by Timothy Zahn
Bayta gave me that patented strained look of hers again. But she was apparently too drained by the encounter with the Chahwyn to argue the point. "We'll see," she said instead. Lowering herself to the floor, she put her back against a stack of crates and closed her eyes.
I sat down, too, and did likewise.
Because there was another reason the Chahwyn might want to reconsider firing me. A very important one.
But I wasn't ready to let Bayta in on that secret, either. Not yet.
Especially since I might be wrong.
An hour later we reconnected with our train. As far as I could tell as we worked our way forward, no one had missed us.
The server Spiders had, of course, long since cleared away our half-empty glasses from the table where we'd left them. I ordered us two more drinks, lemonade for Bayta. iced tea for me. "Where were we?" I asked as we settled into our chairs. "Right—I was asking about the separation wall's default settings."
"And you were talking insanity," she said. "The Modhri would never have put the Hawk on board unless he had enough walkers here to protect it. If we try to steal it, we might trigger the same thing that happened on our trip back from the Sistarrko system."
"I doubt it," I said. "Remember, there he had a source of Modhri coral to work with. I doubt he has anything like that here. Besides, who said anything about stealing the Hawk?"
She was still frowning at me when the server tapped up and delivered our drinks. "You want to break into the compartment and not steal it?" she asked at last.
"Of course not," I said, putting some dignity into my voice. "Stealing's against the law. So if there's a power glitch do the wall locks stay on or go off?"
For a moment she continued to stare at me. Then, her eyes flattened as she consulted with the experts. "They'd go off," she said. "But the wall would still stay closed."
"Not a problem, provided the Modhri inside doesn't notice the power glitch," I assured her. "And provided we're already on the other side of the wall."
"Which would mean breaking into the other half of that compartment."
"Possibly," I said. "Let's find out first which compartment the Hawk's in, and who has the other half."
Neither bit of information proved difficult to collect. As with every Quadrail, conductor Spiders were continuously roaming the aisles, and a few minutes of silent interrogation and cross-checking on Bayta's part did the trick.
"The Jurian in compartment seven is the one who hasn't been outside since we left Jurskala," Bayta said. "The connecting compartment is occupied by another Jurian, a diplomatic consul."
"We can work with that," I said. "I don't suppose we're lucky enough for one of Penny's friends to have the compartment across the corridor from him."
"No," she said. "But Giovan Toya, one of the group, is two down from it. Will that help?"
"Not really," I said. "But that's okay. We'll just have to do it on the fly."
"How?" she asked.
"Just leave it to me," I said, patting her hand. "Order me another iced tea, will you? I need to go find Morse."
Morse was not amused. Not even close.
"You have got to be joking," he growled when I'd finished outlining my plan. "You're talking about breaking and entering. That's a felony. Two felonies."
"One: there won't be any breaking involved," I corrected. "You're going to get him to leave; I'm going to get inside before the door closes. So no breaking. Two: the Quadrail is under Spider jurisdiction. Human and Jurian laws don't apply."
Morse snorted. "Somehow, I don't think the consul will see it that way."
"And three," I added, "this may be the key to nailing down this whole Nemuti sculpture mystery. Possibly including the key to Rafael Künstler's murder."
His lip twitched at that one. No doubt he still thought I was involved with Künstler's death. "It's still lunatic," he insisted. "Why would a ranking Jurian diplomat get himself involved in theft and murder?"
"Why does anyone get involved in that sort of mess?" I countered, looking quickly for a reason that didn't require me to mention the Modhri. "Greed, blackmail, bad judgment, even just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pick one."
"Wrong place and rime certainly seems to be my problem these days," Morse muttered.
"A quick look inside his compartment, and I'm done," I promised.
"And that's all you're doing?" he asked, gazing hard at me. "Fair is fair, Compton. I'm sticking my neck out here, far enough to look backward down the Chunnel. I need the whole story."
"You have it," I assured him, stifling a twinge of conscience. He didn't have the whole story, of course. He barely had the first page. But I couldn't give him all of it. Not yet. "I get in, I look for the Hawk, and I get out."
"And you promise that this is it?" Morse persisted. "That if the Hawk's not there you aren't going to want to work your way through all the rest of the compartments?"
"Scout's honor," I said. "If the consul hasn't got it, the entire theory department's back to square one."
For a moment he continued to measure me with his eyes. Then, he shook his head. "Losutu had better be right about you," he said. "All right. Tell me what you want me to do."
We waited until late in the Quadrail's night schedule, hoping to increase the chances that the Hawk's courier would be sleeping. Whether the Modhri colony inside him would also be asleep, unfortunately, was anyone's guess.
Morse didn't know about that part, of course. My rationale to him was that the late hour would catch the Jurian consul in the other compartment in a half-awake state where he might be more easily manipulated.
It was a few minutes after one o'clock when Morse carefully positioned himself in front of the consul's door and touched the chime button.
A minute went by. Nothing. Morse glanced over at Bayta and me as we leaned against the corridor wall five meters farther forward, pretending to be engaged in a heartfelt conversation. I nodded toward the door, and Morse keyed the chime again. Another half minute went by, and then the door slid open and a Jurian face leaned out. eyes blinking groggily above his beak. "What is this you do, Human?" he demanded.
"My name's Morse," Morse said, holding up his ID wallet. "Terran Confederation EuroUnion Security Service. We have a situation two cars back that requires the assistance of a Resolver."
"I am not a Resolver," the Juri said. But I could hear the growing interest in his voice. All Jurian diplomats had at least a modicum of Resolver training, and a lot of them had ambitions in that direction. Getting called in to fix a social problem aboard a Quadrail would be a nice step toward that goal.
"I was misinformed," Morse said, playing it with a perfect mix of respect and regret. "My apologies."
"Not so hastily, Mr. Morse," the Juri said, lifting a hand to block Morse's departure. "Perhaps I can still assist."
"I wouldn't want to disturb you," Morse said.
"It would be my honor to assist," the Juri said. "Permit me a moment to garb myself."
He stepped back into the room and the door slid shut. Morse looked back at me, his eyebrows raised questioningly. I nodded encouragement as I straightened up from the section of wall I'd been leaning against and prepared for action. I'd spent an hour practicing this maneuver in one of Penny's friends' compartments, but it was still going to take perfect riming to pull it off.
Morse nodded back and gave one last look at my rolled-up belt peeking from between his feet, looking for all the world like a large black snail or nautilus shell. Most people, I knew, seldom looked down unless there was some actual reason to do so. I hoped the Juri was like most people.
The door slid open again and the Juri stepped out into the corridor, nattily attired now in full diplomatic regalia. He must really want that promotion to Resolver. "Take me to this conflict," he ordered Morse.
"This way," Morse said, gesturing toward the rear door. As he did, I left Bayta and started walking casually toward them.
The Juri glanced incuriously a
t me as he stepped past Morse and headed aft. Morse fell into step beside and slightly behind him as the compartment door started to slide closed.
And as I reached the spot where Morse had been standing, I gave the coiled belt a gentle sideways nudge with my foot, sending it unrolling across the corridor and dropping its tip neatly across the path of the sliding door.
Quadrail compartment doors had built-in safeties that were supposed to make sure they didn't close on someone in the process of passing through. But those sensors were clustered midway along the panel. Way down at the bottom, there was nothing but the backup pressure sensors designed to stop the door's movement before it exerted any significant pressure on a Jurian back claw, Shorshian tail, or Human toe.
The key was that, unlike the main safeties, the pressure sensors would merely stop the door and wait there for further instructions.
The Juri fell for it, of course. There was practically no way he couldn't have. He'd heard his door closing, he hadn't heard the soft whoosh of it reopening, and the only person who'd been nearby as it closed—me—hadn't even broken stride as I walked along behind the two of them at the corner of his sight.
I made sure to keep walking with them all the way to the end of the car. There I courteously allowed them to go into the vestibule first.
As soon as they'd vanished behind the door, I did a one-eighty and hurried back to the compartment. I had maybe ten minutes now while Morse searched in vain for the alleged travelers whose alleged confrontation had sent him looking for diplomatic smoothing in the first place.
Bayta was waiting, her throat muscles working nervously. "See?" I said. "No worries." I reached into the narrow gap between door and jamb, and as my fingers triggered the safeties, the door gave its little whoosh and slid open again. I ushered Bayta inside, scooping up my belt from the floor as I followed.
The Juri's compartment had the almost pathological neatness I'd come to expect from ambitious rank-climbing members of the galaxy's various diplomatic corps. His personal items were precisely positioned, with the clothing hanging in the cleaning rack actually laid out in descending spectrum order of basic color. If the Hawk had been in here. I reflected, I would probably have found it filed alphabetically in his luggage.
"Douse the lights," I murmured to Bayta as I stepped to the back of the compartment and the wall switch that controlled the collapsing divider wall.
The room went dark. A moment later. I sensed the movement of air that meant she'd joined me. "You ready?" I asked.
"As ready as I'm going to be," she said. "Wait—the window."
"Right." Reaching over to the control, I opaqued the window, cutting off the last bit of faint reflected glow from the Coreline overhead. Moving back to the wall, I pressed my ear against it.
Nothing. Still, given the Spiders' soundproofing and the clickity-clack of the wheels below me, the courier would have to have a live-spec music party going in there for me to hear anything. "Okay," I murmured to Bayta. "Glitch number one: now."
With the room's lights out, there was no obvious indication that we'd just suffered a quarter-second power flicker. "Ready glitch number two," I said, and pressed the wall release.
Against my hand, I felt the wall begin to retract.
It didn't open very far, making it only about half a meter before Bayta's mental order to the Spiders again shut down power to the double compartment. But that was all I needed. Squeezing Bayta's arm reassuringly. I slipped through the gap.
The courier had also opaqued his window, with the result that the compartment was as black as a politician's financial records. Fortunately, our trip in the tender had given me a fair amount of experience in moving around a blacked-out Quadrail compartment. Hoping the courier wasn't the sort to leave his laundry piled in the middle of the floor, I made my way toward the bed.
I could hear the sound of slow breathing now. If the Modhri colony was awake and aware of my presence, he was being very quiet about it. I reached the bed and located the rack above it. There were three good-sized pieces of luggage up there, none of them the easily carried hand bag I was expecting.
Had the Modhri mind segment decided that the shoulder bag idea was too obvious and stashed the Hawk in with the courier's regular stuff? I hoped not. Opening and digging through someone's luggage in pitch-darkness wasn't something I really wanted to try.
But there was one other possibility. Using the sound of the Juri's breathing to orient myself, I eased my fingertips toward the spot where his chest ought to be.
There it was: a leather carrying bag, about the size of the late Mr. Gerashchenko's lugeboard case, gripped in the Juri's arms like a child's beloved stuffed animal.
I smiled tightly in the darkness. With the sleeper's arms wrapped around it, the bag would be nearly impossible to steal or open. Even if the Modhran colony was sleeping or otherwise unaware of his surroundings, a disturbance on that scale would surely startle both him and the walker himself awake.
But as I'd told Morse, I wasn't here to steal anything.
My reader was already tricked out into its sensor mode. Pulling it out, I started moving it slowly and deliberately down the side of the bag, a centimeter or so above the leather.
"Compton," the Juri murmured.
I froze. The sleeper hadn't stirred, and the word had come out with a definite slurring to it. Was the Juri talking in his sleep? Setting my teeth, I got the scanner moving again.
"Compton," the mumbled word came again. "Give me the Lynx."
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to tingle. This wasn't anyone's sleep-talk. The Modhri was talking to me. "I don't have it," I murmured.
"Find it," the Modhri said. "Give it to me. Then you may retire in safety and wealth."
"Thanks for the offer," I said, forcing myself to continue moving the scanner in the same slow and steady motion. Maybe in the darkness the Modhri didn't realize what I was doing. But whether he did or not, it was for damn sure that I wasn't going to get a second crack at this. "I'll think about it."
"Bring me the Lynx," he repeated. The Juri gave a little sigh and readjusted his shoulders before settling down again.
Conversation over, apparently. I finished the scan and shut down the reader. Then, just out of curiosity, I reached to the top end of the bag and got a grip on it.
The sleeping Juri stiffened, his arms tightening reflexively around his prize. But he didn't wake up; and I, for my part, wasn't interested in pushing the Modhri any farther than I already had. Letting go of the bag, I backed carefully across the compartment. As I slipped through the opening, I felt Bayta reach around behind me and touch the control, and the wall slid shut again.
"I heard voices," she whispered tensely in my ear. "Was that you?"
"Later," I said, taking her hand and leading her back to the door.
We were sitting in our chairs watching the dit rec comedy playing on the nearest display window when Morse and a disappointed-looking Juri consul headed through on their way back to the compartment car.
TWELVE :
We waited another half hour, just to make sure everything had settled down. Then, once again retreating to the bar, we examined the sensor record.
And found nothing.
"What the bloody hell is this?" Morse demanded, frowning at the reader screen. "This your idea of a joke?"
"Hardly" I said. I hadn't wanted him along, but he'd insisted, and after his help I couldn't really refuse him. "Or if it is, it's being played on the universe at large. We're talking one very interesting object here."
"No, we're talking one very harmless carrybag," Morse retorted, dropping the reader back on the table. "Unless you're going to tell me these Nemuti sculptures can morph into brocade dressing robes?"
I spread my hands helplessly. "What can I say? All the signs pointed to the Hawk being in there."
Morse snorted. "And here I always thought it was the Yandro fiasco that got you kicked out of Westali."
"Meaning?" I asked, feel
ing a stirring of anger.
"You're the big clever Yank detective—you figure it out." Abruptly he stood up. "If you'll excuse me, we're due into Ian-apof in an hour and I have to make sure Ms. Auslander's packed and ready to go." He strode out of the bar and headed forward.
I watched him go, then turned to Bayta. "Well?" I invited.
"Well what?" she said. Her eyes were troubled, but there was none of the contempt or disappointment in her face that Morse had just spilled out onto the table. "The sensor must have failed."
I shook my head. "I've already run a self-test. The sensor was working perfectly."
"Then where is the Hawk?"
"It's in the Juri's bag, right where we expected it to be," I told her. "Before I left the compartment I got a grip on the bag, just to see what the Modhri's reaction would be, and I could feel something hard and solid in there. Something that felt very much like the slightly bulbous tip of the Hawk that we saw in the pictures."
Bayta craned her neck to look at the reader's display again. "I don't see that at all."
"Neither did the sensor," I said grimly. "Apparently, the Hawk and its brother sculptures are sensor transparent."
She looked up at me, her eyes widening. "They're what? How can that be possible?"
"I have no idea," I said. "Actually, no, let me back up a little. The Hawk's not simply invisible—if it was, there'd be a hole in the middle of the sensor image. It's more like a sensor chameleon, something that takes on and mimics the characteristics of its surroundings."
"But then how can we see it and take pictures of it?" she protested. "Visible light is just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum; like infrared and radar."
"How can we see through ordinary glass while it still blocks ultraviolet and some infrared?" I countered. "Like I said, I have no idea how it's done. Especially since sitting alone all by itself the Hawk must look like something on a sensor scan. Otherwise, they sure wouldn't have been relegated to the status of third-rate folk art."
