Timothy Zahn - The Domino Pattern

“He’s been stretching more wires like the ones around my neck over the floor,” she said. “I think they’re all just fastened to the walls, but I can’t be completely sure.”

“Probably just window dressing,” I told her. “The more wires he loads the room with, the harder it’ll be for us to know which ones we have to cut. Anything else?”

“I don’t know what it means,” Bayta said slowly, “but he’s brought in the oxygen repressurization tank from our car.”

I frowned. Every Quadrail car came equipped with a self-contained and self-controlled supply/scrubber/regulator system as an emergency backstop against a sudden loss of air pressure. Bayta and I had used them ourselves on occasion. “What’s he thinking, that we’re going to try to gas him?”

“I don’t know,” Bayta said. “He also spent a few minutes earlier cutting into the end of his ticket. Not the key end, but the other end—”

“You talking to Compton?” Sarge interrupted himself.

Only now his voice was Kennrick’s.

A shiver ran up my back. I could understand why the Chahwyn might have thought it a good idea to design their new Spiders to channel voices as well as words. But reasonable or not, it was definitely on the north end of creepy.

“If you are, be sure to tell him about the sensors on the ceiling,” Kennrick’s voice continued. “I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to try to get those little mite Spiders digging in from that direction, but better to err on the cautious side. Oh, and ask him how the evacuation’s going.”

“Frank?” Bayta’s voice came back anxiously. “What do I do?”

“Go ahead and tell him,” I said. “He already knows you can communicate with the Spiders. Don’t mention the defenders, though.”

“All right.”

Sarge’s mimicry shifted tone, presumably indicating that his relay had changed from Bayta’s thoughts to her verbal conversation with Kennrick. I listened with half an ear as she described how the passengers were being moved and listed how many were left to go.

“Sounds like it’s under control,” Kennrick said when she’d finished. “Just remind Compton that he needs to be back here in exactly—let’s see—one hour and forty minutes. If he’s not, the doors close and you’re going to be mighty hungry by the time we get to Venidra Carvo.”

“I’ll tell him,” Bayta’s voice came back. “Frank?” she said, Sarge’s tone again shifting as she switched back to telepathy. “Did you hear all that?”

“Yes, thanks,” I told her. “Overconfident SOB, isn’t he?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“For now, just try to relax,” I said. “And keep me informed as to what he’s doing.”

“All right.” There was a brief pause. “Frank …if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out …”

“It’s going to work out,” I interrupted. “You just relax, okay? I’ll come up with something.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “Thank you.”

Sarge fell silent. As he did so, the other defender stirred. “One of the conductors has been asked how long the passengers will need to remain out of their compartments,” he relayed.

I stared out my compartment’s display window at the dull landscape of the Tube racing past, illuminated only by the coruscating glow of the Coreline above us and the faint light from our train’s own windows. Over two weeks to go before we reached Venidra Carvo. Over two weeks for Bayta to be trapped with a murderer.

I looked back at the defenders. Their white-dotted silver globes didn’t carry the faintest hint of an expression, but there was something about the way they were standing, something in their stance and stillness, that conveyed an unpleasant mixture of determination and ruthlessness.

The defenders weren’t going to let Bayta spend two weeks as Kennrick’s prisoner, either. The only question was whether I would come up with a plan to free her, or they would.

And which of our plans would get her through this alive.

“Compton?” Sarge prompted.

I took a deep breath. “Tell them six hours,” I said. “One way or another, they’ll be back in their compartments in six hours.”

Precisely two hours after being dismissed from Minnario’s compartment, I was back.

“Right on time,” Kennrick said approvingly as I came up to the narrow gap he’d again opened in the divider wall. “Excellent. All that Westali training, no doubt. You have your friend’s rations?”

“Right here,” I said, peering through the gap as I held up the package for him to see. He was back to his earlier cross-legged posture on the bed, this time with his reader propped up on the pillow beside him.

Bayta, in contrast, was now lying on her back on the floor with her feet toward me, the blanket covering her from neck to ankles, her head resting on the pillow. Her face was under control, but I could see the low-level nervousness beneath it. I also noted that there were now three loops of wire around her neck instead of two.

When Bayta had said Kennrick was stringing new lengths of wire around the room, she’d definitely been understating the case. The place was full of the damn stuff, most of it crisscrossing the room at shin height. Half a dozen of the wires ran over Bayta’s torso and legs, while the rest were arranged in front of the door and divider. Even if none of them were actually attached to Bayta’s neck loops, making a mad dash across the room to wring Kennrick’s neck was now out of the question.

“You like the new arrangement?” Kennrick asked.

“Looks like the hobby room of a tall-ship model maker,” I said. “Listen, the gap here is too small to fit the package through. Can you open it up a bit?”

“I could,” he said consideringly. “But it would be a bit tricky for her to eat with a sliced throat, don’t you think?”

I grimaced. “How about I open the package and send them through individually?”

“How about you do that,” he agreed. “Only be careful where they land.”

Tearing open the package, I started dropping the bars through the gap, making sure to miss all the wires. “I hope you’re not going to try to tell me all of those are connected to Bayta.”

“Some of them might be,” he said. “Others might be holding back other lines, so that her throat only remains intact if you leave them alone. Just in case you were thinking about sending in some twitters with instructions to cut everything in sight.”

“I wasn’t,” I assured him. “Look, Kennrick—”

“Hey, you have to see this,” he interrupted, reaching down to the bed beside him and picking up a flat piece of dull gray metal. “Especially since you asked about it earlier. This is part of the stiffening frame for my larger carrybag. Watch.”

Picking up his multitool, he used the needle-nosed pliers to get a grip on the corner of the plate. He pulled carefully to the side; and, to my amazement, a thin wire began to peel away from the metal. “Isn’t that cool?” he asked, continuing to pull wire from the plate until he’d reached the full extension of his arm. “It’s called knitted-metal something-or-other. The stuff’s perfectly solid and perfectly innocent until you need to garrote someone.” He smiled. “I’ll bet Mr. Hardin didn’t give you toys like this.”

“I wouldn’t have taken them if he had,” I said. “Kennrick, we may have some trouble here. Another side has joined the game.”

“What, Esantra Worrbin’s making threatening noises again on behalf of the Assembly?” he asked contemptuously.

“This has nothing to do with the passengers,” I said. “It has to do with the Spiders.”