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.
NINE:
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
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
“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.”
