by Timothy Zahn
“What the hell?” one of the cops beside me muttered as he caught sight of them.
“You’ll want to check those,” I said, pointing to the three guns lying by the bodies. “Two of them are probably the ones that were stolen from Sergeant Aksam and Officer Lasari.”
Wordlessly, the cops pulled out some evidence bags and set to work. I stepped back out of their way, looking up at the stars in the direction the torchyacht had taken.
So that’s where McMicking had gotten to.
Three hours later, less than twenty-four since our arrival, I eased our torchyacht into the air and headed for space.
“Just like that?” Bayta asked, sounding like she didn’t quite believe it.
“Just like that,” I confirmed. Double-checking that we were far enough out from the planet, I keyed in the scoop and the ion-plasma drive. “Besides, what were they going to charge me with?”
“Well, there were those two dead Filiaelians in Mr. Karim’s bar,” she reminded me.
“Killed by an unidentified assailant with an unknown gun,” I reminded her. “Not my gun. Not my fault.”
“How about the theft of the Filiaelians’ torchyacht and the destruction of the planet’s communications laser?”
“Again, nothing to do with me,” I said. “The Customs official who passed the thief through this evening has the man’s name, the security cameras have his face, and neither of them match anyone connected to you or me.”
“No, of course not,” she murmured. “And Mr. Veldrick?”
I grimaced. Even knowing there was nothing I could have done to stop it, that one still bothered me. “Killed with my Glock,” I conceded. “But since the last two Fillies were found with the two murdered cops’ guns, and since those selfsame cops had already reported having confiscated my Glock long before Veldrick was killed, it logically follows that all three guns were stolen as a set.”
“Logically, but not conclusively,” she pointed out. “It would have been better if the two Filiaelians could have been found at the scene of his murder.”
“Certainly wasn’t from any lack of effort on my part,” I said. “Two snoozers each should have put them down for the count. Remind me to be more generous if we run into Filly walkers again.”
“Or at least Filiaelians who’ve been genetically designed for special hunting duty.”
I nodded agreement. “Speaking of hunting, where’s Rebekah?”
“Asleep in her stateroom,” Bayta said. “The poor girl was exhausted.”
I looked at the status readouts. We were already nearly a thousand kilometers out from New Tigris, and adding to that distance with every passing second. A few more minutes ought to be more than enough. “Wake her up,” I said.
Bayta’s eyes widened. “Wake her up?”
“Why not?” I asked. “She’s probably had more sleep in the past twenty-four hours than either of us have.”
“Which means we need sleep even more than she does,” Bayta countered. “Can’t whatever this is wait?”
“It could, but it’s not going to,” I said. “Go on—I’ll meet the two of you in the dayroom in five minutes.”
She looked as if she very much wanted to say something else. But she just nodded and started to turn to the door. “One more thing,” I added, catching her arm. “Let me have the kwi.”
That earned me a long, speculative look. But again, she merely handed the weapon over without argument and left the cockpit. I rechecked the autopilot, confirmed the long-range scanners were clear of any other ships, and headed back to the dayroom. Picking the chair that faced the door, I sat down at the table and settled in to wait.
I’d told Bayta five minutes, but it was closer to fifteen before she reappeared, a bleary-eyed Rebekah in tow. “Hello, Rebekah,” I greeted her. “Sorry I had to wake you.”
“That’s all right,” she said as she and Bayta sat down across from me. “I owe you both a great deal for getting me off New Tigris.”
“So it would seem,” I said. “Seem being the operative word.”
“What are you talking about?” Bayta asked, frowning.
“I’m talking about Little Miss Sunshine here, the girl who’s everyone’s friend,” I told her. “I’m talking about the Modhri, and the Oscar-level performance he put on down there.”
I lifted my hand from my lap and rested the butt of my Beretta on the table, leveling the weapon at Rebekah’s chest. “And I’m talking about fraud,” I concluded quietly. “You’ve been manipulating us ever since Lorelei showed up in my apartment.”
“Frank, have you lost your mind?” Bayta demanded. “This poor little girl—”
“This poor little girl is a Modhran walker,” I cut her off. “And I want to know what the game is.”
I thumbed off the Beretta’s safety, the click sounding abnormally loud in the sudden silence. “Now.”
FOURTEEN
For a long moment no one moved or spoke. I counted the heartbeats—there were eighteen of them—before Bayta finally broke the silence. “I assume you have some proof of this?” she asked.
“I have enough,” I said, watching Rebekah closely. The initial shock of my accusation had passed quickly, leaving a sort of watchful calm in its place. A calm well beyond the capability of any ten-year-old Human I’d ever known. “Pointer number one: the Filly walkers were supposedly able to locate her.”
“We discussed that earlier,” Bayta said. “You came up with at least two possible theories on that.”
“Both of which were incredibly lame,” I said. “Pointer number two: the Filly at the spaceport said Rebekah’s boxes contained Modhran coral.” I raised my eyebrows at Rebekah. “Shall we go take a look?”
“Lieutenant Bhatami did that already,” Bayta reminded me.
“Which is what finally clinched it,” I said coldly. “The Modhri couldn’t care less about smuggled Siris brandy. Ergo, there must be something else of value in the rest of the boxes, with those three just there as decoys.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “So how did Bhatami know which three were safe for him to open?”
Bayta caught her breath. “A thought virus?”
“Can you think of a more perfect setup for one?” I asked. “Sweet, helpless little girl, who everyone in town is already madly in love with?”
“Maybe Lieutenant Bhatami just knew where the safe boxes were,” Bayta suggested.
“How?” I countered. “Karim and I were the ones who loaded them into the trunk, and I guarantee we weren’t following any special prearranged pattern. You were with Rebekah every minute after that—you tell me when she had a chance to clue our good lieutenant in on the layout.”
For another five heartbeats Bayta didn’t answer. Then, reluctantly, she turned to Rebekah. “Rebekah?” she asked gently.
“Very good, Mr. Compton,” Rebekah said quietly, her eyes on me. “We were right to choose you as the one to help us.”
“Flattery noted and ignored,” I said. “Just tell Bayta I’m right, and we can move on.”
Rebekah pursed her lips. “You’re right,” she acknowledged. “But you’re also wrong.”
“Well, that’s clear,” I said sarcastically, forcing myself to remember this was a deadly enemy who was sitting across from me. The minute I started to think of her as a young Human girl I’d be opening myself up to the same thought-virus attack she’d used on Bhatami. “How about a simple yes or no?”
“This is going to be difficult,” she murmured, almost as if she was talking to herself. “All right. I do have a polyp colony inside me. That part you were right about. But I’m not a walker.”
“So you’re a soldier?”
“I’m not that, either,” she said. “I’m more of a—”
“It is a Modhran polyp colony, right?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Technically, also no,” she said. “The colony started out Modhran, but it isn’t anymore.” She looked at Bayta. “Actually, I’m more like Bayta than a walker.”
&
nbsp; Bayta shot a look at me. “In what way?” she asked.
“I’m a symbiotic pair,” Rebekah told her. “Human and polyp intelligences in the same body.”
I snorted. “Basic definition of a walker.”
“Yes, but in the case of an Eye—what you call a walker—the Modhran mind segment is a parasite, with its host unaware of its presence,” the girl said. “I, on the other hand, am completely aware of my symbiont, just as she is of me.”
“She?” I echoed. “I thought the Modhri only came in a masculine flavor.”
“As I said, I’m not part of the Modhri,” Rebekah said. “We were an experiment he began about thirty years ago.” She gave me a somewhat strained smile. “An experiment that’s gone horribly wrong, at least from his point of view.”
I ran my eyes over her expression and her minimal body language as she sat quietly at the table. If this was a scam, at least it was a fresh approach. That alone made it worth hearing out. “I think we’re going to have to back up and start at the beginning,” I said.
Her eyes flicked to the gun in my hand, and I had the distinct impression she was considering asking me to put it away. But if she was, the question remained unasked. Not that I would have, anyway. “As I said, it began about thirty years ago,” she said. “The Spiders had tried to close off Quadrail service to the Modhran homeworld, and the Modhri had finally realized that it was the Spiders who had been behind all the efforts to find and destroy him. He started looking for a new way to operate, and came up with the idea of planting polyp colonies into infants, where they could grow up together aware of each other as a symbiotic pair.”
I felt my stomach tighten. When I’d first heard about the Chahwyn using this symbiont trick on Bayta it had made me seriously wonder whether or not they truly held the high moral ground in their war against the Modhri. Hearing that the Modhri had pulled the exact same stunt was equally disgusting. “How many did he use?” I asked.
“There were only eight Humans in the project,” Rebekah said. “Lorelei and I were the youngest of them. There were also nearly three hundred non-Human symbionts created over the twenty years the project was in operation.”
“Why bother with this when the Modhri’s walkers already worked fine?” Bayta asked. “Was he afraid the system might break down?”
“The problem is that his Eyes are essentially slaves,” Rebekah said. “Slavery has certain advantages for the master, but also carries equally serious risks. For one thing, there’s no loyalty or real cooperation between the Eye and the mind segment. There’s also the danger that if the Eye isn’t used carefully he could become aware of his condition. That would be disastrous for the Modhri.”
“You’re amazingly articulate for a ten-year-old,” I commented. “I take it this is actually your coral speaking?”
Rebekah reddened slightly. “She’s helping me find the right words, yes,” she admitted. “But just helping. She’s not controlling me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I shrugged noncommittally. “So what went wrong? I assume something went wrong?”
“Very wrong,” Rebekah agreed. “No one knows exactly how it happened, but one day we all just . . . changed.”
For a long moment the word hung in the air like a tethered sports zeppelin. “What do you mean, changed?” Bayta asked at last.
“We weren’t connected to the group mind anymore,” Rebekah said. “We were our own, brand-new person. Or rather, we were our own persons, plural. We were still connected together in a group mind like the Modhri, but at the same time we were also still individuals.” She looked at Bayta. “Like you and the Spiders.”
“Not exactly,” Bayta said. “I’m not connected to the Spiders in any permanent way. I can communicate with them, but we certainly don’t form any kind of group mind.”
“Oh,” Rebekah said, sounding a little nonplussed. “Interesting. The Modhri always assumed the Spiders worked the same way he did.”
“They don’t,” Bayta said. “Actually, it sounds to me like your group—what do you call yourselves, anyway?”
“The Melding,” Rebekah said.
“It sounds like your Melding is almost a hybrid in itself,” Bayta continued. “Partly like the Modhri, partly like the Spiders.”
“Maybe,” Rebekah said. “At any rate, as I said, everything’s changed for us now. We can’t connect with the Modhri, though we can still sense his presence and I’m pretty sure he can sense ours. And of course, we have more personal freedom and individuality than any of his own mind segments.”
“The Abomination,” I murmured.
“What was that?” Rebekah asked.
“It’s the Modhri’s pet name for you,” I explained. A perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation, too, at least from his point of view. Maybe from ours, too. “So after that happened, you decided to get out while the getting was good?”
“Basically,” Rebekah said. “There were only a few normal Eyes in our colony. We overpowered them—I say we, though of course I was only a baby at the time—collected everything, and escaped to the Quadrail.”
“Taking your coral outpost with you,” I said. “That is what’s in your boxes, isn’t it?”
“The last segments of it, yes,” Rebekah said. “We’ve been gradually moving it to our new home.” She winced. “We were almost done when the Modhri found us. You know the rest.”
“Not so fast,” I admonished her. “We’re not done with the history lesson yet. How did you come to pick New Tigris?”
“I don’t really know why we chose it over the other options,” Rebekah said. “It was still a fairly new colony, I know, with a lot of construction still going on and people coming and going, both Humans and work-contracted non-Humans. We knew the Human restriction against importing Modhran coral, but our leaders decided it was worth the risk.”
“Your leaders?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” Rebekah said. “As I said, we’re not a single mind like the Modhri. We all have our individual personalities and talents. Some have the talent of leadership, others don’t. I do know that part of their thinking was that a small Human colony would be the last place the Modhri would look for us.”
I snorted. “Little did you know.”
She winced. “Yandro. That irony wasn’t lost on us. Once we realized what he’d done, we knew we had to move again.” She swallowed. “As I said, we were almost finished when he found us.”
“Using genetically altered Fillies,” I commented.
“Yes, and that was a new one on us,” Rebekah admitted. “We could detect the presence of his walkers, and certainly knew when Mr. Veldrick brought in his coral. But the Filiaelians were completely unexpected.”
“How does that work?” Bayta asked. “They need a piece of coral with them, right?”
Rebekah nodded. “As I said, we don’t operate on the same wavelength as the Modhri anymore. Lorelei’s theory was that the presence of the Filiaelian walkers was somehow able to shift the coral’s frequency enough to be able to get direction instead of just a sense of our presence.”
“And they needed to use actual coral because their own internal polyp colonies were too small?” Bayta suggested.
“Probably,” Rebekah said. “But that’s just a guess. All the others except Lorelei and me were already gone by then, and we didn’t have any way of doing any experiments.”
“So why didn’t you leave when Lorelei did?” Bayta asked. “She seemed to slip out without any trouble.”
“It wasn’t quite as easy as you make it sound,” Rebekah said, a shadow crossing her face. “And the only reason she made it at all was because she didn’t have any of our coral with her. I think the coral is what they mostly detect, not us.”
Though she hadn’t been sure enough of that to move freely around her hideout once the Fillies had zeroed in on Karim’s bar. Still, as she’d said, she hadn’t exactly been set up for field tests. “So what does he want from you?” I asked. “This seems way
too much work just for vengeance.”
“Especially since most of the Melding is already gone,” Bayta added.
“This isn’t about vengeance,” Rebekah said soberly. “This is an attempt to learn the Melding’s new location from the outpost.” Her eyes flicked sideways, in the direction of her cabin. “If he does, then he’ll move in and destroy us.”
I had an odd mental image of a bunch of white-jacketed aliens strapping a chunk of coral to an interrogation chair and trying to find somewhere to attach the thumbscrews. “You think the Modhri can make him talk?”
“Make her talk,” Bayta corrected me.
“Actually, we still refer to the coral part of the Melding as he,” Rebekah said. “The shift to female characteristics only happens to the colonies inside female symbionts. And yes, I’m very much afraid the Modhri can get the information if he can move enough of his coral around or near a piece of ours.”
“From what, the sheer overwhelming mental pressure?”
“Something like that.” Rebekah hesitated. “There’s also some thought that if one of us doesn’t stay physically close to our outpost it might revert back to being part of the Modhri. In that case, he wouldn’t have to use any mental pressure at all. But we don’t know that for sure.”
“That’s what you get for aborting an experiment before it’s finished,” I told her. “You’ll have to do better next time.”
Rebekah stared at me. “Are you saying we should have—?”
“He’s joking,” Bayta assured her. “Where exactly do you need to go?”
For a moment Rebekah didn’t answer. “Sibbrava,” she said at last. “It’s a small colony system in the Cimmal Republic.”
“Is that where the rest of your group is?” I asked.
She hesitated just a split second too long. “That’s where we need to go,” she said.
In other words, I gathered, we were heading there but not actually going there. “We need to know the truth, Rebekah,” I warned her. “All of it.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m doing the best I can.”