by Timothy Zahn
The messaging apparatus was supposedly sealed and self-contained, impossible for even the Spiders to reach while the Quadrail was in transit. But of course that didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists. The more paranoid among them were convinced that the Spiders read everything, encrypted or otherwise, before they transmitted it.
If we were dealing with two different factions, the question of Spider eavesdropping might be a highly important one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything I could do about it one way or the other. “I presume you can arrange for them to deliver the data to us aboard whatever train we’re on at the time?” I asked.
Bayta nodded. “I’ll tell the stationmaster when I put in the request.”
“Good,” I said. “Tell him to deliver it to us at Kerfsis.”
She drew back a little. “Kerfsis? The Jurian colony world?”
“Regional capital, actually,” I corrected her. “Why? You have a problem with Juriani?”
“No but—” She seemed to flounder a moment. “I assumed we’d be transferring to a cross-galactic express at Homshil and heading straight to Filiaelian space. That’s where the attack is supposed to take place.”
With a sigh, I popped the last onion ring into my mouth and stood up. “Come on,” I said, brushing off my hands.
“Where are we going?” she asked cautiously.
“To the bar,” I told her. “I need something to drink.”
She followed me silently down the corridor to the rear of our car, through all the genial camaraderie in the forward first-class coach, and back into the dining car. The bar was reasonably busy, but most of the patrons were drinking in groups and there were a few unoccupied tables for two. Choosing one in a back corner, I steered Bayta over to it. The chairs were lumpy and uncomfortable-looking, which probably meant some Shorshians had been using them last. “What’ll you have?” I asked, gesturing her to one of the chairs as I sat down in the other. The chair sensed my weight and body temperature, correctly deduced my species, and reconfigured itself into something a lot more comfortable.
“Something nonalcoholic,” she said a bit stiffly.
“Teetotaler, huh?” I hazarded, touching the button in the middle of the table to pull up the holodisplay menu. I gave it a quick scan, then tapped for a lemonade for her and an iced tea for me. “Too bad. Alcohol can be a nice little social equalizer.”
“Or it can be a way to cloud your mind and put you at a disadvantage with your enemies,” she countered.
I thought about the dead man in Manhattan and the Saarix-laden carrybags back in my compartment. “Lucky for me, I don’t have any enemies,” I murmured.
Her eyebrow may have twitched, but I could have imagined that. “Why exactly did you bring me here?” she asked.
“I wanted to go someplace where we could talk in private,” I said. “I thought the Spiders might have the compartments bugged.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” she insisted.
“You never know,” I said. Actually, I did know; and no, they hadn’t. My watch came from the same stratospherically priced tech people as my disguised sensor system, and it would have tingled a warning if it had picked up any sign of eavesdropping equipment. Another trinket my old Westali colleagues would probably give spare body parts to possess.
“Think whatever you want,” Bayta said. Her voice was still stiff, but now it was a tired sort of stiff. “What do you want to talk about?”
I took a deep breath, let it out in a soft sigh. My attempts to get a reaction with the good-little-girl gambit had failed, and my take-it-or-leave-it arrogance about the weapons data hadn’t done any better. Maybe a sincere, humble, heart-on-the-sleeve approach would hit a resonance and give me a handle on this woman. “Look,” I said. “According to every bit of conventional wisdom, what Hermod says the Spider saw is impossible. The Spiders screen everything coming into the Tube; and the Fillies’ own transfer station screens everything coming out. There should be zero chance of getting any serious weaponry close enough to a Filly station to take it out.”
“Which is why you were asked to investigate it.”
“What I’m trying to say is that the whole thing has me completely flummoxed,” I said. “Frankly, I’m not even sure where to start.”
She started to reach out toward my hand, resting on the table. Midway through the gesture she seemed to think better of it and let her arm fall instead into her lap. “The Spiders wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t think you could do it,” she said.
Encouraging words, and with some genuine concern behind them. The compassionate type, then, only she was afraid to show it?
Perhaps. Still, I couldn’t quite shake the impression that she was more like an observer watching a dit rec drama unfold than one of the people actually in the middle of the action. “Thank you,” I said humbly. “I just hope you’re right.”
“I am,” she said firmly. She glanced around the room, as if making sure no one was close enough to hear us, and leaned a little closer across the table. “But why go to Kerfsis? Do you suspect the Juriani?”
“Not really,” I said as a Spider arrived with our drinks. I handed Bayta her lemonade and took a sip of my iced tea. It was strong and sweet, just the way I liked it. “It’s more likely that one of the Fillies’ neighbors will be the ones making the trouble,” I continued. “Serious grievances typically ferment close to home. Mostly, I want to see if the Jurian entry procedures have changed any in the couple of years since I’ve ridden the Quadrail.”
She took a sip of her lemonade, her eyes fluttering with clear surprise at the tang. Her first experience with the drink? “May I ask why?” she asked.
I nodded upward toward the bar’s slightly domed ceiling. Spread across it was a glowing map of the galaxy and the Quadrail system. “Here’s the problem,” I said. “The Fillies are all the way across the galaxy, about as far from Earth as you can get. Even if we take express trains the whole way, that’s still nearly two and a half months of travel. We simply don’t have the time to go there and start working our way back.”
“We have four months.”
“No, the Fillies have four months,” I corrected her “We, on the other hand, do not … because the Fillies aren’t going to be the first ones attacked.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that whoever these warmongers are, they’d have to be insane to take on the Fillies first crack out of the box,” I said. “Filly soldiers are genetically programmed for loyalty, their overall defense network is second to none, and depending on who’s doing the counting, their empire is either the biggest or second biggest in the galaxy. Would you try out a brand-new attack plan on someone like that?”
Her lips compressed briefly. “I suppose not.”
“Following that same logic, the test subject is likely to be one of the newer, younger, and therefore less dangerous races,” I continued. “If we limit ourselves to those who’ve joined the galactic club in the last two hundred years, that means the Juriani, the Cimmaheem, the Tra’ho’sej, and the Bellidos.” I took a sip of my tea. “And, of course, us.”
For a minute the only sound was the muffled background hum of a half dozen different conversations and the click-clack of the Quadrail’s wheels beneath us. Quadrail dining cars, I remembered from previous trips, were acoustically designed in such a way that the volume and intelligibility of a conversation dropped off sharply half a meter away from the center of the table. It made for considerably more privacy than one would expect just from looking at the layout, which was why I’d been willing to talk about this here at all. “And whoever they decide on,” Bayta said at last, “they’ll need to make their test at least a couple of months before the Filiaelian attack.”
“Right,” I said. “Which basically means any time from now on.”
She took another sip of her lemonade. “All right,” she said. “But if it’s entry procedures you’re interested in, wouldn’t we do better to go straigh
t to Jurskala?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “A homeworld station—any homeworld station—will be too crowded for us to get a really good look at their setup. A regional capital like Kerfsis should have all the same stuff, but without all the busyness. We’ll take the shuttle out to the transfer station, look around a bit, then come back, pick up the next train, and move on.”
“To where?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m guessing our warmongers will want a test subject a little more advanced than us or the Tra’ho’sej. That leaves the Juriani, Cimmaheem, or Bellidos.”
She pondered a moment. “The Bellidos might be a good choice,” she offered. “They’re farther out on the arm than the Terran Confederation, which makes them even more isolated.”
“Right, but at the moment we’re heading the wrong direction,” I reminded her. “Rather than spend time backtracking, we might as well continue on and check out the Juriani and Cimmaheem.”
“There are a lot of worlds out there,” she murmured, looking down at her glass.
I nodded agreement, taking another swallow of my tea as I let my gaze drift around the bar. There were Jurian foursomes occupying two of the tables, with a scattering of Shorshians and Bellidos taking up most of the rest of the space. In the far corner two Cimmaheem sat across from a lone human, their features obscured by the swirling blue smoke of a traditional skinski flambé as a hardworking vent fan kept the fumes from bothering anyone else in the room. “We can look through the system listings along the way and see if we can figure out what sort of test area our attacker might like,” I said. “But no matter how you slice it, we’re talking a lot of search area.” I raised my eyebrows. “I just hope you and I aren’t the only team on the job.”
“What do we do if we find them?” she asked, ignoring the gentle probe. “The attackers, I mean?”
“That’ll be the easy part,” I said. “All your Spider friends have to do is shut down Quadrail service to those worlds.”
There was something about the way she took her next breath. Nothing obvious, but still noticeable. “Maybe,” she said.
“What do you mean, maybe?” I asked, frowning. “It’s their train system, isn’t it? Why can’t they classify someone as persona non grata and refuse to stop at their stations?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they can. I just don’t know.”
I studied her face, trying to read past that neutral expression. On everything else, she seemed so certain about what the Spiders could or couldn’t or would or wouldn’t do. Now, suddenly, she wasn’t sure if they could shut down a few Quadrail stations?
Because if the Spiders couldn’t do that, maybe they weren’t the ones in charge of the system after all. And that was not something I wanted to hear right now. “Well, however they want to deal with it is their problem,” I said. Even to my own ears it sounded pretty lame. “Our job is just to figure out the who and where.” I yawned. “And it’s probably time we got a little rest.”
“Yes,” she said, taking another sip of her lemonade and getting to her feet. “And don’t worry. I won’t tell the Spiders about … you know.”
“Thank you,” I said, standing up as well. Actually, I didn’t much care whether or not the Spiders heard about my crisis of confidence. My main reason for having this conversation somewhere other than in my compartment was to see if there would be any obvious fuss on the Spiders’ part when I moved out of range of their little Saarix booby trap.
But there hadn’t been any such reaction, or at least none I’d been able to see, which left me basically where I’d started. Maybe all the fuss would happen later.
Still, the conversation had given me at least a partial handle on Bayta. That was worth something.
And at the very least, the iced tea had been good.
FIVE
Eight hours later, right on schedule, we pulled into Yandro Station.
I had set the compartment’s display window to show a dit rec of travel through the Swiss Alps, mostly because west-central EuroUnion trains and this kind of intrigue just seemed to go together. Now, as we angled downward from the main Tube into the station, I shut down the dit rec and turned the window transparent.
All the Quadrail stations I’d ever been to had looked pretty much alike, all of them variations on the same basic theme. Yandro’s was no exception, the variation in this case being the number and distribution of the support buildings. Only two of the thirty tracks spaced around the cylinder carried trains that actually stopped here, all others merely passing through on their way to more important places. Ergo, only two of the tracks had passenger stations and cargo loading cranes built alongside them.
Considering the minuscule level of traffic involved, even that was overkill. I found the old frustrations rising again like stomach acid as we pulled to a halt and I saw there were only six passengers waiting to board. At a trillion dollars to put in the station, Yandro’s colonists were going to have to sell a hell of a lot of fancy lumber to ever earn back that investment.
At the far edge of my view, I saw Bayta striding across the platform toward one of the two maintenance buildings, trying not to look too much like she was hurrying. She disappeared inside and I checked my watch, hoping she was doing the same. A fifteen-minute stop wasn’t very long, and for all their professed willingness to cooperate I doubted the Spiders would go so far as to make the train late for us.
Bayta apparently didn’t have any illusions in that regard, either. She emerged from the building with ninety seconds to go and crossed the platform in a sprint that would have done an Olympic runner proud. Even then, I wasn’t sure she’d actually made it aboard until she arrived at my compartment two minutes later, still breathing a little heavily. “All set,” she said as she dropped onto the curve couch. “The stationmaster will pass on the request. The data should be ready by the time we reach Kerfsis. It’ll be delivered to our compartment on the next train we take.”
“Good,” I said, checking my watch, now set to our particular Quadrail’s internal time. It was just after ten in the evening of the Spiders’ standard twenty-nine-hour day, with nine more hours to Kerfsis Station. Enough time for a good night’s sleep plus breakfast before we arrived.
I was just wondering if I should go to the bar first for a quick nightcap when the door chime sounded.
I looked at Bayta. “You expecting someone?” I asked in a low voice.
She shook her head, the corners of her mouth suddenly tight. “It’s not a Spider,” she said.
The chime came again. I thought about sending Bayta back to her own compartment, decided there wasn’t enough time to unfold the wall without the delay looking suspicious. “Washroom,” I ordered her, standing up and crossing to the door. I waited until she had disappeared into the cubicle, then touched the release.
It was a pair of Halkas: flat-faced, vaguely bulldoglike beings who could talk a man’s leg off at twenty paces and had a passion for Earth-grown cinnamon. “Whoa,” the shorter of them announced, his breath thick with the distinctive burnt-acetate smell of their species’ favored intoxicant. “This isn’t Skvi. It’s a Human.”
“I believe you’re right,” the taller one agreed, leaning forward and squinting as if having trouble focusing on me. “Interesting snouts on this species.”
“Can I help you?” I asked, stepping into the doorway just in case they had it in mind to come in without waiting to be asked.
The shorter one waved a hand, his hollow double-reed claw sheaths whistling like a distant oboe with the gesture. “We seek a friend,” he said. “A fellow Halka. Our apologies for the disturbance.”
“No problem,” I said, smiling genially as I gave his eyes a quick but careful look. “I hope you find him.”
“If he is here, then we shall,” he intoned solemnly, pulling his lips back in a smile which made his face look even flatter. Taking his companion’s arm, he turned and continued unsteadily down the corridor, tapping his claws rhythmi
cally against the side wall as if trying to make sure it didn’t get away from him.
I stepped back into the compartment and touched the control. The door started to close; and as it did so, I quickly leaned my head back out again.
The two Halkas were still walking away from me. But there was no longer any sign of staggering or wall-tapping. Just as there hadn’t been the pupil dilation of a real Halkan high.
Fake drunks. And by inference, a fake errand.
I pulled my head back again before the door could close far enough for the automatic safeties to kick in, letting it slide shut in front of me. “Who was it?” Bayta asked, coming out of the washroom.
“A couple of Halkas looking for a friend,” I told her as I snagged my jacket from the clothes rack. “You didn’t happen to notice anyone following you when you got back onto the Quadrail just now, did you?”
Her forehead creased. “I don’t know—I wasn’t really watching. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said as I punched the door release. “Don’t wait up.”
The two Halkas were already out of sight, having either passed through the car’s rear door or else gone into one of the other first-class compartments along the way. Not especially feeling like ringing door chimes at this hour, I continued to the end of the car and pushed the release. The door slid open, and I crossed the swaying vestibule into the first-class coach car beyond.
Late evening it might be by the Spiders’ clocks, but you wouldn’t have known it from the activity level. The card games were still going strong, several of the chairs having been repositioned as old conversation circles had broken up and new ones formed. The overhead lighting had been dimmed to a soft nighttime glow, but with each seat sporting its own reading light the only difference was that the brightness started at chest height instead of up at the ceiling. A few of the passengers were dozing in their seats, sonic neutralizes built into their headrests suppressing the commotion around them.