The Third Lynx

Beside Penny, Stafford stiffened. "What?" he asked carefully.

"It started aboard our private train to Jurskala," I said. "Morse spent those couple of days filling Penny's mind with suspicions about Bayta and me. That naturally drew the two of them closer together emotionally, enabling the Modhri to slide in his thought viruses."

Stafford looked sideways at Penny. "What kind of suggestions was he making?" he asked.

"Don't worry, they're pretty short-lived." I focused on Penny. With her fiancé sitting there beside her, I knew, this was likely to be awkward. But it was important that she hear this. "You haven't had any sort of feelings of attraction toward me lately, have you?"

The tip of her tongue swiped quickly across her upper lip. "It wasn't the way you make it sound," she said. "I was just grateful to you for your help in finding Daniel. That's all."

"Of course," I said, looking into her eyes. Backpedaling and spin-drifting it for all she was worth.

And with that, the last faint lingering hope within me finally died a quiet death. The last lingering Modhri-counterfeited hope. One more reason, I reflected, for me to hate him. "The point is that you switched your opinion of me just a little too quickly," I told her. "Especially after all of Morse's horror stories."

I looked back at Morse. Still none of the telltale signs of a Modhri takeover. "At the same time, the Modhri inside him was also working on me."

"Only you claim thought viruses need a line of friendship between the two parties," Morse said acidly. "I don't think you and I exactly qualify."

"I said they work best that way" I reminded him. "But whether we personally liked each other or not, we were still colleagues who'd been thrown together on the same case. That relationship also lowers emotional resistance walls. Besides, the Modhri didn't need to make me do anything outlandish, at least not at the beginning. All he wanted was to tweak my emotions a little."

"Why?" Stafford asked, clearly not happy with this line of conversation.

"To distract me, of course," I said. "The Modhri wanted my mind on Ms. Auslander instead of focusing my full attention on the problem of finding you and the Lynx and getting you out of his reach."

Abruptly Penny stiffened. "Is that why I ran after you in the Ghonsilya transfer station when you grabbed that gun? Because he told me to?"

"I'm afraid so," I said. "The Modhri had only a few walkers under his control on the scene. He needed to move you into a position where the oathling would have easy access to you."

"And so I supposedly persuaded her to go running toward a lunatic with a loaded gun?" Morse demanded. "Do you have any idea how ridiculous this whole thing sounds?"

"Do you have a better explanation for what's been happening?" I countered.

"As a matter of fact, I do," he said. "If I'm right about Colonel Applegate tumbling to this scheme and having to be eliminated, then this whole charade is just an attempt to do the same to me." He nodded toward Stafford and Penny. "If there even is a Modhri walker among us, who's to say it's not Mr. Stafford or Ms. Auslander?"

"Good question," I said. "Unfortunately for you, there's an equally good answer. For starters, Mr. Stafford is definitely out. If he was a walker, he wouldn't have run off with the Lynx in the first place."

"And Ms. Auslander?"

I shook my head. "Doesn't work. She wasn't anywhere near the Künstler estate the night the Modhri tried to steal the Lynx."

Morse's eyes narrowed. "What are you implying?"

"Don't act the innocent," I reproved him. "It doesn't fit well on you. There was a Modhri walker waiting outside the grounds of Künstler's estate the night of the botched robbery. I know that because one of the captured robbers tried to get Künstler to tell him where the Lynx was, which only makes sense if there was another part of the local mind segment within contact distance."

"That could have been anyone off the street."

"Except that the average person off the street isn't Intelligence trained," I said. "I read the police report, remember? The would-be burglars knew far more about penetration and stealth techniques than they should have. Someone with Intel training had to be running the show."

"Maybe it was someone else from ESS," Morse said, a hint of desperation starting to edge into his voice. He was too good an agent not to recognize how quickly this box was closing around him. "Applegate knew a lot of people. It could have been any one of them."

"It could have," I agreed, wincing with sympathetic pain for the man. This had to be a terrible shock to him, like having the diagnosis of an incurable disease thrown in your face without warning.

But I pushed the feelings away. Compassion formed the paving stones to the same hell Morse was now in. "But it wasn't someone else …because you were the only Intelligence agent with me when I was persuaded to visit the coral crates in the Quadrail baggage car."

Some of the last remaining color drained out of Morse's face. "You said that was the Cimma."

"Of course I said that," I agreed. "The last thing I wanted was for the Modhri mind segment aboard the train to know I was on to you."

"But why couldn't it have been the Cimma?" Morse persisted.

"What, a stranger who called me friend more times than a used-car salesman?" I shook my head. "There's not a chance in hell he could have planted a thought virus that quickly and effectively."

Morse's eyes darted to Bayta, then to Stafford and Penny, a cornered rat looking desperately for a way out. But there wasn't one. He knew the truth now; and there was nothing left to do but accept it. Deliberately, I settled my mind and body into combat mode as I waited for the Modhri mind within him to make its final, desperate move.

But to my surprise, it didn't. Morse turned back to me, his eyes haunted but with none of the telltale signs of a Modhri takeover. "So why tell me now?" he asked.

"So that you'll understand this," I said, lifting my right hand above the tabletop to reveal the Chahwyn kwi. The weapon gave a slight tingle against my palm as Bayta telepathically activated it. "I've been assured it'll just knock you out for a few hours. You and the Modhri inside you."

He swallowed visibly. "All right," he said. "If this is the only way to persuade you I'm not your enemy …go ahead."

And still not a peep from the Modhri. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if I could possibly be wrong.

But I wasn't. And whether the Modhri was learning how to play it subtle or was simply floored by my logical brilliance, he was still the Modhri. Mentally crossing my fingers, I squeezed the kwi.

Quietly, without any sound, fury, or fuss, Morse's eyes rolled up and he fell forward, his torso sprawling on the tabletop.

Stafford muttered something startled-sounding in French. "Is he all right?"

I reached over and checked Morse's pulse. It was slow—too slow for him to be faking—but steady. "Near as I can tell," I said.

"Okay, that's it," Penny said, her voice shaking but determined. "Before we go any farther, I want to know what's going on."

"You will," I promised. "Starting with the fact that we're not going any farther. We are, in fact, on our way back to the Tube."

That one caught both of them by surprise. "We're what?" Stafford demanded.

"Laarmiten was a false front from square one," I told them. "The Modhri never intended to bring any of the Nemuti sculptures here. It was just a convenient destination to slap on the walkers' tickets back at Bellis."

"Then what are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?" Penny asked.

"We're playing his game right back at him," I said. "First we had to convince the Modhri, via Morse, that we'd fallen for his Laarmiten scam. Hence, the rented torchyacht. Second, we had to get Morse out of range of all the other colonies while we executed our about-face." I waved a hand around me. "Hence, the middle of nowhere."

Penny was still looking at me like I was speaking ancient Greek. But the light of comprehension was starting to dawn on Stafford's face. "I see," he said. "And since we're not due into Laarmiten for three more weeks, none of the other mind segments will even suspect anything's happened until then."

"Exactly," I said. "Though if I'm right, our mission will be over a lot sooner than that."

Stafford looked at Morse's motionless form. "Of course, you're assuming the Modhri colony in there is also unconscious. So unconscious that other colonies won't detect it once we're back at the Tube."

"That is the assumption," I conceded. "And since we've never used this gadget on a walker, we don't know for sure that that's true. We'll just have to play our odds as short as we can and keep our fingers crossed."

Stafford grunted. "Doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."

"As I say, we'll do the best we can," I said. "When we reach the Tube we'll circle around and approach the station from the far side, out of view of the transfer station and any other ships that happen to be wandering around. We'll enter through one of the access hatches in the maintenance end—"

"How do we do that?" Penny interrupted.

"We ask the Spiders nicely," I said. "Then, if things are on schedule, we'll board a special train"—I glanced at Bayta, got a slight confirming nod—"and head out to our real destination. There, Mr. Stafford and I will go to the transfer station, rent us another torch-yacht, and come around the back side of the Tube again to pick up Morse and the ladies."

"I don't know," Stafford said hesitantly, looking at Penny. "I don't like the idea of leaving the girls alone with Morse."

"They'll be fine," I assured him. "They'll have the kwi, and we'll want him to be unconscious the whole time anyway."

"I could stay here with them," he volunteered. "You could go get the torchyacht by yourself. I'm pretty sure I've got enough left on my last cash stick to cover it."

"Unfortunately, they'll also want to see the renter's ID," I reminded him. "If my name pops up on any official database from now on, it's going to set off alarms from here to Bellis and back again."

"I hadn't thought about that," Stafford said, making a face. "Okay, then. We'll get the torchyacht, and the girls will mind the store."

"They'll be fine," I assured him again. "Anyway, we should be back inside the Tube in a few hours. I hope you haven't unpacked yet."

"We haven't," Stafford said. "Do we get to know where we're going once we're aboard our Quadrail?"

"The place where the Modhri's taken the sculptures, of course," I said. "It turns out they're actually components of something called trinaries, with one of each type fitting together into some kind of exotic energy weapon."

Stafford gave a low whistle. "That sounds bad."

"It's worse than just bad," I said. "Which is why we have to get in there and stop it."

"And you know where they took them?" Penny asked.

"I know the exact spot," I said. "Remember the art auction at the Magaraa City Art Museum? It seems one of the Vipers blew up while the Modhri was trying to steal it a few weeks ago."

I paused, looking expectantly at them. But all I saw was blank stares. "Don't you get it?" I asked. "One of the Vipers blew up."

"Yes, you said that," Stafford said. "What does that have to do with anything?"

I suppressed a sigh. "Look. The sculptures form a trinary weapon, right? One Lynx, one Hawk, one Viper"

"You said that, too," Stafford said, starting to sound impatient.

"The third Viper is gone," I said. "So why does the Modhri even want the third Lynx?"

Penny caught her breath. "He knows where there's another Viper!"

"Exactly," I said. "And where are you most likely to find a tenth Nemuti sculpture?"

"The same place they found the first nine," Bayta said. "The Ten Mesas region of Veerstu."

"Which is just two Quadrail stops before Laarmiten," I said. "All the walkers bringing in the stolen Hawk from Bellis had to do was step outside their train and make a quick handoff to another group waiting on the platform. Then they could continue on to Laarmiten as if nothing had happened."

"So Veerstu it is," Stafford said. "I don't suppose there's time to whistle up any cavalry?"

"All the cavalry we could get would either be too late or too suspect," I said regretfully. "No, it's up to us. Well, it's up to Bayta and me, anyway. You two can stay with the torchyacht at Veerstu if you want. For that matter, once we have the torchyacht rented, you can just go home."

"Not a chance," Stafford said firmly. "They killed Uncle Rafael. This isn't just justice, not for me. It's also personal."

He considered. "Besides which, I still have to get my sculpture back."