Odd Girl Out

  “Except for one small but critical fact,” I said. “The small fact that the Modhri didn’t create the Melding.”

  I leveled a finger at him. “You did.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  For a long minute the Chahwyn just gazed across the room at me. “How did you learn this?” he asked at last.

  At least he wasn’t going to waste my time with a useless bluff. I had to give him points for that one. “Lots of little things,” I said. “In retrospect, I’m surprised it took me as long as it did.”

  I nodded behind me. “For starters, this business of melding species together is your trademark trick, not the Modhri’s. It’s the same thing you did with Bayta. In fact, Rebekah even pointed that out. Does she know, by the way?”

  “Rebekah does not know,” the Chahwyn said. “None of the Melding does.”

  “Nice to know she’s not as accomplished a liar as I was starting to think,” I said. “The next clue was that Rebekah told us the Melding had a secret place where they’d all gone to hide. You don’t get anywhere in this galaxy, certainly not by Quadrail, without Spider cooperation. In a case like this, Spider cooperation means Chahwyn cooperation. QED.”

  His eye-ridge tufts quivered. “QED?”

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” I explained. “It’s from an old Earth language and means that which was to have been proved. In this case, Chahwyn knowledge implies Chahwyn complicity.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Where exactly is the Melding hiding place, by the way?”

  “In an uninhabited system near Sibbrava which the Cimmaheem are thinking about developing,” the Chahwyn said. “There is a temporary Quadrail stop there which services only their exploration teams.”

  “But of course there’s no official station yet,” I said, nodding. “Which means no manned support services, no resident personnel, and no transfer station with its contingent of nosy Customs agents. Give the Melding a transport or two, and they can go anywhere.”

  “They have such a transport.”

  “Again, QED,” I said. “There was also your rather ham-handed attempt to protect the coral—or what you thought was the coral—from the Modhri on the train into Jurskala. There was no reason for his walkers to have moved the crate all the way to the last cargo car. You did that, probably sending your Spiders across from this very tender to get it out of their reach. When the walkers came looking for it, you let them get into the second car and popped the roof.”

  “Yes,” the Chahwyn said. “I did not expect him to blame you for that.”

  “I’m sure I appreciate the thought.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the kwi Rebekah had given me. “But this was the real clincher,” I continued, holding it up. “At the critical moment in our fight, Rebekah was able to get this to me. She told me afterward that she’d found it in one of the walkers’ pockets.”

  “You don’t believe that to be the truth?”

  “I know it isn’t.” I reached into my other pocket. “Because this is my kwi.”

  For a moment he gazed at the two weapons, his eye-ridge tufts again quivering. “What will you tell Bayta?” he asked.

  “That depends,” I said. “In retrospect, I can see that from the moment Lorelei showed up in my apartment this whole thing was designed to get Bayta and me to help sneak Rebekah off New Tigris and to safety.”

  “She was trapped and alone,” the Chahwyn said, a note of quiet pleading in his voice. “Our Spiders could not help her, not on a Human world far from the Tube. You were the only ones we could turn to.”

  “In principle, I have no problem with that,” I said. “We do work for you, after all.” I let my face harden. “But that’s hardly the whole story. You wanted us to help Rebekah . . . but yet you didn’t want us to know you were also involved with her. Still don’t, for that matter. I want to know why.”

  He exhaled softly, a sound that was almost a whistle but not quite. “Because we were afraid,” he said, his voice low and earnest and even a little ashamed. “We were afraid of what you would think.”

  “What would we think?” I countered. “That you were trying to find a way to infuse the Modhri with a calmer, gentler, less aggressive form of himself? As a matter of fact, I brought up that exact idea myself.”

  “Yet you were extremely angry when you first learned what we had done to create the Human/Chahwyn symbiont that is Bayta,” he reminded me. “Your anger nearly caused you to turn your back on us instead of choosing to support us.”

  “I think you’re overstating the case just a bit,” I said.

  “If so, only in degree, not in substance,” he said. “But more than that, there were Bayta’s feelings to consider. Whatever she may think about herself and her Chahwyn symbiont, would she accept that doing the same with Modhran polyps and other living beings was both acceptable and needful?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But considering how close she and Rebekah have become over the past couple of weeks, I don’t think she would have a problem with it.”

  “Perhaps not,” the Chahwyn said. “But it was a risk we dared not take.” His face elongated slightly. “A risk we are still not prepared to take.”

  “In other words, you want me to keep my mouth shut about this?”

  “We would be most grateful if you would,” the Chahwyn said, relief evident in his voice.

  “I’m sure you would,” I said. “But that’s not the whole story, either. And you, Elder of the Chahwyn, are a liar.” I stuffed the two kwis back into my pockets. “Permit me to prove it.” Bracing myself, I started toward him.

  His mouth dropped open, his body stiffening with disbelief and probably fear. But the two Spiders flanking him didn’t even hesitate. Before I’d made it three steps they had moved in front of their master, each dropping into a low, four-legged stance with his other three legs raised high like a tarantula preparing to strike. I kept coming, feinting right and then ducking left.

  And suddenly I found myself wrapped in a cold metallic grip as one of the Spiders snatched me off the floor. A second later my back was slammed none too gently against the top of the side wall.

  I looked past the shiny Spider sphere at the Chahwyn still sitting frozen in his chair. “QED,” I said quietly. “The Melding experiment isn’t just your attempt to create a less dangerous Modhri.”

  “You’re trying to create a Spider army.”

  “You are a fool,” the Chahwyn bit out, his breath coming in short, spasmodic bursts now. “You don’t understand your danger.”

  “Oh, I understand my danger quite well,” I assured him, wincing as the Spider’s legs dug into my already sore ribs. “The question is, do you understand yours?”

  For maybe a quarter minute no one moved or spoke. Then, slowly, the Spider holding me lowered me back to the floor. “You don’t understand,” the Chahwyn said again, his melodic voice gone flat and lifeless. “We cannot fight. We cannot defend ourselves. We are helpless before the Modhran onslaught. We had to do something.”

  “You did do something,” I told him. “You hired me.”

  He snorted, a dog-like sound. “Do truly think you can defeat the Modhri alone?”

  “I’m not alone,” I said. “Neither are you. We have allies all over the galaxy. Not many of them, granted. Not yet. But our ranks are growing.”

  “Not as quickly as the ranks of the enemy.”

  “Perhaps,” I conceded. “But you can’t defeat the Modhri by becoming just like him.”

  He looked back and forth between the two Spiders. “Then what do we become?” he asked. “Or do we simply resign ourselves to defeat and destruction?”

  “You never do that,” I told him firmly. “As to what you should become, that’s a question for people a lot smarter than I am. All I know is that you’ve kept peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy by being what you are, and by keeping the Spiders what you created them to be. You don’t want to be in a hurry to upset that balance.”

  His eyes were steady on me. “Will you tell Bayta???
? he asked.

  I thought about it a moment. “No,” I told him. “Or at least, not yet. But circumstances may force me to do so somewhere down the line.”

  His mouth flattened into a wan smile. “As circumstances may likewise force us to do what we would otherwise prefer not to do?”

  I grimaced. I hated it when people used my own logic against me. “I never said any of this was simple. I just don’t want you to turn a corner you may wind up bitterly regretting later on. Certainly not until turning that corner is absolutely necessary.”

  “And until then?”

  “Stay with what you are,” I said. “Hold on to the high ground, and give the less noble people like me time to do our jobs. We can stop the Modhri. I know we can. But I want to make sure that when it’s over we all have a safe, nondespotic Quadrail to ride home in.”

  His eye-ridge tufts twitched. “I will deliver that message,” he said. “I do not guarantee the reception it will receive.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “What about this second kwi? Do you want it, or does it go back to Rebekah?”

  “I will take it,” he said. He held out a hand, the hand and arm both stretching fluidly toward me. “She was asked to keep that part of our involvement secret. It would disturb her to learn you had penetrated her deception by returning the weapon to her.”

  “Which is one more good reason to back off the path you’re taking,” I pointed out as I dropped the kwi into his hand. “If you hadn’t been so concerned about Bayta and me finding out about your new class of Spiders, there would have been no need for you to play this whole thing so far under the table. Rebekah could have given me the kwi when we first boarded the train and saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  “Yes.” The Chahwyn paused. “How did you learn of our new Spiders, if I may ask?”

  “Basically, because you tried to be clever,” I said. “I already knew there was a class of Spider I didn’t know about—there’d been a couple of them hanging around every time we were spirited off a train for a chat with one of your people. I saw one of them aboard our previous train—I call him Spot, by the way—who probably came aboard with the group who moved our crate and then came into the passenger part of the train to keep an eye on things. They use a different telepathic frequency than regular Spiders, don’t they?”

  “They can communicate on both levels,” the Chahwyn said. “It is similar to the difference in communication between the Modhri and the Melding.”

  “Both of which are also different from the Chahwyn’s frequency,” I said as a stray fact suddenly stuck me. “Rebekah’s kwi was tuned to the Melding frequency, wasn’t it? She was the one activating it for me, not Bayta.”

  “Correct,” the Chahwyn said. “Now that it has been returned, it will have to be retuned to the Chahwyn frequency.”

  “While you’re at it, you should probably check the batteries,” I said. “The six-hour knockout charge is only lasting a few minutes.”

  “That is not a problem with the weapon,” the Chahwyn said. “It is because the Modhri mind segment had coral nearby.”

  I frowned. “What does coral have to do with it?”

  “When the mind segment includes a coral outpost, the effects of the kwi are not as strong or long-lasting,” he said. “We believe the polyps in the coral are able to absorb some of the effect and dissipate it more quickly than is possible for a non-coral mind segment.”

  “Oh, that’s handy,” I growled. “And when were you planning to tell me this?”

  His cheeks puffed out slightly. “We did not know it ourselves until recently.”

  Terrific. “Anything else you didn’t know until recently that you’d like to share with the class?”

  “Not as yet,” he said. “But you were speaking about the Spiders.”

  I grimaced. Getting timely and useful information out of the Chahwyn was like pulling teeth with greased fingers. “The problem came when you decided to disguise your special agent by printing—”

  “Our defender,” the Chahwyn corrected. “We call them defenders.”

  “Nice name,” I said. “It was when you decided to disguise him by putting a stationmaster’s dot pattern on his globe. It was reasonable enough in its way, I suppose—the two classes are about the same size, and I assume stationmasters are transferred back and forth on regular passenger trains every now and then. The problem was that when I mentioned him to Bayta, she told me there were no stationmasters aboard.”

  “She could have been mistaken.”

  “With a whole trainful of Spiders as her information network?” I shook my head. “No, it was simply that she’d asked the wrong question. If you’re in a band, and someone sees the trumpet player carrying a flute case, that person might ask you who the flutist is. You, knowing full well the band doesn’t have a flutist, would tell the questioner he was nuts. If Bayta had asked if there was a non-standard Spider aboard, they might have told her there was, and we would have figured it out sooner.”

  “Yes,” he murmured. “And indeed, you describe a perfect example of the problem we seek so urgently to overcome. Would a Human have simply answered the question he was asked without also volunteering the bit of information that he hadn’t been asked?”

  “Actually, some Humans probably would,” I told him. “We call them bureaucrats and mid-level managers.”

  “But the best Humans would not.”

  “Probably not,” I conceded.

  His eye-ridge tufts twitched. “Best of fortune to you, Frank Compton.”

  Apparently, the interview was over. But that was all right. I’d said everything I’d come here to say. “And to you, Elder of the Chahwyn,” I replied.

  The temporary Quadrail stop was nothing to look at, consisting of a couple of cargo-sized hatches, a single-story storage building, and a loop of track where a tender or small train could pull off the main track for loading and unloading. A passenger staring out his window at the long light-years of Tube could blink at the wrong moment and miss it completely.

  Even at that, it had probably cost around a quarter trillion dollars. Building stops along the Tube didn’t come cheap. I hoped the Cimmaheem would get more out of their new colony than Earth had out of hers.

  There were two figures waiting for us by a corner of the supply building as Bayta and I escorted Rebekah from the tender: a Pirk and a thirtyish Human female. They started walking toward us as we came into sight. “Beheoro and Karyn,” Rebekah identified them quietly. “Beheoro was Drorcro’s sister.”

  The Pirk who’d sacrificed himself to protect us from the two walkers on the New Tigris transfer station. Whether we’d actually wanted that protection or not. “Do they know about him?” I asked.

  Rebekah nodded. “I’ve just told them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  The five of us met in the middle. “Greetings to you, Frank Compton and Bayta,” Karyn said, nodding gravely. “We thank you for what you’ve done for Rebekah.” Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. “And for our brother.”

  I looked back to see the Spiders carrying out the lockboxes full of Melding coral. “We were glad to help,” I said, turning back again. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more.” I looked at Beheoro. “Especially for those who were lost.”

  “Drorcro is not truly lost,” the Pirk said quietly. “While the Melding lives, so will he.”

  “Of course,” I said lamely. That old funeral eulogy platitude, that the deceased would continue to live on in the hearts of those left behind, had always rather irritated me. But in this case, I had the discomfiting feeling that it might actually be true. “Well, Rebekah, I guess this is it. Take care of—”

  The rest of my stock cliché farewell vanished in a puff of air as she threw herself against me in a startlingly strong bear hug. “Thank you,” she murmured into my chest. “Thank you.”

  With only a slight hesitation, I put my arms around her. “You’re welcome,” I murmured back.

  We held the hug anot
her few seconds. Then, disentangling herself from me, she turned and gave Bayta a hug of similar or possibly even greater vigor and earnestness. A few murmured words passed between them, but I never found out what they said to each other.

  And with that, it was finally over. For now.

  “Come on,” I told Bayta as we watched the four of them and the coral-laden Spiders heading for the hatch and the transport waiting outside. “Time to go.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  After the carnage aboard our last Quadrail, I wasn’t looking forward to climbing onto a normal first-class car for the trip back to Earth. Fortunately, the Spiders seemed to understand, and instead gave us a lift back in the tender.

  This time around, I made sure to stay put at our end of the train. If Bayta ever realized there was a Chahwyn at the other end, she never mentioned it.

  A brief message reached us via Spider telepathy as we slowed down for one of the stations. Via Bayta and our Spiders, I used the same technique to send back a reply as we passed through the next station in line.

  Thus it was that we reached Terra Station to find Bruce McMicking waiting for us at my favorite Quadrail restaurant.

  “Welcome home,” he greeted us, half standing in old-world courtesy as I helped Bayta into her seat. Her wrist was merely sprained, we’d concluded, but it was still a little weak. “I trust your trip went smoothly?”

  “As smoothly as could be expected,” I told him. “Yours?”

  “Spectacularly successful,” he said. “I appreciate your help.”

  “As we appreciate yours,” I said. “You didn’t happen to peruse the Manhattan criminal court directory while you were waiting here for us, did you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” he said. “The good news is that you’ve been cleared of the double murder the Modhri tried to hang you with.”

  “Really,” I said, frowning. “That was quick.”

  “Straightforward, really,” McMicking said. “With the three killings on the New Tigris transfer station—which, timing-wise, you couldn’t possibly have been involved with—plus the presence of your stolen Heckler-Koch among the victims, Detective Kylowski realized his case against you wasn’t nearly strong enough to continue with. All charges have been dropped, though he got your gun permit suspended for the next year.”