“You know who he is, then?” Bayta asked.

“Not a clue,” I admitted, shutting off the reader and putting it away.

“Someone from your past, maybe?”

“What’s this, the old ‘your past coming back to haunt you’ routine?” I scoffed. “That works okay in old dit rec dramas, but not so much in real life. As long as you’ve got the stationmaster on the line, how about checking to see if any of the passengers are planning to change trains to the Ilat Dumar Covrey system like we are alter we hit Venidra Carvo.”

Bayta’s eyes defocused again. “No, no one,” she reported. “At least, no one’s carrying a multiple-leg ticket for that station.”

“Good enough,” I said. Though with thousands of Filly systems to choose from, the odds that someone on our train would be matching our ultimate destination had been pretty slim in the first place. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Do you think Mr. Kennrick could be someone from your past?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” I said. So much for trying to deflect her interest away from Kennrick. I should have known it wouldn’t work. “I wouldn’t worry about it, though.”

“You really mean that?” Bayta asked pointedly. “Or are you saying that I shouldn’t worry about it?”

“Neither of us should worry,” I said firmly. “Besides, we’ll know soon enough who he is and what he’s doing here.”

Bayta gave me a wary look. “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kick in his door or crash his next dinner party,” I assured her. “But hey, we’re all here on the same train. Sooner or later, I’m sure an opportunity will present itself.”

But for the first two weeks, it didn’t.

That alone was surprising. Surprising, and more than a little ominous. Quadrail trains, while larger than their Terran counterparts, were hardly the size of Class AA torchliners. More significantly, they were laid out linearly, without the kind of multiple pathways that could allow a couple of torchliner passengers to endlessly chase each other in circles.