"I think you're overstating the case just a bit," I said.
"If so, only in degree, not in substance," he said. "But more than that, there were Bayta's feelings to consider. Whatever she may think about herself and her Chahwyn symbiont, would she accept that doing the same with Modhran polyps and other living beings was both acceptable and needful?"
"I don't know," I said. "But considering how close she and Rebekah have become over the past couple of weeks, I don't think she would have a problem with it."
"Perhaps not," the Chahwyn said. "But it was a risk we dared not take." His face elongated slightly. "A risk we are still not prepared to take."
"In other words, you want me to keep my mouth shut about this?"
"We would be most grateful if you would," the Chahwyn said, relief evident in his voice.
"I'm sure you would," I said. "But that's not the whole story, either. And you, Elder of the Chahwyn, are a liar." I stuffed the two kwis back into my pockets. "Permit me to prove it." Bracing myself, I started toward him.
His mouth dropped open, his body stiffening with disbelief and probably fear. But the two Spiders flanking him didn't even hesitate. Before I'd made it three steps they had moved in front of their master, each dropping into a low, four-legged stance with his other three legs raised high like a tarantula preparing to strike. I kept coming, feinting right and then ducking left.
And suddenly I found myself wrapped in a cold metallic grip as one of the Spiders snatched me off the floor. A second later my back was slammed none too gently against the top of the side wall.
I looked past the shiny Spider sphere at the Chahwyn still sitting frozen in his chair. "QED," I said quietly. "The Melding experiment isn't just your attempt to create a less dangerous Modhri.
"You're trying to create a Spider army."
"You are a fool," the Chahwyn bit out, his breath coming in short, spasmodic bursts now. "You don't understand your danger."
"Oh, I understand my danger quite well," I assured him, wincing as the Spider's legs dug into my already sore ribs. "The question is, do you understand yours?"
For maybe a quarter minute no one moved or spoke. Then, slowly, the Spider holding me lowered me back to the floor. "You don't understand," the Chahwyn said again, his melodic voice gone flat and lifeless. "We cannot fight. We cannot defend ourselves. We are helpless before the Modhran onslaught. We had to do something."
"You did do something," I told him. "You hired me."
He snorted, a dog-like sound. "Do truly think you can defeat the Modhri alone?"
"I'm not alone," I said. "Neither are you. We have allies all over the galaxy. Not many of them, granted. Not yet. But our ranks are growing."
"Not as quickly as the ranks of the enemy."
"Perhaps," I conceded. "But you can't defeat the Modhri by becoming just like him."
He looked back and forth between the two Spiders. "Then what do we become?" he asked. "Or do we simply resign ourselves to defeat and destruction?"
"You never do that," I told him firmly. "As to what you should become, that's a question for people a lot smarter than I am. All I know is that you've kept peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy by being what you are, and by keeping the Spiders what you created them to be. You don't want to be in a hurry to upset that balance."
His eyes were steady on me. "Will you tell Bayta?" he asked.
I thought about it a moment. "No," I told him. "Or at least, not yet. But circumstances may force me to do so somewhere down the line."
His mouth flattened into a wan smile. "As circumstances may likewise force us to do what we would otherwise prefer not to do?"
I grimaced. I hated it when people used my own logic against me. "I never said any of this was simple. I just don't want you to turn a corner you may wind up bitterly regretting later on. Certainly not until turning that corner is absolutely necessary."
"And until then?"
"Stay with what you are," I said. "Hold on to the high ground, and give the less noble people like me time to do our jobs. We can stop the Modhri. I know we can. But I want to make sure that when it's over we all have a safe, nondespotic Quadrail to ride home in."
His eye-ridge tufts twitched. "I will deliver that message," he said. "I do not guarantee the reception it will receive."
"Good enough," I said. "What about this second kwi? Do you want it, or does it go back to Rebekah?"
"I will take it," he said. He held out a hand, the hand and arm both stretching fluidly toward me. "She was asked to keep that part of our involvement secret. It would disturb her to learn you had penetrated her deception by returning the weapon to her."
"Which is one more good reason to back off the path you're taking," I pointed out as I dropped the kwi into his hand. "If you hadn't been so concerned about Bayta and me finding out about your new class of Spiders, there would have been no need for you to play this whole thing so far under the table. Rebekah could have given me the kwi when we first boarded the train and saved us all a lot of trouble."
"Yes." The Chahwyn paused. "How did you learn of our new Spiders, if I may ask?"
"Basically, because you tried to be clever," I said. "I already knew there was a class of Spider I didn't know about—there'd been a couple of them hanging around every time we were spirited off a train for a chat with one of your people. I saw one of them aboard our previous train—I call him Spot, by the way—who probably came aboard with the group who moved our crate and then came into the passenger part of the train to keep an eye on things. They use a different telepathic frequency than regular Spiders, don't they?"
"They can communicate on both levels," the Chahwyn said. "It is similar to the difference in communication between the Modhri and the Melding."
"Both of which are also different from the Chahwyn's frequency," I said as a stray fact suddenly stuck me. "Rebekah's kwi was tuned to the Melding frequency, wasn't it? She was the one activating it for me, not Bayta."
"Correct," the Chahwyn said. "Now that it has been returned, it will have to be retuned to the Chahwyn frequency."
"While you're at it, you should probably check the batteries," I said. "The six-hour knockout charge is only lasting a few minutes."
"That is not a problem with the weapon," the Chahwyn said. "It is because the Modhri mind segment had coral nearby."
I frowned. "What does coral have to do with it?"
"When the mind segment includes a coral outpost, the effects of the kwi are not as strong or long-lasting," he said. "We believe the polyps in the coral are able to absorb some of the effect and dissipate it more quickly than is possible for a non-coral mind segment."
"Oh, that's handy," I growled. "And when were you planning to tell me this?"
His cheeks puffed out slightly. "We did not know it ourselves until recently."
Terrific. "Anything else you didn't know until recently that you'd like to share with the class?"
"Not as yet," he said. "But you were speaking about the Spiders."
I grimaced. Getting timely and useful information out of the Chahwyn was like pulling teeth with greased fingers. "The problem came when you decided to disguise your special agent by printing—"
"Our defender," the Chahwyn corrected. "We call them defenders."
"Nice name," I said. "It was when you decided to disguise him by putting a stationmaster's dot pattern on his globe. It was reasonable enough in its way, I suppose—the two classes are about the same size, and I assume stationmasters are transferred back and forth on regular passenger trains every now and then. The problem was that when I mentioned him to Bayta, she told me there were no stationmasters aboard."