by Timothy Zahn
“You said that yesterday,” she reminded me. “Don’t you care that someone stole Master Colix’s fruit snacks?”
Actually, I didn’t. Despite what the Spiders probably claimed, I was pretty sure this kind of petty theft went on all the time aboard Quadrails.
But if it came to facing someone’s irritation, it would be safer to deal with Terese’s than Bayta’s. “Fine,” I said, coming to a reluctant halt. “Excuse me,” I said to Terese’s headphoned ears. Not waiting for a response, or expecting one for that matter, I lifted one leg and stepped carefully over her outstretched body.
Her head snapped up with a quickness and preset glare that showed she hadn’t been nearly as oblivious of our presence as she’d been pretending. “You have a problem?” she growled, slipping the headphones down around her neck.
“I just need to get through,” I soothed, getting my first foot planted in front of Colix’s seat and lifting my other foot over her legs.
“For frigg’s sake,” she grumbled. “How many times are you people going to do this?”
I frowned as I brought my other foot back to the floor. “I don’t know,” I said. “How many times have we done this?”
“How about just talking to each other for once?” she bit out. “They’re gone, I didn’t take them, and I don’t know who did. Can you leave me alone now?”
“What didn’t you take?” I asked, sitting down in Colix’s seat.
For a second I could see Terese trying to decide whether or not she should just get up and make for the relative sanctuary of the restroom. But Bayta had moved up beside her, blocking easy access to the aisle. “The Shorshian’s fruit snacks,” she answered me. “Or whatever they were.”
“You think they were something else?”
“I don’t know what they were,” Terese snapped back. “All I know is that he never offered to share them, and he kept them right there under his legs where he could watch them until he swapped them out for his special sleepy-time blankie. And then he made double damn sure they were locked up tight.” Her lip twisted. “I also know that everyone and his dog Rolf seems to want them. You tell me what they were.”
I leaned over and pulled out the drawer of Colix’s underseat storage. There was an assortment of personal stuff under there—a reader and a set of data chips, some headphones, fancier than Terese’s, a flexible water bottle, a compact toiletry bag, and the small keepsake box that a lot of Shorshians liked to travel with. All of it was neatly and precisely arranged.
And right at the front left of the drawer was a gap in the arrangement, about fifteen centimeters square. The perfect size for a bag of something.
“Who else has been looking for them?” Bayta asked.
“Well, there was you for a start,” Terese growled, flicking her a disdainful look. “Then there was that other Human you hang out with. He came by yesterday morning to look for them.”
“You mean Dr. Witherspoon?” I asked.
“No, not Dr. Witherspoon,” Terese growled. “I know Dr. Witherspoon’s name. It was the other one, the one you were with when you tried to ambush me outside the bathroom.”
I frowned. “Kennrick?”
“I don’t know his name,” Terese said with exaggerated patience. “Balding, mustache, a little chubby.”
“That’s Kennrick,” I confirmed. “And you’re sure he was after Master Colix’s fruit snacks?”
“Well, he was after something,” Terese said. “And he didn’t find anything, either. You about done here?”
“One more minute,” I promised. Returning my attention to the drawer, I slid my fingers over the lock mechanism. There was no evidence I could find that it had been forced. I stood up and gave the overseat compartment the same check. Again, nothing. Popping the compartment door, I peered inside.
There were two small carrybags in there, plus another toiletry bag, plus a carefully folded blanket. “Did he have the blanket down with him that last night?” I asked Terese as I pulled out the first carrybag and set it onto the seat.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I went to sleep before he did.” She grimaced. “I mean, before he … you know what I mean.”
“Before he went off to the dispensary to die?” I suggested.
I had the minor satisfaction of watching an emotion other than anger or resentment flicker across her face. “Yes,” she muttered.
I looked over at the Juri on my other side. He was half turned toward me, surreptitiously watching the whole operation. “What about you, Tas Krodo?” I asked as I opened the carrybag and started sorting through its contents. There was nothing there but changes of clothing. “Did you see him with his blanket that night?”
“Yes, he had it,” the Juri confirmed. “I distinctly remember him holding it when I returned from my evening ablutions.”
“Good—that helps,” I said. “Do you have any idea who might have put it back up in his compartment?”
He hesitated. “I’m afraid it was I,” he admitted. “The next morning.”
“Can you tell me why?” I asked, closing the carrybag and swapping it out for the other one.
“I heard about his death, and I saw his blanket lying crumpled on his seat,” he Said. “It seemed wrong to leave it there. It had been a relic of his childhood, which he always traveled with as a reminder of home and family. I’m sorry if I did wrong.”
“No, it’s all right,” I assured him, pausing in my search of the second carrybag and pulling the blanket out of the compartment. It was old, all right, with a pleasant scent of distant spices to it. Exactly the sort of keepsake a Shorshian would like. “One could say it was your final honoring for Master Colix. When you put it back, did you happen to see whether or not his bag of fruit snacks was there?”
“It was not,” the Juri said firmly. “The blanket would not have fit otherwise.”
“Of course,” I said, returning the blanket to its place. “I should have realized that. Is there anything else about Master Colix that you can remember?”
“Nothing specific,” he admitted. “But he was very kind to me, and kept me entertained with tales of his many interesting journeys.”
“And about his precious Path of whatever,” Terese muttered. If the moment of maudlin sentiment was affecting her, she was hiding it well. “He talked about that a lot.”
I finished going through the second bag—again, there was nothing there but clothing—and replaced it in the storage compartment. “One final question, Tas Krodo. You say that Master Colix was kind to you. Did he ever offer you any of his fruit snacks?”
“He did not,” the Juri said. “And I certainly wouldn’t have taken one without his permission.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” I assured him. “Thank you for your time.”
“You are welcome,” Tas Krodo said quietly. “I grieve Master Colix’s loss to the universe. If I can do anything to help you solve his death, I stand at your disposal.”
“Thank you,” I said. “If I need you, I’ll let you know.”
He bowed his head to me. I bowed back, then stepped over Terese’s legs out into the aisle again. Typically, she didn’t bother to draw up her knees to make the procedure any easier. “And thank you for your cooperation as well, Ms. German,” I added as I regained my balance.
She didn’t answer, but merely put her headphones back on and closed her eyes.
“A helpful public makes this job so much more rewarding,” I murmured. Tririn’s seat, I noted, was empty, our lone surviving contract team Shorshian out and about somewhere. That was all right—I hadn’t wanted to talk to him right now anyway.
“Do you believe him?” Bayta asked as we resumed our trip toward the rear of the train.
“Who, Tas Krodo?” I shrugged. “Assuming he has no connection to Pellorian Medical or the contract team, he shouldn’t have any reason to lie.” I nodded back over my shoulder. “Actually, I’m more intrigued by Witherspoon’s relationship with our helpful Ms. German.”
; “What sort of relationship?”
“I don’t know, but there’s something going on under the table,” I said. “Remember when I confronted him with the fact that he was two cars away when he allegedly noticed all her stomach trouble?”
“But he explained that,” Bayta said, frowning. “He said he’d noticed her when he was visiting the three Shorshians.”
“That’s what he said,” I agreed. “But if that was actually true, he should have said it without floundering and fumbling all over himself.”
“Maybe he was just nervous,” she suggested. “You did catch him a little off-guard with those questions.”
“True,” I said. “But then he should have been caught equally off-guard when I told Kennrick that the good doctor thought I was the killer. But he wasn’t. He was quick, decisive, and in complete control of the English language. No, there’s something about him and Terese that we still haven’t got nailed down.”
We walked through the last seven third-class cars in silence, and finally passed through the vestibule into the first baggage car.
The casual passenger wandering into a Quadrail baggage car for the first time might reasonably think he’d accidentally stumbled into a classic English garden maze, with the role of the hedges being played by tall stacks of safety-webbed crates. Add in the silence and dim lighting, and the overall ambience could easily drift from the disconcerting into the spooky. Bayta and I had spent so much time in places like this that I hardly noticed. “Third car, you said?” I confirmed as we made our way through the second car and into the vestibule connecting it with the third.
“Yes, near the back.” She shivered. “I don’t like looking at dead bodies.”
“They tell me you get used to it,” I said.
“Have you gotten used to it?”
“Not really.”
We were halfway down the car when I caught a subtle shift in lighting and shadow somewhere ahead. “Hold it,” I murmured, catching Bayta’s arm and bringing us both to a halt.
“What is it?” she murmured back.
For a moment I didn’t answer, wondering if I’d imagined it. I stood motionlessly, staring at the stacks of crates and the meandering aisles between them.
And then, I saw it again.
So did Bayta. “Frank?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said grimly.
We’d come way back here to examine the victims’ bodies. Apparently, someone else had beaten us to it.
TWELVE
“What do we do?” Bayta whispered tensely.
I watched the shifting shadows, thinking hard. Chances were good that our intruder was unaware of our presence—the fact that he was still moving around argued that assumption. If we kept it quiet, we might be able to sneak the rest of the way to the bodies and catch him in the act. Whatever that act turned out to be.
On the other hand, sneaking up on a murderer carried its own set of risks. But standing here in nervous indecision would be to lose by default. “Let’s take a look,” I said, slipping the kwi out of my pocket. It was tingling with Bayta’s activation command as I settled it into place around the knuckles of my right hand. Tucking Bayta close in behind my left side, where she’d be partially protected and out of my line of fire, I started forward.
We were nearly to the gap where I’d estimated the earlier movement had come from when I realized that the motion had ceased. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized it might have stopped up to a minute or even a minute and a half earlier.
I stopped, turning to put our backs against the nearest stack of crates as I searched for some clue as to where he might have gone. Nothing. Whoever this guy was, he was quick and smart.
But then, I was quick and smart, too. And I had a huge advantage he didn’t know about: I had a weapon. Resting my thumb on the kwi’s activation button, I gestured Bayta to follow and headed in.
No one jumped us before we reached the gap. Pressing my shoulder against the side of the last stack, I eased a cautious eye around the corner.
Wedged into the narrow space between crate stacks were four coffin-sized tanks. The lid of the nearest was cracked open, while the other three appeared to still be sealed. The intruder himself was nowhere to be seen. Touching Bayta’s arm, I slipped around the corner into the impromptu mortuary.
“What do you think he wanted?” Bayta asked quietly as I stopped beside the partially-open tank.
“For starters, not to be caught,” I said, getting a grip on the lid and experimentally pushing it closed.
It latched with a loud click that could probably have been heard fifteen meters away. “Which is why he left it open instead of closing it and trying to pretend no one had been here,” I went on, popping the lid open again. It made the same loud click as it had when I’d closed it.
And then, from somewhere near the front of the car, I heard an answering sound. Not another click, but the thud of someone bumping into one of the crate stacks. Our intruder, it appeared, was making a run for it.
“Stay close,” I murmured to Bayta, and headed at a dead run back toward the vestibule.
Or at least, I tried to make it look and sound like a dead run. But I knew this trick, and I wasn’t about to be taken in so easily. The suspicious-noise ploy was a classic way to get the hunter charging off in the wrong direction while the prey slipped away through the dark of night to freedom.
Here, with only a single exit from the baggage car, slipping away for more hide-and-seek was pretty much a waste of effort. Hence, the prey had opted for suspicious-noise variant number two: lure the hunter into ambush range and clobber him.
Which was why my dead run wasn’t nearly as reckless as it looked. I was in fact carefully checking every side aisle as I ran toward and past it, my kwi ready to fire in whichever direction it was needed. Between aisles I kept a careful watch on the tops of the stacks in case the intruder had scaled one of them in hopes of pulling a Douglas Fairbanks on me.
And with my full attention shifting between right, left, and up, I completely missed the low trip wire that had been stretched out across the aisle in front of me.
I hit it hard, catching my right foot and launching myself into an unintended dive across the dim landscape. I barely managed to get my hands under me before I slammed chest-first into the floor. Even with my arms absorbing some of the impact I hit hard enough to see stars.
For a long, horrible second I couldn’t move, my brain spinning, my lungs fighting to recover the air that had just been knocked out of them. Then, through the haze, I felt someone grab my upper arms. I tried to bring the kwi around to bear, but my arms weren’t responding and my wrists burned with pain. The hands gripping me pulled me up and half over, and I saw to my relief that it was Bayta. “Where is he?” I wheezed at her.
“He’s gone,” she said, fighting to drag me over toward the nearest crates. I got my legs working enough to help push, and a moment later was sitting more or less upright with her crouching beside me. It was, I reflected grimly, the perfect time for an ambusher to attack.
Only no one did. Apparently, he really was gone. “Are you all right?” I asked Bayta, still working on getting my wind back.
“I’m fine,” she assured me, eyeing me warily. “The question is, are you all right?”
“Aside from feeling like an idiot, sure,” I said sourly, experimentally flexing my wrists. They still hurt, but they were starting to recover. “No chance of catching him now, I guess.”
“Do we need to actually catch him?” Bayta asked. “Or do we just need to know who he is?”
I peered up at her. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
She nodded toward the front of the car. “I’ve moved a conductor into the last passenger car,” she said. “He’s watching to see who comes out of the baggage section.”
“Nice,” I complimented her. “I don’t suppose you and the Spiders have figured out yet how to relay images back and forth.”
“Our communication doesn’t work that way,
” she said. “But he doesn’t have to send me an image or even a description. The conductors know who’s assigned to which seat. All we have to do is see where he lands, and we’ll have him.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “But warn him not to get too close. We don’t want our friend to know he’s being followed.”
“He won’t be followed,” Bayta said. “The conductor in the rear car will stay there and merely pass him off to a Spider who’s already in place ahead. In the two cars after that, if they’re needed, there will be some mites working inside the ceiling systems who will watch his movements. The next car after that has another conductor, and so on.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “All those dit rec mysteries I’ve been pushing on you have obviously done you a world of good.” I nodded toward the trip wire behind her. “Let’s have a look at our friend’s handiwork.”
Successful booby traps, in my fortunately limited personal experience, tended toward one of three main flavors: simple, elegant, or opportunistic. This one managed to be all three.
The intruder had cut a section of safety webbing from the base of one of the crates, picking a strand about ankle height, and had continued his cut all the way around the stack until he’d freed enough slack to reach twice across the most likely aisle for us to take when we came charging after him. He’d stretched the line straight across the aisle, looped it through the webbing on the stack on that side, then run it back to the original stack at about a thirty-degree angle.
The result had been a pair of trip wires with a continually varying distance between them, the sort of arrangement that would be perfect for use against two pursuers with different stride lengths. Odds were very good that at least one of us would hit at least one of the lines, which was precisely what had happened. “Nice work,” I commented. “This guy’s definitely a pro.”
“But how did he set it up?” Bayta asked, frowning as she poked experimentally at the taut line. “He couldn’t have had more than a couple of minutes once he knew we were here.”