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
“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
“Well,
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,
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
“Okay,” I managed, trying to unfreeze my brain. An outburst like that from my calm, unemotional Bayta? “Since you say
“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
