Zahn's Third Lynx doesn't pussyfoot around

Timothy Zahn's The Third Lynx
published by Tim Doherty Associates

Another rollicking space detective story by Timothy Zahn. Here, private eye Frank Compton and sidekick Bayta make their way through the crowded universe recently visited in Zahn's Night Train to Rigel.

Once again... all abooooaard!

The Quadrail Express is on the move, and in first class compartmented splendor, Zahn's sleuth Frank Compton, a banished government intelligence agent turned freelance gumshoe, hired by the secretive owners of the Express and its farflung stations to aid them in their struggle with the Modrhi, an aggressive colonial alien species that threatens to homogenize the presently very heterogenous mix of Galactic cultures, is settling down to "a sizzling plate of artistically arranged Shorshic pili tentacles", when....

And that when is the moment in all good detective tales, nay in ALL good tales, when the Hero is hurled from mundane toil into a new all engulfing, world-changing Task, and must use his/her/its wits, vigor and savoir-faire to save a largely indifferent universe.

Here in that when moment, private eye Compton crossly lowers his forkfull of tentacles to his plate and, bidding his lovely company-supplied girl friday Bayta follow in his wake, leads us from the dining car on a romp though the busy Galactic railway bazaar (so does Paul Thoreau term in his travelogues the heady, ever changing combinations of commerce, culture, and class distinction yet democracy, aboard the isolated, confined yet motile spaces of a long distance passenger train) in quest of purloined treasure.

A few dying-words-from-a-bit-part-player later, and we are elbowing our way through the teeming scaled, furred and feathered multitudes that inhabit Zahn Space in splendid Dickensian variety, all solemnly minding their own business enroute to their destinations among the bustling twelve galactic empires serviced by the Quadrail Express in tightly controlled neutrality. Gunslinger aliens, for example, must check their weapons into the cargo holds for the journey, but the culture-respecting train authorities, for appearances sake, allow them to pack nonfunctional plastic replica pistols in their holsters while aboard, to let them maintain their internal class distinctions.

Not one, not two but TWELVE empires rub shoulders in Zahn's galaxy. Most writers, one would think, would despair of keeping the characters from more than two empires straight enough to maintain coherence in their tale, let alone we hapless readers, who must consult lengthy, absurd Dramatis Personae to keep track of precisely who Lord Haw-haw or the Baroness Trotter is. Come now, Zahn! Twelve? How dare you?

But he succeeds! Civilization after civilization rises before our eyes and, in the span of a few words dashed upon the page, unfolds resplendent, absurd, colorful, then vanishes into the background roar while another hoves into view. Bellidosh in their well-armed rodentian earnestness. Lumbering Halkavisti, dolphin-snouted Shorshins and hawk-beaked Juriani. Fibibibs and Cimmaheem, too, rise to the fore, then subside into the general din. Homshil, Nemuti and goose-feathered Pirks, too, are among the galaxy's citizens in lawful transit aboard the Express.

Then there are the villains, for what detective tale would dare lack them? Zahn lavishes but a few on us, but they are suitably dreadful: the terrible yet vanquished Shonkla-raa, whose fell creation, the Modrhi, an intelligent, telepathic and aggressively invasive colonial coral-being, lives on, burrowing like malevolent Babel Fish into the brains or alien-correlates-thereof of unsuspecting galactic citizens, turning them into puppets, obedient-on-demand to the central Modrhi consciousness, yet otherwise going about their lives, unaware of the bit of alien protoplasm embedded in their brains guiding their decisions at need.

For various reasons, the Modrhi have issues with the proprietors of the Express, who have created their own cyborgs, the nonviolent, ego-free Spiders, to carry out maintenance and servicing and other necessary railroad tasks. Their creators, the Chahwyn, who have hired Detective Compton to suss out their schemes, are a shy species that prefers being the invisible hand of the galactic marketplace. Not a timid one, for they were instrumental in the overthrow of the Shankla Ra from galactic hegemony, but not eager for the limelight either.

Thus the Chahwyn have put Frank Compton on their payroll. He's been recently fired from service in the intelligence service of the Western Alliance, aka the 'Human Empire' or as Campton calls it "Earth and four pathetic little colony systems"; a reasonable statement when that "empire" is contrasted, for example, with the thousands of planets under "Shorshonian" sway. The universe is a busy place, and Earth is quite insignificant in the shuffling, flapping, skittering crowd of Big Empires: the Nemuti FarReach, the Greesovra System, the Filiaelian Territory, the Ghonsilya system.

Zahn bids us peep into the lives of these civilized peoples, all linked by the Express. It is in these voyeuristic snapshots of them, these miniatures, sometimes impressionistic, sometimes clear as cut crystal, always interesting, that Zahn's book charms.

Will Compton save the day? Will he get the girl? Will he ever get to finish a plateful of Shorshic pili tentacles? Of course he will and can, the devil. How could he not, for he of such heroic (even if pleasantly flawed) parts that even the galaxy-engulfing Modrhi must treat him with grudging but unbreakable honor? And yet.....

There is something absurd even while enobling, about joining Compton's tete a tetes with shoulder-holstered chipmunks, in sharing his first class dining car with "goose-feathered Pirks" noshing on "the horrible things they liked to eat"; in watching him exchange bows and blows, salutations and insults with the great galactic bestiary.

In all of these acts, these beings, we see the same mixture of cupidity, joy, fear, pleasure, suspicion, trust, dogmatism, tolerance and finally common sense we look for and find in each other and must admit to of ourselves.

In Zahn's created universe, unlike some, one can actually love one's enemy. Even when kicking its alien hindquarters across the dining car. In our time, with fundamentalism-fired hate setting mercy on the backburner, he has a message for us, if we will listen.