"I am not a Resolver," the Juri said. But I could hear the growing interest in his voice. All Jurian diplomats had at least a modicum of Resolver training, and a lot of them had ambitions in that direction. Getting called in to fix a social problem aboard a Quadrail would be a nice step toward that goal.
"I was misinformed," Morse said, playing it with a perfect mix of respect and regret. "My apologies."
"Not so hastily, Mr. Morse," the Juri said, lifting a hand to block Morse's departure. "Perhaps I can still assist."
"I wouldn't want to disturb you," Morse said.
"It would be my honor to assist," the Juri said. "Permit me a moment to garb myself."
He stepped back into the room and the door slid shut. Morse looked back at me, his eyebrows raised questioningly. I nodded encouragement as I straightened up from the section of wall I'd been leaning against and prepared for action. I'd spent an hour practicing this maneuver in one of Penny's friends' compartments, but it was still going to take perfect riming to pull it off.
Morse nodded back and gave one last look at my rolled-up belt peeking from between his feet, looking for all the world like a large black snail or nautilus shell. Most people, I knew, seldom looked down unless there was some actual reason to do so. I hoped the Juri was like most people.
The door slid open again and the Juri stepped out into the corridor, nattily attired now in full diplomatic regalia. He must really want that promotion to Resolver. "Take me to this conflict," he ordered Morse.
"This way," Morse said, gesturing toward the rear door. As he did, I left Bayta and started walking casually toward them.
The Juri glanced incuriously at me as he stepped past Morse and headed aft. Morse fell into step beside and slightly behind him as the compartment door started to slide closed.
And as I reached the spot where Morse had been standing, I gave the coiled belt a gentle sideways nudge with my foot, sending it unrolling across the corridor and dropping its tip neatly across the path of the sliding door.
Quadrail compartment doors had built-in safeties that were supposed to make sure they didn't close on someone in the process of passing through. But those sensors were clustered midway along the panel. Way down at the bottom, there was nothing but the backup pressure sensors designed to stop the door's movement before it exerted any significant pressure on a Jurian back claw, Shorshian tail, or Human toe.
The key was that, unlike the main safeties, the pressure sensors would merely stop the door and wait there for further instructions.
The Juri fell for it, of course. There was practically no way he couldn't have. He'd heard his door closing, he hadn't heard the soft whoosh of it reopening, and the only person who'd been nearby as it closed—me—hadn't even broken stride as I walked along behind the two of them at the corner of his sight.
I made sure to keep walking with them all the way to the end of the car. There I courteously allowed them to go into the vestibule first.
As soon as they'd vanished behind the door, I did a one-eighty and hurried back to the compartment. I had maybe ten minutes now while Morse searched in vain for the alleged travelers whose alleged confrontation had sent him looking for diplomatic smoothing in the first place.
Bayta was waiting, her throat muscles working nervously. "See?" I said. "No worries." I reached into the narrow gap between door and jamb, and as my fingers triggered the safeties, the door gave its little whoosh and slid open again. I ushered Bayta inside, scooping up my belt from the floor as I followed.
The Juri's compartment had the almost pathological neatness I'd come to expect from ambitious rank-climbing members of the galaxy's various diplomatic corps. His personal items were precisely positioned, with the clothing hanging in the cleaning rack actually laid out in descending spectrum order of basic color. If the Hawk had been in here. I reflected, I would probably have found it filed alphabetically in his luggage.
"Douse the lights," I murmured to Bayta as I stepped to the back of the compartment and the wall switch that controlled the collapsing divider wall.
The room went dark. A moment later. I sensed the movement of air that meant she'd joined me. "You ready?" I asked.
"As ready as I'm going to be," she said. "Wait—the window."
"Right." Reaching over to the control, I opaqued the window, cutting off the last bit of faint reflected glow from the Coreline overhead. Moving back to the wall, I pressed my ear against it.
Nothing. Still, given the Spiders' soundproofing and the clickity-clack of the wheels below me, the courier would have to have a live-spec music party going in there for me to hear anything. "Okay," I murmured to Bayta. "Glitch number one: now."
With the room's lights out, there was no obvious indication that we'd just suffered a quarter-second power flicker. "Ready glitch number two," I said, and pressed the wall release.
Against my hand, I felt the wall begin to retract.
It didn't open very far, making it only about half a meter before Bayta's mental order to the Spiders again shut down power to the double compartment. But that was all I needed. Squeezing Bayta's arm reassuringly. I slipped through the gap.
The courier had also opaqued his window, with the result that the compartment was as black as a politician's financial records. Fortunately, our trip in the tender had given me a fair amount of experience in moving around a blacked-out Quadrail compartment. Hoping the courier wasn't the sort to leave his laundry piled in the middle of the floor, I made my way toward the bed.
I could hear the sound of slow breathing now. If the Modhri colony was awake and aware of my presence, he was being very quiet about it. I reached the bed and located the rack above it. There were three good-sized pieces of luggage up there, none of them the easily carried hand bag I was expecting.
Had the Modhri mind segment decided that the shoulder bag idea was too obvious and stashed the Hawk in with the courier's regular stuff? I hoped not. Opening and digging through someone's luggage in pitch-darkness wasn't something I really wanted to try.
But there was one other possibility. Using the sound of the Juri's breathing to orient myself, I eased my fingertips toward the spot where his chest ought to be.
There it was: a leather carrying bag, about the size of the late Mr. Gerashchenko's lugeboard case, gripped in the Juri's arms like a child's beloved stuffed animal.
I smiled tightly in the darkness. With the sleeper's arms wrapped around it, the bag would be nearly impossible to steal or open. Even if the Modhran colony was sleeping or otherwise unaware of his surroundings, a disturbance on that scale would surely startle both him and the walker himself awake.
But as I'd told Morse, I wasn't here to steal anything.
My reader was already tricked out into its sensor mode. Pulling it out, I started moving it slowly and deliberately down the side of the bag, a centimeter or so above the leather.
"Compton," the Juri murmured.
I froze. The sleeper hadn't stirred, and the word had come out with a definite slurring to it. Was the Juri talking in his sleep? Setting my teeth, I got the scanner moving again.
"Compton," the mumbled word came again. "Give me the Lynx."
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to tingle. This wasn't anyone's sleep-talk. The Modhri was talking to me. "I don't have it," I murmured.
"Find it," the Modhri said. "Give it to me. Then you may retire in safety and wealth."
"Thanks for the offer," I said, forcing myself to continue moving the scanner in the same slow and steady motion. Maybe in the darkness the Modhri didn't realize what I was doing. But whether he did or not, it was for damn sure that I wasn't going to get a second crack at this. "I'll think about it."
"Bring me the Lynx," he repeated. The Juri gave a little sigh and readjusted his shoulders before settling down again.
Conversation over, apparently. I finished the scan and shut down the reader. Then, just out of curiosity, I reached to the top end of the bag and got a grip on it.