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Odd Girl Out

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By Zahn, Timothy

Tor Science Fiction

Copyright © 2009 Zahn, Timothy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780765356703

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ONE
The first thing I noticed when I opened my apartment door was the woman standing there. She was young, late teens or early twenties, her clothing a conservative dark gray, her hair strikingly blonde. She was slender, nearly gaunt in fact, and her face, while pretty enough, was drawn and taut. The glitter of a silver necklace peeked out from her open collar, with a match­ing twinkle from a ring on her  right- hand ring .nger.
All that I noticed peripherally, though. My main attention was on the gun she was pointing at me.
“Easy,” I cautioned, my eyes .icking once around the room in case I’d somehow arrived at the wrong apartment door and my key had somehow managed to open it anyway. But it was my furniture, all right: old and mismatched, with a thin layer of dust marking the fact that I hadn’t spent a lot of time here in the past year. “Let’s not do anything we’ll both regret.”
“Come in,” she ordered. Her voice was cold, a really good match for her face.
Brie.y, I considered trying to outrun her re.exes by duck­ing back outside into the hallway and making a dash for the stairs. But the self- rolling carrybags that had followed me from the elevator were still behind me, and I probably couldn’t get out without tripping over them. Besides, even if I could outrun her re.exes, I couldn’t outrun a 5mm thudwumper round from her gun.
Possibly my gun, actually. It was hard to tell one gun from another when all you could see was the view down the barrel, but that could very well be the Glock I kept holstered under the tea table she was standing beside.
She was still waiting. I took a couple of steps forward, bring­ing myself and my obedient luggage fully inside the room. Just to prove I knew the routine, I reached behind me and pushed the door closed. “Now what?” I asked.
“First tell me who you are,” she said.
“I’m Frank Compton,” I said. “I live  here.”
“Prove it.”
Prove it so that she would put away the gun? Or prove it to con.rm that I was the guy she’d come here to shoot? I glanced around the room again, looking for some clue as to what was going on.
It was only then that I noticed that the layer of dust that should have been covering everything was not, in fact, actually there. I took a third, longer, look, this time spotting the fact that the stack of magazines and unanswered mail on the tea table had been subtly shifted since my last brief time at home.
Which suggested that the woman facing me hadn’t simply nipped in .ve minutes ahead of me, hoping I’d show up and play skeet for her. She had, in fact, moved in.
“What,you’ve been here this long and haven’t looked through my photo albums?” I asked, focusing on the woman again.
Her lips compressed brie.y. “No, I have,” she conceded. “Mr. Compton, I need your help.”
I shook my head. “I never discuss business when there’s a gun pointed at me.”
Slowly, she lowered the weapon. It was my Glock, all right. “My name’s Lorelei Beach,” she said. “My sister’s in trouble.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “What does that have to do with me?”
“She’s trapped on New Tigris,” she said. “I need your help to get her out.”
“How do you get trapped on New Tigris?” I asked, walking over to the couch and sitting down. My carrybags followed, rolling to a halt by the corner of the tea table.
“I mean she can’t get out,” she said with a .ash of impa­tience. “There are some bad people trying to .nd her, and they’re watching the spaceport.”
And New Tigris had only one spaceport, or at least only one place where torchships  were legal to land. “She owe them money?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Lorelei said, a bit stif.y.
“Then why do they want her?”
“They want to hurt her.”
“So call the cops,” I said. “How about putting that gun down before someone gets hurt?”
“The police can’t help us,” she said, some desperation creep­ing into her voice. The gun stayed where it was, hanging loosely at her side. “You’re the only one who can.”
“I’m .attered,” I said. “I also don’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth,” she insisted. “Why else would I have waited for you this way?”
“Free rent?” I suggested.
Her cheeks reddened a little. “It was the only place I felt safe.”
“Especially since most New York hotels don’t stock guns for their guests?”
She lifted the Glock as if she’d only just remembered she was holding it. “They’re after me, too,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Feel free to call the cops on your way out.”
“If they catch me out there, they’ll kill me,” she said.
“Oh, come on, Ms. Beach,” I growled. “Really. You think I haven’t heard that one before? It’s the last card everyone tries when they want to con someone into doing something.”
“I’m not trying to con you into anything,” she insisted.
“Could have fooled me,” I said. “There’s an emergency women’s shelter right down the block. Feel free to go there and tell them your troubles. Maybe they’ll put you up for the night. Maybe they’ll even talk to the cops for you.”
“The shelter can’t help me,” she said. “Neither can the police.”
“You won’t know until you try, will you?”
She took a deep breath. “She should still be in the Zumur­rud District of Imani City,” she said. “She’ll wait for you to contact her. Her name’s—”
“Ms. Beach, I already told you I’m not interested,” I inter­rupted, standing up again. “Furthermore, it’s been a long day and I’m very tired.”
“Her name’s Rebekah,” she went on, the words coming out in a rush like a countdown sprinter trying to beat the clock. “She’s ten years old, blonde—”
“Ms. Beach, do I need to call the cops?”
Her throat tightened. “No,” she said, .nally moving toward the door. “Would you at least think about it?”
“Sorry, but I’m otherwise employed at the moment,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe how complicated my life is these days.”
Her lips twitched. “Actually, I would,” she said. “Good night, Mr. Compton. If you change your mind—”
“Good night, Ms. Beach,” I said. “Just leave the gun on the side table by the door.”
She hesitated. Then, turning her back on me, she set the Glock carefully onto the table. She turned back, her eyes search­ing my face, made as if to say something else, then nodded silently and left.
For a long time I just sat there, too tired even to get up and double- lock the door. I’d been run through the wringer over the past few weeks, getting chased across half the Twelve Em­pires by the remnants of the Modhri group mind that wanted to take over the galaxy and everyone in it.
This most recent skirmish, over an obscure set of Nemuti sculptures, had ended more or less all right, though I was start­ing to realize that victories against the Modhri were seldom really  clear- cut. Still, one could only do what one could do.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Odd Girl Out by Zahn, Timothy Copyright © 2009 by Zahn, Timothy. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Timothy Zahn is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than thirty SF novels, including the Dragonback series, as well as Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Blackcollar: The Judas Solution and the Dragonback sextet. He has also written the all-time bestselling Star Wars™ spinoff novel, Heir to the Empire, and other Star Wars™ novels, including the recent Allegiance. He lives in coastal Oregon.

In the not-so-distant future, in which civilized races wage a secret war against a coral polyp-based group mind known as the Modhri, ex-government agent Frank Compton arrives home to find an armed woman in his house asking him to rescue her ten-year-old sister. When the woman is later found murdered, Compton, now a suspect, travels to distant worlds in search of the girl who is part of the resistance group fighting the Modhri. Compton's third noir sf thriller set on the interstellar Quadrail (after Night Train to Rigel and The Third Lynx ) expands on the secret war and gives a closer glimpse into Zahn's imagined future. For most libraries where hard sf is popular.

[Page 72]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

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Mysterious deaths, encounters with oddly named aliens, chases and shootouts form a skeleton of a story that never quite gets fleshed out in Zahn's weak third Frank Compton adventure. Former spy and planet-hopping PI Compton, worn out by the events of 2007's The Third Lynx , gets home to find a woman in his apartment. She needs help rescuing her little sister, Rebekah, from the group mind that Compton just got back from battling. After he turns her down in classic cynical-hero fashion, she's promptly killed. Compton, framed for the crime, acquires a new identity and heads off to find Rebekah with the assistance of "ex-Marine ex-bounty hunter" Bruce McMicking. The usual sort of mayhem leads to Rebekah's rescue, the discovery of her secret and a classic confrontation/explanation scene with the mastermind, who asks, "How did you learn this?" Clumsy back-references and a blatant setup for the next book will thoroughly discourage new readers. (Sept.)

[Page 42]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.