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 had 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.
And that was all. There was nothing with the Peerage-type patterns that a Halkan high official like JhanKla would use. There was also nothing that followed any standard Belldic patterns, military
or
civilian.
There was a movement at the corner of my eye, and I looked up as Bayta slid into the chair across from me. “Is anything wrong?” she asked. “You said an hour.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I told her, keying off the reader and pulling put the chip. “I just got tired early. How sure are you that JhanKla or one of his people didn’t get on our Quadrail at Jurskala?”
“The Spiders said they’d all stayed behind.”
“So we’re as sure as the Spiders are,” I concluded, wishing I felt reassured by that. “Fine. Hear anything interesting out there?”
“Not really,” she said, frowning slightly. “They mostly seemed to be talking about whatever game they were playing.”
“Yeah, I got a lot of that, too,” I said. “You happen to listen in on any Cimman conversations?”
“There was one,” she said. “They were talking about taking a submarine cruise to an underwater cave a few kilometers from here.”
“So were mine,” I said. “Interesting.”
“Doesn’t sound very interesting to me,” Bayta said. “None of it did.”
“My point exactly,” I said, looking out past the low wall at the milling gamblers. “When did you ever wander around this many people and not find
someone
talking business?”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe they save all their business talk for somewhere else.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I didn’t hear anything about family or politics, either. They save all that for somewhere else, too?”
She gave a hooded look to the side, toward a pair of Halkas sitting two tables away. “What are you implying?” she asked in a low voice.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Normally, you never make the assumption that everyone’s in on a gag except you. But in this case, I’m starting to wonder.”
“You mean like a conspiracy?”
“I admit it’s an overused presumption,” I said. “But you said yourself that I had no friends out here. And
Apos
Mahf did say the ultra-rich were a close-knit community.”
“
Apos
Mahf?”
“The Bellido you pointed out earlier,” I told her. “He claims to know me.”
“A friend?” she asked, her tone suddenly cautious.
“So he claims,” I said. “He named a ceremony I was at several years ago, but he apparently doesn’t know how good my memory is for faces. Even Belldic faces.”