The Third Lynx Read Free

behind the dining car.
    “You know him?” Bayta asked.
    “No, but I know his type,” I said. “He’s someone’s Intelligence agent. Probably Westali or the EuroUnion Security Service—he doesn’t look Asian or African enough for any of their groups.”
    “What’s he doing here?”
    “The same thing I used to do way too much of,” I said. “He’s playing escort. The lady’s probably some ranking politician who decided her status demanded she get an official government guard dog to hold her hand out here in the big, scary universe.”
    Bayta pondered that for another two bites. “So why was he watching us?” she asked.
    It was the same question I’d been asking myself ever since Bayta mentioned them. That backward glance all by itself had been way too interested for a man who was supposed to be busy watching his client’s back.
    There were, in fact, only a limited number of reasons I could think of why he might be that interested in me. Unfortunately, most of those reasons involved the Modhri.
    “Maybe he just recognized me from somewhere,” I said, picking the least threatening of the possibilities. “I was in that same business, after all.”
    “I don’t know,” Bayta said slowly. “He seemed interested in Mr. Smith, too.”
    “Maybe Mr. Smith’s completely legal secret artwork transaction isn’t as secret as he thinks,” I said. “Either way, our best bet is to keep a low profile the rest of the way to Bellis and hope all of them forget about us.”
    “It’s only twenty-five hours to Bellis,” Bayta pointed out.
    “Then they’ll have to forget real fast.”
    We finished our meal in silence against the steady clacking of the train’s wheels on the tracks beneath us as we traveled along at a steady hundred kilometers an hour. Or a light-year per minute, however one preferred to think about it. When we were finished, we headed back to our double compartment.
    We reached the car to find Smith’s door was closed. I half expected him to jump out into the corridor as we passed and try his sales pitch on me again, but the door stayed shut. Either he’d gone to bed, or else he’d given up on me. Either suited me fine.
    I ushered Bayta into her compartment and then continued on to my own. I hung my jacket on the clothes rack for a quick cleaning, then settled down on the bed with my reader and the complete guidebook to Bellis I’d picked up at Terra Station before Bayta and I had left. As Humans we were going to look out of place enough among all those chipmunk-faced Bellidos. There was no point in looking like tourists, too.
    I’d been reading for an hour, and was just thinking about taking a quick shower and getting ready for bed, when a piercing scream from the corridor knifed through the wall.
    Chapter Two
    I was at the door in two seconds flat, slapping at the release even as a small, sane part of my mind warned that this was not a smart thing to do. There were probably at least a couple of Modhran walkers aboard, and uncorking a pitiful scream was a time-honored way of enticing a victim into a trap.
    But the sane part of my mind wasn’t winning many arguments these days, and it didn’t win this one, either. Reminding myself that the Spiders were very good about keeping weapons off their Quadrails. I stepped out into the corridor.
    Standing a couple of paces inside the car’s rear vestibule was the lady politician who’d passed us in the dining car earlier. Her mouth was open, her lungs filling for a reprise of her scream, her hands scrabbling at the corridor walls as if trying to find something to hold on to.
    Her wide eyes were staring down at Mr. Smith’s battered body, sprawled on the corridor floor barely two meters from my door.
    “What happened?” I demanded as I dropped to one knee beside Smith. He was still wearing the traveling suit I’d seen him in earlier, now badly rumpled. The front of his jacket was rising and falling feverishly with short, shallow breaths.
    “I