collective nose on the Human colony world of New Tigris, had been one of our greatest successes, and had no doubt irritated the Modhri no end.
Wherein lay the problem. There
And six weeks was more than enough time for the Modhri. should he be so inclined, to plan and carry out a couple of murders. Such as, say, those of Bayta and me.
The train was nearly to the platform now, and I took a moment to look up and down the line of our fellow passengers. One would expect that a super-express heading toward Filiaelian and Shorshic territory would mostly draw Filiaelians and Shorshians, and indeed those two species comprised nearly half our passenger list. But there were quite a few other species represented, as well: bulldog-faced Halkas, iguana-like Juriani with hawk beaks and clawed fingers, a few pear-shaped Cimmaheem. and even a couple of groups of delicately featured Tra’ho’seej.
More surprisingly, there were quite a few Humans, as well. I spotted at least three groups of four or five each, plus several couples and a healthy scattering of unattached individuals. Either something particularly interesting was about to happen at the far end of the galaxy, or else the Filly and Shorshic tourist bureaus were running some kind of tourism special.
Most of the Humans were down the line to our left in the second- and third-class sections of the platform. But there was at least one other besides Bayta and me waiting here for the first-class cars. He was middle-aged, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair, standing with his back to us as he conferred quietly with a group or four Fillies. Some top-level business executive, I concluded from the cut of his suit, or possibly an academic on a sabbatical exchange program.
There was the screech of multiple sets of brakes, and the train rolled to a stop. Directly in front of us was the middle of the three first-class compartment cars, the one in which Bayta and I had booked our usual double room. All along the train the doors irised open, and a line of seven-legged conductor Spiders stepped onto the platform, settling into their standard Buckingham Palace guard stances.
[All aboard Trans-Galactic Quadrail 1077 to Venidra Carvo of the Shorshic Congregate,] they announced in Juric, as always using the local language. For the rest of us, a multilanguage holodisplay with the same information floated above the train. [Departure in thirty-three minutes.]
This was it. Squaring my shoulders, reminding myself that so far we’d been able to handle anything the Modhri threw at us, I started toward the door.
And stopped short as the back of a hand suddenly pressed imperiously against my right shoulder. “Excuse us,” a voice said tartly. “Coming through. Excuse us, please.”
I turned to look. The owner of the hand was the middle-aged Human I’d seen talking to the four Fillies. Along with his salt-and-pepper hair. I saw now that he had a slightly bushy mustache, cut in the style currently in vogue among middle-level corporate drones. He was about my height, running a little to fat beneath his traveling suit. Confidence and authority and calm arrogance wrapped around him like a rain cloak.
His eyes flicked to me, sized me up and dismissed me in that single glance, and moved on. The pressure of the back of his hand vanished as he passed me by, still warning the rest of our fellow passengers to give him room as he ushered his four Fillies toward the door.
A few meters down from me, one of the waiting Juriani muttered something about decorum and proper procedure. But no one else seemed inclined to raise any objections. In fact, I spotted several of the passengers moving aside of their own accord.
The deference didn’t surprise me. Depending on who was doing the counting, the Filiaelian Assembly was either the biggest or second-biggest of the Twelve Empires, with an overall power, prestige, and influence to match. Individual Fillies, in my admittedly limited experience, didn’t pull rank all that often. But when they did. you could bet that everyone else in the vicinity was ready, willing, and eager to cut them the necessary slack.
But it wasn’t Filiaelian prestige or influence that was suddenly sending shivers up my back, but the fact that the Modhri’s shock front for our most recent operation against him had been a group of these sell-same Fillies.
I looked at Bayta, noting the tightness around her eyes as she watched the procession. Granted, all Fillies looked somewhat alike, as did all Bellidos and all Halkas and all Humans. And I certainly had no reason at the moment to suspect that this group had anything whatsoever to do with the Modhri.
On the other hand, up until a few weeks ago we’d been under the impression that the Modhri hadn’t penetrated Filly society at all. Our main purpose for this trip, in fact, was to take a run out to the Ilat Dumar Covrey system, where those six Modhran-controlled Fillies had come from, to see if we could find out what was going on out there.
The first of the four Fillies reached the door; and just as he started aboard, I saw their Human escort’s shoulders twitch. He paused there, gesturing the rest of the group forward.
And as he did so, he casually turned back around for another look at me.
He held the look no more than half a second before turning back to his charges. But it was more than enough. He had recognized me, and the recognition hadn’t been friendly.
Problem was, I didn’t recognize
“Interesting,” Bayta murmured.
I looked at her, wondering if she’d caught the man’s reaction. But her eyes were on the four Fillies. “You think they’re associated with our friends?” I asked, keeping my voice low. No telling which of the other passengers waiting their turn to board might be Modhran walkers.
“I don’t know,” Bayta said. “I was just noticing that none of the other Filiaelians seemed to mind letting those four push their way aboard first.”
I looked around. Focused first on the Fillies, and then on their Human associate, I’d completely missed the audience’s reaction to the little drama.
Bayta was right. All six of the other Fillies waiting to board our car were silently standing by, with no hint of impatience or annoyance on their long, horse-like faces. That probably implied the other four Fillies were even more upper-crust than the rest of us, though what the clues to that status were I didn’t know.
What I did know was that the Modhri worked especially hard to get into the Twelve Empires’ upper-upper crusts.
Terrific.
The four Fillies disappeared into the train, their luggage obediently rolling through the door behind them, followed by the Human and his three bags. Only then did the rest of the waiting Fillies make an orderly surge for the door.
I hung back, partly out of respect, mostly so I could watch the order in which the Fillies sorted themselves out. But as with the first four, the pecking-order cues they were using were too subtle for me to figure out.
When we ran out of Fillies, I let the waiting Shorshians, Halkas, and Juriani board. Then, with our section of the platform finally empty, I nudged Bayta ahead of me and we headed in.
I’d rather expected our double compartment to be different from those on standard Quadrail trains: a bit larger, or at the very least a bit more plush. But it looked very much the same as every other first-class compartment we’d traveled in over the past months. The luggage rack above the bed was longer, and there was an extra underbed drawer, both clearly put there with the assumption that passengers here would be traveling with larger wardrobes. But aside from that, the layout was the same. Super-express trains might include a plethora of extra cars, but the basic passenger accommodations had largely been left alone.
But there was
And then it hit me. The compartment smelled fresher. Fresher, cleaner, and somehow more sprightly.
I stepped to the display window and looked out. The tracks in the super-express Tube were arranged slightly differently from those in ordinary Tubes. There were only six main tracks, for one thing, with the Tube itself being correspondingly somewhat narrower. A set of auxiliary service tracks paralleled each of the main tracks about five meters to the right, which the official brochure said were for tenders and other emergency equipment. That made a certain amount of sense, given the thousands of light-years we were about to traverse without a single station
