by Timothy Zahn
“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.”
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.
And with a frenetic social life no longer a viable hobby, he’d turned his thoughts and bankroll to art collecting.
He’d gotten pretty good at it, too. Somewhere along the line he’d built a warehouse-sized gallery on his estate, constructing a labyrinth of passageways inside it with nooks and display cases and panels along every wall and around every turn. The report included a few quotes from art critics and connoisseurs who’d toured the place, all of whom praised the experience as unique and exciting.
Two of the critics had expressed hope that the collection might someday be opened to the public. A counterquote from Künstler made it clear that would happen when hell froze over.
The rest of the file was taken up with a summary of Künstler’s various business ventures, plus lists of colleagues, family members—all the way out to fourth cousins—and friends. That last list was definitely the shortest of the three.
Bayta spotted that. too. “He didn’t have many friends, did he?” she murmured.
“Who do the superrich have to hang out with except the rest of the superrich?” I pointed out. “Hardly the gene pool I’d want to have to choose my friends from.”
“And that opinion is based on what?” Bayta asked dryly. “One man?”
“I’m sure Larry Hardin is good to his dog and has a wonderful singing voice.” I said, thinking back to our last meeting, when I’d stuck him for a trillion dollars, and our subsequent less-than-amicable parting. “Doesn’t mean I’m in any hurry to renew our acquaintanceship.”
“He did help us out, you know.”
“Unknowingly, and only after I blackmailed him into it,” I reminded her, scrolling past the list of Künstler’s business addresses and contact information to the second data file on the chip.
It was yet another police report.
“They have a report already?” Bayta asked, frowning.
“This isn’t about his murder,” I said, my eyes automatically finding the line marked Crime Description. “Looks like there was an attempted burglary of his art gallery a few weeks ago.”
An extremely strange burglary, too, I saw with growing interest as I read through the report. The perps had been an unlikely gang of six midlevel bureaucrats from the UN’s Geneva HQ, who nevertheless had handled themselves with a professionalism that had apparently impressed even the police officer who’d written up the report. He’d gone into considerable detail, in fact, on their technique in penetrating the grounds and the art gallery, including their disarming of the alarm system.
Incredibly, though, especially after all that care, they were still wandering the twisting pathways and staircases an hour later, the shoulder bags they’d brought with them still empty. At that point they’d been surprised by Künstler himself, who had apparently come in to commune with the Old Masters. He’d sounded the alarm, and in the resulting very one-sided fracas all six burglars had been killed.
But not before one of them had found the strength to ask Künstler where the Nemuti Lynx was.
“Well, if we still had any doubts the Modhri was involved, this pretty well clinches it,” I told Bayta as I handed her the reader.
“Which part?” she asked, frowning at the text.
“The part where one of the perps wastes his dying breath asking where the Lynx is.” I pointed to the place.
I saw Bayta’s throat tighten. “The walkers weren’t all inside the grounds,” she said. “There was at least one still outside.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “Hoping Künstler would tell him where he’d stashed the Lynx.”
“Unless the inside man had an open radio channel to someone?” Bayta suggested.
I shook my head. “Standard procedure in a case like this is to immediately jam all communications except the private rolling-link system the security people themselves are using. No, the only messages getting out right then would have been across a Modhri mind segment.”
“I just hope Künstler didn’t tell him.”
“He didn’t,” I assured her grimly. “His lethal interrogation aboard the Quadrail proves that much.”
Bayta shivered. “What in the galaxy does he want with these things?”
I shrugged. “Between our attack on his homeland and the pressure Fayr’s been putting on his Belldic outposts, he has to be finding himself a bit on the ropes these days. Every good soldier knows that the first rule of retreat is to have someplace to retreat to. Could be he’s made a deal with one of these ultrarich collectors to trade the complete Nemuti collection for a chunk of cold-water territory he can call his own.”
Bayta stiffened. I didn’t blame her. The thought of the Modhri going underground, regrouping, and relaunching his campaign against the galaxy on his own terms and with his own timing was very much at the top of my Things We Don’t Want To Happen list. “How do we stop him?” she asked.
“We start by ignoring the big. scary view and focusing on the immediate job at hand,” I told her. “Künstler’s murder shows the Modhri’s still after this third Lynx. We have to make sure we get to it first.” I took back the reader and scrolled to the next file. “And we start by finding out what they’ve got on this p
erson of extreme interest.”
The third file on the chip, as expected, was a brief biography of one Daniel Josef Stafford.
He was twenty-six years old, the son of one of Künstler’s top business managers. Born into the Künstler inner circle, he’d spent a lot of time on the estate when he was growing up, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful among his father’s friends. The usual pattern in these cases, I knew, was for the kid to be groomed for golden-cog status, then inserted into some cushy midlevel corporate job as soon as he graduated from college.
That might still be the plan, but as yet the big event hadn’t happened. Stafford had taken to the collegiate lifestyle with a vengeance, so much so that he’d apparently decided to make a full-time career of it. In the past eight years he’d bounced his major around like a fumbled football, switching from business to economics to art appreciation to psychology. If the attached course schedule was up-to-date, he was currently splitting his class time between the odd duo of alien sociology and techniques of advertising.
His free time was equally well packed. During his teen years he’d become adept with both skis and lugeboard, and every chance he got he was off Earth and onto the Quadrail to match his skills against some of the galaxy’s most challenging slopes.
Despite his unfocused ambitions, relations with his parents seemed to have remained good. He still dropped in on them at the Künstler estate a couple of times a year, where he also made a point of touring Künstler’s art gallery to see what the boss had added since his last visit. Showing off his art appreciation classes, no doubt.
His last visit had been the weekend of the abortive burglary. He hadn’t been seen or heard from since that night. Nor had his ID been logged through at any air, sea, or land entry portal, nor had he used any of his credit tags anywhere in the Terran Confederation. As far as ESS could tell, Daniel Stafford had simply dropped off the edge of the universe.
“Do you think he was killed?” Bayta asked.
“I doubt it.” I told her. “His body wasn’t found on the scene, and I can’t see the Modhri dragging him all the way across the grounds just to kill him somewhere out of sight.”
“Unless the Modhri thought Mr. Stafford had the Lynx,” Bayta suggested.
“Which is a pretty good bet anyway,” I agreed. “Stafford on the estate; Stafford and the Lynx no longer on the estate. Hence, person of extreme interest.”
“I don’t know,” Bayta said doubtfully. “It sounds like the Lynx had been sitting around there for years. Why wait until now to steal it?”
“The simplest and most obvious answer is that the Modhri got to Stafford with an offer too good to pass up,” I said. “That’s probably ESS’s current reasoning, too. Except the Modhri part, of course.”
“But you don’t believe that?”
I shrugged. “Cops like simple answers,” I said. “And to be honest, most crimes do end up shaking out that way. But this case has a few too many unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as why Künstler was on the Bellis Quadrail,” I said. “Was he chasing Stafford, or was he on some mission of his own? He was certainly doing something underhanded—there’s no other reason for him to be running alone and under a false ID. And whatever he was up to, if the Modhri already had the Lynx or knew it was on the way, why beat him to death?”
“Maybe Mr. Stafford is planning to sell the Lynx to someone else,” Bayta suggested. “Maybe the Modhri realized that and needs to find him before the Lynx disappears into another private collection.”
“That’s sort of where I’m leaning on the whole thing,” I agreed.
“You think Mr. Stafford is the Daniel Mice Mr. Künstler spoke about?”
“I’d say it would be straining the bounds of probability to have a second Daniel running around this case,” I told her. “But since we can’t find Daniel Mice and ESS can’t find Daniel Stafford, it would seem he’s got at least one other name in his collection.”
“So we’re basically stuck.”
“At least as far as his name goes.” I raised my eyebrows as a sudden thought struck me. “Unless we don’t need his name. Could the Spiders locate him if we provide them with a photo?”
Bayta pursed her lips. “Probably not,” she said regretfully. “Conductors can learn to distinguish Human faces—they can recognize the two of us, for instance. But they aren’t going to be able to pick a random Human face out of a crowd.”
I grimaced. But I really should have expected that answer. “In that case, we’re back to old-fashioned detective work,” I said, scrolling to the next page. “Let’s see if ESS was kind enough to provide us with a search platform.”
They had. The next two pages of the file listed Stafford’s relatives, closest friends, classmates, and fellow lugeboard junkies. It was, I noted cynically, a considerably longer list than Künstler’s own. Apparently there were social advantages to being only slightly obscenely rich.
The three pages after that included Stafford’s favorite hot spots, on Earth and elsewhere, a list of every place he’d visited during his wanderings, plus every travel, work, and play habit anyone had been able to statistically dredge up from his life’s history. “I can’t believe how fast they pulled all this together.” Bayta commented when we finally reached the end.
“They’ve had five weeks since he and the Lynx disappeared,” I reminded her. “This wasn’t something they came up with after Morse messaged them that Künstler had been murdered.”
Bayta’s eyes went slightly unfocused. “Two drudges have arrived outside with the luggage we left aboard the last Quadrail,” she reported.
“Good,” I said. “Go let them in—I’ll be with you in a minute. Just leave the bags in the waiting room, though, until I’ve had a chance to look them over.”
She nodded and left. Turning off Morse’s reader, I returned the data chip to the case and took both of them back to his jacket. I slid the reader into its tailored pocket, and returned the case to its own slot.
I had turned toward the door when Morse’s voice croaked at me from the bed. “That does it, Compton,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”
SEVEN
I turned back and looked at Morse. His face was still pale, but there was nothing uncertain about the disbelieving anger in his eyes. “Welcome back to the living,” I said pleasantly.
“Did you hear me?” he rasped. “You’re under arrest.”
“I heard you,” I confirmed. “Unfortunately, you still have the same jurisdictional problem you had at Bellis.”
“Not at all,” he countered. His voice was sounding stronger now. “This medical facility is Human-owned and Human-run. That makes it Human territory.”
“An interesting interpretation,” I agreed. “However, unless you know of an arraignment court on the premises, you still have to take me through Spider territory to get me to a shuttle.”
“The Spiders can—” He broke off, twisting his wrist around and looking at his watch. “Bloody hell,” he snarled, fumbling for the call button beside him on the rail. He squeezed it and then swung his legs over the side of the bed, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He spotted his shoes beside the bed and leaned over to grab them.
And toppled straight to the floor.
I was ready for it, and managed to grab one of his arms in time to keep his head from bouncing off the tile. “What happened?” the doctor said sharply from the doorway.
“Nothing,” Morse’s slightly muffled voice came before I could answer. “I’m all right.”
“He tried to pass out,” I told the doctor. “Almost made it, too.”
“Help me get him back on the bed,” the doctor said.
Together, he and I helped Morse back into a prone position on the bed. Morse fought us the whole way. “Let me alone,” he insisted. “I have to leave.”
“You’ll leave the minute you’re ready,” the doctor countered firmly. “Not before.”
“Then give me som
ething to speed up the process,” Morse demanded. “I’m already an hour behind the train I’m supposed to be on.”
“And, what, you’re going to chase after it on a dit rec western handcar?” I asked.
Morse tried his dagger-glaring technique, but with his eyes still woozy it wasn’t very effective. “Mr. Compton is right,” the doctor said. “There’ll be other trains.”
“Doctor, I need whatever you can do,” Morse said, pitching his voice low and earnest and reasonable. “I can finish recovering once I’m on the train. I’m a EuroUnion government agent, and I have to get out of here.”
The doctor looked at me. “He is, and he probably does,” I confirmed.
The doctor grimaced, but nodded. “Wait here.” Turning, he left the room.
“Don’t think this is helping,” Morse warned me. “Even if you manage to slide on Künstler’s murder, I can still get you for theft of official ESS property and data. The penalty for that is eight to ten in the Minsk Four facility.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I’ll be sure to mention that to the next pickpockets I run into.”
An uncertain frown edged across his forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about three Halkas out in the station, one of whom called your name, thus enabling two of his buddies to trip you up and knock you cold, thus enabling them to steal this.” I snagged his jacket and pulled out the data chip case. “Luckily for you, I got there in time to steal it back. No, no—don’t thank me. That sunny smile of gratitude is all the thanks I need.”
That one got the daggers up and running again. “Compton, if you think—”