The Third Lynx

The rain had increased in intensity while we'd been inside, but the lack of wind kept it from blowing beneath our hoods into our faces or otherwise being particularly unpleasant. The neighborhood immediately around us seemed to have reacted to the precipitation by closing down for the night, most of the houses showing cheery lights through their curtained windows as their inhabitants settled in for the evening. There were still a few pedestrians in sight, but none was closer than half a block away. There were also a fair number of cars out and about, but the drivers all seemed intent on taking care of their business and getting back home.

We walked without speaking, surrounded by the sizzle of the rain on the sidewalk and the hissing of tires on wet pavement as cars went by. The homes and other buildings around us gradually changed from our original middle-class neighborhood to a slightly lower-middle-class area, then reversed itself and started up the social scale again. By the time we reached the museum grounds, the houses had become full-bore estates, with the sculpted facades and manicured lawns and fenced perimeters to prove it.

The art museum itself left them all in the dust.

It was as if the designers couldn't make up their minds whether they wanted a museum, a mansion, or a Greek temple, so they'd compromised and made it a combination of all three. The place was as imposing as the Rock of Gibraltar, had the solid look of a structure built to last into the next millennium, and was big enough to lose a small army inside. Apparently, the people of Magaraa City took their reputation as art lovers very seriously.

And it was currently lit up like Times Square on VI Day. "I thought you said they'd closed early tonight," I said in a low voice as we walked toward it.

"They did," Fayr confirmed. "The staff must be preparing for the auction."

"Auction?"

"An art auction tomorrow evening," he explained. "The objects for sale will be on display during the day for potential buyers to examine."

"This sort of thing happen often?" I asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Fayr said. "The fifty percent commission the museum will be charging for each sale will be put toward repairing the damage caused by the intrusion. Come—there's a side door we can use."

The side door turned out to be a service entrance built to accommodate forklift-sized vehicles and their cargoes. It was locked, but apparently not all that seriously, and in less than thirty seconds Fayr had it open wide enough for us to get through. "Stay here," he murmured, and slipped inside. Nudging Bayta back into what limited shadows there were near the door, I drew my gun, keeping it ready but hidden beneath the edge of my poncho.

Two minutes later Fayr was back. "Come, but quietly," he said.

Beyond the door was a wide service corridor with the utilitarian look of service corridors everywhere. Fayr led us through a maze of several more, each getting progressively narrower as other corridors branched off the main one to other parts of the museum.

Finally, we reached one that dead-ended at a normal-sized door. Fayr eased it open, looked inside, then gestured us in.

Up to now all we'd seen of the museum's interior were the staff and worker sections. With this room we'd finally made it into the public display areas, and I saw that the same people who'd designed the exterior had extended their schizophrenic triple architectural theme inward. The gallery we were in was quite large, with curved marble walls and a cupola-type ceiling with moldings and frescoes and whatnots thrown in everywhere by the shovelful. The carpeted softfloor had an embedded pattern of tiny starlights that could probably be programmed to give a viewer a customized tour, while strategically placed benches allowed the serious art connoisseur to linger in his or her contemplation.

It was truly a place of elegance and beauty. Or at least it had been. Now, squarely in the center of all that splendor, the gallery had become a blackened, ruined mess.

"The damage I spoke of," Fayr said. "Tell me what you make of it."

I walked across the floor, eyeing the destruction as I ran through my mental list of things that go bump in the night. It had been caused by an explosion—that much was obvious. But the radius of the blast and the progressive damage pattern didn't match anything I was familiar with. "What did the police report say?" I asked.

"That there had been an explosion," Fayr said. "Specific cause unknown."

"Any witnesses or security records?"

"The security cameras had been shut down," Fayr said. "Suspicion has fallen on one or both of the two guards on duty that night, neither of whom has been seen since then."

"Neither of them?"

"No," he said. "But traces of their nucleic matter was recovered at the site, along with that of an unidentified Jurian."

I rubbed my jaw as I measured distances with my eyes. The explosion had caused nearly complete destruction within a three-meter-radius sphere, even chewing up the floor, the subflooring, and the concrete foundation. But outside that radius, the damage dropped off dramatically to the point where the floor, display easels, and pillars ten meters away weren't even scorched. "The first part seems straightforward enough, anyway," I said. "The Modhri turned one of the guards into a walker and used him to shut off the cameras and open the door for the Jurian thief."

"But then what of the explosion?" Fayr asked. "Did the second guard surprise them and a grenade accidentally go off?"

"Does seem awfully sloppy on somebody's part," I agreed. "Besides, all short-range grenades I know of leave a lot more body residue behind. Do we know where the Viper was displayed?"

Fayr pointed across the room. "It was in a case against that wall with several other Nemuti artifacts."

"So the thieves were heading for our service door," I concluded, a funny feeling starting to grow in the pit of my stomach. "But before they could reach it, the second guard came in and confronted them. Shortly thereafter, the whole group got themselves vaporized."

There was a long, heavy silence. Bayta broke it first, with the conclusion all three of us had obviously reached. "The Viper exploded," she said, her voice tight. "That's what the Nemuti sculptures are. They're bombs."

"And the Modhri already has seven of them," I added, the funny feeling in my stomach changing to a knot as the full implications of that began to trickle in.

"Apparently so," Fayr said. "Still, unless the Modhri can create a more powerful version, I don't see how this gains him very much."

"That's because you don't know the whole story," I told him. "I had the opportunity to do a scan of one of the Hawks on the trip here. It turns out the things are sensor chameleons. Put one of them in a bag, maybe even just wrap a towel around it, and it takes on the characteristics of that object as far as sensors are concerned. It might work with liquids, too. I never got a chance to test that."

Fayr's facial stripes had gone dark. "Are you saying," he said slowly, "that they can be taken aboard a Quadrail train without detection?"

"You got it," I said grimly. "Aboard a Quadrail, through a transfer station, probably even onto a warship. The Modhri doesn't have to learn how to enhance the effect, Fayr. If he can figure out even just how to duplicate it, this war is about to take a very nasty turn."

"He's going to use them against the Spiders," Bayta murmured, a shiver running through her. "He can't infiltrate them or take them over, so he's going to kill them."

"Actually, he's not," I assured her. "Because we're going to stop him."

She turned hot eyes to me. "Will that be before or after we rescue Ms. Auslander from him?"

"Why not do both together?" I said tartly. "I am capable of thinking about more than one thing at the same time, you know."

"It's not the thinking part I'm worried about," she countered.

"Then what are you worried about?" I demanded. "That Penny's going to steal me away from you?"

I knew the instant the words were out of my mouth that it was the absolutely wrong thing to say. But the words were already gone, and it was an eternity too late to call them back. Bayta's throat tightened, her eyes again those of someone who's just been slapped. Without a word, she spun around and stalked away from us across the room.

I started to follow her, paused; started to speak; paused again. Indecision and inertia won out and I didn't do anything. "That was helpful," Fayr murmured.

"Thank you," I growled back.

"You'll need to find another opportunity to talk," he said. Again, ir was more order than suggestion. "In the meantime, the Nemuti sculptures as bombs cannot be the whole story."

"Why not?" I asked, my eyes and half my attention still on Bayta's stiff back.

"If he seeks to reproduce the effect, he needs only one sculpture to experiment with," Fayr said. "He certainly would not need to go to this much risk to obtain the last Lynx."

Resolutely, I shook Bayta and her anger at me out of my mind. Fayr was right. "Unless he doesn't think he can duplicate the technology," I said. "In that case, he'd want every one he can get hold of."

"No " Fayr said, shaking his head. "Something is still missing."

"Maybe we can figure it out once we have the Lynx," I said. "Earlier you said—"

I broke off as his left hand suddenly snapped up in a gesture for silence. He spun to face the archway leading out of our gallery into die rest of the museum, his Rontra popping into view from beneath the concealing poncho.

I resisted the urge to make extraneous noise by hauling out my own gun, opting instead to freeze in place and listen. The typical sounds of a large, mostly hollow, mostly deserted building whispered across my ears.

And then my ears and brain edited out the background noise, and I heard the slow, measured footsteps coming our way.

Bayta heard the footsteps, too. She turned back toward Fayr and me, her eyes wide with sudden urgency. I motioned for her to stay put, and got a grip on my gun. The footsteps came closer …

"Compton?" a familiar voice called softly from somewhere beyond the archway.

It was Gargantua.

Fayr threw me a sideways look. I threw him one back, making sure mine had a little curdle to it. So much for his sunburst grenade knocking Gargantua and the other Halkan walker out of the game for the rest of the night.

"Compton?" Gargantua called again, a little louder this time. "Please come out. I plan no action against you, but wish merely to talk."

Bayta was shaking her head, pointing insistently at the service door we'd used on our way in. I looked at Fayr again, saw my own ambivalence reflected there. Bayta's choice of a fast cut and run seemed the logical response. Certainly it would be the smart military move.

But if the Modhri wanted to take us, he would have cops surrounding the building by now. Actually, he would probably have had them lobbing in sleep gas already. Chances were good that, for once, he was telling the truth.

Fayr was still waiting for my call. Keeping hold of my gun, I gave Bayta a reassuring smile and made my way across the gallery. Carefully, I peeked around the corner.

I was looking into another gallery, this one every bit as elegant as the one I was standing in. More elegant, actually, since no one had set of a bomb in the middle of it.

Seated on one of the contemplation benches about twenty meters away was Gargantua.

He was, to put it bluntly, a mess. His eyes were heavily bandaged, the bandage riding over the top curve of his snout and half covering his ears. The facial skin the bandage didn't cover had gone a deep purple, the Halkan version of serious sunburn. Gripped in his hands was a sensor cane, its bottom end planted firmly in the softfloor, its aperture swiveling back and forth across the width of my archway.

"Hello, Modhri," I greeted him as I came the rest of the way around the corner. "You're looking good."

"You lie," Gargantua said calmly. The hand resting on the top of the cane rotated a little, swiveling the sensor aperture to point directly at me. "A very effective weapon, that."

"Especially against someone like you who shares pain and all the other unpleasantries of life," I agreed. "How are you doing with the Tra'ho'seej vertigo? I notice you decided to sit down."

His lips curled back to reveal his teeth. "I'm not in a position to force you to my will, if that's what you mean," he said. "Still, never forget that I can eliminate that particular effect whenever I choose."

Translation: at any point the Modhri colonies inside the Tra'ho'seej could simply kill themselves and their hosts, eliminating the vertigo flowing through the local Modhri mind segment by eliminating the central nervous systems that were generating it. Rather like curing dandruff by cutting off your head, except that in this case it would actually work. "I don't think that would be a good idea," I pointed out. "By my count, you're down to two functioning walkers at the moment."

"That, too, is easily changed," he said. "But I didn't come here to talk about me. I came to talk about your Human friends."

I felt a lump rise into my throat. Penny …"How are they doing?"

"They are in pain," the Modhri said. "Also frightened. Also very angry."

I grimaced before I could catch myself. "I imagine so," I agreed, wondering fleetingly what kind of visual resolution he was getting from his cane. With Humans, it took a month or more of practice before the brain learned to read the input stream well enough to decipher faces and read expressions. I didn't know how long that adaptation took with Halkas, and had even less of an idea how long it took with the Modhri.

Apparently not as long as I would have liked. "You seem distressed," he said.

"I've seen you in action," I reminded him. "I dislike the thought of any civilized being falling into your hands."

"As well you should," he said coldly. "But at the moment there is no need for concern. The only damage perpetrated on either of them was that inflicted by the Human McMicking."

"Who?" I asked innocently.

And this time I did manage to keep my face from giving anything away. So the Modhri thought it was Larry Hardin's troubleshooter Bruce McMicking who had thrown the sunburst grenade, and not the rogue Belldic commando Korak Fayr. A reasonable mistake for him to have made, and one that might prove to be useful.

"Do not play innocent," Gargantua admonished me. "I saw him throw that grenade."

"Actually, all you saw was a street drifter fumbling with something," I corrected him. "You never saw the actual grenade."

Gargantua snorted. "This is a foolish lie," he said. "I know you had no such device with you."

"Do you?" I countered, raising my eyebrows.

For a long minute he remained silent, his face turned to me as if he was trying to stare straight through his bandages into my mind.

Because I was right. All he actually knew was that he'd had me under surveillance since before we'd left the Quadrail, and that I hadn't had a chance to pick up any military hardware along the way.

And of course, he knew that no one was permitted to carry such things aboard a Quadrail.

But he also knew that I was in league with the Spiders …and allies of the Spiders might operate under entirely different rules.

"I know what I saw," he said at last. "But even with the Human McMicking's aid, it will not be possible for you to locate the other Humans." His face hardened. "I would presume you won't wish the Ghonsilya authorities to call you in to identify the Human Auslander's body."

He was bluffing, of course. We both knew that. He couldn't afford to damage the only levers he had to use against me.

But even so I still felt a tingle of dread ripple through me at the thought of what he might do to Penny.

And we also both knew that I couldn't and wouldn't let anything happen to her. "There won't be any need for that," I said between dry lips. "There's an art auction scheduled here for tomorrow evening. Bring Morse and Ms. Auslander with you."

He leaned the cane a little toward me, as if trying to read my face. "You have the Lynx?"

"I will by then," I promised. "A straight trade: the Humans for the Lynx."

"I accept," he said. "But be warned. If you don't have the Lynx, things will not go well for your friends."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. "There's just one more thing, then. Since I can't have you following me—"

He never even had time to react as I pulled out my gun and shot him.

He slumped limply over the back of the bench, his cane thudding to the softfloor, as the snoozer's drug hit his bloodstream and knocked him cold. Mindful of what Fayr had once told me about a Modhran colony's resistance to such drugs, I fired again, then put a third snoozer into him just to be on the safe side. Slipping the gun back beneath my poncho, keeping an eye on the archways leading off into other sections of the museum, I gave his clothing a quick search.

I'd had some faint hope that the Modhri might have been careless enough to let Gargantua head off to our meeting with a hotel key or other significant clue on his person. But no such luck. Nothing in his pockets gave any indication of where he might have Penny and Morse hidden.

Keeping an eye on him over my shoulder, I returned to the other gallery. Fayr and Bayta had moved to the edge of the archway in my absence, no doubt the better to eavesdrop on the conversation. I gave them a thumbs-up, a finger across the lips for continued silence, and gestured toward the exit.

Five minutes later, we were back out in the rain, making our way across the museum grounds. I'd half expected the Modhri to have stationed his other Halkan soldier out here as backup, just in case I pulled something on Gargantua. But there was no sign of anyone hanging around, and neither Fayr's sensors or the ones in my gimmicked reader indicated any evidence of electronic surveillance focused on us.

It retrospect, I decided I wasn't really surprised the other Halka wasn't here. Locking up a trained ESS agent like Morse somewhere was tricky enough without having to trust him to stay that way on his own. The Modhri had apparently decided keeping tabs on me was less important than making sure he held on to his bargaining chips.

Especially since the only way out of the Ghonsilya system was through the Quadrail station. If I double-crossed him and ran, he knew where I'd eventually have to turn up.

We were out of sight of the museum building itself before Fayr spoke again. "Do you know where the Lynx is?"

"Not yet," I said. "But now that we're here, I don't think we'll have any trouble laying our hands on it."

"And you genuinely intend to trade it to the Modhri for your friends?"

"We'll see what we can do," I hedged. "But before we can cross that bridge we need to find Daniel Stafford. You said you know a place where these artist types hang out?"

Fayr was silent for a few more steps. Maybe he wasn't sure anymore whether to trust me or not. "There's a place a short distance away on the other side of the museum grounds," he said at last. "It's called Artists' Paradise."

I turned to glance down a side street as we passed, the movement tilting my hood just enough to send a rivulet of rain into my eyes. "Sounds interesting," I said, brushing away the water with the back of my hand. "Lead the way."