clear shot around his maze of legs. Actually, I wasn’t really sure how much authority I had over the Spiders when Bayta wasn’t with me.

  “You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” the Spider said, still not moving.

  I grimaced. Apparently, not much. “In that case—” I began.

  And right in the middle of the sentence, I ducked past him and sprinted for the stairs.

  Spiders being the simple workers that they are, I hadn’t expected them to react quickly enough to stop me. I was right, and was halfway down the first flight of the wide flowing staircase before they even made it to the landing.

  Unfortunately, the Modhri wasn’t nearly so slow on the uptake. I had reached the fourth-floor landing and was rounding the corner onto the next curve of stairs when I heard the sounds of a small crowd further down the stairway on its way up.

  I was halfway to the third floor when the front of that wave reached me.

  There were four of them, all middle-aged Juriani dressed in quiet, dignified, upper-class clothing, breathing heavily as they bounded up the stairs like children in a hop-clink game. Behind them, just starting up the flight of stairs, were two Halkas wearing the trilayered robes of the Halkan Peerage. Apparently the Juriani were the sacrificial lambs, designed to slow me down as I barreled through them so that the larger Halkas could safely corral me before I did any serious damage.

  But I had no intention of playing nicely. I waited until I was only three steps away from the panting Juriani, then veered to the outside of the stairway, grabbed the top of the railing, and flipped myself over the edge. Shifting my grip in midair
to one of the railing’s vertical supports, I slid down until I was hanging straight over the railing of the next flight down. As my momentum swung me inward, I let go of the support and dropped to the stairs below.

  Neatly putting me below the Modhri’s attack line.

  I could hear the sudden flurry of activity above me as the Juriani and Halkas screeched to a halt and reversed direction. But they were too late. I was already on my way down, taking the stairs three at a time. I reached the lobby and charged past the rest of the astonished travelers out into the station.

  Jurskala Station was the Quadrail stop for the Jurian home system, and as such was large, elaborate, and teeming with travelers. Despite my desperate hurry, I forced myself to slow to a walk, knowing that nothing drew attention faster than someone running full tilt through a crowd. The Modhri was relying on alien minds and alien eyes, and it was likely that most of the people moving through the station had never bothered learning how to distinguish one Human from another.

  Even so, I doubted I could slip past all the walkers, not with the Modhri bending every resource he had here toward locating me. Certainly I’d never stay below the radar long enough to find Bayta.

  But then, despite the impression I’d worked so hard to leave with the Modhri up in my room, I had no intention of turning the station upside down until I found her. All I needed right now was to get to the stationmaster and make sure he didn’t carry out the arrangements I’d sent Bayta to make.

  A chipmunk-faced Bellido stepped into my path, a set of three guns holstered beneath the arms of his elaborately embroidered robe. “Excuse me—” he began.

  I shouldered my way past him and picked up my pace, cursing under my breath. I’d hoped to get at least a little farther before I was spotted. Theoretically, I knew, I shouldn’t have to physically confront the stationmaster, but should be able to relay my instructions to him via any Spider. But Spiders had varying degrees of imagination and autonomy, none of them very impressive, and I didn’t dare risk that my message would get garbled or ignored.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted two Tra’ho’seej angling toward me. I responded by shifting direction toward a bulky Cimma also coming toward me, did a quick sidestep around him, and headed off in another direction entirely. I ducked behind and around a pair of Halkas, passed by a Human wearing a Sorbonne collegiate scarf and jacket, and made a tight circle to put me again on a path to the stationmaster’s office.

  And suddenly a pair of metallic Spider legs came angling down from my right, hitting the floor directly in front of me.

  I had no chance to sidestep or even stop. I slammed into them, feeling them flex a bit with the impact, and bounced back. Before I could do more than catch my balance the Spider swiveled around behind me and wrapped another of his legs, wrestler-style, around my waist. A second later two more legs lifted from the floor and poked their way horizontally under my armpits, and the damn thing lifted me up like a weightlifter doing biceps curls.

  And I found myself staring at my distorted reflection in a shiny Spider globe.

  But not just any Spider globe. As I looked at the pattern of white dots beneath my face, I realized this was the same Spider I’d done that trampoline off of in my previous train’s baggage car.

  Was that why he was here? Looking for payback?

  He pulled me higher and closer until my cheek was pressed against his globe. I braced myself, wondering if he was going to try bouncing off of me now, just to show me what it felt like, or whether he’d just settle for playing kickball with me across the station.

  But to my surprise, I just heard a quiet Spider voice in my ear, almost too quiet to hear. “What do you do here, friend?”

  I felt my chest tighten. I’d never had a Spider call me friend. For that matter, I’d never heard of a Spider calling anyone friend.

  And in that single numbing second I knew that my earlier speculations and suspicions had been right.

  God help us all.

  “What do you do here, friend?” the Spider asked again.

  I took a deep breath. Whatever else this might mean—whatever the implications for the future—my first priority was to get Bayta away from the Modhri. “I need to get a message to the stationmaster,” I said. “Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I gave him the message, keeping it short and clear and as authoritative as I could make it. Hanging a half meter off a Quadrail station floor being stared at by hundreds of bemused aliens was no time to get long-winded. “Can he do that?” I asked when I’d finished.

  “He will do that,” the Spider said.

  I grimaced, the sinking feeling in my stomach dropping another couple of floors. “Then I suppose I need to get back to my prison,” I told him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I frowned, focusing on the station around me. To my surprise, I discovered that we were already in motion, though the Spider was walking so smoothly I hadn’t even noticed when, we’d started up. The Eulalee Hotel’s main entrance was in sight out of the corner of my eye, and I could see the two Halkas who’d tried to corral me on the stairs waiting watchfully off to the side.

  Belatedly, I realized I probably looked like an oversized baby in its mother’s chest carrier. “I can make it from here, Spot,” I told the Spider.

  There was a slight pause, as if he was pondering the nickname I’d just given him. “It is ordered that you be delivered to your prison,” he told me.

  “This is extremely undignified,” I tried again. “Dignity is important to Humans.”

  He didn’t answer. He also didn’t put me down.

  And considering the look on the Halkas’ faces as we passed, maybe it was just as well that he didn’t. The Modhri was apparently still mad at me.

  The four Spider guards were back in their semicircle around my door when we reached my room. Spot set me down, one of the guards unlocked my door, and I went inside.

  Tas Yelfro had managed to pull himself off the floor and drag himself up onto the couch in my absence. “Human fool,” he rasped as I closed the door behind me. “Did you genuinely hope to accomplish anything useful?”

  The voice was raspy, but the face and tone were still those of the Modhri. “You never know until you try,” I said, pulling over a chair to face him and sitting down. “I have a deal to propose.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “One that’ll benefit both of us,” I said. “But first we need to clear the air a little. Specifically, I didn’t kill your walkers aboard the Quadrail. The baggage car decompressed, and they simply asphyxiated.”

  He cocked his head to one side, the motion making him look more bird-like than ever. “Yes, I know,” he said. “How did you decompress the car?”

  “I didn’t,” I told him. “It was probably some malfunction of the seals—the Spiders are looking into it. The point is that there’s no reason to blame me for any of that, or to try to take revenge.”

  “I never take revenge,” he said. “Speak your proposal.”

  “I want Bayta back,” I said.

  “I want the Abomination,” he countered. “Deliver it, and you may have the Human female.”

  “Actually, you don’t want the Abomination,” I said. “You want something far more valuable than that.”

  “There is nothing more valuable than the Abomination.”

  “You’re confusing means with ends,” I told him. “Tell me, if you had the Abomination coral right now, what would you do with him?”

  “I would take it through the transfer station to Jurskala,” he said. “I have many outposts on that world.”

  “And then?”

  Something cold settled into the Modhri’s eyes. “It would reveal to me the location of the others.”

  “No it wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ll never get that information. Not from the coral.”

  “Once I surround the Abomination, it will have no choice.”

  “It’ll never happen,” I insisted. “The
coral will suicide long before he lets you get him to your interrogation chamber. Or hadn’t you heard about Lorelei Beach and what her symbiont colony did to itself on Earth?”

  The Modhri’s eyes might have flashed a little on the word symbiont. “The Abomination will not have access to any such convenient means of self-destruction.”

  “Who says he’ll need it?” I countered. “You have your polyp colonies kill their hosts and themselves all the time. Who says the Melding’s outpost can’t pull the same stunt inside his coral?”

  The Modhri clacked his beak. “For a Human who claims cleverness, you quickly argue yourself into your own trap,” he said. “If the Abomination will not tell me where the others are hiding, then the only other source of that information is the young female. Do you wish for me to demand her instead in exchange for the Human Bayta?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I wish for you to take a wider view of all this. I mean, really, what is the Abomination? A couple hundred symbionts and a few chunks of coral. What kind of threat can they possibly be to you?”

  He gave a loud, derisive snort. It was followed immediately by a wince of pain from his still-tender abdomen and lung sacs. “Of course the Abomination is not a threat,” he said. “This is not about threats.”

  “No, it’s about principle, and cleansing the universe of a crime against nature,” I acknowledged. “Believe it or not, I understand the concept. But the Abomination has something far more valuable to you than simple revenge.”

  “Explain.”

  “Think about it a minute,” I urged. “The Abomination was hidden on New Tigris for close to ten years. In the past few months, he and his symbionts have been moving to some other location. You’ve probably been hunting him for a lot of that time, with every outpost and walker and soldier you’ve got.” I raised my eyebrows. “And yet, with all those resources, you still haven’t got a clue as to where they’ve all gone.”

  The Modhri snorted again, more gently and carefully this time. “If you have a point, make it.”

  “It’s very simple,” I said. “The Abomination has found a hiding place for his new homeland that no one has been able to find. Which is exactly what you want for your own homeland.”