Applegate’s lips puckered. “I see you’ve lost none of your trademark tact.”
“You go with your strengths. I take it this Cimman starfighter deal is the bone of contention?”
“One of them, yes,” Applegate said. “But I really ought to let Losutu brief you on that himself.”
I nodded as a memory suddenly clicked. The two Cimmaheem in the corner table when Bayta and I had dropped in a few hours ago for our tea and lemonade. The human who’d been sitting with them… “That was
you
having the quiet chat over a bowl of
skinski
flambé wasn’t it?”
He smiled. “You see? You haven’t lost it completely. Yes, I invited our colleagues for an informal strategy session while Losutu was working on his report. I would have come over and said hello, but you seemed to be having a rather serious conversation of your own.”
My stomach tightened, then relaxed. With the bar’s acoustic design, there was no way he could have eavesdropped on us. All he would have seen was me having an intimate tête-à-tête with a young woman. Knowing him, he was bound to have instantly jumped to the wrong conclusion. “It was interesting,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
He lifted an eyebrow roguishly. “I’ll bet it was.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder. “And productive, too, I see,” he added, lifting a finger. “Miss?” he said, raising his voice a little. “He’s right here.”
I half turned and looked around the seat back. Bayta was coming toward us, a frown clearing from her face as she spotted me. “There you are,” she said, sounding relieved as she came up. Her eyes flicked to Applegate, back to me. “I was starting to get worried.”
“No need,” I assured her, gesturing to Applegate. “I ran into an old associate, that’s all.”
I was facing Applegate as I said that, with Bayta only in my peripheral vision. But even so, I caught the sudden stiffening of her body. “You’re one of Mr. Compton’s friends?” she asked, her voice suddenly guarded.
“
Mr
. Compton?” Applegate repeated, a touch of amusement in his voice. “Hmm. I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion on this one.”
“This is Bayta,” I told him. “She’s my assistant and recordist.”
The minute I said it I wished I could call the words back. Bayta’s formal demeanor had unfortunately ruined our best choice of cover story, namely that of a romantic relationship, leaving a business relationship as the only other option.
The problem was, Applegate had seen us on the Terra Station platform going our completely separate ways. The last thing I wanted was for him to remember that and start wondering.
But it was too late now to come up with a better story. All I could do was ignore the inconsistency and hope he would simply assume we’d been doing independent studies for our mythical travel consortium. “Bayta, this is Mr. Terrance Applegate,” I continued the introductions. “Formerly a colonel in Western Alliance Intelligence; currently an advisor with the UN Directorate.”
Bayta nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, her voice still wary.
“Likewise,” Applegate said. “Well, it’s been pleasant, Frank, but it’s been a long day and my eyes are starting to fall asleep.”
“Of course,” I said, standing up. “By the way, you didn’t happen to see a couple of Halkas pass through here a minute or two ahead of me, did you?”
“No, but I wasn’t really paying attention,” he said. “Is it important?”
“Probably not,” I said, privately giving up the hunt. By now the Halkas had had plenty of time to change clothes and go to ground, and I didn’t feel like searching the entire Quadrail for them. I would just have to keep my eyes open and wait for them to surface again. “They seemed a little drunk when they came pounding on my door, and I wondered if someone should alert the conductors.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it” Applegate advised. “I’ve never yet seen a drunk Halka get violent. And they’re not going to crush anyone to death if they pass out on top of him, like Cimma might.”
“True,” I said. “Good night”
Bayta didn’t speak again until we were back in the privacy of our compartment. “Is this Mr. Applegate a friend of yours?” she asked as I locked the door behind us.
“Hardly,” I said. “He was one of my superiors at Westali.”
“An acquaintance?”
I shook my head. “Given that he was one of the people who voted to kick me out, I wouldn’t even put him that high on my list.”
“More of an enemy, then?”
“Not really that, either,” I said, wondering why Bayta was beating this particular horse to death. “Let’s just call him one of life’s little disappointments.”
She seemed to mull that one over for a minute. “All right,” she said. “Are you planning to go out again tonight?”
“Just in the unconscious sense of the word,” I said, hanging up my jacket and checking my watch. A little over eight hours to Kerfsis. Still enough time for a decent stretch of sleep, but no chance now for the leisurely breakfast I’d envisioned. “I’m going to bed.”
“All right” For a moment her eyes searched my face. “Those two Halkas weren’t really drunk, were they?”
I hesitated, the heavily ingrained Westali secrecy reflex briefly kicking in. There was so little I really knew about Bayta. “No,” I told her. “I don’t think they were looking for any friend, either.”
“Were they looking for us?”
“They weren’t still chiming doors when I got out into the corridor thirty seconds later,” I said. “Draw your own conclusions.”
She looked over at the door I’d just locked. “Would you mind terribly if I left the wall open while we slept?”
“As long as you don’t snore,” I said, going to the luggage rack and pulling down the larger of my carrybags. In point of fact, I’d been trying to find a way to suggest that myself.
After all, if she knew about the Saarix-5 booby trap, it was a good bet that I’d be safe as long as she wasn’t demanding an airtight wall between us.
And if she
didn’t
know about it, at least whoever wanted to kill me would get a two-for-one deal. For whatever comfort that was worth.
The traffic at Kerfsis Station, though light by Jurian standards, was still far more impressive than that of any of the human stations we’d passed through, including Terra. A good sixty of us filed off the various cars of our Quadrail, with an equal number on the platform waiting to board. Most were Juriani, but there were a handful of other species as well. Bayta and I were the only two humans in sight.
We were heading across the platform toward the first-class shuttle when I spotted a pair of Halkas emerging from one of the third-class cars at the far end of the train. They were too far away for me to see the subtleties of their faces, but their rolling gait definitely reminded me of my late-night visitors. Taking Bayta’s arm, I angled us through the crowd in their direction.
“Where are we going?” Bayta asked. “We’re supposed to take the first-class shuttle.”
“I know,” I said, picking up my pace a little.
But either the Halkas spotted me on their tail or else they were in a hurry of their own. Before we’d covered even half the distance, they reached the third-class shuttle and disappeared down the hatchway.
“We need to take the first-class shuttle,” Bayta repeated, more emphatically this time.
For a moment I toyed with the idea of ignoring protocol and staying with the Halkas instead. But the Juriani were sticklers for their particular rules of etiquette and protocol, and they looked very disconcertingly down those hawk beaks of theirs at anyone who dared to break those rules. Bayta and I were first-class passengers, and we belonged on the first-class shuttle, and there would be genteel hell to pay if we tried to hitch a ride elsewhere. It didn’t seem worth that kind of grief, especially since all the passengers would be regrouping a few minutes from now anyway in the transfer station’s customs area. “Right,” I said, and turned us back toward our shuttle.
Like everyone else in the galaxy who could afford them, the Juriani used Shorshic vectored force thrusters for their artificial gravity. That meant an actual stairway inside the shuttle, which meant I could hang on to my carrybags instead of handing them over to an automated system that would leave my hands free to maneuver down a ladder. Considering what had happened to my luggage the last time they’d been out of my sight, I was just as glad to be able to keep track of them this time.
I’d been looking for signs of the Spiders’ sensor array as I climbed into the Tube back at Terra Station. I looked just as closely now as I went down the stairs into our shuttle, with no better success. Wherever the Spiders were hiding it, they were hiding it well.
The Jurian sensor system, in contrast, was at the complete other end of the subtlety scale. As our three shuttles glided toward the transfer station, we passed beneath a pair of compact battle platforms, each with a massive sensor array and a matched set of docked starfighters standing ready in case of trouble.
Fortunately, there wasn’t any. Our shuttle docked with the station, and a few minutes later we filed into the entry-point lounge. “Are we going through?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to look over the crowd at the customs tables at the far end.
I studied the wide exit doorways in the wall behind the tables. There were almost certainly layered sets of fine-scan sensors up there, and I wondered briefly whether they would be good enough to pick up the Saarix hidden in my bags.
Fortunately, we weren’t going to have to find out just yet. “No need,” I told her. “We’re not staying, remember?”
“I thought you wanted to see the security procedures.”
“I’ve seen enough,” I said, scowling as I looked around. There was no sign of the two Halkas I’d been trying to chase down earlier. Had their shuttle been diverted someplace else on the station?
But no. Just after the Halkas had reached their shuttle, I’d seen a little goose-feathered Pirk disappear down the hatchway behind them, and he was visible halfway across the room, standing in the little bubble of open space that tended to form around the aromatic creatures. The Halkas must have slipped out somewhere between the shuttle and the lounge.
Problem was, the only such duck-out places in the corridor
we’d
passed through had been a handful of official-use-only doors. Unless security for the third-class passengers was considerably looser, that meant they must have somehow disappeared into the bowels of Jurian officialdom.
“So where
are
we going?” Bayta persisted.
I looked over at the archway that would allow us to bypass customs and go directly across the station to the departure lounge. The simplest thing to do would be to take that corridor, fly back to the Quadrail, and chalk this whole thing up to coincidence and an overheated imagination.
But it wasn’t coincidence, my imagination was strictly room temperature, and what had started as a minor mystery was starting to take on some ominous aspects. Given the Jurian temperament, if my Halkas were sitting around someone’s office down there, there had to be a meticulously defined reason for it. “We’re going to find those Halkas,” I told Bayta. “Come on.”
I led her to the information kiosk nestled against the side wall. “Good day. Human,” the Juri behind the counter said, nodding her head with the slight sideways tilt that was the proper mark of respect toward an alien of unknown social rank. “May I assist?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m looking for two acquaintances—Halkas—who were supposed to be aboard the third-class shuttle. They haven’t shown up, and I wondered if there was some problem.”
“I will inquire,” she said, dropping her eyes to her display and tapping briefly at the keyboard. “No, there is no word of any problems or broken protocol.”
“May I see a floor plan of that section?”
The scales at the bridge of her beak crinkled slightly, but she worked her keyboard again without comment. “Here,” she said, and a display set beneath the countertop came to life.
I leaned over, studying it. There were several offices along the corridor, some maintenance and electrical access areas, and a small machine shop.
And one of the entryways into the secure baggage area.
“How is this door sealed?” I asked the Juri, pointing at it.
“Is this information that you need to know?” she countered, still very politely.
“This is the luggage that isn’t accessible to passengers during the trip,” I reminded her. “Valuables, oversized bags… and weapons.”
The beak scales crinkled again. “There is no entry into that area for outsiders,” she said firmly.
“I’m relieved to hear that,” I said. “Would you mind checking with security anyway?”
Her expression clearly indicated she thought I was crazy. But part of her job was to deal with crazy offworlders, and she merely turned back to her keyboard. “If you would care to wait?” she suggested as a padded bench extruded itself from the wall to the left of the kiosk.
“Thank you.” Taking Bayta’s arm, I led her over to the bench.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured as we sat down. “You think the Halkas are up to something?”
“All I know is that they’ve disappeared,” I said, looking back at the crowd. Still no sign of the Halkas. “Things like that bother me.”
We’d been sitting there for about fifteen minutes when the Juri called us back. “May I ask your precise relationship to these Halkas?” she asked when we arrived at her counter.
“Casual acquaintance,” I said. “I met them on the Quadrail and hoped to talk to them again before we went our separate ways, that’s all.”
“I see.” She seemed to study my face a moment “If you’ll step through that yellow door at the rear of the lounge, the Resolver will see you.”
I felt my stomach tighten. A
Resolver
had been called in? “Thank you,” I said.
We threaded our way through our fellow travelers toward the indicated door. “Did you mean for them to call in a Resolver?” Bayta asked in a low voice.
“No, of course not,” I said. “I was hoping to keep this very unofficial. Too late now.”
“We don’t have to go see him.”
“If we don’t,
we’ll
be the ones they start looking for,” I pointed out “We’ll just have to play it through.”
The door opened to admit us, and we stepped into a short corridor with a single door on either side and one at the far end. The door on the right stood open; deciding that was our cue, I walked over and stepped through.
A tall, distinguished-looking Juri seated behind a dark purple desk rose as we entered the room. “Good day, Humans,” he said, nodding his head the same way the female in the kiosk had. His scales had the polish of someone of the professional classes, and his beak carried the subtle markings that identified a Resolver. “How may I assist?”
The voice seemed oddly familiar. I took a closer look at the scale pattern of his face; and then, it clicked. “
Tas
Rastra?” I asked.
The scales of his cheeks puckered as he frowned at me in turn. Then, suddenly, they smoothed out. “Mr. Frank Compton,” he said, his voice vibrating with the deep subharmonics of Julian surprise. “An unexpected meeting, indeed.”
“For me, as well,” I agreed. “It’s been a long time since the governor’s reception on Vanido.”
“Indeed,” he confirmed. “You were in command of security for the representatives of Earth’s Western Alliance.”
“And you were the governor’s chief Resolver who made it possible for me to do that job,” I said.
“Both our lives seem to have changed since then,” Rastra said, gesturing to Bayta. “Please, identify your companion to me.”
“This is Bayta, my assistant on my journey,” I said.
“Your presence honors the Jurian Collective,” he told her gravely. “You have no title of standing?”
“None,” she said, her voice oddly tight.
“No, Bayta’s not a dignitary,” I told Rastra, frowning as I looked at Bayta. Her face, I saw, was as tense as her voice. Had she spotted something I’d missed? “I’m finished with that sort of escort duty,” I went on, looking back at Rastra. “How about you? Are you working Kerfsis Station now?”
“Actually, no,” he said. “My current position is to travel with a high official of the Halkan government, resolving any problems he might encounter.”
“And I’ll bet you’ve had a few.” I commented. Halkas often had trouble with Jurian protocol, especially Halkas high on the rank scale.
“Nothing too serious,” he said diplomatically. “But as a problem involving other Halkas has now arisen, and as High Commissioner JhanKla and I were awaiting the next Quadrail anyway, I thought I would lend my assistance to your problem.”
“Ah,” I said. “Actually, it’s such a small thing that I hesitate to even mention it. I ran into two Halkas aboard the Quadrail and hoped to see them again before we parted company, that’s all.”
“And why specifically did you wish this?”
Fortunately, I’d had time during our earlier idleness to come up with what I hoped would be a plausible story. “My current position is with a Terran travel consortium, and the Halkas told me about an interesting recreational area somewhere in the Halkavisti Empire,” I explained. “It sounded like the sort of place I should check out; but somehow I never got around to learning its name and location.”
“I see,” Rastra said, leaning back in his chair. “What sort of recreational area was it?”
“Oh, basically the kind we humans really like,” I said, waving my hand. A nice, vague description was what was called for here. “Plenty of outdoor sports, fantastic views, gourmet food. That sort of thing.”
“And unique, too, no doubt,” Rastra said, his beak flattening with a smile. “You Humans do seem to prize such qualities. Tell me, how did you meet these Halkas?”
“We just bumped into each other, like people do on a Quadrail,” I said. “They’d been drinking a little, and we started chatting.”
“Did you learn their names, homes, or where and why they were traveling?”
I felt my skin starting to tingle. This was rapidly drifting out of the realm of casual conversation and on to the all-too-familiar territory of an official interrogation. “The conversation never went that direction,” I told him. “And before you ask, I’d never met either of them before.”
For a long moment Rastra just gazed at me. Then he stirred and stood up. “Come,” he said, gesturing toward a door behind him. He started to turn that direction, then paused. “By the way, it’s
Falc
Rastra now,” he said. “The rank was conferred on me by the governor six lunes ago.”
I had the sudden vertiginous sense of the cultural rug being yanked out from under me. With that almost offhanded comment Rastra had suddenly jumped two notches above me on the Jurian social scale, and with a sinking feeling I realized that every tone of voice and nuance of word I’d just used with him had been a violation of proper social protocol. “Congratulations,” I managed through suddenly stiff lips.
Fortunately, like the good Resolver that he was, Rastra had already anticipated the problem. “Thank you,” he said, giving his beak a pair of distinctive clicks. “It was an unanticipated honor indeed.” Shifting his gaze to Bayta, he double-clicked her, as well.
And as quickly as it had been pulled out from under me, the rug was back beneath my feet. With those double clicks officially designating Bayta and me as his social equals—which we most certainly were not—he had graciously relieved us of the onerous task of juggling the complicated forms of address and gesture that would otherwise have been expected of us. “Unanticipated it might have been,” I said. “But well deserved.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But now come and tell me what you make of this.”
The door opened as he stepped to it. I started to follow, but Bayta cut halfway in front of me. “This Juri,” she hissed in my ear. “He’s a friend?”
It was the same question she’d asked about Colonel Applegate aboard the Quadrail. “Not anymore,” I murmured back. “When a Juri changes rank, he pretty much has to change all his friends, too. The class lines here are very strictly drawn.”
“But he was once your friend?”
I felt my throat tighten. “I don’t have any friends, Bayta,” I told her “I have acquaintances, former colleagues, and people who wish they’d never met me. Why? You auditioning for the part?”