by Timothy Zahn
“Impossible,” Gargantua said, prodding at the case’s custom-molded interior with a thick finger. “There’s no room in here for the Lynx.”
“Not in the case, anyway,” I agreed, producing my multitool.
And as they watched, I unfastened the Rontra’s barrel and slid it off, revealing the Lynx tucked away inside the weapon’s outer shell.
“Bloody hell,” Morse muttered as I set to work taking apart the rest of the gun. “I wouldn’t have believed the Lynx would fit into something even that size.”
“It is a cozy fit,” I conceded. “I had to pretty much gut the thing to get it in, and then add on this extra cooling sleeve to make it work.”
“Where did you get it?” Penny asked, still sounding stunned. “I mean . . . I didn’t think you worked for Westali anymore.”
“That’s the wonderful thing about the free enterprise system,” I told her. “You can find anything you want on the galaxy’s various black markets.”
She shivered. “I suppose.”
I finished the operation in silence. A moment later, with the pieces of what was left of the Rontra scattered around the table, I held up the Nemuti Lynx. “Okay,” I said, turning to Gargantua. “Your turn.”
“Take her,” he said, letting go of Penny’s arm and taking the sculpture. Without another word, he and the other Halka turned and joined the line of people heading for the torchliner boarding areas.
Morse heaved a sigh. “So that’s it,” he said. “No crime, no suspect; and now no evidence. Might as well not even have made the trip.”
“No, we still have a crime,” I said. “Mr. Künstler’s murder, remember?”
“Like we’re actually going to solve that now,” he said with an edge of bitterness.
“We might,” I said. The two Halkas had passed through a wide archway and angled out of our sight. “As for the evidence, don’t count that out yet, either,” I added. “I’ll be right back.”
I crossed to the edge of the archway and cautiously looked through. There were a fair number of passengers streaming down the corridors, but Gargantua’s size made him easy to pick out of the crowd. As I watched, the two of them turned into the third of the five hatchways, paused briefly at the registration desk, and disappeared inside.
I looked at the schedule listing above my archway. The torchliner behind that door was heading for the city of Parrda, on the Central Continent, and was scheduled to leave in three hours. Smiling, I retraced my steps to the rest of our group.
“Well?” Morse asked as I came up.
“They’re taking the Lynx to Parrda,” I told him.
“Good,” Stafford said. “Let’s get us some tickets.”
Penny and Morse both looked at him in astonishment. Penny got the words out first. “What in the world are you talking about?” she demanded. “I just got away from those people.”
“They killed Uncle Rafael,” he reminded her.
“You can’t do anything about that,” Penny protested.
“Maybe not,” Stafford said. “But they also have my sculpture, and I want it back.”
“Relax,” I put in as Penny visibly gathered herself together for another try. “We’re not going to just charge aboard the torchliner and demand they return Mr. Stafford’s property. I had something a little more circumspect in mind.”
“Such as?” she asked.
“Such as renting a torchyacht and seeing if we can get to Parrda ahead of them.”
“Following them from in front, in other words?” Morse suggested.
“Something like that,” I said. “People with guilty consciences tend to focus their attention over their shoulders.”
“I’m in,” Stafford said firmly, digging a cash stick out of his pocket. “The rest of you can do whatever you want. Where do we go to hire this torchyacht?”
In the end, we all decided to go. Even Penny, who was equal parts aghast that we would pull such a bonehead stunt and adamant that she wasn’t going to head back to Earth alone.
I’d never been inside a torchyacht before, and was rather surprised by both its roominess and the plainness of its decor and furnishings. But then, this one was a Nemuti craft, and the Nemuti as a species weren’t especially noted for their love of ruffles and flourishes.
Stafford didn’t have a pilot’s license—probably one of the few university majors he hadn’t gotten to yet—but Morse and I both had current military-grade certificates that covered civilian craft this size. We got ourselves checked out on the torchyacht’s control systems, drained a hefty up-front fee and an even heftier deposit out of Stafford’s cash sticks, and headed out.
The universe was an incredibly beautiful place. Beautiful and lonely both. It was something I tended to forget sometimes, traveling inside a cozy Quadrail Tube or flying cross-system wrapped up in a torchliner with a thousand other people, with only the occasional visit to an observation lounge to remind me of what things looked like outside.
But from the cockpit of a torchyacht, with the stars and nebulae spread out in front of me through a wraparound canopy, it was all very clear. And very humbling.
Morse, whose license was more up-to-date than mine, handled the job of maneuvering us away from the transfer station. After that I took over, feeding in the positioning data and keying in our course. Laarmiten was currently on the far side of its orbit from the Quadrail station, which translated to a twenty-day trip. Fortunately, torch vessels scooped their own fuel from the interplanetary medium around us, and even a ship as small as a torchyacht routinely packed enough food, drink, and air for trips three times that long.
Even more fortunately, I had no intention of taking us all the way to Laarmiten.
I gave it two hours, just to be on the safe side. Then I changed course, locked in the autopilot, and headed back to the dayroom.
Stafford and Penny were seated together on a small couch, holding hands and talking quietly but earnestly together. Bayta was reading in a chair a quarter of the way around the room from them, while Morse was at the center table, splitting his attention between a Scotch and something he was writing. “Your report to ESS?” I asked as I came over to him.
“The latest version, yes,” he said, taking a sip from his drink. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a job that required such a massive rewrite every third day.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, sitting across the table from him, resting my right hand in my lap out of his sight. “From this point on, I think the report’s pretty well finished.”
He frowned. “How do you figure? We still have to get to Laarmiten and find the Lynx—”
“Or rather,” I said quietly, “you’re pretty well finished.”
Across the room, Penny and Stafford stopped talking. Bayta laid aside her reader. “So I was right, after all,” Morse said into the silence. “That story was nothing but the truth turned inside-out, wasn’t it?”
“What story?” Stafford asked.
“He spun me a tale about some villainous group mind called the Modhri,” Morse said, his eyes locked on me. “They supposedly arose during a war—”
“Yes, I know the story,” Stafford interrupted. “What do you mean he turned it inside-out?”
“He claimed that vanished Quadrail train a few months ago was him and UN Deputy Director Losutu foiling a plot by this Modhri group mind,” Morse said. “Only I think it was the other way around. I think he’s the one who’s gone over the side, and it was Colonel Applegate who was trying to stop him.”
A shiver of memory ran through me. Colonel Terrance Applegate had once been my superior in Westali. He’d subsequently become my ex-superior, and later my deadly enemy.
My reaction to his name must have shown on my face, because Morse gave me a faint smile. “Oh, yes, I knew the colonel,” he said “Quite well, in fact. I met him after he left Westali and started working for the UN Directorate. He recognized my potential and helped me start climbing the ESS ladder. I returned the favor by reco
mmending he be offered a job with the Service.” His face darkened. “And then he stepped aboard a Quadrail train with you and Losutu and disappeared.”
“I guess that explains why you hate me,” I said as the final piece of Morse’s personal puzzle fell into place. “It also explains how you came to be a Modhri walker.”
“A what?” Penny asked, sounding bewildered.
“An unsuspecting member of the Modhri group mind,” Stafford told her, his eyes on Morse. “You sure about this, Compton?”
“I’m positive,” I said, watching Morse closely. Somewhere along here the Modhri colony within him would realize the jig was up, take over his body, and make a fight of it. “Applegate was probably the one who got Morse infected.”
“Ridiculous,” Morse spat. “I’ve never touched Modhran coral in my life.”
“I’m sure you don’t remember,” I said. “The Modhri’s been working on keeping a very low profile, especially on Earth.”
“So you therefore argue from silence?” Morse snorted. “What dazzling logic.”
“No, I argue from my knowledge of the Modhri and how he works,” I said. “Particularly how he uses thought viruses to carry subtle suggestions between friends and trusted colleagues. Which is how I know for certain you’re carrying a Modhran colony beneath your brain.” I gestured to Penny. “You really shouldn’t have tried to make me fall in love with her.”
Beside Penny, Stafford stiffened. “What?” he asked carefully.
“It started aboard our private train to Jurskala,” I said. “Morse spent those couple of days filling Penny’s mind with suspicions about Bayta and me. That naturally drew the two of them closer together emotionally, enabling the Modhri to slide in his thought viruses.”
Stafford looked sideways at Penny. “What kind of suggestions was he making?” he asked.
“Don’t worry, they’re pretty short-lived.” I focused on Penny. With her fiancé sitting there beside her, I knew, this was likely to be awkward. But it was important that she hear this. “You haven’t had any sort of feelings of attraction toward me lately, have you?”
The tip of her tongue swiped quickly across her upper lip. “It wasn’t the way you make it sound,” she said. “I was just grateful to you for your help in finding Daniel. That’s all.”
“Of course,” I said, looking into her eyes. Backpedaling and spin-drifting it for all she was worth.
And with that, the last faint lingering hope within me finally died a quiet death. The last lingering Modhri-counterfeited hope. One more reason, I reflected, for me to hate him. “The point is that you switched your opinion of me just a little too quickly,” I told her. “Especially after all of Morse’s horror stories.”
I looked back at Morse. Still none of the telltale signs of a Modhri takeover. “At the same time, the Modhri inside him was also working on me.”
“Only you claim thought viruses need a line of friendship between the two parties,” Morse said acidly. “I don’t think you and I exactly qualify.”
“I said they work best that way” I reminded him. “But whether we personally liked each other or not, we were still colleagues who’d been thrown together on the same case. That relationship also lowers emotional resistance walls. Besides, the Modhri didn’t need to make me do anything outlandish, at least not at the beginning. All he wanted was to tweak my emotions a little.”
“Why?” Stafford asked, clearly not happy with this line of conversation.
“To distract me, of course,” I said. “The Modhri wanted my mind on Ms. Auslander instead of focusing my full attention on the problem of finding you and the Lynx and getting you out of his reach.”
Abruptly Penny stiffened. “Is that why I ran after you in the Ghonsilya transfer station when you grabbed that gun? Because he told me to?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “The Modhri had only a few walkers under his control on the scene. He needed to move you into a position where the oathling would have easy access to you.”
“And so I supposedly persuaded her to go running toward a lunatic with a loaded gun?” Morse demanded. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous this whole thing sounds?”
“Do you have a better explanation for what’s been happening?” I countered.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “If I’m right about Colonel Applegate tumbling to this scheme and having to be eliminated, then this whole charade is just an attempt to do the same to me.” He nodded toward Stafford and Penny. “If there even is a Modhri walker among us, who’s to say it’s not Mr. Stafford or Ms. Auslander?”
“Good question,” I said. “Unfortunately for you, there’s an equally good answer. For starters, Mr. Stafford is definitely out. If he was a walker, he wouldn’t have run off with the Lynx in the first place.”
“And Ms. Auslander?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t work. She wasn’t anywhere near the Künstler estate the night the Modhri tried to steal the Lynx.”
Morse’s eyes narrowed. “What are you implying?”
“Don’t act the innocent,” I reproved him. “It doesn’t fit well on you. There was a Modhri walker waiting outside the grounds of Künstler’s estate the night of the botched robbery. I know that because one of the captured robbers tried to get Künstler to tell him where the Lynx was, which only makes sense if there was another part of the local mind segment within contact distance.”
“That could have been anyone off the street.”
“Except that the average person off the street isn’t Intelligence trained,” I said. “I read the police report, remember? The would-be burglars knew far more about penetration and stealth techniques than they should have. Someone with Intel training had to be running the show.”
“Maybe it was someone else from ESS,” Morse said, a hint of desperation starting to edge into his voice. He was too good an agent not to recognize how quickly this box was closing around him. “Applegate knew a lot of people. It could have been any one of them.”
“It could have,” I agreed, wincing with sympathetic pain for the man. This had to be a terrible shock to him, like having the diagnosis of an incurable disease thrown in your face without warning.
But I pushed the feelings away. Compassion formed the paving stones to the same hell Morse was now in. “But it wasn’t someone else . . . because you were the only Intelligence agent with me when I was persuaded to visit the coral crates in the Quadrail baggage car.”
Some of the last remaining color drained out of Morse’s face. “You said that was the Cimma.”
“Of course I said that,” I agreed. “The last thing I wanted was for the Modhri mind segment aboard the train to know I was on to you.”
“But why couldn’t it have been the Cimma?” Morse persisted.
“What, a stranger who called me friend more times than a used-car salesman?” I shook my head. “There’s not a chance in hell he could have planted a thought virus that quickly and effectively.”
Morse’s eyes darted to Bayta, then to Stafford and Penny, a cornered rat looking desperately for a way out. But there wasn’t one. He knew the truth now; and there was nothing left to do but accept it. Deliberately, I settled my mind and body into combat mode as I waited for the Modhri mind within him to make its final, desperate move.
But to my surprise, it didn’t. Morse turned back to me, his eyes haunted but with none of the telltale signs of a Modhri takeover. “So why tell me now?” he asked.
“So that you’ll understand this,” I said, lifting my right hand above the tabletop to reveal the Chahwyn kwi. The weapon gave a slight tingle against my palm as Bayta telepathically activated it. “I’ve been assured it’ll just knock you out for a few hours. You and the Modhri inside you.”
He swallowed visibly. “All right,” he said. “If this is the only way to persuade you I’m not your enemy . . . go ahead.”
And still not a peep from the Modhri. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if I could possibly be wrong.
But I wasn’t. And whether the Modhri was learning how to play it subtle or was simply floored by my logical brilliance, he was still the Modhri. Mentally crossing my fingers, I squeezed the kwi.
Quietly, without any sound, fury, or fuss, Morse’s eyes rolled up and he fell forward, his torso sprawling on the tabletop.
Stafford muttered something startled-sounding in French. “Is he all right?”
I reached over and checked Morse’s pulse. It was slow—too slow for him to be faking—but steady. “Near as I can tell,” I said.
“Okay, that’s it,” Penny said, her voice shaking but determined. “Before we go any farther, I want to know what’s going on.”
“You will,” I promised. “Starting with the fact that we’re not going any farther. We are, in fact, on our way back to the Tube.”
That one caught both of them by surprise. “We’re what?” Stafford demanded.
“Laarmiten was a false front from square one,” I told them. “The Modhri never intended to bring any of the Nemuti sculptures here. It was just a convenient destination to slap on the walkers’ tickets back at Bellis.”
“Then what are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Penny asked.
“We’re playing his game right back at him,” I said. “First we had to convince the Modhri, via Morse, that we’d fallen for his Laarmiten scam. Hence, the rented torchyacht. Second, we had to get Morse out of range of all the other colonies while we executed our about-face.” I waved a hand around me. “Hence, the middle of nowhere.”
Penny was still looking at me like I was speaking ancient Greek. But the light of comprehension was starting to dawn on Stafford’s face. “I see,” he said. “And since we’re not due into Laarmiten for three more weeks, none of the other mind segments will even suspect anything’s happened until then.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Though if I’m right, our mission will be over a lot sooner than that.”
Stafford looked at Morse’s motionless form. “Of course, you’re assuming the Modhri colony in there is also unconscious. So unconscious that other colonies won’t detect it once we’re back at the Tube.”
