by Timothy Zahn
The minutes ticked by, the platform outside settling into the character of a dit rec western ghost town. With four minutes yet to go the conductors got back on the train, though the doors themselves remained open. I kept one eye on my watch, the other on the stationmaster’s office door, and started trying to figure out what I would do if Bayta didn’t make it back in time.
With two minutes left on the clock I finally saw her emerge from the office and head toward the Quadrail at a dead run.
I exhaled a silent sigh of relief. Helvanti Station wasn’t very big, and even at a casual walk she should make it with half a minute to spare.
I’d relaxed too soon. Bayta had reached the halfway point when a pair of well-dressed Juriani and a massive pear-shaped Cimma suddenly entered my line of sight, heading across the platform from one of the cars farther back. Chatting animatedly among themselves, apparently oblivious to their surroundings, they moved directly into Bayta’s path.
She tried to swerve, but it was too late. Even as I watched the four of them came to a confused face-to-face halt and launched into one of those in-unison sidestepping farces that looks hilarious in a well-done stage comedy.
Only in this case there was nothing even remotely humorous about it. Their last-minute appearance tagged the three of them as Modhri walkers, with the clear intent of making sure Bayta didn’t make it back onto the train.
Trapping her in one of the loneliest places in the galaxy.
There was no time for planning or even conscious thought. Even before the full ramifications of the situation had sifted completely through my brain I was on my feet, weaving madly through the maze of chairs as I raced for the car’s door. I came within an ace of tangling myself in the conductor’s legs as I dodged around him; and then I was outside, sprinting across the platform toward the macabre do-si-do still going on.
One of the Juriani half turned, but he had no time for more than a startled gasp before I slammed my shoulder into him, bouncing him in turn off his companions and finally throwing off their rhythm. My hand darted past the Cimma to grab Bayta’s wrist, and I turned us back toward the train.
Only to see that it was already in motion.
I tried anyway, nearly dragging Bayta off her feet as I pulled her toward the train. But we were too late. The doors were closed, and there wasn’t nearly enough time for Bayta to get a conductor to open one of them. Swearing viciously under my breath, I gave up and slowed to a halt.
The Gang of Fifteen, and whatever it was they were carrying, were gone.
FIVE
The sounds of the Quadrail faded away, and as they did so I became aware that I wasn’t the only one swearing. “What do you do. Human?” the Juri I’d slammed into demanded, glaring at me as he clutched his shoulder with one clawed hand.
“What do you do?” I countered. “You kept my friend from reboarding her train.”
He bristled, clicking his hawk beak with indignation, his three-toed feet tapping the floor. Probably as annoyed by my lack of proper verbal etiquette as he was by the physical injury itself, I guessed. The Juriani were sticklers for such things, and normally I did my best to accommodate them.
At the moment, though, I couldn’t have cared less. “It was completely unintentional. I assure you,” he insisted stiffly. “We had suddenly realized that here was the source of all that fine Helvanti chocolate and decided to avail ourselves of the opportunity to purchase some.”
The worst part was that probably really was all that he and his companions had intended. Or at least, all they thought they’d intended. None of them would be aware in the slightest that there was a small mass of alien flesh tucked away beneath their brains whispering these suggestions to them.
“It’s all right, Frank,” Bayta spoke up. “Master Juri, we apologize for our actions. To all of you,” she added to the others.
She looked expectantly at me. “I also apologize,” I said, forcing as much civility into the words as I could manage. “My actions were discourteous and inexcusable, and I crave your understanding and your forgiveness.”
The Juri drew himself up to his full height, his polished scales glistening in the Coreline’s flickering light. Now that the proper words had been said, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. “You are forgiven.” he said, clicking his beak three times to show that he meant it. “And do not be alarmed at the departure of the train. There will be others.” With that, he gestured to his friends and they headed together for the station’s single shop/restaurant.
I glared after him, fighting back my frustration and sense of defeat. How did you fight someone who didn’t even know he was your enemy?
“You all right?” Bayta asked as she watched them go.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said sourly. “You?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t hurt.”
I looked down the tracks to see our Quadrail ride up the angled end of the station and through the atmosphere barrier into the narrower main Tube. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to send a warning message ahead.”
“How?” Bayta countered.
She was right, of course. Spiders were telepathic between themselves, but only over short distances. Message cylinders traveled a thousand times faster than the Quadrails themselves, but to send one you had to have a train available in the first place. “Any chance we can get another train before that one reaches Terra Station?”
“The next one for this station isn’t due for another twelve hours.”
And the Bellidos would be at Terra in eight. Plenty of time for them to switch trains or pass their package on to some other group of walkers the Modhri could have waiting at the station. “No express trains we could stop?” I asked, trying one last time.
“There are only two other expresses during that time, and it’s too late to get a message to either of them.” She hesitated. “Even if the Spiders were willing to stop them.”
I nodded. For years I’d admired the absolute precision with which the Quadrail system operated. But now that I knew how the message cylinder trick was done, I realized there was more to it than just professional pride. If the trains weren’t in the right places at the right times, those cylinders would be falling from the inner mesh like pigeon droppings over Manhattan. “So we’ve lost them,” I said, making it official.
“I’m sorry.”
I focused on her face. Bayta spent so much of her time being in complete emotional control of herself that it was always something of a shock when that control slipped, even for a minute. “Hey, relax,” I soothed. “It wasn’t your fault. Anyway, we know where they’re going. Sooner or later, we’ll catch up with them.” I raised my eyebrows. “Trust me.”
She gave me one of those wryly patient looks she’d honed to a fine art during our months of traveling together. But at least the self-reproach was fading. “If you say so.”
“I say so,” I said. “Incidentally, just out of curiosity, how did it go with the stationmaster?”
“Oh, fine,” she said, making a face. “Right now there’s a drone Spider hanging onto the side of one of the baggage cars. Actually, he’s probably moved to the top of the car by now.”
All ready to work his way forward and try to peek through the window into the compartment where our reclusive Bellidos had locked themselves. A glimpse of what they had in that shoulder bag, relayed telepathically to Bayta, might have given us a clue as to what was going on.
Only now the whole thing was moot, because Bayta wasn’t there to guide the operation and receive the image. Spiders were terrific at their assigned jobs, but I was starting to realize that trying to nudge them outside their personal fields of expertise was like trying to teach a cat to sing. Chances were fairly good, in fact, that the drone would still be on the baggage car roof when the train pulled into Terra Station eight hours from now. “I hope he at least enjoys the ride.” I said.
“Enjoyment for a Spider comes from doing his job,” Bayta said, glancing casually around us. “The stationmaster al
so had two data chips,” she said, pulling them out of her pocket. “One for each of us.”
I took the proffered chip, giving the platform a quick check of my own. The trio of walkers had vanished into the shop/restaurant, and aside from a half-dozen drudge Spiders working on one of the tracks down the line we were completely alone. “Let’s go sit over there,” I suggested, pointing to a pair of benches facing an interactive kiosk offering visitors the Helvanti colony’s brief but no doubt exciting history.
We both had our readers out and the chips plugged in by the time we sat down. “Mine has the Nemuti Lynx data you asked for,” Bayta reported, peering closely at it.
“That’s nice,” I said absently, my brain fully absorbed with my own chip. What the hell?
I was on my third reading when Bayta nudged me with her reader. “Here,” she said.
“What?” I asked, forcing my mind away from the sudden flurry of thought and speculation that had descended on me.
“Here,” she repeated. “You’ll want to read this.”
I put my reader down on the bench and took hers. Scrolling back to the top of the report—and there wasn’t all that far I had to scroll—I began to read.
The Nemuti Lynx turned out to be one of a set of nine small abstract sculptures that had been unearthed at an archaeological dig in the Ten Mesas region of the Nemuti colony world of Veerstu two hundred years ago. The set included three sculptures that were called Lynxes, three that had been dubbed Hawks, and three more with the name Vipers.
“They gave them Human animal names?” I asked, frowning at Bayta.
She pointed at the reader. “Keep reading.”
The sculptures had originally been given Nemuti names, I discovered in the next paragraph, but fifteen years ago a scholar with way too much time on his hands had done some heavy-duty etymological studies and translated the names into what he decided were the most accurate and/or poetic equivalents in a dozen other languages, including English. Over the years the nine sculptures had ended up dispersed around the galaxy, four to various art museums and five to private collectors.
The next page was devoted to pictures of the sculptures, including a scale that showed them to range between twenty and forty centimeters long. All nine were made of some gleaming white stone, they were very definitely abstract, and to me they didn’t look anything like lynxes, hawks, or vipers. The so-called Hawk was twenty centimeters from top to bottom and shaped something like a comma, with a rounded top flowing in a wide curve into a somewhat wider base. The Viper was larger, about forty centimeters long, and looked like a frozen tongue of fire, curving upward twice from its base to a slightly rounded point. The Lynx was about thirty centimeters long and mainly tubular, like a short piece of bamboo rising out of a wider base. To me it looked a lot more like a viper than the Viper itself did. All nine sculptures were covered with texturing, but whether it was abstract decoration, miniature bas-relief carvings, or simple erosion I couldn’t tell.
There was also a map of the Ten Mesas area where they’d been found, plus a short bio of the Nemut who’d led the team that dug them up. I skimmed the latter without finding anything of interest and scrolled down to page three.
Page three was a police report.
I glanced at Bayta, noting the set of her jaw, and returned to my reading.
The nine sculptures weren’t considered all that valuable, certainly not compared to the Mona Lisa or the Cincarian Stand. But that hadn’t stopped collectors from trying to acquire a complete set of Lynx, Hawk, and Viper. Collectors being what they were, of course, none of them wanted to part with even their single sculpture, and over the years there had apparently been a lot of Go Fish-style jockeying back and forth among the various owners. The four relevant museums had been approached as well, but most of them were run by equally fanatic collectors, and it had appeared that the status quo would be maintained for a long time to come.
Only someone had apparently gotten tired of waiting and decided on a more direct approach. In the past twelve months all four of the museums had been burglarized and their Nemuti sculptures stolen. Just their Nemuti sculptures, as far as I could tell from the reports, which should have sent up red flags or at least yellow ones for anyone who had been paying attention.
Apparently, no one had. Skimming farther down the report, I discovered that four of the privately held sculptures had also been stolen, despite the heavy security their owners had built around their collections. In the most recent of the robberies, the owner had apparently surprised the intruders and been killed.
Eight of the sculptures had vanished. One was still at large.
The third Lynx.
“This,” I said, looking up at Bayta again, “is starting to sound like an old dit rec drama.”
“Only those are fiction,” she reminded me soberly. “This is real.”
“Dead bodies do have a way of emphasizing that.” I conceded, skimming the dates and locations again and wishing the Spiders had included the full police reports instead of just a summary. Even so. though, there were some intriguing hints to be gleaned. “Did you notice where the last private-collector robbery took place?” I asked Bayta. “The one where the owner was murdered?”
She craned her neck toward the reader. “Somewhere on Bellis. wasn’t it?”
“Very good,” I said. “For extra credit, when did it happen?”
“Just over three weeks ago.”
“Right,” I said. “Which, if the number you gave me earlier was correct, was the same time all those first-class compartments on our dearly departed train suddenly got booked.”
I saw her throat tighten. “By Bellidos traveling to a world of the Nemuti FarReach.”
“And who left Bellis Station the same time someone with the last Lynx on his mind was due to arrive,” I said. “Coincidence is coincidence, but this is starting to push the envelope.”
I picked up my own reader and handed it to her. “Or we could push it even farther.”
I watched her eyes flick back and forth again as she started to read. They faltered, then started again, moving more slowly.
It was a short message, which meant she must have read it through at least twice before she finally looked back at me. “This can’t really be from Korak Fayr,” she insisted. “Can it?”
I shrugged. “The last reports of coral vandalism would suggest his commandos are still operating on Bellis,” I said. “But there’s no reason Fayr has to be there in person. For that matter, we’re only assuming it was his group who pulled these latest attacks. The way the various Belldic Intelligence services operate, it’s entirely possible that someone else has put the pieces together and started running his own private anti-Modhri crusade.”
Bayta looked again at the message. “ ‘To Frank Compton: meet me at the Fraklog-Oryo Hotel. Magaraa City, Ghonsilya, Tra’hok Unity.’ Isn’t Magaraa City where one of the Nemuti sculptures was stolen?”
“Very good,” I said approvingly. “One of the Vipers, to be exact.”
“And the Bellis theft was of one of the Hawks,” she said slowly. “And Mr. Smith talked about one of the Lynxes.”
“A complete set, in other words,” I said. “The final set, actually, if we assume the other two sets were appropriated by the same people.”
“Don’t you mean the same person?”
I glanced at the store where the three walkers had disappeared. “Either that, or we’ve got a large and organized gang working.” I agreed soberly. “The Magaraa museum theft took place about two months ago, with the Bellis one only five weeks later. That’s not nearly enough time for the same team to travel from Nemuti territory to Bellis, case the joint, and prep and pull off a second robbery.”
“So the Modhri has them all now?”
“Well, he hasn’t got the third Lynx, anyway,” I said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Then why was Mr. Smith killed?” Bayta asked.
“Not to get the Lynx,” I repeated. “Though come to t
hink of it, that might have been the original plan: lure Smith and the Lynx to Bellis so that the walkers could grab it on their way out of the system.”
“If so, they cut it a little fine, didn’t they?” she commented. “Mr. Smith was coming in less than an hour before they were scheduled to leave.”
“Right, but remember he was delayed six hours waiting for me to get back to Terra Station,” I reminded her. “That would have given them plenty of time to negotiate and finalize any transactions.” I grimaced. “And possibly to consign Smith’s body to deep space.”
“What do you suppose went wrong?” Bayta asked.
“That one’s easy,” I said. “Smith apparently double-crossed them and didn’t bring the Lynx.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” I said. “It would have been a three-minute job to search a Quadrail compartment for something that size. If Smith had had it with him, they would have found it. and there would have been no need to beat him to death.”
“Unless they wanted to cover their trail.”
“A quick snap of the neck would have done that,” I said. “No, they don’t have the Lynx. But I’d say they really, really want it.”
“Enough to lure us into a trap?” she asked, lifting my reader for emphasis.
“Possibly,” I said. “But if so, that message isn’t it. It was sent long before we stumbled into the middle of this Lynx thing.”
“But not before the Magaraa museum robbery,” she pointed out. “It could be a trick by the Modhri to make sure we were out of the way when they went after the Hawk and Mr. Smith’s Lynx.”
“No,” I said. “Note the P.S. just below Fayr’s name.”
Bayta looked back at the reader. “ ‘Bring with you that strange but interesting gift of Human humor.’ “
“That’s a reference to something he said to me just before our first raid on the Modhri homeland,” I said. “You weren’t there at the time.”