The Third Lynx

Claremiado Loop and go to Laarmiten instead.'

'Fine,' he said. 'Incidentally, when we hit Bildim I'm going to see about upgrading back to first class. No sense in staying back here guarding your luggage if there's nothing in there worth guarding.'

'Not really,' I agreed. It was not, I decided, the right time to tell him I was going to upgrade back to a first- class compartment, too. 'Be sure to lift a fine Scotch whiskey to my health.'

The corner of his lip twisted. 'Of course,' he said softly. 'Maybe even two.'

TWENTY-TWO :

Forty minutes later we felt the slight bump that meant we'd been reconnected with our train.

'It occurs to me we may have trouble letting the other side know we want to alter the exchange point,' Morse commented as we started down the aisle of the rearmost third-class car. 'I don't suppose you have a forwarding address for them.'

'No, but I don't think it'll be a problem,' I assured him. 'They have people all around.'

'So I gather,' he said. 'I think it's about time you told me exactly who and what this group is.'

'Later,' I told him.

At the front of our car, one of the restroom doors opened and possibly the widest Cimma I'd ever seen pushed his way out into the aisle. With his eyes on the floor in front of him, completely oblivious to our presence, he started waddling in our direction. 'This could be trouble,' Morse murmured.

'No problem,' I assured him, spotting an empty seat a few rows ahead. 'We'll pull in there and wait for him to pass.'

We were nearly there when the Cimma suddenly raised his eyes far enough to see us. 'Ah—friends,' he panted, his blubbery flanks wobbling their way around another pair of seats. Apparently even this much of a stroll was outside his usual endurance level. 'Excuse pre please. I am bother of great height.'

'That's all right,' I said. Morse had already stepped into the gap, and I nudged Bayta to join him. There wasn't enough room for all three of us, so I slipped into the row just behind them, apologizing with a nod of my head as my feet brushed a little too close to the toes of the Juri seated there.

The Cimma worked his way to the row in front of Bayta, then suddenly turned an intense gaze on me. 'But you not sit from this car,' he said. 'I would peer three Humans living here together.'

'No, our seats are farther forward,' I agreed. 'We had to get something from our luggage.'

'All three of you?' Abruptly his jaws cracked wide in a sly smile. 'You on running, my friend?'

'What?' I asked. The casual Cimmaheem approach to grammar made them masters at mangling all languages except their own.

'You on running,' he repeated, even more slyly. 'You were cheating at cards, perhapsly, and went dark to hide?'

'No, of course not,' I said stiffly, putting all the wounded pride into my voice that I could summon on short notice. The Cimmaheem might be terrible with languages, but they could read attitude and tonal nuance with the best of them.

And they were better than most at jumping to wrong conclusions. 'Ah,' he said knowingly as he got his bulk moving again, finally clearing Bayta's and Morse's row. 'Never fear, friend. I will not orate upon you.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'We appreciate it.'

'Nothing littler can one do for a friend,' he said, looking directly into my eyes as he cleared my row as well. 'Be long-lived, friend, and do run safely to probable.'

With that, he continued on back, bumping into every seat and most of the shoulders along his path. I stared at his back as he went, an odd tingling somewhere at the base of my brain. There was something wrong about him, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

'You coming?' Morse asked.

I snapped out of my reverie. 'Of course,' I said, nodding again to the Juri as I stepped back out into the aisle.

Bayta was looking oddly at me. 'You all right?' she asked.

'I'm fine.' I took a deep breath. 'Come on, let's get back to our seats. I want a nap before we hit Bildim.'

I was awakened by a hand shaking my shoulder. 'Compton?' Morse's voice called from somewhere in the distance. 'Come on, snap out of it.'

I blinked open my eyes. Everything around me was dim, which meant the car's lights had been lowered to their usual nighttime setting. That must mean we were about to come into Bildim Station. I lifted my wrist to check my watch.

It was only then I realized I wasn't sitting in my nice, comfy

third-class seat amid the smells and sounds of dozens of Humans and aliens. I was, instead, standing amid the crates and trunks in one of the baggage cars, facing a stack of dark blue boxes safety-webbed to the side wall.

I snapped fully awake. 'What the hell?'

'I was about to say that myself,' Morse growled. 'When did you start sleepwalking?'

'I don't sleepwalk,' I told him, looking around. I was in a baggage car, all right. The front one, I tentatively identified it. 'What happened?'

'As I said, you were sleepwalking,' Morse said. 'I heard you mumbling, and when I looked back to see what the problem was you were lumbering down the aisle like Frankenstein's latest science project.'

A cold chill ran up my back. 'Thought virus,' I muttered.

'Come again?'

'Thought virus,' I repeated. 'It's a technique used by the enemy for planting suggestions in a person's mind.'

'You mean like a hypnotic drug?' Morse asked, frowning.

'Similar, but a lot easier to deliver,' I said. 'Remember that Cimma who talked to us as we were heading back to our seats earlier? It didn't click at the time, but his hair didn't fit his supposedly lower-class status.'

'Of course it did,' Morse said, frowning with concentration. 'I remember. It was hanging completely loose.'

'Yes, but it had the kinking of having been recently braided,' I said.

'You're right,' Morse murmured. 'Bloody hell. But what does that have to do with this?'

'You were there on Ghonsilya,' I said. 'You saw how most of the enemy's soldiers were from the upper and ruling classes.'

Morse muttered something under his breath. 'I was hoping they were just playing fancy-dress to throw the cops off the track.'

'No, they were real,' I assured him. 'And the Cimma called me friend, four or five times at least. Friendship helps lower emotional barriers and gives the thought virus better access to the victim.'

Morse hissed between his teeth. 'You ready yet to tell me what the hell is going on?'

'Later,' I said. 'Right now, I need to figure out what I'm doing here. What happened after I came in?'

'You walked straight to this stack of crates and stopped,' Morse said. 'You were staring at the labels when I decided enough was enough.'

I studied the stack of crates. All of them had destination labels for the same world, some place in the Cimmal Republic I'd never heard of. So did all the crates in the two stacks on either side of it. 'Interesting,' I said, pulling out my multitool. 'Let's see what's in them.'

'Easy,' Morse warned, suddenly cautious. 'This is illegal even by the Spiders' rules.'

'Don't worry, I won't hurt anything,' I said. Selecting the pry bar, I slid it beneath the lid of the top crate, digging into the plastic near one corner. With a twist of my wrist, I popped the lid half a centimeter up.

And as the train clattered around a curve and the car lurched, a spoonful of water rolled through the gap and