"Good question," I acknowledged. "I wish I had a good answer to go with it."
"You weren't somebody she already knew?" he persisted. "A friend, or the friend of a friend?"
"Not that she ever mentioned," I said. "All she said was that her sister Rebekah was in danger, and that she wanted me to get her out."
"Is Rebekah still safe?" Bayta asked.
Karim's eyes shifted to her, his forehead creasing in a frown. "As safe as we can make her," he said. "And you are …?"
"This is Bayta," I told him, frowning in turn at his reaction. Were we going to get into the royal bugaboo of cultural problems here? "Is it inappropriate for her to speak in our company?"
"No, no, not at all," Karim assured me. But he was still staring at her, that odd look still on his face. "It's just that there's something about her. Something …" He shook his head abruptly. "Never mind. Tell me how you plan to get Rebekah off New Tigris."
"Not so fast," I cautioned. "I'm not doing anything until I know more about the situation. Let's start with who exactly was hunting Lorelei, and are they the same bunch who are also hunting Rebekah."
"We don't know who they are, exactly," he said. "The police may be involved—I know Lorelei didn't trust them, and didn't want us to, either. There have also been other people, too, mostly non-Humans, who've come to New Tigris for a week or two at a time."
I thought about the other two torchyachts we'd seen on the field north of town. "Tourists?"
"Some were," he said. "Upper-class ones, who threw a lot of money around traveling out into the wilderness areas. But there were also some who seemed to be here on business. That group stayed pretty much in the city."
I looked at Bayta, saw my same conclusion reflected in the tightness around her lips. Rich non-Human tourists and businessmen were prime candidates for Modhran walkerhood. And, of course, we were assuming Lorelei died in the company of Human walkers.
Which seemed to point to the slightly absurd conclusion that this ten-year-old Human girl was the Abomination the Modhri was so worried about. "Do the police have anything official to do with Rebekah?" I asked. "Any warrants or protection formals out on her?"
"None that I know of."
"How long have all these non-Human tourists been wandering around?"
"They started arriving about three months ago," Karim said. "At first, Lorelei didn't seem to be particularly worried about them. Then, about five weeks ago, she suddenly started getting nervous. She said she needed to go to Earth for help, and asked me to hide Rebekah while she was gone."
"Where's Rebekah now?" Bayta asked.
Karim hesitated, his eyes shifting back and forth between us. "Come on, Mr. Karim," I coaxed. "You either trust us right now, or else you don't trust us at all. There's no way to get you any more proof as to who we are or whose side we're on."
Karim snorted. "My father once warned me never to trust people who urge you to make a quick decision on an important matter."
"Whether to veer left or right as you barrel toward a cliff could be considered an important decision, too," I said. "It's also not one you can afford to ponder too long."
"Point taken," Karim said. But his eyes were still troubled.
"Maybe I can make it easier for you," Bayta offered. "If we were your enemies, we'd thank you for your time and leave. Then we'd come back with reinforcements."
"Reinforcements for what?" Karim asked, frowning.
"To get Rebekah," Bayta said. "She's here in this building."
Karim was good, all right. His face and body language didn't even twitch.
But even through his dark skin, I saw some of the color go out of his face. "Bayta's right," I said, putting a casual confidence in my voice even as I wondered how in hell's name she'd figured that out. "You want to take us to her? Or are you the sporting type who'd rather make us find her ourselves?"
"No need," he said, his shoulders sagging microscopically in defeat. Standing up, he moved his chair out of the way and ducked down to the floor. I was halfway around the side of the desk when there was a soft creaking sound.
And as I finished rounding the desk, I saw him pulling open a half-meter-square trapdoor. "She's down there," he said, straightening up and gesturing down the shaft.
I leaned over for a closer look. The shaft was completely framed with wood that looked like it had been there awhile. There was a ladder fastened to one side, disappearing downward into the darkness. I pulled out my flashlight and shone it into the hole, revealing a dirt floor about four meters down. At the bottom a passageway led off from the desk side of the shaft, heading in a direction that would take it under the main part of the bar. "Interesting accommodations," I commented.
"Part of the storage cellar," Karim told me. "We walled it off from the main cellar when Rebekah went into hiding."
"How obvious is the dividing wall?"
"Not at all," he assured me. "It also has ten beer barrels stacked against it." He gestured to the shaft. "Shall I go first?"
There was a subtle challenge to my pride hidden in the question: the big, bad, former Westali agent afraid that a simple little colonist might pull a fast one and seal him away down in the deep, dark hole.
But I was way past the point of letting pride make my decisions for me. "Yes, thank you," I said, gesturing him toward the ladder.
Without a word he knelt, got a grip on the edge of the hole, and started down the ladder. Motioning Bayta to stand watch, I followed him down.
He was waiting just inside the passageway when I reached the ground. The passageway itself, I saw now, ended at a dark dirt face only a couple of meters away. "What now?" I asked.
"This way," he said, turning and starting down the passageway.
Again, I followed. He reached the end, and as he pushed the "dirt face" aside to reveal a soft light beyond I realized that it was just a light-blocking curtain that had been set across the passageway. He stepped through, holding the curtain open for me. Bracing myself, I stepped through after him into a small, low-ceilinged room.
The furnishings were Spartan in the extreme. There was a cot, a small folding table and chair, and a drying rack that held both neatly folded clothing and a collection of ration bars. In one corner of the room a sink/toilet combination nestled up against a section of the wall that had been gouged out for access to the bar's plumbing system. Stacked neatly along one of the other walls were twenty gray metal containers about the size of standard Quadrail lockboxes, about fifty centimeters long and twenty centimeters high and deep.
And sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cot with her back against the wall, gazing at us with an unreadable expression, was a young girl.
"Hello, Rebekah," Karim said. "How are you doing?"
"I'm fine, thank you," she said gravely, unfolding her legs and standing up. Her voice was definitely that of a ten-year-old, but at the same time there was also something very adult about it.
But then, she was apparently being hunted for her life. That sort of thing could age a person very quickly.
"Are you Frank Compton?" she asked.
"Yes, I am," I confirmed, shaking away my musings and giving her a quick once-over. She seemed healthy enough, though her long confinement had left her a little thin and pale.
Aside from her build and hair color, though, she didn't really resemble Lorelei very much. Still, I'd known sisters who were a lot more dissimilar than this. "You ready to get out of here?" I asked, keeping my tone light.
"Very much so," she said gravely. Her eyes flicked down to the kwi still gripped in my right hand, but she didn't ask about it. "Mr. Karim told you about my other needs?"
I frowned at Karim. "What needs are those?"
He winced a bit. "The boxes have to go with her," he said, nodding toward the stack of gray boxes against the wall.
I looked at the boxes and then back at Karim. "You're kidding."
"Neither of us is kidding, Mr. Compton," Rebekah said reprovingly. "It's absolutely vital that those boxes and I leave New Tigris together."