Odd Girl Out

'Maybe related to all that coral he was moving?' Bayta suggested.

'Could be,' I said. 'Of course, that would require Lorelei to also have been a walker who went to my apartment to snag one of my guns. Scenario three is that the whole thing was a setup to get me to flush McMicking out into the open for him.'

Bayta took a thoughtful sip of her lemonade. 'You did say the walkers following you seemed more interested in him than in you.'

'True,' I agreed. 'On the other hand, we could still be on scenarios one or two, and deciding to follow us was just something the Modhri decided on the fly after seeing McMicking bail me out.'

'I don't know,' Bayta said thoughtfully. 'Something about the last two scenarios bothers me.'

'Me, too,' I said. 'Starting with the fact that if Lorelei was a walker there was no reason for her to keep hanging around my apartment after she'd stolen my gun. There was certainly no reason for her to spin me that story about a kid sister in trouble.'

'So what you're saying is that, for good or evil, someone wants you to go looking for her,' she concluded slowly.

I cocked an eyebrow. ' 'For good or evil'?'

She colored slightly. 'I've been reading Earth literature lately,' she admitted. 'I thought it would help me to understand …all of us …a little better.'

I suppressed a grimace. Bayta was in effect a hybrid, a Human who'd grown up with a full-blown alien Chahwyn similarly growing up inside her. They shared much the same sort of dual mind as a walker and his Modhran colony, except that in Bayta's case it was a true symbiosis and not simply a parasitical relationship. The Chahwyn part gave her a stamina beyond normal Human capacity, and let her communicate telepathically with the Chahwyn and the Spiders, an ability that came in handy on a regular basis.

If I thought about it too hard, it could become a little unsettling. But for her, obviously, it worked.

But partly because of that, and partly because Bayta had been raised by the Chahwyn, there were certain gaps in her Human cultural understanding. I'd been doing my best to help fill those gaps over the past few months by showing her some of the classic dit rec dramas by Hitchcock and Kurosawa and Reed. Now, it seemed she'd decided to branch out into literature, as well.

Still, there was something vaguely embarrassing about her admission, composed as it was of equal parts childlikeness and the painful awareness that for all her Human appearance she still wasn't fully Human. I turned my eyes away from her, pretending I was just checking out the area around us.

My eyes halted their sweep, Bayta's discomfiture abruptly forgotten. Sitting on a bench fifty meters away, his left profile turned to me, was a Pirk.

There was nothing unusual about that per se. Pirks loved to travel, and were reputed to spend more of their income on that than anything else except housing. This particular Pirk was typical of his people: wiry, covered with goose-like feathers, wearing the simple headdress that denoted modest means and social standing. He was gazing across the platforms that straddled the various four-railed Quadrail tracks running along the inside of the Tube.

But there was something else about him, something that was decidedly atypical of the species. The bubble of empty space that typically surrounded every Pirk wasn't there. Other travelers, Humans as well as non-Pirk aliens, were passing by his bench without veering away, some of them getting as close as a meter before they even seemed to notice he was there.

Either Terra Station was witnessing a mass paralysis of the olfactory organs, or else we'd stumbled across the galaxy's first non-aromatic Pirk.

'Frank?' Bayta asked.

'Take a look,' I said, nodding fractionally toward the bench. 'The Pirk over there with the yellow-and-pale-blue headdress.'

Lifting her lemonade, she casually looked that direction. 'Looks fairly young,' she said. 'Lower-middle-class, probably, from the headdress. Maybe even a bit lower …' She trailed off.

'Yeah, that's what I was thinking,' I agreed. 'Did the Pirks suddenly discover deodorant when I wasn't looking?

'Deodorants don't do any good,' she said, frowning at him. 'The distinctive Pirk aroma comes from the food they eat. The by-products are metabolized and excreted through the skin pores—'

'I was being facetious,' I interrupted. Cultural gaps aside, Bayta's general book learning was very much up to date. 'So does that mean this one's on a special diet or something?'

'I don't know,' Bayta said. Her eyes shifted a little to the left. 'Do you know those Humans he's staring at?'

Caught up in the novelty of it all, I hadn't even picked up on the fact that he was looking at something across the way. I tracked along his sightlines, and found myself facing a similar bench two platforms over.

There, chatting amiably together, were two men I did indeed recognize. 'They're a couple of my fellow torchliner passengers,' I said. 'I don't know their names.'

Bayta tapped thoughtfully on our table. 'There's something about them that bothers me.'

I took a sip of my tea. Now that she mentioned it, there was something about them that bothered me, too. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure it out. They were both in their late forties, with similar bland facial features and rotund physiques that put them halfway to the dit rec cartoon version of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They were nicely dressed but not ostentatiously so, with none of the look of the superrich that were the Modhri's favored target for planting colonies inside.

Still, I knew that up to now he hadn't launched that kind of campaign against humanity, contenting himself with keeping an eye on us via low- and mid-level governmental functionaries. The two Tweedles could easily fit into that category.

But then, so could any number of other people.

So what was it about them that had caught our attention?

And then, suddenly, it hit me. Since I'd been watching them neither man had checked his watch, or looked up at one of the floating schedule holodisplays, or even glanced down the track whose platform they were sitting beside.

They had, in short, a settled look. Like two men who weren't really anticipating the arrival of their train, but were simply hanging around the station enjoying the ambience.

It was much the same look as our non-stinky Pirk had, now that I thought about it. For that matter, it was the same look Bayta and I probably had. Three sets of travelers, none of whom had anywhere to go.

I lowered my eyes to the luggage nestled beside the two Tweedles. Four reasonably large rolling bags, plus two shoulder bags. Enough carrying capacity for someone who was traveling light to go anywhere in the galaxy. 'Do me a favor,' I said to Bayta. 'Find out when the next train is due to arrive on that track, and where it's going.'

Bayta's eyes took on a slightly glazed look as she sent out a telepathic message to the station's Spiders. 'It's an express heading outward toward the Bellidosh Estates-General,' she said after a moment. 'It doesn't arrive for nearly two hours.'

'Ah,' I said. 'Okay. Well, the good news is that your instincts are working perfectly.'

I quirked a lip toward the Tweedles. 'The bad news is that our friends over there seem to be waiting patiently for us to make our move.'

Bayta nodded, a typically calm acceptance. 'Do we have one yet?'

I ran a finger idly up the side of my now nearly empty glass. 'I think so,' I told her. 'We're going to need two different trains. The first will be a local going coreward to Yandro and Jurian space.'

'Where are we going?'

'Yandro,' I said. 'The second will be another local passing outward through Yandro back here.'

Her forehead creased for a moment as she studied my face. Then the wrinkles smoothed out again. 'All right,' she said. 'Let me see what's available.'

Her eyes glazed over again. Her lemonade was also gone, and I wondered briefly whether or not I should get us some food when I ordered refills.

'Got it,' she said, her eyes coming back to focus. 'The train for Yandro leaves from Platform Seven in forty minutes.'