The Third Lynx

seeing anybody leave the compartment car during the hour before Smith's body had been discovered.

Obviously, they'd simply forgotten. People did that a lot, and every cop knew it. But just the same there was no point in offering Morse the opportunity to add that bit of weight to the case against me. 'Still, we do know of at least one person who entered the compartment car prior to the discovery of the crime,' I said instead.

'Who?' one of the Bellidos asked.

I pointed to the lady politician still hovering behind them. 'Her.'

The woman's eyes widened. 'What did you say?' she demanded. Unlike her screaming voice, her demanding voice was solidly in upper-crust territory.

'Just stating facts, ma'am,' I said mildly.

'Lady Dorchester had nothing to do with the crime,' Morse put in hurriedly. 'I can personally vouch for her.'

'So what?' I scoffed. 'Bayta here can personally vouch for me, too. That proves nothing.'

The mental daggers I'd been sending Morse earlier reversed direction. 'This is nothing but an attempt to muddy the waters,' he ground out. 'I've shown you my credentials. If Mr. Compton has any of his own—'

'Excuse me, but Mr. Compton and I have business to attend to,' Bayta spoke up unexpectedly. 'You three go ahead and continue your discussion.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Morse growled. 'Until this is settled you can't go anywhere unattended.'

'What's to settle?' I countered. I had no idea where Bayta was going with this, but I was willing to play along. 'As long as we're still in the Tube none of you has any right to hinder our movements.'

'That may change momentarily,' Morse warned darkly.

'When it does, be sure and let me know,' I said. 'Until then, we have lives to lead. Honored sirs; Lady Dorchester,' I added, nodding in turn to the Bellidos and the woman. Taking Bayta's arm. I turned us in the general direction of the stationmaster's building and started walking.

I half expected Morse to try to stop us, but he didn't. I gave us five or six steps worth of distance, then leaned my head toward Bayta. 'What's up?' I asked quietly.

Her answer was to pull subtly on my arm, changing our course a few degrees to the left. 'Those hatchways,' she murmured, nodding toward a set of shuttle hatchways fifty meters ahead.

I craned my neck to look over a line of goose-feathered Pirks that were hurrying past across our path. Two of the hatchways had the glowing rims that proclaimed the presence of docked shuttles. A crowd of travelers had gathered in the area, waiting their turn to embark for the transfer station and the torchliners that would take them to their ultimate destinations here in the Estates-General's capital system. As I watched, one of the two glowing hatchways opened and began disgorging a line of passengers, upper-class Bellidos with lots of plastic guns riding beneath their arms. 'What about them?' I asked Bayta.

'I just saw another shuttle from that same group only let out five passengers,' she said. 'All of them upper class.'

'So they had a short load,' I said. 'So what?'

'But then only five outgoing passengers got on,' she said. 'Belldic shuttles are supposed to carry sixty passengers.'

I frowned. She was right about the number. And given that it cost as much to run a half-empty shuttle as it did a full one, nobody deliberately ran short loads without a good reason. 'Let's take a closer look,' I suggested.

Sure enough, before we'd gotten twenty paces the flow of incoming Bellidos from the shuttle stopped. Five of them, just as Bayta had said. The outgoing passengers started filing down the stairway; again, only five made it in before the hatchway light went out, indicating the shuttle was full.

'Interesting,' I said, shifting my attention to our five new arrivals. A dozen paces from the shuttle hatchways they joined up with another group of five, possibly the ones from the shuttle Bayta had first noticed. The first five were standing casually enough, looking at first glance like any other collection of travelers regrouping before heading for their trains.

But they weren't talking among themselves or looking at their tickets or admiring the brilliantly flashing Core- line that ran through the center of the Tube above our heads. Instead, they stood silently, their attention focused outward toward the rest of the crowd milling about the station.

Even more interestingly, their carry-on luggage, instead of hugging their owners' sides like well-behaved self- rolling luggage should, was gathered together in the middle of their circle like the women and children in an old dit rec western.

The other lighted hatchway opened, and a third group of upper-class Bellidos started filing up into the Tube. 'Wait here,' I told Bayta. Turning off the leash button inside my lapel to keep my luggage from following, I headed toward the hatchway, weaving in and out of the other travelers as quickly and unobtrusively as I could.

Only five Bellidos got out of this shuttle, too. By the time I reached the waiting crowd the first five outgoing passengers had disappeared down the stairway and the hatchway's rim lights had gone out. Picking up my pace, I hurried forward, and as the hatchway started to iris shut I jumped through the opening.

The stairway had already retracted, and I dropped two meters straight down onto the folded metal. I hit with a rattling clang, nearly twisting my ankle on the uneven surface as I threw a hand against the side wall to steady myself. Recovering my balance, I lifted my eyes from my footing.

To find myself staring down the muzzles of a dozen guns.

Not the fake ones Bellidos were allowed to carry into the Tube, either. These were the real thing: large caliber, undoubtedly loaded, and gripped in very steady hands. Hands whose owners were furthermore encased in Belldic military uniforms.

'Who?' one of the soldiers demanded.

Somewhere deep in my chest, I found where I'd mislaid my voice. 'Sorry.' I croaked, carefully opening both hands to demonstrate their emptiness. 'Wrong shuttle.'

There was a soft clanking from above me as the hatch opened again. 'Go,' the Bellido ordered, twitching the muzzle of his gun upward in case my ears had stopped working the same time my voice had.

I got a grip on the edges of the hatch, my eyes flicking once to the five wide-eyed nonmilitary Belldic passengers in the front row, and pulled myself up and out. The shuttle hatch irised closed, followed by the station's own hatch, both of them nearly catching my legs before I could get them out of the way.

'What in the world was that for?' Bayta demanded, hurrying toward me with my carrybags in her hands and her own rolling at her heels. 'If Morse had seen you trying to get away—'

'I wasn't trying to get away,' I assured her as she set down my bags with perhaps a little more force than necessary. 'Besides which, the shuttle was already full.'

'With only five passengers?'

'That's right.' Turning my leash control back on, I let my bags roll into position behind me, then gave a casual glance at the—now—fifteen Bellidos who'd emerged from the three special shuttles. The original ten were still gazing outward, looking for all the world like a group of combat soldiers settled into a defensive ring around their clustered luggage.

The five new arrivals, in contrast, were looking straight at me.

'Come on,' I said, taking Bayta's arm again and picking a random direction away from them.

The Bellidos didn't make any move to follow. I waited anyway until we'd built up some distance before speaking again. 'Two reasons why the shuttles were already full,' I said quietly. 'Reason one: they were military layout, with only twenty seats each. Reason two: the other fifteen seats were occupied by armed Bellidos.'

Bayta's eyes went wide. 'They're not supposed to bring weapons this close to a station,' she insisted.

'They must have gotten special permission,' I said. 'It did seem to be an official military operation. And they didn't try to—'

'I don't care how official it was,' Bayta said. She actually looked angry, an emotion I didn't see in her very often. 'No weapons are allowed in the trains or Tubes. They know that.'

'And they didn't try to bring the weapons into the Tube,' I finished patiently. 'Come on. If the Spiders could keep their temper over this, you should be able to, too.'

Her lips compressed into a thin line. Then, slowly, the tension lines eased. 'It was still a waste of effort,' she said. 'Once the shuttle has left the transfer station, what good are armed soldiers going to do anyone?'

'Not a scrap,' I agreed. 'But someone aboard must have been feeling nervous about whatever he was up to. Apparently he wanted to get to the Quadrail with at least the illusion of safety.'