the kind of multiple pathways that could allow a couple of torchliner passengers to endlessly chase each other in circles.
The lack of contact with Kennrick wasn’t from lack of trying on my part, either. I spent hours at a time wandering through the first-class areas of the train, checking the restaurant and bar and the entertainment and exercise facilities, without ever catching so much as a glimpse of our mystery man.
Through Bayta, I tried instructing the conductor Spiders to keep an eye on Kennrick’s door when they weren’t busy with other duties. But the two times I got word that he’d left his compartment he managed to disappear again before I could get there.
At one point, I lost my temper and ordered the Spiders to search the entire damn train tor him. But the conductors and servers were no better than any other Spiders at distinguishing between Humans, and all my demand did was waste their time and irritate Bayta.
Otherwise, Bayta and I occupied ourselves as best we could. We watched dit rec dramas and comedies on our computers, ate far too much good food, and did our best to work off those indulgences in the exercise room. Often we had the facility to ourselves, as most of the other first-class passengers were older than we were, light-years richer, and had apparently decided they were beyond anything as plebeian and vulgar as sweat and strain.
It was late at night at the beginning of our third week of travel, and I was lying awake in the dark trying to come up with a new strategy for cornering Kennrick, when I felt a subtle puff of air across my face.
My hand slipped reflexively beneath my pillow to grip the kwi I always kept within reach. The kwi was a weapon I’d conned out of the Chahwyn, a relic they’d dug up from the days of the Shonkla-raa war. An elegantly nonlethal weapon, it was capable of delivering three levels of pain, or three levels of unconsciousness, to anyone within its somewhat limited range.
There was, unfortunately, one catch: the kwi was telepathically activated, which meant I needed Bayta or a Spider to turn the damn thing on for me.
Which meant that if the puff of air I’d felt meant there was trouble coming through my door, I would need to bellow Bayta awake through our dividing wall and hope she got the message before someone tried to strangle me in my bed—
“Frank?” Bayta’s voice came out of the darkness, tense and hurried and scared. “Frank, there’s trouble. The Spiders want us in third class right away.”
“What is it?” I asked, feeling a flicker of relief as I swung my legs out from under the blanket and grabbed for my clothes.
“It’s one of the Shorshians,” she said. “He’s come down sick.”
I paused, shirt in hand. She’d barged in on me for this ? “So have them call a doctor,” I growled.
“The doctors are already there,” she said, her voice shaking, “and they say he’s not just sick.
“He’s been poisoned.”
Chapter Two
I’d been about to toss my shirt back onto my clothes stack. Now, instead, I started pulling it on.
Poisons couldn’t be brought aboard Quadrail trains. They just couldn’t . The same huge station-based sensor arrays that sniffed out weapons and weapon components did an equally efficient job of screening out poisons. All sorts of poisons, and all known varieties of poison-producing flora and fauna. The sensors also looked for every known type of dangerous bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms. The Shorshian back there simply couldn’t have been poisoned.
But some doctor apparently thought he had. Either we had an incompetent quack aboard, or there was a serious problem.
All Quadrail trains came equipped with a couple of small dispensaries, typically tucked in at one end of the first-class and second/third-class dining cars. The server Spider on duty there could do little except dole out an assortment of general-purpose medicines, but there was usually at least one doctor aboard any given train
The lack of contact with Kennrick wasn’t from lack of trying on my part, either. I spent hours at a time wandering through the first-class areas of the train, checking the restaurant and bar and the entertainment and exercise facilities, without ever catching so much as a glimpse of our mystery man.
Through Bayta, I tried instructing the conductor Spiders to keep an eye on Kennrick’s door when they weren’t busy with other duties. But the two times I got word that he’d left his compartment he managed to disappear again before I could get there.
At one point, I lost my temper and ordered the Spiders to search the entire damn train tor him. But the conductors and servers were no better than any other Spiders at distinguishing between Humans, and all my demand did was waste their time and irritate Bayta.
Otherwise, Bayta and I occupied ourselves as best we could. We watched dit rec dramas and comedies on our computers, ate far too much good food, and did our best to work off those indulgences in the exercise room. Often we had the facility to ourselves, as most of the other first-class passengers were older than we were, light-years richer, and had apparently decided they were beyond anything as plebeian and vulgar as sweat and strain.
It was late at night at the beginning of our third week of travel, and I was lying awake in the dark trying to come up with a new strategy for cornering Kennrick, when I felt a subtle puff of air across my face.
My hand slipped reflexively beneath my pillow to grip the kwi I always kept within reach. The kwi was a weapon I’d conned out of the Chahwyn, a relic they’d dug up from the days of the Shonkla-raa war. An elegantly nonlethal weapon, it was capable of delivering three levels of pain, or three levels of unconsciousness, to anyone within its somewhat limited range.
There was, unfortunately, one catch: the kwi was telepathically activated, which meant I needed Bayta or a Spider to turn the damn thing on for me.
Which meant that if the puff of air I’d felt meant there was trouble coming through my door, I would need to bellow Bayta awake through our dividing wall and hope she got the message before someone tried to strangle me in my bed—
“Frank?” Bayta’s voice came out of the darkness, tense and hurried and scared. “Frank, there’s trouble. The Spiders want us in third class right away.”
“What is it?” I asked, feeling a flicker of relief as I swung my legs out from under the blanket and grabbed for my clothes.
“It’s one of the Shorshians,” she said. “He’s come down sick.”
I paused, shirt in hand. She’d barged in on me for this ? “So have them call a doctor,” I growled.
“The doctors are already there,” she said, her voice shaking, “and they say he’s not just sick.
“He’s been poisoned.”
Chapter Two
I’d been about to toss my shirt back onto my clothes stack. Now, instead, I started pulling it on.
Poisons couldn’t be brought aboard Quadrail trains. They just couldn’t . The same huge station-based sensor arrays that sniffed out weapons and weapon components did an equally efficient job of screening out poisons. All sorts of poisons, and all known varieties of poison-producing flora and fauna. The sensors also looked for every known type of dangerous bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms. The Shorshian back there simply couldn’t have been poisoned.
But some doctor apparently thought he had. Either we had an incompetent quack aboard, or there was a serious problem.
All Quadrail trains came equipped with a couple of small dispensaries, typically tucked in at one end of the first-class and second/third-class dining cars. The server Spider on duty there could do little except dole out an assortment of general-purpose medicines, but there was usually at least one doctor aboard any given train