by Timothy Zahn
“I think not,” Braithewick said calmly. “You are a strong Human, Compton. I make you the compliment that breaking your bones will not gain me anything.” He gestured toward Bayta. “But you are not strong enough to stand by and watch the slow destruction of the Human Bayta’s life. Tell me where the Abomination is, or I’ll begin by pulling out her fingers.”
Bayta looked at me, her face taut but determined. “There’s no need to get melodramatic,” I told the Modhri. “Let her go, and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me first,” Braithewick said.
“Let her go first,” I repeated.
Braithewick seemed to consider. Then, almost reluctantly, the Halka holding Bayta’s arm relaxed the pressure on her wrist. “Where is the Abomination?” Braithewick asked.
I looked consideringly at the ceiling. “It should be right about . . . there,” I said, pointing upward.
Braithewick didn’t speak, but Bayta suddenly gasped again in pain. “Stop it,” I snapped. “I’m telling the truth.”
“The Abomination is not on the roof,” Braithewick snapped back.
“I didn’t say it was on the roof,” I countered. “I said it was out there.” I pointed again.
“You lie,” Braithewick insisted. “It is here. I can feel its presence.”
“Fine—have it your way,” I said. “There are probably three to four hundred crates in here. Go ahead—knock yourself out.”
Braithewick eyed me, his expression turning from angry to puzzled. “Why do you play such games, Compton? Do you truly believe I will hesitate to destroy the Human Bayta’s life?” He cocked his head. “Or is it that you fear her agonizing death less than you fear the other fate I hold within my power?”
A cold chill ran through me. Other Modhran mind segments over the years had threatened to infect Bayta and me with polyp colonies and turn us into two more of his puppets. It was a possibility that held a special horror for Bayta, one she would gladly and unhesitatingly give up her life to avoid.
When Braithewick had threatened torture, I’d hoped that the far more terrifying scenario had somehow passed him by. But I saw now that the torture gambit had been merely a game, a psychological ploy to progressively raise the stakes of noncooperation.
And with a supply of coral already aboard the train, this new threat was anything but idle. If I didn’t give him the Abomination, Bayta could be part of the Modhri within the hour. Probably we both would.
There was just one small problem. The Abomination really wasn’t aboard the Quadrail.
I was searching desperately for something else to do or say when, behind the line of walkers directing their cold Modhran stares at me, I saw something that made my breath catch in my throat. A shadowy figure was flitting between the stacks of crates, moving in the direction of the forward door.
Rebekah was out of her crate, and making a break for it.
“Turning her into a walker won’t do you any good,” I warned Braithewick, raising my voice a bit to try to cover up any noise Rebekah might make. “I already told you the Abomination’s not here.”
“Then where is it?” Braithewick demanded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the lump of coral the Halka in the other baggage car had tried to throw at me. “Tell me. Now.”
I braced myself. If the Modhri had been angry before, this was going to make him furious. “The fact of the matter is—”
“Bayta!” Rebekah’s voice called from somewhere behind the walkers. “Bayta—catch!”
The Modhri sprang into instant action, half the walkers turning toward the sound of Rebekah’s voice, the other half surging toward Bayta, their eyes angled upward to spot and intercept whatever it was Rebekah was preparing to throw. At my sides, my two Jurian guards each put a hand on my shoulder, pressing me to the floor to prevent me from leaping to my feet and taking advantage of whatever the situation was that was about to unfold.
And as everyone looked and moved in all the wrong directions, an object came sliding across the floor, neatly passing through the gauntlet of shuffling feet, and came to a halt right in front of me.
It was my kwi.
The walkers jerked to a halt as one of their number spotted it, the whole bunch swiveling back toward me as my two guards dived simultaneously for the weapon.
But they were already too late. I scooped up the kwi, feeling the familiar activation tingle against my hand as I turned it upward and fired at the guard on my right.
I hadn’t had time to check what setting the kwi was on, but from the violent shudder that arced through the walker’s body as he tumbled uncontrollably to the floor across my leg it was clear that Rebekah had put the weapon on its highest pain setting. I fired twice more as I got the kwi into proper position on my hand, peripherally aware that all the walkers were shaking and twitching with the shared pain I was pumping into the group mind.
I fired a fourth time as I shoved the Juri off my leg and surged to my feet. I was barely vertical before I had to duck to the side to avoid a Halka who had managed to keep enough control of his body to throw himself at me. He slammed face-first into the stack of crates I’d been seated against, sending another ripple of pain through the mind. I fired one last jolt on the pain setting, then switched the kwi to its full knockout setting.
It was, to use the old phrase, like shooting ducks on the water. The walkers tried desperately to scatter, but the pain throbbing through their individual nervous systems had reduced their muscles to twitching jelly and their escape efforts into something halfway between laughable and pathetic. I strode among them, sending them one by one off to dreamland, occasionally shifting back to pain setting just to make sure those still conscious wouldn’t recover enough to mount some kind of counterattack.
Three minutes later, it was all over.
Bayta was still standing by the crate stack where I’d left her, her face tight, her right wrist cradled in her left hand. “You all right?” I asked her, nudging back her fingers so I could get a look at her wrist.
“Mostly,” she said, wincing. “I think it might be broken.”
“Looks more like just a sprain,” I said, gently touching the swelling skin. “We’ll try to find someone to look at it in the next few hours.”
Abruptly, she stiffened. “Frank, there are more first-class passengers coming this way,” she said tightly.
“Interesting,” I said, handing her wrist back into her care again. “I think that’s the first time the Modhri’s bothered to keep any of his walkers in reserve. I guess he can learn.”
“Never mind whether or not he can learn,” Bayta bit out. “What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry, we’re covered,” I assured her, hefting the kwi. “Speaking of which.” I turned around. “Rebekah? You can come out now.”
There was a pause, followed by a slight shuffling noise as Rebekah peered cautiously from around one of the stacks. “He’s down?”
“Down and out, and going to stay that way for quite a while,” I confirmed.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she came over to us. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Thank you,” I countered. “How’d you find our kwi, anyway?”
“It was in his pocket,” she said, pointing to the first Juri I’d clobbered in the Modhri’s initial surge through the vestibule.
“How did you know he had it?” Bayta asked.
“I didn’t,” Rebekah said. “I’d already searched the ones you knocked out just before they caught you.” She shivered. “I’m just glad it wasn’t on one of the ones still standing.”
“That would have been a little tricky,” I agreed. “Meanwhile, Bayta says there are more walkers on the way, which means it’s time to think about blowing this pop stand. Any word on when that might be?”
“Five minutes,” Rebekah said. “There’s a crosshatch just ahead.”
“A crosshatch?” Bayta echoed, frowning.
“A section of spiral-laid tracks that allow a Quadrail to quickly switc
h from one track to another,” I explained.
“Yes, I know what it is,” Bayta said, a little tartly. “What do they have to do with anything?”
“Because we need the tender that’s currently on Track Fifteen to come over to our track so it can pick us up,” I told her. “The tender that’s been paralleling us for the past two days, by the way.”
Bayta’s eyes flicked back toward the rear of the train with sudden understanding. “You put Rebekah’s coral aboard a tender?”
“Specifically, the tender the Spiders had on tap when you got snatched at Jurskala,” I said. “This way we could keep it close enough for the Modhri to sense it and think it was aboard the train, but at the same time keep it completely and permanently out of his reach.”
“Yes,” Bayta murmured, staring off into space. “Yes, I can sense the Spiders aboard now.” She focused on me again. “There is still one problem, though.”
“Actually, it’s covered,” I said. “Three stacks back from the front along the left-hand wall is a crate with three oxygen masks and tanks in it.”
“That’ll only solve the first part of the problem,” Bayta cautioned.
“Trust me,” I soothed. “You and Rebekah head to the rear door while I get the oxygen masks. As soon as I’ve done that—whoa,” I interrupted myself. “What have we here?”
One of the Jurian walkers, the first one I’d stunned a few minutes ago, was moving. Not very much, more like a person shifting around in a dream than someone clearing the decks for action.
But with a six-hour kwi jolt in him, he shouldn’t have been moving at all.
“Something’s wrong,” Bayta murmured.
“Agreed,” I said. I double-checked the setting and shot the walker again, and the dream-like movements stopped.
But for how long? “Maybe it’s losing its effectiveness,” I said, peering at the kwi. “It is several hundred years old, after all.”
“I sure hope that’s not it,” Bayta said, wincing. “Maybe you’d better give them all another shot, just to be on the safe side. Rebekah and I can get the oxygen masks.”
“Okay, if you think your wrist can handle it.”
“It can,” Bayta assured me. “Three stacks back from the front?”
“Right,” I said. “Top crate on the stack, green stripe pattern around the label. I’ve already loosened the lid.”
Bayta nodded and headed off, Rebekah trailing along behind her. I fired another kwi bolt into the next walker in line, watching the two women out of the corner of my eye.
As soon as they were gone, I knelt down beside the one I’d just zapped and started going through his pockets.
He didn’t have what I was looking for. Neither did the second walker I checked.
The third one did.
I was back on my feet, systematically zapping everything in sight, when Bayta and Rebekah returned with the oxygen masks. “They’re here,” Bayta announced as she handed me my mask. “As soon as we’re ready, they’ll open the roof to release the rear door’s pressure lock.”
I grimaced. Depressurizing the car would of course kill all the walkers lying asleep around us. By most of the galaxy’s legal codes, not to mention most of the galaxy’s ethical standards, that constituted murder.
But we had no choice. There was no other way for us to escape, and there wasn’t nearly enough time for us to first drag all these sleeping bodies back into the other baggage car. Not with more walkers on the way.
Besides, even if we did, the Modhri probably wouldn’t let them live anyway. By their very nature walkers had to be kept ignorant of their role, and there was no way in hell that even the most persuasive rationalization would explain away the blank spots or the broken bones. Either he would have their polyp colonies suicide, or he would permanently take them over and turn them into soldiers. The first was death. The second was worse.
But all the cold logic in the universe didn’t make it any easier to take. Collateral damage, unavoidable or not, was still collateral damage.
We were waiting by the rear door, our oxygen masks in place, when there was a creaking from above us and the roof began to open.
For a moment we felt some buffeting as the car’s air rushed out into the near-vacuum of the Tube. I felt my ears pop; from Rebekah’s sudden twitch, I guessed hers had done the same. Then the mild windstorm dropped away, and the roof closed over us again, and Bayta touched the door release.
We were facing the gleaming silver nose of a Quadrail engine, holding position about half a meter back from the rear of our train. Straddling the gap, with two of his seven legs braced on each of the two vehicles, was a dot-marked stationmaster Spider. Behind him, stretched out in a line all the way back across the top of the engine, were four of the slightly smaller conductors.
Bayta didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward, holding her arms slightly away from her sides. The stationmaster got two of his remaining three legs under her arms, holding the third ready in case of trouble, and lifted her across the gap. He passed her off to the next Spider in line, then swung his arms back to Rebekah and me.
I nudged Rebekah and gestured. What I could see of her expression through her mask wasn’t very happy, and her grip on my hand as she stepped to the edge of the short baggage-car platform was anything but gentle. But at least she went without having to be pushed. The Spider lifted her up and over, and then it was my turn.
And as he lifted me up, I took a good look at his dot pattern.
The trip over the speed-blurred tracks below us was mercifully short. A few seconds later, the first Spider handed me off to the next in line, and I was bucket-brigaded across to the rear of the engine.
Two more Spiders were waiting there, hanging on to rings set into the side of the first of the tender’s three passenger cars. They got their legs under my arms and lifted me over the coupling, maneuvering me through the open door on the side. Bayta and Rebekah were already inside, and as the Spider withdrew his legs the door irised shut and I heard the faint hiss as the car was repressurized.
I watched the gauge on the inside of my mask, wincing as my eardrums again struggled to adjust to the pressure change. The gauge reached Quadrail standard, and I closed the valve and took off the mask.
The air smelled sweet and fresh and clean. I took several deep breaths as Bayta and Rebekah removed their own masks, trying to wash away the emotional grime and sweat and guilt of the battle with the Modhri and his slave warriors.
“Are we safe now?” Rebekah asked.
I gazed at her face, searching in vain for the ten-year-old girl I’d seen only briefly in all our time together. What lofty goal was it, I wondered distantly, that deprived a child of her childhood? “Yes, we’re safe,” I said. “It’s all over.” Without waiting for a reply, I turned away.
Because it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
At least, not for me.
The car was similar to the ones Bayta and I had traveled in a couple of times before. It was laid out like a double Quadrail compartment, only without the central dividing wall and with a food storage and prep area taking the space where the second bathroom would be. There were two beds at each end, and it wasn’t long before all three of us had claimed our bunks and collapsed into them. Bayta and Rebekah were exhausted, and it wasn’t long before they were fast asleep.
I wasn’t in any better shape than they were, and I could feel fatigue tugging at my eyelids. But I couldn’t go to sleep. Not yet. I waited until their breathing had settled down into a slow rhythm, then gave it another five minutes just to be sure. Then, getting up from my bed, I crossed to the car’s rear door It opened at a touch of the control, and I stepped through the vestibule into the next car back.
It was a cargo car, unfurnished, unadorned, and mostly empty. The only cargo were the seventeen coral lockboxes we’d spirited off New Tigris, sitting together in the middle of the floor. At the far end was a door leading into the tender’s third passenger car.
Standing beside
the car’s rear door like a Buckingham Palace guard was the white-dotted Spider who had carried us across the gap to safety. The same white-dotted Spider I’d run into before, in fact, the one I’d privately christened Spot.
I walked the length of the car, feeling a creepy sense of unfriendly eyes watching my every move. Spot stirred as I approached the door, moving sideways to stand in my way. “I need to see him,” I said, coming to a halt a couple of steps away.
“He will not see you,” Spot said.
“I think he will,” I said. “Tell him I know everything.”
There was a short pause. “He will not see you,” Spot repeated.
So he was calling my bluff. I’d expected nothing less. “He has two choices,” I said. “He can see me now, alone, or I can walk back to our car and wake up Bayta, and he can see the two of us together.”
There was another pause, a longer one this time. I waited; and then, slowly, Spot sidled back to his place beside the door. Stepping past him, I touched the door release, crossed the vestibule, and opened the door behind it.
“Good day, Frank Compton,” a melodic voice called as I stepped into the car.
Melodic, but with an unpleasant edge beneath it. Anger? Annoyance?
Fear?
“Hello, Elder of the Chahwyn,” I said, nodding to the slender, pale-skinned being seated on a chair in the middle of the room between a pair of Spiders. “You are an Elder, I assume?”
“I am,” he confirmed.
Good—someone with authority. “Elder of the Chahwyn, we need to talk,” I said.
“About what?”
“About this fraud you’ve perpetrated on us,” I said. “This fraud called the Melding.”
There was a stiffening of the cat-like whiskers on the ridges above his eyes. “There is no fraud,” he insisted. “The Melding is as Rebekah has described it.”
