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 small waterfalls and a set of rapids.
And inside the trough, glistening with the water flowing over it, was a long patterned formation of 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
'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
