Odd Girl Out

merchants on this block took pride even in the less public areas of their properties.

'Which way?' Bayta whispered.

I pointed south, the direction we'd just come from. 'Let's see how fast they are on the uptake.' I turned and started to take a step.

And froze as a soft click came from the far side of one of the bins now behind us. The soft but distinctive click of a gun's safety catch being released.

Bayta heard it, too. 'Was that—?'

'Yes, it was,' a raspy voice said from the direction of the click. 'Just pull your hand out of your coat, friend. Nice and easy. And empty.'

Keeping my head motionless, I gave the area around us a quick scan. But there was no cover anywhere, at least nothing Bayta and I could reach fast enough. With a sigh, I pulled my hand out of my jacket, holding it up to demonstrate its emptiness. 'You're good,' I complimented my ambusher.

'No, you're just predictable,' he said. The voice was moving, indicating he'd left his cover and was coming up behind us. 'You really should work on that.'

'I'll make a note,' I said.

'You'd better,' he warned. 'In this business, when you get predictable, you die.'

I frowned. Fatherly advice from a street assailant?

And then, suddenly, it clicked. 'Well, you would certainly know,' I agreed. Without waiting for permission, I turned around.

It was the middle-aged jogger I'd spotted earlier, all right, his gun in hand but pointed harmlessly up at the sky. His hair was gray and ponytailed behind him, his face was lined and leathery with age and a lifetime of too much sun, and he was sporting a two-day stubble on his cheeks. It was a face I'd never seen before in my life. 'Hello, McMicking,' I greeted him. 'What in the name of hell are you doing here?'

SEVEN :

The Hanging Gardens was pleasant, pricey, and seemed to have plenty of rooms available. Bayta and I checked into a two-bedroom suite, got a recommendation for a nearby restaurant from the concierge, and headed back out.

McMicking was already seated when we arrived. 'How did you know we were coming here?' Bayta asked as we sat down at his table. 'I didn't think Frank had called you yet.'

'He hadn't,' McMicking said, handing her a menu. 'But I got the same recommendation from the concierge last night. Considering the averageness of the food, I'm guessing he's getting a kickback from the management.'

I looked around at the low lights and the booths' wraparound isolation shells. 'But the privacy factor is above average?' I suggested.

'Exactly,' McMicking aid. 'Let's order, and then we can talk.'

We ordered a stuffed mushroom appetizer, and as we ate I gave him a thumbnail sketch of our activities since my departure from Manhattan, leaving out only our meeting with Rebekah. Restaurant isolation shells were all well and good, but they could be trusted only so far.

McMicking seemed fascinated by all of it, especially the Veldrick part of the story 'Interesting,' he said after the waiter had cleared away the appetizer plates. 'So is this a truce you've got going with the Modhri? Or would you consider it more of a full-fledged alliance?'

'I consider it a complete scam,' I told him flatly. 'The only question is what that scam is, what he's actually going for, and how we stop him.'

'Good questions all,' McMicking said. 'You have any proof it's a scam? Aside from your natural distrust of the universe at large?'

'Sure,' I said. 'Veldrick. If the Modhri's trying to pretend he's giving us rope to track down the Abomination, why reveal the fact that there's a coral outpost in the neighborhood? Or as Bayta and I were discussing earlier, why bring in an outpost at all?'

'Uh-huh,' McMicking said, an odd look on his face. 'But of course, if he's running a scam, why tip his hand by showing you the coral in the first place?'

'That one's got me stumped,' I admitted. 'All I can think of is that word of our so-called truce hasn't made it to the local mind segment yet. But that seems ridiculous. It took five days for our torchyacht to get here from the Tube. Plenty of time for the Modhri to have lasered in a message.'

'Unless the Modhri mind segment that made the deal hasn't figured out that we're here,' Bayta said suddenly. 'He took all his walkers off the Quadrail, remember, and there wasn't anyone at the New Tigris Station.'

'He may have taken all his walkers off,' I corrected. 'We only have his word for that. He could just as easily pulled the old duck-blind trick.'

'What's a duck-blind trick?' she asked.

'Three people go into a duck blind; two people come out,' I explained. 'Since ducks don't count very well, they all relax, thinking they're alone and off the hook.'

'There is another possibility,' McMicking said thoughtfully 'Is there any way to tell whether or not Veldrick is a walker?'

'Not until the Modhri takes him over,' I said. 'There are definite changes in face and voice when that happens.'

'I was hoping for something a little less drastic,' McMicking said. 'I was thinking about the fact that the Modhri and the Spiders are all telepathic, and wondering if Bayta might be able to sense his presence.'

'I wish I could,' Bayta said. 'But there's no crossover. Spider and Modhri communications work on—' She looked at me, as if searching for the right word. 'I guess you could say we're on different frequencies.'

'Though thought viruses prove that—' I broke off at a warning twitch of McMicking's eye. The waiter arrived, and we sat in silence as he laid out our plates. 'I was going to say, thought viruses prove there's some telepathic overlap between the Modhri and normal humans,' I finished when we were alone again.

McMicking grunted. 'The fact that polyp colonies can whisper suggestions and rationalizations to a host proves that much,' he pointed out. 'Where I was going with this was that Veldrick might not be a walker. If he isn't, then there's no connection between him and the Modhri's truce or scam or whatever.'

'Interestingly enough, I was wondering that same thing myself earlier,' I said. 'But then why did he go to all that trouble to show us the coral? Because he did deliberately do that.'

'Maybe he was trying to gauge your reaction to it,' McMicking said.

I frowned at him. With McMicking, it was as much about what he wasn't saying as about what he was. 'And he would do this because …?' I prompted.

McMicking smiled tightly. 'Because I came here to take it away from him.'

He pointed at my plate. 'But your steak's getting cold. Let's eat.'

The dinner had been eaten, the plates cleared away, and we were on coffee and the dessert sampler when McMicking finally picked up the story again. 'It started five months ago when Hardin Industries bought Crown Rosette Electronics,' he said. 'One of the first things Mr. Hardin always does once the papers have been signed is to send someone around to make a survey of local manufacturing centers. About three months ago, the rep got around to New Tigris.'

He made a face. 'And discovered to his stunned disbelief that the head of the local branch had about a cubic meter of highly illegal Modhran coral in his house.'

'I warned Veldrick about that,' I said.

'So did the rep,' McMicking said. 'Unfortunately, it was too late for warnings. The stuff was here, and in the possession of a Hardin Industries subsidiary.'

I nodded as the light dawned. 'Which means if someone decides to make an issue of it, Hardin is on the hook for the whole list of judgments and penalties.'