The Third Lynx

Morse was waiting at the platform when we arrived there an hour and a half later. Our Quadrail was visible in the distance, the red glow of the laserlike beams flashing between the train's front bumper and the Coreline and turning the Coreline's already impressive light show into something frighteningly manic. The lasers winked out, the train angled down the Tube's sloping side into the wider section that was the station, and a few minutes later it rolled to a brake-squealing halt beside us.

Our double compartment was, as usual, in the first car behind the engine. Morse's seat was three cars back, just behind the first-class dining car.

Bayta and I stayed close to home during the trip, emerging from our compartments only for meals, to stretch our legs, and occasionally to check on Morse. As far as I could tell, he too seemed to be keeping mostly to himself in the midst of all that noisy first-class camaraderie.

I made a couple of attempts to wheedle the other data chip out of him, the one that had been hidden in his pocket. But it was a waste of effort. Now that he was finally on the Quadrail and had Bayta's assurance that we could link him up with Penny and her friends, he wasn't making even an effort to be civil to me anymore.

I spent the rest of my limited time outside my compartment eyeing the other first-class passengers and wondering which of them might be walkers. That was even more of a waste of effort. As long as the Modhri colony inside a person stayed dormant, there was no way, barring serious micro-level surgery, to know it was in there.

Twenty-one hours after leaving Terra, precisely on time, we pulled into Homshil Station.

Most Quadrail stations carried between ten and forty sets of tracks, spaced more or less evenly around the inside of the Tube. Homshil was different. Though its main purpose was to provide service to the Jurian colony world of Homshiltristia, it also happened to be one of the fifty or sixty node points in the Quadrail system where the Spiders had brought several different lines together. One of the most important was a set of cross-galaxy tracks that headed out of our spiral arm entirely and traversed a wide swath of relatively empty space before skirting the edge of the galactic core and Fibibib space and heading across to the Pirkarli, Shorshian, and Filiaelian territories in the other spiral arm. For anyone traveling to those empires, shifting lines at Homshil could cut two or more weeks off their transit time.

As a result, Homshil carried a lot of traffic, and the Spiders had built accordingly. The station was half again bigger than the usual Quadrail station's diameter, with no fewer than sixty sets of tracks running along the floor. Between the platforms were dozens of restaurants, shops, waiting areas, and three full-service hotels for travelers who wanted to take a break before continuing their journeys. The stationmaster's office had been expanded into a four-building complex that included the office itself, separate booking and message centers, and a small computer library where newcomers to this spiral arm could grab up-to-date information on the worlds and cultures they would be visiting.

Between and around the various buildings, the Juriani who were responsible for maintaining the service structures had set up planters and air-vine hedges, providing decoration, agreeable aromas for those species who went in for that sort of thing, and a modicum of badly needed pedestrian traffic control.

Across from the main passenger areas, looking upside down as you gazed up past the Coreline, the station's cargo facilities were equally crowded, except that instead of restaurants and shops the space was filled with cranes and sidings and transfer pallets. Through it all bustled dozens of drudge Spiders, looking like seven-legged ants crawling on a distant ceiling as they shifted crates back and forth between freight cars and cargo hatchways. At both ends of the five-kilometer-long station, away from the passenger and cargo unloading areas in the middle, were the maintenance and assembly areas.

Once again, we found Morse already on the platform when we disembarked from our car. The man was nothing if not quick on his feet. "You told me she'd be here," he said. "Where?"

"Over there," Bayta said, pointing to a long, low waiting room with classic Jurian architectural curlicues at the roof line.

Morse grunted. "Would have been safer to put her in the stationmaster's office."

"It might also have clued her in that there was something serious going on," I countered. "Her and anyone else who might have been paying attention."

The waiting room was comfortably full. Most of the passengers sitting around reading or chatting or playing cards were aliens, but there was a fair scattering of Humans as well. Despite the crowd, Penny Auslander was easy to spot. She was seated in a far corner of the room, the only person in that entire block of seats, flanked by a pair of watchful conductor Spiders.

We made our way through the aisles, dodging Juriani balancing frothing cups of pale yellow ale and Pirks carrying containers of some of the horrible things they liked to eat. Penny lifted her glare from the floor in front of her as we approached and transferred it to us. "About time," she said stiffly. "What took you so long?"

"My apologies for the delay, Ms. Auslander," Morse said, inclining his head in polite old-world manner.

"Apologies are cold comfort to the lost and vacant hour," she countered.

I winced to myself. Light-stick aphorisms, especially deep pithy light-stick aphorisms, always left me cold.

"I understand your distress," Morse said, still politely. Apparently he had a higher tolerance to brainless philosophy than I did. "But I think I can clear this up." He pulled out his badge wallet and flipped it open. "My name is Morse; EuroUnion Security Service."

Penny's glare slipped a little. "You're not with the Terran consulate?"

"No, ma'am," Morse said, tucking the wallet away.

Penny's eyes flicked to me, then Bayta, and finally back to Morse. "What's going on?" she asked.

"We're looking for your friend Daniel Stafford," Morse said. "We need to ask him a few questions."

He launched into a standard police-style explanation, a spiel tailored to evoke sympathy and cooperation without giving away any actual information. Listening with half an ear, I touched Bayta's arm and took a casual step backward. "Check with those conductors," I murmured to her. "Has she been alone this whole time?"

"They don't know," she murmured back. "They only came on duty fifteen minutes ago, replacing the others who'd been watching her. She was definitely alone then."

"Then find the ones who were here earlier and ask them," I said. "Her eyes shifted just a fraction to her left when Morse mentioned her friend Daniel."

Bayta shook her head. "I can't. They just left on one of the trains."

I swallowed a curse, looking around the waiting room. The Spiders really needed some training in proper police procedure. "Get everyone in the station looking for another Human," I ordered, pulling up my mental picture of Daniel Stafford. "Dark hair, mid-twenties, slender build—"

"Most Spiders don't know how to estimate Human ages," she interrupted.

"Then just go with dark hair and slender build," I said impatiently as I looked around the waiting room. All the Humans I could see were either older, bigger, or female. "At this point, I'll take any Human who's even close."

Morse was still trying to sell Penny on the idea that she could trust him. Penny still wasn't buying. I looked around the waiting room again, wondering if I ought to give up on the Spiders and start a search of my own.

"Got it," Bayta announced suddenly. "There's a dark-haired Human male at the TrinTrinTril restaurant carry-away counter. He's dressed in red and blue."

I'd noticed the TrinTrinTril on our way in. It was the direction Penny's eyes had flicked a minute ago. "Tell the Spiders I'm on my way," I told Bayta.

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"I'd rather you keep an eye on Morse and Ms. Auslander," I said. Confirming that neither of the other two was paying attention to me at the moment, I slipped away and headed through the milling passengers toward the door closest to the TrinTrinTril. I made sure to watch the other doors as I did so, just in case my quarry decided to come in through one of those instead.

No dark-haired Human males had appeared by the time I reached the far side of the room. I stepped outside, nearly getting run down by a Fibibib and a Nemut who were on their way in, and craned my neck to look over at the TrinTrinTril.

There he was, exactly as advertised: a youngish dark-haired kid in his early or mid twenties, wearing a red and blue ski outfit and holding a carry tray containing a pair of cups and a small closed box. He was talking earnestly with a well-dressed, smooth-skinned Shorshian, whose protruding dolphin snout was partially obscuring the kid's face.

Or rather, the kid was listening earnestly—the Shorshian seemed to be doing all the talking. Dodging around a pair of older Humans with double-knotted bankers' scarves, I headed over. I saw the boy's eyes flick past the Shorshian's head and lock on to me.

And to my astonishment, he dropped the carry tray and took off like all of hell was after him.

"Wait!" I shouted. "We just want to talk!"

The assurance was a waste of breath. If anything, the kid just ran faster.

And now that his back was to me, I could see for the first time the long backpack slung securely over his shoulders.

A long backpack just about the size of the Nemuti Lynx. Cursing feelingly, I took off after him.

In theory, running from the law inside a Quadrail station was an exercise in futility. There was literally nowhere to go where you couldn't eventually be tracked down. In practice, though, it was clear that the kid was intent on giving it a really good try.

He couldn't have picked a better station for it, either. With its maze of buildings and decorative shrubbery, Homshil was definitely a runners paradise. Wishing now that I'd invited Bayta to join this party, I concentrated on keeping him in sight without bowling over any innocent bystanders in the process.

It was as I rounded one of the shops and nearly shinned myself on someone's luggage chat I suddenly realized that the boy and I weren't the only ones on the move. On the fringes of my vision I could see two Halkas and three Juriani moving swiftly through the crowd in the same direction I was. None of them, as far as I could see, had any luggage with them.

No one simply abandoned their luggage in a Quadrail station. Not without a damn good reason.

Apparently, the Modhri wanted Daniel Stafford, too.

For the moment, though, the walkers weren't making any effort to close with the kid, apparently content to merely parallel the chase. Meanwhile, I had other troubles to deal with. My near miss with the luggage had cost me a couple of seconds, and as I came around another corner I saw that my quarry had gained some distance on me. He was nearing the end of the public areas, where he would have only three options: to keep going into the Spider maintenance section, head cross-country toward the cargo platforms, or double back and try to get past me.

"Where is he?"

I half turned to see Morse come up beside me. "Where's Ms. Auslander?" I countered.

"The Spiders have her," he said. "Bayta said Stafford was running."

"There," I said, nodding toward the distant figure. "Don't know …where he's …going."

"Wonder where he's—damn; there he goes," Morse said.

The kid had apparently decided on Option B and was angling toward the edge of the passenger platforms and the cargo areas beyond. Morse and I reached the edge of the hedge we were paralleling and turned to match his new direction. "Can you sic the Spiders on him?" Morse asked.

"They don't need …me to …tell them." I said, silently cursing Morse the lung capacity that let him run and talk at the same time. ESS apparently made its agents do laps every morning.

"Well, they'd better get to it," Morse warned. "Lot of places over there where he can go to ground."

"Only temp …orarily," I said. Our Juriani and Halkan friends, I noted uneasily, had changed course as well. "We've also …got outriders."

Morse glanced to both sides. "Damned amateurs," he rumbled. "Looks like he's making for that warehouse."

He was right. The kid had shifted direction again and was heading for one of the big maintenance buildings. "It's a …maintenance …building," I corrected.

"Whatever," Morse said impatiently. "Come on, old man. Run."

But it was too late. Even as Morse started to pull ahead of me, the kid ahead reached the closest of the maintenance building's doors, pulled it open, and vanished inside.

"I'm going in," Morse shouted over his shoulder. "You circle around in case he comes out the other side." Without waiting for a reply, he put on a burst of speed and left me in the dust.

I scowled as I veered to my right, heading for the nearest edge of the building. How I was supposed to cover all four sides of a warehouse-sized building by myself he hadn't said.

But there was nothing to do but try. The outriders were still paralleling me, I saw, apparently no more interested in following Morse into the maintenance building than they had been in converging on the kid out in the open air.

Only now, where there had been five outriders, there were only four.

One of the Halkas had disappeared.

I turned my eyes forward again, scanning the area. He might have simply run out of air and dropped out of the race. But I would hate to bet on that. I'd already seen how the Modhri presence inside a walker could push its host beyond normal limits of stamina and strength.

I was nearly to the corner of the building when the kid flashed into view, emerging from one of the side doors and running toward the next building over, a much smaller repair shop. He crossed the open space in a mad dash and disappeared inside.

I swore under my breath and changed direction. My walker escort had turned the same time I had, and unless I put on a pretty respectable burst of speed the two Halkas on that side were going to get to the door before I did.

But I'd run close to a kilometer already, and I didn't have the reserves left for a last-minute sprint. The two Halkas reached the door a good thirty meters ahead of me and disappeared inside. Ignoring the small sane part of my mind that warned me this was a stupid thing to do, I charged in after them.

For once, the sane part was right. I'd barely made it in out of the Coreline's pulsating glow when they attacked.

Fortunately, Modhri walkers or not, they were as worn-out from the run as I was. Their lunge was slow and disorganized, and I was able to dodge out of the way with only a single glancing blow off my shoulder. I took the nearest one down with a leg sweep, tried unsuccessfully to do the same to the other, and danced back out of his way, taking a moment to look around.

As our young fugitive had picked a good station to run in, he'd similarly picked a terrific place to go to ground. The repair shop was reasonably large, but over half of the open space in the center was currently occupied by a freight car with a disassembled rear wheel assembly. Between the car itself, the various equipment cabinets lining the walls, and the catwalks and crane tracks crisscrossing the space above us, we had the makings here of world-class hide-and-seek.

And with the Halka I'd tripped now back on his feet, I was again on the short end of two-to-one odds. "Stafford!" I shouted as the two Halkas advanced toward me. "Get out of here—fast—and get back to the stationmaster's office."

Nothing. Behind the Halkas the door we'd come in through opened again and the two Juriani who'd been on my other flank appeared, panting heavily but clearly game to join in the fun. Four-to-one odds, now. "Stafford, you're in danger," I shouted again. "Get out of here." Again, the only response was my own echo off the high ceiling.

And I was running out of time. Westali combat training was all well and good, but four to one was still four to one. I backed up, looking vainly around for some sign of my quarry, wondering too where that missing Halkan walker had gotten to. There was a soft tapping sound behind me, and I spun around, whipping my hands around into defensive position.

But it was only a drone Spider. The smooth globe and slender legs hardly lent themselves to expressions or body language, but just the same I would swear this particular Spider looked startled. "Don't just stand there," I growled at him. "Give me a hand."

The Spider's response was to take a couple of rapid steps toward the Quadrail car to get out of my way. Radically nonaggressive beings, I reminded myself, as constitutionally unable to fight as the Chahwyn who had created them. I continued to back up, keeping ahead of the advancing walkers, hoping to find a spot narrow enough that they would have to come at me one at a time.

But I was nearly halfway through and hadn't found anything yet. I would have to try circling around the front of the Quadrail car when I got there and see if there was anything on the other side of the building.

And then, as I passed one of the tool cabinets, it gave a soft click.

The sound of a lock unlocking.

The drone still cowering over by the car couldn't simply wade in and help me fight the four walkers. But he'd done the next best thing.

He'd offered me a chance at a weapon.

I took a sideways step to the tool cabinet and swung open the door, grabbing the first long tool—a wrench—that caught my eye. Jumping back, slamming the door closed again, I once again faced my attackers.

The Modhri mind segment that included these four walkers must have known in that moment that he'd lost this group. But after having taken full control of them for this long he probably would have had to kill them anyway. The Modhri preferred to operate in the shadows, and four upstanding citizens of the galaxy who had inexplicably blacked out for this length of time might wonder about it a little too hard and a little too loudly.

So with absolutely nothing to lose, he sent them charging to the attack.

Four bodies under the control of the same mind made for an awesome fighting machine. But these four weren't fighters, and as such had no training or reflexes or combat experience the Modhri could draw on.

And it showed. I moved against one side of the circle as they closed in, taking out one of the Halkas with a blow to his knee before the others could get close enough to double-team me. I danced back again, ducked under a flailing Jurian arm, and jabbed the owner in one of his upper thigh nerve points. He went down even more spectacularly than the Halka had, and then there were two.

Normal attackers might have paused at this point for a little reevaluation. These two just waded in, the Halka going high, the Juri going low. The latter got a wrench across the side of his beak for his trouble, and he was down for the count.

But the numbers had been just a shade too right. His partner got in outside my arm, and I found myself being crowded sideways with arm and wrench pressed too tightly against my chest to do anything. I managed to shift the wrench to my left hand, but was shoved against a bank of waist-high diagnostic machines before I could get off more than a fairly weak blow across his upper arm.

He grunted with pain and grabbed at my wrist. I evaded that attempt, but his second try succeeded, and multiple jolts of pain lanced through my left forearm as his claws punched through my jacket and sank into my skin. His other hand slashed at my eyes; more by luck than skill I caught his wrist in my right hand.

For a second I stared into that flat, bulldoglike face, the sagging jowls and empty eyes an eerie reminder that what I was fighting wasn't the respectable, civilized being that had once called this body home. Then, clenching my teeth against the pain from the dug-in claws, I twisted my left wrist to the side, bringing the end of the wrench down onto the hand still stretched toward my eyes.

There was the faint sound of snapping bones, and suddenly my left arm was free as the Halka howled and clutched at his broken hand. I lifted the wrench high, aiming for the muscle ridge where his neck and shoulder joined.

The blow never landed. Abruptly, the Halka dropped straight down like he'd fallen through a trapdoor as his legs were swept out from under him. As his head dropped out of my line of sight I saw Morse standing behind him, a thunderous look on his face. He jabbed a single blow into the back of the Halka's neck, and the fight was over.

The physical fight, anyway. "What in bloody hell do you think you're doing?" Morse snarled at me.

"Protecting my life," I told him, massaging my arm where the claws had perforated it.

"From these?" Morse countered, gesturing at the unconscious bodies around us. "What were they going to do, foreclose your house? Force you to buy some insurance?"

"Maybe protecting Daniel Stafford's life, too," I said. "He came in here right before I did."

Morse looked around. "Stafford?" he called. "Stafford, this is Agent Ackerley Morse of the EuroUnion Security Service. We need to talk to you."

"It's all right," I called. "You're safe now."

There was no answer. "Maybe he went out the other end," Morse suggested.

I shook my head. "I would have heard the sound of the door."

Morse hissed softly between his teeth. "Right," he said, his voice quiet and deadly. "Let's go find him."

Five minutes later, we found him lying behind a diagnostic cabinet that had been pulled a meter away from the wall. He was dead, of course, his neck broken.

Only it wasn't Daniel Stafford. In fact, aside from the hair color, age, and body type, he wasn't even close.

"Check the bag," Morse murmured over my shoulder. "See if they got the Lynx."

The backpack was still slung over the boy's shoulder. Carefully, I reached over and unzipped it.

No one had gotten the Lynx, because the Lynx had never been there. Snugged up inside the padded case was a beautifully decorated, high-priced lugeboard.

Morse and I stared at the board, and at the body, for what seemed a long time. Then, Morse got an unpleasantly firm grip on my shoulder. "Come on," he said. "We need to talk."