Odd Girl Out by Timothy Zahn

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.
    Modhran 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 that impressive.”
    “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 morning, and let us leave.
    The cops who’d delivered us were long gone. Getting my bearings, I turned us east toward Broadway, one of Imani City’s major streets, where we should be able to find an autocab stand.
    Broadway was four blocks away. We’d covered two of them before Bayta finally spoke. “Do you think he knows?” she asked.
    “After that two-hundred-twenty-volt twitch of mine?” I growled, feeling disgusted with myself. “If he didn’t know before, he certainly does now.”
    “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “If showing us the coral was supposed to confirm who we are, why didn’t the Modhri do something with that information?”
    “You heard him, back at Yandro,” I reminded her. “He’s going to leave us alone until we find and destroy the