Odd Girl Out

teeming with travelers. Despite my desperate hurry, I forced myself to slow to a walk, knowing that nothing drew attention faster than someone running full tilt through a crowd. The Modhri was relying on alien minds and alien eyes, and it was likely that most of the people moving through the station had never bothered learning how to distinguish one Human from another.

Even so, I doubted I could slip past all the walkers, not with the Modhri bending every resource he had here toward locating me. Certainly I'd never stay below the radar long enough to find Bayta.

But then, despite the impression I'd worked so hard to leave with the Modhri up in my room, I had no intention of turning the station upside down until I found her. All I needed right now was to get to the stationmaster and make sure he didn't carry out the arrangements I'd sent Bayta to make.

A chipmunk-faced Bellido stepped into my path, a set of three guns holstered beneath the arms of his elaborately embroidered robe. 'Excuse me—' he began.

I shouldered my way past him and picked up my pace, cursing under my breath. I'd hoped to get at least a little farther before I was spotted. Theoretically, I knew, I shouldn't have to physically confront the stationmaster, but should be able to relay my instructions to him via any Spider. But Spiders had varying degrees of imagination and autonomy, none of them very impressive, and I didn't dare risk that my message would get garbled or ignored.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted two Tra'ho'seej angling toward me. I responded by shifting direction toward a bulky Cimma also coming toward me, did a quick sidestep around him, and headed off in another direction entirely. I ducked behind and around a pair of Halkas, passed by a Human wearing a Sorbonne collegiate scarf and jacket, and made a tight circle to put me again on a path to the stationmaster's office.

And suddenly a pair of metallic Spider legs came angling down from my right, hitting the floor directly in front of me.

I had no chance to sidestep or even stop. I slammed into them, feeling them flex a bit with the impact, and bounced back. Before I could do more than catch my balance the Spider swiveled around behind me and wrapped another of his legs, wrestler-style, around my waist. A second later two more legs lifted from the floor and poked their way horizontally under my armpits, and the damn thing lifted me up like a weightlifter doing biceps curls.

And I found myself staring at my distorted reflection in a shiny Spider globe.

But not just any Spider globe. As I looked at the pattern of white dots beneath my face, I realized this was the same Spider I'd done that trampoline off of in my previous train's baggage car.

Was that why he was here? Looking for payback?

He pulled me higher and closer until my cheek was pressed against his globe. I braced myself, wondering if he was going to try bouncing off of me now, just to show me what it felt like, or whether he'd just settle for playing kickball with me across the station.

But to my surprise, I just heard a quiet Spider voice in my ear, almost too quiet to hear. 'What do you do here, friend?'

I felt my chest tighten. I'd never had a Spider call me friend. For that matter, I'd never heard of a Spider calling anyone friend.

And in that single numbing second I knew that my earlier speculations and suspicions had been right.

God help us all.

'What do you do here, friend?' the Spider asked again.

I took a deep breath. Whatever else this might mean—whatever the implications for the future—my first priority was to get Bayta away from the Modhri. 'I need to get a message to the stationmaster,' I said. 'Can you do that?'

'Yes,' he said.

I gave him the message, keeping it short and clear and as authoritative as I could make it. Hanging a half meter off a Quadrail station floor being stared at by hundreds of bemused aliens was no time to get long-winded. 'Can he do that?' I asked when I'd finished.

'He will do that,' the Spider said.

I grimaced, the sinking feeling in my stomach dropping another couple of floors. 'Then I suppose I need to get back to my prison,' I told him.

'Yes,' he said.

I frowned, focusing on the station around me. To my surprise, I discovered that we were already in motion, though the Spider was walking so smoothly I hadn't even noticed when, we'd started up. The Eulalee Hotel's main entrance was in sight out of the corner of my eye, and I could see the two Halkas who'd tried to corral me on the stairs waiting watchfully off to the side.

Belatedly, I realized I probably looked like an oversized baby in its mother's chest carrier. 'I can make it from here, Spot,' I told the Spider.

There was a slight pause, as if he was pondering the nickname I'd just given him. 'It is ordered that you be delivered to your prison,' he told me.

'This is extremely undignified,' I tried again. 'Dignity is important to Humans.'

He didn't answer. He also didn't put me down.

And considering the look on the Halkas' faces as we passed, maybe it was just as well that he didn't. The Modhri was apparently still mad at me.

The four Spider guards were back in their semicircle around my door when we reached my room. Spot set me down, one of the guards unlocked my door, and I went inside.

Tas Yelfro had managed to pull himself off the floor and drag himself up onto the couch in my absence. 'Human fool,' he rasped as I closed the door behind me. 'Did you genuinely hope to accomplish anything useful?'

The voice was raspy, but the face and tone were still those of the Modhri. 'You never know until you try,' I said, pulling over a chair to face him and sitting down. 'I have a deal to propose.'

'What sort of deal?'

'One that'll benefit both of us,' I said. 'But first we need to clear the air a little. Specifically, I didn't kill your walkers aboard the Quadrail. The baggage car decompressed, and they simply asphyxiated.'

He cocked his head to one side, the motion making him look more bird-like than ever. 'Yes, I know,' he said. 'How did you decompress the car?'

'I didn't,' I told him. 'It was probably some malfunction of the seals—the Spiders are looking into it. The point is that there's no reason to blame me for any of that, or to try to take revenge.'

'I never take revenge,' he said. 'Speak your proposal.'

'I want Bayta back,' I said.

'I want the Abomination,' he countered. 'Deliver it, and you may have the Human female.'

'Actually, you don't want the Abomination,' I said. 'You want something far more valuable than that.'

'There is nothing more valuable than the Abomination.'

'You're confusing means with ends,' I told him. 'Tell me, if you had the Abomination coral right now, what would you do with him?'

'I would take it through the transfer station to Jurskala,' he said. 'I have many outposts on that world.'

'And then?'

Something cold settled into the Modhri's eyes. 'It would reveal to me the location of the others.'

'No it wouldn't,' I said. 'You'll never get that information. Not from the coral.'

'Once I surround the Abomination, it will have no choice.'

'It'll never happen,' I insisted. 'The coral will suicide long before he lets you get him to your interrogation chamber. Or hadn't you heard about Lorelei Beach and what her symbiont colony did to itself on Earth?'

The Modhri's eyes might have flashed a little on the word symbiont. 'The Abomination will not have access to any such convenient means of self-destruction.'

'Who says he'll need it?' I countered. 'You have your polyp colonies kill their hosts and themselves all the time. Who says the Melding's outpost can't pull the same stunt inside his coral?'

The Modhri clacked his beak. 'For a Human who claims cleverness, you quickly argue yourself into your own trap,' he said. 'If the Abomination will not tell me where the others are hiding, then the only other source of that information is the young female. Do you wish for me to demand her instead in exchange for the Human Bayta?'

'Not at all,' I said. 'I wish for you to take a wider view of all this. I mean, really, what