He cocked his head to the side in sudden understanding. "I'll be damned," he said. "That sculpture thing he had in his backpack that looked like a half-carved log?"
I nodded. "He'd built a fake log around the Lynx and hidden it at the bottom of a fire pit at the Paradise," I explained. "Naturally, you can't just carry a big ceramic log through customs without someone wondering. So I had him redo it as a sort of folk art piece."
"Clever," Morse murmured. "Of course, that means he and the Lynx are sitting all alone on that train right now."
"This won't take long," I assured him. "Besides, he's in a locked compartment, and the bad guys don't know who he is."
Morse grunted. "Let's hope not."
Given the urgency of the summons, I wasn't expecting the trip to take very long. I was right. We'd been traveling our private way for no more than fifteen minutes when we again began to slow down. "So what happens now?" Morse said, standing up and brushing himself off.
"Bayta and I go outside for a chat," I said. "You stay here and cultivate your patience."
For a moment I thought he was going to argue about that. He glanced at the stony expression on Bayta's face and apparently thought better of it. "Whatever you say," he said.
The car door irised open, and Bayta and I stepped out into yet another of the Spiders' secret sidings. Unlike all the others I'd visited, though, this one was playing host to a second train, another of the short pushmi-pullyu tenders like the one the Spiders had provided for our trip from Homshil to Jurskala. There seemed to be more Spiders around than usual, too, including several of the unknown stationmaster-sized class.
One of the latter was waiting on the platform, and led us to a typical meeting building. Inside, waiting at his point of the three-chair triangle, was a Chahwyn, a pair of Spiders standing watchdog behind him. "Sit down, Mr. Compton," he said, pointing to one of the other chairs.
"Thank you," I said as I did so. His voice sounded very much like that of the Chahwyn who'd pink-slipped me earlier this trip, but given the species' malleable bodies and voice boxes that might not mean anything. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"
"You have obtained the third Nemuti Lynx," he said, extending his hand. "I will take it."
"Will you, now?" I said, leaning back in my chair and crossing my legs casually. "Sorry—did I miss the part where you thanked me for tracking it down?"
"Frank," Bayta murmured warningly.
I glanced at her, paused for a second look. Her face was tight and pinched, the look of someone walking through a graveyard in a midnight mist. "What?" I asked.
For a moment neither of them spoke, their eyes locked in another of those annoying little telepathic conferences. "Hello?" I called. "Remember me?"
The Chahwyn's eyes dipped briefly away from the contact, then rose again to face me. "You are not Chahwyn," he said flatly. "You cannot be told."
I felt my ears prick up. There was a deep, dark secret lurking behind that plastic face, just waiting for me to weasel it out of him. "No, I'm not Chahwyn," I agreed calmly. "That's precisely why I need to be told everything."
"You no longer work for the Chahwyn."
"Then you're in deep trouble," I said. Time to trot out the trump card I'd been saving for just such an occasion. "Because I'm the only guy in town who the Modhri's afraid of."
His face wrinkled like an old dishrag. "What do you say? You make no sense."
"Why not?" I countered. "Don't you think the Modhri can feel fear?"
"Not toward you," he said flatly. "Not toward a single Human."
I smiled tightly. "But I'm not just a single Human. I'm the single Human. I'm the Human who took on an entire trainload of his walkers and destroyed them."
The Chahwyn gave a short, two-toned whistle. "That's not how it happened."
"Isn't it?" I countered. "A few months ago Bayta and I boarded a Quadrail with a Modhri mind segment that was ready and willing to take over the entire train in order to nail us to the floor. There was surely another mind segment at the platform who knew of that intent. Only we came out alive, while the train's mind segment and the rest of the whole damn train vanished without a trace. If you were the Modhri, what conclusion would you come to?"
His face was rippling now like a lake in a stiff breeze. "No," he said firmly. "I know what happened aboard that train. It wasn't as easy as you imply."
"I never said it was," I said. "But what you and I know doesn't matter. As far as the Modhri's concerned it's a big fat unknown. Big fat unknowns always make people nervous."
"The Modhri does not panic so easily."
"I never said he was panicked, either," I said. "I said he was afraid of me. An entire mind segment was destroyed, aboard a Quadrail where we theoretically had no access to weapons. The Modhri has no idea how we pulled it off, and he's sure as hell not ready to risk us doing it again."
I gestured to Bayta. "But don't take my word for it. Ask Bayta whether or not the Modhri's been playing us with tweezers and cotton batting ever since we tripped over Künstler's body on the way to Bellis."
They locked eyes in another miniconference. This time I stayed quiet and let them finish at their own speed.
It took over a minute, but when the Chahwyn again turned to face me I was pretty sure Bayta had won. "What do you want?" he asked.
"Number one: I want to be reinstated," I said. "I didn't ask to get into this war, but I'm in it now and I'll be damned if I'll quit before the final whistle. That includes reactivating my fancy unlimited first-class compartment pass, and all the bells and whistles that go with it."
"It will be done," the Chahwyn said.
"And I want a monthly stipend, as well," I added. "There are all sorts of out-of-pocket expenses in this job, plus I still have an apartment in New York I'm paying rent on. Say, ten thousand dollars a month?"
The Chahwyn's face contorted slightly, but he nodded. "It will be done."
"Number two: I want to know what this new big secret is about the Lynx," I said. "First point on that list being how to make sure it won't blow up on me."
"The Lynx will not explode." He looked at Bayta again, possibly trying one last time to argue for silence in front of this upstart alien.
He might as well have saved himself the effort. Bayta was wearing her set-in-concrete stubborn expression, another of the looks I knew all too well. "I'm listening," I prodded.
"Have you ever heard of—" He glanced at Bayta, as if searching for the right English word. "Of trinary weapons?"
"I'm familiar with binaries," I said. "Explosives built from two components that you have to mix together to get the desired boom."
"Trinaries are not explosives," the Chahwyn said. "They're shock or energy weapons composed of three separate sections."
"You mean like breaking a rifle down into component parts?" I asked, frowning.
"Not at all," he said. "A rifle component is instantly recognizable as part of a weapon. A true trinary is a weapon whose components are completely inert when they are alone. Only when they are joined is the weapon's true nature awakened."
Something with cold feet ran up my spine. Three components. Hawk, Viper, Lynx. "Are you saying that's what the Nemuti sculptures are? Some exotic alien weapon?"
"Not just an alien weapon," he said grimly. "A weapon created by the Shonkla-raa."
"Terrific," I murmured. The Modhri and the Nemuti sculptures. One weapon of the Shonkla-raa busily collecting the pieces of another. "How do they work?"
"As I say, the three components are joined together," the Chahwyn said. "Each component then activates the others and is activated in turn by them."
"And in the meantime, not only are they dormant, they're also effectively invisible to sensors," I said. This whole thing was sounding more unpleasant by the minute. "Do we know which sculpture is which component?"