The Third Lynx

I smiled tightly. 'But I'm not just a single Human. I'm the single Human. I'm the Human who took on an entire trainload of his walkers and destroyed them.'

The Chahwyn gave a short, two-toned whistle. 'That's not how it happened.'

'Isn't it?' I countered. 'A few months ago Bayta and I boarded a Quadrail with a Modhri mind segment that was ready and willing to take over the entire train in order to nail us to the floor. There was surely another mind segment at the platform who knew of that intent. Only we came out alive, while the train's mind segment and the rest of the whole damn train vanished without a trace. If you were the Modhri, what conclusion would you come to?'

His face was rippling now like a lake in a stiff breeze. 'No,' he said firmly. 'I know what happened aboard that train. It wasn't as easy as you imply.'

'I never said it was,' I said. 'But what you and I know doesn't matter. As far as the Modhri's concerned it's a big fat unknown. Big fat unknowns always make people nervous.'

'The Modhri does not panic so easily.'

'I never said he was panicked, either,' I said. 'I said he was afraid of me. An entire mind segment was destroyed, aboard a Quadrail where we theoretically had no access to weapons. The Modhri has no idea how we pulled it off, and he's sure as hell not ready to risk us doing it again.'

I gestured to Bayta. 'But don't take my word for it. Ask Bayta whether or not the Modhri's been playing us with tweezers and cotton batting ever since we tripped over Kunstler's body on the way to Bellis.'

They locked eyes in another miniconference. This time I stayed quiet and let them finish at their own speed.

It took over a minute, but when the Chahwyn again turned to face me I was pretty sure Bayta had won. 'What do you want?' he asked.

'Number one: I want to be reinstated,' I said. 'I didn't ask to get into this war, but I'm in it now and I'll be damned if I'll quit before the final whistle. That includes reactivating my fancy unlimited first-class compartment pass, and all the bells and whistles that go with it.'

'It will be done,' the Chahwyn said.

'And I want a monthly stipend, as well,' I added. 'There are all sorts of out-of-pocket expenses in this job, plus I still have an apartment in New York I'm paying rent on. Say, ten thousand dollars a month?'

The Chahwyn's face contorted slightly, but he nodded. 'It will be done.'

'Number two: I want to know what this new big secret is about the Lynx,' I said. 'First point on that list being how to make sure it won't blow up on me.'

'The Lynx will not explode.' He looked at Bayta again, possibly trying one last time to argue for silence in front of this upstart alien.

He might as well have saved himself the effort. Bayta was wearing her set-in-concrete stubborn expression, another of the looks I knew all too well. 'I'm listening,' I prodded.

'Have you ever heard of—' He glanced at Bayta, as if searching for the right English word. 'Of trinary weapons?'

'I'm familiar with binaries,' I said. 'Explosives built from two components that you have to mix together to get the desired boom.'

'Trinaries are not explosives,' the Chahwyn said. 'They're shock or energy weapons composed of three separate sections.'

'You mean like breaking a rifle down into component parts?' I asked, frowning.

'Not at all,' he said. 'A rifle component is instantly recognizable as part of a weapon. A true trinary is a weapon whose components are completely inert when they are alone. Only when they are joined is the weapon's true nature awakened.'

Something with cold feet ran up my spine. Three components. Hawk, Viper, Lynx. 'Are you saying that's what the Nemuti sculptures are? Some exotic alien weapon?'

'Not just an alien weapon,' he said grimly. 'A weapon created by the Shonkla-raa.'

'Terrific,' I murmured. The Modhri and the Nemuti sculptures. One weapon of the Shonkla-raa busily collecting the pieces of another. 'How do they work?'

'As I say, the three components are joined together,' the Chahwyn said. 'Each component then activates the others and is activated in turn by them.'

'And in the meantime, not only are they dormant, they're also effectively invisible to sensors,' I said. This whole thing was sounding more unpleasant by the minute. 'Do we know which sculpture is which component?'

He shrugged, a fluid rolling of the shoulders like a move in a scarecrow dance routine. 'From their shapes, I would assume the Lynx is the emitter and the Hawk the handle.'

'Yes, that makes sense,' I agreed, pulling up my mental image of the pictures that had been on Morse's data chip. 'And that would make—' I broke off, fumbling for my reader as something suddenly occurred to me.

'What is it?' Bayta asked.

'I just had a thought,' I said, plugging in the dictionary chip, 'I was about to say that would make the Viper the power supply.' 'And?'

'Remember what the Spider report said about that Nemuti scholar doing an etymological study on the sculptures' names and coming up with alien equivalents?' I punched in the word Lynx. 'Okay, let's see. Lynx comes from Middle English, from Latin, from Greek from— see leuk—' I hit the link. 'Bingo. The Indo-European root leuk means light or brightness.'

'Light?' Bayta asked, sounding confused.

'As in shock or energy,' I said.

Her expression hardened. 'Oh.'

'Exactly,' I agreed, keying for the other names. 'Hawk …from kap, meaning to grasp. There's your grip, all right. And Viper …from gwei and pere, meaning to live and to produce.'

'The power supply,' Bayta murmured.

'Right,' I said. 'This scholar was smarter than I thought. With this kind of hint, I'm surprised no one's figured it out before now.'

'This is all interesting, but of no immediate usage,' the Chahwyn put in. 'Now that you know the truth, you see that you must give me the Lynx.'

'I do, and I'd love to comply,' I said. 'Unfortunately, we've picked up a couple of complications along the way. For one thing, I don't have it with me. For another, it looks like we're going to have to trade it to the Modhri for one of our friends.'

The Chahwyn's back stiffened. 'You cannot do that,' he insisted. 'You will not do that. I demand that you retrieve the Lynx at once and bring it to me.'

'Easy,' I calmed him, holding out a soothing hand. 'You're missing the big picture.'

He snorted. 'Do you have any idea what the Modhri could do with such a weapon?'

'He could create havoc across the galaxy, including and maybe especially aboard the Quadrail trains,' I said. 'And I wholeheartedly agree that's something we very much want to avoid. But that's not the big picture I was referring to.'

'Then what is?'

'I can get you the Lynx,' I said. 'But what you really want are all the rest of the sculptures.'

'Except the one that exploded in the Ghonsilya art museum,' Bayta murmured.

I stared at her, her words echoing through my brain. Suddenly, with that simple comment, the whole thing had taken a sideways tilt. A very, very dangerous sideways tilt. 'Right,' I said, keeping my voice steady. I needed time to think this through. 'Of course not that one. So retrieving the rest of them is next on the agenda.'

'How can you do that?' the Chahwyn asked suspiciously. 'You don't even know where the sculptures are.'

'No, but I know where they were going,' I said. 'That first group of Bellidos, the ones with the stolen Hawk, were on their way to Laarmiten in the Nemuti FarReach.'