Odd Girl Out (4 page)

She gave a quiet sigh. “I suppose not. Oh, and you’ll probably want this back.” Pulling a folded handkerchief from her pocket, she pushed it across the table toward me.

I closed my hand over it, feeling the reassuring weight of the Chahwyn
kwi
weapon as I picked it up. “Thanks,” I said, slipping it into my own pocket. “Did you have to use it?”

She shook her head. “The Modhri seems to be avoiding me.”

“I don’t blame him,” I said. The
kwi
had two basic settings—unconsciousness and pain—both of which worked quite well against Modhran walkers.

Of course, it was anyone’s guess as to how long the thing would last. The
kwi
was over a millennium old, a relic from the war that had originally spawned the Modhri in the first place. The Chahwyn who’d dug up the
kwi
didn’t know an awful lot about it, including if or when it might suddenly pop a vital circuit and become nothing more than a flexible and rather decorative set of brass knuckles.

Still, for now the thing worked, and it worked well, and the Chahwyn had given me permission—albeit grudgingly—to carry it aboard the Quadrail. For that I was grateful.

Grateful enough that I didn’t even resent the fact that Bayta and I seemed to be field-testing the thing for them.

Retrieving my cash stick, I stood up and keyed the leash control inside my jacket. Obediently, the two bags at my feet aligned themselves, ready to roll as soon as I started moving. Bayta also stood up, her bags similarly preparing themselves for duty. “Okay, let’s go,” I said. “Nice and easy and casual.”

“I know the routine,” Bayta said. “By the way, Frank…”

I looked at her, seeing the sudden discomfort and embarrassment in her face. “Yes?” I asked.

Her lip twitched. “Nothing,” she murmured. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I assured her. “I’m glad we’re back in the trenches together, too.”

A flicker of surprise crossed her face, followed rapidly by relief and then a second surge of embarrassment. “Right,” she said. “Me, too.”

“So let’s get to it,” I said, gesturing her ahead of me like a proper gentleman.

As we headed away from the table toward Platform Seven, out of the corner of my eye I saw our settled-looking Pirk get up off his bench. He fussed for a moment with his headdress, then started off in the same direction we were also going. I didn’t want to turn around and check on the two Humans, but I suspected they had joined the parade as well.

Fourteen hours to Yandro, another eleven back to New Tigris, then probably five to eight days to get to New Tigris proper via torchliner. Add in the twenty days since Lorelei had left New Tigris Station, plus the five to eight days up from the planet itself, and by the time we reached her kid sister Rebekah it would be a month or more that the girl had been on her own.

I just hoped she wasn’t in any pressing hurry to be rescued.

Sure enough, forty minutes later when our Quadrail pulled into the station, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and the Pirk were all waiting on our platform.

Though at very different positions along that platform. Bayta and I were at the head of the line, where the first-class compartment car would be stopping. The two Humans were farther back in the group waiting for the second-class cars. The Pirk, in contrast, was all the way at the far end of the line, poised for the last of the third-class cars, the one just in front of the baggage cars.

The incoming Terra Station passengers got off the train, we all got aboard, and a few minutes later we were on our way.

The trip proved surprisingly uneventful. Neither the Tweedles nor the Pirk would have been allowed in first-class territory, of course, not with second- and third-class tickets. But if any or all of them were walkers their colonies would be part of the train’s overall Modhran mind segment, and there ought to be at least one walker basking in the luxury of first-class. I half expected to be accosted somewhere along the line by some genteel ultra-rich traveler, probably as Bayta and I were walking back to the dining car.

But there was nothing. A few of the other passengers deigned to glance up as we passed by, but most of them ignored us completely.

Still, that didn’t mean the Modhri wasn’t aboard, or that he hadn’t spotted and identified us. He could easily be playing it coy, waiting to see where we were going before making any moves. Under that scenario, we would probably find a crowd getting off with us at Yandro Station.

This time, I was right. Not only did the two Tweedles join us on the platform, but so did four of our fellow first-class passengers: three Juriani and a Bellido. Yandro was hardly the kind of place to attract that kind of attention, which strongly suggested that all four of the latter had been heading elsewhere when the local Modhran mind segment had changed their plans for them. Idly, I wondered what kind of pretzel logic his unsuspecting hosts would use to rationalize this one.

To my mild surprise, the non-aromatic Pirk didn’t join us.

Bayta and I had two hours before we could catch the train heading back again toward New Tigris. With only eight of us getting off, it would have been highly suspicious if she and I had opted to wait at the station while the other six boarded the shuttle and headed across to the transfer station. It might even have induced the Modhri to take charge of his hosts long enough to find out what game I was playing this time.

Fortunately, I had something a little more subtle in mind. Trying to keep an eye on all six of the others as we trooped across to the shuttle hatchway, I ran the numbers and timings through my mind. It should be just about right.

“You must be joking,” I said, leveling one of my best Westali glares at the hapless Customs official on the other side of the counter. “You
lost
my
lockbox
?”

“I’m sure it’s not actually
lost
,” he assured me, trying to sound calm and confident as he punched keys on his terminal. It wasn’t a very convincing act. “It could have gotten mixed in with the crates from the last cargo train—”

“I don’t want excuses,” I cut him off. My act, unlike his, was superb, if I did say so myself. “I want my lockbox. I’m not leaving here without it.”

“I understand, Mr. Compton,” he assured me, still poking at his keys. “Fortunately, the torchferry for Yandro won’t be arriving until tomorrow That should be more than enough time to get this sorted out.”

“Really?” I countered. “What if it’s still aboard the Quadrail? What if it’s even now heading for Kerfsis or Jurskala or who the hell knows where? You still going to get it to me by tomorrow?”

“Sir, as far as I know the Spiders have never lost a piece of luggage,” he said, his confident tone beginning to fray at the edges.

“That’s not much comfort for the person who gets to be the first blot on their record, is it?” I said icily.

“No, sir, not really,” he conceded. “Let me call over to the stationmaster and get the Spiders looking for it over there.”

Finally; the cue I’d been waiting for. “Don’t bother,” I growled. “We’ll go talk to him ourselves. Is the shuttle still at the docking station?”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “But there aren’t any outgoing passengers right now.”

“It can make a special trip,” I said. “You owe me. Where can we leave our luggage?”

“You can’t go back to the Tube,” the clerk said.

“Why not?” I asked.

For a second he fumbled, the mark of a man who had just said something that surprised even him and was searching madly for the reason why he’d said it. “Well, you’re
here
,” he said at last. “I mean
here
, on this side of the station. You’ve already passed through Customs.”

“So we’ll pass through again,” I said. “You don’t look all that busy.”

“Well, no, sir, but that’s not the point. It’s just…” He trailed off, still looking confused.

No doubt he was, and I could almost sympathize. Clearly, the man was a walker, a leftover from the days when the Modhri had actually cared about what happened in Yandro system. Just as clearly, the mind segment currently consisting of the polyp colonies in him and our fellow travelers didn’t want me out of his collective sight.

Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t any official reason the official could point to forbidding me to go back to the Tube. And even the Modhri could only push his powers of rationalization so far. He could take over the man’s body, of course, but I didn’t think he was ready to go quite that far. “So where can we leave our luggage?” I asked again.

The clerk’s lip’s compressed. “You can leave it here behind the counter,” he said, his face still working with the strange internal conflict going on inside him. “There’s no secure holding area this side of Customs.”

“This’ll do fine,” I said. Shutting off my leash control, I picked up my bags and heaved them around the end of the counter, stacking them as far to the back as the narrow space allowed. “Give me your bags, Bayta.”

Silently, she handed me her bags, and I added them to the pile. “Now you just need to check us back through,” I told the clerk.

“Yes, sir.” Shutting down his terminal, he came out from behind the counter and crossed to the Customs counter five meters away. “I’ll need to see your IDs again.”

We showed him our IDs and allowed his body scanner to do its work. “And we’ll want a double room when we get back,” I added as he reluctantly waved us through. “And sleeping rooms on the torchferry, of course.”

“Of course,” the clerk said. His expression was mostly neutral, but there was a quiet watchfulness beneath it. Taking Bayta’s arm, I steered us through the doorway back into the outbound section of the transfer station.

And as we did so, I threw a casual glance back at our fellow travelers.

All six of them were watching us, their expressions a mix of concern and bemusement and sympathetic outrage for our unheard-of dilemma.

But beneath it all, on every one of those faces, I could see a hint of the Customs official’s same quiet watchfulness.

The Modhri wasn’t happy with me. Not a bit.

Bayta was obviously thinking the same thing. “He knows what we’re up to, you know,” she murmured as we headed for the shuttle bay.

“He
thinks
he knows what we’re up to,” I corrected. “The problem is, right now he can’t do anything about it.”

“He could send his walkers after us,” she reminded me. “They all must have come up with rationalizations as to why they were getting off at Yandro in the first place. Surely they wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with equally good reasons to leave again.”

“Right, but in order to do that, they’d have to clear their luggage through Customs again,” I pointed out. “That’ll take time, and we’ll be on our way to the Tube long before then.”

“Even with another walker in charge of giving them that clearance?”

So she’d noticed that, too. I’d expected she would. “That won’t help him any,” I said. “Human Customs routines are largely computerized, with no way for a mere clerk to bypass the routine and speed up the process. In theory, he could call in his supervisor for an override, but that would probably take more time than he’s got.”

“Couldn’t they leave their bags here, like we did?”

“Even the Modhri would have a hard time coming up with a rationalization for
that
one,” I said. “And I doubt he wants to risk taking over the hosts. Not six of them at once, not for the length of time this would take. If they compared notes afterward and discovered simultaneous blackouts, they might finally start to wonder.”

I smiled tightly. “Besides, lurking in the back of his ethereal little mind is probably the thought that I might be goading him into precisely that move. We could be pretending to head back to the Tube, then planning to double back and make off with their luggage when they hurry after us.”

She gave me a puzzled frown. “What in space would we want with their luggage?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But if the Modhri has learned anything, it’s not to underestimate how convoluted our plans can get.”

“How convoluted
your
plans can get.” “Whatever.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “He might still think it’s a risk worth taking.”

“What for?” I countered. “So we’re dumping this group. So what? We’re probably about to get back on the Quadrail, and he’s got eyes all over the Quadrail. He’ll just have the Customs agent or one of the passengers send messages both directions down the line to alert other mind segments, and figure he’ll pick up our trail again before we get too far.”

“Excuse me?” a voice called from behind us.

I set my teeth together and turned around. The Modhri might at least have had the common decency to make his move before I’d gone so firmly on record with my prediction that he wouldn’t. “Yes?” I asked, turning around.

It was one of my rotund fellow Humans, the one I’d dubbed Tweedledum. “My name’s Braithewick,” he said, puffing a bit as he came up to us. His luggage, I noted, was nowhere to be seen. Left behind, as I’d just explained to Bayta wouldn’t happen. “I’m an associate negotiations researcher at the UN.”

A glorified computer clerk, in other words. “And?” I prompted.

He seemed a bit surprised by my unenthusiastic response. “I work at the UN,” he repeated. “I wanted to offer my service in your negotiations with the stationmaster.”

“What negotiations?” I said. “I’m going to make him find my lockbox and send it over here, and that’ll be that.”

He chuckled. “You amateurs,” he said with a typical mid-level bureaucratic air of self-importance. “You always think it’s going to be that easy.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” I asked. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

He smiled cherubically… and suddenly the smile faded, and the flabby skin of his cheeks and throat seemed to sag. “Don’t play games, Compton,” he said, his voice subtly changed.

“Hello, Modhri,” I said, the skin at the back of my neck tingling unpleasantly. No matter how many times I watched a Modhran mind segment take over one of its hosts, it still creeped me out. “If you’re still looking for the Lynx, you’re out of luck. I haven’t got it.”

“You know what I seek,” the Modhri said. “I offer you a bargain: step back, and allow me to deal with it.”

“Is that a bargain, or a threat?” I asked. “What exactly is it you’re looking for?”

“You know what I seek,” he said again. “The Abomination.”

“Ah—that,” I said, nodding sagely as I wondered what he was talking about. “And what are you going to do when you find it?”

“It must be destroyed.”

“Like you destroyed the Human female back in Manhattan?” I asked. “Why
did
you kill her, anyway? Too heavy to take with you?”

“The Abomination must be destroyed,” he repeated, ignoring my questions. “For once, Compton, you and I
will
agree on this. You will want it destroyed as well as I.”

Another tingle tickled the back of my neck. False sincerity was a dollar a ton in this business, but there was something about the Modhri’s expression that half inclined me to believe him. “An interesting assumption,” I said. “You really believe that?”

“I do,” he said firmly

“In that case, let me make you a counteroffer,” I said. “
You
back off, and let
me
find it.”

His sag-faced expression actually shifted a bit. Surprise? Suspicion? “Why?” he asked.

“For one thing, because I’m the one offering the deal,” I said. “For another, I’m better at finding things than you are.” I cocked my head. “Or hasn’t your particular mind segment caught up with the news of the past few weeks?”

The Modhri shifted his gaze to Bayta. “I am aware of those events.”

“Good,” I said. “Really does save time when everyone’s up to speed. Is it a deal?”

His eyes searched my face, shifted again to Bayta, then came back to me. “It is,” he said. “I will accompany you to the Tube and pass on word of our new agreement.”

“You can pass it on later, after we’re on our way” I gestured back toward the Customs area. “Speaking of being on one’s way…?”

“It would be a gesture of good faith,” he said, not budging. “On your part as well as mine.”

“I said no,” I told him, dipping my hand into my pocket and getting a grip on the
kwi
. “Don’t make me insist.”

“Violence will not help you,” he pointed out calmly. “Not now. If you had shot all my Eyes when they stood together by the Customs counter, you might have achieved something. But not now. Not when another of my Eyes can immediately call the pilot and alert him that there is a madman loose in the station.”

I grimaced. But he was right. As soon as I realized the clerk was a walker, I should have zapped the whole bunch of them unconscious.

But wild and possibly indiscriminate shooting wasn’t a good idea even at the best of times, not even with a nonlethal weapon. Besides, I couldn’t have been sure there weren’t more walkers lurking elsewhere among the station’s personnel and guests.

For that matter, I still couldn’t. “So I have to zap the pilot, too,” I said, wondering why I was even bothering to run with this bluff. “I can fly the shuttle myself if I have to.”

He gave me a faint smile. “Come now, Compton,” he chided. “Do you really wish to draw that kind of attention to yourself? Besides, what would it gain you?”

“Apart from the satisfaction, it would let us start our trip with a little peace and quiet,” I said.

“Is
that
your concern?” he said. “Very well, then. As I said: a gesture of good faith.” He nodded behind him. “Shall I bring you your luggage?”

“If you’d like,” I said.

Actually, there wasn’t anything in the carrybags except some tablecloths we’d scrounged from the server Spiders in our last train’s dining car. Our clothing and other personal items were currently in plastic bags in the stationmaster’s office, along with my allegedly missing lockbox.

Still, as long as the play was blown anyway, we might as well have our bags back.

“Frank?” Bayta murmured tautly.

“I don’t like it either,” I conceded. “But there isn’t much we can do about it. The station has a crew of probably twenty or thirty, at least some of whom are probably walkers. We can’t take down everyone, and it would be lunacy to try.”

“Besides, there’s no need,” the Modhri added. “For the moment, at least, we have a common goal.”

“The destruction of the Abomination.”

“Correct.” He reached into his pocket. “Oh, and you may find this useful.” He opened his hand.

My stomach wrapped itself into a tight knot. Nestled in his pudgy palm was a silver necklace. The match to the ring I was carrying in my own pocket.

The necklace Lorelei had been wearing when she was killed.

“Thanks,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm as I plucked it out of his hand. If the Modhri was looking for a reaction from me, he wasn’t going to get the satisfaction.

“You’re welcome.” He turned his head to look behind us.

And as he did so, the skin of his face tightened up again out of its sag. “Sorry,” Braithewick said, his voice back to normal. “Sorry. Zoned out on you there for a minute.”

“That’s okay,” I murmured, slipping the necklace into my pocket. “I wasn’t saying anything important.”

“At any rate, as I was starting to say, dealing with the Spiders can take a little professional finesse,” he said briskly. “I was thinking that it might take some time and—ah; your luggage.”

The Customs official came into sight, looking like a dit rec comedy bellhop as he struggled with two people’s worth of travel bags. “I took the liberty of suggesting to him that it would look better if you had your bags with you,” Braithewick explained, a slight frown creasing his forehead.