Her eyes defocused briefly 'Yes, there are two adjoining compartments available,' she confirmed.
'Book 'em for us,' I ordered. 'Then—'
'Wait a minute,' she interrupted, frowning in concentration. 'The stationmaster says there should be a tender along soon, one that's set up for normal people.'
'Really,' I said, frowning in turn. Tenders were workhorse trains, typically two or three cars with an engine on each end so they could move in either direction without having to go to a station or siding to turn around. Normally, the cars were stuffed with equipment and spare track and Spiders, without any of the conveniences that Quadrail passengers usually demanded, such as food, restroom facilities, and a constant supply of oxygen.
But the Spiders did have a few tenders that had been tricked out for passengers. Bayta and I had traveled on them a couple of times. If there was one in the vicinity, it would be the perfect way to avoid the Modhri on our way to Sibbrava. 'When's it due?' I asked.
'About twenty hours,' she said.
I shook my head. 'No good. In twenty hours half the transfer station personnel will be over here waving papers calling for my arrest on triple murder charges.'
'But they won't be able to arrest you,' Bayta pointed out. 'Not in here.'
'Maybe not, but they'll sure be able to sit on me long enough to get my prints and biometrics and send them to Earth for a solid ID,' I reminded her. 'The minute all that gets cross-linked to my real name and the circumstances around Lorelei's death in New York come to light, I might as well kiss the Terran Confederation good-bye as far as a retirement home is concerned. Forget the tender—we'll just take the next train.'
'All right,' Bayta said. She wasn't any happier about the situation than I was, I could tell. But I wouldn't be of any use to the Spiders and the war against the Modhri doing four or five life sentences for a bunch of murders I hadn't even committed. 'We're confirmed aboard.'
'Good,' I said. 'By the way, which direction is the tender coming from?'
'From rimward,' Bayta said. 'It's somewhere in the Greesovra area.'
One of the worlds of the Bellidosh Estates-General, and the opposite direction from the way we were going. No chance then of rendezvousing with it somewhere along our way.
Unless we took the next Quadrail headed back in that direction, met the tender at Helvanti or one of the minor Belldic colonies, and switched ourselves and our cargo aboard there.
But a glance at the holodisplay torpedoed that one. The next Quadrail heading rimward wasn't due for another twelve hours, which was no better than the twenty it would take the tender to get here under its own steam. 'So that's settled,' I said briskly. 'Let's get this crate unpacked and send the boxes of coral to wherever the Spiders keep lockboxes until they're ready to be loaded aboard.'
'Do we just dump the crate completely, then?' Bayta asked.
I looked at the approaching Spiders. 'No, let's leave the three brandy boxes inside and have the crate loaded in the luggage car as Rebekah originally planned. When the Customs man back on the transfer station gets questioned about the murders, he'll probably mention we took a crate out with us.'
'He'll also tell them there were just some boxes of brandy inside,' Bayta pointed out.
'Which no one will believe,' I said, pulling out my reader. 'The more eyes pointed at it, the fewer pointed at us. What's a good stop on the Kalalee Branch, something well past Sibbrava?'
Bayta looked over my shoulder. 'Benedais would work,' she suggested, pointing at a spot on my Quadrail map. 'It's reasonably large and quite cosmopolitan.'
'Benedais it is,' I agreed. 'Have the Spiders label the crate for Benedais. While you're at it, have them make us up another half-dozen labels for a few other random locations.'
'Which we can put over the Benedais one if we need to?' Bayta asked.
'Exactly,' I said. 'The more effort we can put into making the crate look vitally important to us, the better our chances of keeping the Modhri focused on it until we're ready to slip Rebekah and the coral off the train.'
I looked at Rebekah. She had a rather doubtful look on her face, clearly wondering about the possibility of keeping a group mind focused in only a single direction at all. But she merely nodded agreement. 'Whatever you think is best, Mr. Compton,' she said.
'That's the spirit,' I said. 'Okay, then. Let's get to it.'
SIXTEEN :
I'd told Bayta that twenty hours was way too long to expect the three bodies on the transfer station to go undiscovered. Privately, I'd suspected even our ninety-minute wait would be pushing it.
So it was to my mild surprise that the Quadrail rolled to a halt at our platform without so much as a fact-finding crew making their appearance. Either the transfer station personnel knew trying to talk me out of my safe haven in Spider territory would be futile, or else no one had wanted to barge in on the men in Room Four to ask if they'd really agreed to let me take Rebekah and fly the coop.
I hoped they would at least find the bodies before the Pirk stopped being non-aromatic.
Whatever the reason for our reprieve, the train pulled in, we got aboard, and it pulled out again. I didn't actually see the Spiders put the crate and lockboxes aboard—that was all handled on the opposite side of the train from the passenger doors—but even before the train started on its way again Rebekah was able to confirm that her mutant coral was snugged in safely beneath our compartments. None of us knew whether or not the crate had been brought aboard as well, but knowing Spider efficiency I had no reason to doubt that it had.
A conductor Spider showed up in Bayta's compartment shortly after the train passed through the atmosphere barrier into the main part of the Tube. A couple of minutes later, he'd folded away the luggage rack above the bed and replaced it with a second bunk, converting the compartment from a single to a double.
We stayed put for the first few hours, lying low against the possibility of being spotted and identified by any walkers who happened to be traveling with us. Midway through the nine-hour trip to Yandro Bayta and I slipped back to the dining car to get something to eat.
Rebekah insisted on staying behind where she could be near her coral, which was fine with me. The less she was out in the open, the better. Bayta and I had a quick dinner, then got a carry-away meal to take back to Rebekah.
Yandro came and went, the last stop in Human space. The next stop, seven hours beyond it, was Homshil, one of the heavily traveled node points that linked up several different Quadrail lines, including a super-express that led across a large span of unoccupied territory to the Shorshic and Filiaelian empires at the other end of the galaxy.
Homshil was usually a stop where a lot of passengers got swapped out, and this time was no exception. Bayta and Rebekah and I stayed in our compartments while the do-si-do was going on, keeping our display window opaqued. The layover complete, we headed out again.
Sixteen hours out, and so far not a peep from the Modhri. But that wouldn't last. McMicking would be holding off on his arrival at the New Tigris transfer station, I knew, giving us as much time as he could to make our escape. But he wasn't exactly out of the woods yet himself, and he absolutely had to get through the station and to the legal protection of the Tube before the techs on the planet fixed the comm laser he'd wrecked and blew the whistle on him.
And of course, the minute he reached the Quadrail and the late Mr. Veldrick's coral got within range of any other Modhran mind segments, the balloon would go up in spades.
We had to be as far away as possible before that happened. Unfortunately, we could only go so fast. Our train was what was informally called a local-express, which had fewer stops than a local but more than a regular express. An extra downside to that fact was that once the Modhri knew Rebekah and her coral were on the run, extra stops meant more opportunities for him to bring additional walkers aboard our train.
But there was nothing I could do about that. New Tigris and Sibbrava were both small enough to be served only by locals and local-expresses. Theoretically, we could switch to a faster express somewhere past New Tigris and
