"Please do," he said, finally standing up. "Compartment eleven. Drop in anytime."
With another nod at Bayta, he returned his chair to the other table and made his way through the room to the corridor bordering the dining area. Turning left, he disappeared toward the first-class car in front of us and the compartment car beyond that. "His compartment's right across from yours," I commented to Bayta, finally slicing off a piece of pili. "Handy."
"I wonder if that's a coincidence," she said, scooping up a bite of her own meal. "What do you think?"
"About Smith? Or about Smith's offer?"
"Either. Both."
I shrugged. "He personally is probably legit. His little transaction is more doubtful. Either way, it's kind of irrelevant."
"Why?" she countered. "If it is a genuine offer, it might be a good cover for us."
I took another bite, mulling it over. She had a point. The Modhri homeland had been destroyed, but the Modhri himself was unfortunately still very much alive.
It was, without a doubt, the most bizarre enemy anyone had ever faced. The Modhri was technically a single entity, a group mind composed of the telepathically linked polyps that lived in the decorative and highly prized Modhran coral. He'd been created as a last-ditch weapon of the Shonkla-raa, a vicious race of conquerors, during the last stages of a revolt that had wiped them out sixteen hundred years ago.
Unfortunately, the Shonkla-raa's little fifth column weapon hadn't died with them. The Modhri had remained dormant for centuries, until the coral had been rediscovered and the Modhri inadvertently unleashed on the galaxy. Before the Spiders and their secretive Chahwyn masters had finally tumbled to his existence, he'd gotten his claws firmly planted in the power centers of most of the Twelve Empires served by the Quadrail system.
The presence of an aggressive group mind hidden in clumps of coral would have been bad enough. What made the whole thing infinitely worse was that the polyps could also invade and live inside living beings: Humans and Bellidos and Juriani and pretty much everyone else in the galaxy. A polyp hook could move in with just a scratch of the coral and reproduce enough polyps inside their host to create a new Modhri mind segment.
In some ways it was like the terrorist wars of the early century. Only worse, because the newly created walker was completely unaware of the fact that he or she had been co-opted into the Modhri's quiet war of conquest. Most of the time the colony lay quiet, occasionally making subtle mental suggestions that the host would usually obey and afterward find a reason to rationalize away.
But that was under normal circumstances. Under more urgent need, the Modhri mind segment could take complete control of his host, overriding the resident mind and turning the body into a sort of life-sized marionette. The host would have no memory of that period, but would merely end up with a strange blacked-out chunk of his or her day.
Even then, if the Modhri was clever, he could avoid suspicion. A short blackout could be rationalized in any number of ways, especially if the walker was accustomed to drinking intoxicants. Since most of the rich and influential who were the Modhri's targets of choice had learned social drinking at an early age, it was an easy and obvious explanation for the Modhri to push.
If that wasn't bad enough, each walker mind segment could also telepathically link up with the segments of other nearby walkers, or with outposts of the coral itself, creating a larger, smarter, more dangerous mind. A given Modhri mind segment was never static, but continually added pieces and information to itself as new walkers came into telepathic range and losing pieces as old ones moved away off the edge of its consciousness. The result was a fluid, ever-changing opponent that was as hard to pin down as a drop of mercury.
Fortunately, even slippery enemies weren't infallible. One of our few allies in this war, a rogue Belldic commando squad leader named Korak Fayr, had taken upon himself the goal of ridding his own worlds of Modhran influence. To that end, he'd spent the last few months moving around the Bellidosh Estates-General, destroying every coral outpost he could get his hands on.
The Modhri had spent those same months trying his damnedest to find Fayr and throw a rope around him. Making Fayr's job all the more difficult was the fact that the high monetary value of the coral meant that even owners and police who weren't carrying Modhran colonies under their skins were trying to nail him to the wall.
Fayr was the sort who enjoyed a challenge. Still, I doubted he would turn down any reasonable offer of assistance, which was why Bayta and I were on our way to Bellis to offer him some.
Which brought me back to Bayta's question. The Modhri was undoubtedly still looking for us, and might have a few walkers hanging around the transfer station where Quadrail passengers bound for the Bellis inner system went through customs. If Mr. Smith's mysterious errand could provide Bayta and me with a legitimate reason to enter Belldic space, it might be worth a few days of our time to accommodate him.
The problem was the other side of coin …because if Smith himself was a Modhran walker, then no matter how legitimate he might think his offer, going with him would probably walk us straight into a trap.
Up to now the Modhri hadn't shown himself to be a particularly vengeful sort. But that was before we'd destroyed his homeland. I wasn't eager to find out what his new attitude toward us might be. "Forget it," I told Bayta. "Not worth the risk."
"But—"
"We're not interested," I said firmly, cutting off another bite.
"Maybe we aren't," Bayta said, a little crossly. "But someone else is."
I knew better than to abruptly stop what I was doing and spin around. "Where?" I asked, putting the pili into my mouth.
Her eyes flicked over my shoulder, then returned to her own plate. "There are two of them: a man and a woman," she said. "The man's about your age, the woman about the same age as Mr. Smith."
"How's their meal going?"
"I think they're almost finished," she said. "But the man was definitely watching your conversation with Mr. Smith."
And watching was pretty much all he could do at that distance. The acoustics in Quadrail dining and bar cars were designed to make eavesdropping from more than about a meter away effectively impossible. "Let me know when they get ready to leave," I said.
I got three more bites of pili and had tried the accompanying cornleaf mash when Bayta murmured her warning. I looked down into my lap, pretending to adjust my napkin, and was gazing at the floor as they walked past.
Their shoes were the first items up for consideration. The woman's were very much upper class, while the man's were nice but nothing special. I let my eyes move upward as the two of them continued by, giving each article of clothing the same quick analysis, then checked out the backs of their heads and their hairstyles.
There was no doubt about it. The woman belonged here among the stratospheric wealthy of the galaxy. The man was just as definitely traveling first class on someone else's budget.
And then, as they reached the corridor, the man turned and looked at me.
It was a short, expressionless glance. But it was enough. "Well, well," I murmured as the two of them turned right toward the first-class car behind the dining car.
"You know him?" Bayta asked.
"No, but I know his type," I said. "He's someone's Intelligence agent. Probably Westali or the EuroUnion Security Service—he doesn't look Asian or African enough for any of their groups."
"What's he doing here?"
"The same thing I used to do way too much of," I said. "He's playing escort. The lady's probably some ranking politician who decided her status demanded she get an official government guard dog to hold her hand out here in the big, scary universe."
Bayta pondered that for another two bites. "So why was he watching us?" she asked.
It was the same question I'd been asking myself ever since Bayta mentioned them. That backward glance all by itself had been way too interested for a man who was supposed to be busy watching his client's back.