Judgment at Proteus

by Timothy Zahn

  “An interesting question,” I agreed. “Shall we find out?”

  For a moment the other was silent. I listened to the persistent and increasingly annoying command tone as I peered back and forth through my barrier, trying to figure out where all the walkers had disappeared to. But they’d all gone to ground somewhere out of sight. Only the four Shonkla-raa were still visible, still standing in their generals’ line, out of range of my kwi.

  But if I could get out there and close some of that distance before they could get their walkers close to me …

  “Your words demonstrate true Shonkla-raa spirit,” the spokesman said. “But I do not believe your strength of will is of the same magnitude.”

  “I just firebombed a dozen of my own people,” I reminded him.

  “I grant your willingness to wound or kill Humans you do not know,” the Shonkla-raa said. “But what about friends and allies? Are you willing to sacrifice them, as well?”

  I snorted under my breath. “I think you may be missing the point of why I’m sitting here in this doorway.”

  “I do not refer to those allies aboard the Quadrail,” he said. “I refer to these allies.” He shouted something in a unfamiliar Fili dialect.

  “What’s he talking about?” Terese murmured in my ear.

  “I don’t know,” I said, frowning as two Humans and a fifth Filly appeared through the door of one of the cafés. They headed across the line of platforms toward us, and I saw now that the Shonkla-raa was pushing the Humans ahead of him with his hands wrapped snugly around the backs of their necks.

  “Who are they?” Terese asked.

  “Can’t tell yet,” I told her. But both men definitely seemed familiar. They continued forward, the Humans’ faces slowly coming into focus—

  I caught my breath. One of the men was UN director Biret Losutu. The other was my former employer Larry Cecil Hardin.

  I stared at them, a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Losutu, the one man on Earth who knew enough about this war and had the authority to recruit the army I needed. If the Shonkla-raa murdered him, that would be it for any and all help from my own people.

  Larry Hardin, the high-profile industrialist whom I’d blackmailed out of a trillion dollars and who would gladly see me twisting in the wind. If the Shonkla-raa murdered him, it would be a race as to whether the Shonkla-raa or Hardin’s own security force got to me first.

  “I don’t think either of those are what I’d call a friend or an ally,” I called out to the Shonkla-raa, forcing my voice to stay calm and detached. “You got anything else?”

  “I offer you a trade,” the newcomer called as he brought Losutu and Hardin to a halt, again staying well out of kwi range. “These two Human males for the female Terese German.”

  Behind me, Terese gripped my arm tightly. “Sorry,” I called back. “Ms. German and her baby aren’t for sale.”

  “Then we will kill the males,” the Shonkla-raa said, his voice darkening. “And then we will kill all the other innocents in the station. And all for nothing, because no help will come from your transfer station. Not ever.”

  The knot in my stomach tightened another turn. “You don’t seriously expect me to believe you’ve taken over the whole transfer station.”

  “And you think we could not?” He gave a contemptuous whinny. “Perhaps someday. This day we content ourselves with controlling the Spiders, who in turn control the docking hatchways. No help will arrive, for no help can enter the station.”

  I grimaced. I’d hoped he wouldn’t realize that. “Except that unlike your Quadrail stations, ours have manual overrides,” I said, trying one final bluff.

  “They do not,” the Shonkla-raa said flatly. “I make the offer again: Terese German for these two males.”

  “Compton!” Losutu called. “Don’t—” He broke off with a strangled gurgle.

  “What are we going to do?” Terese asked tensely.

  I chewed at my lip. Unfortunately, the Shonkla-raa was right. We were trapped here, with no hope of help from Earth or the Spiders, facing five Shonkla-raa and probably seventy-five or more functional walkers. No matter what kind of defenses we were able to cobble together, sooner or later they would find a way through or else would overwhelm us with sheer numbers.

  There was nothing more I could do in here except stall for time. Out there, though, I might find a weakness I could exploit. “Counteroffer,” I called. “You release the two males, forget about Ms. German, and you can have me.”

  Terese’s grip on my arm tightened. “Do you then consider yourself worth as much as the female?” the Shonkla-raa called.

  “Osantra Riijkhan seemed to think so,” I said. “He offered to give the whole Terran Confederation a get-out-of-tyranny-free card if I came over to your side.”

  “Is that what you offer in exchange for these Humans?”

  “I’m offering to leave the train in exchange for them being allowed to join my friends in here,” I said. “Whether I’ll actually work for you is a different negotiation for a different day.”

  There was another pause. Then, below the whistling of the command tone I caught the low murmur of hurried conversation in that same Fili dialect. They knew I was up to something, and were probably trying to decide whether the risk of me springing some trap was worth getting me out of the train.

  Terese was clearly thinking along the same lines. “You can’t leave us,” she murmured. “If you do, they’ll get us. All of us.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, wishing I had an iota of reason for her not to. If the Shonkla-raa still hoped they could turn me, I might have enough time to find the weakness I was hoping for.

  If they’d decided I wasn’t worth any more of their effort, I’d be dead thirty seconds after I stepped out onto the platform.

  “We accept your offer,” the Shonkla-raa holding Losutu and Hardin called, switching back to English. “Open your barrier and come out.”

  I took a deep breath. This was, I knew, very possibly the last stupid mistake I would ever make. But stupid or not, it was the only chance we had. “You’ll have to drop your command tone for a minute,” I called back. “The Spiders are wedged in the doorway. I can’t move them—they’ll need to be mobile enough to move themselves.”

  There was another silence. “Shonkla-raa?” I prompted. “Come on, read the logic. You want me out there, you’ll have to drop the tone.”

  “You will leave the Spiders and exit from a different door.”

  “The Spiders have been ordered to keep the other doors closed,” I said. “Bayta can’t override them from the compartment here.”

  “Then she may leave the compartment.”

  “When hell freezes over,” I retorted. “It’s this door, or none at all. Now shut off the damn command tone.”

  The Shonkla-raa snarled something I couldn’t hear. “You will have ten seconds,” he said, his voice low and dark.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “But they’re pretty well wedged.”

  “You will have ten seconds.”

  Abruptly, the command tone stopped, leaving a sort of auditory afterimage ringing in my ears. “You heard him,” I said, tapping Sam’s globe. “Or maybe you didn’t. Whatever. Come on, time to untangle yourselves.”

  And then, to my surprise, the tingling of the kwi wrapped around my hand stopped.

  I threw a reflexive glance at the wall of the compartment beside me. Surely Bayta wouldn’t have deactivated the weapon now, with the defenders about to move out of the door and us at our most vulnerable. Had something happened to her?

  Apparently not. A fraction of a second later, with the usual tingle, the kwi came back on.

  And then went off again. And then on, and then off, and then on and then off. I lifted my hand, peering closely at the weapon, wondering if the thing was finally starting to fall apart. That would be just perfect, for us to lose our single best weapon right when we needed it most—

  I frowned. The kwi wasn’t just spu
ttering. It was sputtering in a pattern. A bit clumsy and amateurish, but a pattern nonetheless. A pattern that Bayta didn’t know, but was probably being dictated to her by someone else in the compartment.

  Someone like, say, a EuroUnion Security Service agent who’d probably been teased the entire week he and his fellow trainees were learning the aptly named Morse code.

  And the message itself—

  McMicking here.

  The message began to repeat. Casually, I lowered my hand again, my heart thudding with new hope. Hope, and a bit of embarrassment. Of course McMicking was here—Larry Hardin was here, and McMicking was his chief troubleshooter. It only made sense that McMicking would be here with him.

  And with that, we now had a genuine chance. The Spiders obviously knew about McMicking, and it was only because of the Shonkla-raa tone freezing out their system that they hadn’t been able to pass that information on to Bayta until now.

  The Spiders knew, and now we knew. More importantly, the Shonkla-raa didn’t know.

  Of course, the Spiders probably didn’t know what McMicking’s plan was, and I sure as hell didn’t. But whatever it was, there might be a way to help it along a little.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said quietly to Terese. “Go to the compartment and tell Bayta—”

  I broke off as the Shonkla-raa tone resumed, again freezing the defenders in place. “Not done,” I called, peering out through the tangle of Spider legs. “I need more time.”

  “You have had all you need,” he called back.

  “You want me out there or not?” I countered. “If you do, I’m going to need more time.”

  The Filly’s mouth moved as he muttered something under his breath. “Ten more seconds.”

  The tone again shut off. “Go back to the compartment and tell Bayta I’m going to try to get to the engine,” I told Terese as I continued helping the defenders untangle themselves. “I’ll pull out as many of the walkers as I can out from the wheels and drive mechanism. With luck, I’ll get enough of them clear that she’ll be able to get the train moving again before the Shonkla-raa can react.”

  “But what about you?” Terese asked. “We can’t just leave you here.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “They want me alive, remember? You just focus on getting you and the rest of the train out of here and going for help. Bayta will know how and where to do that.”

  Outside, the tone again resumed. “And take this with you,” I added, handing her the kwi. On the platform, out of Bayta’s range, the weapon would be useless to me, and I had no intention of letting the Shonkla-raa get hold of it. “Go,” I ordered, giving her a little push.

  Her face was screwed up halfway to tears, but she gave a jerky nod and hurried back to the compartment. I waited until the door had closed behind her, then pulled the refrozen defenders out of the way. Taking a deep breath, I stepped outside, standing still until I felt the slight movement of air that meant the car door had irised shut behind me.

  “Welcome, Frank Compton,” the Shonkla-raa holding Losutu and Hardin called, and there was no mistaking the malicious satisfaction in his voice. “We have waited for this moment for a long time. A long, long time.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Have you, now,” I said, trying to sound casual and suave, the way a proper dit-rec detective would sound under these circumstances. “It’s so nice to bring happiness into people’s lives.” I started toward him and his hostages.

  And two steps later, I abruptly spun to my left and broke into a flat-out sprint.

  Only to discover a double line of walkers already standing between me and the engine.

  I slowed to a halt again, letting my lip twist as I looked back at the Shonkla-raa. “I seem to have been anticipated,” I said lamely.

  “Did you really think such an obvious attack point would escape our notice?” the Shonkla-raa asked contemptuously. “Look also at the train cars behind you.”

  I turned. About thirty of the walkers who’d retreated in that direction in the face of my earlier kwi attack were standing alertly alongside the compartment car, ready to counter any move I might make in that direction. The rest of the group, another fifteen or twenty of them, had wedged themselves into the wheels of the compartment car and the first-class coach car behind it. “You see,” the Shonkla-raa continued. “Even had you reached the engine, your efforts would have been futile.”

  “I suppose,” I said, letting just enough chagrin make it into my voice to look like I was stifling a whole lot more.

  And trying very hard not to smile.

  Because my impromptu gambit had actually worked. In an effort to counter the ridiculous plan I’d spun for Terese, the Shonkla-raa had now made twenty percent of their remaining force unavailable for a quick response.

  I looked up at the window of our appropriated cabin, making sure to keep the same stifled chagrin on my face. Bayta and Morse were gazing out at me, Bayta’s face tense, Morse’s that of a poker player who’s just put all his chips into the pot but has no idea what his hole card is.

  And then, as I started to look away, something else caught my eye. In the compartment next to theirs a large piece of paper covered with alien writing was being pulled away from the window, and I caught a glimpse of another of the scrawny Fillies who’d been dogging our trail ever since at least Venidra Carvo.

  So that was how the Shonkla-raa out here had been apprised of my charge-the-engine plan. I let a little more chagrin into my expression, just in case the Filly or anyone else in that compartment was also watching.

  I heard the sound of footsteps over the noise of the command tone, and turned as half a dozen of the walkers who’d been blocking my path to the engine came up to me. My official reception committee, apparently. The two in front, a Jurian diplomat and a pudgy Human wearing a banker’s scarf with a half-open courier’s briefcase still slung across his chest, took my wrists and turned me toward Losutu and Hardin and their Shonkla-raa keeper. “Okay, I’m here,” I called. “You can let them go now.”

  “In good time,” the Shonkla-raa called back. The Juri and Human gave simultaneous tugs on my wrists and we headed across the platform, the other four walkers following close behind us.

  I glanced around the station as we walked. The non-walkers who’d been watching bemusedly from afar when this whole thing started had vanished, probably cowering in disbelief and horror in the cafés and gift shops, wondering what in hell was going on.

  There was no sign of McMicking. Wherever the others had gone to ground, he’d apparently gone with them.

  The Spiders, in contrast, were still standing where they’d been when our train pulled in, just as frozen and useless as before. A pity, I thought, that Bayta hadn’t been able to do something with them when the command tone was off. But then, she’d only had a pair of ten-second intervals to work with, and I doubted the Shonkla-raa would have missed any sort of concerted action. Even if Bayta had found anything that the permanently nonviolent creatures could actually do for us.

  And then, something caught my eye. The Spiders were indeed still where they’d been standing. But their postures had subtly changed. Every one of them was now standing on only six of their seven legs, with the seventh leg folded up beneath their domes.

  And all of those folded legs were pointed off to my left.

  Casually, I let my gaze wander in that direction. The Spiders were pointing toward a pair of drudge Spiders about a hundred meters away along the axis of the station from where Losutu and Hardin were standing. The drudges were also perched on six legs, leaning toward each other in unstable-looking poses, their unused legs pointed downward toward a partially open service access airlock.

  The implication was clear. It also made no sense.

  Because the airlock didn’t actually go anywhere. Not unless there was a maintenance skiff attached to the other side. Even if there was, we would have no way of getting into it. We would need a Spider to close the airlock’s upper hatch and open
the lower one, and thanks to the Shonkla-raa all the Spiders were temporarily out of service. All we could do, even assuming I could free the hostages and get to the airlock ahead of the Shonkla-raa, would be to stand there in the pit and wait for the walkers to stroll over and pull us out again.

  But the signs were too clear to be misinterpreted. Clearly, Bayta wanted me to go there.

  I squared my shoulders. She’d trusted me often enough during our time together. Now it was my turn.

  The Shonkla-raa was still gripping his hostages’ necks when my escort and I arrived. “Okay, I’ve made good on my half of the bargain,” I said. “Your turn.”

  “In good time,” the Shonkla-raa said, eyeing me curiously. His nose blaze, I saw now, had the same sort of slanted lines through it that I’d also seen on Osantra Riijkhan. Coincidence? Or were the Shonkla-raa blaze-coding their field commanders?

  “That’s what you said about seventy meters ago,” I reminded him, nodding over my shoulder toward the train. “You’ve got me. Let them go.”

  “You are not what I expected,” Slant Nose continued. “A hero of the Humans should be taller.” He cocked his head. “He should also have a longer nose.”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I growled. “You never intended to let them go, did you?”

  “A hero of the Humans also requires proper motivation if he is to cooperate with his new masters,” Slant Nose said. “I have no intention of allowing this mission to fail as have others.” His blaze darkened. “Nor will I allow the deaths of my comrades to go unavenged.”

  My throat tightened. So it was going to be a quick death after all. “Osantra Riijkhan won’t like it if I arrive in damaged condition,” I warned, trying to stall for time. Where the hell was McMicking?

  “Even Osantra Riijkhan does not obtain everything he desires,” Slant Nose countered. Behind me, one of the men from my escort detached himself from the group and stepped in front of me. His hand dipped into the banker’s briefcase and pulled out a mite Spider, its slender legs sticking out rigidly from its fist-sized globe.