Timothy Zahn - The Third Lynx

Terra Station was a pretty unsophisticated stop, certainly when compared to the elaborate facilities and ornamentation of the other eleven empires' homeworld stations. But despite its backwater appearance, it included a pretty decent medical center. One of the doctors examined Morse, diagnosed a mild concussion, assured us that he would recover, and fitted him with a bandage and a QuixHeal injection. A few minutes later he was in a Fibibib-designed monitor bed in an otherwise unoccupied ward, sleeping soundly, and Bayta and I were seated in a couple of chairs across the room near the door where we could keep an eye on him.

Only then, with some time and privacy on our hands, did I dig out the flat case I'd stolen back from the Halka.

"Where did you get that?" Bayta asked as I pulled it from my jacket pocket.

"From the walker who'd just taken it from Morse," I told her.

From the feel as I'd picked the Halka's pocket I'd guessed it was a data chip case, and I was right. About fifteen centimeters long, two wide, and one deep, it could hold up to thirty data chips in protected, padded niches.

"Is that why the Modhri attacked him?" Bayta asked.

"Either that or he just felt like giving his walkers some exercise," I said, turning the case over in my hands and studying in particular its lock and hinge sides.

Bayta watched me in silence for a few more seconds. "Well?" she prompted.

"Patience," I said, pulling out my reader and inserting the data chip that turned it into a powerful sensor. "Data chip cases are sometimes booby-trapped to fry the chips if the wrong person opens it."

For once, my paranoia was unwarranted. The case wasn't rigged. "Let's see what the well-equipped ESS Special Agent is reading these days," I said, and popped it open.

Inside were a dozen data chips. None of them, I guessed, was light summer entertainment. "Let's assume he's the organized type," I suggested, pulling out the last one in the line. It was the same type of chip I'd gotten at Helvanti, the sort the Spiders used for cross-Quadrail messages and information packets lasered to the Tube from the collection center in the local transfer station. Wondering who was sending Morse fan mail, I inserted it into my reader.

The display filled with lines of apparently random characters. What the well-equipped ESS Special Agent was reading these days was heavily encrypted. "Can you decode it?" Bayta asked.

"That may not be necessary." Handing the reader to Bayta. I got up and went across to the rack where Morse's outer clothing had been hung. His reader was in the standard inside jacket pocket. "People running the same routine day after day sometimes get careless." I told Bayta as I rejoined her. "Specifically, they sometimes neglect to scramble-clear the decryption program after they've read something." I turned on the reader and inserted Morse's chip.

He hadn't been as careless as he might have been. But he'd been careless enough. The display still came up gibberish, but there was now a helpful tab at the bottom of the screen asking if I wanted the message translated into another language. I keyed it, and a moment later we had clear, readable text.

"Good thing the Modhri didn't get the reader, too," Bayta commented.

"That was probably next on his list," I told her. Scrolling down past the standard classified-document warning and a five-color ESS logo, I got to the meat of the document.

Some meat.

TO: Ackerley Morse, Terra Station

FROM: ESS Central, Geneva

RE: Urgent information request

Confirm your report re death of Rafael Künstler on Terra-Bellis Quadrail #339721. Current data attached.

Current assignment re Lady Dorchester suspended. Locate and detain Daniel Stafford immediately as person of extreme interest. Current data attached.

"Do you know these people?" Bayta asked as she read over my shoulder.

"I know one of them," I said. "At least by reputation. Rafael Künstler is— was , rather—one of Earth's upper-crust multibillionaires. Maybe he'd made it all the way to trillionaire; I'm not sure. He was something of a recluse, which is probably why I didn't recognize him."

"He was one of Earth's rich and powerful?" Bayta asked pointedly.

I grimaced. Up to now the Modhri had mostly left humanity alone, for which we were all very grateful. But every other time he'd made a play for power across the galaxy, his attack pattern was to target a people's leadership: political, military, economic, and social. The typical Human trillionaire would fit nicely into at least two of those categories. "Hard to imagine the Modhri letting one of his walkers get beaten to death," I said. "All that shared pain through the whole mind segment, remember."

"Maybe that's what he wants us to think," Bayta said. "And don't forget, Mr. Künstler did say he hates you . Who could he have meant besides the Modhri?"

"Could be any number of people, actually," I said. "Besides, referring to the Modhri that way would imply Künstler knew something about him. Walkers usually never figure that out."

"Maybe he was smarter than most." Bayta paused. "Or maybe he had friends who could figure it out for him."

I scratched my cheek thoughtfully. As far as I knew, there were only two Humans besides Bayta and me who were even aware of the Modhri's existence: Bruce McMicking, chief troubleshooter for multitrillionaire industrialist Larry Hardin, who I'd once worked briefly for; and Deputy UN Director Losutu, who had supposedly put Künstler on my trail to begin with.

Both men had been sworn to secrecy, but I wasn't naive enough to think their solemn oaths would hold traction forever. Calling up the reader's search page, I punched in McMicking's and Losutu's names.

McMicking's came up dry. Losutu's didn't. There, tucked away at the bottom of the document, was what looked almost like an almost-forgotten afterthought:

ADDENDUM

FROM: Deputy Director Biret Losutu, UN Directorate, Geneva.

Bona fides of former Westali agent Frank Compton confirmed beyond question. He can be taken into your fullest confidence.

"Uncommonly kind of Director Losutu," I commented, angling the reader to show Bayta the note. "Though in my experience ringing endorsements like that usually come with fairly nasty situations attached." I scrolled back to the top of the document. "Let's see how nasty this one is."

The first data file was a summary of the life and times of the late Mr. Künstler.

Like many of Earth's wealthiest people, he'd gotten a head start by arranging to have himself born to parents who were themselves already stratospherically rich. Unlike many in that position, though, he hadn't rested on their laurels or frittered his inheritance away with riotous living. Instead, he'd taken the money and run with it, building an economic empire that had dwarfed even that of his parents. According to the best estimates, he had indeed made it to trillionaire status before his untimely death.

The wealth and power hadn't come without a few speed bumps along the way, of course. In his early twenties he'd been lured briefly into the stereotypical rich kid's skating-on-the-edge life mode, which had been quickly and inevitably followed by half a dozen paternity suits. He'd taken the quick route back to peace and quiet, paying off the claimants without wasting time contesting the charges, and having learned from his mistakes retired to his estate in the Bavarian Alps to focus on business. From that point on. he'd largely limited his Human contacts to his staff, his business associates, and his older and more trustworthy friends.

And with a frenetic social life no longer a viable hobby, he'd turned his thoughts and bankroll to art collecting.

He'd gotten pretty good at it, too. Somewhere along the line he'd built a warehouse-sized gallery on his estate, constructing a labyrinth of passageways inside it with nooks and display cases and panels along every wall and around every turn. The report included a few quotes from art critics and connoisseurs who'd toured the place, all of whom praised the experience as unique and exciting.