He shrugged, a fluid rolling of the shoulders like a move in a scarecrow dance routine. "From their shapes, I would assume the Lynx is the emitter and the Hawk the handle."
"Yes, that makes sense," I agreed, pulling up my mental image of the pictures that had been on Morse's data chip. "And that would make—" I broke off, fumbling for my reader as something suddenly occurred to me.
"What is it?" Bayta asked.
"I just had a thought," I said, plugging in the dictionary chip, "I was about to say that would make the Viper the power supply." "And?"
"Remember what the Spider report said about that Nemuti scholar doing an etymological study on the sculptures' names and coming up with alien equivalents?" I punched in the word Lynx. "Okay, let's see. Lynx comes from Middle English, from Latin, from Greek from— see leuk—" I hit the link. "Bingo. The Indo-European root leuk means light or brightness."
"Light?" Bayta asked, sounding confused.
"As in shock or energy," I said.
Her expression hardened. "Oh."
"Exactly," I agreed, keying for the other names. "Hawk …from kap, meaning to grasp. There's your grip, all right. And Viper …from gwei and pere, meaning to live and to produce."
"The power supply," Bayta murmured.
"Right," I said. "This scholar was smarter than I thought. With this kind of hint, I'm surprised no one's figured it out before now."
"This is all interesting, but of no immediate usage," the Chahwyn put in. "Now that you know the truth, you see that you must give me the Lynx."
"I do, and I'd love to comply," I said. "Unfortunately, we've picked up a couple of complications along the way. For one thing, I don't have it with me. For another, it looks like we're going to have to trade it to the Modhri for one of our friends."
The Chahwyn's back stiffened. "You cannot do that," he insisted. "You will not do that. I demand that you retrieve the Lynx at once and bring it to me."
"Easy," I calmed him, holding out a soothing hand. "You're missing the big picture."
He snorted. "Do you have any idea what the Modhri could do with such a weapon?"
"He could create havoc across the galaxy, including and maybe especially aboard the Quadrail trains," I said. "And I wholeheartedly agree that's something we very much want to avoid. But that's not the big picture I was referring to."
"Then what is?"
"I can get you the Lynx," I said. "But what you really want are all the rest of the sculptures."
"Except the one that exploded in the Ghonsilya art museum," Bayta murmured.
I stared at her, her words echoing through my brain. Suddenly, with that simple comment, the whole thing had taken a sideways tilt. A very, very dangerous sideways tilt. "Right," I said, keeping my voice steady. I needed time to think this through. "Of course not that one. So retrieving the rest of them is next on the agenda."
"How can you do that?" the Chahwyn asked suspiciously. "You don't even know where the sculptures are."
"No, but I know where they were going," I said. "That first group of Bellidos, the ones with the stolen Hawk, were on their way to Laarmiten in the Nemuti FarReach."
"You think to find the sculptures there?"
"If they're there, we'll get them back," I promised. "Which brings up my third request."
"Your third request?" the Chahwyn asked, sounding confused.
"After reinstatement and the truth," I said to him. "Request three is that I want a gun."
"Impossible," the Chahwyn said flatly. "No weapons are allowed inside the Tube."
"Of course they are," I asked. "You have one."
The room went a dark gray shade of silence. The Chahwyn's eyes darted to Bayta's, turned back to me. "Explain," he said, his voice right.
"You Chahwyn were designed by the Shonkla-raa to be incapable of aggression, which is why you bred the Spiders to run your Quadrail for you," I said. "It stands to reason that you wouldn't have ventured out into the big bad universe without some way of protecting yourself."
"That does not imply a weapon," he said stiffly. "I have Spiders to protect me."
"Who are as useless in a fight as you are," I said. "No, you've got some kind of weapon, all right. I want one, too."
He looked at Bayta, and once again the two of them lapsed into a brief telepathic conference. "Actually, I'd venture to say you almost don't have a choice anymore," I said into the silence. "The Modhri already suspects I'm being allowed to carry a weapon aboard the trains. If and when he gets desperate enough to jump me, I'd better be holding something heftier than a bluff. Otherwise, scratch me, scratch Bayta, and scratch any chance of using any other bluffs against him. Ever."
The Chahwyn's eyes came back to me. "It cannot be allowed," he said.
"Oh, I'll bet it can," I cajoled. "Come on, at least let me see what the thing looks like."
For a long minute he sat stewing in indecision. Then, reluctantly, he reached somewhere inside his toga and pulled out a device that looked remarkably like a set of brass knuckles made of antiqued pewter. "It's a neural shock weapon called a kwi," he said, holding it out for my scrutiny. "A relic of the war against the Shonkla-raa."
"What does it do?" I asked.
"It has two settings, each with three levels," he explained, indicating a pair of spots on the weapon. "It can either create incapacitating pain or bring about unconsciousness for up to six hours."
"Scope and range?"
"We believe it will work against any oxygen-breathing being, and up to a distance of perhaps forty or fifty meters."
Not much range, as such things went. Still, it was better than nothing. And the any oxygen-breather part was definitely promising. "Will the knock-out setting take out a walker's polyp colony?" I asked, just to make sure.
His face puckered. Not just the area around his mouth, but his whole face. "We are fairly certain that it will," he said. "But we haven't yet tried it against any living beings."
An untested weapon. Terrific. "Well, the things apparently worked back during the war," I pointed out. "Close enough. Wrap it up—I'll take it."
"Certainly you joke," he said, tucking the kwi out of sight again. "As you have already said, this is my single defense against danger."
"My apologies" I said. "In that case, I'll make do with your backup piece."
"My what?"
"Your backup weapon," I said. "The one you keep hidden in your tender in case the bad guys manage to take this one away from you."
The Chahwyn's face rippled again. "Would you care to tell me exactly where the other weapon is hidden?"
"I don't know the layout in there," I reminded him. "But it'll be somewhere within arm's reach of the most valuable thing you have." I paused, considering. "At a guess, it's near your map of the Quadrail system. The one that includes all these sidings, your new home system, and any other secret hideaways you have stashed around the galaxy."
He stared at me as if seeing me for the first time. "You're very sure of yourself and your conclusions, aren't you, Mr. Compton?"
"If you mean am I good at what I do, yes," I said. "That's why you hired me in the first place."
He looked at Bayta, and then stood up. As he did so, and in perfect unison, the two Spiders behind him also straightened a bit. "Come." He walked to the door, the two Spiders deftly inserting themselves between him and me, and we all headed outside.
We passed our truncated train, and I got a glimpse of Morse's face as he peered between the legs of a Spider who had taken up guard position directly outside the baggage car door. If Morse had been despondently clutching the nearest legs it would have been the spitting image of a dit rec prison drama scene, and it was all I could do to resist calling out something about the governor and a pardon.