by Timothy Zahn
"I wasn't just thinking," I told her. Aptly and succinctly put, I noted to myself. "I've also been keeping an eye on the rest of the passengers."
It was half a lie, but only half. I had indeed done a little looking and speculating. But at this point it was mostly just academic. The walkers would identify themselves soon enough, as soon as we sorted ourselves out among the various transports at the Ghonsilya spaceport.
Penny, of course, didn't know anything about that. All she knew was that she was in danger from dark and mysterious forces, and that she was counting on me to protect her from them. "Mr. Morse is worried about them, too," she said. "He told me I should stay in my stateroom the whole trip except for meals."
I had to smile at the thought of Morse trying to keep someone with Penny's spirit caged up that way. "I take it you didn't think much of that advice?"
"You've got to be kidding," she said, her nose wrinkling. "There's nothing to do in there except read and sleep. At least the Spiders put computers in their compartments."
"I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Mr. Morse's advice," I cautioned her. "He is a professional security agent."
"I know." Her nose wrinkled again. There was something rather endearing about the way she did that. "It's just that he's so British."
"And you're, what, German?"
"Austrian, actually," she said. "But I mostly grew up in Paris."
"Ah." I said, nodding. The Brits and French had had a running feud going for at least the past six hundred years. Sometimes it had been almost friendly, other times decidedly not. "Say no more."
Her forehead creased, and for a moment I thought she was going to take issue with my comment. But then her skin smoothed out again. "Anyway, I've got you here to protect me, right?"
"I'll certainly do my best," I said, gazing at her face, feeling all those unwanted emotions stirring inside me. It was bad enough when I was just watching her from across a room. To have her staring trustingly at me with those big brown eyes barely half a meter away was pushing things way past the line. "But in this case I have to agree with Mr. Morse," I managed. "Now that you've finished dinner, maybe you should go back to your stateroom for a while."
Her face fell a little. "Well …all right. But only because it's you who's asking me." Her expression brightened again. "Will you walk me there?"
"I—" It had been a long time since I'd stumbled over my own tongue. This wasn't just a stumble, but a full-blown barrel-roll reverse in the pike position. It took me a solid three seconds just to bring my voice back on line. "I can do that," I managed. "Sure."
"Because I feel a lot safer when you're with me," she breathed.
She shifted position; and suddenly that half meter of open space between us was gone. "You're not like any man I've ever met, Frank," she whispered, her breath making little hot puffs against my lips. "Thank you for caring about me." Her lips moved closer, brushing gently against mine.
I should have pulled back. Failing that, I should at least have frozen in place.
Instead, I moved in for the kill.
I don't know how long we sat there like that, our lips locked in a solid, passionate kiss. No more than a few seconds, probably. My blood was pounding in my ears, my whole body starting to tremble with adrenaline and desire and guilt.
But for those few seconds, the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. There was no Daniel Stafford, no mysterious Nemuti sculptures, no Modhri, no Bayta, no—
"What in bloody hell are you doing?"
And very definitely no ESS Agent Morse.
I tried to pull back, only to find that somewhere along the line Penny's right arm had gotten itself crooked around the back of my neck. I reached up and gently but firmly forced it away as I looked sideways past the sheen of her hair toward the door.
Morse was standing just inside the lounge, his eyes wide, his expression still trying to decide whether it wanted to be astonished, appalled, or just plain furious. Penny's face, in contrast, was flushed, slightly defiant, and completely unapologetic.
"Evening, Morse," I greeted him as I finished easing Penny away from me and rested my hands on her shoulders to make sure she stayed there. I was feeling rather defiantly appalled myself, but since both of those were taken I decided to go with unconcerned casual instead. "You must have skipped the dessert cart."
The contest taking place across Morse's face was instantly over, with furious as the clear winner. Quietly, genteelly furious, perhaps, but furious nonetheless. "That's more than I can say about you," he retorted, his voice gone stiff with a thousand years of proper British decorum. "May I see you a moment?" His eyes flicked to Penny. "Alone?"
"Certainly," I said, shifting my eyes to Penny's. They were big and brown and still unrepentant. "If you'll excuse us. Penny?"
She nodded silently and got up, weaving her way back through the chairs to the door. She passed Morse without a glance going in either direction and disappeared. "What can I do for you?" I asked, gesturing Morse forward.
He took his own sweet time in ungluing himself from the deck, and wasn't any faster in working his way over to me. By the time he pulled one of the other chairs around to face me and sat down, he seemed to have cooled down a bit. "We'll pass over for the moment the utter inappropriateness of your behavior," he began in a growl. "For the moment."
I nodded, returning the favor by passing over for the moment the fact that he had no authority over me and that I wasn't subject to any bureaucratic rules of behavior anyway. "Fair enough."
"What we cannot pass over any longer is what exactly is going on here," he went on, glancing at the Fibibibi and lowering his voice. "We make planetfall tomorrow, and you obviously know more about this situation than you're letting on."
"Not so much as you think," I said. "There's a group of people who want Künstler's Lynx—"
"What people?" he cut me off. "That's the real question, isn't it? Who are they, and who are they affiliated with? Are they a criminal gang, an insurgent group, a government—what?"
"As near as I can tell, they have ties and links to all three categories," I said, angling the truth only a little. "I know they've infiltrated several galactic governments, some of them at the highest levels."
His face hardened. "Including Earth's?"
"They've got a few people scattered around the UN and probably elsewhere," I acknowledged, frowning. Clearly, some unknown puzzle pieces had just fallen into place behind those pale blue eyes. "Fortunately for us, they've mostly been concentrating on other governments."
"I see," he murmured, darkly thoughtful. "That would explain a great deal. I suppose our four Halkan friends will be continuing with us the whole way?"
I'd only tagged the three Halkas who'd been on Ian-apof as the Modhri's local walker contingent. Apparently, there was one more I'd missed. "Until we decide to lose them, yes," I told him.
Morse's forehead wrinkled a little at that, but he let it go without comment. "Well, then, if you have nothing else for me, I'll be off." He stood up. "I trust you'll be spending the night in your own stateroom?"
My first impulse was to tell him it was none of his business. He could hardly dislike me more than he already did.
But I was counting on him to protect Penny if and when the shooting started. I couldn't afford for his disgust with me to bleed over onto her. "Absolutely," I assured him.
"I would hope so," he said. "Good evening, Mr. Compton." He gave me a stiffly polite nod of the head and moved off.
I watched as he made his way back to the door, quiet alarm bells going off in the back of my head. I had long experience in reading faces, and I was pretty sure that some significant threshold had just been crossed in Morse's mind. Problem was, I had no idea what that threshold was.
But I was very sure I wasn't going to like it.
I thought about dropping in on Penny before retiring to my own stateroom, just to make sure she'd gotten there safely. But I decided against it. She might invite me in, and then I would have t
o say no, and then there'd be more confrontation of the sort I'd just gone through with Morse.
So I headed instead back to my own stateroom. I was finished with confrontation for the night.
Unfortunately, confrontation wasn't finished with me.
I'd been in the stateroom no more than ten minutes when there was a tap on the door. Wondering whether it was Penny or Morse or one of the Modhran walkers, I opened it.
It was none of the above. It was Bayta.
"We need to talk," she said without preamble as she strode into the room.
"Come in," I murmured, closing the door behind her. "What exactly do we need to talk about?"
She turned to face me, a determined look on her face. "Ms. Auslander," she said.
My stomach rumbled with a stirring of anger. "That was quick," I growled. "What did Morse do, come straight to your stateroom?"
Her forehead creased. "I haven't seen Mr. Morse since dinner," she said. "Is there something he's supposed to tell me?"
"No, not really," I said, cursing my carelessness. The first rule of subterfuge was to never, ever, offer information that hasn't been asked for. Especially information you didn't want anyone knowing. "What specifically about Ms. Auslander did you want to talk about?"
"I want to talk about the way you've been behaving toward her," Bayta said, still frowning.
"I'm just trying to be civil," I said. "Just because you don't like her—"
"You're trying to be civil?" she interrupted.
"Civil, friendly—whatever," I tried again. If Morse hadn't blabbed, could she somehow have heard about the kiss from one of the Fibibibi who'd been in the lounge? "We need to earn her trust if we're going to get to Stafford and the Lynx."
"Frank, what are you talking about?" Bayta repeated. Her puzzlement, I noted uneasily, had edged into irritation. "I'm talking about the way you've been ignoring her practically since we got on the torchliner."
I swallowed. Uh-oh. "Oh," I said.
"Is that what you call being friendly?" Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Or is there something I don't know about?'
"Nothing that's any of your business," I said. Even to my own ears it sounded lame.
Apparently, it sounded exactly the same to her. "Really," she said, her tone dipping below the frost line. "Shall I go ask Mr. Morse what he thinks of that?"
Silently, I cursed myself, Morse, Bayta, and the universe at large. But there was no way out. Letting Morse frame the details of Pyotr Gerashchenko's murder had turned Penny against us for days. I didn't dare let him frame the details of this one, too. "Okay, fine," I bit out "I kissed her, okay? Is that a crime?"
I'd expected Bayta to stare at me in disbelief, or explode in anger, or at the very least launch into a lecture on proper decorum. Instead, she twitched backward, her breath catching in her throat, her expression that of someone who's just been slapped hard across the face.
Slapped across the face by a friend.
It was so unexpected that it took me a couple of seconds to find my brain and then my voice. But by then, it was too late. Bayta was already on the move, brushing past me and making for the door. "Bayta!" I called, spinning around.
Again, I was too late. Bayta was out of the stateroom, the door sliding shut behind her.
My first impulse was to run after her, to try to explain that it wasn't as bad as it sounded. But she hadn't looked like someone who was ready to listen to explanations.
Besides, maybe from her point of view it was as bad as it sounded.
I spent the rest of the evening alone in my stateroom. Between Penny, Morse, and Bayta, suddenly the Modhri was starting to look like the least of my problems. I hoped that by the time we made planetfall tomorrow morning everyone would have calmed down.
But I wasn't really expecting it.
FOURTEEN :
We touched down at the main Ghonsilya spaceport outside Portline a little after six in the morning, torchliner time, which had been gradually adjusted during the past few days to match that of the local spaceport. We'd already gone through one set of customs formalities at the transfer station outside the Tube, but the local groundsiders wanted a crack at us, too, and we spent two hours running through their particular collection of bureaucratic hoops. Finally, we were released to make our individual ways to the other end of the terminal where we could catch one of the various planes, trains, or suborbital transports that would take us to our final destinations across the planet.
Morse's count had been correct: there were indeed four Halkas who joined us aboard the Magaraa City transport. I wondered briefly if the Modhri realized how they would stand out of a crowd of the thinner, more delicately featured Tra'ho'seej, then put the question out of my mind. That was the Modhri's problem, not mine.
Morse wasn't speaking to me much, basically limiting his conversation to necessary information exchanges. All of those were short and formal. Bayta wasn't speaking to me at all. Penny, in contrast, was almost chatty, though most of her conversation was of the casual cocktail-party variety. Usually I had little patience with that sort of thing, but I recognized it here as a cover-up for her nervousness about what might await us.
She also was showing a new penchant for hanging on to my arm as we walked. It would probably have made Bayta even quieter if she hadn't been at absolute zero already.
Off we all went for a fun-filled excursion together.
The suborbital transport took three hours to get across the Ghonsilya landscape, which when added to the local time zone change put us on the ground again just after local sunset. At my suggestion we parked our luggage in the depot storage lockers, with the idea that we'd pick it up later after we'd figured out what our long-term plans were going to be. We took the subway to the neighborhood of the art museum that had been burgled, and a few minutes later disembarked into the gathering dusk.
By our own internal biological clocks, of course, it was only lunchtime. Travel could be very wearing on the stomach.
"What's your plan?" Morse asked quietly as he. Penny, Bayta, and I walked along a street lined with small shops and quaint-looking houses, our four silent walkers running a wide screen formation around us a few meters away.
"I thought we'd try something outrageously clever and give the nearby hotels a call," I said, pulling out my comm and keying for a local directory.
Morse snorted under his breath. "And here I thought you'd be looking for a trail of bread crumbs."
Penny half turned toward him, her eyes glowering. But whatever crushing retort she'd been preparing to offer on my behalf, she never got to it. As I lifted the comm the biggest of the four Halkas, whom I'd privately dubbed Gargantua, moved in from his place in the screen formation and plucked it from my grip. "No," he growled.
I was actually perfectly willing to let him have the comm. Stafford hadn't been traveling aboard the Quadrail under either his own name or the Daniel Mice moniker Künstler had gasped at me, and I doubted he would go back to one of them here. That made a hotel survey pretty much useless.
Of course, Modhri already knew the Stafford name was a bust, since he would certainly have done a survey of his own the minute our walker escort got close enough to the planet for their Modhri colonies to meld with the locals and sound the alert. My suggestion had been pure red herring, designed to make Morse and the walkers think I knew something that they didn't.
Which, technically speaking, I did. But that wasn't the point. The point was to keep the Modhri thinking in the wrong direction, and if taking my comm away made him feel safer, he was welcome to it.
Unfortunately, Morse didn't know any of that. He apparently thought I was about to reveal Stafford's traveling identity, and figured it was therefore the right time to try to lose our escort. Slipping his hand inside his jacket, he turned toward Gargantua.
It was a complete waste of effort. The Modhri had easily anticipated the move. Two of the other Halkas moved in even before he completed his turn, and in typically perfect coordination one of them
threw his arms around Morse's shoulders to trap his hand inside his jacket while the other reached inside and twisted the gun out of his hand.
Penny gave a little gasp as she jerked back from the sudden fracas. The fourth Halka was ready, catching her shoulders to discourage any thought of flight and relieving her of her own comm. She started to give him a withering over-the-shoulder look, but midway through her eyes seemed to catch on something behind my back. "Frank?" she breathed.
I turned. Somewhere along the line, the four Modhran walkers who'd accompanied us from the Ghonsilya spaceport had picked up reinforcements. Twenty reinforcements, to be precise, all of them Tra'ho'seej. They were arranged in a loose but very deliberate guard ring around us about thirty meters away.
They didn't look like guards, of course. They were grouped in casual-looking twos and threes at corners or loitering silently as individuals in the various shop doorways around us. Most of them were dressed in the expensively embroidered clothing and multiple earrings of upper-class citizens, while the rest had the severe half-shaved heads and contrasting flowing topcuts of oathlings who'd taken the vow of government service.
Apparently, the Modhri had turned out most of his local mind segment in honor of our visit.
"Frank?" Penny repeated, more urgently this time.
"It's all right," I soothed, studying the newcomers. They were making no move to approach, but were merely continuing with their conversations or private meditations. The Modhri would have maneuvered them here through his usual technique of quiet and reasonable suggestions, but was apparently holding off on the more drastic and riskier step of taking direct control of their bodies.
Playing it low-key …and it was going to cost him. Whispering subtle instructions in their ears had gotten the Tra'ho'seej here just fine, but it was highly unlikely that the hosts' rationalizations could have been made to stretch to the extent of bringing weapons along on their innocent evening group stroll. Twenty walkers were bad enough, but twenty armed walkers would have been a hell of a lot worse.
Of course, Gargantua and his buddies did have at least one gun now—Morse's—plus whatever hardware they might have brought with them from the Quadrail lockboxes. Morse and I would just have to deal with that as best we could.
