Odd Girl Out

by Timothy Zahn

  “I see,” I said, passing over the fact that dusk was at least two hours away. “And who exactly is this Mr. Veldrick who has such interest in autocab records?”

  The cop raised his eyebrows slightly. “You don’t recognize the name of the man you came here to see?”

  “I’m terrible with names,” I said. “Remind me.”

  “Mr. Veldrick is the local administrator of Crown Rosette Electronics,” the cop explained. “Which I believe Hardin Industries acquired a few months ago.”

  I looked at Karim. His expression was studiously neutral, but there was a hint of tension showing beneath the mask. “And one of Mr. Veldrick’s duties is to keep track of autocab records?”

  “Not all of them,” the cop said, smiling. “Just yours. Would you come with us, please? Mr. Veldrick is most anxious to meet you.”

  “Then by all means let’s relieve his anxiety,” I said, standing up and gesturing Bayta to do likewise. Without knowing how the police were set up outside the bar, anything short of meek compliance would be potential suicide. Considerations of countermoves would have to wait until we could further assess the situation. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Karim. Perhaps we can pick up our conversation again some other time.”

  “Perhaps,” Karim said, nodding gravely to me. “Good day to you, Mr. Donaldson.”

  There were five more cops waiting outside, three of them engaged in a sort of pickup staring contest with Karim’s bar-door buddies. Three marked patrol cars were lined up at the curb, as well, and I wondered just what percentage of Imani City’s police force was represented by this group. Either I was a VIP of the top rank, deserving of an official police escort, or else it was a quiet day down at the station.

  Or else the cops preferred to run in convoy when they came to Zumurrud District.

  Veldrick lived in one of the areas of the city we hadn’t passed through on our way in, and it was clearly yet another neighborhood the doom-and-gloom reporters had ignored. The houses were larger and snootier than most of those Bayta and I had seen up to now, set back from the street across large, manicured lawns. Crown Rosette Electronics, apparently, was doing well for itself.

  I half expected a neatly uniformed butler to answer the chime. But the man who opened the door was instead wearing a nicely tailored business suit. He was middle-aged and graying, starting to run a little overweight, but with the piercing eyes of a man accustomed to quick evaluation, analysis, and decision. Veldrick, without a doubt.

  His eyes flicked once across my face, then dipped quickly up and down the rest of my body, rather like a laser scanner selecting the grading for a particular side of beef. “You must be Mr. Donaldson,” he said in greeting. His eyes shifted to Bayta.

  And paused there, taking a second and even a third look, his forehead creasing slightly. “And you are . . .?” he asked.

  “This is Jasmine, my assistant,” I told him. “You must be Mr. Veldrick.”

  He looked back at me, the frown clearing away. “That’s right,” he said. “Come in—I’ve been expecting you.”

  He ushered us inside, dismissing our police escort with a glance, and closed the door behind us. “So I hear,” I said. “I must admit to being a bit surprised by that.”

  “Surprised by my interest in you?” he asked, gesturing us through the foyer toward a decorated archway. “Or surprised I even knew you were here?”

  “Mostly the latter,” I said. “I’d thought I was keeping a reasonably low profile.”

  “And so you were,” he said as we stepped through the archway into an elegantly furnished great room, complete with an impressive half-wrap wood-burning fireplace. “But one of the necessities of corporate survival is to have as many ears to as much ground as possible. I received private word that Mr. Hardin was sending someone my way, and I’ve been watching for you ever since.”

  “With a little help from friends in the police and Customs?” I suggested as Bayta and I sat down on a very comfortable contour couch facing a low serving table.

  “Ears to the ground, eyes to the horizon,” Veldrick said with a smile as he sat down in a throne-like chair on the opposite side of the serving table from us. He tapped a button, and the table opened up to reveal a variety of drinks and small finger foods. “May I offer you some refreshment?”

  “Thank you,” I said, looking over the selection. It was a nice middle-of-the-road assortment, neither too extravagant nor too cheap. Just the sort of offering I’d expect from someone who wasn’t sure whether the corporate visitor across the table was a potential ally or a potential adversary.

  Which led immediately to other questions, such as whether Hardin’s takeover had been friendly or hostile. If the latter, how hostile had it been, and how exactly Veldrick was positioning himself to deal with it.

  But intriguing though the boardroom stratagems might be, they were far outside the scope of our immediate task. “How long have you been on New Tigris?” I asked, selecting a cola and a cookie sandwich.

  “Eight years,” Veldrick said. “There are some rich selenium and iridium deposits about fifty kilometers west of the city, and we’ve been taking advantage of them to get some high-end production going. We’ve been shipping product for nearly seven years now, and the operation has been showing a profit for the past three.”

  “Impressive,” I said, taking a bite of the sandwich. Shrimp, I decided, or the local equivalent. “I presume you’re still shipping mostly to Earth?”

  “Mostly, but we’ve also been working to develop markets with the Juriani and Cimmaheem.” He smiled. “I’m guessing that’s what caught Mr. Hardin’s interest in our little company.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “Mr. Hardin’s very big on extending his markets outward.”

  “As well he should be,” Veldrick said. “That’s the direction of the future.”

  He cocked his head. “But I don’t imagine you came all this way just to chat about market conditions.”

  Clearly, he was inviting me to tell him why Hardin had sent me. Problem was, I didn’t have the slightest idea why Hardin would even do something like that. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” I assured him, going for the vaguest answer I could find on short notice. “This sort of visit is pretty much routine, at least in certain cases.”

  “What sort of cases?” he asked.

  I gave him the bland formal smile I’d learned at Westali for use against criminal suspects and nosy senators. “I’m sure you understand I can’t go into details,” I said. “Again, though, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  He held my eyes another couple of heartbeats and then gave a small shrug. “Of course,” he said, pretending to be satisfied with my answer. “Where are you staying, by the way? The Hanging Gardens?”

  I shook my head. “For the moment, we’re just staying aboard our torchyacht.”

  “The Hanging Gardens,” he said firmly. “Third and Chestnut. It’s the best hotel in Imani City. All the visiting dignitaries stay there, and it’s convenient to both our offices and our assembly plant.” He cocked his head again. “Or you could stay here,” he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “I have a very nice guest suite.”

  “No, we couldn’t possibly impose on you that way,” I demurred.

  “At least let me show it to you,” he said, standing up and gesturing through an archway covered with strings of glittering, diamond-like beads. “It’s just on the other side of the meditation room.”

  He stepped to the doorway and pulled the strings aside for us, the beads making gentle bell-like whisperings as they moved. With Bayta close behind me, I stepped through.

  The meditation room was small but nicely arranged. There were four large floor pillows clustered in the middle of the room, surrounded by several candelabra with attached incense burners. Along one wall was another fireplace, much smaller than the one out in the great room. On the wall opposite it was a tiered trough with a miniature stream of flowing water, complete with a couple of sm
all waterfalls and a set of rapids.

  And inside the trough, glistening with the water flowing over it, was a long patterned formation of coral.

  Modhran coral.

  Veldrick had a Modhran mind segment right here inside his house.

  I shouldn’t have reacted. I should have glanced at the coral, made some nice polite comment about how lovely and peaceful the room looked, and moved on.

  But the discovery was so unexpected that I couldn’t catch myself in time. Instead, I stopped with a jerk, my torso giving a sharp twitch. “That’s—”

  I broke off. But it was too late. “It’s Modhran coral,” Veldrick said, his tone subtly altered as he came up behind me. I twitched again, taking a long step away and turning to face him.

  But there was no weapon in his hand. “Come now, Mr. Donaldson,” he said with a faintly mocking smile. “It’s not that impressive.”

  “It’s not the impressiveness that worries me,” I said, searching for something else to hang my reaction on. It was still possible the fake Donaldson identity had him fooled. “It’s the ramifications,” I went on. “Last I heard, it was still illegal to import coral or coral-like substances onto Confederation worlds.”

  He waved a hand, his nose wrinkling in genteel contempt. “A ridiculous law,” he said. “Probably illegitimate, certainly unenforceable. Besides, you’ve no idea how a gift of Modhran coral helps to grease the wheels of commercial enterprise. Especially with non-Humans.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. There were several arguable points in there, but this wasn’t the time to argue them. This was the time to make our farewells and get the hell out of here. “But it’s getting late. Perhaps we’ll go take a look at the Hanging Gardens.”

  “But you haven’t seen the guest suite,” Veldrick reminded me, gesturing toward a doorway on the far side of the meditation room, this one also sporting a shimmering wall of beads. “Right through there.”

  The guest suite was indeed nice, on a par with a mid-range hotel room. I made the standard comments and murmurs of appreciation, again insisted that I couldn’t allow us to be a burden to him, and again attempted to disengage.

  This time, it worked. Veldrick escorted us back to the front door, encouraged me to come by the office in the morning, and let us leave.

  The cops who’d delivered us were long gone. Getting my bearings, I turned us east toward Broadway, one of Imani City’s major streets, where we should be able to find an autocab stand.

  Broadway was four blocks away. We’d covered two of them before Bayta finally spoke. “Do you think he knows?” she asked.

  “After that two-hundred-twenty-volt twitch of mine?” I growled, feeling disgusted with myself. “If he didn’t know before, he certainly does now.”

  “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “If showing us the coral was supposed to confirm who we are, why didn’t the Modhri do something with that information?”

  “You heard him, back at Yandro,” I reminded her. “He’s going to leave us alone until we find and destroy the Abomination.”

  She shivered. “Rebekah?”

  “That’s the logical assumption,” I said. “We know the Modhri was tracking Lorelei, and those offworld searchers Karim mentioned were probably also walkers. Coordinated by Veldrick’s meditation-room coral, no doubt.” I frowned as something suddenly struck me. “Interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “I was just wondering when the coral was brought in,” I said, trying to think this through. “It’s possible Veldrick himself isn’t actually a walker.”

  Bayta shook her head. “I doubt the Modhri would set up an outpost without a walker here to watch over it.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt Veldrick’s on his way to becoming one,” I said. “But if the Modhri just recently figured out Rebekah is here, he may have brought in the outpost solely to coordinate the search. In that case, Veldrick’s polyp infection may not have grown to full colony status yet.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Bayta said, still sounding doubtful. “Especially if there were other walkers here he could use in an emergency.”

  “Right,” I said. “My question is why bother with a coral outpost at all? Why not just use walkers for the search?”

  “Shall we go back and ask him?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve had enough socializing for one day,” I said. “Let’s go check out this Hanging Gardens place and see what it’s like.”

  Bayta was silent for another half block. “What about Rebekah?” she asked.

  “For now, we leave her where she is,” I said. “In fact, now that you and I are no longer flying under the radar, we should probably steer clear of the whole Zumurrud District for a few days.”

  “I suppose,” she said. “I wonder what’s in all those boxes.”

  “Probably her shoe collection,” I grumbled. “That’s going to be a major headache all by itself.”

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  “I appreciate your confidence,” I said. “Speaking of figuring things out, how did you figure out where she was?”

  “I don’t know,” Bayta said, shaking her head slowly. “It just seemed . . . I don’t know.”

  “Oh, well, that clears it up,” I said, trying not to be too sarcastic. “Come on—work at it a little. Did you hear her, or smell her, or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Bayta said again, starting to sound a little exasperated.

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” I soothed. “But if the details ever surface, be sure to let me know.”

  We reached Broadway, pausing on the corner as I looked both directions down the street for the traditional green-and-yellow banner of an autocab stand. But there wasn’t one in sight. I focused my attention on the traffic flowing briskly along, wondering if autocabs simply roamed the streets like they did in some of the cities I’d visited.

  But I couldn’t see any of them tucked in among the streams of private cars and trucks, either. “I guess you have to call them,” I said, pulling out my comm and punching up the city directory.

  “We could just walk,” Bayta offered, pointing to our left. “If I remember the map right, Third and Chestnut is only five or six blocks away. Probably be just as fast as calling a cab.”

  “It won’t take long in a city this size,” I assured her. I found the number and punched in a request, glancing up and down the street again. A block away to our right, a middle-aged man in a jogging suit trotted to a stop at the corner, peering closely at his reader. Checking the news as he ran, I decided, or else he had a map of the city pulled up and was trying to figure out the next leg of his urban walking adventure.

  I frowned, red flags going up in the back of my brain. I’d noticed a man in similar garb a block away in that same direction as we were leaving Veldrick’s house. If this was that same man, and if we’d reached Broadway half a minute before he did, he had to be the slowest jogger in the business.

  Or else he was making sure he didn’t get ahead of us.

  “On second thought, maybe you’re right,” I told Bayta, canceling the autocab request. Swapping out the comm for my reader, I punched up a street map.

  She was right—the Hanging Gardens was five blocks north and one block east of where we were standing. Between us and it was one of the city’s commercial and shopping areas, with most of this section of Broadway lined with shops and restaurants. A number of the businesses on our side of the street, I noted, opened onto service alleys running along behind them.

  “Yes, you’re definitely right,” I went on, shutting off the reader and putting it away “Besides, it’ll be dinnertime soon. A walk will give us a chance to check out the restaurants along the way.”

  Bayta had a faintly suspicious look on her face, no doubt prompted by my sudden one-eighty on the autocab thing. But she merely nodded, and we set off.

  We took our time, strolling at a leisurely pace as we checked out the window displays of the shops along our way and paused at each restaurant
to look over its posted menu. I made sure not to check on whether our jogger was still back there, either by looking for his reflection in the windows or by actually turning around. Unless he was a complete amateur he would know all the techniques for clearing a back-trail, plus all the techniques for not getting spotted in the first place.

  Two and a half blocks later, we reached the place where I planned to lose him.

  It was a hardware supply store, one of the establishments I’d noted that had a service alley running behind it. It was a large place, the sort that would likely have tall display shelves, somewhat winding aisles, and perhaps the occasional blind corner. “In here,” I told Bayta, nudging her toward the main door as we started to pass.

  Accustomed to taking even ridiculous orders from me, she obediently pulled open the door and headed inside. I followed, and for the first time since we set off on our stroll up Broadly I looked behind me.

  The man in the jogging suit was nowhere to be seen. I checked the other side of the street. No jogger. He’d either changed outfits, gotten around in front of us and was lying low, or passed us off to a second tail.

  This was possibly going to be more interesting than I’d thought.

  The store did indeed have the tall racks and relatively narrow aisles I’d hoped for. Catching up to Bayta, I took her arm and steered her onto a zigzag path toward the rear. “What are we looking for?” she asked as we reached the plumbing section.

  “Freedom of movement,” I told her. “I think we were followed from Veldrick’s place.”

  She digested that as we passed through Plumbing and reached Storage and Shelving. “All right,” she said. “But if we lose him now, won’t he just pick us up again at the Hanging Gardens?”

  “That assumes we’re still going to the Hanging Gardens,” I said. “I’m thinking now maybe we won’t. In here.”

  We slipped through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Beyond it was a typical retail store back area: cluttered and uncarpeted, its walls decorated with notices and inspirational placards and the occasional gouge where someone had missed a turn with a loaded cart. I glanced around, spotted a lighted EXIT sign, and steered Bayta toward it. Reaching under my jacket to my belt holster, I got a grip on my Glock and pushed open the back door.