Night Train to Rigel (11 page)

Which actually wasn’t all that surprising. There was no way the fake drunk could have gotten past me while I was talking to Rastra, which meant he was still behind me somewhere in the forward part of the train. Comms didn’t work aboard Quadrails, or anywhere else inside the Tube for that matter, which meant there also wasn’t any way for him to have communicated with any confederates he might have farther back.

Unless, of course, he didn’t need to communicate with them because they already had their orders. Trying not to look too much like I was hurrying, I left the last second-class car and crossed the vestibule into the third-class section.

I hadn’t focused on the passengers on my way forward, but to the best of my memory nothing much seemed to have changed since then. Again, I paid special attention to the Bellidos; again, they didn’t seem to be paying any attention back.

I was midway through the last of the passenger cars when my eyes fell on a set of three empty seats in the last row.

There had been occasional empty seats on my way forward, their occupants presumably either out having dinner or else communing with nature in one of the pair of restrooms at the front of each car. But there hadn’t been any threesomes in the second/third-class dining car just now, and the chances of three passengers in the same row deciding to hit the head at the same time had to be pretty small.

Much smaller, I suspected, than the chances that those same three passengers had drifted off to the privacy of one of the baggage cars to arrange some kind of unpleasant surprise. Still, unless I wanted to wait for the fake drunk to catch up and turn three-to-one odds into four-to-one odds, there was nothing to do but keep going.

But like I’d told Bayta earlier, alcohol was a good equalizer. As my playmates were about to learn, that equalizing capability also extended to nonsocial events.

Anywhere in the galaxy except aboard a Quadrail, there would have been no question about how I would do that. A typical glass whiskey bottle made a natural club, which was probably why the Spiders were careful to package all their beverages in this flimsy plastic instead. One good thump, and the bottle would split along its tear lines and dump its contents all over the floor.

But the warped minds at Westali had been mulling over this for a few years, and they’d come up with a couple of tricks. With luck, maybe I could give any waiting footpads a surprise of their own.

I reached the end of the car and stepped through the door into the vestibule. There, momentarily shielded from view from either direction, I pulled the stopper from the bottle and replaced it just tightly enough to keep it closed. Now, with a good squeeze, I could send the stopper flying straight into an assailant’s face, with a slosh of whisky right behind it. I couldn’t remember how Bellido eyes reacted to alcohol, but even if it didn’t temporarily blind him it should at least slow him down long enough for me to be faced with only two-to-one odds. Still not good, but better than nothing. Holding the bottle at its base, I opened the door and stepped into the first baggage car.

My natural instinct was to pause there, peering down the stacks of safety-webbed crates and listening for some clue as to where they might be hiding. But I overrode the reflex. Showing I was aware of their presence would only make them treat me with professional respect, and I would rather they assume I was stupid and oblivious and hopefully let their guard down a little. Without breaking stride, I headed in, trusting in my peripheral vision to give me enough warning for whatever was about to happen.

It didn’t. I was halfway down the car when something exploded against the side of my head and the universe went black.

I woke with an ache behind my right ear, an unpleasant half pain across the whole right side of my face, and the odd sensation that I’d been sleeping standing up.

For another minute I stayed as I was, listening for any signs of activity around me. But all I could hear was the rhythmic clicking of the Quadrail’s wheels. Apparently, my assailant or assailants were already gone. Carefully, I opened my eyes.

My inner ear hadn’t been lying to me. I was indeed standing up, my back pressed solidly up against something hard, my head turned to my left. From the faint light seeping in from below me, I could see I was inside one of the taller crates, which had had a narrow space cleared out for me. The mystery of how I had managed to stay upright while still unconscious was quickly solved: My playmates had simply worked the crate’s access panel free—probably sliding it upward—manhandled me in face-first against the safety webbing already stretched around this group of crates, then slid the panel back in place behind me.

It was, I had to admit, a quick and creative way of putting an opponent temporarily out of action. The first person who really focused on the arrangement would instantly spot the webbing anomaly, but people doing a quick search for a wayward Human could easily miss such details.

Still, clever or not, they’d missed an obvious bet: They’d forgotten to gag me. Once the search reached my vicinity, a good shout would bring my rescuers straight to the spot. Experimentally, I started to take a deep breath.

They hadn’t missed a bet after all. The webbing was tight enough that I
couldn’t
expand my chest that far. Short, shallow breaths were unfortunately going to be the order of the day.

The little knife in my multitool could cut through this stuff with ease, of course. But the multitool was in my right pocket, and my captors had thoughtfully positioned me close enough to the right wall that I couldn’t bend my elbow far enough to get my hand into that pocket.

I studied the cargo pressed up against me, or at least the small percentage of it I could see with my head turned to the side. It was too dark to read any of the labels, or even to tell what language they were in, but from the delicate aromas I guessed they were mostly exotic spices. No chance of identifying my assailants by unexplained quantities of merchandise in their possession, then—spices were one of those items that could easily be flushed down the nearest toilet, with their packaging shredded and dumped out the same way. There was no way of knowing my crate’s destination, but if my attackers had done their job right it would be someplace far down the line, past Jurian territory and possibly out of Halkan space as well. If they’d been feeling generous, they might have arranged things so that I’d be found before I died of thirst. I wasn’t ready to bet on that, though.

And then, as I studied the shadows of my feet against the spice packages, I noticed I’d apparently grown a third leg. For a moment I puzzled at the extra shadow; and then, suddenly, I realized what it was. Rather than burden themselves with the Jack Daniel’s, they’d simply set the bottle on the floor between my feet before walling me in.

And I’d already loosened the stopper.

The webbing reached down only to my lower shins. Carefully, wincing as the movement put more pressure on the mesh against my face. I eased my feet together against the bottle, trying to squeeze it open. But my leverage was lousy, and nothing happened.

Besides, what I really needed was to send a spray of the whiskey under the door where it could be seen and smelled, not up across my slacks. Moving my left leg away, I swiveled my right foot around and gave the bottle a tap. It moved over a couple of centimeters, but stayed upright. I tried again, and this time it fell neatly over on its side. With a little careful maneuvering with the tips of my shoes, I got it pointed along the crack beneath the door.

Now came the tricky part. Exhaling as deeply as I could to give myself as much slack as possible, I angled my left foot up at the ankle and set it on top of the bottle. Mentally crossing my fingers, I pushed down.

With a gratifying clatter, the stopper popped out and skittered along the edge of the crate, and the delicate aroma of mixed spices vanished beneath the powerful smell of sour-mash whiskey. I took a breath, remembering in time to make it a shallow one, and settled down to wait.

I was just starting to wonder if you could get drunk on alcohol fumes alone when they found me.

“So you never actually saw them,” Rastra said.

“Not a glimpse,” I told him, gingerly daubing at the lump below my ear with one of the Peerage car’s first-aid cloths. “I don’t even know what they hit me with.”

Standing stiffly to the side, JhanKla made an angry bulldog rumble deep in his throat. “I should have insisted that YirTukOo accompany you.”

“Hey, stuff happens,” I said philosophically. “No permanent harm done, except that we lost the Jack Daniel’s. By the way, did anyone happen to notice where I was heading when you got that crate open? I forgot to check.”

“It was addressed to a spice wholesaler on Alra-kae at the inner edge of the Halkavisti Empire,” Rastra said. “Only a two-day journey, fortunately, but it still would have been uncomfortable.”

“Definitely,” I agreed. “You get that problem solved in first class?”

“Yes,” he said, the scales around his beak wrinkling. “One took offense at another, with the second unaware that he had even given cause for anger. A brief face-to-face conversation, and it was resolved.”

So the whole thing had indeed been a ruse, a heavy-handed but effective ploy to split us up so that they could beat me up in private.

Which had taken some advance planning, which meant that I wasn’t just a random victim. Not that I’d really thought that I was.

“I still think you should have that injury examined,” Rastra continued. “I’m informed that there are three Human physicians aboard this Quadrail.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I got worse lumps than this when I played Sunday afternoon football at college. I just need to take a couple more QuixHeals and lie down for a while.”

“As you choose,” Rastra said, clearly not convinced. “But if you’re still feeling unwell when we reach Jurskala, I’m going to insist. There are specialists in Human medicine on duty at the transfer station.”

“Deal,” I said, getting a bit unsteadily to my feet. “Bayta, can you give me a hand?”

Silently, she stood up and crossed to my side. She hadn’t said a word since she and Rastra and the Spider they’d recruited for the search had pulled me out of that spice crate. Now, still without speaking, she gingerly took my arm. It was the first time she’d ever actually touched me, and even through my shirt I could feel the coldness of her fingers. Letting her take a little of my weight just for show, we headed down the corridor to my compartment.

The door had barely closed behind us when she let go of my arm like she’d been scalded. “How
could
you?” she demanded, her voice shaking, her rigid control suddenly gone. “How could you let them
take
it?”

“Relax,” I said, dropping onto the edge of the bed and digging the data chip out of my pocket. “They didn’t.”

She stared at the chip like it was a gold watch being offered back to her by a dinner theater magician. “But then…?” She trailed off.

“Why did they attack me in the first place?” I finished her question for her. “Good question. Before we discuss it, let’s just make sure they weren’t cute enough to switch chips on me.”

She grimaced, but nodded. “All right,” she said, moving toward the door. “I’ll get my reader.”

She was gone just long enough for me to confirm that the chip registered on my own reader as nothing but an innocuous set of travel guides. “Any chance they could have made a copy?” I asked as she took the chip and plugged it into hers.

“No.” She did something with the scroll buttons, peered at the display, and nodded. “There,” she said, handing it to me.

Where before there’d been nothing but tourist fluff, the display now showed over fifty files relating to Quadrail security and sensors. “Perfect,” I said. “Something to read on the way to Modhra.”

“You still want to go there?” Bayta asked, her voice suddenly cautious. “I mean… shouldn’t you see a doctor first?”

“I’m fine,” I assured her. I started to shake my head, quickly changed my mind. “Besides, this is starting to get very interesting.”

“Interesting?” she echoed. “You call being attacked
interesting
?”

I shrugged. The gesture turned out to be only marginally less painful than shaking my head. “People don’t usually attack you unless they feel threatened,” I said. “That must mean we’re getting close.”

“Close to what?” she persisted. “All we’ve got is a name—Modhra—and JhanKla telling us we should go there.”

“Plus all the maneuvering it took them to get him to drop us that name,” I reminded her.

“Which could have just been to get us out of Kerfsis,” she reminded me back. “Or to keep us away from somewhere else, for that matter.”

I hesitated, once again trying to decide just how much I should tell her. I still didn’t know what was really going on, or whose side she was on.

Still, she was clearly in league with the Spiders, or at least some group of them. If I froze her out of my investigation, I’d be completely on my own. Considering what had just happened, even questionable allies were better than nothing. “No, it’s Modhra, all right,” I said. “I didn’t want to say anything with Rastra and JhanKla listening, but there was a chatty Bellido in the bar when I was getting the Jack Daniel’s. He asked where I was going—”

“And you
told
him?”

I stared up at her, my head throbbing in time to my pulse, my eyes and ears taking in her expression and her tone and her body language, my Westali-trained brain taking the pieces and putting them together.

And in that single stretched-out moment in time, all my vague suspicions suddenly coalesced into a hard, cold certainty. Whatever was going on with JhanKla and Modhra and the Bellidos, Bayta knew all about it. “It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time,” I said, keeping my voice even. “The point is, the next thing I knew he’d disappeared somewhere into the first-class cars. And the
next
thing I knew, I’d been clobbered and locked in a spice crate.”

“And you think the incidents are related?”

“Absolutely,” I said, wondering how much of this she already knew. Still, I couldn’t afford to let her know that I knew she knew. “They weren’t after the data chip, because I still have that. They weren’t after my cash stick, because I still have
that
. What else is there but someone not wanting us to go to Modhra?”

“But how could he have communicated with anyone at the rear of the train?” she asked. “You said he’d gone the other direction.”

“That part I haven’t figured out yet,” I admitted, watching her closely. But she had herself fully under control again, and her face wasn’t giving anything away. “My guess is that he used the Quadrail computer system somehow, or else found a way to piggyback a signal onto the control lines.”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think either is possible.”

“Well, whatever he did, he
did
send a message,” I growled. “I’m sure of that.”

“But I still don’t see the point,” she said. “What did they hope to accomplish?”

“They hoped to put me on ice long enough for us to go past Jurskala and the Grakla Spur,” I said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. Someone, for whatever reason, doesn’t want us going to Modhra.”

The corner of her lip twitched. “So, of course, that’s where you intend to go?”

I shrugged. “I’m following a trail. That’s where it leads.”

She seemed to brace herself. “I don’t want to go to Modhra.”

“No problem,” I said calmly. “You can wait for me at Jurskala.”

“What if I have the Spiders revoke your pass?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Are you threatening me?”

“There could be danger there,” she said evasively. “Terrible danger.”

I thought about the Saarix-5 in my carrybag handles. “There’s danger everywhere,” I said. “Life is like that.”

She seemed to brace herself. “You could die there.”

So there it was, right out in the open. Modhra was indeed the key… and our enemies were prepared to be very serious indeed about protecting that key. “I could die anywhere,” I countered. “I could fall over a Cimma in the dining car and break my neck. You know something about Modhra you’re not telling me?”

A muscle in her jaw tightened briefly. “It’s just a feeling.”

“Fine, then,” I said, pretending to believe her. “I’m going. You’ve got five hours to decide whether you’re coming with me.”

“Mr. Compton—”

“In the meantime,” I cut her off, “do these feelings of yours include any hints as to which direction the danger might be coming from?”

She looked away. “It could be from anywhere,” she said quietly. “You have no friends out here.”

“Not even you?” I asked, pitching it like it was a joke. “At least you care whether I live or die, don’t you?”

She straightened up. “I’m not your friend, Mr. Compton,” she said, her voice and face stiff. “And no, I
don’t
care.” Brushing past me, she escaped into the corridor.

For a long moment I stared at the closed door, a hard, bitter knot settling into my stomach. I’d hoped for something—anything—that would indicate we were at least on the same side, even if we weren’t exactly staunch allies.

But no.
I’m not your friend. And no, I don’t care
.

Fine. Then I wouldn’t care, either, when I did what I was going to do to her precious Spider friends.

And I would laugh in her face when I did it.

Swiveling my feet up onto the bed, I positioned my throbbing head carefully against the pillow. It would be another half hour before the painkiller I’d taken kicked in and let me get some sleep.

Pulling up the first of the Spiders’ security files, I began to read.