“Only to take us straight through the Estates-General,” I pointed out, hoping he’d get the inference. There were several other beings crowding around the three of us, also checking the listings, and I didn’t want to make any overt references to the Modhri. “I’m not sure what this gains us.”
“The Juriani have had the problem for nearly a hundred years,” Bayta murmured from beside me. “The Bellidos have had it for less than ten.”
“I suppose,” I said, studying the schedule. Actually, the most important difference as far as I was concerned was the fact that the Bellis Loop Quadrail stopped at fewer Jurian stations along the way than the next train to the Confederation. The fewer the stops, the fewer the opportunities for any Modhran walkers to put something together against us.
From my other side came a tentative plucking at my sleeve. I turned, tensing, but it was only a slightly hunched-over middle-aged Human with white-flecked brown hair tied back in a short ponytail, muttonchop whiskers, and a rather bewildered expression as he blinked at the schedule. “Excuse me, sir,” he said in a quavering voice. “I can’t seem to locate my train. Could you possibly help me?”
“I can try,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t pronounce it,” he confessed, pressing a folded and dog-eared piece of paper into my hand. “Here’s the name.”
I opened the paper. But there wasn’t any station name written there, pronounceable or otherwise.
Tlexiss Café. Now. Mc.
I took a second, longer look at the man… and only then did I see past the whiskers and the slightly disheveled hair and the overall air of harmless helplessness.
It was Bruce McMicking, bodyguard and general trouble-shooter for multitrillionaire industrialist Larry Cecil Hardin.
My boss.
“It’s right there,” I said between suddenly dry lips as I pointed to a random line on the schedule. McMicking here… and Bayta stranding right beside me. This was not good. “Track Five in thirty-five minutes.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said. Plucking the paper out of my hand, he turned and made his uncertain way out through the other bystanders.
Fayr and Bayta were still waiting for my decision. “Fine, we’ll do the Loop,” I told them. “You two go make the reservations. I need to check on something—I’ll meet you at the platform in twenty minutes. Hang on to my carrybags, will you?”
I headed away before either of them could object, passing two of Fayr’s commandos on my way out of the crowd. One of them gave me a questioning gesture; I motioned for him to stay with Fayr and Bayta. If McMicking was here, there was a chance Hardin was, too, and I didn’t want even the Bellidos to see us together.
McMicking was about fifty meters ahead of me, walking with a sort of shuffling step that fit the rest of the persona he’d adopted for the occasion. I followed, keeping my distance, marveling again at the chameleonlike abilities of the man. I’d seen him in person three times now, and never did he look exactly the same twice. He changed his hair and beard like other people switched socks; whether he saw that as part of his job or whether it was some strange psychological quirk I didn’t know.
The Tlexiss Café was one of the half dozen restaurants serving the Jurskala Station. Unlike the others, it boasted an open-air section dressed up with trellises and arbors like something you’d find in a EuroUnion countryside. McMicking led the way between a pair of potted bushes, pausing just inside to wait for me to catch up.
“Compton,” he greeted me as I came up to him. The quavering uncertainty was gone from his voice and his manner as if they’d never been there. “Mr. Hardin would like a word with you.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to sound calm. So Hardin was here. Bracing myself, I stepped between the bushes and into the café.
It wasn’t a normal mealtime by the station’s clock, but eight of the twenty tables were nevertheless occupied by a variety of beings sipping or eating various drinks and foodstuffs. Seated at the far end beneath an arching latticework arbor laced with delicate purple vines and brilliant red and purple flowers was Larry Cecil Hardin.
Even by Earth’s perpetually starstruck standards, Hardin stood head and shoulders above the crowd. He’d started life as an inventor of high-end precision optics and optical switches, had taken up a business role in order to market his creations, and had managed to hit a couple of economic waves that had made him a more or less overnight billionaire. Never one for laurel-resting, he’d kept at it, and after another few business cycles and a few more small but timely inventions he hit the one trillion mark. After that, there’d been nowhere to go but up.
No one actually knew how rich he was, except possibly Hardin himself, and he wasn’t talking. But that didn’t stop the media from speculating on it. And Hardin played the game right back at them, inviting them in to see his planes and cars and antique motorcycles while at the same time playing it all very coy and modest.
The irony of it, at least for me, was that there were at least eight men and women in the Confederation who were richer than he was. But he was the one the media had latched onto, so he was the one everyone knew. A place like Jurskala Station, where humans were barely even noticed, let alone lionized, was probably an interesting change of pace for him.
Hardin was the sort who liked to get in the first word. Perversely I decided to beat him to it. “Mr. Hardin,” I said, nodding as I sat down uninvited across the table from him. “This is a pleasant surprise. How did you find me?”
Behind me, McMicking made a soft noise in the back of his throat. But Hardin didn’t even twitch. “There’s only one exit from the Grakla Spur,” he said calmly. “Once I knew you’d been there, it was a simple matter of having my people check all inbound Quadrails until you showed up.”
“Of course,” I said. “I hope you didn’t come all this way just for me.”
“I had other business to attend to,” he said, his eyes and voice cooling a few degrees. “Tell me, did you think I wouldn’t notice if you slipped off to a high-class resort for a few days?”
So he’d taken time out of his busy schedule to keep up-to-date track of the credit tag he’d given me. I’d been afraid of that. “That was business,” I said.
“My business?”
“Of course,” I said striving for snow-pure innocence. “What other business could I be on?”
“I don’t know,” he countered. “Maybe something having to do with that dead man at the curb the night you left?”
I looked up at McMicking, a piece clicking into place. “So that was you standing over the body as I was leaving,” I said.
He inclined his head in an affirmative. “You should have told me about that in advance,” he said. “It could have been handled much more quietly.”
“I didn’t know in advance,” I said, looking back at Hardin. “What, you think I killed him?”
“You tell me,” he invited. “All I know is that there seem to be an extraordinary number of dead bodies in your wake. First the kid in New York, then those two Halkas at the Kerfsis transfer station—”
“Those weren’t my fault, either,” I interrupted.
“Of course not,” he said. “And now I’m hearing reports of some sort of disturbance at that resort you were just at?”
I hesitated, wishing I knew exactly what those reports had said. Had they mentioned a pair of Humans, or just Fayr and his Bellidos? “That wasn’t really my fault, either,” I hedged.
“Of course not,” Hardin said. “You know, Compton, when I hired you I thought it was understood that you were to keep a low profile. Is this what you consider a low profile?”