Night Train to Rigel (4 page)

“I’m still in the information-gathering phase,” I said, crunching into one of the rings. They tasted like the San Antonio ones, too. “For starters, I want you to ask the Spiders for a list of situations under which weapons are allowed aboard Quadrails.”

“I can answer that one,” she said. “Personal weapons like Belldic status guns can be put in lockboxes at the transfer station, which are then stowed in inaccessible storage bins beneath the cars. Larger weapons and weapons systems can be sent by cargo Quadrail only with special governmental permits.”

“Yes, I know the official exceptions,” I said. “I want to know the
un
official ones.”

She shook her head. “There aren’t any.”

“That you know about.”

“There
aren’t
any,” she repeated, more firmly this time.

I took a careful breath, willing myself to be calm. Dogmatic statements always drove me crazy. “Ask the Spiders anyway,” I said. “I also want to know everything about the Tube’s sensors. How they work, what they look for, and what exactly they do and don’t detect”

She seemed a bit taken aback. “I’m not sure the Spiders will be willing to give you that kind of information,” she warned.

“They’re not being offered a choice,” I said. “
They’re
the ones who asked
me
in on this, remember? Either I get what I need or I’m walking.”

Her mouth twitched. “All right, I’ll ask,” she said. “But none of the conductors will have that kind of information.”

Another dogmatic statement. This one, though, I believed. “Fine. Who will?”

“It’ll have to go through a stationmaster,” she said, her forehead wrinkled in thought.

“Is that a problem?” I asked. “I assumed you could talk to
all
the Spiders.”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “But there aren’t very many of them at Yandro Station. Probably not enough for a clear relay to the stationmaster’s building.”

“A clear what?”

“My… communication… method has a limited range,” she said reluctantly. “For longer distances a message can be relayed between Spiders, but only if the Spiders are physically close enough to each other.”

“I see,” I said, nodding. So apparently she didn’t even have to look at a Spider to communicate, as I’d first thought. Some form of telepathy, then?

Problem was, as far as I knew no human being had ever demonstrated genuine, reproducible telepathic abilities. Also as far as I knew, neither had any of the galaxy’s other known species.

Which made Bayta… what?

“On the other hand, we’re only in the station for fifteen minutes,” I reminded her. “That’s not much time.”

“No, but I’ll only need to deliver that one short request,” she pointed out. “The information itself will have to be gathered and sent to us farther down the line.”

“I suppose that’ll work,” I said, thinking it through. Cargo and passengers traveled at the Quadrails’ standard light-year-per-minute, but the news and mail in those message cylinders somehow managed the trick of crossing the galaxy over a thousand times faster. The most popular theory was that once the Quadrail got up to speed, the Spiders used the dish antenna in front of the message cylinder slot to transmit everything to a train farther up the line, using the Tube itself as a gigantic wave-guide.

The messaging apparatus was supposedly sealed and self-contained, impossible for even the Spiders to reach while the Quadrail was in transit. But of course that didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists. The more paranoid among them were convinced that the Spiders read everything, encrypted or otherwise, before they transmitted it.

If we were dealing with two different factions, the question of Spider eavesdropping might be a highly important one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything I could do about it one way or the other. “I presume you can arrange for them to deliver the data to us aboard whatever train we’re on at the time?” I asked.

Bayta nodded. “I’ll tell the stationmaster when I put in the request.”

“Good,” I said. “Tell him to deliver it to us at Kerfsis.” She drew back a little. “Kerfsis? The Jurian colony world?”

“Regional capital, actually,” I corrected her. “Why? You have a problem with Juriani?”

“No but—” She seemed to flounder a moment. “I assumed we’d be transferring to a cross-galactic express at Homshil and heading straight to Filiaelian space. That’s where the attack is supposed to take place.”

With a sigh, I popped the last onion ring into my mouth and stood up. “Come on,” I said, brushing off my hands.

“Where are we going?” she asked cautiously.

“To the bar,” I told her. “I need something to drink.”

She followed me silently down the corridor to the rear of our car, through all the genial camaraderie in the forward first-class coach, and back into the dining car. The bar was reasonably busy, but most of the patrons were drinking in groups and there were a few unoccupied tables for two. Choosing one in a back comer, I steered Bayta over to it. The chairs were lumpy and uncomfortable-looking, which probably meant some Shorshians had been using them last. “What’ll you have?” I asked, gesturing her to one of the chairs as I sat down in the other. The chair sensed my weight and body temperature, correctly deduced my species, and reconfigured itself into something a lot more comfortable.

“Something nonalcoholic,” she said a bit stiffly.

“Teetotaler, huh?” I hazarded, touching the button in the middle of the table to pull up the holodisplay menu. I gave it a quick scan, then tapped for a lemonade for her and an iced tea for me. “Too bad. Alcohol can be a nice little social equalizer.”

“Or it can be a way to cloud your mind and put you at a disadvantage with your enemies,” she countered.

I thought about the dead man in Manhattan and the Saarix-laden carrybags back in my compartment “Lucky for me, I don’t have any enemies,” I murmured.

Her eyebrow may have twitched, but I could have imagined that. “Why exactly did you bring me here?” she asked.

“I wanted to go someplace where we could talk in private,” I said. “I thought the Spiders might have the compartments bugged.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” she insisted.

“You never know,” I said. Actually, I
did
know; and no, they hadn’t. My watch came from the same stratospherically priced tech people as my disguised sensor system, and it would have tingled a warning if it had picked up any sign of eavesdropping equipment. Another trinket my old Westali colleagues would probably give spare body parts to possess.

“Think whatever you want,” Bayta said. Her voice was still stiff, but now it was a tired sort of stiff. “What do you want to talk about?”

I took a deep breath, let it out in a soft sigh. My attempts to get a reaction with the good-little-girl gambit had failed, and my take-it-or-leave-it arrogance about the weapons data hadn’t done any better. Maybe a sincere, humble, heart-on-the-sleeve approach would hit a resonance and give me a handle on this woman. “Look,” I said. “According to every bit of conventional wisdom, what Hermod says the Spider saw is impossible. The Spiders screen everything coming into the Tube; and the Fillies’ own transfer station screens everything coming
out
. There should be zero chance of getting any serious weaponry close enough to a Filly station to take it out.”

“Which is why you were asked to investigate it.”

“What I’m trying to say is that the whole thing has me completely flummoxed,” I said. “Frankly, I’m not even sure where to start.”

She started to reach out toward my hand, resting on the table. Midway through the gesture she seemed to think better of it and let her arm fall instead into her lap. “The Spiders wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t think you could do it.” she said.

Encouraging words, and with some genuine concern behind them. The compassionate type, then, only she was afraid to show it?

Perhaps. Still, I couldn’t quite shake the impression that she was more like an observer watching a dit rec drama unfold than one of the people actually in the middle of the action. “Thank you,” I said humbly. “I just hope you’re right.”

“I am,” she said firmly. She glanced around the room, as if making sure no one was close enough to hear us, and leaned a little closer across the table. “But why go to Kerfsis? Do you suspect the Juriani?”

“Not really,” I said as a Spider arrived with our drinks. I handed Bayta her lemonade and took a sip of my iced tea. It was strong and sweet just the way I liked it. “It’s more likely that one of the Fillies’ neighbors will be the ones making the trouble,” I continued. “Serious grievances typically ferment close to home. Mostly, I want to see if the Jurian entry procedures have changed any in the couple of years since I’ve ridden the Quadrail.”

She took a sip of her lemonade, her eyes fluttering with clear surprise at the tang. Her first experience with the drink? “May I ask why?” she asked.

I nodded upward toward the bar’s slightly domed ceiling. Spread across it was a glowing map of the galaxy and the Quadrail system. “Here’s the problem,” I said. “The Fillies are all the way across the galaxy, about as far from Earth as you can get. Even if we take express trains the whole way, that’s still nearly two and a half months of travel. We simply don’t have the time to go there and start working our way back.”

“We have four months.”

“No, the
Fillies
have four months,” I corrected her “
We
, on the other hand, do not… because the Fillies aren’t going to be the first ones attacked.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that whoever these warmongers are, they’d have to be insane to take on the Fillies first crack out of the box,” I said. “Filly soldiers are genetically programmed for loyalty, their overall defense network is second to none, and depending on who’s doing the counting, their empire is either the biggest or second biggest in the galaxy. Would
you
try out a brand-new attack plan on someone like that?”

Her lips compressed briefly. “I suppose not.”

“Following that same logic, the test subject is likely to be one of the newer, younger, and therefore less dangerous races,” I continued. “If we limit ourselves to those who’ve joined the galactic club in the last two hundred years, that means the Juriani, the Cimmaheem, the Tra’ho’sej, and the Bellidos.” I took a sip of my tea."And, of course, us.”

For a minute the only sound was the muffled background hum of a half dozen different conversations and the click-clack of the Quadrail’s wheels beneath us. Quadrail dining cars, I remembered from previous trips, were acoustically designed in such a way that the volume and intelligibility of a conversation dropped off sharply half a meter away from the center of the table. It made for considerably more privacy than one would expect just from looking at the layout, which was why I’d been willing to talk about this here at all. “And whoever they decide on,” Bayta said at last, “they’ll need to make their test at least a couple of months before the Filiaelian attack.”

“Right,” I said. “Which basically means any time from now on.”

She took another sip of her lemonade. “All right,” she said. “But if it’s entry procedures you’re interested in, wouldn’t we do better to go straight to Jurskala?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “A homeworld station—
any
homeworld station—will be too crowded for us to get a really good look at their setup. A regional capital like Kerfsis should have all the same stuff, but without all the busyness. We’ll take the shuttle out to the transfer station, look around a bit, then come back, pick up the next train, and move on.”

“To where?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m guessing our warmongers will want a test subject a little more advanced than us or the Tra’ho’sej. That leaves the Juriani, Cimmaheem, or Bellidos.”

She pondered a moment. “The Bellidos might be a good choice,” she offered. “They’re farther out on the arm than the Terran Confederation, which makes them even more isolated.”

“Right, but at the moment we’re heading the wrong direction,” I reminded her. “Rather than spend time backtracking, we might as well continue on and check out the Juriani and Cimmaheem.”

“There are a lot of worlds out there,” she murmured, looking down at her glass.

I nodded agreement, taking another swallow of my tea as I let my gaze drift around the bar. There were Jurian foursomes occupying two of the tables, with a scattering of Shorshians and Bellidos taking up most of the rest of the space. In the far corner two Cimmaheem sat across from a lone human, their features obscured by the swirling blue smoke of a traditional
skinski
flambé as a hardworking vent fan kept the fumes from bothering anyone else in the room. “We can look through the system listings along the way and see if we can figure out what sort of test area our attacker might like,” I said. “But no matter how you slice it, we’re talking a lot of search area.” I raised my eyebrows. “I just hope you and I aren’t the only team on the job.”

“What do we do if we find them?” she asked, ignoring the gentle probe. “The attackers, I mean?”

“
That’ll
be the easy part,” I said. “All your Spider friends have to do is shut down Quadrail service to those worlds.”

There was something about the way she took her next breath. Nothing obvious, but still noticeable. “Maybe,” she said.

“What do you mean,
maybe
?” I asked, frowning. “It’s their train system, isn’t it? Why can’t they classify someone as persona non grata and refuse to stop at their stations?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they can. I just don’t know.”

I studied her face, trying to read past that neutral expression. On everything else, she seemed so certain about what the Spiders could or couldn’t or would or wouldn’t do. Now, suddenly, she wasn’t sure if they could shut down a few Quadrail stations?

Because if the Spiders couldn’t do that, maybe they weren’t the ones in charge of the system after all. And that was
not
something I wanted to hear right now. “Well, however they want to deal with it is their problem,” I said. Even to my own ears it sounded pretty lame. “
Our
job is just to figure out the who and where.” I yawned. “And it’s probably time we got a little rest.”