by Timothy Zahn
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“What Viper?” Penny asked. “You’re not making sense.”
“On the contrary, he makes perfect sense,” the Modhri said, as if unknown pieces were suddenly dropping into place. “Mr. Künstler was killed on his way to Bellis, where the last Hawk had been stolen. He was hoping to contact the thieves and buy the sculpture from them.”
I felt my stomach tighten. I’d already guessed that was the reason Künstler had been on his way to Bellis. But the certainty in the Modhri’s voice strongly implied that it hadn’t been entirely Künstler’s idea. “Or else he was lured with a promise to trade the Hawk for his Lynx,” I said. “The people who killed him clearly expected him to have the Lynx with him.”
If I could have seen the Modhri’s face I would have been ninety percent sure I’d nailed it exactly. As it was, I could only make it to about seventy percent. But it was enough. The Modhri had indeed enticed Künstler onto that Quadrail and to his death. “Unfortunately for them, the Lynx was already on its way in the opposite direction,” I continued. “Daniel was heading toward the art museum where one of the Vipers had also been stolen, probably also hoping to wheedle the sculpture out of the thieves.”
“Or also planning to falsely offer a trade,” the Modhri said darkly.
Penny was staring at me with horrified eyes. “Are you saying Mr. Künstler was killed over a stupid piece of art?”
I shrugged. “Collectors can get pretty fanatical.”
“No,” Penny said, her voice firm. Fire, and a sharp, intelligent mind. “There has to be more to it than that.”
“You can ask Mr. Stafford when you find him,” the Modhri said. “You’d best see now to your preparations—the Quadrail for Ghonsilya will be arriving in the station in a little over an hour. Good luck with your search, Ms. Auslander.” He turned his covered eyes to me. “And to you as well, Mr. Compton.”
The three Halkas were nowhere to be seen as Penny and I made our way through the twisting corridor and out again into the reassuring light of the Coreline. “We’ll find Bayta and have her get us reservations,” I told Penny as we headed toward the shuttle waiting area.
“That was weird,” Penny murmured, walking very close to me. “That man—he won’t be going with us, will he?”
“I’m sure he won’t,” I said. It was clearly the answer she wanted, even if it wasn’t entirely true. “But I imagine he’ll have friends aboard keeping an eye on us.”
“Keeping an eye out for Daniel and this stupid sculpture, you mean,” Penny said harshly. Her fright was fading away, leaving a growing anger in its place. “But it won’t work. Daniel’s too smart for them.”
“It’ll be all right,” I assured her. “Trust me.”
“I will,” she murmured. “I do.”
I looked sideways at her. She didn’t return my glance, but there was something in her profile I hadn’t seen before. A softness, and some actual genuine trust.
The Modhri had been right: she was an attractive woman. She was also rich, still single, and not all that much younger than I was.
Resolutely, I turned my eyes and mind away. I was here to protect her, Daniel, and the Lynx. Nothing more.
And I would. Because what the Modhri didn’t know was that Fayr wasn’t waiting for me on Laarmiten, as he’d read in the message chip he’d stolen at Terra Station. Fayr was on Ghonsilya, in the same Magaraa City neighborhood where we were all heading.
I hoped he’d brought all his guns with him. Knowing Fayr, I rather expected he had.
THIRTEEN
Penny’s friends didn’t understand the abrupt change of plan, of course. Given Penny’s vague and rather incoherent explanation, I probably wouldn’t have understood it either. One of the boys offered to accompany us, but it was a token offer and he was easily talked out of it.
Morse, in contrast, was grimly serious in his insistence that he go along. I’d expected nothing else, and didn’t even bother to argue with him. I had no illusions that he would ever stick his neck out for me, but I was pretty sure I could count on him to protect Penny when the shooting started. That made him worth putting up with.
Besides, when push came to shove against unknown assailants, he might even take my side instead of leaving me to sink or swim on my own. Stranger things had happened.
Paradoxically, for the moment at least, we were probably as safe as we were ever going to be. Certainly as safe as I’d been since I stumbled into this war. We had something the Modhri wanted, and until he got it he was going to take exceptionally good care of us.
Just the same, Bayta made sure to get us our usual double compartment for the trip to Ghonsilya. Lockable doors are a good thing to have. I had her upgrade to a compartment for Penny, too, for the same reason. Bayta wondered a little about that, but I pointed out the girl was our only solid connection to Stafford and that we therefore needed to make sure she was as safe as possible. Her daddy could certainly afford the extra cost.
I did let Morse take only the standard first-class seat his pass permitted. I figured he could take care of himself, and I knew the kind of conniption the ESS accountants would throw over any unauthorized expenditures. There was nothing to be gained in getting him into any more trouble than he was probably already in over all this.
Besides, he might very well have to spring the extra cash for that locked door on the way out of Ghonsilya.
It was a five-day trip from Ian-apof to Ghonsilya, and it went off as smoothly as any I’d ever taken. At Ghonsilya Station we collected our luggage and took the shuttle to the transfer station, where we breezed through customs and reserved tiny staterooms aboard the next torchliner headed for the inner system. Ghonsilya’s current positioning vis-à-vis the Tube translated to another six days of travel, and we all settled in to enjoy the ride as best we could.
It wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded.
Morse, while cordial enough, was still nursing the secret resentment against me that he still refused to talk about. Penny was brooding with an equally potent nervousness about the situation she’d been unexpectedly drop-kicked into. Bayta was even quieter than usual, probably worried about the two of them in addition to her usual worrying about the two of us.
And as the forced idleness of torchliner travel built up toward boredom, I found my thoughts turning increasingly toward Penny.
It was absurd on the face of it. I knew that. Her family’s wealth created a social chasm between us that I could never hope to cross, she was already engaged to someone else, and despite her twenty-three years she was clearly a babe in the woods when it came to stuff like this. My focus needed to be on the Lynx: finding it, getting it away from the Modhri, and then keeping it away from the Modhri long enough to find out what he wanted with it. Anything that fell outside those parameters came under the heading of potentially lethal distractions.
It was a litany I repeated to myself at least once a day. Usually more than once. But the harder I tried to push my feelings into the background, the more they stubbornly popped out somewhere else. Somewhere along the line, I knew, this growing obsession was going to get me into trouble.
The last evening before we reached Ghonsilya, it did.
I had taken to eating dinner quickly and then escaping from the general press of other passengers to the aft observation lounge. That particular lounge, with its view marred somewhat by the blazing nuclear fire of the drive, was usually fairly empty, which was just the way I wanted it.
Not that the solitude was helping my mental wrestling. If anything, being alone with my thoughts actually made things worse. But at least I didn’t have to put up with any mindless prattle from Tra’ho’seej excited about returning home. The ultrasonic overtones in their voices always made my teeth hurt.
I’d been sitting there for maybe half an hour when Penny showed up. “There you are,” she said, working her way between the chairs and over to my two-person couch. “I wondered where you’ve been disappearing to. That’s very ru
de, you know.”
I glanced over at the lounge’s only other occupants, a pair of lanky Fibibibi cuddled close together at the far side of the room. Their full attention was on the coruscating fire of the drive, which their ultraviolet-sensitive eyes made more spectacular than Human vision could appreciate. “Sorry,” I apologized to Penny. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“I can imagine,” she said gravely as she sat down beside me. Way too close beside me. “Real men of action are also men of thought.”
“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 c
ounting 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 to 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?”
