We made our way through the aisles, dodging Juriani balancing frothing cups of pale yellow ale and Pirks carrying containers of some of the horrible things they liked to eat. Penny lifted her glare from the floor in front of her as we approached and transferred it to us. "About time," she said stiffly. "What took you so long?"
"My apologies for the delay, Ms. Auslander," Morse said, inclining his head in polite old-world manner.
"Apologies are cold comfort to the lost and vacant hour," she countered.
I winced to myself. Light-stick aphorisms, especially deep pithy light-stick aphorisms, always left me cold.
"I understand your distress," Morse said, still politely. Apparently he had a higher tolerance to brainless philosophy than I did. "But I think I can clear this up." He pulled out his badge wallet and flipped it open. "My name is Morse; EuroUnion Security Service."
Penny's glare slipped a little. "You're not with the Terran consulate?"
"No, ma'am," Morse said, tucking the wallet away.
Penny's eyes flicked to me, then Bayta, and finally back to Morse. "What's going on?" she asked.
"We're looking for your friend Daniel Stafford," Morse said. "We need to ask him a few questions."
He launched into a standard police-style explanation, a spiel tailored to evoke sympathy and cooperation without giving away any actual information. Listening with half an ear, I touched Bayta's arm and took a casual step backward. "Check with those conductors," I murmured to her. "Has she been alone this whole time?"
"They don't know," she murmured back. "They only came on duty fifteen minutes ago, replacing the others who'd been watching her. She was definitely alone then."
"Then find the ones who were here earlier and ask them," I said. "Her eyes shifted just a fraction to her left when Morse mentioned her friend Daniel."
Bayta shook her head. "I can't. They just left on one of the trains."
I swallowed a curse, looking around the waiting room. The Spiders really needed some training in proper police procedure. "Get everyone in the station looking for another Human," I ordered, pulling up my mental picture of Daniel Stafford. "Dark hair, mid-twenties, slender build—"
"Most Spiders don't know how to estimate Human ages," she interrupted.
"Then just go with dark hair and slender build," I said impatiently as I looked around the waiting room. All the Humans I could see were either older, bigger, or female. "At this point, I'll take any Human who's even close."
Morse was still trying to sell Penny on the idea that she could trust him. Penny still wasn't buying. I looked around the waiting room again, wondering if I ought to give up on the Spiders and start a search of my own.
"Got it," Bayta announced suddenly. "There's a dark-haired Human male at the TrinTrinTril restaurant carry-away counter. He's dressed in red and blue."
I'd noticed the TrinTrinTril on our way in. It was the direction Penny's eyes had flicked a minute ago. "Tell the Spiders I'm on my way," I told Bayta.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"I'd rather you keep an eye on Morse and Ms. Auslander," I said. Confirming that neither of the other two was paying attention to me at the moment, I slipped away and headed through the milling passengers toward the door closest to the TrinTrinTril. I made sure to watch the other doors as I did so, just in case my quarry decided to come in through one of those instead.
No dark-haired Human males had appeared by the time I reached the far side of the room. I stepped outside, nearly getting run down by a Fibibib and a Nemut who were on their way in, and craned my neck to look over at the TrinTrinTril.
There he was, exactly as advertised: a youngish dark-haired kid in his early or mid twenties, wearing a red and blue ski outfit and holding a carry tray containing a pair of cups and a small closed box. He was talking earnestly with a well-dressed, smooth-skinned Shorshian, whose protruding dolphin snout was partially obscuring the kid's face.
Or rather, the kid was listening earnestly—the Shorshian seemed to be doing all the talking. Dodging around a pair of older Humans with double-knotted bankers' scarves, I headed over. I saw the boy's eyes flick past the Shorshian's head and lock on to me.
And to my astonishment, he dropped the carry tray and took off like all of hell was after him.
"Wait!" I shouted. "We just want to talk!"
The assurance was a waste of breath. If anything, the kid just ran faster.
And now that his back was to me, I could see for the first time the long backpack slung securely over his shoulders.
A long backpack just about the size of the Nemuti Lynx. Cursing feelingly, I took off after him.
In theory, running from the law inside a Quadrail station was an exercise in futility. There was literally nowhere to go where you couldn't eventually be tracked down. In practice, though, it was clear that the kid was intent on giving it a really good try.
He couldn't have picked a better station for it, either. With its maze of buildings and decorative shrubbery, Homshil was definitely a runners paradise. Wishing now that I'd invited Bayta to join this party, I concentrated on keeping him in sight without bowling over any innocent bystanders in the process.
It was as I rounded one of the shops and nearly shinned myself on someone's luggage chat I suddenly realized that the boy and I weren't the only ones on the move. On the fringes of my vision I could see two Halkas and three Juriani moving swiftly through the crowd in the same direction I was. None of them, as far as I could see, had any luggage with them.
No one simply abandoned their luggage in a Quadrail station. Not without a damn good reason.
Apparently, the Modhri wanted Daniel Stafford, too.
For the moment, though, the walkers weren't making any effort to close with the kid, apparently content to merely parallel the chase. Meanwhile, I had other troubles to deal with. My near miss with the luggage had cost me a couple of seconds, and as I came around another corner I saw that my quarry had gained some distance on me. He was nearing the end of the public areas, where he would have only three options: to keep going into the Spider maintenance section, head cross-country toward the cargo platforms, or double back and try to get past me.
"Where is he?"
I half turned to see Morse come up beside me. "Where's Ms. Auslander?" I countered.
"The Spiders have her," he said. "Bayta said Stafford was running."
"There," I said, nodding toward the distant figure. "Don't know …where he's …going."
"Wonder where he's—damn; there he goes," Morse said.
The kid had apparently decided on Option B and was angling toward the edge of the passenger platforms and the cargo areas beyond. Morse and I reached the edge of the hedge we were paralleling and turned to match his new direction. "Can you sic the Spiders on him?" Morse asked.
"They don't need …me to …tell them." I said, silently cursing Morse the lung capacity that let him run and talk at the same time. ESS apparently made its agents do laps every morning.
"Well, they'd better get to it," Morse warned. "Lot of places over there where he can go to ground."
"Only temp …orarily," I said. Our Juriani and Halkan friends, I noted uneasily, had changed course as well. "We've also …got outriders."
Morse glanced to both sides. "Damned amateurs," he rumbled. "Looks like he's making for that warehouse."
He was right. The kid had shifted direction again and was heading for one of the big maintenance buildings. "It's a …maintenance …building," I corrected.
"Whatever," Morse said impatiently. "Come on, old man. Run."
But it was too late. Even as Morse started to pull ahead of me, the kid ahead reached the closest of the maintenance building's doors, pulled it open, and vanished inside.