Timothy Zahn - The Third Lynx

I was awakened by a hand shaking my shoulder. "Compton?" Morse's voice called from somewhere in the distance. "Come on, snap out of it."

I blinked open my eyes. Everything around me was dim, which meant the car's lights had been lowered to their usual nighttime setting. That must mean we were about to come into Bildim Station. I lifted my wrist to check my watch.

It was only then I realized I wasn't sitting in my nice, comfy

third-class seat amid the smells and sounds of dozens of Humans and aliens. I was, instead, standing amid the crates and trunks in one of the baggage cars, facing a stack of dark blue boxes safety-webbed to the side wall.

I snapped fully awake. "What the hell ?"

"I was about to say that myself," Morse growled. "When did you start sleepwalking?"

"I don't sleepwalk," I told him, looking around. I was in a baggage car, all right. The front one, I tentatively identified it. "What happened?"

"As I said, you were sleepwalking," Morse said. "I heard you mumbling, and when I looked back to see what the problem was you were lumbering down the aisle like Frankenstein's latest science project."

A cold chill ran up my back. "Thought virus," I muttered.

"Come again?"

"Thought virus," I repeated. "It's a technique used by the enemy for planting suggestions in a person's mind."

"You mean like a hypnotic drug?" Morse asked, frowning.

"Similar, but a lot easier to deliver," I said. "Remember that Cimma who talked to us as we were heading back to our seats earlier? It didn't click at the time, but his hair didn't fit his supposedly lower-class status."

"Of course it did," Morse said, frowning with concentration. "I remember. It was hanging completely loose."

"Yes, but it had the kinking of having been recently braided," I said.

"You're right," Morse murmured. "Bloody hell. But what does that have to do with this?"

"You were there on Ghonsilya," I said. "You saw how most of the enemy's soldiers were from the upper and ruling classes."

Morse muttered something under his breath. "I was hoping they were just playing fancy-dress to throw the cops off the track."

"No, they were real," I assured him. " And the Cimma called me friend, four or five times at least. Friendship helps lower emotional barriers and gives the thought virus better access to the victim."

Morse hissed between his teeth. "You ready yet to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Later," I said. "Right now, I need to figure out what I'm doing here. What happened after I came in?"

"You walked straight to this stack of crates and stopped," Morse said. "You were staring at the labels when I decided enough was enough."

I studied the stack of crates. All of them had destination labels for the same world, some place in the Cimmal Republic I'd never heard of. So did all the crates in the two stacks on either side of it. "Interesting," I said, pulling out my multitool. "Let's see what's in them."

"Easy," Morse warned, suddenly cautious. "This is illegal even by the Spiders' rules."

"Don't worry, I won't hurt anything," I said. Selecting the pry bar, I slid it beneath the lid of the top crate, digging into the plastic near one corner. With a twist of my wrist, I popped the lid half a centimeter up.

And as the train clattered around a curve and the car lurched, a spoonful of water rolled through the gap and trickled down the outside of the crate.

I touched a finger to it. It was cold water. Very cold water. The kind of water Modhran coral liked to live in.

I looked at the three stacks of crates. Suddenly this was feeling like a very unhealthy place to be. "Let's get out of here," I muttered, letting the lid back down and taking a careful step back.

"What is it?" Morse asked.

"Tell you later," I said, taking another step back and turning around. I half expected to see the Cimma and an entire group of walkers watching in silent anticipation of me pulling a Sleeping Beauty and jabbing my finger on the sharp coral. One scratch was all it would take to put me on the track to joining them.

But there was no one there. Having wound up his puppet—me—the Modhri had apparently just turned me loose.

I jerked as Morse suddenly gripped my upper arm. "Not later," he said flatly. "Later has become now. My life's on the line here. So are Mr. Stafford's and Ms. Auslander's."

"I suppose," I conceded. "All right. As soon as we hit Bildim and I can get a compartment and some privacy, we'll talk."

We reached Bildim, swapped out the usual assortment of passengers, and started up again. There were no compartments available, but Morse and I were able to get seats in the first-class car directly behind the compartment car.

And as we pulled out into the permanent twilight of the Tube, he and Bayta and I settled into Bayta's compartment and I told him the whole story. Or at least as much of the story as it seemed advisable to tell him.

He was silent for a long minute after I'd finished. Apparently his standard bloody hell was inadequate to cover this one. "And you can prove all this?" he asked at last.

" Prove may be too strong a word," I conceded. "But Deputy Director Losutu can certainly vouch for the parts he was involved in. You can talk to him when we get back."

"I'll do that," he said, a hint of challenge in his tone. "In the meantime, we have Ms. Auslander as a hostage to these things—"

" This thing, singular," I corrected.

"Right," he growled. "Group mind. Even the bloody grammar is scrambled with this thing. As I was saying, our first priority has to be getting Ms. Auslander away from him."

"Agreed," I said. "We'll have a couple of hours at Trivsdal Station when we change Quadrails for Laarmiten. I'll just wander the platform muttering message for Modhri until someone takes notice."

"Sounds like the opening of that classic Hitchcock dit rec drama North by Northwest ," Morse commented. "A mistaken connection with the telegram boy launches the hero into danger and intrigue."

"Yes, I remember," I said. "Let's hope life doesn't end up imitating art. Anyway, once a walker comes forward I'll tell him about the change in plans."

"What if he can't get the message to the walkers holding Ms. Auslander in time?" Morse asked. "Or what if the Modhri doesn't go for it? He's bound to be suspicious about you resetting the rendezvous for the system where he's collecting the rest of the sculptures."

"That's his problem," I said. "Both are his problem, actually. If he wants the Lynx badly enough, he'll just have to play by our rules."

"Or else write up a set of his own," Morse warned. "The thing with you and the coral back there looks suspiciously like a recruitment effort."

"He's tried to get me to touch coral before," I said. "I'm not worried about it."

"Maybe you should be," Morse said, standing up. "Anyway, conspiracy stories make me thirsty. Join me?"

"Maybe later," I told him. "Bayta and I first need to discuss some of the details of the Laarmiten plan."

"And to talk about me, no doubt," Morse said, smiling slightly. "Fine. I'll be in the bar or my seat if you need me."

With a nod to each of us, he left the compartment. "He's right, you know," Bayta told me. "Maybe you should be concerned."

"What, about the Modhri sleepwalking me to the baggage car?" I shook my head. "That was never about me touching the coral."

"Mr. Morse seems to think it was."

"Mr. Morse is wrong," I said flatly. "He said himself that I was just standing there staring at the crates when he snapped me awake. I hadn't even gone for my multitool yet to try to open one of them. And when I did, I could barely get a corner of the lid open. I'd have had to cut the safety webbing and pull down a crate full of water and coral, and I know I wouldn't have stayed asleep through all that. No, I think all the Modhri wanted was for me to know what was in there."