by Timothy Zahn
"Letting the Modhri get the better of you?"
"It's not like that," she insisted. "This isn't personal."
"I know," I said, pretending to believe her. "It isn't for me, either."
For a few seconds she sat quietly, her eyes staring down the Tube. Then, stirring, she handed me back my reader. "You might want to destroy Fayr's message," she said. "Just in case."
"Actually, I had something a little more devious in mind," I told her, keying for an edit.
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see." I finished my edit and held the reader out for her perusal.
" 'Meet me at the Supreme Falls viewing area on Laarmiten'?" she read, sounding a little taken aback.
"As long as the Gang of Fifteen are heading there anyway," I said. "The Modhri's reaction might be interesting if he finagles a peek at this."
"An expert will be able to tell the message has been modified," Bayta warned.
"Not with this reader he won't," I said. "This is that special high-tech job I got from Larry Hardin, back when I was working for him. Chock-full of interesting goodies. Did you also notice the new P.S.?"
She frowned. " 'Remember that victory belongs to the daring.' "
"There's no point in letting a private joke go public, either," I said. I pulled out the chip and put it in my side pocket, then returned the reader to its usual place inside my jacket. "So. Are we planning to just sit here until the train arrives?"
"Unless you want to take a shuttle across to the transfer station," she suggested. "There might be more to do there."
I looked at the shop. "I think I'd rather keep an eye on our walkers."
"I agree," she said, shutting off her reader and putting it away.
And then, to my mild surprise, she slid across the dozen centimeters that separated us and snuggled up against my side. "I'm going to take a nap," she said, her voice a little muffled as she rested her head on my shoulder. "Wake me when it's my turn to keep watch."
She exhaled a deep sigh; and with that, she was asleep.
Bayta's approach to the universe had a natural reserve to it, which acted as a psychological barrier to keep people at arm's length. Part of that was undoubtedly her wariness about the Modhri and his little bag of telepathic tricks, the rest of it her own natural personality. But she and I had been through a lot together, and over the months she'd gradually accepted me into her inner circle.
Apparently. I'd made it deeper into that circle than I'd realized.
It felt a little awkward, and more than a little embarrassing. My own personality was every bit as closed as hers was, though that probably wasn't so much natural tendency as it was having had all my alleged friends turn their backs on me during the Yandro controversy. I'd gotten used to my own company since then, and wasn't entirely sure I wanted to start with the whole friendship thing again.
I gazed down at the top of her head, tracing locks of her dark hair with my eyes. Still, Bayta was my partner in our little corner of this war, and it was part of my job to humor her.
Shifting position, I put my arm around her shoulders and turned my head just enough to keep the shop/restaurant in view. Now that they'd succeeded in getting us off the train and away from the Gang of Fifteen, I wasn't expecting the three walkers to give us any more trouble.
But I'd been wrong before.
SIX :
Eleven and a half hours later, precisely on time, the next Quadrail arrived at Helvanti. Together with our three walkers, each of them now lugging a large bag of chocolate, we went aboard.
The usual lack of communication with a moving train meant that Bayta hadn't been able to arrange our accommodations ahead of time, and once again it turned out that all the compartments were booked. Still, with the trip only eight and a half hours long, a compartment hardly seemed worth the trouble anyway.
After having been on guard duty most of the previous twelve hours, I spent the majority of the trip dozing in my seat. I doubted that Bayta, with her nervousness about being in an open car surrounded by walkers, even closed her eyes.
The trip passed without incident, and we were soon weaving our way through the relatively large and bustling crowd at Terra Station toward the stationmaster's office. First on our list was to figure out the fastest route to Ghonsilya for our rendezvous with Fayr, while a close second would be to see if the Spiders had retrieved our luggage from the train we'd been bounced from. Third on the list would be checking on Fayr's and Daniel Mice's passenger histories.
We were studying one of the floating schedule holodisplays when I heard a familiar voice behind me. "Well, well. Look what the budgie left in the bottom of his cage."
I turned around. ESS Special Agent Morse was striding toward me, his expression hovering between angry and sour. "I could say the same thing about you," I countered. "I thought you were on lapdog duty this week."
His face drifted a few percentage points further onto the angry side. "We're more terriers than lapdogs, actually," he corrected. "Bred to drive burrowing animals into the open, where they can be properly hunted down and killed."
"And I take it I'm the rat du jour?"
"I'd like nothing better," he said. "Unfortunately, I have other more pressing matters to deal with. I merely stopped here to pick up my messages and arrange the transfer of Mr. Kün—Mr. Smith's body."
I felt my ears prick up. "So you've identified our victim?"
"Good day, Mr. Compton." Turning on his heel in an almost military-precise about-face, he stalked away, his bags trailing behind him.
And as he headed through the streaming travelers, three well-dressed Halkas casually turned in unison and set off after him.
Bayta touched my arm. "It looks like we want the express to—"
"Hold on," I told her, watching the procession. The Halkas were still following Morse, but with an air of leisure and unconcern that even professional Intelligence agents had trouble counterfeiting when they were on the hunt.
Only in this case, it wasn't an act. The Halkas genuinely didn't realize they were following anyone.
Walkers.
Beside me, Bayta inhaled sharply as she spotted the procession. "Frank—"
"I see them," I growled, handing her my leash control. "Wait here."
I headed into the flow of passengers, trying to look as casual as the three Halkas. There was a lot about Morse I didn't like, but that didn't mean I was going to just stand off to the side and let the Modhri have a free poke at him. Especially since there was at least half a chance that it was Morse's contact with the late Mr. Smith that had drawn the Modhri's attention to him in the first place.
The Modhri had bounced Bayta and me out of the Lynx investigation once. Maybe this was our chance to get back in.
A dozen meters ahead of Morse were a pair of Juriani with long hard-sided golf cases rolling along behind them. They paused, and one of them reached down and picked up his case. He tucked it under his arm and they continued on their way, their path now shifted subtly onto an intercept course with Morse's.
The pursuing Halkas, meanwhile, were steadily closing the gap. At current speeds, I estimated, the three of them and the two golfers would converge together on Morse in about ten seconds. Keeping an eye peeled for anyone else the Modhri might decide to throw into the mix, I picked up my pace.
Abruptly, one of the two Juriani who'd blocked Bayta at the Helvanti Station loomed in front of me. "Ah—my Human friend from last night," he said cheerfully, raising his arms wide in welcome.
I ducked beneath one of the outstretched arms and kept going. So the Modhri had spotted me, too. I thought about shouting Morse a warning, decided it would just distract him—
"Mr. Morse!" one of the Halkas behind Morse shouted. Morse half turned, slowing but not stopping.
And in that split second of inattention, the Modhri struck.
It was, from a professional standpoint, beautifully done. The two Juriani cut directly in front of Morse with no more than half a meter to sp
are, and the golf case still trailing behind them rolled into position just in time for Morse to trip over it. As he thrust out his hands to break his fall, the other Juri spun a hundred eighty degrees around, ostensibly to see what was going on, and slammed the end of his case solidly against the side of Morse's head.
Morse went down like a lassoed calf, rolling half over as he sprawled across the rolling case and slammed the back of his head solidly on the Tube floor.
The three trailing Halkas were there in an instant, dropping to their knees around him like solicitous Good Samaritan bystanders at an accident scene. Their positioning, probably not coincidentally, managed to block my view of Morse and anything they were doing with him. "Someone get a Spider!" the Halka whose shout had distracted Morse at the fatal moment called to the station in general. "We must find a Human doctor."
Cue for Compton. "I'm a doctor," I said, striding up. I dropped to one knee at Morse's side, deftly elbowing the nearest Halka out of my way.
And as I did so. out of the corner of my eye I saw his hand dip briefly inside his own inner vest and come out empty. The left side of Morse's jacket was open, I noted, as if someone had pushed the flap aside. "No—don't go," I said, grabbing the Halka's wrist as he started to get up. Pulling him firmly back down to his knees, I put his hand on Morse's left wrist. "Hold him right here," I instructed.
"But—" the Halka started to protest.
"And put your other hand up there on his right shoulder," I interrupted, putting some authority into my voice as I started to take off my own jacket.
Clearly wondering what this had to do with medical treatment, but just as clearly unwilling to argue from his ignorance of Human physiology, the Halka leaned forward and stretched out his hand. As he did so, he started to lose his balance—
"Careful," I warned, turning at the waist and putting a supporting hand on his chest. My jacket, which I hadn't yet pulled off that arm. dangled down across Morse's legs. "First shift your knee over there to his other side."
The Halka complied, and from his new position was able to get his hand to Morse's shoulder without trouble. I kept my hand protectively against his chest until it was clear he was stable again, then let go and finished taking off my jacket. I bunched it together and laid it beside me, making sure that the slim, flat case I'd removed from inside the Halka's vest was safely hidden inside it.
I had taken Morse's pulse—which seemed steady enough—and was making a show of checking for pupil dilation when a pair of drudge Spiders finally arrived on the scene.
"There you are." I said, grabbing my jacket and standing up. "He needs to be taken immediately to the medical center. Carefully, now."
I supported Morse's head myself, pillowing it on my wadded-up jacket as the drudges got three legs each under him and lifted him up. Feeling the stares of the Juriani and Halkas on my back the whole way, I snagged Morse's luggage and followed the Spiders through the crowd of onlookers.
Terra Station was a pretty unsophisticated stop, certainly when compared to the elaborate facilities and ornamentation of the other eleven empires' homeworld stations. But despite its backwater appearance, it included a pretty decent medical center. One of the doctors examined Morse, diagnosed a mild concussion, assured us that he would recover, and fitted him with a bandage and a QuixHeal injection. A few minutes later he was in a Fibibib-designed monitor bed in an otherwise unoccupied ward, sleeping soundly, and Bayta and I were seated in a couple of chairs across the room near the door where we could keep an eye on him.
Only then, with some time and privacy on our hands, did I dig out the flat case I'd stolen back from the Halka.
"Where did you get that?" Bayta asked as I pulled it from my jacket pocket.
"From the walker who'd just taken it from Morse," I told her.
From the feel as I'd picked the Halka's pocket I'd guessed it was a data chip case, and I was right. About fifteen centimeters long, two wide, and one deep, it could hold up to thirty data chips in protected, padded niches.
"Is that why the Modhri attacked him?" Bayta asked.
"Either that or he just felt like giving his walkers some exercise," I said, turning the case over in my hands and studying in particular its lock and hinge sides.
Bayta watched me in silence for a few more seconds. "Well?" she prompted.
"Patience," I said, pulling out my reader and inserting the data chip that turned it into a powerful sensor. "Data chip cases are sometimes booby-trapped to fry the chips if the wrong person opens it."
For once, my paranoia was unwarranted. The case wasn't rigged. "Let's see what the well-equipped ESS Special Agent is reading these days," I said, and popped it open.
Inside were a dozen data chips. None of them, I guessed, was light summer entertainment. "Let's assume he's the organized type," I suggested, pulling out the last one in the line. It was the same type of chip I'd gotten at Helvanti, the sort the Spiders used for cross-Quadrail messages and information packets lasered to the Tube from the collection center in the local transfer station. Wondering who was sending Morse fan mail, I inserted it into my reader.
The display filled with lines of apparently random characters. What the well-equipped ESS Special Agent was reading these days was heavily encrypted. "Can you decode it?" Bayta asked.
"That may not be necessary." Handing the reader to Bayta. I got up and went across to the rack where Morse's outer clothing had been hung. His reader was in the standard inside jacket pocket. "People running the same routine day after day sometimes get careless." I told Bayta as I rejoined her. "Specifically, they sometimes neglect to scramble-clear the decryption program after they've read something." I turned on the reader and inserted Morse's chip.
He hadn't been as careless as he might have been. But he'd been careless enough. The display still came up gibberish, but there was now a helpful tab at the bottom of the screen asking if I wanted the message translated into another language. I keyed it, and a moment later we had clear, readable text.
"Good thing the Modhri didn't get the reader, too," Bayta commented.
"That was probably next on his list," I told her. Scrolling down past the standard classified-document warning and a five-color ESS logo, I got to the meat of the document.
Some meat.
TO: Ackerley Morse, Terra Station
FROM: ESS Central, Geneva
RE: Urgent information request
Confirm your report re death of Rafael Künstler on Terra-Bellis Quadrail #339721. Current data attached.
Current assignment re Lady Dorchester suspended. Locate and detain Daniel Stafford immediately as person of extreme interest. Current data attached.
"Do you know these people?" Bayta asked as she read over my shoulder.
"I know one of them," I said. "At least by reputation. Rafael Künstler is—was, rather—one of Earth's upper-crust multibillionaires. Maybe he'd made it all the way to trillionaire; I'm not sure. He was something of a recluse, which is probably why I didn't recognize him."
"He was one of Earth's rich and powerful?" Bayta asked pointedly.
I grimaced. Up to now the Modhri had mostly left humanity alone, for which we were all very grateful. But every other time he'd made a play for power across the galaxy, his attack pattern was to target a people's leadership: political, military, economic, and social. The typical Human trillionaire would fit nicely into at least two of those categories. "Hard to imagine the Modhri letting one of his walkers get beaten to death," I said. "All that shared pain through the whole mind segment, remember."
"Maybe that's what he wants us to think," Bayta said. "And don't forget, Mr. Künstler did say he hates you. Who could he have meant besides the Modhri?"
"Could be any number of people, actually," I said. "Besides, referring to the Modhri that way would imply Künstler knew something about him. Walkers usually never figure that out."
"Maybe he was smarter than most." Bayta paused. "Or maybe he had friends who could figure it out for him."
<
br /> I scratched my cheek thoughtfully. As far as I knew, there were only two Humans besides Bayta and me who were even aware of the Modhri's existence: Bruce McMicking, chief troubleshooter for multitrillionaire industrialist Larry Hardin, who I'd once worked briefly for; and Deputy UN Director Losutu, who had supposedly put Künstler on my trail to begin with.
Both men had been sworn to secrecy, but I wasn't naive enough to think their solemn oaths would hold traction forever. Calling up the reader's search page, I punched in McMicking's and Losutu's names.
McMicking's came up dry. Losutu's didn't. There, tucked away at the bottom of the document, was what looked almost like an almost-forgotten afterthought:
ADDENDUM
FROM: Deputy Director Biret Losutu, UN Directorate, Geneva.
Bona fides of former Westali agent Frank Compton confirmed beyond question. He can be taken into your fullest confidence.
"Uncommonly kind of Director Losutu," I commented, angling the reader to show Bayta the note. "Though in my experience ringing endorsements like that usually come with fairly nasty situations attached." I scrolled back to the top of the document. "Let's see how nasty this one is."
The first data file was a summary of the life and times of the late Mr. Künstler.
Like many of Earth's wealthiest people, he'd gotten a head start by arranging to have himself born to parents who were themselves already stratospherically rich. Unlike many in that position, though, he hadn't rested on their laurels or frittered his inheritance away with riotous living. Instead, he'd taken the money and run with it, building an economic empire that had dwarfed even that of his parents. According to the best estimates, he had indeed made it to trillionaire status before his untimely death.
The wealth and power hadn't come without a few speed bumps along the way, of course. In his early twenties he'd been lured briefly into the stereotypical rich kid's skating-on-the-edge life mode, which had been quickly and inevitably followed by half a dozen paternity suits. He'd taken the quick route back to peace and quiet, paying off the claimants without wasting time contesting the charges, and having learned from his mistakes retired to his estate in the Bavarian Alps to focus on business. From that point on. he'd largely limited his Human contacts to his staff, his business associates, and his older and more trustworthy friends.