Odd Girl Out

TWENTY-ONE :

For a long minute the Chahwyn just gazed across the room at me. 'How did you learn this?' he asked at last.

At least he wasn't going to waste my time with a useless bluff. I had to give him points for that one. 'Lots of little things,' I said. 'In retrospect, I'm surprised it took me as long as it did.'

I nodded behind me. 'For starters, this business of melding species together is your trademark trick, not the Modhri's. It's the same thing you did with Bayta. In fact, Rebekah even pointed that out. Does she know, by the way?'

'Rebekah does not know,' the Chahwyn said. 'None of the Melding does.'

'Nice to know she's not as accomplished a liar as I was starting to think,' I said. 'The next clue was that Rebekah told us the Melding had a secret place where they'd all gone to hide. You don't get anywhere in this galaxy, certainly not by

Quadrail, without Spider cooperation. In a case like this, Spider cooperation means Chahwyn cooperation. QED.'

His eye-ridge tufts quivered. 'QED?'

'Quod erat demonstrandum,' I explained. 'It's from an old Earth language and means that which was to have been proved. In this case, Chahwyn knowledge implies Chahwyn complicity.' I cocked an eyebrow. 'Where exactly is the Melding hiding place, by the way?'

'In an uninhabited system near Sibbrava which the Cimmaheem are thinking about developing,' the Chahwyn said. 'There is a temporary Quadrail stop there which services only their exploration teams.'

'But of course there's no official station yet,' I said, nodding. 'Which means no manned support services, no resident personnel, and no transfer station with its contingent of nosy Customs agents. Give the Melding a transport or two, and they can go anywhere.'

'They have such a transport.'

'Again, QED,' I said. 'There was also your rather ham-handed attempt to protect the coral—or what you thought was the coral—from the Modhri on the train into Jurskala. There was no reason for his walkers to have moved the crate all the way to the last cargo car. You did that, probably sending your Spiders across from this very tender to get it out of their reach. When the walkers came looking for it, you let them get into the second car and popped the roof.'

'Yes,' the Chahwyn said. 'I did not expect him to blame you for that.'

'I'm sure I appreciate the thought.' I reached into my pocket and pulled out the kwi Rebekah had given me. 'But this was the real clincher,' I continued, holding it up. 'At the critical moment in our fight, Rebekah was able to get this to me. She told me afterward that she'd found it in one of the walkers' pockets.'

'You don't believe that to be the truth?'

'I know it isn't.' I reached into my other pocket. 'Because this is my kwi.'

For a moment he gazed at the two weapons, his eye-ridge tufts again quivering. 'What will you tell Bayta?' he asked.

'That depends,' I said. 'In retrospect, I can see that from the moment Lorelei showed up in my apartment this whole thing was designed to get Bayta and me to help sneak Rebekah off New Tigris and to safety.'

'She was trapped and alone,' the Chahwyn said, a note of quiet pleading in his voice. 'Our Spiders could not help her, not on a Human world far from the Tube. You were the only ones we could turn to.'

'In principle, I have no problem with that,' I said. 'We do work for you, after all.' I let my face harden. 'But that's hardly the whole story. You wanted us to help Rebekah …but yet you didn't want us to know you were also involved with her. Still don't, for that matter. I want to know why.'

He exhaled softly, a sound that was almost a whistle but not quite. 'Because we were afraid,' he said, his voice low and earnest and even a little ashamed. 'We were afraid of what you would think.'

'What would we think?' I countered. 'That you were trying to find a way to infuse the Modhri with a calmer, gentler, less aggressive form of himself? As a matter of fact, I brought up that exact idea myself.'

'Yet you were extremely angry when you first learned what we had done to create the Human/Chahwyn symbiont that is Bayta,' he reminded me. 'Your anger nearly caused you to turn your back on us instead of choosing to support us.'

'I think you're overstating the case just a bit,' I said.

'If so, only in degree, not in substance,' he said. 'But more than that, there were Bayta's feelings to consider. Whatever she may think about herself and her Chahwyn symbiont, would she accept that doing the same with Modhran polyps and other living beings was both acceptable and needful?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But considering how close she and Rebekah have become over the past couple of weeks, I don't think she would have a problem with it.'

'Perhaps not,' the Chahwyn said. 'But it was a risk we dared not take.' His face elongated slightly. 'A risk we are still not prepared to take.'

'In other words, you want me to keep my mouth shut about this?'

'We would be most grateful if you would,' the Chahwyn said, relief evident in his voice.

'I'm sure you would,' I said. 'But that's not the whole story, either. And you, Elder of the Chahwyn, are a liar.' I stuffed the two kwis back into my pockets. 'Permit me to prove it.' Bracing myself, I started toward him.

His mouth dropped open, his body stiffening with disbelief and probably fear. But the two Spiders flanking him didn't even hesitate. Before I'd made it three steps they had moved in front of their master, each dropping into a low, four-legged stance with his other three legs raised high like a tarantula preparing to strike. I kept coming, feinting right and then ducking left.

And suddenly I found myself wrapped in a cold metallic grip as one of the Spiders snatched me off the floor. A second later my back was slammed none too gently against the top of the side wall.

I looked past the shiny Spider sphere at the Chahwyn still sitting frozen in his chair. 'QED,' I said quietly. 'The Melding experiment isn't just your attempt to create a less dangerous Modhri.

'You're trying to create a Spider army.'

'You are a fool,' the Chahwyn bit out, his breath coming in short, spasmodic bursts now. 'You don't understand your danger.'

'Oh, I understand my danger quite well,' I assured him, wincing as the Spider's legs dug into my already sore ribs. 'The question is, do you understand yours?'

For maybe a quarter minute no one moved or spoke. Then, slowly, the Spider holding me lowered me back to the floor. 'You don't understand,' the Chahwyn said again, his melodic voice gone flat and lifeless. 'We cannot fight. We cannot defend ourselves. We are helpless before the Modhran onslaught. We had to do something.'

'You did do something,' I told him. 'You hired me.'

He snorted, a dog-like sound. 'Do truly think you can defeat the Modhri alone?'

'I'm not alone,' I said. 'Neither are you. We have allies all over the galaxy. Not many of them, granted. Not yet. But our ranks are growing.'

'Not as quickly as the ranks of the enemy.'

'Perhaps,' I conceded. 'But you can't defeat the Modhri by becoming just like him.'

He looked back and forth between the two Spiders. 'Then what do we become?' he asked. 'Or do we simply resign ourselves to defeat and destruction?'