robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (33 page)

Ryder frowned. "You don't seem very happy, Dr. Spae."

She made herself smile. Ryder smiled back. "It's just dial—well, I just hadn't expected such generosity. I don't know what to say."

"Try thank you," David suggested.

"Yes, well, thank you."

Ryder beamed at her. "I'm sure you can find a better way to express your gratitude, Doctor. Why, for example, you might consider putting your new license to use. I would like to suggest a trial arrangement. Would your gratitude extend to consenting to work with us on a current matter? With full compensation, of course. What do you say? It would give you something to do and it would give us a chance to demonstrate our desire to create a fulfilling and mutually profitable relationship."

That seemed the least she could do.

David chose this moment to be suspicious, asking, "What sort of matter? And for what compensation?"

Ryder directed his answer to her. "We would like your advice, your expert advice, with regard to a recent incident. Now I know there is no precedent establishing pay scales for persons of your expertise, so let's use our own pay scale as a guideline. Say, two thousand a day? Naturally, we will cover any expenses you might incur in your investigations. Travel mostly, I would expect. The situation is mostly a matter requiring observation and forethought, I expect. Of course, there may be the odd test or two, that sort of thing. What do you say? Are you willing to give it a shot?"

For that kind of money, she'd be a fool to refuse; the Department had frozen her accounts and she didn't want to live on David's charity. To do so would destroy her resolve to make their relationship a free one.

"All right," she said.

"Excellent, excellent." Ryder raised a bushy white eyebrow. "Now, I would guess from your circumstances that you don't have any other pressing appointments just now. Am I right? I thought so. What do you say to starting at once?"

It wasn't what she had expected, but how could she refuse? "All right."

"Excellent, excellent. This particular matter into which we'd like you to look occurred just last night in Norwood.'
¹

"Norwood?" Spae asked. She didn't know local geography, if Norwood was local.

"Just southwest of Boston," David explained.

Boston she knew. If Norwood was south and west of there, it was less than two hundred kilometers away. How much less she couldn't guess, but she supposed it wasn't important. "What happened?"

"Yes, well, that is the question. It seems that there was an unexplained power surge in the grid, resulting in a progressive loss of service to several locations. At approximately the same time, there was a very mysterious explosion in the penthouse suite of a nearby building."

"There was nothing about an explosion on the news this morning," she said.

"And there won't be."

"Now
you
are being mysterious," David accused.

"Sorry. That dramatic flair, you know. The reason that you have heard nothing is that the building belongs to Mitsutomo keiretsu, and they're quashing the story. They say that there was no explosion. They say the glass that fell from the penthouse was the result of a structural failure. And—and this is all without fanfare, mind you—they are compensating the survivors of those killed in the incident without recourse to an insurance investigation."

"That's odd," David said. "I would think they'd want whoever built the building to take the rap."

"Frankly, we expected the same thing. You see, that building was built by Carenellicorp, a company that just happens to be part of our own corporate family."

"All the more reason to hang it around your necks," David said.

"Curious, isn't it?"

Spae shook her head. "I don't see where this involves me. I'm not a structural engineer, or an insurance investigator."

"Well, Dr. Spae, there is more to this situation than structural engineering. I think I can say with some assurance that there was no structural problem. The building was soundly built. This morning, Carenellicorp had crews out to survey the damage and test the rest of the building; from the outside, of course, since Mitsutomo is letting no one inside. The tests .how nothing wrong with the structure; it is as sound as the day it was completed."

"Then there
was
an explosion?"

"Well, that's the mystery. Our survey team was unable to discern any sort of damage inside the penthouse suite, yet the entire wall, three centimeters of structural monoacrylic, was entirely gone, not a shard remaining in the frame."

"And you think it was done by magic," David said.

"We would like to know if it was," Ryder said. "Can you ascertain that, Dr. Spae?"

"Maybe. But I can't tell you from here. I'll need to see the site. Walking it would be better."

"I'm afraid a visit is not possible: Mitsutomo security, you know. But I can most certainly arrange a viewing. One of our corporate family maintains a nearby high-rise hotel with an excellent view of the Settawego Building." Ryder came around his desk, hand out. Spae rose and shook his hand; he had a firm grip that did not overpower. "I am most pleased to have you aboard, Dr. Spae. I am sure we will have a most rewarding relationship."

CHAPTER

17

Spillway Sue gave John a broad smile when the control panel emerged from the wall at his touch.

"Deucey," she crowed. "See, your access is good enough ta get us through. We're outta here."

"Don't be so sure." The panel's indicator lights showed that the door was locked.

"Six-three-two-seven-seven-star-two-three," she said, still smiling.

He punched the numbers into the keyboard.

"Out and free," Sue said as the indicator switched to unlocked. As the door started to slide open, she brushed past him and walked without hesitation into the glare flooding in liom beyond the open door.

John's eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light of the ilwarven halls, and the bright light was blinding. Shading his eyes and squinting, he could barely make out the slim shadow that he knew was Sue; she had stopped just over the threshold.

"Shit!"

Spillway Sue's voice was filled with anger, but there was disappointment, too. Somehow her plan for escape had fallen apart. But how? John's eyes were adjusting rapidly; he stepped through the door to see for himself.

A wildwood stood before him across a narrow verge of gravel. Daylight flooded down on him, but though he smelled earth and growing things and felt the moisture in the air, he had no sense of being outside. It was very strange.

He looked up, searching for the sun, but the light was soft, as though diffused by clouds, but it was far brighter than any overcast day in John's memory. By shading his eyes, he could make out faint lines of darkness crisscrossing the sky. The thickest lines formed a gridwork of rectangles. The thinner lines swooped across between the thicker ones, sometimes turning, sometimes stopping in the middle. Beams defining panels of light while pipes and conduits crossed beneath them.

There was a ceiling above their heads!

The light came through the rectangular panels, but those panels weren't transparent; it was impossible to tell if they were frosted windows to the outside world or if the light came from bulbs hidden behind the milky whiteness. The evenness of the illumination suggested the latter.

A ceiling! John could hardly believe it. If there was a ceiling, they had to be in a chamber, a chamber bigger than anything John had ever seen bounded by walls!

The only wall he could see was the one at his back. Everything in front of him was forest. Could you call it a forest if it had a roof? There was greenery in extravagant profusion as far as the eye could see, a veritable jungle of plants. There were shade trees and bushes and fruit trees and low ground cover and shrubs and grasses and pine trees and ferns, all growing in a riot that beggared the finest corporate arboretum he'd ever seen. It was the sort of growth he could imagine the legendary untouched rain forests to boast.

And they were still inside the dwarves' realm!

They stood on a three-meter-wide path of gravel that ran along the wall they had come through. A narrow path in front of them led into the verdure. Looking down that shadowed aisle, John could see that it forked not very far in. A glance in either direction along the edge of the wood revealed what appeared to be other paths leading into the trees from the perimeter path as well.

John found this place the most congenial he'd visited in the dwarves' domain. It was alive, full of energy! Totally unlike the stony coldness he'd felt everywhere else.

Why had the dwarves constructed such a place? Was it a park, or a farm, or an arboretum, or something else entirely? What purpose could a captive forest have for the dwarves? As he stared in wonderment, the door slid shut behind him.

Sue tensed, giving the panel a dirty look. She looked around suspiciously. When nothing happened, she relaxed.

"No alarms. I guess we're okay for now."

It was almost as if someone was urging them to go on.

The perimeter path ran straight for a long distance in either direction. It was hard to tell for sure, but it looked like the forest eventually curved out to press against the wall. Or maybe l he wall curved away from the trees and the forest followed it. They could walk in one direction or the other and find out, but somehow the path in front of them seemed a more inviting avenue for exploration, even though it was cloaked in the shadow of the trees whose branches arched over it and the gloom gathered under the leaves shaded everything to a dark mystery.

Sue took a step toward the path into the forest. "Come on. There's gotta be an exit somewhere."

The forest might be the most inviting place John had seen in the dwarves' realm, but he hesitated to enter. "I only agreed to help you get through the door to this place. I can't leave Hear yet."

"Oh, no. You're not shimmying out on me. We ain't out yet. Come on. The outside's gotta be on the other side of the

trees."

It sounded like wishful thinking to John, but he
had
promised to help her escape, even though they had taken different views of what a completed "escape" would mean. How had could it be? Once they'd found the door to the outside, he'd come back and make sure the dwarves got Bear back on his feet. And having helped Sue escape, he'd know the way out himself.

He followed Sue under the cool and pleasant cover of the leaves. The air was full of forest smell, flavored with the scent of a bewildering variety of wildflowers and other blooming plants. Insects buzzed and moaned through the air, and crawled and scurried through the leaf mold and along the branches and stems of the plants. John found the filtered light easier on his eyes than the harsh glare that beat down on the perimeter path. The environment made for pleasant and serene walking, quite unlike the city.

They took the left-hand fork and hadn't gone more than a couple of dozen meters before the path forked again. Sue took the left branch again. She ignored each of the lesser paths that occasionally intersected the one they traveled on. Before long, John became convinced that they were paralleling the wall through which they had entered. How long before they encountered another wall?

Sue stopped and crouched low, listening. After a moment, she whispered, "Somebody's comin'," and dived into the greenery beside the path. Catching the faint sound of dwarvish voices, John followed, just fast enough to see that she was cutting through the underbrush, heading toward where he thought the wall lay. Being smaller than he, she made better time sliding through the tangle and was soon out of sight. He pressed on, thinking they would have been better off hiding in one place and trying his best to move quietly. He came upon a narrow path and could hear the voices of the approaching dwarves; they sounded close and were getting closer. Thinking that they must be using the path he'd just found, John crossed it and kept to the untracked brush. He hoped Sue had not taken the path; if the dwarves
were
using it, they'd surely catch her.

Before long, John discerned a lightness through the leaves and brush. The wall. Staying within the cover of the brush, he stopped and scanned the perimeter path. Sue was nowhere in sight. He could hear the dwarves more clearly now; they were definitely coming closer. If he called out to Sue, they would hear him. He silently wished that she would stay low and out of sight. He kept silent himself, crouching down and trying to make himself as small as possible.

Too bad Faye wasn't here; her invisibility trick would be useful.

As it turned out, he didn't need Faye's trick. Three dwarves emerged from the brush. The trio crunched down the gravel path, headed toward the door. And John—John thought inconspicuous thoughts, wanting to go unnoticed. Talking in a language John didn't comprehend, the three dwarves strolled by his hiding place. They gave no sign that they noticed him crouching in the shadows of the plants.

He was vaguely surprised that the dwarves didn't seem to be searching. He was sure the alarm must have gone up even if he hadn't heard anything. Maybe the dwarves were searching elsewhere and just didn't think John and Sue would have come here.