by Timothy Zahn
Our iced tea, lemonade, and onion rings had just arrived when the door opened, and I looked up to see Morse hurrying toward us. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“Where is who?” I asked, frowning.
“Don’t play the fool,” he snapped. “She’s been trying for the past hour to get me to order you to come to Ian-apof with us.”
“Like you could actually do that,” I said, looking past him out the window. There were maybe twenty or thirty other waiting passengers milling around out there. None of them was Penny Auslander. “When did you see her last?”
“She went to the washroom about fifteen minutes ago,” Morse said, turning to follow my line of sight. “When she didn’t come out, I sent one of the other girls in to check on her. She must have sneaked out the other door.”
I looked at Bayta. Sneaked out, or was helped out. “Where are the rest of them?” I asked, pulling out a cash stick and plugging it into the table’s jack to pay for the drinks and onion rings that it looked like we weren’t going to be enjoying.
“At the shuttle waiting room,” Morse said. “I told them to stay together and not move until I got back.”
“Were they good with that?” I asked as the three of us headed for the door.
Morse made a noise in the back of his throat. “Who knows? I don’t exactly have authority to order them to do anything, either. Are you telling me Ms. Auslander didn’t come looking for you?”
“If she did, she didn’t find me,” I told him, pausing outside the restaurant to take stock of the situation. “Okay. She didn’t get on a shuttle, because you would have seen her.”
“Correct,” Morse said. “Besides which, none have docked since we arrived.”
“Ditto for any trains,” I said. “Ergo, she’s still somewhere in the station.”
“Brilliant, Holmes,” Morse growled. “Problem: there are fourteen buildings, not counting the Spiders’ private ones, and only three of us to search them all. If she cares to, she can play hide the button all day.” He looked at Bayta. “Unless you can persuade your Spider friends to join in the hunt.”
Bayta looked along the curved Tube floor to a pair of cargo trains with Spiders swarming busily around them. “They’re all already occupied,” she told him. “We’ll have to do it on our own.”
Morse grunted. “Lovely. Any suggestions as to where we begin?”
“We begin by splitting up,” I said. “Like you said, there’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“I thought you’d probably say that.” Morse pointed toward one end of the station and a triad of gift shops clustered around a restaurant. “I’ll start with that end.”
“We’ll take the other,” I said. “I suggest you start at the far side and work your way back toward the middle.”
“Thank you; I do know something about the technique,” Morse said acidly. Giving the area around us one final visual sweep, he strode off toward his target buildings.
I took Bayta’s arm and headed us off in the other direction. “You think she’s in danger?” Bayta asked quietly.
“I don’t know why she would be,” I said. “The Modhri must have realized by now that she doesn’t know where Stafford is.”
“Maybe Mr. Künstler told them he didn’t know where the Lynx was, either.”
I grimaced. At which point the walkers had beaten him to death just to make sure. “Point,” I conceded. “The Modhri doesn’t seem to be the trusting sort.” Directly ahead of us, a wiry Pirk with an expensive plumed headdress came to a halt in front of one of the schedule holodisplays, his hands idly preening his feathers as he gazed up at the listings.
It was the sort of thing Quadrail travelers did all the time. Problem was, this particular traveler had been looking at an identical display when Morse and Bayta and I had first emerged from the restaurant not two minutes ago. Either he had the galaxy’s worst short-term memory, or he wasn’t here to look at schedules. “But we can sort out the details once we find her,” I continued, keeping my voice casual. “Why don’t you start with those two cafés over there”—I pointed to the buildings nearest the working Spiders—”and I’ll hit the dit rec and sleeping-room buildings.” I indicated the two windowless structures directly past the Pirk. “If she’s not there, we’ll expand the search to the service buildings.”
“You think we should split up?” Bayta asked, her tone making it clear that she herself didn’t think much of the idea.
“We’ll be all right,” I soothed, patting her shoulder and then giving her a gentle push. “Go on, get going. Meet me here when you’re done.”
She studied my face a moment. But whatever her doubts or suspicions, they weren’t strong enough to override her basic tendency toward obedience. Turning, she headed toward the two cafés.
I let her get a few steps away, then continued toward the Pirk. He was still studying the display, standing in fact directly between me and the dit rec building. As I veered a little to go around him, he swiveled and tufted his ear feathers in the traditional gesture of greeting. [Ah—a Human,] he said in scratch-voiced Karli. [May your day be rich with joy and profit.]
“May your day be likewise,” I said, touching my hand to the top of my ear in the proper response by those of us whose biomechanical design had somehow neglected the need for full-range ear movement. “You are well?”
[Well and most content,] he replied. [I have just finished savoring the pleasure of one of your classic Human dit rec dramas. Its name—what was its name again?]
“I’m afraid I can’t help you on that,” I said politely. This Pirk seemed even more aromatic than usual for his species, and I had to force myself not to widen the circle I was already making around him.
[Ten Angry Men,] he said suddenly, his ear feathers making little circles. [That was the title. Ten Angry Men.]
“An excellent drama,” I agreed. The other standard response to Pirkarli aroma, aside from creating more distance, was to talk a lot, permitting more air to bypass the nose on its way in and out of the lungs. “But I believe you’ll find the title is actually Twelve Angry Men.”
[Ah, yes, indeed,] he said. [That was the number. Thank you. We shall have to remember that.] His ears flattened slightly. [Rather, I shall have to remember. You have no such need, as you already know.]
“You’re welcome,” I said, nodding as I finished my half circle and thankfully started widening the distance between us. “A fine furtherance of the day to you.”
[And to you. Human.] Briskly, he strode away.
Mentally, I shook my head. A dit rec drama, and the number twelve. If they ever handed out prizes for unsubtlety, the Modhri would take the top three places.
From the outside, as I’d already noted, the dit rec building looked like a miniature Matterhorn. Inside, I discovered, its designers had gone even more overboard. The central corridor, instead of carving a clean, straight line through the middle of the building, twisted like the meandering path of a drunken sailor trying to find the door. Its walls were craggy and angled, the light overhead dim and diffuse, the overall effect that of a narrow northside mountain crevice straight out of some Icelandic saga.
Even more impressive, it came complete with a set of Icelandic trolls.
There were three of them, all Halkas, grouped loosely together in the corridor like watchful statues a few meters past the door marked 12. The biggest of them was an unexpectedly familiar face: the Halka on the Bellis-bound Quadrail who’d pulled me away from Künstler’s dying body and tossed me down the Quadrail corridor.
One of the other two was the fifth walker from Jurskala, the one who’d conveniently disappeared during our mad chase after Pyotr Gerashchenko. Apparently, the Modhri was consolidating his best forces here. Probably not a good sign. Watching the Halkas out of the corner of my eye, I opened the door and went inside.
Public viewing facilities like this normally included a variety of room sizes, ranging from those suitable for single viewers to larger ones that could accommodate
groups of ten to fifteen. Room Twelve was in the middle of that range, with five large seats arranged in a semicircle around the dit rec display. At first I thought the room was deserted, but as I walked around one end of the semicircle I saw there was a single middle-aged Human lying along the farthest of the seats, his head pillowed on one armrest and his knees angled somewhat awkwardly over the other. There was a silk scarf across his face, as if there to shield his eyes from the dim light, covering everything down to his upper lip. His mouth was slightly open, his breathing the slow and methodical rhythm of a man in deep sleep. Playing to itself on the display was a classic Harold Lloyd dit rec silent comedy.
“Nice choice,” I commented quietly as I continued around the end of the seats and came to a halt facing the sleeping man. “A silent dit rec means no annoying soundtrack to interfere with your friend’s nap.”
“Thank you,” the man said.
Though not really the man, of course. The stiffness of his shoulders, the subtle tightness of voice and jaw and throat muscles, were all I needed to know that I was once again speaking directly to the Modhri.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “You’re both missing a good dit rec, though.”
“He needed the sleep,” the Modhri said. “And I find Human humor tedious.” He stretched his arms once, the gesture somehow making him look even less Human than he already did. Unhooking his legs from the chair arm, he swiveled himself back up into a sitting position. The scarf covering his face started to slip off, but he got a hand up in time and readjusted it back into place. “Please; sit down.”
“That’s okay—I’ve been sitting all day,” I said, staying where I was. Sitting in any of the remaining chairs would mean putting my back to the door, which I wasn’t interested in doing. “What did you want to talk about?”
“The third Lynx, formerly owned by the Human Künstler,” he said. “I want it.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “What I don’t understand is what kind of appeal an old Nemuti sculpture can possibly have for a galaxy-spanning supermind like you.”
“They intrigue me.” He paused, as if searching for the right phrase. “Perhaps they will go well together on my mantel.”
“I thought you said you didn’t like Human humor.”
“I said it was tedious,” he corrected. “I didn’t say it wasn’t a useful tool. What would it take to persuade you to deliver the Lynx to me?”
“Number one: I’ve seen how trustworthy your promises are,” I said. “Number two: you couldn’t afford me even if I did trust you. And number three: I haven’t got the Lynx.”
“But you know where it is,” he said. “That puts you ahead of the fools who seek the Human Stafford on Ian-apof.”
“You don’t think he’s there?”
“You don’t think he’s there,” the Modhri countered. “Else you would be preparing to travel to the inner system with them.”
“Who says?” I countered. “Maybe I just don’t fancy an eight-day torchliner trip in the company of people who don’t like me. Maybe I’m planning on taking a later torchliner, or renting myself a private torchyacht.”
“Or maybe you already know where the Human Stafford is.” He cocked his head. “Tell me, do you find the Human Auslander an attractive female?”
“I hadn’t really noticed,” I said, trying to keep the sudden tension out of my voice. There was only one direction he could be going with this particular change of topic.
“Really,” the Modhri said interestedly. “I would have said she is. Certainly judging by my host’s reaction to her. She is also somewhat younger than you, I believe. Like most species, I’ve found Humans to be especially protective toward their young.”
“That only applies to children,” I told him. Probably a waste of effort, but I had to try. “Ms. Auslander is an adult. Who, I might add, can’t tell you anything about Stafford that you don’t already know.”
“Yet her presence might be useful in bringing him into the open.”
“Stafford’s on the run,” I reminded him. “He’s going to be suspicious of anyone who shows up with unknown friends in tow. Even Ms. Auslander.”
“So she is truly of no use to me?” The Modhri shrugged. “Pity. Then I suppose I might as well kill her.”
“Hardly seems worth the effort,” I said, keeping my voice even. If anything happened to Penny, there was no way in hell that Morse wouldn’t find a way to pin it on me. “Besides, vengeance is for the weak and smallminded. That hardly applies to you.”
“You flatter me,” he said. “Still, you’re right: I kill only when necessary. But perhaps in this case it is necessary. Why do you think I have my host’s face covered this way?”
I shrugged. The answer was pretty obvious, with some ominous implications. “I assumed it was because you really don’t like Human dit rec comedies,” I improvised.
“Come now, Compton,” he chided. “You surely know better than that. I still have use of this Eye, and don’t wish his identity to be compromised by your sight.”
“Ah,” I said, as if I hadn’t already figured that out. “He’s one of your spies in the UN, I suppose?”
He gave me what was probably intended to be a sly smile. “Please. No one gives away information for free. But I will trade you his identity for the Lynx.”
I snorted. “And then suicide him before we can get anything of value from him? No thanks.”
“Yet therein lies my dilemma,” he said. “It may be that the Human Auslander saw this Eye’s face. In that case, killing her would not be vengeance but a necessary act of self-preservation.”
“Did she see his face?”
“It may be,” he repeated.
I puffed out a breath of air, the small sane part of my mind appreciating the neat little box the Modhri had put me in. If Penny had indeed seen the hidden face, the Modhri genuinely would be justified in killing her, at least from his point of view.
Of course, she was still on the station, which meant that Bayta and the Spiders still had a chance of finding her before the Modhri could do anything drastic. But even if they could, the Modhri had the advantage in position and recon setup, and it was a long way back to Earth. If he really wanted Penny dead there was probably no way any of us could stop him.
Which meant her life was now squarely in my hands, which was clearly where the Modhri wanted it. “I already told you I don’t have the Lynx,” I said.
“I believe you,” he said. “But you do know where the Human Stafford is. I would be willing to trade the female’s life for that information.”
“First bring Ms. Auslander here,” I said. “When I see she’s all right, I’ll tell you.”
For a moment the faceless face studied me through the filmy silk. “And then?”
“Then we say good-bye, Ms. Auslander goes skiing with her friends, and you and I race to see which of us can get to Stafford first.”
He smiled again. It was even more grotesque this time. “With the Spiders who control the Quadrail as your allies? I think not.”
Briefly, I wondered what his reaction would be if he knew the Spiders had already fired me. Probably best not to bring that up. “You want me to stay here, then?”
“We will go find the Human Stafford together,” he said. “You and the female, with my Arms accompanying you. She will be useful as leverage.”
“Against whom?” I asked. “I already told you she can’t help pry Stafford out of hiding.”
“Not leverage against him,” he said. “Leverage against you.”
Behind him, the door opened and Penny appeared, stumbling in as if some unseen person had given her a shove. “Mr. Compton!” she said as she recovered her balance. “What’s going on? They said I couldn’t leave—”
“It’s all right,” I interrupted her soothingly. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, flicked to my companion, then back to me. “Look, I don’t know what he’s been trying to sell you—”
�
�But it’s all cleared up now,” I said. “You ready to go find your fiancé?”
“—but this was no—” She broke off as her brain caught up to her ears. “What?”
“We think we know where Daniel is,” I said, watching the Modhri out of the corner of my eye. “He’s somewhere in Magaraa City on the Tra’hok Unity planet of Ghonsilya.”
Penny’s mouth dropped open a centimeter. “Ghonsilya?” she echoed. “What in the galaxy is he doing there?”
“We’ll ask him when we get there,” I said, taking a step around the chairs toward her. “Let’s go get your things and say good-bye to your friends.”
“I think Ms. Auslander deserves to know first why we’re going to Ghonsilya,” the Modhri said.
Or in other words, he wasn’t going to let me lead him across the galaxy on a wild goose chase without something solid to back it up. “If you insist,” I said, wishing briefly that Bayta was here. I always liked her to be around when I was being clever. “Everyone’s been assuming that Daniel stole Mr. Künstler’s Lynx. He didn’t. Mr. Künstler gave it to him.”
“He gave it to him?” Penny asked. “When?”
“Sometime before the attempted burglary.” I raised my eyebrows toward the Modhri. “Probably shortly after Mr. Künstler was approached by agents trying to buy it.”
The Modhri’s lip twitched, just enough to confirm my guess was right. Of course he would have tried the straightforward approach before attempting anything as risky as a burglary.
“Daniel never mentioned that,” Penny protested.
“Mr. Künstler probably told him not to tell anyone, including you,” I said. “The fact that the other two Nemuti Lynxes had already been stolen from their owners would have made him extra cagey with his. The point is that Daniel didn’t leave Earth running from anything. He left running toward something.”
“The Viper,” the Modhri said suddenly.
