Judgment at Proteus

headphones.”

“Which just proves she has a modicum of good taste,” I said. “My point is that through all of that her body might have been there, but she wasn’t. Her heart and mind were a million light-years away.”

“She was like that on the super-express, too,” Bayta reminded me. “You saw what a private sort of person she is. And as ChoDar said, a single Peerage car can be stifling. There was nowhere she could really get away.”

“Of course there was—there was her room,” I said. “She could have gone in there any time she wanted to and locked the door. ChoDar probably would even have had MewHijLosFuw deliver her meals there if she couldn’t stand the sight of us even that long. But instead she sat out there with everyone else, pretending to be sociable.”

“Because she was trying to look normal,” Bayta said, and I winced at the ache in her voice. Of all the people in the galaxy, Bayta knew best what it meant not to be what anyone else would define as normal. “She didn’t want to draw attention to herself by being antisocial.”

“Because she’d already made up her mind what she was going to do the first chance she got,” I said quietly. “This was that chance.”

“She knew she couldn’t get anything from Senior Ambassador ChoDar’s drinks cabinet without his or Chef KhiChoDe’s permission,” Bayta said, nodding tiredly. “And she was probably afraid it would tip us off if she tried.”

“That’s my guess,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, this is going to drastically change our travel plans.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we can’t spend the next month and a half cooped up in the Peerage car,” I said. “She may try to kill herself or her child again, and none of us has the necessary medical training or equipment to deal with that if she does.”

Bayta’s eyes widened. “Frank, we can’t ride the regular super-express,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “The Shonkla-raa have already tried to get us once.”

“I know, but I don’t see any choice,” I said. “Not unless you want to strap her down in her Peerage-car compartment.”

“We could do that,” Bayta said. “I mean, no, we can’t strap her down. But we could restrain her. We could do something.”

“And turn the only friends she’s got into her jailers?” I asked gently.

For a moment Bayta stared at me. Then, she exhaled a long breath, and her shoulders slumped. “She would hate us,” she said, an infinite sadness in her voice. “And once we reached Earth, and we couldn’t watch her anymore…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. But then, she didn’t have to. Once Terese was on her own again, she would finish the job she’d started today. One way or another.

“What it boils down to is that we can’t physically stop her from destroying her child if she wants to,” I said. “So what we need to do is make her not want to anymore. We need to persuade her to your way of thinking, that it’s the Shonkla-raa she should be fighting, not herself or her child. And we have to start by forgiving her for this stunt, and to prove we trust her by giving her some space and freedom.”

Bayta exhaled a snort. “On a Quadrail filled with Shonkla-raa and their agents?”

“Probably not exactly filled with them,” I soothed her. “And we’ll have a whole bunch of Spiders around to help us keep track of her.”

“Spiders who’ll be helpless if the Shonkla-raa attack,” Bayta pointed out grimly.

“They’re pretty much helpless anyway, at least in any serious fight,” I said. “Fortunately, I doubt the Shonkla- raa are ready to take it to that level. Not yet.”

“I’d hate to count on that,” Bayta warned. “After what we did to them on Proteus, they must be pretty angry.”

“Actually, if they’re that strongly driven by revenge, we can all heave a sigh of relief,” I said. “Revenge-seekers are incredibly easy to manipulate to their own destruction. No, I don’t think they’ll do anything because of two crucial facts. One, they don’t know who all our allies are; and two, for all their incredibly smug confidence they’re still a pretty small group.”

Bayta shivered. “But very powerful.”

“True,” I conceded. “Lucky for us, it’s the raw numbers that matter here. See, if you’ve got a big army, the simplest way to find out who your secret enemies are is by letting those enemies take potshots at you. You’ll lose a few of your own in each attack, but I’ve known commanders who wouldn’t be bothered a bit by that cost as long as it got them what they wanted.”

“I see where you’re going,” Bayta said, nodding slowly. “A small group can’t do that, and they’ve already lost quite a few of their number. If they hit us again, they could lose more, and they can’t afford to keep doing that.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Especially since hitting us won’t tell them anything new about our allies. No, for now they’re going to be watching and waiting, giving their agents time to figure out who and what we have lurking in the shadows.”

For a moment Bayta was silent, and I knew she was thinking about the depressing fact that, no matter how short the Shonkla-raa membership rolls might be, our own list of allies was considerably shorter. “How many compartments will we want?” she asked.

“Ideally, three,” I said. “If that’s not possible, I suppose you and Terese could bunk together.”

There was another moment of silence as she conferred with the stationmaster. “There aren’t any compartments available,” she said at last. “But there’s a long enough request list that the stationmaster is willing to add another compartment car. The three of us can have a double.”

“Good enough,” I said. “I’ll see if YhoTeHeu’s still in the lobby. If he is, I’ll tell him to wait here with you and Terese while I go tell ChoDar about the change in plans.”

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the kwi and pressed it into Bayta’s hand. “I’ll leave this with you regardless. Back as soon as I can.”

*   *   *

ChoDar wasn’t happy with my proposed change of plans. He’d been most pleased with our company, he told me regretfully, and had looked forward to sharing more dit-recs and elegant cuisine with us over the remainder of our journey.

The Modhri inside him was even less happy about it, especially after having sent two of his walkers tearing halfway across the station to give us cover from the Shonkla-raa attack. I thanked him, promised everything would be all right, and told him I would look forward to meeting the members of the mind segment that would be traveling with me.

I didn’t mention that I mostly wanted to meet those walkers so that I’d know who I’d be fighting if I was wrong about the Shonkla-raa making a move on the super-express.

The Modhri didn’t mention it, either. But he didn’t have to. We both knew.

*   *   *

Two hours later, the super-express—all fifty cars of it—pulled out of the station. We rolled up the ramp into the Tube and headed into six weeks’ worth of complete isolation.

Normally, the compartment cars were all were lined up together at the front of the train, between the engines and the regular first-class coach cars. In this case, at Bayta’s suggestion, the Spiders had put our extra compartment car a bit further to the rear, placing it between the first-class dining car and one of the extra storage cars that came with super-express trains. That meant Bayta, Terese, and I could get our meals without having to run the gauntlet of other compartment cars, whose doors might conceal any number of possible dangers, and also avoid putting ourselves on obvious display as we walked through the regular first-class coach cars.

I’d expected the Modhri to have a mind segment aboard, and he did: six walkers, four ahead of us in first class and two behind us in second. ChoDar himself would have been a seventh, but I was informed by a gregarious Shorshian who approached Bayta and me at dinner on the first night out that ChoDar was too far away from the train’s passenger sections to link up with the rest of the mind segment.

In some ways, that was a good thing. The Modhri was already planning to send one or two of the walkers back through third class and the baggage cars every day or two, moving them close enough to the Peerage car to link up with the ChoDar mind segment and keep it apprised of events. At the same time, ChoDar’s isolation meant that,