Not dead, I told myself firmly. Not dead. The Modhri was way too smart to throw away his best leverage against me by killing her out of hand. No, she was surely only unconscious.
Unfortunately, she could also be literally anywhere on the station. "Alert the rest of the Spiders to watch for her," I ordered him. "You four start searching the passenger areas between here and the medical center."
None of them so much as budged. "Did you hear me?" I demanded.
"You are ordered to remain in your compartment," the Spider said.
"I have authority in Bayta's name to give you orders," I said, easing myself to the side where I would have a clear shot around his maze of legs. Actually, I wasn't really sure how much authority I had over the Spiders when Bayta wasn't with me.
"You are ordered to remain in your compartment," the Spider said, still not moving.
I grimaced. Apparently, not much. "In that case—" I began.
And right in the middle of the sentence, I ducked past him and sprinted for the stairs.
Spiders being the simple workers that they are, I hadn't expected them to react quickly enough to stop me. I was right, and was halfway down the first flight of the wide flowing staircase before they even made it to the landing.
Unfortunately, the Modhri wasn't nearly so slow on the uptake. I had reached the fourth-floor landing and was rounding the corner onto the next curve of stairs when I heard the sounds of a small crowd further down the stairway on its way up.
I was halfway to the third floor when the front of that wave reached me.
There were four of them, all middle-aged Juriani dressed in quiet, dignified, upper-class clothing, breathing heavily as they bounded up the stairs like children in a hop-clink game. Behind them, just starting up the flight of stairs, were two Halkas wearing the trilayered robes of the Halkan Peerage. Apparently the Juriani were the sacrificial lambs, designed to slow me down as I barreled through them so that the larger Halkas could safely corral me before I did any serious damage.
But I had no intention of playing nicely. I waited until I was only three steps away from the panting Juriani, then veered to the outside of the stairway, grabbed the top of the railing, and flipped myself over the edge. Shifting my grip in midair to one of the railing's vertical supports, I slid down until I was hanging straight over the railing of the next flight down. As my momentum swung me inward, I let go of the support and dropped to the stairs below.
Neatly putting me below the Modhri's attack line.
I could hear the sudden flurry of activity above me as the Juriani and Halkas screeched to a halt and reversed direction. But they were too late. I was already on my way down, taking the stairs three at a time. I reached the lobby and charged past the rest of the astonished travelers out into the station.
Jurskala Station was the Quadrail stop for the Jurian home system, and as such was large, elaborate, and teeming with travelers. Despite my desperate hurry, I forced myself to slow to a walk, knowing that nothing drew attention faster than someone running full tilt through a crowd. The Modhri was relying on alien minds and alien eyes, and it was likely that most of the people moving through the station had never bothered learning how to distinguish one Human from another.
Even so, I doubted I could slip past all the walkers, not with the Modhri bending every resource he had here toward locating me. Certainly I'd never stay below the radar long enough to find Bayta.
But then, despite the impression I'd worked so hard to leave with the Modhri up in my room, I had no intention of turning the station upside down until I found her. All I needed right now was to get to the stationmaster and make sure he didn't carry out the arrangements I'd sent Bayta to make.
A chipmunk-faced Bellido stepped into my path, a set of three guns holstered beneath the arms of his elaborately embroidered robe. "Excuse me—" he began.
I shouldered my way past him and picked up my pace, cursing under my breath. I'd hoped to get at least a little farther before I was spotted. Theoretically, I knew, I shouldn't have to physically confront the stationmaster, but should be able to relay my instructions to him via any Spider. But Spiders had varying degrees of imagination and autonomy, none of them very impressive, and I didn't dare risk that my message would get garbled or ignored.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted two Tra'ho'seej angling toward me. I responded by shifting direction toward a bulky Cimma also coming toward me, did a quick sidestep around him, and headed off in another direction entirely. I ducked behind and around a pair of Halkas, passed by a Human wearing a Sorbonne collegiate scarf and jacket, and made a tight circle to put me again on a path to the stationmaster's office.
And suddenly a pair of metallic Spider legs came angling down from my right, hitting the floor directly in front of me.
I had no chance to sidestep or even stop. I slammed into them, feeling them flex a bit with the impact, and bounced back. Before I could do more than catch my balance the Spider swiveled around behind me and wrapped another of his legs, wrestler-style, around my waist. A second later two more legs lifted from the floor and poked their way horizontally under my armpits, and the damn thing lifted me up like a weightlifter doing biceps curls.
And I found myself staring at my distorted reflection in a shiny Spider globe.
But not just any Spider globe. As I looked at the pattern of white dots beneath my face, I realized this was the same Spider I'd done that trampoline off of in my previous train's baggage car.
Was that why he was here? Looking for payback?
He pulled me higher and closer until my cheek was pressed against his globe. I braced myself, wondering if he was going to try bouncing off of me now, just to show me what it felt like, or whether he'd just settle for playing kickball with me across the station.
But to my surprise, I just heard a quiet Spider voice in my ear, almost too quiet to hear. "What do you do here, friend?"
I felt my chest tighten. I'd never had a Spider call me friend. For that matter, I'd never heard of a Spider calling anyone friend.
And in that single numbing second I knew that my earlier speculations and suspicions had been right.
God help us all.
"What do you do here, friend?" the Spider asked again.
I took a deep breath. Whatever else this might mean—whatever the implications for the future—my first priority was to get Bayta away from the Modhri. "I need to get a message to the stationmaster," I said. "Can you do that?"
"Yes," he said.
I gave him the message, keeping it short and clear and as authoritative as I could make it. Hanging a half meter off a Quadrail station floor being stared at by hundreds of bemused aliens was no time to get long-winded. "Can he do that?" I asked when I'd finished.
"He will do that," the Spider said.
I grimaced, the sinking feeling in my stomach dropping another couple of floors. "Then I suppose I need to get back to my prison," I told him.
"Yes," he said.
I frowned, focusing on the station around me. To my surprise, I discovered that we were already in motion, though the Spider was walking so smoothly I hadn't even noticed when, we'd started up. The Eulalee Hotel's main entrance was in sight out of the corner of my eye, and I could see the two Halkas who'd tried to corral me on the stairs waiting watchfully off to the side.
Belatedly, I realized I probably looked like an oversized baby in its mother's chest carrier. "I can make it from here, Spot," I told the Spider.
There was a slight pause, as if he was pondering the nickname I'd just given him. "It is ordered that you be delivered to your prison," he told me.
"This is extremely undignified," I tried again. "Dignity is important to Humans."
He didn't answer. He also didn't put me down.
And considering the look on the Halkas' faces as we passed, maybe it was just as well that he didn't. The Modhri was apparently still mad at me.