Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt

The difference was that Ixil was already used to that sort of thing from me.

Tera wasn't, and my face was hot as I glowered my way forward.

Ixil was seated in the restraint chair when I reached the bridge, Pix and Paxnosing curiously around the bases of the various consoles in their rodent way.

"How was Nicabar?" he asked.

"Smart, competent, and apparently on our side," I told him. "Tera, unfortunately, probably now thinks I'm an idiot. Did you hear a metallicclunking noise a couple of minutes ago?"

"Not from here, no," he said, snapping his fingers twice. The two ferretsabandoned their exploration in response to the signal, scampering up his legsand onto his shoulders. "They didn't hear anything, either," he added. "Couldit have been a pressure ridge forming?"

"No, it wasn't anything like that," I said. "Tera told me she'd bumped herhead on the bulkhead. But that's not what it sounded like to me."

"Perhaps it was Shawn across the corridor from her in the electronicsworkshop,"

Ixil suggested as the ferrets headed down his legs to the deck again. "He saidhe was going to be tearing apart and cleaning one of the spare trimregulators."

"He came here? Or did he use the intercom?"

"He came here," Ixil said. "He wanted to ask you to run a decision/diagnosticon the regulators already on-line, not wanting to have one of the spares tornapartif there was any chance we might need it."

"Unfortunately, this ship has all the decision-making capabilities of apolitician up for reelection," I said. "Tera's computer back there is justthis side of utterly useless."

"Yes, he mentioned that," Ixil agreed. "I did what I could in the way of adiagnostic, then told him to go ahead."

"Fine," I said, pulling out the console's swivel stool. I sat down facingIxil, keeping the door visible at the corner of my eye. "I presume you took theopportunity to find out a little about him?"

"Of course," he said, as if there would be any doubt. "An interesting youngman, though he strikes me as something of the rebellious type. He's quite welltraveled—he went on several survey-match trips while in tech school, includingone that followed Captain Dak'ario's famous journey across the Spiral three hundred years ago."

"Sounds like a flimsy excuse to get out of real classes." I sniffed. "Whichschool was it?"

"Amdrigal Technical Institute on New Rome," he said. "Graduated fifth in hisclass, or so he says."

"Impressive, if true," I admitted grudgingly. "What was he doing on Meima?"

"He was out of work," Ixil said. "Why, he wouldn't say—he went rather evasiveevery time I tried to move us back to that topic. He did say that he wassittingin a taverno wearing his class jacket and being picked on by some kids from arival school when he caught Cameron's eye."

"Borodin, please, at least in public," I cautioned him. "That's the nameeveryone else aboard knows him by."

"Right. Sorry." He paused, an odd expression flitting across his face.

"There's one other thing that may or may not mean anything. Have you noticed Shawnseems to have a rather peculiar odor about him?"

I frowned. My first reaction was to think that that was possibly the strangestcomment Ixil had ever made, certainly in recent memory. But Ixil was anonhuman, with access to a pair of even more nonhuman outriders, and all of them haddifferent sensory ranges from mine. "No, I hadn't," I said.

"It's quite subtle," he said. "But it's definitely there. My initial thoughtwas that it might be related to a possible medical problem, the odor coming eitherfrom the illness itself or induced by medication."

I felt my throat tighten. "Or it could be coming from some other kind of drug.

The illegal type, maybe?"

"Could be," Ixil said. "Not standard happyjam, I don't think, but there areanynumber of variations I'm not familiar with." He shrugged. "Then again, itcould also be a result of something exotic he had for lunch in the port."

"Nice to have it narrowed down." Still, in all the years I'd known Ixil hisinstincts had never steered him wrong in this sort of thing. And there hadbeen the attitude change I'd noticed myself in Shawn earlier in the trip, a changethat could well have had something to do with drugs. "All right, we'll keep aneye on him. See if he smells the same tomorrow after a day of shipboard food."

"I will," he promised. "Speaking of tomorrow, I notice you've scheduled ournext fueling stop on Dorscind's World. I thought I might remind you that Dorscind'sWorld is not exactly a highlight of the average five-star tourist cruise."

"Which is precisely why I picked it," I told him. Pix and Pax had finishedtheir deck-level tour of the bridge now and had scampered out the door into thecorridor. I sent up a silent prayer that they wouldn't run across Everett; with his bulk, the big medic might step on them before he even noticed they wereunderfoot. "Paperwork accuracy has never been exactly a high priority with thePort Authority there, particularly if you're a few commarks heavy on thedockingfees. I figure that the eighty-two hours it'll take to get there should belongenough for us to create a new identity for the Icarus that'll be good enoughto pass muster."

"I'm sure we can put something together," he rumbled, eyeing me speculatively.

"Did your tangle with the Lumpy Brothers bother you that much?"

"More than you know," I assured him grimly. "You see, according to theschedule Cameron left me—the schedule he presumably filed with the Meima PortAuthority—the Icarus's first stop was going to be Trottsen. We weren'tsupposedto be on Xathru at all."

His squashed-iguana face hardened. "Yet the Lumpy Brothers knew you werethere."

"And called me by name," I nodded. "Granted, they may have tagged me when myturn was called at the StarrComm building—I had no reason at the time not togive my right name there. But why pick on me at all?"

Ixil nodded thoughtfully. "Can't be one of the crew," he murmured, half tohimself. "If someone here wanted the cargo, he would have simply stolen ithimself after everyone else left the ship."

"Depending on whether he could get through Cameron's security sealing," Isaid.

"But at the very least he would have made sure the Icarus didn't lift. And allhe needed to do to accomplish that was to phone the Port Authority with ananonymous report about a pair of crisped bodies lying next to a cul-de-sacloading dock."

Ixil cocked his head to the side. "In other words, he could have used the sametechnique that got you detained on Meima."

"Yes," I agreed. "And the fact that it didn't happen on Xathru implies to methat it wasn't someone aboard who pulled that stunt on Meima. But it doessuggest a reason why the Lumpy Brothers latched on to me but not on to anyoneelse aboard."

Ixil nodded. "The Meima Port Authority report had your name."

"Not only my name, but my name linked with Cameron's," I said. "Someone gothold of that near-arrest report and disseminated it to assorted associates acrossthe Spiral with instructions to be on the lookout for me. The Lumpy Brothers justhappened to get lucky."

"Or else backtracked your name to the Stormy Banks and looked up my flightschedule," Ixil suggested. "That might explain how they happened to be hangingaround the StarrComm building."

"I hadn't thought of that part," I acknowledged. "You're probably right."

"It also indicates our employer is probably still at large," Ixil continued, stroking his cheek thoughtfully. "I imagine he remembers all the rest of thenames of the people he hired on Meima, in which case the private alert oughtto have included their names as well."

"Good point," I said, grimacing. What had become of Cameron was still high onmylist of annoying loose ends. "Though that's not definitive—I doubt any of theothers had their names called over a loudspeaker in the market."