Odd Girl Out

Finally; the cue I'd been waiting for. 'Don't bother,' I growled. 'We'll go talk to him ourselves. Is the shuttle still at the docking station?'

'Yes, sir,' the clerk said. 'But there aren't any outgoing passengers right now.'

'It can make a special trip,' I said. 'You owe me. Where can we leave our luggage?'

'You can't go back to the Tube,' the clerk said.

'Why not?' I asked.

For a second he fumbled, the mark of a man who had just said something that surprised even him and was searching madly for the reason why he'd said it. 'Well, you're here,' he said at last. 'I mean here, on this side of the station. You've already passed through Customs.'

'So we'll pass through again,' I said. 'You don't look all that busy.'

'Well, no, sir, but that's not the point. It's just …' He trailed off, still looking confused.

No doubt he was, and I could almost sympathize. Clearly, the man was a walker, a leftover from the days when the Modhri had actually cared about what happened in Yandro system. Just as clearly, the mind segment currently consisting of the polyp colonies in him and our fellow travelers didn't want me out of his collective sight.

Unfortunately for him, there wasn't any official reason the official could point to forbidding me to go back to the Tube. And even the Modhri could only push his powers of rationalization so far. He could take over the man's body, of course, but I didn't think he was ready to go quite that far. 'So where can we leave our luggage?' I asked again.

The clerk's lip's compressed. 'You can leave it here behind the counter,' he said, his face still working with the strange internal conflict going on inside him. 'There's no secure holding area this side of Customs.'

'This'll do fine,' I said. Shutting off my leash control, I picked up my bags and heaved them around the end of the counter, stacking them as far to the back as the narrow space allowed. 'Give me your bags, Bayta.'

Silently, she handed me her bags, and I added them to the pile. 'Now you just need to check us back through,' I told the clerk.

'Yes, sir.' Shutting down his terminal, he came out from behind the counter and crossed to the Customs counter five meters away. 'I'll need to see your IDs again.'

We showed him our IDs and allowed his body scanner to do its work. 'And we'll want a double room when we get back,' I added as he reluctantly waved us through. 'And sleeping rooms on the torchferry, of course.'

'Of course,' the clerk said. His expression was mostly neutral, but there was a quiet watchfulness beneath it. Taking Bayta's arm, I steered us through the doorway back into the outbound section of the transfer station.

And as we did so, I threw a casual glance back at our fellow travelers.

All six of them were watching us, their expressions a mix of concern and bemusement and sympathetic outrage for our unheard-of dilemma.

But beneath it all, on every one of those faces, I could see a hint of the Customs official's same quiet watchfulness.

The Modhri wasn't happy with me. Not a bit.

Bayta was obviously thinking the same thing. 'He knows what we're up to, you know,' she murmured as we headed for the shuttle bay.

'He thinks he knows what we're up to,' I corrected. 'The problem is, right now he can't do anything about it.'

'He could send his walkers after us,' she reminded me. 'They all must have come up with rationalizations as to why they were getting off at Yandro in the first place. Surely they wouldn't have any trouble coming up with equally good reasons to leave again.'

'Right, but in order to do that, they'd have to clear their luggage through Customs again,' I pointed out. 'That'll take time, and we'll be on our way to the Tube long before then.'

'Even with another walker in charge of giving them that clearance?'

So she'd noticed that, too. I'd expected she would. 'That won't help him any,' I said. 'Human Customs routines are largely computerized, with no way for a mere clerk to bypass the routine and speed up the process. In theory, he could call in his supervisor for an override, but that would probably take more time than he's got.'

'Couldn't they leave their bags here, like we did?'

'Even the Modhri would have a hard time coming up with a rationalization for that one,' I said. 'And I doubt he wants to risk taking over the hosts. Not six of them at once, not for the length of time this would take. If they compared notes afterward and discovered simultaneous blackouts, they might finally start to wonder.'

I smiled tightly. 'Besides, lurking in the back of his ethereal little mind is probably the thought that I might be goading him into precisely that move. We could be pretending to head back to the Tube, then planning to double back and make off with their luggage when they hurry after us.'

She gave me a puzzled frown. 'What in space would we want with their luggage?'

'I have no idea,' I admitted. 'But if the Modhri has learned anything, it's not to underestimate how convoluted our plans can get.'

'How convoluted your plans can get.' 'Whatever.'

She glanced back over her shoulder. 'He might still think it's a risk worth taking.'

'What for?' I countered. 'So we're dumping this group. So what? We're probably about to get back on the Quadrail, and he's got eyes all over the Quadrail. He'll just have the Customs agent or one of the passengers send messages both directions down the line to alert other mind segments, and figure he'll pick up our trail again before we get too far.'

'Excuse me?' a voice called from behind us.

I set my teeth together and turned around. The Modhri might at least have had the common decency to make his move before I'd gone so firmly on record with my prediction that he wouldn't. 'Yes?' I asked, turning around.

It was one of my rotund fellow Humans, the one I'd dubbed Tweedledum. 'My name's Braithewick,' he said, puffing a bit as he came up to us. His luggage, I noted, was nowhere to be seen. Left behind, as I'd just explained to Bayta wouldn't happen. 'I'm an associate negotiations researcher at the UN.'

A glorified computer clerk, in other words. 'And?' I prompted.

He seemed a bit surprised by my unenthusiastic response. 'I work at the UN,' he repeated. 'I wanted to offer my service in your negotiations with the stationmaster.'

'What negotiations?' I said. 'I'm going to make him find my lockbox and send it over here, and that'll be that.'

He chuckled. 'You amateurs,' he said with a typical mid-level bureaucratic air of self-importance. 'You always think it's going to be that easy.'

'Why shouldn't it be?' I asked. 'Unless you know something I don't.'

He smiled cherubically …and suddenly the smile faded, and the flabby skin of his cheeks and throat seemed to sag. 'Don't play games, Compton,' he said, his voice subtly changed.

'Hello, Modhri,' I said, the skin at the back of my neck tingling unpleasantly. No matter how many times I watched a Modhran mind segment take over one of its hosts, it still creeped me out. 'If you're still looking for the Lynx, you're out of luck. I haven't got it.'

'You know what I seek,' the Modhri said. 'I offer you a bargain: step back, and allow me to deal with it.'

'Is that a bargain, or a threat?' I asked. 'What exactly is it you're looking for?'

'You know what I seek,' he said again. 'The Abomination.'

'Ah—that,' I said, nodding sagely as I wondered what he was talking about. 'And what are you going to do when you find it?'

'It must be destroyed.'

'Like you destroyed the Human female back in Manhattan?' I asked. 'Why did you kill her, anyway? Too heavy to take with you?'

'The Abomination must be destroyed,' he repeated, ignoring my questions. 'For once, Compton, you and I will agree on this. You will want it destroyed as well as I.'

Another tingle tickled the back of my neck. False sincerity was a dollar a ton in this business, but there was something about the Modhri's expression that half inclined me to believe him. 'An interesting assumption,' I said. 'You really believe that?'