by Timothy Zahn
The whole place was decorated with a graceful mixture of wispy sea plants and multicolored rock, all overlaid with a filigree of ice and frozen sea foam. Large convex windows showcased the view here beneath Modhra’s ice cap, illuminated by an array of floodlights. JhanKla had said these oceans ran up to five kilometers deep, but the resort had been built in one of the shallower areas, and some of the famous Modhran coral ridges could be seen snaking their way across the ocean floor below.
The desk clerks here were dressed in outfits that looked vaguely mermaid and merman, though I couldn’t remember any such legends in any Halkan mythos. The single-room rates were outrageous enough, but the two-room suite we needed was astronomical, far beyond what I had in any of my cash sticks. The Spiders hadn’t thought to include any actual money with their Quadrail pass, which left me no option but to put the room on my credit tag. I did so without actually wincing, though I suspected there would be all sorts of unpleasant future ramifications for this kind of unauthorized usage.
But then, according to Bayta, odds were I’d be dying here anyway. No future; no future ramifications; no worries. I signed the authorization, and we were directed to the elevator for one final descent.
Our suite wasn’t quite as luxurious as JhanKla’s Peerage car. But it was lavish enough, and the view beat the car hands down. We were on the hotel’s lowest level, with a transparent floor and two transparent corner walls giving us a spectacular wraparound view of the rippling water and coral ridges below. In the center of the room a pair of couches faced each other over a glowing fire pit—artificial, of course, but very realistic. There were two comfortable lounge chairs and six carved wooden uprights, the latter group arranged around a similarly carved wooden dining/conference table. Set against the two nontransparent walls were a computer desk and a huge entertainment center.
The bedroom was just as nice, though smaller, with its floor and its single outside wall again transparent. Here the center was dominated by a gargantuan bed big enough for a Cimmaheem couple or at least four standard-issue humans, with a duplicate of the living room’s entertainment center on one wall and a large walk-in closet on the other. The closet, I noted, came prefurnished with clothing in a wide range of styles and sizes.
There were also no bugs anywhere in the suite. For me, that was the biggest surprise of all. “Nice enough for you?” I asked Bayta as I emerged from my bedroom sweep into the living area.
Bayta was standing beside one of the outer walls, gazing out at the coral and the lights from a group of divers and a couple of midget submarines that were moving around among the ridges. “I mean, there was a Grand Suite listed if you think we should upgrade,” I added.
“What exactly are you planning to do here?” she asked, not turning around. She’d hardly said two words since our arrival at Sistarrko Station and the muscles of her neck seemed to have settled into a permanently taut state.
“We start by trying to relax,” I told her, stepping to her side and taking her hand. Trying to take it, anyway, before she deftly pulled it out of my grip. Her skin was icy cold. “No one’s going to try to kill us here. It’s too public and way too high-profile.”
“So they’ll wait until we’re off in some quiet and lonely place?” she asked with only a trace of sarcasm.
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
“And, of course, we will be going to some quiet and lonely places?”
“Well, I will,” I told her. “Like I said before, you’re welcome to stay here, or even go back to the Tube.” I crossed toward the desk and computer terminal. “Let’s see what they’ve got in the way of entertainment.”
There were, as it turned out, quite a few options to choose from. JhanKla had already listed the outdoor activities for us, but the resort had a large number of indoor ones as well. There were half a dozen restaurants, ranging from casual to formal-wear-fancy, two theaters with rotating stage shows designed to appeal to a wide range of Halkan and offworlder tastes, and a fully equipped casino for anyone who still had money left after paying for their room and meals. Our entertainment centers had access to a wide range of music and dit recs, as well, more extensive even than JhanKla’s private collection. “Let’s try the casino first,” I suggested. “Unless you’d rather start with a swim.”
“Shouldn’t we be focusing on our investigation?” she countered.
“We’ve got time,” I assured her, getting up from the desk and crossing to her side. “I’m expecting our Bellidos to show up before anything interesting happens, and they definitely weren’t on our torchferry. Either they decided to take a later one, which according to the schedule won’t be in for another eight hours, or else they’ve gone into the inner system to Sistarrko itself, which means they can’t be here for a minimum of thirty.”
“Why would they go to Sistarrko?”
“No idea,” I said. “Maybe there’s some prep work they still need to do.”
“Or maybe that’s where this theoretical test of yours will take place?”
“I suppose that’s possible,” I conceded. “Still, JhanKla pointed us here, not Sistarrko, and Modhra’s the name that apparently also caught my fake drunk’s attention. No, something’s going to happen here, and most likely within the next hundred hours.”
She frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Because the crate they stuck me in was bound for Alra-kae, nearly two days past Jurskala,” I reminded her. “If I hadn’t been found until then and had had to backtrack, it would have cost us just about a hundred hours. If the idea was to get me out of the way while something happened here, we can assume it’ll all be all over by then.”
I gestured to the view “But until they arrive, the point is moot. So let’s spend some time getting the lay of the land.”
“How will you know when the Bellidos arrive?”
“There are ways,” I assured her. “So again: casino or swimming?”
“Casino,” she said reluctantly. She turned toward the bedroom, paused. “This whole place will probably be decorated with Modhran coral,” she said, her voice suddenly very strange. “Whatever you do, don’t touch it. All right?”
“The stuff’s not fragile,” I soothed her. “I’ve seen pictures of it being used—”
“Just don’t touch it!” she cut me off sharply. “Promise me you won’t touch it.” Her shoulders rose slightly as she took a deep breath. “Please,” she added more quietly.
“Okay,” I managed, trying to unfreeze my brain. An outburst like that from my calm, unemotional Bayta? “Since you say please… sure.”
“Thank you.” Her shoulders rose and fell again. “All right. Let’s go.”
Halkan casinos were invariably formal, and I hadn’t brought anything nearly classy enough to wear. Fortunately, the hotel had that covered with several formal outfits, both male and female, tucked away in the bedroom closet. They were all Remods, no less, which meant that once we’d donned the ones closest to our sizes, we were able to plug them into the room’s computer and have them finetuned to a perfect fit. One of the more useful toys of the rich and famous.
It was the middle of the afternoon, local time, and the casino was doing a brisk business. I spotted a couple of other hotel-issue Remods, but most of the patrons had brought far more elaborate outfits of their own to show off to each other. Two of the room’s corners sported drink and snack areas set off from the rest of the casino by what looked like waist-high walls with chunks of Modhran coral submerged in swiftly moving canals. In the center of the casino was a five-meter-tall waterfall/fountain with more of the coral in the rippling pool area around it.
“I see a Bellido,” Bayta murmured as we paused at the top of the entrance ramp leading from the elevator bank to the main floor. “Over by that long green table.”
“The daubs table,” I identified it for her. The Bellido in question was in full army uniform, watching intently as the Halka currently handling the dice ran through the traditional prethrow good-luck
routine. I couldn’t make out his rank insignia from this distance, but there were a pair of gun grips sticking out from beneath each of his arms, which probably pegged him as at least a lieutenant general “It’s the Halkan equivalent of craps.”
“That’s a military uniform, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed,” I agreed, putting my hand against the small of her back and starting down the ramp. “Come on, let’s mingle. You go left; I’ll go right.”
“You want us to split up?” she asked, a fresh note of trepidation in her voice.
“Public and high-profile, remember?” I soothed her. “Just smile a lot, listen to what people are saying, and don’t leave the casino without me. We’ll meet in an hour in that blue-colored snack area in the back corner.”
We reached the bottom of the ramp. Giving her arm a reassuring squeeze, I let go and headed into the genteel chaos.
In real life, I knew, gambling usually wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it was portrayed in dit rec dramas and mysteries. Rarely if ever were pivotal decisions made at the poker tables, nor did the chief villain meet the hero over baccarat to trade witticisms and veiled threats.
Still, gambling turned people’s minds toward money and recreation, and as a result tended to make tongues wag more freely and with less caution than they otherwise might. Keeping my ears open, I wandered through the crowd, pausing at each table to study the game in progress and do a little professional eavesdropping.
Like the first-class coach cars on the Quadrail, this seemed to be a place where the galaxy’s various species mixed freely. Unfortunately, as I made my rounds I discovered that business interests seemed to have been left back in the guest rooms. All the conversations I dipped into seemed related either to the current game in progress, the profit and loss levels of previous games, or the other activities available on Modhra I. Even a trio of Cimmaheem, who generally avoided exercise like the plague once they’d reached this age and status level, were talking enthusiastically about taking a submarine tour to one of the cavern complexes nearby and suiting up to go explore it.
Eventually, my wanderings brought me to the central waterfall/ fountain.
It was one of the standards of Halkan decor, consisting of several small fountains at different levels squirting water upward where it then tumbled down layers of molded rock. Each fountain had its jets set at different heights and intervals, the whole group working together in a nicely artistic pattern. Additional injectors at various levels of the waterfall added more variation to the flow, stirring up the water, sending it into small whirlpools, or whipping it into brief whitewater frenzies. The reservoir pool stretched out a meter from the base of the rock pile, though the water itself was only about half a meter deep, and the waist-high wall around the whole thing was embossed with colored light ridges running a counterpoint pattern of their own.
And as I’d observed from the entrance ramp, the pool itself was full of coral.
Considerably more coral than I’d realized, too. The bits I’d spotted sticking up out of the water were only the tips of much larger formations snaking along the floor of the pool, covering it completely in places, with hidden colored lights creating contrast and dramatic shading.
Anywhere else in the galaxy, a display with this much Modhran coral would have cost millions. Here, fifty meters above the spot where the stuff grew, it was rather like decorating a Yukon winter scene with ice sculptures.
“What do you think?” a voice rose above the general murmur of the crowd.
I turned. The military-clad Bellido Bayta had pointed out earlier was standing behind me, idly swirling the dark red liquid in his glass as he gazed up at the waterfall. I could see now that his insignia identified him as an Apos, the equivalent of a brigadier general. “It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Isn’t it, though,” he agreed, lowering his eyes back to me. “Apos Taurine Mahf of the Bellidosh Estates-General Army Command.”
“Frank Compton,” I said in reply. “No position in particular at the moment.”
He made a rumbling noise. “And they were fools to allow your departure.”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
His chipmunk face creased with a smile. “Forgive me,” he said “You are the Frank Compton once with Earth’s Western Alliance Intelligence service, are you not?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said, studying his face. As far as I could recall, I’d never run into this particular Bellido before. “Have we met?”
“Once, several years ago,” he said. “It was at the ceremony marking the opening of the New Tigris Station. I was one of the guard the Supreme Councillor sent to honor your people.”
“Ah,” I said. In fact, I remembered that ceremony well… and unless Apos Mahf had had extensive facial restriping I was quite sure he hadn’t been there. “Yes, that was an adventure, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed,” he said, taking a sip from his drink. “What exactly do you do now?”
“At the moment, I work for a travel agency,” I told him. “A much simpler and safer job.”
“Even so, you cannot seem to avoid adventure,” he said. “I understand you nearly vanished from your last Quadrail.”
An unpleasant tingling ran across my skin. “Excuse me?” I asked carefully.
“Your adventure with the baggage car and your unknown assailant,” Mahf elaborated. “He was unknown, was he not?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” I said.
“No idea at all?” Mahf persisted. “Even knowledge of his species would be of help to the authorities.”
“I didn’t see or hear a thing,” I said. “Is keeping track of Quadrail incidents part of your job?”
He waved his hand in the Belldic equivalent of a shrug. “Not at all,” he said. “But this topmost level of galactic society is a small and tightly bound machine. Gossip and rumor are the fuels that drive it.”
“Ah,” I said, deciding to try a little experiment. “Yes, it was an unexpected adventure, all right. Rather like that of the old woman in the classic dit rec drama, in fact.”
Mahf’s whiskers twitched with uncertainty, then smoothed out again. “Yes, indeed,” he said knowingly. “The Lady Vanishes. Very much like that, in fact. Still, I’m pleased you won out in the end.”
“As am I,” I said between stiff lips. There should have been no way for him to have caught on to which specific dit rec drama I’d been referring to. No way in hell.
Unless he had a direct pipeline to someone who’d been in that Peerage car with us.
The Spiders had told Bayta that everyone from that group had stayed behind at Jurskala. I’d checked the schedule for Sistarrko-bound Quadrails, and there wasn’t any way for someone to have caught a later one and arrived here by now. JhanKla or Rastra would have had to send a message on ahead, a message apparently detailed enough to include even the dit recs we’d watched. Either that or the Spiders had lied to Bayta.
Or else Bayta had lied to me.
“I see you admiring the coral,” Mahf said into my thoughts.
I had been doing no such thing, but I nodded anyway. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I said. “Unfortunately, our laws don’t permit it to be imported to our worlds.”
“A pity,” he said, gesturing toward the fountain. “I presume that means you’ve never had the chance to actually touch it.”
Bayta’s strange warning flitted through my mind. Was everybody in the whole galaxy obsessed with this damn stuff? “No, but I’ve touched Earth coral a couple of times,” I told him. “Very rough very pointy, very scratchy.”
“But this is Modhran coral,” he said reprovingly. “It has a texture far different from that of any other coral in the galaxy. Different from anything else, for that matter.”
I stepped to the wall and looked down. I’d never seen Modhran coral up close, and as I gazed into the pool I was struck by how vibrant and colorful and glittery it was. Human coral just sort of lay there, silently warning the unwary diver with its sharp brittleness but this h
ad an odd look of suppleness, even cuddliness, that I couldn’t quite explain, even to myself.
“Go on,” Mahf murmured. He was right beside me now, practically breathing onto my neck. “Touch it. It’s quite safe, and very pleasant.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said, straightening up and taking a long step back from the pool. “Mother taught me never to pick up strange things. You never know where they’ve been.”
For a long moment he stared at me, his earlier cheerfulness suddenly hidden beneath an almost wooden mask. Then, to my relief, the smiles came out again from behind the clouds. “I would never seek to overturn such counsel,” he said, lifting his glass to me. “Farewell, Compton. May your stay be pleasant.”
There were half a dozen cashiers seated in booths along the walls, walled off behind traditional flame-patterned iron gratings. “Your desire, sir?” one of them asked as I stepped to his window.
“Do you have link-games?” I asked.
“Yes, indeed,” he assured me, selecting a link chip from a bowl. “Do you need a reader?”
“Got one, thanks,” I said, taking the chip and heading for the bar. Choosing a table that gave me a view of the rest of the casino, I pulled out my reader, palming my sensor chip as I did so. Switching on the reader, I made as if to plug in the link chip, then did a flip switch and put in the sensor instead. Settling back into my chair, pretending I was playing the link-game, I keyed for a scan of the comm-frequency transmissions.
Considering the size of the resort, there was an amazingly low level of comm traffic going on, though in retrospect I should have realized that these people had come here to get away from it all, not bring it all with them. All the transmissions that were zipping around were encrypted, of course, and I had nothing with me nearly powerful enough to dig through all that protection.
But then, actually eavesdropping on the conversations wasn’t the point of this exercise.
The bulk of the traffic, not surprisingly, was running civilian Halkan encryptions, and I tackled those first. They varied in complexity and layering, depending on how leakproof their owners wanted them to be, but they all followed a very distinctive, very Halkan pattern. The next most common encryption pattern was Cimman, again not surprising given the proximity of the Cimmal Republic. I eliminated those, plus the dozen civilian Jurian systems, and finally the two Pirkarli ones.
