House of the Sun (30 page)
Along the corridor we went, the elf-biff walking point, me walking slack, and my two armed side-men picking up the rear. Decor-wise, the place still looked like a hospital, but it didn't take me long to start second-guessing that conclusion. Hospitals—the ones I've visited, at least—have antiseptic-looking people always hurrying to and fro, carrying pocket 'puters and portable scanners. The air's always filled with that hospital smell—equal parts rubbing alcohol, urine, fear, and despair—and PA systems are always telling Dr. So-and-So to do such-and-such
stat
. Not here. We were alone in the hallway, me and my escorts. The air smelled of nothing whatsoever, and the loudest sound was the tap-tap of the elf biff's stiletto heels on the acrylamide tile floor.
We reached a T-intersection and turned left. An ideal place for a nurses' station if this were a hospital. Here, though, there was just a bank of three elevators. One opened its doors as we approached, and the elf gestured for me to stop.
If I'd wanted to make a break for it, this would have been the time. Something I'd learned early in my training in the Star is that getting into an elevator with a captive is—like getting into a car—an activity that requires good technique if you don't want your captive to take advantage. The three elves had good technique. One of my burly side-men went in first, holding his stun baton ready. Then the biff gestured me in. The second muscleboy followed, his baton lightly touching my kidney. Only once I was inside and secured—one stun baton at your kidney, another touching your groin is a
frag
of a disincentive against trying something stupid—did the corp-biff step inside.
Hey, they could have saved themselves the trouble if they'd only asked me. Making a break for it when I didn't know where I was or which way to run just didn't seem to be a reasonable option at the moment.
Take, for example, the fact that the
"
hospital" was apparently two levels underground—judging by the elevator control panel, at least. Frag, if I'd made a break before this, I'd probably have bolted
down
a fire-escape stairway, and found myself running out of options in a real hurry.
The door sighed shut, the corp biff touched the UP button, and off we went. Moments later, the macroplast doors hissed open again, and our entire entourage stepped out.
Into the reception area of what was obviously a high-tone corporate building. Lots of chrome, lots of polarized mirrorfinish, lots of technoflash. All the trappings you'd normally expect: holos on the wall of suits schmoozing with politicos and other reprobates; waiting-room furniture that costs more than an apartment in downtown Seattle; reception desk, complete with glamour-faced receptionist jacked into the system; big corp logo on the wall behind said reception desk. For a moment I focused on that logo.
TIC, it said in a curlicued, stylized font. And below that, in smaller letters—almost as an afterthought—the expansion: Telestrian Industries Corporation.
Telestrian. Where had I heard that name before?
Memory flashed back. It was a Tir Taimgire corp, wasn't it, with an arcology somewhere in Portland? Not much activity outside the Tir itself—or so I'd
thought
. This facility seemed to indicate otherwise. I wouldn't have so much as recognized the name if there hadn't been all that hash-up some time back during a highly publicized reorganization of the elven corp.
The receptionist behind the desk—elf, natch—flashed me a fifteen-gigawatt smile as I passed by. It didn't seem to matter one iota that I was being escorted by two muscleboys, each prodding me in the back with a stun baton. It occurred to me that, even if I'd run through the lobby buck-naked and on fire, she'd still have fired off that same practiced smile.
On we went, my friends and I, past the reception desk into the atrium of the TIC building.
That stopped me in my tracks—earning me two painful pokes in the kidneys, but I hardly noticed. I've never been much for typical corp architecture. Too many corps seem to get into the old macho "I've got the biggest architect" kind of drek, forgetting that people actually have to live and work in their monuments to too much cred and too little taste. Not TIC—at least, not here.
The place was bright and airy, the atrium open to the azure blue sky above. Open-sided corridors looked down onto the atrium from all three stories of the building. People were doing about their corp business along those corridors. As I watched, one slag on the second floor reached over the railing and plucked a blossom from one of the flowering trees—that's right,
trees
—that grew in the open area. He sniffed the flower appreciatively, then stuck it into his buttonhole before moving on. Birds twittered and cheeped from the boughs above me, and the air was full of perfume.
Under one of the trees was a small conference table. Half a dozen intense-looking corp types were discussing something—discussing it quite heatedly, judging by their body language. I couldn't hear the first word of what they were saying, however; the "conference room" was obviously equipped with white-noise generators.
"All right, already," I said peevishly as my two sideboys poked me in the back, and off we went again. Over to the far corner of the atrium, and up a movator to the second floor, then up another to the third and top.
Top floor—executive suite. I could tell immediately. The pearl gray carpet on the floors was deeper-piled. The art on the walls was more understated, elegant, and obviously expensive. The people passing by in the halls were better-dressed. (Don't get me wrong: Even on the ground floor, people wore suits that would cost as much as a car. The only difference on the third floor was the
model
of car—Jackrabbit or Westwind.) I could almost
smell
the cred in the air.
Along one of those open-sided hallways we walked, then turned away from the atrium and into serious suit-land. We approached a big set of double doors that had to be real mahogany and not wood-grained duraplast. The doors silently swung open before we reached them. The corp-biff jandered on through with me at her heels. The two muscleboys peeled off, though, and stayed outside the doors, which immediately swung shut behind me. Which implied serious security on this side of the doors, of course. Surveillance cameras at the very least, and probably spirits or elementals on a very short leash. Just as well I wasn't planning anything untoward at the moment.
On jandered my escort, past various office doors—all mahogany, all notably missing nameplates; presumably, if you didn't know where to find the office you wanted, you just plain didn't belong here. Another couple of turns, and another double door; this time floor-to-ceiling transpex with some kind of chromatic coating that made the doors look like huge opalescent soap bubbles. Again the doors swung back as we approached and again closed silently after us.
End of the line, apparently. The elf stopped in the middle of an antechamber or waiting room and gestured silently to one of the coral-hued leather couches. And then, still without saying a word, she turned on her heel and strode back out through the soap-bubble doors.
On a whim, I tried to follow. Predictably, those doors didn't open for me the way they did for her.
Okay, so I'd been bagged by pros and taken to see some high corp suit who had something he/she/it wanted me to know ... presumably. (Unless TIC was a yak cover, and this was the waiting room for the torture chamber.) I remember reading once that, "Life is just one damn thing after another." Wrongo. It's the same damn thing over and over again.
I wandered back into the middle of the waiting room and took a good, hard look around. The soap-bubble doors took up much of one wall. In the center of the opposite wall was a single wooden door. (Not mahogany; something even richer-looking, with an even stronger grain pattern. A native Hawai'ian species, maybe?) Again, there was no nameplate on the door. But it didn't need one. I can recognize the office door of the head muckamuck without any outside cues.
Along the other two walls were couches, a delicate coral in color, perfectly coordinated with the pastel carpets and wall-coverings. On the walls were three large paintings.
Yes, I mean
paintings
. Flat things with no 3-D to them. Paint manually applied to some kind of backing material. Rare, these days, and generally
very
expensive because of it. Out of curiosity—and because I didn't have much else to do at the moment—I strolled up to the nearest one and gave it the scan.
Strange drek, chummer. It was an undersea scene, complete with coral and brilliantly colored reef fish and happy, smiling dolphins. (
Dolphins
? I guess that was some indication of the painting's age. Dolphins went out quite a while back when they couldn't adapt to the concentration of toxics we were tossing into their oceans. And you can bet they weren't smiling for quite some time before the end.) So far so good, I guess. Then it started getting weird. There were Grecian-style columns, temples, and other crap—even
pyramids,
honest to Ghu!—on the bottom of the ocean, and the happy, smiling dolphins were swimming in and out among them. Hmm.
I moved on to the next painting. Much the same thing: same reefs, same ruins, same happy, smiling dolphins. Except this time there was some kind of glow emanating from inside the ruined buildings. And maybe the dolphins looked just a tad happier, I don't know.
Third painting, exactly the same, but more so. And this time, over the glowing door of one of the pyramids, there was some strange symbol carved into the rock. The Eye of Horus crossed with the biohazard trefoil, that's what it looked like, but I know squat about art, so I might have been wrong. Weird drek. Atlantis?
I bent closer for a look at the signature: an incomprehensible scrawl that might have been
"Andrew
Annen-
something", or maybe not. The date was 1996.
"What do you think, Mr. Montgomery?"
The husky contralto voice sounded from close behind me. I tried to keep tight rein on my sphincters, and struggled to keep my movements smooth and urbane as I turned around.
The dark-grained wood door had opened silently, and, just as silently, an elf had emerged. Tall and slender she was, with fine blond hair curled into a coif that seemed to defy gravity. Her eyes were pale—faint blue, maybe, or gray. She was dressed in a broad-shouldered, tab-collared corp skirtsuit that could have been made of liquid gold. On one epaulet was the designer's marque—the stylized Z of Zoe. On the other was the Telestrian Industries Corporation logotype.
The elf smiled at me, and extended her hand. On reflex I took it. Her grip was firm, her skin cool and silk-smooth. "Again I feel like I'm at a disadvantage," I told her as calmly as I could manage. "You know my name ..."
She smiled. "I meant no disrespect, Mr. Montgomery." Under the right circumstances that voice could curl my toes. At the moment, though, I wasn't in the mood. "My name is Chantal Monot." She gave the name a strong French inflection.
I racked my brain for any details I could recall about TIC. "James Telestrian's ... daughter-in-law?" I guessed, naming the CEO of the overall TIC empire.
The elf's smile broadened. "Nepotism isn't
that
bad in the company," she chided me lightly. "Not
every
executive is related to James. Many, but not all."
I yielded the point with a nod. "And your position is, Ms. Monot ...?"
"President and chief executive officer of Telestrian Industries Corporation, South Pacific Operations."
Monot inclined her head toward the painting and repeated, "What do you think, Mr. Montgomery?" She chuckled. "And
please
don't tell me you 'know nothing about art but know what you like.' "
Since that was exactly what I
had
been about to tell her,
I thought about it for a moment. "Strong colors and pretty good technique," I said finally. "But it's going to overwhelm the wrong decor."
She quirked an eyebrow in what seemed to me genuine amusement. "And the subject matter?"
Fragging
squirrely
didn't seem to be a politic thing to say, so I settled for, "Interesting."
"Yes," she agreed with an arch smile.
"
Isn't it?"
Frag, that's one of the reasons I
hate
dealing with elves. No, correct that—with
some
elves. It's that pervasive "I know something
you
don't, nyah nyah" attitude so many of them have. Irritating, big-time.
Chantal Monot gestured to the open door. "Please," she said. "There are some things I'd like to discuss with you." Of course there were. I shrugged, and I preceded her through the door into her office.
I was familiar with the way Diamond Head looked from the west—from the Honolulu side. Now I got to see it from the other side, and I had to admit it was just as striking. The TIC building was only three stories tall, but it seemed to be built on some kind of ridge or bluff, so there was nothing to block the president's view of the old, eroded crater.
While I was still staring, Monot took a seat behind the large desk. She gestured to one of the comfortable-looking guest chairs, and I sat down. "Tea?" she asked. Before I could either refuse or accept, she'd turned to a silver samovar on the credenza beside her and prepared two cups. Glasses, actually, in the Russian style. She handed one over to me. I sniffed, then sipped appreciatively. Never tried
real
Oolong tea? Your loss.