Odd Girl Out

'You never do that,' I told him firmly. 'As to what you should become, that's a question for people a lot smarter than I am. All I know is that you've kept peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy by being what you are, and by keeping the Spiders what you created them to be. You don't want to be in a hurry to upset that balance.'

His eyes were steady on me. 'Will you tell Bayta?' he asked.

I thought about it a moment. 'No,' I told him. 'Or at least, not yet. But circumstances may force me to do so somewhere down the line.'

His mouth flattened into a wan smile. 'As circumstances may likewise force us to do what we would otherwise prefer not to do?'

I grimaced. I hated it when people used my own logic against me. 'I never said any of this was simple. I just don't want you to turn a corner you may wind up bitterly regretting later on. Certainly not until turning that corner is absolutely necessary.'

'And until then?'

'Stay with what you are,' I said. 'Hold on to the high ground, and give the less noble people like me time to do our jobs. We can stop the Modhri. I know we can. But I want to make sure that when it's over we all have a safe, nondespotic Quadrail to ride home in.'

His eye-ridge tufts twitched. 'I will deliver that message,' he said. 'I do not guarantee the reception it will receive.'

'Good enough,' I said. 'What about this second kwi? Do you want it, or does it go back to Rebekah?'

'I will take it,' he said. He held out a hand, the hand and arm both stretching fluidly toward me. 'She was asked to keep that part of our involvement secret. It would disturb her to learn you had penetrated her deception by returning the weapon to her.'

'Which is one more good reason to back off the path you're taking,' I pointed out as I dropped the kwi into his hand. 'If you hadn't been so concerned about Bayta and me finding out about your new class of Spiders, there would have been no need for you to play this whole thing so far under the table. Rebekah could have given me the kwi when we first boarded the train and saved us all a lot of trouble.'

'Yes.' The Chahwyn paused. 'How did you learn of our new Spiders, if I may ask?'

'Basically, because you tried to be clever,' I said. 'I already knew there was a class of Spider I didn't know about—there'd been a couple of them hanging around every time we were spirited off a train for a chat with one of your people. I saw one of them aboard our previous train—I call him Spot, by the way—who probably came aboard with the group who moved our crate and then came into the passenger part of the train to keep an eye on things. They use a different telepathic frequency than regular Spiders, don't they?'

'They can communicate on both levels,' the Chahwyn said. 'It is similar to the difference in communication between the Modhri and the Melding.'

'Both of which are also different from the Chahwyn's frequency,' I said as a stray fact suddenly stuck me. 'Rebekah's kwi was tuned to the Melding frequency, wasn't it? She was the one activating it for me, not Bayta.'

'Correct,' the Chahwyn said. 'Now that it has been returned, it will have to be retuned to the Chahwyn frequency.'

'While you're at it, you should probably check the batteries,' I said. 'The six-hour knockout charge is only lasting a few minutes.'

'That is not a problem with the weapon,' the Chahwyn said. 'It is because the Modhri mind segment had coral nearby.'

I frowned. 'What does coral have to do with it?'

'When the mind segment includes a coral outpost, the effects of the kwi are not as strong or long-lasting,' he said. 'We believe the polyps in the coral are able to absorb some of the effect and dissipate it more quickly than is possible for a non-coral mind segment.'

'Oh, that's handy,' I growled. 'And when were you planning to tell me this?'

His cheeks puffed out slightly. 'We did not know it ourselves until recently.'

Terrific. 'Anything else you didn't know until recently that you'd like to share with the class?'

'Not as yet,' he said. 'But you were speaking about the Spiders.'

I grimaced. Getting timely and useful information out of the Chahwyn was like pulling teeth with greased fingers. 'The problem came when you decided to disguise your special agent by printing—'

'Our defender,' the Chahwyn corrected. 'We call them defenders.'

'Nice name,' I said. 'It was when you decided to disguise him by putting a stationmaster's dot pattern on his globe. It was reasonable enough in its way, I suppose—the two classes are about the same size, and I assume stationmasters are transferred back and forth on regular passenger trains every now and then. The problem was that when I mentioned him to Bayta, she told me there were no stationmasters aboard.'

'She could have been mistaken.'

'With a whole trainful of Spiders as her information network?' I shook my head. 'No, it was simply that she'd asked the wrong question. If you're in a band, and someone sees the trumpet player carrying a flute case, that person might ask you who the flutist is. You, knowing full well the band doesn't have a flutist, would tell the questioner he was nuts. If Bayta had asked if there was a non-standard Spider aboard, they might have told her there was, and we would have figured it out sooner.'

'Yes,' he murmured. 'And indeed, you describe a perfect example of the problem we seek so urgently to overcome. Would a Human have simply answered the question he was asked without also volunteering the bit of information that he hadn't been asked?'

'Actually, some Humans probably would,' I told him. 'We call them bureaucrats and mid-level managers.'

'But the best Humans would not.'

'Probably not,' I conceded.

His eye-ridge tufts twitched. 'Best of fortune to you, Frank Compton.'

Apparently, the interview was over. But that was all right. I'd said everything I'd come here to say. 'And to you, Elder of the Chahwyn,' I replied.

The temporary Quadrail stop was nothing to look at, consisting of a couple of cargo-sized hatches, a single- story storage building, and a loop of track where a tender or small train could pull off the main track for loading and unloading. A passenger staring out his window at the long light-years of Tube could blink at the wrong moment and miss it completely.

Even at that, it had probably cost around a quarter trillion dollars. Building stops along the Tube didn't come cheap. I hoped the Cimmaheem would get more out of their new colony than Earth had out of hers.

There were two figures waiting for us by a corner of the supply building as Bayta and I escorted Rebekah from the tender: a Pirk and a thirtyish Human female. They started walking toward us as we came into sight. 'Beheoro and Karyn,' Rebekah identified them quietly. 'Beheoro was Drorcro's sister.'

The Pirk who'd sacrificed himself to protect us from the two walkers on the New Tigris transfer station. Whether we'd actually wanted that protection or not. 'Do they know about him?' I asked.

Rebekah nodded. 'I've just told them.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Right.'

The five of us met in the middle. 'Greetings to you, Frank Compton and Bayta,' Karyn said, nodding gravely. 'We thank you for what you've done for Rebekah.' Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. 'And for our brother.'

I looked back to see the Spiders carrying out the lockboxes full of Melding coral. 'We were glad to help,' I said, turning back again. 'I'm sorry we couldn't do more.' I looked at Beheoro. 'Especially for those who were lost.'

'Drorcro is not truly lost,' the Pirk said quietly. 'While the Melding lives, so will he.'

'Of course,' I said lamely. That old funeral eulogy platitude, that the deceased would continue to live on in the hearts of those left behind, had always rather irritated me. But in this case, I had the discomfiting feeling that it might actually be true. 'Well, Rebekah, I guess this is it. Take care of—'

The rest of my stock cliche farewell vanished in a puff of air as she threw herself against me in a startlingly strong bear hug. 'Thank you,' she murmured into my chest. 'Thank you.'