by Timothy Zahn
“We go after her,” I said. “Either she’s on her way to the shower/laundry car, which is unlikely since she hasn’t got a change of clothing with her, or else she’s headed for the dining car for something to settle her stomach.”
“Fine,” Kennrick asked in a tone of overstrained patience. “So can we go?”
In answer, I took Bayta’s arm and headed for the vestibule. Assuming Terese kept up the same pace that she’d left here with, by the time she reached the archway into the third-class dining car she would have quick-walked for most of three long Quadrail cars. All that exercise, plus her stomach trouble, should take some of the starch out of her and make her a little easier to question.
We walked through the shower/laundry car, then the storage car, and finally through the vestibule into the third-class dining car. As with all such cars, the aisle here veered all the way to the right side of the car so as to avoid cutting the dining area in half. There were large, slightly tinted windows in the wall that separated the dining room from the corridor, allowing the patrons to watch those passing by and vice versa. “Any sign of her?” I asked, slowing down as I peered in through the windows.
“Not yet,” Kennrick said. “Maybe she went past and has gone to ground somewhere forward.”
“There,” Bayta said, pointing.
I followed her finger. Terese was standing at the bar at the forward end of the car, talking earnestly to a tall Filly I didn’t recognize. “Anyone seen that Filly before?” I asked.
“No,” Bayta said.
“Me, neither,” Kennrick said. “Does he look a little drunk to you?”
“Not really,” I said. “You two stay out here. Be ready to corral her if she makes another break for it.” Squaring my shoulders, I walked through the archway into the dining area.
I was halfway through the maze of tables and chairs when the Filly detached himself from Terese and headed toward me. “May you be well,” I said in greeting as he got within earshot.
“You will not bother the Human female,” he said, his tone flat and unfriendly.
“I’m not bothering her,” I assured him, coming to a halt. “I just want to ask her a few questions.”
“You will not bother the Human female,” he repeated, his hands bunching into fists as he continued toward me.
I sighed. Apparently, Terese hadn’t come here for something to settle her stomach. She’d come here looking for a white knight to protect her.
And she had apparently found one.
SIX
“Easy, now,” I cautioned, holding my hands out toward the Filly as I reversed direction, backing toward the archway and the corridor beyond. The last thing I wanted was to get involved in a brawl with one of the other passengers. The very last thing I wanted was for that brawl to take place in a dining room.
But the Filly kept coming, the thought of broken tables, crockery, and bones apparently not bothering him in the least. I continued giving way, still making useless soothing noises. The carefully designed privacy acoustics of Quadrail dining cars meant that none of the other patrons could really make out what either of us was saying, but pretty much everyone facing our direction had spotted the gathering storm and had clued in their dining partners. If I’d ever wanted to get beaten to a pulp in front of an audience, I reflected sourly, this was my big chance.
Apparently, Bayta was thinking along the same lines. The kwi snugged away in my pocket tingled as she telepathically activated the weapon.
I could certainly see her point. The Filly probably outweighed me by ten kilos, and while his species wasn’t known for their prowess at unarmed combat, they weren’t complete slouches at it, either. The chance to drop him where he stood was a very tempting proposition.
Unfortunately, the presence of an audience put that option off the table. Using a weapon, even a nonlethal one, on a supposedly weapons-free Quadrail would draw way too much unwelcome attention.
Fortunately, the kwi wouldn’t be necessary. I’d backed up nearly to the archway now, and had finally reached my goal: a small section of empty floor space.
Time to make my move.
“All right, this has gone far enough,” I said firmly, coming to an abrupt halt with my hands still held out in front of me, my palms toward the Filly. “I’m going to question Ms. German, and that’s all there is to it.”
He took the bait. “You will not bother the Human female,” he said, continuing forward and reaching for my left wrist. As he stretched out his arm, I smoothly withdrew mine, bringing it inward toward my chest. He picked up his pace, reaching even more insistently toward me.
And with his complete attention now focused on the wrist that was somehow managing to remain just out of his grasp, I reached across with my right hand, grabbed his hand and bent the wrist in on itself, then snaked my left hand behind his elbow.
An instant later he found himself pinned upright in place, his arm locked vertically at his side, his weight coming up on his toes as I pulled the bent wrist upward and inward. “Now,” I said softly to the long face and startled eyes fifteen centimeters from my own. “I’m going to ask Ms. German a few questions, and then she can go about her business. Is that all right with you?”
For a couple of heartbeats he remained silent. “A few questions only,” he replied at last.
“Thank you,” I said.
Releasing his arm, I took a step backward. I was taking something of a risk, I knew—he was uninjured, he still had those ten kilos on me, and he was perfectly capable of backing out of his verbal agreement if he chose to do so.
But he didn’t. Apparently, he was smart enough to realize that someone who had just showed my brand of restraint in round one was likely to have more painful options available for round two. Stepping to the side, he gestured me back into the dining area.
Terese was still standing by the bar, her mouth hanging slightly open. Apparently, she hadn’t expected her white knight to be vanquished quite so easily.
Which meant she’d had some expectations to begin with, either about me or about the Filly. I tucked away that little bit of data for future consideration. “Hello, Ms. German,” I said, nodding politely as I came up to her. “Remember me?”
She clamped her mouth closed. “What do you want?”
“The answers to a few questions,” I said. “A very few questions.” I gestured her to one of the bar stools. “Have a seat?”
Reluctantly, she plopped down on the stool. I took the next one and sat down facing her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Bayta and Kennrick had now come into the dining area and were watching us from across the room. “I heard a rumor that Master Colix might have brought along some private snacks,” I said. “Did you notice him with anything like that?”
Terese shrugged. “He might have had something.”
“Were they in a bag?” I asked. “A nice box? A tube dispenser?”
“It was a dark brown bag,” she said. “Small, like a meal from a quick-food spot. But I don’t know where it came from.” She gave a flip of her fingertips that somehow managed to take in the entire room. “He could even have gotten it from here, for all I know.”
“We can check on that,” I said. “Did you notice anything specific about the bag or its contents, anything about how either looked? Or were there any strange aromas that might have caught your attention?”
She shook her head. “Like I said, I didn’t really pay much attention to him.”
“So who should I be talking to about this?”
“The Juri on his other side,” she said. “The two of them were jabbering all the time.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was like bad Chinese or something.”
That was actually a pretty fair description of how Juric sounded. “You said he showed you holos of his family?”
“Once,” she said. “Mostly, he just talked about his job.”
I nodded. “How was Master Colix’s English, by the way? I’m told he was trying to brush up on his language skills.”
She wr
inkled her nose again. “He still had a long way to go.”
“But you could understand him?”
“As much as I wanted to. Look, can I go now?”
“Sure,” I said, gesturing her toward the exit. “You know, you really ought to see a doctor about that stomach of yours.”
That got me another glare as she slid off her stool. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s not contagious, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Not really,” I said as she turned away and took a step toward the archway. “I’m sure Dr. Witherspoon would have said something to the Spiders if you were.”
Even with her back to me, I could see her reaction to Witherspoon’s name. “Who?” she asked, stopping but not turning around.
“Dr. Witherspoon,” I repeated. “The man you had dinner with last night.”
“I didn’t have dinner with him,” she said, still keeping her face away from me. “I was eating by myself and he came over and sat down.”
“And you immediately told him to take a hike, right?”
She hesitated, and I could see the tension in her shoulders as she tried to guess how much I knew, and therefore how much bending of the truth she could get away with. “He might have stayed for a few minutes,” she conceded. “He said he’d noticed my stomach problem and wanted to ask me about it.”
“What did you tell him?”
She gave me an oblique look over her shoulder. “Can I leave now?”
“I already said you could,” I said. “Thanks for your cooperation.”
She might have expelled a sarcastic snort as she strode off, but with the dining car’s acoustics I couldn’t tell for sure. She glared at the Filly who she’d sent to stop me, strode past Bayta and Kennrick without a glance at either of them, and headed back down the corridor toward her car.
“Well, that was interesting,” Kennrick commented as he and Bayta joined me at the bar. “What exactly did you say to her there at the end?”
“I take it there was a reaction?” I asked.
“Oh, a beaut,” Kennrick assured me. “What did you say?”
For a moment I considered not telling him. But he’d already heard the Nemut mention that Terese had met a white-haired Human over dinner, and it wouldn’t take much of a deductive leap on his part to tag Witherspoon for the part. “I asked about her dinner with Dr. Witherspoon,” I said.
“Really,” Kennrick said. “And?”
“She denied it was an actual dinner,” I said. “According to her, he just dropped by to see how she was feeling.”
Kennrick grunted. “Did you get anything about her sickness?”
“Not a whisper,” I said. “I wonder if you could do me a favor.”
He cocked an eyebrow, possibly noting the irony of a former Westali agent asking a former fugitive for help. But if he was tempted to make a comment to that effect, he managed to resist it. “Shoot,” he invited.
“I want you to track down Dr. Witherspoon,” I said. “Find out what the symptoms are of heavy-metal poisoning in Humans.”
Kennrick looked at the archway where Terese had just exited. “You think she’s the one who poisoned them?”
“No idea,” I said. “But she seems to be the only one who was in the victims’ immediate vicinity who’s also noticeably ill.”
“Yes, but her?” Kennrick persisted. “She doesn’t exactly have that icy killer look about her.”
“Not very many icy killers do,” I said. “Maybe her stomach trouble has nothing to do with this. But if it does, I’d like to find it out before someone else joins the choir invisible.”
“Point,” Kennrick said heavily. “Any idea where Witherspoon might be?”
I looked at Bayta. “His seat is two cars back from Ms. German’s,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s there, though.”
“But there are only fifteen third-class cars,” I added helpfully. “He has to be there somewhere.”
“Thanks,” Kennrick growled. “If and when I find him, where will you be?”
“In my bed,” I said, yawning widely. “I’m still way too short on sleep.”
“I know the feeling,” Kennrick said. “Talk to you later.” With a nod at Bayta, he left the dining area and headed toward the rear of the train.
“Do you want me to see if the Spiders can locate Dr. Witherspoon?” Bayta asked.
“Even if they could, I’d just as soon have Kennrick wander around on his own for awhile,” I said. “I know he’s worried about his precious contract team, but I don’t especially like having him underfoot. How’s the disassembly of the air filter system going?”
“Slowly,” Bayta said. “I don’t think one of these has ever been taken apart while the train was in motion, and the mites are having to figure it out as they go. Do you think Ms. German is the killer?”
“My first impression is no,” I said. “But I’m not ready to write anyone off the suspect list quite yet. She’s certainly had enough access to the victims over the past two weeks. And she’s definitely hiding something.”
Bayta looked at the archway. “Do you suppose she could be running away from home?”
“Jumping a Quadrail is a pretty pricey way of escaping Mom and Dad,” I reminded her. “On the other hand, without access to the Spiders’ station-based records, there’s no way to know the circumstances of her coming aboard.”
“No, there’s not,” Bayta murmured thoughtfully. “Do you suppose that’s why the killer chose a cross-galactic express? So that we wouldn’t be able to get anyone’s records?”
“Could be,” I said. “Or so we wouldn’t be able to call for help, get quick and complete autopsies, or get out of his line of fire. Pick one.”
Bayta shivered. “You think he’s planning more killings, then?”
“I would hope that two dead bodies would be enough for anyone,” I said soberly. “But I wouldn’t bet the rent money on it.”
“No.” She took a deep breath, and for just a moment her mask dropped away to reveal something tired and anxious. It was a side of her that I didn’t see very often, and there was something about it that made me want to take her hand and tell her, don’t worry, it’ll be all right.
But I didn’t. I didn’t dare. Among his other tricks, the Modhri employed something called thought viruses, suggestions that could be sent telepathically from a walker to an uninfected person. In one of the lowest ironies of this whole miserable business, thought viruses traveled best along the lines of trust between friends, close colleagues, or lovers.
Which meant that once the Modhri had established a colony in one person, the walker’s entire circle of friends was usually soon to follow, lemming-like, in the act of touching some Modhran coral and starting their own Modhran polyp colonies. The Modhri had used that technique to infiltrate business centers, industrial directorates, counterintelligence squads, and even whole governments.
Bayta and I were close. We had to be, working and fighting alongside each other the way we were. But at the same time, we had to struggle to maintain as much emotional distance between us as we possibly could. Otherwise, if the Modhri ever got to one of us, he would inevitably get the other one, too.
Bayta knew that as well as I did. The moment of vulnerability passed, her mask came back up, and I once again forced my protective male instincts into the background. “So what’s our next move?” she asked.
“Exactly what I told Kennrick.” I yawned again. “I’m going to get some sleep. You coming?”
“I think I’ll wander around a little longer,” she said. “Maybe go watch the air system disassembly. I don’t think I could sleep just now.”
I eyed her, that brief flicker of vulnerability coming back to mind. But her professional self was back in charge, cool and confident and competent.
And it wasn’t like she would be alone out here. Not with hundreds of people milling around and other hundreds of Spiders watching her every move. “Okay,” I said, pushing myself off the bar stool. “Just be
careful. And let me know if anything happens.”
“What if what happens isn’t especially interesting?” she asked.
“This is a murder investigation,” I reminded her grimly. “Everything is interesting.”
This time I got nearly four hours of sleep before I was awakened by a growling stomach, the realization that I hadn’t eaten since last night, and the delectable aroma of onion rings.
“I thought you might be hungry,” Bayta said as she carefully balanced the onion rings and a cup of iced tea on the edge of my computer desk’s swivel table.
“Very,” I confirmed, sniffing at the plate with mild surprise. Offhand, I couldn’t think of any other time when Bayta had brought me something to eat purely on her own initiative. Either she was finally getting the hang of this girl-Friday stuff, or else I was looking even more old and decrepit and pitiable than usual lately. “Thanks. Have a bite?”
“No, thank you,” she said, her cheek twitching. “My stomach’s been bothering me a little today.”
“You’re probably just hungry,” I suggested as I sat down and took a sip of the tea. It was strong and sweet, just the way I liked it.
“No, I had a vegetable roll a couple of hours ago,” she said. “I’m just feeling a little odd today, that’s all.”
I frowned at her as I bit into one of the onion rings. “Odd enough to have you checked over by one of the doctors?”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that,” she assured me. “Like I said, my stomach’s just a little sensitive.”
“Okay,” I said, making a mental note to keep tabs on her digestive rumblings. With two confirmed poisonings, and Terese German apparently heaving her guts on a regular basis, I wasn’t ready yet to chalk up Bayta’s oddness to normal travel indigestion. “Any news on the air filter?”
“It’s almost ready,” she said. “Another hour, maybe.”
“Good,” I said, biting a third out of the next onion ring in line and washing it down with a swig of tea. “You didn’t happen to bump into either Kennrick or Dr. Witherspoon while you were wandering around, did you?”
“I didn’t spot either of them,” Bayta said. “But I wasn’t really looking. I was mostly talking to Tas Krodo.”