The Third Lynx by Timothy Zahn Page B

including a scale that showed them to range between twenty and forty centimeters long. All nine were made of some gleaming white stone, they were very definitely abstract, and to me they didn’t look anything like lynxes, hawks, or vipers. The so-called Hawk was twenty centimeters from top to bottom and shaped something like a comma, with a rounded top flowing in a wide curve into a somewhat wider base. The Viper was larger, about forty centimeters long, and looked like a frozen tongue of fire, curving upward twice from its base to a slightly rounded point. The Lynx was about thirty centimeters long and mainly tubular, like a short piece of bamboo rising out of a wider base. To me it looked a lot more like a viper than the Viper itself did. All nine sculptures were covered with texturing, but whether it was abstract decoration, miniature bas-relief carvings, or simple erosion I couldn’t tell.
    There was also a map of the Ten Mesas area where they’d been found, plus a short bio of the Nemut who’d led the team that dug them up. I skimmed the latter without finding anything of interest and scrolled down to page three.
    Page three was a police report.
    I glanced at Bayta, noting the set of her jaw, and returned to my reading.
    The nine sculptures weren’t considered all that valuable, certainly not compared to the Mona Lisa or the Cincarian Stand. But that hadn’t stopped collectors from trying to acquire a complete set of Lynx, Hawk, and Viper. Collectors being what they were, of course, none of them wanted to part with even their single sculpture, and over the years there had apparently been a lot of Go Fish-style jockeying back and forth among the various owners. The four relevant museums had been approached as well, but most of them were run by equally fanatic collectors, and it had appeared that the status quo would be maintained for a long time to come.
    Only someone had apparently gotten tired of waiting and decided on a more direct approach. In the past twelve months all four of the museums had been burglarized and their Nemuti sculptures stolen. Just their Nemuti sculptures, as far as I could tell from the reports, which should have sent up red flags or at least yellow ones for anyone who had been paying attention.
    Apparently, no one had. Skimming farther down the report, I discovered that four of the privately held sculptures had also been stolen, despite the heavy security their owners had built around their collections. In the most recent of the robberies, the owner had apparently surprised the intruders and been killed.
    Eight of the sculptures had vanished. One was still at large.
    The third Lynx.
    “This,” I said, looking up at Bayta again, “is starting to sound like an old dit rec drama.”
    “Only those are fiction,” she reminded me soberly. “This is real.”
    “Dead bodies do have a way of emphasizing that.” I conceded, skimming the dates and locations again and wishing the Spiders had included the full police reports instead of just a summary. Even so. though, there were some intriguing hints to be gleaned. “Did you notice where the last private-collector robbery took place?” I asked Bayta. “The one where the owner was murdered?”
    She craned her neck toward the reader. “Somewhere on Bellis. wasn’t it?”
    “Very good,” I said. “For extra credit, when did it happen?”
    “Just over three weeks ago.”
    “Right,” I said. “Which, if the number you gave me earlier was correct, was the same time all those first-class compartments on our dearly departed train suddenly got booked.”
    I saw her throat tighten. “By Bellidos traveling to a world of the Nemuti FarReach.”
    “And who left Bellis Station the same time someone with the last Lynx on his mind was due to arrive,” I said. “Coincidence is coincidence, but this is starting to push the envelope.”
    I picked up my own reader and handed it to her. “Or we could push it even farther.”
    I watched her eyes flick