I looked at him in surprise. It was the first time he’d spoken English. I hadn’t even realized he knew the language.
And then my brain caught up with me, and I belatedly recognized the subtle change in voice and face and body language. “It wasn’t that big a risk,” I told him. “You can’t afford to have a fracas now.”
“What means fracas?”
“A disturbance,” I explained. “Like the kind of mob scene we left in there.”
Penny half turned around, frowning at me. “Frank?” she asked tentatively.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Turns out he’s part of the gang who’s after the Lynx.”
She twisted her head around toward the oathling, the one eye I could see widening. “He’s—?”
“Relax,” I soothed her. “For the moment, we all have the same goal. Namely, to get me out of here and onto the Quadrail.”
“I do not control station security, you see,” the Modhri explained to her. “If they were allowed to take him, they would impound his effects. A routine inquiry would show the Lynx had been stolen, and it would be returned to Earth.”
“Putting him back at square one,” I said. “Even worse, the guards could start shooting.” I drummed my fingers on my carrybag. “That would pretty well end the hunt for good.” I cocked an eyebrow at the oathling. “You really should have infiltrated the local law enforcement establishment better, you know.”
The oathling gave a strange catlike hiss. “Indeed,” he conceded. “But there are other needs, and more urgent priorities. And this is such a small, useless world.”
“And playing the odds usually does work,” I agreed. “Still, one never knows where the cards are going to be dealt, does one?”
“True,” the Modhri said. “Yet at the end of each hand the cards are always gathered and dealt anew.”
I grimaced. “True.”
“So they’re letting us go?” Penny asked, grabbing on to the part of this she could understand.
“Only temporarily,” I said. “Like I said, he’s playing the odds. In this case, he’s hoping that on the Quadrail he’ll have a better chance of stealing the Lynx from us.”
I saw Penny’s throat muscles tighten. “Maybe it would be better if we
did
turn ourselves in.”
“Maybe better for
you
,” I said. “Unfortunately, after that little drama it would hardly be better for me. Besides, the Quadrail has one big advantage over this place.”
“What’s that?”
I hefted Fayr’s gun. “No weapons.”
The oathling looked sideways at me, an odd expression on his face. I was still wondering what that meant when it abruptly changed again. [I’m sorry,] he said, his voice also returning to normal as he shifted back to Seejlis. [My thoughts wandered. Were you speaking to me?]
“Just rambling,” I said. So a wandering mind was how the oathling had chosen to explain away this latest blank spot in his memory. A puppet on golden chains, and he didn’t even know it.
Damn the Modhri, anyway.
The debarkation lounge the oathling led us to was as deserted as everywhere else we’d been since leaving the customs area. [There is your escape,] he said, pointing to the invitingly open hatchway.
Way too invitingly, to my mind. “You first,” I said, gesturing with my gun. “Don’t get too far ahead of me.”
I’d expected the shuttle to be the standard Tra’hok passenger model, with ten rows of seats offering lots of cover to a determined assault team. To my surprise, it was instead a cargo version of the same ship, a single empty chamber lined with straps and anchor rings with literally nowhere for anyone to hide. “Nice,” I commented as Penny and I stepped cautiously inside. “Okay, then. Let’s get this show—”
Without warning, the oathling turned and lunged.
Reflexively, I twisted away, swinging the barrel of my gun toward the side of his head.
But he wasn’t going for me. Ducking under my wild blow, he grabbed Penny’s upper arms and shoved her hard back through the hatchway. Even as I dropped my carrybag and dived after her, her gasp of surprise and pain was swallowed up by the slam of metal on metal as the hatch slammed closed.
Cursing, I switched direction toward the hatch control. But again I was too late. With a multiple popping of released clamps, we were away from the station and into the vacuum of space.
I turned back to the oathling, leveling my gun squarely between his eyes. “Go ahead,” the Modhri voice said. “Shoot, if it will appease your anger and shame.” He gave me an almost human smile. “I can afford to lose this one.”
With a supreme effort, I eased my forefinger back off the trigger.
A puppet who doesn’t even know it
. “Clever,” I bit out. “Passenger shuttle doors can’t legally close that fast except in a decompression emergency. Hence, the cargo version.”
“I thought it would also soothe any fears of a trap,” he said, gesturing around the empty compartment. “But don’t be concerned. The Human female is in no danger.”
“Provided?”
His eyes flicked to my carrybag. “Provided you now deliver to me what you promised.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I countered, thinking furiously. This whole scheme depended on the Modhri thinking he knew where the Lynx was. Briefly, my thoughts flicked to Stafford, wondering if he’d made it across to the Tube yet or whether he was still stuck in one of the waiting rooms. “Okay, you got me,” I told the Modhri. “You can have the Lynx.” I cocked my head as if considering my options. “But not here.”
His ears twitched in a way I’d never seen a Tra’ho’s ears move before. “Where, then?”
“The Terra Quadrail Station,” I told him. “My friends in the transfer station will be allowed to leave, and then we’ll all travel together back to Human space. You can message ahead and have a walker waiting.”
For a long moment he gazed at me. “Very well,” he said at last. “I can wait a little longer. But
only
a little longer,” he added, his voice deepening. “And don’t try anything clever. Remember, I’ll be watching you the entire way.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I’ll bet you will.”
A pair of drone Spiders were waiting for me when the shuttle’s upper hatch opened, one of them plucking the gun from my hand without comment and tucking it in close beneath his silvery sphere as he and his companion strode off toward the stationmaster’s office. I wasn’t sure what happened to confiscated items; hopefully, Bayta could persuade them to put the weapon in a lockbox to be returned to Fayr later.
His job of living shield completed, the oathling stayed aboard the shuttle for transport back to the transfer station. There was no need for him to stay; the Modhran colony inside him had already linked up with whatever mind segment of travelers happened to be in the Tube at the moment, transferring all the necessary information about me, the Lynx, and the exchange agreement.
Nor was there any need for any of them to change their own travel plans in order to shadow me. When my train pulled in, the walkers aboard—be there one or twenty—would similarly be clued in on the situation. Someone would also probably send a message ahead on one of the Spiders’ message cylinders, alerting Modhri mind segments down the line. Once the Modhri was alerted to something, you didn’t have a hope of outflanking him.
Not unless you were clever.
Stafford had indeed made it across ahead of me. As per our arrangement, he was sitting in one of the clinger-plant-covered gazebos near the stationmaster’s office, pretending to be engrossed in his reader. I took a seat fifty meters behind him, out of his line of sight, and settled in to wait for the others.
And to figure out what exactly I was going to say to them.
Fayr arrived on the eighth shuttle after mine, his plastic substitute status guns bouncing prominently beneath his arms. He was wearing a scowl of wounded dignity, probably for the benefit of any of his fellow passengers who might have witnessed my performance. He consulted the schedule, carefully avoiding looking in my direction, and marched off toward the platform where the next Terra-bound train was scheduled to depart.
Bayta and Morse arrived two shuttles later, with their own luggage plus Penny’s abandoned carrybags in tow. They had moved out of the main traffic patterns and were looking around when I reached them.
“There
you are,” Morse growled. “What the bloody hell was
that
in aid of?”
“It’s called a diversion,” I explained. “Any problems back there after I left?”
“Only the expected ones,” he said, frowning slightly at me. “What kind of diversion?”
“Where’s Ms. Auslander?” Bayta asked.
“Not here,” I admitted. “I’m afraid I got finessed at the last moment.”
“Well, that’s clever,” Morse said heavily. “First you lose Stafford, and now you lose Ms. Auslander, too?”
“You’re half right,” I told him. “Come with me.”
I led the way to the gazebo where Stafford was waiting. “Agent Morse: Mr. Daniel Stafford,” I introduced them as Stafford stood up. “Mr. Stafford: EuroUnion Security Service Agent Ackerley Morse.”
“Honored,” Stafford said shortly, his eyes probing the milling crowd of Quadrail passengers behind us. “Where’s Penny? You said she’d be with you.”
“I’m afraid there’s been a slight hitch on that front,” I told him, bracing myself. “We’ll be meeting Ms. Auslander back at Terra Station.”
His roving eyes locked on to me. “You
lost
her? What in
blinking
—?”
“She’ll be all right,” I interrupted, holding out a soothing hand. “All they want is the Lynx.”
“Well, then, let them have it,” he said, starting to turn toward the backpack on the seat beside him.
“Easy,” I said, catching his arm. The Modhri would undoubtedly be watching all of this.
Stafford shrugged off my hand. “Don’t touch me,” he snapped. “You promised that if I cooperated they’d let Penny go.”
“And they will,” I assured him. “It’s just going to take a little longer, that’s all. Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”
He looked down at Penny’s luggage, clustered around Bayta’s feet. “It’s coming out of your hide, Compton,” he said darkly. “From now on. Anything and everything that happens comes straight out of your hide.”
“I’ll get her back,” I promised.
“Then let’s get to it,” Stafford said, squinting at the nearest schedule holodisplay. “Next express that direction is in an hour. Do we need tickets, or did you already get them?”
“No, we still need tickets.” I cleared my throat. This was going to be awkward. “Speaking of which…”
He looked at me with disgust. “You still need me to cover your fare, I suppose.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said, feeling my face warming. Originally, he was supposed to be so grateful that I’d reunited him with Penny that he wouldn’t even bat an eye over me stiffing him for a measly little Quadrail ticket back to Earth. Obviously, gratitude wasn’t exactly at the top of his mind right now.
I could only guess what was at the top of Morse’s.
“Fine,” Stafford growled. “You really are a piece of work, Compton, aren’t you?” Pushing past me, he headed toward the stationmaster’s office.
I caught Bayta’s eye and nodded. She nodded back and set off after him. “Well,
that
went well,” Morse commented.
“It’ll be all right,” I said, watching Stafford’s stiff back.
“Your record is so convincing so far.” Morse paused. “There
is
another way to play this, of course.”
“You mean just give them the Lynx?”
“I mean we wait for them to bring Ms. Auslander across to the Tube,” he said tartly.
“And then what?” I asked.
“We grab her back, of course,” he said. “At least here it’s a level playing pitch. No guns for us; no guns for them.”
I snorted. “Like that’ll matter when they can bring ten thugs for each of us.”
“Can’t the Spiders help?”
“Can’t and won’t,” I said. “No, the only way to get Ms. Auslander back is to play it straight.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
“Not yet,” I admitted. “But it’s a long way back to Terra. I’ll think of something.”
Stafford, as befit his status and the number of zeroes on his cash sticks, booked himself a first-class compartment. As befit his frustration at my inability to deliver his fiancée, he booked
me
a seat back in the second to the last of the third-class cars.
“It’s bloody unfair,” Morse grumbled as we made our way down the narrow aisle to our seats. “It’s not
your
fault she isn’t here. If she’d stayed with Bayta and me during your little performance, she’d have been fine.”
“You don’t hear me arguing,” I said as I took my seat beside a pair of Shorshians. Honeymooners, from the look of them. At least I wouldn’t need to sit next to Morse, whose seat was three rows ahead of mine. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I added. “Your pass will be good the whole way to Terra, and there’s a good chance there are still first-class seats available.”
“Only if you let me take that with me,” he said, his eyes following my every move as I heaved my carrybags up onto the rack above the seats. “Evidence in grand theft and homicide, remember?”
“Forget it,” I said as I sat down.
“Then I stay here.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. I wasn’t exactly happy about leaving Stafford out of my sight in first class, either. But Bayta was there, and had even managed to get the compartment that connected to his. If the Modhri tried anything, she could whistle up the Spiders and get a message to me. Hopefully in time to do something.
Besides which, Fayr was also aboard, though I wasn’t exactly sure where. With luck, the Modhri hadn’t made the connection between him and us, which would leave him free to play the role of wild card if necessary.
I very much hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
We were about an hour out of Ghonsilya Station, and I’d just put my reader away in favor of a nap, when the vestibule at the front of the car opened and Bayta appeared, an expression on her face that I’d seen before. She looked around, spotted me, and headed back. I focused on the top of Morse’s head, visible over the top of the seat back, and hoped hard that he was asleep.
No such luck. As Bayta passed he rose from his seat and stepped into the aisle behind her. “Let me guess,” I said as Bayta reached me. “Now?”
“Right now,” she confirmed, her voice tight. “They say it’s urgent.”
“Who says?” Morse asked from behind her.
She looked over her shoulder, startled at his unseen entry into the conversation. “It’s nothing to do with you,” she told him.
“Anything that affects Compton has to do with me,” he countered as I stood up. “Where are we going?”
“You’re
staying here,” I said firmly. “Don’t worry, we won’t be long.” Without waiting for a reply, I ushered Bayta past me and we headed toward the rear of the train.
The Chahwyn, apparently, wanted to speak with us again.
We traveled through the rest of the Quadrail’s third-class section and two of the three luggage cars. “Any idea what it’s about?” I asked Bayta as we moved through the last baggage car toward the train’s rear door.
“The Spiders didn’t know,” she said. “But I suppose—”
She broke off at the soft sound of the car’s forward vestibule door opening behind us.
I spun around, peering forward through the car’s dim lighting, my hands curling reflexively into fists. There was a vague figure approaching down the aisle between the stacks of crates…
“There you are,” Morse puffed, my larger carrybag clutched across his chest. “What in bloody hell are you doing back here?”
“What in bloody hell are
you
doing back here?” I countered, sorely tempted to deck him anyway just for startling us that way.
“You forgot this,” he said, thrusting the carrybag toward me.
“I didn’t forget it,” I said, making no move to take it. “I didn’t want it.”
“Thought so,” Morse grunted, lowering the bag to the floor. “The Lynx isn’t in here, is it?”
I grimaced. But then, I shouldn’t have expected a trained investigator to be taken in that easily. “Of course not,” I said. “Way too obvious.”
“So where is—whoa!” he interrupted himself as the car abruptly began to slow down. “What’s going on? Are we stopping?”
“Just this car,” I told him.
He stared at me. “In the middle of bloody nowhere?”
“Trust me.” I said, gesturing to one of the nearby stacks of crates. “Might as well have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”
He eyed me another moment, then eased himself down onto the floor. He was shifting his back against the crates when the car began to pick up speed again. “So where
is
the Lynx?” he asked. “With Stafford?”
“Well,
I
certainly couldn’t risk carrying it,” I pointed out. “My face was way too well known. Stafford, on the other hand, currently looks like a refugee from a dit rec war drama. We thought there was a good chance he could slip by them.”
He cocked his head to the side in sudden understanding. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That sculpture thing he had in his backpack that looked like a half-carved log?”
I nodded. “He’d built a fake log around the Lynx and hidden it at the bottom of a fire pit at the Paradise,” I explained. “Naturally, you can’t just carry a big ceramic log through customs without someone wondering. So I had him redo it as a sort of folk art piece.”
“Clever,” Morse murmured. “Of course, that means he
and
the Lynx are sitting all alone on that train right now.”
“This won’t take long,” I assured him. “Besides, he’s in a locked compartment, and the bad guys don’t know who he is.”
Morse grunted. “Let’s hope not.”
Given the urgency of the summons, I wasn’t expecting the trip to take very long. I was right. We’d been traveling our private way for no more than fifteen minutes when we again began to slow down. “So what happens now?” Morse said, standing up and brushing himself off.
“Bayta and I go outside for a chat,” I said. “You stay here and cultivate your patience.”
For a moment I thought he was going to argue about that. He glanced at the stony expression on Bayta’s face and apparently thought better of it. “Whatever you say,” he said.
The car door irised open, and Bayta and I stepped out into yet another of the Spiders’ secret sidings. Unlike all the others I’d visited, though, this one was playing host to a second train, another of the short pushmi-pullyu tenders like the one the Spiders had provided for our trip from Homshil to Jurskala. There seemed to be more Spiders around than usual, too, including several of the unknown stationmaster-sized class.
One of the latter was waiting on the platform, and led us to a typical meeting building. Inside, waiting at his point of the three-chair triangle, was a Chahwyn, a pair of Spiders standing watchdog behind him. “Sit down, Mr. Compton,” he said, pointing to one of the other chairs.
“Thank you,” I said as I did so. His voice sounded very much like that of the Chahwyn who’d pink-slipped me earlier this trip, but given the species’ malleable bodies and voice boxes that might not mean anything. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“You have obtained the third Nemuti Lynx,” he said, extending his hand. “I will take it.”
“Will you, now?” I said, leaning back in my chair and crossing my legs casually. “Sorry—did I miss the part where you thanked me for tracking it down?”
“Frank,” Bayta murmured warningly.
I glanced at her, paused for a second look. Her face was tight and pinched, the look of someone walking through a graveyard in a midnight mist. “What?” I asked.
For a moment neither of them spoke, their eyes locked in another of those annoying little telepathic conferences. “Hello?” I called. “Remember me?”
The Chahwyn’s eyes dipped briefly away from the contact, then rose again to face me. “You are not Chahwyn,” he said flatly. “You cannot be told.”
I felt my ears prick up. There was a deep, dark secret lurking behind that plastic face, just waiting for me to weasel it out of him. “No, I’m not Chahwyn,” I agreed calmly. “That’s precisely why I need to be told everything.”
“You no longer work for the Chahwyn.”
“Then you’re in deep trouble,” I said. Time to trot out the trump card I’d been saving for just such an occasion. “Because I’m the only guy in town who the Modhri’s afraid of.”
His face wrinkled like an old dishrag. “What do you say? You make no sense.”
“Why not?” I countered. “Don’t you think the Modhri can feel fear?”
“Not toward you,” he said flatly. “Not toward a single Human.”
I smiled tightly. “But I’m not just
a
single Human. I’m
the
single Human. I’m the Human who took on an entire trainload of his walkers and destroyed them.”
The Chahwyn gave a short, two-toned whistle. “That’s not how it happened.”
“Isn’t it?” I countered. “A few months ago Bayta and I boarded a Quadrail with a Modhri mind segment that was ready and willing to take over the entire train in order to nail us to the floor. There was surely another mind segment at the platform who knew of that intent. Only we came out alive, while the train’s mind segment
and
the rest of the whole damn train vanished without a trace. If you were the Modhri, what conclusion would
you
come to?”
His face was rippling now like a lake in a stiff breeze. “No,” he said firmly. “I know what happened aboard that train. It wasn’t as easy as you imply.”
“I never said it was,” I said. “But what you and I know doesn’t matter. As far as the Modhri’s concerned it’s a big fat unknown. Big fat unknowns always make people nervous.”
“The Modhri does not panic so easily.”
“I never said he was panicked, either,” I said. “I said he was afraid of me. An entire mind segment was destroyed, aboard a Quadrail where we theoretically had no access to weapons. The Modhri has no idea how we pulled it off, and he’s sure as hell not ready to risk us doing it again.”
I gestured to Bayta. “But don’t take
my
word for it. Ask Bayta whether or not the Modhri’s been playing us with tweezers and cotton batting ever since we tripped over Künstler’s body on the way to Bellis.”
They locked eyes in another miniconference. This time I stayed quiet and let them finish at their own speed.
It took over a minute, but when the Chahwyn again turned to face me I was pretty sure Bayta had won. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Number one: I want to be reinstated,” I said. “I didn’t ask to get into this war, but I’m in it now and I’ll be damned if I’ll quit before the final whistle. That includes reactivating my fancy unlimited first-class compartment pass, and all the bells and whistles that go with it.”
“It will be done,” the Chahwyn said.
“And I want a monthly stipend, as well,” I added. “There are all sorts of out-of-pocket expenses in this job, plus I still have an apartment in New York I’m paying rent on. Say, ten thousand dollars a month?”
The Chahwyn’s face contorted slightly, but he nodded. “It will be done.”
“Number two: I want to know what this new big secret is about the Lynx,” I said. “First point on that list being how to make sure it won’t blow up on me.”
“The Lynx will not explode.” He looked at Bayta again, possibly trying one last time to argue for silence in front of this upstart alien.
He might as well have saved himself the effort. Bayta was wearing her set-in-concrete stubborn expression, another of the looks I knew all too well. “I’m listening,” I prodded.
“Have you ever heard of—” He glanced at Bayta, as if searching for the right English word. “Of trinary weapons?”
“I’m familiar with binaries,” I said. “Explosives built from two components that you have to mix together to get the desired boom.”
“Trinaries are not explosives,” the Chahwyn said. “They’re shock or energy weapons composed of three separate sections.”
“You mean like breaking a rifle down into component parts?” I asked, frowning.
“Not at all,” he said. “A rifle component is instantly recognizable as part of a weapon. A true trinary is a weapon whose components are completely inert when they are alone. Only when they are joined is the weapon’s true nature awakened.”
Something with cold feet ran up my spine. Three components. Hawk, Viper, Lynx. “Are you saying
that’s
what the Nemuti sculptures are? Some exotic alien weapon?”
“Not just an alien weapon,” he said grimly. “A weapon created by the Shonkla-raa.”
“Terrific,” I murmured. The Modhri and the Nemuti sculptures. One weapon of the Shonkla-raa busily collecting the pieces of another. “How do they work?”
“As I say, the three components are joined together,” the Chahwyn said. “Each component then activates the others and is activated in turn by them.”
“And in the meantime, not only are they dormant, they’re also effectively invisible to sensors,” I said. This whole thing was sounding more unpleasant by the minute. “Do we know which sculpture is which component?”
He shrugged, a fluid rolling of the shoulders like a move in a scarecrow dance routine. “From their shapes, I would assume the Lynx is the emitter and the Hawk the handle.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” I agreed, pulling up my mental image of the pictures that had been on Morse’s data chip. “And that would make—” I broke off, fumbling for my reader as something suddenly occurred to me.
“What is it?” Bayta asked.
“I just had a thought,” I said, plugging in the dictionary chip, “I was about to say that would make the Viper the power supply.” “And?”
“Remember what the Spider report said about that Nemuti scholar doing an etymological study on the sculptures’ names and coming up with alien equivalents?” I punched in the word
Lynx
. “Okay, let’s see.
Lynx
comes from Middle English, from Latin, from Greek from— see
leuk
—” I hit the link. “Bingo. The Indo-European root
leuk
means
light
or
brightness
.”
“Light?” Bayta asked, sounding confused.
“As in shock or energy,” I said.
Her expression hardened. “Oh.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, keying for the other names. “Hawk… from
kap
, meaning to grasp. There’s your grip, all right. And Viper… from
gwei
and
pere
, meaning to live and to produce.”