“You disappoint me, Colonel,” I said. “This isn’t the attitude you showed back on Modhra, when you were trying so hard to be my friend.”
“That was before you joined ecoterrorists and participated in an attack on Halkan soil,” Applegate countered stiffly.
“Is that what it was?” I asked. “Or is it that you were still trying to get me to trust you, hoping to give the Modhri one last crack at me?”
Applegate’s forehead wrinkled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Actually, you probably don’t,” I conceded. “But you see, I’m on to your quiet little friend. You and he made a slip when we were all having dinner together in the Redbird. Not a big slip, nothing I noticed at the time, but something that came back to me later when I heard someone else comment that he couldn’t imagine anyone speaking well of grabbing a chunk of coral.”
“I didn’t say anything good about touching coral,” Applegate said, still frowning. “In fact, I think I said just the opposite.”
“Yes, you did,” I agreed. “The slip was in the specific words you used. You said that coral was such rough, pointy, scratchy stuff.”
“You have a point here?” Losutu put in. His voice hadn’t lost any of its anger, but there was a hint of curiosity starting to edge its way through. For all his dislike of me personally, he knew the kind of Westali agent I’d once been.
“Yes, sir, I do,” I assured him. “Because just one day earlier I’d used those same words, in that same order, when Apos Mahf was singing the praises of Modhran coral. Rough, pointy, scratchy. Tell me, Coloneclass="underline" How likely is it for you to have come up with all three of those words on your own unless there was someone whispering them in your ear?”
“This is insane,” Applegate insisted. “Completely insane.”
“I agree,” Losutu seconded. “If you’ve got something to say, Compton, say it.”
“I’ll be happy to, sir, if you’ll just step over to my compartment,” I said. “And if JhanKla wants to join us, he’s also welcome.”
“So now you want a Halkan High Commissioner to leave the comfort of his Peerage car for your convenience?” Applegate demanded contemptuously.
“Is it his comfort you’re worried about?” I asked. “Or his safety?”
“His safety?” Applegate echoed, frowning.
“Yes,” I said, suddenly feeling tired of this whole thing. Applegate had never been a friend; but even so, it was strangely debilitating to fight a man who didn’t even know he was an enemy. Maybe that was where the true strength of the Modhri lay. “Tell me, Colonel, what’s he afraid of? Me? Bayta?”
“Stop calling him Colonel,” Losutu growled. “He’s a civilian now.”
I shook my head. “No, sir, he’s just with a different army. The army of the Modhri.”
“The what?” Losutu demanded.
But I wasn’t looking at him. Applegate’s eyes had gone oddly flat, the muscles of his face sagging visibly as if he had fallen asleep on his feet. Before I could react, his face tightened up again, and his eyes came back to focus.
Only now the eyes were too bright, his posture too stiff, his face a subtle parody of the man who had once gazed coolly at me across a Westali desk and told me I was fired. It was no longer Colonel Terrance Applegate who stood before us.
The real enemy had finally come out to play.
“Ah,” I said, trying to keep my voice conversational. “Do I finally have the honor of speaking directly to the Modhri?”
“You do,” Applegate said. It wasn’t quite his voice, either.
Losutu apparently heard the difference, too. “Applegate?” he asked uncertainly. The anger was gone now, a growing apprehension in its place. “What’s going on?”
“Shut up,” Applegate said. He stepped to Losutu’s side, and the other inhaled sharply as his right wrist was suddenly pinned in a control lock. “You win, Compton. Let’s go to your compartment.”
“What for?” Losutu asked, fighting to keep his composure as Applegate marched him across the dining car.
“We’re going to talk,” Applegate told him calmly. He looked at me, the strange eyes gone suddenly dead. “And then,” he added “I’m going to end it.”
The entire contingent of first-class passengers was in motion as we stepped through the connecting door into the coach car, their drinks and readers and cards abandoned as they strode purposefully toward us like soldiers marching into combat. I tensed, hardening my hands into fists; but to my surprise they merely swerved both ways around us and continued on, heading back through the vestibule toward the dining car. “Where are they going?” Losutu asked, craning his head to watch as the last of them filed out of the car. “Applegate?”
“It’s no concern of yours,” Applegate said. Or rather, the thing possessing Applegate said. When the time came, I would have to remember that it was no longer a human being that I would be facing.
We were halfway across the now-empty car when the door ahead of us opened and a second stream of passengers appeared, heading aft with the same air of purpose as the first. Apparently, the Modhri was clearing out his walkers from all of the first-class compartments, too.
By the time we reached the compartment car itself the corridor was empty. “Which one?” Losutu asked.
“These,” Applegate said, gesturing toward the doors of our two compartments. “They’re the only ones I didn’t control.”
“We’ll go in here,” I said, stepping to Bayta’s compartment and touching the door chime. “We might as well bring Bayta in on the conversation.”
“And your other companion, too,” Applegate said. “The one posing as another doctor.”
The door opened, and I saw a flicker of surprise on Bayta’s face as she realized I had company. A second flicker followed as she saw who the company was. “Yes?” she asked carefully.
“Sorry,” I said, gently easing her aside and stepping in. The connecting wall between the two compartments, I saw, was partially open, just the way I’d left it. “Afraid we’ve miscalculated.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as the others came in behind me, Applegate closing the door behind him.
“He means the game is over,” Applegate said, releasing Losutu’s wrist and giving him a shove toward the bed. “Sit down, all of you. I’ll make this as quick and painless as possible. You—in the other compartment! Come here. Now.”
There was no answer. “You—Human!” Applegate called again, putting an edge to his voice. “Come now.”
“Just a minute,” a timid voice came at last. McMicking’s voice, but quavering like a frightened accountant. “Please. I’m not dressed.”
Applegate hesitated, probably wondering whether it would be safe to leave us alone while he went to the other compartment and dragged McMicking in by his neck. His eyes touched mine, and he apparently decided against it. “You have one minute,” he called.
Losutu cleared his throat. “You promised to tell me what’s going on, Compton.”
“Basically, Colonel Applegate has been turned into a sort of pod person,” I told him, making sure my voice was loud enough to carry to McMicking. “I say sort of because up to now he’s been completely unaware that he’s playing host to a section of a group mind called the Modhri.”
“Even now he isn’t aware of it,” Bayta said, her voice so low I could barely hear her. “The Modhri has taken control by putting his personality to sleep. When he releases him, Applegate will return, with no memory of what happened. He’ll think he simply blacked out.”
“Only this time that may be a problem,” I warned, eyeing Apple-gate thoughtfully. “He’ll remember that I was talking about you just before he suffered an unexplained blackout. He’s too good an intelligence agent not to connect the dots.”
“I doubt it,” Applegate said calmly. “Primitives like you are amazingly good at rationalizing away events you don’t understand.”