Odd Girl Out (22 page)

The Eulalee Hotel was the tallest public building in Jurskala Station, a five-floor showcase of Jurian architectural prowess rising over the mostly single-story cafes and shops around it. The exterior was done up in Neo-Revival, a style I’d always found both pretentious and ugly. One of the minor advantages of staying there was that, once inside your room, you didn’t have to look at it.

The hotel’s elevators weren’t nearly big enough for our entire party to squeeze into together, so
Falc
Bresi insisted we take the stairs. The demand was probably designed to annoy me, but I had more urgent things on my mind than Jurian cheap shots and agreed without complaint.

Still, I couldn’t help wondering what the travelers relaxing in the hotel’s atrium lobby thought as they watched two Humans, two Juriani, and two conductor Spiders making their way all the way up the wide wrought-iron switchback staircase toward the fifth-floor landing. It just begged for a reference to Noah’s ark, but given that our escort probably wouldn’t get the joke I decided not to bother.

The stationmaster had sent a message ahead, and two more Spiders were waiting when we reached my assigned room. “I assume you’re taking the first shift of guard duty?” I asked them as we approached.

In answer, one of them unfolded a leg he’d had tucked under his globe and produced a key. He stuck it into the lock, and the door popped open. “So you are,” I confirmed, looking at the two Juriani. “I guess that means your services will no longer be needed,” I added as I pushed the door open.

“Yet we would not wish that the entire burden for your security would rest with the Spiders,”
Tas
Yelfro said smoothly. “Therefore,
Falc
Bresi has authorized a Jurian security team to be assembled from the transfer station. It will be here within the hour.”

I grimaced. As if I didn’t have enough enemies and potential enemies to keep track of. “That’s very generous of you,” I said, taking Bayta’s arm and easing her through the doorway into the room. “We’ll speak again when the investigation is finished.”

“We’ll look forward to it,”
Tas
Yelfro promised.

I nodded to him and started into the room.
Falc
Bresi started to walk in behind me, but stopped short as I stood my ground in the doorway. “We’ll speak again when the investigation is finished,” I repeated, a little more firmly.

For a couple of seconds he just stared at me, as if memorizing the features of my face against the day when he had his people rearrange them. Then, without comment, he turned and headed toward the elevators.
Tas
Yelfro nodded again at me and followed.

I cocked an eyebrow at the four Spiders now grouped around the door. “Your turn,” I said.

“They’ll be staying for a while,” Bayta said quietly from somewhere behind me.

I looked over my shoulder. While I’d been verbally sparring with
Falc
Bresi, she’d made her way across the room and was standing with her back to me, staring out the window. Closing the door on the Spiders, I crossed over to her. “You okay?” I asked.

“This isn’t going to work, Frank,” she said, her voice almost too soft for me to hear. “Every minute we stay here is another minute the Modhri has to bring in more walkers. In three days—” She shook her head, a shiver running through her.

Unfortunately, she had a point. “It’ll work out,” I said.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Grimacing, I stepped around to her side and put my arm around her shoulders. The muscles beneath my hand tensed reflexively at the touch, then softened again. Lifting my eyes from the colorfully dressed Humans and aliens scurrying among the tracks and platforms below, I focused on our train.

The Spiders had finished transferring the cargo from the old baggage car to the new one, and had maneuvered the new car into position between the other two baggage cars. I wondered briefly why they hadn’t just put the remaining two cars together and stuck the new one on the end, decided it probably had something to do with keeping the cargo stacks in the properly positioned cargo cars. Through the open roof of the old baggage car I could see a group of smaller tech-type Spiders, both the knee-high mites and the even smaller twitters, moving slowly along the floor as they searched for evidence of how the two Halkas had died. I looked again at the open roof.

And felt my breath catch in my throat. “Bayta, you told me the Spiders took our crate off the train,” I said, forcing my voice to stay casual. “Where exactly was it? Somewhere near where we found the Halkas?”

“No, actually, it was in the third baggage car,” she said. “The one at the end of the train.”

The tingle running up my back went a little more tingly. “Could they tell if it had been opened?”

“I didn’t ask them,” she said, frowning at me. Casual tone or not, she knew what it meant when I started asking odd questions this way. “But they must have. Otherwise, why would the Modhri have killed them?”

“Is that what you think?” I asked. “That the Modhri killed his own walkers?”

“I assumed he wanted an excuse to keep us here,” she said, frowning a little harder. “It’s not like he hasn’t killed walkers before when he needed to.”

“He certainly made use of the situation to make trouble for us,” I agreed. “But I think it was mostly pure luck that things turned out that way for him. Do you know where the autopsy is being carried out?”

“In one of the medical center’s operating rooms, I think.”

“We need to go talk to the doctors.” I turned from the window and started toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” she said, catching my arm. “
We’re
not going anywhere. You’re under arrest, remember?”

“So un-arrest me,” I said. “This is important.”

“So is your life,” she said firmly. “I thought the reason we agreed to this was to keep you away from angry Halkas until we could prove you didn’t kill their countrymen. What do you want me to tell the doctors at the autopsy?”

I grimaced, but she was right. “Tell them to check for evidence of asphyxiation.”

Her eyes widened. “
Asphyxiation
?”

“And then,” I went on, “have the Spiders check all the air seals on that baggage car.”

She looked back out the window. “You mean the whole thing was just an
accident
?”

“Well, the Modhri certainly didn’t kill them himself,” I said, carefully sidestepping her actual question. The deaths hadn’t been an accident, not by a long shot. But this wasn’t the time to go into that. “You didn’t see the way those four Jurian walkers came charging in at me after the Halkas died. The Modhri was mad, way madder than he should have been if he’d snuffed the Halkas himself. I think he was convinced I’d killed them, and was going to make it very clear what he thought of that.”

Bayta took a deep breath. “All right, I’ll go tell the doctors. What do you want me to do after that?”

“We get out of here as fast as we can, before the Modhri can bring in more walkers,” I said. “I don’t suppose that tender the New Tigris stationmaster told us about would happen to be anywhere nearby?”

“Actually, I think it’s right here,” Bayta said, leaning a little toward the window and peering past the passenger platforms and buildings. “Yes, I can see it over there.”

I looked where she was pointing. It was there, all right: three windowless passenger cars sandwiched between two engines pointed in opposite directions. It was sitting on the second track past the passenger section, in one of the Spiders’ service areas. “Then we’re good to go,” I said. “As soon as you get me officially cleared of the Halkas’ deaths, have the Spiders collect the crate and lockboxes and put them aboard the tender. Once everything’s there, you and I and Rebekah will join them, and we’ll be out of here.”

Bayta’s lips puckered. “It sounds too easy,” she said doubtfully.

“Well, the first part certainly is,” I said. “You said Rebekah’s in a secure storage facility, which should include dozens of crates waiting to be transferred to different trains. And of course, the Spiders are always moving lockboxes around. Even if the Modhri’s watching like a hawk, it should be no trick to get the Melding coral ready to travel.”

“But?” she prompted.

“But getting the three of us aboard won’t be nearly so simple,” I conceded. “We’ll need to come up with a really good diversion to keep all those walker eyes pointed in the wrong direction at the critical moment.”

“You have any ideas on how to do that?”

“Not yet, but I will,” I said. “You just get me off the hook so that I don’t have a mob of Halkas breathing down my neck when we make our break.”

“Medical center, stationmaster’s office, then back here,” she said, heading toward the door. “Anything else?”

“No, that should do for now,” I said. “And be careful. Some of the Halkas may have seen us together, and the Modhri certainly has.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, pulling the
kwi
out of her pocket. “I’ll see you soon.”

She opened the door, and I caught a glimpse of a forest of Spider legs out in the corridor before it closed again behind her. Pulling out my reader, I settled down in a comfy chair by the window and pulled up a station schematic. When setting up a diversion, the first thing to consider was geography.

I’d been working for about half an hour when the door chime sounded.

I looked up, frowning. Bayta wouldn’t bother ringing—one of the Spiders out there had a key, and she would have no problem ordering him to open up.

The chime came again. Tucking my reader away, I got up and went to the door.

It was the Jurian Resolver,
Tas
Yelfro. “Mr. Compton,” he greeted me solemnly. “May I come in?”

“Certainly,” I said, stepping back out of his way and wondering what the Modhri was up to this time.
Tas
Yelfro came in, glancing around as if making sure I was alone.

And as I watched, the scales around his beak seemed to sag a little, and the sweep of his shoulders hunched just a bit farther back, and his head straightened and then settled back into its original position.

The Modhri had taken over.

“Greetings, Mr. Compton,” he said, his voice altered as subtly but as indisputably as his appearance. “I bring news and an offer.”

“Do you, now,” I said. “If it’s anything like the last seven or eight offers you’ve pitched to me, I think I’ll pass.”

“But first,” the Modhri said, ignoring the gibe, “I bring you a conversation piece.” Reaching into his tunic, he pulled out something small and lobbed it toward me.

Automatically, I reached out and caught it. It was a
kwi
, just like the one I’d conned out of the Chahwyn.

I felt my breath freeze in my chest. No. It wasn’t just like my
kwi
. It
was
my
kwi
.

The
kwi
Bayta had been carrying.

I looked up at the mocking Jurian eyes gazing at me. “Where is she?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay quiet and controlled.

“She is safe,” the Modhri said. “There’s no need to worry.” He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Yet.”

I took a step toward him. “Where is she?” I repeated, my voice quavering slightly with black anger. My brain was spinning at Quadrail speeds, trying desperately to come up with a plan.

“I said she is safe,” the Modhri said, matching my tone. “For now, that’s all you need to know.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, taking another step toward him. Most people, I reflected grimly, would have started backing up about now, possibly doing a quick reevaluation on whether they really wanted to cross me or not.

But the Modhri didn’t think like that. To him,
Tas
Yelfro was just another of his slaves, one more disposable body in his collection. If he died at my hand, the Modhri would simply find or make a replacement.

And then, as I continued moving toward him, the germ of an idea finally surfaced. A risky, shaky idea, way too heavy on speculation and suspicion and way too light on actual fact. But it was the best I had, and it would have to do. “You’ll tell me where she is, and you’ll tell me now,” I continued, taking the one final step that put me within arm’s reach of him.

His beak cracked open in a mocking smile. “Really, Mr. Compton—”

The rest of the sentence disintegrated in an explosive gasp of surprise and pain as I drove my fist hard into his abdomen.

The typical Human response when hit like that would be to fold, jackknife-style, around the point of impact. The typical Jurian response, in contrast, was to go stiff as a board and fall backward. Except for his Modhran polyp colony,
Tas
Yelfro was indeed a typical Juri. He gasped again as he toppled backward like a frozen mannequin, the crash of his fall muffled by the thick carpet.

For a second he just lay there, looking like a molded lugeboard, staring at me in disbelief. I knelt down beside him and, just to show it hadn’t been an accident, I hit him again in the same spot.

He shook with the impact, his eyes and beak widening with agony and even more disbelief and the beginnings of genuine anger. “I’m going to go find her now,” I told him, gazing into his eyes with the most intimidating stare in my Westali arsenal. “If you try to stop me, I’ll just have to hurt more of your walkers.”

I lowered my face until it was only a few centimeters from his. “And if you hurt her,” I added quietly, “I’ll kill every walker in this station. You hear me? Every last one of them.”

He was still staring back at me, his eyes still swimming with pain. Only now, I could see the first stirrings of fear, as well. If I really succeeded in killing all his walkers, this particular mind segment would die, vanishing without a trace and leaving the overall Modhran mind to forever wonder what had happened here today.

It wasn’t an idle threat, either. I’d done it before, destroying the mind segment on an entire Quadrail train.

Or so he believed.

I held his gaze another couple of seconds, just to make sure he knew I was serious, pushing the bluff to the limit. Then, wrapping the
kwi
around my right hand, I stood up, crossed to the door, and eased it open.

My four Spider guards were still standing out there where I’d left them. Slipping out into the hallway, I closed the door behind me. “Can you locate Bayta?” I asked.

“You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” one of the Spiders said.

“I know that,” I said. “Can you locate Bayta? Yes or no?”

“No,” he said.

I felt my stomach tighten. For one telepath not to be able to locate another telepath meant one of three things: out of range, unconscious, or dead.

Not dead, I told myself firmly. Not dead. The Modhri was way too smart to throw away his best leverage against me by killing her out of hand. No, she was surely only unconscious.

Unfortunately, she could also be literally anywhere on the station. “Alert the rest of the Spiders to watch for her,” I ordered him. “You four start searching the passenger areas between here and the medical center.”

None of them so much as budged. “Did you hear me?” I demanded.

“You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” the Spider said.

“I have authority in Bayta’s name to give you orders,” I said, easing myself to the side where I would have a clear shot around his maze of legs. Actually, I wasn’t really sure how much authority I had over the Spiders when Bayta wasn’t with me.

“You are ordered to remain in your compartment,” the Spider said, still not moving.

I grimaced. Apparently, not much. “In that case—” I began.

And right in the middle of the sentence, I ducked past him and sprinted for the stairs.

Spiders being the simple workers that they are, I hadn’t expected them to react quickly enough to stop me. I was right, and was halfway down the first flight of the wide flowing staircase before they even made it to the landing.

Unfortunately, the Modhri wasn’t nearly so slow on the uptake. I had reached the fourth-floor landing and was rounding the corner onto the next curve of stairs when I heard the sounds of a small crowd further down the stairway on its way up.

I was halfway to the third floor when the front of that wave reached me.

There were four of them, all middle-aged Juriani dressed in quiet, dignified, upper-class clothing, breathing heavily as they bounded up the stairs like children in a hop-clink game. Behind them, just starting up the flight of stairs, were two Halkas wearing the trilayered robes of the Halkan Peerage. Apparently the Juriani were the sacrificial lambs, designed to slow me down as I barreled through them so that the larger Halkas could safely corral me before I did any serious damage.

But I had no intention of playing nicely. I waited until I was only three steps away from the panting Juriani, then veered to the outside of the stairway, grabbed the top of the railing, and flipped myself over the edge. Shifting my grip in midair to one of the railing’s vertical supports, I slid down until I was hanging straight over the railing of the next flight down. As my momentum swung me inward, I let go of the support and dropped to the stairs below.

Neatly putting me
below
the Modhri’s attack line.

I could hear the sudden flurry of activity above me as the Juriani and Halkas screeched to a halt and reversed direction. But they were too late. I was already on my way down, taking the stairs three at a time. I reached the lobby and charged past the rest of the astonished travelers out into the station.

Jurskala Station was the Quadrail stop for the Jurian home system, and as such was large, elaborate, and teeming with travelers. Despite my desperate hurry, I forced myself to slow to a walk, knowing that nothing drew attention faster than someone running full tilt through a crowd. The Modhri was relying on alien minds and alien eyes, and it was likely that most of the people moving through the station had never bothered learning how to distinguish one Human from another.

Even so, I doubted I could slip past all the walkers, not with the Modhri bending every resource he had here toward locating me. Certainly I’d never stay below the radar long enough to find Bayta.

But then, despite the impression I’d worked so hard to leave with the Modhri up in my room, I had no intention of turning the station upside down until I found her. All I needed right now was to get to the stationmaster and make sure he didn’t carry out the arrangements I’d sent Bayta to make.

A chipmunk-faced Bellido stepped into my path, a set of three guns holstered beneath the arms of his elaborately embroidered robe. “Excuse me—” he began.

I shouldered my way past him and picked up my pace, cursing under my breath. I’d hoped to get at least a little farther before I was spotted. Theoretically, I knew, I shouldn’t have to physically confront the stationmaster, but should be able to relay my instructions to him via any Spider. But Spiders had varying degrees of imagination and autonomy, none of them very impressive, and I didn’t dare risk that my message would get garbled or ignored.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted two Tra’ho’seej angling toward me. I responded by shifting direction toward a bulky Cimma also coming toward me, did a quick sidestep around him, and headed off in another direction entirely. I ducked behind and around a pair of Halkas, passed by a Human wearing a Sorbonne collegiate scarf and jacket, and made a tight circle to put me again on a path to the stationmaster’s office.

And suddenly a pair of metallic Spider legs came angling down from my right, hitting the floor directly in front of me.

I had no chance to sidestep or even stop. I slammed into them, feeling them flex a bit with the impact, and bounced back. Before I could do more than catch my balance the Spider swiveled around behind me and wrapped another of his legs, wrestler-style, around my waist. A second later two more legs lifted from the floor and poked their way horizontally under my armpits, and the damn thing lifted me up like a weightlifter doing biceps curls.

And I found myself staring at my distorted reflection in a shiny Spider globe.

But not just any Spider globe. As I looked at the pattern of white dots beneath my face, I realized this was the same Spider I’d done that trampoline off of in my previous train’s baggage car.

Was that why he was here? Looking for payback?

He pulled me higher and closer until my cheek was pressed against his globe. I braced myself, wondering if he was going to try bouncing off of me now, just to show me what it felt like, or whether he’d just settle for playing kickball with me across the station.

But to my surprise, I just heard a quiet Spider voice in my ear, almost too quiet to hear. “What do you do here, friend?”

I felt my chest tighten. I’d never had a Spider call me friend. For that matter, I’d never heard of a Spider calling
anyone
friend.

And in that single numbing second I knew that my earlier speculations and suspicions had been right.

God help us all.

“What do you do here, friend?” the Spider asked again.

I took a deep breath. Whatever else this might mean—whatever the implications for the future—my first priority was to get Bayta away from the Modhri. “I need to get a message to the stationmaster,” I said. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” he said.

I gave him the message, keeping it short and clear and as authoritative as I could make it. Hanging a half meter off a Quadrail station floor being stared at by hundreds of bemused aliens was no time to get long-winded. “Can he do that?” I asked when I’d finished.

“He will do that,” the Spider said.

I grimaced, the sinking feeling in my stomach dropping another couple of floors. “Then I suppose I need to get back to my prison,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said.

I frowned, focusing on the station around me. To my surprise, I discovered that we were already in motion, though the Spider was walking so smoothly I hadn’t even noticed when, we’d started up. The Eulalee Hotel’s main entrance was in sight out of the corner of my eye, and I could see the two Halkas who’d tried to corral me on the stairs waiting watchfully off to the side.

Belatedly, I realized I probably looked like an oversized baby in its mother’s chest carrier. “I can make it from here, Spot,” I told the Spider.

There was a slight pause, as if he was pondering the nickname I’d just given him. “It is ordered that you be delivered to your prison,” he told me.

“This is extremely undignified,” I tried again. “Dignity is important to Humans.”

He didn’t answer. He also didn’t put me down.

And considering the look on the Halkas’ faces as we passed, maybe it was just as well that he didn’t. The Modhri was apparently still mad at me.

The four Spider guards were back in their semicircle around my door when we reached my room. Spot set me down, one of the guards unlocked my door, and I went inside.

Tas
Yelfro had managed to pull himself off the floor and drag himself up onto the couch in my absence. “Human fool,” he rasped as I closed the door behind me. “Did you genuinely hope to accomplish anything useful?”

The voice was raspy, but the face and tone were still those of the Modhri. “You never know until you try,” I said, pulling over a chair to face him and sitting down. “I have a deal to propose.”

“What sort of deal?”

“One that’ll benefit both of us,” I said. “But first we need to clear the air a little. Specifically, I didn’t kill your walkers aboard the Quadrail. The baggage car decompressed, and they simply asphyxiated.”

He cocked his head to one side, the motion making him look more bird-like than ever. “Yes, I know,” he said. “How did you decompress the car?”

“I didn’t,” I told him. “It was probably some malfunction of the seals—the Spiders are looking into it. The point is that there’s no reason to blame me for any of that, or to try to take revenge.”

“I never take revenge,” he said. “Speak your proposal.”

“I want Bayta back,” I said.

“I want the Abomination,” he countered. “Deliver it, and you may have the Human female.”

“Actually, you don’t want the Abomination,” I said. “You want something far more valuable than that.”

“There is nothing more valuable than the Abomination.”

“You’re confusing means with ends,” I told him. “Tell me, if you had the Abomination coral right now, what would you do with him?”

“I would take it through the transfer station to Jurskala,” he said. “I have many outposts on that world.”

“And then?”

Something cold settled into the Modhri’s eyes. “It would reveal to me the location of the others.”

“No it wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ll never get that information. Not from the coral.”

“Once I surround the Abomination, it will have no choice.”

“It’ll never happen,” I insisted. “The coral will suicide long before he lets you get him to your interrogation chamber. Or hadn’t you heard about Lorelei Beach and what her symbiont colony did to itself on Earth?”

The Modhri’s eyes might have flashed a little on the word
symbiont
. “The Abomination will not have access to any such convenient means of self-destruction.”

“Who says he’ll need it?” I countered. “You have your polyp colonies kill their hosts and themselves all the time. Who says the Melding’s outpost can’t pull the same stunt inside his coral?”

The Modhri clacked his beak. “For a Human who claims cleverness, you quickly argue yourself into your own trap,” he said. “If the Abomination will not tell me where the others are hiding, then the only other source of that information is the young female. Do you wish for me to demand her instead in exchange for the Human Bayta?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I wish for you to take a wider view of all this. I mean, really, what
is
the Abomination? A couple hundred symbionts and a few chunks of coral. What kind of threat can they possibly be to you?”

He gave a loud, derisive snort. It was followed immediately by a wince of pain from his still-tender abdomen and lung sacs. “Of course the Abomination is not a threat,” he said. “This is not about threats.”

“No, it’s about principle, and cleansing the universe of a crime against nature,” I acknowledged. “Believe it or not, I understand the concept. But the Abomination has something far more valuable to you than simple revenge.”

“Explain.”

“Think about it a minute,” I urged. “The Abomination was hidden on New Tigris for close to ten years. In the past few months, he and his symbionts have been moving to some other location. You’ve probably been hunting him for a lot of that time, with every outpost and walker and soldier you’ve got.” I raised my eyebrows. “And yet, with all those resources, you still haven’t got a clue as to where they’ve all gone.”