“And then, thirty years ago, you Humans burst upon the scene.”
He paused, his eyes again shifting to Bayta. “You were a wild race, full of confidence and energy and cleverness. The Shonkla-raa had either failed to notice you or else had decided your world had nothing worth stealing and had passed you by. But you were certainly a shock to the rest of us. Nothing quite like you had ever been seen in the galaxy, and I will admit that many of us were somewhat taken aback. But others saw you as perhaps our last, best hope for victory against the Modhri.”
I felt my throat tighten. “Are you saying there isn’t anyone else left?”
His eye-ridge tufts bristled. “At that point neither the Bellidos nor the Cimmaheem had shown signs of Modhran influence,” he said. “And we think the Filiaelians, at the far end of the galaxy, may yet be untouched. Their routine manipulation of their own genetic code provides a natural barrier to Modhran intrusion.”
Which was probably why Hermod had pointed me toward the Fillies in the first place. Watching a Spider agent go charging off to one of the last remaining bastions of independence would have pretty much guaranteed the Modhri’s attention.
“But you were the ones with the drive and the curiosity that gave you a unique edge,” the Elder continued. “We needed only to wait until you were acclimated to the cultures around you and ready to act.”
“And meanwhile, the Bellidos decided to take their own crack at the Modhri,” I said, remembering our conversations with Fayr aboard the Quadrail.
“And failed like all the others,” the Elder said grimly. “Still, it was their effort that finally solved the mystery of the thought-virus mechanism.”
“So when Fayr decided to try it on his own, he had the whole story available to him,” I said, nodding. “And as an extra bonus, you even provided him with a nice little diversion.”
The Elder ducked his head, the gesture looking very strange the way his neck was jointed. “For that I apologize,” he said. “But Fayr was in motion, and while we had no details of his plan or timetable, we nevertheless deemed his attempt had a good chance of success. We further judged that Humans were not yet ready to make a serious effort against the Modhri on their own. So we did what we could to help the Bellidos, while at the same time not jeopardizing the possibility of a future Human attack.”
“And it worked pretty well,” I had to admit. “I didn’t divert the Modhri quite the way you planned, but my presence at least muddied the water a little. And Fayr was good enough that none of it made much of a difference to his plan anyway.”
“Yes,” the Elder murmured. “Except that it seems his plan was only a partial success.”
“Unfortunately,” I said. “My guess is that once the Modhri figured out that you were the ones behind all these attacks, he decided he’d better pull up stakes and get out of town. He picked a new homeland and started shipping his coral there as fast as he could.”
“So that by the time Fayr destroyed the Modhran coral beds, enough of him had already made the transfer to begin again,” the Elder said heavily. “But now Bayta tells us you know where this new homeland is.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Now all you have to do is convince me that I should tell you.”
He stared, his eye-ridge tufts going suddenly rigid. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean that from where I sit, you and the Modhri are looking way too much like fraternal twins,” I said evenly. “You both communicate telepathically, you both like to be in control”—I hesitated, but this was no time to worry about a little hypocrisy—“and you both play fast and loose with the truth when it suits you.”
I looked squarely at Bayta. “
And
you both invade people’s bodies.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she insisted. Unlike the Elder, her human face carried emotional cues I could read, and it was clear she was stunned by my abrupt refusal to spill my guts on cue. “The Modhri is a parasite, emotionally as well as physically, a creature who seeks to manipulate and control others for his own ends. I, on the other hand, am a true synthesis, with the Human and Chahwyn parts of me forming a genuine partnership.”
“And how much say did the Human half of you have in the arrangement of this partnership?”
A flicker of something crossed her face. “She was a foundling,” she said, her voice low. “A baby born aboard a Quadrail, then abandoned.”
I felt my skin crawling. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, certainly not among the rich and powerful who could afford to travel among the stars. “Did you try to find her mother?”
“Yes, they found her,” Bayta said. She was trying hard to sound like she was just reciting facts, but I could hear the pain beneath the words. “But she didn’t want me. Or so she insisted.”
“We, on the other hand, had great need of her,” the Elder said. “We had the Spiders bring her here and… the two were melded.”
A shiver ran up my back. “At least the Modhri has the courtesy to wait until someone’s full-grown before taking over.”
“We had no choice,” Bayta snapped, glaring at me. “You saw Hermod, how big and fat and ungainly he was. That’s what happens if you try to meld a Human and Chahwyn later in life. We had no
choice
.”
She swallowed, her glare fading. “We were fighting for our survival,” she said. “
And
for yours.”
“We’re not talking about me,” I said. “We’re talking about you, and how you’ve cheated an innocent Human being of her right to live. How exactly was this so-called melding done?”
“It was simple enough, at least from a technical standpoint,” the Elder said. “Though despite what you say, we
did
think long and hard over the ethical questions. But as Bayta has said, we had no choice. So we took the Human foundling and introduced a newly born Chahwyn into her body.”
So they’d done the same thing to a baby of their own, too. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he agreed uncomfortably He extended a finger, stretching it out toward Bayta like an invisible hand pulling taffy. “Our bodies, as you’ve already seen, are far more malleable than yours,” he said, withdrawing the finger to its original size. “It didn’t hurt either of them, I assure you.”
“The Modhri within a walker is always a separate entity lurking in the background, looking for advantages for himself,” Bayta said. “With me, though the Human and Chahwyn parts are in some ways separate, we are at the same time truly one person. We are partners, companions, friends. We are stronger than the sum of our parts.”
“If you say so,” I said, looking back at the Elder. “What about the one who brought me my Quadrail ticket? Another foundling?”
The Elder hesitated. “He, too, was unwanted.”
“Was he another foundling?” I repeated.
He sighed. “He was purchased,” he admitted. “Another child whose mother didn’t want him. In his case, we worked through Hermod and an agency to obtain him.”
“So there you have it,” I said, the ashes of defeat in my mouth. I hadn’t really wanted to prove the worst about the Chahwyn. But it seemed I’d done so anyway. “You buy and sell and use people like commodities, just like the Modhri. So you tell me: Why should I even bother to pick sides?”
“We’ve kept the galaxy at peace for seven hundred years,” the Elder said, his voice tight as his hoped-for victory began to slip between his malleable fingers. “We don’t interfere with politics or commerce or—”
“Do you want the woman back?” Bayta asked abruptly.
I blinked. “What do you mean, do I want her back?”
“You said we’d cheated an innocent Human being of her right to live,” Bayta said. Her face was pale, but her voice was steady. “We can’t change what has been for the past twenty-two years. But if the Chahwyn part of me is willing to die and return the rest of her life to her, will that make sufficient amends for our injustice?”
I shot a glance at the Elder. He seemed as flabbergasted by the offer as I was. “I don’t know,” I said. “What would that do to her?”
Bayta took a deep breath. “It would return her to what she would have been,” she said. “She would be fully Human once more.”
“And?”
Bayta hesitated. “She would be fully Human,” she repeated. “Would that be sufficient amends?”
I studied her face. If there was any duplicity in her offer, I couldn’t see it. “Let me think about it. What’s happening with McMicking?”
“The work will take a few hours more,” the Elder said, floundering a little as he tried to get back on track again. “Fortunately, he was brought here while the Modhran infection was still small and localized. Do you—?” He shot a look at Bayta. “Bayta reminds me you still need food and rest. Perhaps you will allow her to show you to a place where you may obtain both.”
“Thank you,” I said, studying Bayta’s face. Two beings, separate yet one. I didn’t understand it, but it seemed clear that she found the arrangement both reasonable and comfortable.
Perhaps more than just comfortable.
Partners, companions, friends
, she had said.
Friends
.
She had told me flatly that she wasn’t my friend. Yet for the sake of her people, she was willing to give up the closest friend she had… and that closest of friends was in turn willing to die.
If I demanded it.
I flipped my mental coin and watched it land where I knew it had to. No, the Chahwyn weren’t perfect. But then, which of us was? “Yes, I’d like something to eat,” I continued. “But let’s first get the matter of the Modhri’s new homeland out of the way.”
The Elder’s eye-ridge tufts fluttered. “I thought—”
“I know,” I said. “But in the end, I guess, everyone eventually has no choice but to pick sides. And like you said, you
have
kept the galaxy at peace.” I looked at Bayta. “Besides, Bayta has all the same clues I do. She could put it together if she wanted to. Question: What does the Modhri need in a homeland?”
“Cold and liquid water,” the Elder said. “The polyps can survive in many other environments, but only in cold water can they create more coral and expand his mind.”
“Okay, but you can get cold water almost anywhere,” I said. “What I meant was that he needs a place where he can avoid the kind of attack Fayr used against him.”
“I understand,” Bayta said, her forehead suddenly wrinkled in concentration. “He needs a place where you can’t bring in trade goods and buy weapons. Because there are no weapons to buy?”
“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “But at the same time, obviously, it has to be a place with Quadrail service. In other words, a primitive colony.”
“There must be a hundred such places in the galaxy,” the Elder murmured.
“At the very least,” I agreed. “Fortunately for us, the Modhri was kind enough to point us directly at it. Bayta, you told me Human society and government hadn’t been infiltrated yet, correct?”
“That was what we thought,” she said, her eyes gazing unblinkingly at me. “Yet we know now that Applegate
was
a walker.”
“So the Modhri
has
infiltrated,” I concluded. “Only he
hasn’t
infiltrated the top levels. Losutu, for instance, would have been an obvious target, yet he clearly hasn’t been touched. Why not? Answer one: The Modhri knew you were watching the people at the top level and would pick up on any moves he made. Answer two: He had more urgent fish to fry.”
“It’s on a
Human
colony!” the Elder exclaimed suddenly. “And you have only four of them.”
“Narrows the field considerably, doesn’t it?” I agreed. “But I can narrow it even further. Tell me, Bayta: When exactly did we suddenly become the focus of Modhran attention? Was it when that drudge grabbed my luggage at Terra Station in front of everybody? Applegate was there, and that incident would certainly connect me to the Spiders in the Modhri’s mind. Did it seem to bother him at all?”
“No,” she said slowly. “At least, nothing obvious happened there.”
“What about after you split off my car from the train and we had our chat with Hermod?” I continued. “That was what caught Fayr’s attention. Did the Modhri seem to notice?”
“Again, no.”
“And after we left New Tigris we went to the bar where Applegate was right across the room entertaining a couple of Cimmaheem,” I reminded her. “Yet he didn’t even bother to catch my eye and wave. Clearly, he didn’t care what I was doing or who I was doing it with.”
She caught her breath. “
Yandro
,” she breathed.
“Yandro,” I confirmed, feeling the heavy irony of having come full circle. “A useless, empty world that certain people behind the scenes were nevertheless hell-bent on colonizing. A useless world that I was fired over, in fact, when I tried to rock the boat. And a world where you set off red flags all across the local Modhran mind segment when you made that hurried visit to the stationmaster during a fifteen-minute stopover.”
“Yes,” she said, and there was suddenly no doubt in her voice. “That has to be it.”
“But what can we do?” the Elder asked. “If the system is as empty as you say, the Bellidos’ approach won’t work.”
“Which is precisely why the Modhri moved there,” I agreed. “Unfortunately for him, I have an idea.”
The Elder eyed me. “And the cost for this will be?”
Right on cue, my stomach growled. “Right now, all it will cost is dinner,” I said. “After that… we’ll need to talk.”
“This is certainly a pleasant surprise,” Larry Hardin commented as McMicking and I walked between the palm trees flanking the doorway that led into the formal solarium of his New Pallas Towers apartment. “When the news about that missing Quadrail hit the net I assumed you were both lost. Does this mean the Spiders have found it, after all?”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. In actual fact, they
had
gone into the Tube and retrieved the derelict train. But since the Modhri had already killed everyone aboard, I doubted that would ever be announced. “Fortunately, we’d switched trains.”
“Lucky indeed,” Hardin agreed, gesturing toward a bench across from him set between a pair of lilac bushes. “As McMicking may have mentioned, I’ve had some second thoughts about your employment.”
“Yes, he did,” I confirmed, sitting down on the bench and sniffing appreciatively at the delicate scent of the lilacs. McMicking, for his part, went and stood at the back corner of Hardin’s bench, watching me closely. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that you were right the first time.”
Hardin’s eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?” he asked ominously. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to deliver, after all,” I told him.
“You’re giving up?”
“I give up when a job is finished or I’m convinced it’s not possible,” I said. “In this case, it’s the latter.”
“I see.” Hardin leaned back against his bench. “Speaking of unfinished jobs, I’ve been having my people do a little investigating of your, shall we say, unaccounted-for funding. Oddly enough, it’s also been impossible to track.”
“And what do you conclude from that?”
“Possibly that some governmental agency is involved,” he said. “I understand that a UN deputy director, who was also supposed to have been aboard that vanished Quadrail, has also returned alive and well. I further understand that you and he came back on the same torchliner
and
that you spent a great deal of the trip in his cabin.”
“You’re very well informed,” I said.
“I try to be,” he said. “You realize, of course, that our agreement has an exclusivity clause in it.”
“I haven’t told Director Losutu anything about this that I haven’t told you,” I assured him. “Our discussion was on other topics.”
“In that case, the only other possibility is that you were suborned by the Spiders themselves.” Hardin’s already cool gaze went a few degrees chillier. “And
that
wouldn’t be simply an exclusivity violation. It would be contract malfeasance and fraud, both of which are felonies.”
“You could certainly file charges and launch an official investigation,” I agreed. “Of course, that would mean letting the rest of the world know what you were planning to do. You really want that?”
“Not particularly,” he said. “But one way or another, I think we can agree that your actions have voided our contract. As such, according to Paragraph Ten, you owe me all the monies you spent over the past two months.”
“I understand,” I said. “Actually, as long as we’re on the subject anyway, money is the main reason I came here today. I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more of it.”
An amused smile touched Hardin’s lips. “You have chutzpah, Compton, I’ll give you that. Fine, I’ll bite. How much?”
“A trillion dollars ought to do it.”
His smile vanished. “You
are
joking.”
“Maybe a little less,” I added. “We’ll have to see how it all shakes out.”
“How it shakes out is that you’ve outstayed your welcome,” he said tartly, signaling for the guards standing in the shade of the door palms. “My accountant will contact you when he’s finished totaling up what you owe me.”
“I’m sure he will,” I said, making no move to stand up. “Interesting thing about that young man who died outside the New Pallas the night I left New York. You
do
remember him, don’t you?”
Hardin’s forehead creased slightly. “What about him?”
“He’d been shot six times,” I said. “Three of those shots being snoozers. Yet apparently he was still able to made it from my apartment all the way here to the New Pallas Towers.”
“Must have had a very strong constitution.”
“Indeed,” I said, lifting my eyebrows. “You don’t seem surprised to hear that he’d come here from my apartment.”
The guards had arrived at my bench now. “Yes, sir?” one of them asked.
Hardin hesitated, then shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. He gestured to his companion, and the two of them headed back through the foliage toward their posts.
“You see, I got to thinking about him during the trip back to Earth,” I continued when they were out of earshot again. “There are really only three possibilities as to who might have killed him.” I held up three fingers and started ticking them off. “It wasn’t your average mugger, because your average mugger carries snoozers or thudwumpers but usually not both. It also wasn’t the man’s enemies— never mind who they are—because his presence here would have alerted them to my relationship with you and they would certainly have moved to exploit that. Which leaves only the third possibility.”
I ticked off the third finger. “You.”
I saw the muscles in his throat tighten briefly. “I was in here with you when it happened,” he reminded me.
“Oh, I don’t mean you personally,” I said. “But you were certainly involved. The way I read it, your people reported there was someone hanging around my apartment, which got you wondering if our deal maybe wasn’t as secret as you’d hoped. You told them to bring him in for a chat, but they weren’t able to do that. So you told them to get rid of him.”
Hardin snorted. But it was a desperate, blustering sort of snort. “This is nonsense,” he insisted.
“Only he wasn’t as easy to kill as they thought,” I continued. “So when they hopped into their car and headed back here to report, he pulled himself up off the pavement, grabbed an autocab, and followed them. That’s the only way he could have been waiting for me when I came out that night.”
I gestured toward McMicking. “And it’s the only way to explain how McMicking was on the scene so fast. He’d gotten the frantic report that the target was not only alive, but was standing on your doorstep, and had gone down to finish the job. Unfortunately for you, I got there first.”
“Ridiculous,” Hardin murmured. But the denial was pure reflex, without any real emotion behind it.
“That was the real reason you made a point of coming to see me at Jurskala, wasn’t it?” I asked. “You’d figured out that the dead man and I were connected, and you needed to find out if I knew you’d been involved.”
Hardin took a deep breath; and with that, he was on balance again. “Interesting theory,” he said. “Completely unprovable, of course.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “We could subpoena all the personnel who were on duty in Manhattan that night. Unless the messenger gave someone time to change clips, the presence of both snoozers and thudwumpers implies two shooters. I’d bet at least one of them would be willing to skid on you to save his own skin.”
“I’d take that bet, actually,” he said with a touch of grim humor. “But I’m forgetting—you don’t have anything left to bet with anymore, do you?”
“You really think your people will fall on their swords for you?”
“No falling necessary,” he said calmly. “All you’ve got is conjecture. There’s absolutely no proof of any of it.”
“And the courts are open to the highest bidder?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t go quite
that
far,” he said. “But you’d be surprised what the right legal representation can do.”
“What about the court of public opinion?” I persisted. “This kind of accusation splashed across the media would make you look pretty bad. And you have plenty of enemies ready to fan the flames.”
He smiled tightly. “You, of all people, should know how fickle public opinion is,” he said. “A couple of months, and whatever fire you managed to kindle would quietly burn itself out.”
I glanced up at McMicking. He was looking back at me, his face completely neutral. “So you’re not afraid of me, the courts, or public opinion,” I said, looking back at Hardin. “Is there anything you
are
afraid of?”
“Nothing that’s worth a trillion dollars in hush money,” he said. “And now you really
have
outstayed your welcome.” He started to get up.
“How about the Spiders?” I asked.
He paused halfway up. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, that’s right—you didn’t know,” I said, as if the thought had only now occurred to me. “The man your people killed was an agent for the Spiders. The way I hear it, the Spiders are very unhappy about his death.”
Slowly, Hardin sat down again. “It wasn’t the way you think,” he insisted, his voice tight. “
Yes
, I was concerned about this stranger hanging around; and
yes
, I wanted him out of the picture. But I never wanted him dead. That was a completely unauthorized over-reaction.”
“I’m not sure that the Spiders would understand that kind of subtlety,” I said. “And I’d bet you’d lose an awful lot of money if they embargoed you from shipping anything through the Quadrail. Probably a lot more than a measly trillion dollars.”
His eyes hardened. “This is blackmail.”
“This is business,” I corrected. “Can I expect your credit authorization in a timely fashion? Or do you need the Spiders to cut off all your shipments for a month or two to prove you can’t slide anything past them?”
For a dozen heartbeats he continued to glare at me. Then the corner of his mouth curled in surrender. “The money will be messengered to you by tomorrow afternoon,” he said, his voice as dark-edged as a death notice.
“Thank you,” I said. “If it helps any, the money will be going to a very worthy cause.”
“I’m sure it will,” he ground out. “Once you leave this apartment, you’re to stay out of my way.
Far
out of my way.”
“Understood,” I said, getting to my feet. I looked again at McMicking, got a microscopic nod of confirmation in return. Hardin would pay up, all right, and he wouldn’t make trouble. McMicking would see to that.
And in paying up, Hardin would save the Spiders, the Quadrail, and the entire galaxy. Just one more bit of irony for my new collection. “Thank you, Mr. Hardin. I’ll see myself out.”