House of the Sun

17

Light. Morning.

I lay there-wherever there happened to be-for an immeasurable time, just staring up into a mellow, sourceless light. If this was death, I kind of liked it. No pain, no worries, no fears. No real thoughts either, and certainly no analytical awareness of the future. I was just the eternal, living now, with as much concern for the past or the future as a fragging bunny rabbit. It was pleasant, and for I don't know how long I just grooved on it

It didn't last, of course-the good drek never does. Way too soon, I started to become aware of my body. The lazy lub-dub of my heart. The slow, deep bellows action of my lungs. The touch of soft sheets and a firm mattress against my back.

And the throbbing pain of a puncture wound in the center of my chest.

That realization brought an end to the timeless grooving, let me tell you, chummer. As if the realization of pain had opened some kind of stopcock, memories of the past and fears of the future come flooding back into my brain. I think I whimpered then. Somebody had bagged me, and bagged me good. The elf-biff had distracted me with her looks and body language, then driven a narcodart into my chest. Good tactics, with forethought and planning. That still left a couple of important questions, though.

Who? And, more important, why? Work on the "who" first, I decided.

Moko and Kat? Doubt it, chummer. A drive-by was more their style. (Frag, if I'd been a millisecond slower, it would have worked and I'd be dead right about now.) Ryumyo? Doubt it; Kat and her friends were almost certainly after me on the worm's orders. King Kamehameha? Doubt it; he'd had me in his clutches in Iolani Palace and let me walk. Harlech the elf? Doubt it, for much the same reason. Which left…

Which left the fragging yakuza, didn't it? The yaks could be as brutal and direct as anyone else when circumstances warranted, but they could also pull something pretty elegant if they wanted. Like the elf-biff and her bracer.

And that answered the "why" all too well. I'd cacked their oyabun… or, at least, I'd been closely involved in his cackage. The yaks had always been deep into payback, teaching lessons, and sending messages. That meant the fact that I was still alive wasn't necessarily a reassuring thing. It simply meant they were planning to take their time over making me dead.

Wonderful, oh joy.

My body wasn't yet under perfect control of my mind, but at least I managed to sit up and look around. I was in what looked like a hospital or clinic room, judging by the powered bed and antiseptic white walls, at least. There was no furniture beside the bed-no chairs, no bed tables, nothing else that could serve as a weapon of opportunity. No window, either.

The door was to my right, flush with the wall. No knob, just a push-plate, which meant the door opened outward. Which, in turn, meant I was denied that old trick of hiding behind the door and cold-cocking the first person to come a-visiting. Locked, of course.

And that was it for the room. No closet, no door to an adjoining room. Not even a light fixture in the ceiling, just standard-issue flatpanel lights set right into the acoustical rile.

I threw back the single sheet covering me. I was naked, of course. That didn't surprise me; it was just one more move in the familiar security game. My captors knew how much harder it is to be heroic and innovative when you're bare-ass naked. With a silent curse I pulled the top sheet off the bed and wrapped it around me. Better to look like a refugee from a toga party than display my shortcomings in public, I figured. Then I began prowling around the room, looking for… well, looking for anything that might help me get out of there. I didn't know exactly what that anything might be, but I figured I'd know it when I saw it.

My captors didn't give me much time. The click of a maglock disengaging froze me in midprowl. I was all the way on the other side of the room, much too far for me to reach the door in time for anything heroic. (And, of course, my captors would have known that, timing their entry by watching me on a surveillance monitor.) I gathered what shreds of dignity I still had to hand, drew myself up to my full height, and prepared to give the first yak soldier through the door a serious dose of imperious stink-eye.

It wasn't a yak soldier who came through the door, though. Not what I imagined to be a typical yak soldier, at least. She was elf and Polynesian-three strikes, as far as the yaks I'm familiar with are concerned; male, human, and Nihonese is more their style. She gave me a coldly polite smile and said, "Good morning, Mr. Montgomery."

(I sighed. What was the deal here? Everyone and his fragging hamster knew my name…)

She looked competent and confident, did this elf-woman. She didn't have any obvious weapons-sensible, since it was conceivable I could have taken any heat away from her and used it myself-but she did look poised and ready, like a martial-arts expert. She was dressed in conservative corp-type fashions-nothing extravagant or flashy, but still definitely well-heeled.

In my peripheral vision I caught movement in the hallway outside the door. There were two more figures out there. I couldn't see details, but it was a sure bet they were packing serious heat, and were ready to take me down if I made the first wrong move against the elf-slitch. I sighed again and just stood there in the middle of the room, wrapped in my sheet

"Here," she said, tossing a small, soft-sided suitcase onto the bed. "Get dressed please, Mr. Montgomery," she went on emotionlessly. "Someone will come to fetch you." And with that she turned on her heel and walked out. The door shut behind her, and the maglock snapped back into place.

I crossed to the bed and sat down heavily on it. For a couple of minutes I stared at the suitcase as though I was expecting it to sprout fangs and go for my throat. Just what the frag was going on here anyway? Maybe it wasn't the yaks who'd bagged me after all. Unless there was something big that I was missing-not an unreasonable possibility, I had to admit-the only interest the yaks would have in me was to make me dead, in as protracted and messy a way as possible. That kind of game wouldn't involve giving me clothes beforehand, would it?

I shook my head. Then I reached over and undid the latch of the suitcase.

If this had been an old-style action-espionage flatfilm, the clothes in the suitcase would have been a finely tailored dinner jacket with black tie and patent leather shoes. No luck there, chummer. The case contained simple tropical-weight casual wear: shirt, slacks, shoes, and undergarments. All in my size-or close enough to it-incidentally. No armor, predictably, and definitely nothing I could use as a weapon. Even the shoes had apparently been chosen to minimize their effectiveness as weapons, in case I'd happened to be an expert at savat. The uppers were rough fabric almost like burlap, and the soles were rope. (No drek-hemp rope.) They were comfortable enough, though, and that was all that mattered at the moment. The bag also contained my wallet, my 'puter, and all my credsticks.

So I dressed. Shrugging into the shirt introduced me to a complex spectrum of pain radiating from the region of my left shoulder blade. I breathed in deeply and worked the shoulder… immediately regretting it. The pain was almost enough to knock me flat on my hoop. I tried the deep-breath thing again, a lot more cautiously this time.

Okay, the pain was bad, but more the dull, throbbing kind you get from a major contusion. The light armor I'd been wearing had spread the kinetic energy of the impact over a wide enough area that it hadn't punctured my precious skin. Also, the fact that the pain wasn't knife-sharp stabs told me that my ribs weren't broken. Be thankful for small favors, I told myself.

I'd just finished dressing when the maglock snapped back again. (Yes, I was definitely under observation.) The same elf-slitch appeared in the doorway, backed by me same two barely glimpsed figures in the hallway behind her. "Come with me, please, Mr. Montgomery," she said.

I came. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I followed the corp-biff out from my room into the hallway, hanging a good pace back. The two shadows-elves too, but surprisingly beefy for that metatype-fell in behind me and to the sides. Both had tasers on their belts and held oversized stun batons ready to swing. Chill, brah, I wanted to tell them, I'm not planning anything militant unless you force me into it. But I held my tongue.

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-me 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 dawn a fire-escape stairway, and found myself running out of options in a real hurry.

The door sighed shut me 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 Tairngire 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 me biggest architect" kind of drek, forgetting mat 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 comer 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 mat 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 me 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."

I blinked. Ookaay… It always pays to know what level you're working at. (In this case, me highest.)

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 mat 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.

"I was serious about the subject of the paintings outside," Monot said at length. "Have you ever realized quite how pervasive the legend of a sunken continent, a lost world, actually is?"

I shrugged. "It's never really kept me up nights," I had to admit.

"It is interesting, though. What do you know about Lemuria?"

Again I shrugged. "It's where lemurs come from?"

I'd meant it as a smart-hooped comeback line, but she nodded approvingly. "In a way, yes. Did you know that, before geologists understood about continental drift, scientists were puzzled by the fact that fossilized lemur bones were found on two distinct continents, separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean? How had the lemurs crossed from one continent to another… if there hadn't once been a land bridge, a midoceanic continent, connecting the two? Since mere was no land bridge in existence, the only logical conclusion was that it had sunk centuries or millennia before."

I decided to stick with my response to the paintings. "Interesting." (Actually, I could hardly have cared less, but I figured it's best to be polite about the crank beliefs of the president and chief executive officer of Telestrian Industries Corporation, South Pacific Operations.)

"Isn't it?" she agreed. "What I find even more interesting is that the legends of Lemuria indirecdy involve the islands of Hawai'i. Do you know who originally colonized the islands, Mr. Montgomery?"

I shook my head, and she answered her own question. "Polynesians from Tahiti. According to some beliefs, they crossed the ocean, looking for their own sunken continent. There are even some who claim that this sunken continent will one day re-emerge from the water, with the volcano of Haleakala as its highest mountain peak."

She smiled enigmatically. "It's interesting how different, seemingly unrelated factors are actually connected, if you look below the surface." She paused, and I knew she was getting down to biz; all this drek about lemurs and sinking continents was just preamble.

"Like you, Mr. Montgomery," Monot continued after a moment. "You seem to be one of those unrelated factors. Yet you're not unrelated, are you? You're actually connected, directly or indirectly, with many different… well, let's call them threads."

I snorted. A tight feeling had been building in my chest throughout her lemur prattle. Now I realized what that feeling was-anger. "Look," I said sharply, "I've had enough of all this vague, oblique and veiled-reference crap, you scan? Everybody's talking at me like I know a lot more about what's going down than I do, and it's torquing me off. Barnard did it. Ho did it, fragging Ryumyo did it, Harlech did it, and now you're doing it…"

I stopped in midpurge as Monot raised a slender hand. Her brows knotted in a frown. "Who?" she asked.

It took me a moment to get my derailed train of thought back on track. I ticked them off on my fingers. "Barnard, Ho, Ryumyo, Harlech-"

"Harlech," she repeated, interrupting again. "Who was that?"

I hesitated. There was something strange in Monot's expression-something that made me suspect she knew all too well, and didn't like it one bit. "Quentin Harlech," I told her. "He said to call him Quinn."

She went slightly pale, and she whispered something then, under her breath. It could have been a repetition of the name I'd given her, but in the order you'd find it in a 'puter database, last name first. Or it could have been something else. ("Big worm / bakeware" time again…)

"That's the slag," I confirmed. Even though I didn't know jack about what was going down, I kept a good dose of bluster in my voice. If something had knocked Monot off-stride, maybe I could use it to my advantage. "But what's the big deal?" I asked, "He's an elf, too."

Chantal Monot's pale eyes flashed with momentary anger. Then her professional control took over, and I watched as she forced herself to calmness. "He may be an elf," she said at last, "but elves don't speak with one voice. Particularly on an issue as important as this." (Important, neh? I filed that gem away for future reference.)

I shrugged. "From what I've read, TIC is in like this"-I held up crossed fingers-"with the Tir government. Sometimes, your corp's an instrument of policy for the Tir nation. And if that isn't speaking with one voice-"

She broke in again. "We may be an instrument of policy for the Tir's leadership" she corrected coldly, "not for the nation." (And I filed that one away, too. It didn't make any sense at the moment, but maybe later…)

Monot gazed out me window at Diamond Head. The rock face was washed with the ruddy light of early morning. After almost a minute she turned back to me. "You spoke with… Quinn Harlech, didn't you, Mr. Montgomery? What did he tell you?"

"It didn't make much sense," I told her truthfully. "He said he was going to blow the lid off something. Let him do it for all I care-it's no skin off my hoop."

Monot nodded slowly. "Did he say how?"

"Not as far as I could tell." Then I hesitated. "Now I think about it, he implied he'd already done it"

"And I assume he knew of your association with Gordon Ho."

I nodded at that one. "He knew, all right." He'd seen my deputy's badge-gone, now-and certainly seemed to know what it meant.

Apparently that wasn't good news. Chantal Monot looked like one troubled elf. After a few more moments of thought she sighed. "Thank you for coming in, Mr. Montgomery. I appreciate your candor."

I snorted. "If it's candor you wanted, you could have gotten it without the narcodart," I pointed out.

Monot at least had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "I apologize for that, Mr. Montgomery, but our operative"- she must have meant the biff with the bracers-"evaluated your mental condition as being dangerous, to her and to yourself." (Translation: scared to the point of drekking myself. Granted.) "She made the field decision to incapacitate you rather than risking something a lot more unpleasant for all concerned."

Okay, I could understand that If my job was to arrange a meeting with some wild-eyed spacecase who'd just burst out of an alley brandishing a gun, I'd probably have narked him in his tracks, too. That didn't mean I had to like it, though.

Monot pressed a key on the sophisticated telecom built into the desk. "A driver will take you anywhere you wish to go," she told me.

"Hold the phone," I said. "Is that it? You track me and dart me and bag me… and that's it? No more questions?"

Monot looked at me bleakly. "The questions I had are no longer relevant."

I think I blinked in surprise… and then again in understanding. "Aren't you even going to warn me to keep my nose out of things that are too big for me?"

The elf looked genuinely sad as she said, "I think it's far too late for that, Mr. Montgomery."