For a long moment Penny stared at me, her expression bringing the full weight of her family's wealth and position to bear. I returned her gaze without flinching, and with a twitch of her lip she turned the glare back down to low power. "I see," she said stiffly. "Thank you for your time." Standing up, she strode out of the bar and disappeared again down the corridor.
"Some people are never satisfied," I commented, taking a sip of my iced tea. "I wonder what kind of man she does like? Rich kids with rich daddies, I suppose."
"I don't know," Bayta said thoughtfully. "How sure are we that Mr. Morse isn't a walker?"
I shrugged. "Statistically, the odds are against it," I said. "We know the Modhri hasn't made much of an incursion into Human space."
"Or he hadn't as of a few months ago," Bayta countered. "Even then, though, he had some walkers at the UN and other places."
She had a point, unfortunately. With Earth law banning the import of corals and corallike substances, the Modhri hadn't been able to bring in the outposts that he'd used as base camps for his infiltration of most of the other societies throughout the galaxy. Still, we knew he'd managed to create a certain presence for himself, mostly among the behind-the-scenes personnel in Earth's various power centers.
And an ESS agent like Morse probably got out into the galaxy enough for the Modhri to have possibly snared him somewhere along the way.
"It's certainly possible," I told Bayta. "But he seems awfully antagonistic toward me for someone with a Modhran mind segment whispering behavioral cues in his ear."
"Unless the Modhri's keeping quiet and trying not to influence him."
"Sure, but why?" I countered. "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, to dust off an old saying. Even if Morse had a good reason to hate me, it would pay the Modhri to try to suppress that and make him a more enthusiastic ally."
"Maybe he thought you'd be suspicious of a total stranger who wanted to assist us."
"Maybe," I agreed. "On the other hand, we're fellow toilers in the Intelligence service trenches. That should automatically raise me above the standard random citizen in his eyes."
"Except that he doesn't like you."
"Which the Modhri should be able to suppress, as I said." I shook my head. "Bottom line is that we're probably not going to know for sure whether Morse is a walker unless the Modhri makes a mistake."
Bayta shivered. "Or takes him over."
"Right," I said, suppressing a shiver of my own. "But at least he can't do that without our knowing about it. There are definite vocal and facial changes I know how to spot." I took another sip of my tea. "Meantime, we just pretend Morse is as untrustworthy as everyone else and play our cards as close to our chests as possible. And try to get to Stafford before the Modhri does."
"Yes," Bayta murmured. "You may have been right about the Modhri not wanting to hurt Mr. Stafford. But at the same time, he won't hesitate to do so if he thinks it necessary."
I grimaced. "I know."
"But you say you know where he is?"
"Pretty much." I took a last swallow of tea and stood up. "Come on. The least we can do is see Penny and her friends off."
The Ian-apof Station was fairly small, reflecting the modest size and ambitions of the planetary system itself. As far as I could tell from my encyclopedia, the planet's skiing, lugeboarding, and rock climbing facilities were about all they had that might appeal to the interstellar tourist.
Still, those facilities were apparently pretty impressive, and the station's designers had worked hard to make sure that no one who passed through their Quadrail station forgot it. Each of the dozen restaurants, waiting rooms, shops, and sleeping-room facilities had been painted and textured to look like craggy cliff sides, snow-covered forests, or majestic glaciers. With trains stopping less frequently than at larger stations, the Halkas here had even put in a public dit rec facility, whose tall sides had been sloped upward into a Matterhorn-like peak. Looking at it all, I could practically feel frostbite working its way into my feet.
We said our good-byes to Morse and Penny and her friends at the platform. Penny was rather subdued, probably still annoyed that I hadn't properly fallen all over myself obeying her request to escort her to the inner system. Morse, for his part, seemed to have gotten over the—to him—perceived fiasco of my midnight reconnoiter and had gone back to his normal attitude of simmering dislike.
I was glad to be rid of the pair of them.
Bayta and I watched the group make their way toward the exit hatchway waiting area—apparently Ian-apof transfer station shuttles ran on an on-demand basis—and then headed for the main Quadrail waiting room. "How soon until the next train to Ghonsilya?" I asked Bayta as we walked.
"About two hours," she said.
Way too long, I decided, to just sit around a waiting room counting the cracks in the fake rock formations. "In that case, let's get something to drink," I said, changing course toward a restaurant decorated to look like a very intimidating rock chimney. I'd never done any rock climbing myself, but I'd heard enough stories to know it wasn't a hobby I would be taking up anytime soon.
"By the way, there was a data chip waiting for you with the stationmaster," she said as we walked. "I went and got it while you were telling Ms. Auslander—again—that we weren't going with them."
I winced a little at the frost in her tone. She very definitely didn't like Penny. "And?"
"It was from Deputy Director Losutu," she said. "Agent Morse is indeed who he claims to be."
"He's sure?"
"He sent us Agent Morse's complete ESS personnel file," Bayta said, handing me a data chip. "From what I glanced at, it looked fine. But you'll be able to tell better than I can."
So much for the possibility that the Modhri had tried to throw in a ringer. Still, that had never been more than an outside chance anyway. With modern technologies making a person's identity easy to check, a charade like that wouldn't hold up long enough to be very useful. "I'll look it over later," I said.
The restaurant's outside wilderness decor unfortunately carried over to the interior, with the added bonus of a whistling-wind soundtrack running in the background. The floor was painted to give the illusion that your table was halfway up the side of a cliff that even a mountain goat would avoid. Idly, I wondered how many acrophobes they got who took one look and ran out screaming.
Our iced tea, lemonade, and onion rings had just arrived when the door opened, and I looked up to see Morse hurrying toward us. "Where is she?" he demanded.
"Where is who?" I asked, frowning.
"Don't play the fool," he snapped. "She's been trying for the past hour to get me to order you to come to Ian-apof with us."
"Like you could actually do that," I said, looking past him out the window. There were maybe twenty or thirty other waiting passengers milling around out there. None of them was Penny Auslander. "When did you see her last?"
"She went to the washroom about fifteen minutes ago," Morse said, turning to follow my line of sight. "When she didn't come out, I sent one of the other girls in to check on her. She must have sneaked out the other door."
I looked at Bayta. Sneaked out, or was helped out. "Where are the rest of them?" I asked, pulling out a cash stick and plugging it into the table's jack to pay for the drinks and onion rings that it looked like we weren't going to be enjoying.
"At the shuttle waiting room," Morse said. "I told them to stay together and not move until I got back."
"Were they good with that?" I asked as the three of us headed for the door.
Morse made a noise in the back of his throat. "Who knows? I don't exactly have authority to order them to do anything, either. Are you telling me Ms. Auslander didn't come looking for you?"