Night Train to Rigel

She had told me flatly that she wasn’t my friend. Yet for the sake of her people, she was willing to give up the closest friend she had …and that closest of friends was in turn willing to die.

If I demanded it.

I flipped my mental coin and watched it land where I knew it had to. No, the Chahwyn weren’t perfect. But then, which of us was? “Yes, I’d like something to eat,” I continued. “But let’s first get the matter of the Modhri’s new homeland out of the way.”

The Elder’s eye-ridge tufts fluttered. “I thought—”

“I know,” I said. “But in the end, I guess, everyone eventually has no choice but to pick sides. And like you said, you have kept the galaxy at peace.” I looked at Bayta. “Besides, Bayta has all the same clues I do. She could put it together if she wanted to. Question: What does the Modhri need in a homeland?”

“Cold and liquid water,” the Elder said. “The polyps can survive in many other environments, but only in cold water can they create more coral and expand his mind.”

“Okay, but you can get cold water almost anywhere,” I said. “What I meant was that he needs a place where he can avoid the kind of attack Fayr used against him.”

“I understand,” Bayta said, her forehead suddenly wrinkled in concentration. “He needs a place where you can’t bring in trade goods and buy weapons. Because there are no weapons to buy?”

“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “But at the same time, obviously, it has to be a place with Quadrail service. In other words, a primitive colony.”

“There must be a hundred such places in the galaxy,” the Elder murmured.

“At the very least,” I agreed. “Fortunately for us, the Modhri was kind enough to point us directly at it. Bayta, you told me Human society and government hadn’t been infiltrated yet, correct?”

“That was what we thought,” she said, her eyes gazing unblinkingly at me. “Yet we know now that Applegate was a walker.”

“So the Modhri has infiltrated,” I concluded. “Only he hasn’t infiltrated the top levels. Losutu, for instance, would have been an obvious target, yet he clearly hasn’t been touched. Why not? Answer one: The Modhri knew you were watching the people at the top level and would pick up on any moves he made. Answer two: He had more urgent fish to fry.”

“It’s on a Human colony!” the Elder exclaimed suddenly. “And you have only four of them.”

“Narrows the field considerably, doesn’t it?” I agreed. “But I can narrow it even further. Tell me, Bayta: When exactly did we suddenly become the focus of Modhran attention? Was it when that drudge grabbed my luggage at Terra Station in front of everybody? Applegate was there, and that incident would certainly connect me to the Spiders in the Modhri’s mind. Did it seem to bother him at all?”

“No,” she said slowly. “At least, nothing obvious happened there.”

“What about after you split off my car from the train and we had our chat with Hermod?” I continued. “That was what caught Fayr’s attention. Did the Modhri seem to notice?”

“Again, no.”

“And after we left New Tigris we went to the bar where Applegate was right across the room entertaining a couple of Cimmaheem,” I reminded her. “Yet he didn’t even bother to catch my eye and wave. Clearly, he didn’t care what I was doing or who I was doing it with.”

She caught her breath. “Yandro,” she breathed.

“Yandro,” I confirmed, feeling the heavy irony of having come full circle. “A useless, empty world that certain people behind the scenes were nevertheless hell-bent on colonizing. A useless world that I was fired over, in fact, when I tried to rock the boat. And a world where you set off red flags all across the local Modhran mind segment when you made that hurried visit to the stationmaster during a fifteen-minute stopover.”

“Yes,” she said, and there was suddenly no doubt in her voice. “That has to be it.”

“But what can we do?” the Elder asked. “If the system is as empty as you say, the Bellidos’ approach won’t work.”

“Which is precisely why the Modhri moved there,” I agreed. “Unfortunately for him, I have an idea.”

The Elder eyed me. “And the cost for this will be?”

Right on cue, my stomach growled. “Right now, all it will cost is dinner,” I said. “After that… we’ll need to talk.”

TWENTY-FOUR:

“This is certainly a pleasant surprise,” Larry Hardin commented as McMicking and I walked between the palm trees flanking the doorway that led into the formal solarium of his New Pallas Towers apartment. “When the news about that missing Quadrail hit the net I assumed you were both lost. Does this mean the Spiders have found it, after all?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. In actual fact, they had gone into the Tube and retrieved the derelict train. But since the Modhri had already killed everyone aboard, I doubted that would ever be announced. “Fortunately, we’d switched trains.”

“Lucky indeed,” Hardin agreed, gesturing toward a bench across from him set between a pair of lilac bushes. “As McMicking may have mentioned, I’ve had some second thoughts about your employment.”

“Yes, he did,” I confirmed, sitting down on the bench and sniffing appreciatively at the delicate scent of the lilacs. McMicking, for his part, went and stood at the back corner of Hardin’s bench, watching me closely. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that you were right the first time.”

Hardin’s eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?” he asked ominously. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to deliver, after all,” I told him.

“You’re giving up?”

“I give up when a job is finished or I’m convinced it’s not possible,” I said. “In this case, it’s the latter.”

“I see.” Hardin leaned back against his bench. “Speaking of unfinished jobs, I’ve been having my people do a little investigating of your, shall we say, unaccounted-for funding. Oddly enough, it’s also been impossible to track.”

“And what do you conclude from that?”

“Possibly that some governmental agency is involved,” he said. “I understand that a UN deputy director, who was also supposed to have been aboard that vanished Quadrail, has also returned alive and well. I further understand that you and he came back on the same torchliner and that you spent a great deal of the trip in his cabin.”

“You’re very well informed,” I said.

“I try to be,” he said. “You realize, of course, that our agreement has an exclusivity clause in it.”

“I haven’t told Director Losutu anything about this that I haven’t told you,” I assured him. “Our discussion was on other topics.”

“In that case, the only other possibility is that you were suborned by the Spiders themselves.” Hardin’s already cool gaze went a few degrees chillier. “And that wouldn’t be simply an exclusivity violation. It would be contract malfeasance and fraud, both of which are felonies.”

“You could certainly file charges and launch an official investigation,” I agreed. “Of course, that would mean letting the rest of the world know what you were planning to do. You really want that?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “But one way or another, I think we can agree that your actions have voided our contract. As such, according to Paragraph Ten, you owe me all the monies you spent over the past two months.”

“I understand,” I said. “Actually, as long as we’re on the subject anyway, money is the main reason I came here today. I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more of it.”

An amused smile touched Hardin’s lips. “You have chutzpah, Compton, I’ll give you that. Fine, I’ll bite. How much?”

“A trillion dollars ought to do it.”