We made it across the sky bridge. The doors in the structure slid open two steps before we reached them. Ms. Rocha kept walking purposefully straight ahead into a broad corridor. I had to hurry to keep up with her because I was so distracted by the art that lined both walls. Powerfully simple line drawings of aurochs and dawn age horses in the style of the cave paintings at Lascaux evolved into multicolored Celtic vegetative knotwork which flowed into circuit diagrams and computer chip designs as we continued. The art wasn’t static. It moved and seemed to be pulsing with life. I was almost disappointed when we reached the sleek chrome-plated doors at the far end.
“Mr. Zwilniki will see you now,” said Ms. Rocha.
The doors in front of me hissed open and my guide artfully disappeared down a side hall. I hardly noticed and didn’t even remember to thank her. All my attention was on the view in front of me. Anthony Zwilniki sat on the far side of the room at a raised white desk, an ovoid supported by a gracefully tapering pillar of the same reflective white material. Behind him was a giant floor to ceiling window, twenty feet tall and forty feet wide, crisscrossed by narrow chrome steel supports. There was a faint scent of ozone in the air, like after a summer thunderstorm. A Strauss waltz played softly in the background. I felt the gentle touch of circulating air, but all my other senses except my sense of awe took second place to the sight of a vast, glowing lenticular galaxy, billions of stars and hundreds of thousands of light years of interstellar gas, filling the window and majestically rotating in time to the music. The overall effect did not suggest that Zwilniki was humbled by the view behind him, but master of it. He was Tony Zed, captain of industry and ruler of the galaxy. Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars and Ming the Merciless from the old Flash Gordon serials would have been proud.
I was frozen in the doorway for several seconds taking in the grandeur of the sight before me. Then I walked into the room with a slow, measured pace, clapping in time to each footstep. Zwilniki inclined his head slightly and smiled to acknowledge my applause. A white chair made from the same material as the desk extruded itself from the floor and I sat down across from my host.
“You liked it?” he said. I could see a little boy’s mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“It’s impressive,” I said. “Very impressive.”
“Thanks. My new projector technology will revolutionize virtual reality.”
I nodded. “I also liked the way you modified the air pressure in the elevator to create the illusion of going up, not down.”
“That’s trivial. Air pressure cues were reinforced by the direction of motion of the lights in the light panels,” said Zwilniki. “And the actual descent was so slow your body couldn’t feel it.”
“So what are we, three floors down?”
“Four,” said Zwilniki. “The third floor is filled with simulation hardware.”
“You’ve got hidden depths.”
“Most of us do,” said my host. “How do you like these instead?
A bright light like a camera’s flash popped in front of my eyes and I could just see the room as it actually was—a simple metal table with two chairs—before the floating galaxy was replaced by a view of Rome at its zenith. The Colosseum stood in all its original glory below us. Our view framed by tall Doric columns—we were on the veranda of a hillside villa. The two of us were patron and client, seated across a finely made wooden table with a mosaic tile inlaid top. Then another flash and we were holding poker hands at a card table in an old west saloon. Dancing girls in long skirts on a wooden stage replaced the Colosseum. One more pop of light and the two of us were seated in comfortable overstuffed leather armchairs beside an elaborately carved ebony table with a gray marble top holding two snifters of what I assumed was expensive brandy. Dark paneling, antique weapons, stuffy portraits and stuffed animal heads replaced the dancing girls. We were in a nineteenth century British men’s club complete with mahogany wainscoting and thick oriental carpets. I expected that this would be where he’d want to talk and I was right.
“What, no dinosaurs?” Zwilniki frowned and moved his head from side to side in a small arc.
“I can’t get my experts to agree on feathers or no feathers.”
“Why not both?” I offered.
“It may come to that,” said Zwilniki. “We’ll see.”
“Thank you for the technology demonstration.”
“Forgive me for showing off, Mr. Buckston,” said my host. “I do so enjoy seeing people’s reactions to my latest technology. And you did sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
I had signed an NDA. Zwilniki had a reputation for being more secretive than Howard Hughes at his most paranoid so it had made sense at the time. I looked him over. He was five foot nine with a medium build that looked like it benefited from the semi-regular attentions of a personal trainer. He had thick straight dark hair nearly to his shoulders that provided a significant contrast to his pale white skin. Perhaps a Mongol conqueror had made a stop on the plains of Poland in the 13th century. I didn’t spot any six inch fingernails.
“If you’re this far ahead,” I said, “what could I possibly do to help you?”
“Now it’s my turn to thank you,” said Zwilniki.
“For…” I began.
“For sparing me the need to say ‘perhaps you’re wondering why I brought you here today’ or some other melodramatic phrase.”
I smiled, warily.
“This place does resemble a James Bond villain’s lair,” I noted.
Zwilniki laughed using just one syllable. “I’m no villain, Mr. Buckston.”
“And I’m no James Bond.”
“True, but still a man of many talents. Let me tell you how you and Xenotech Support Corporation can help me.”
“Please do.” It was difficult to stop thinking about his grajja factory a quarter mile away. He was charming—the way a tiger was charming, all smiles and sharp teeth. I had to be careful.
“Let me remind you of the penalties for violating non-disclosure agreements,” said Zwilniki.
“There no need for that. I understand my obligations.”
“So long as that’s clear. I’ve been told you’re an expert on all things Orishen.”
“Most Orishen technology,” I said. “I try to stay away from their religions.”
“A wise move, I’m sure. It’s Orishen technology I’m primarily interested in. I’ve recently acquired quite a bit of well-used surplus Orishen equipment and would like to determine whether or not you can help me restore it to full operating condition.”
“I’ve worked with a lot of older Orishen equipment,” I said, “and have usually been able to refurbish it without much problem if spare parts are available. What sort of equipment are you talking about?”
“I think I’ll keep the specifics to myself for now,” said Zwilniki. “Why don’t you tell me about the various categories of Orishen technology you’ve worked with.”
It was a long list. I’d learned how to repair and maintain lots of different types of Orishen tech when I was studying for an advanced degree at Mulbiri Polytechnic University. Some of what I learned was formal, as part of my academic training, and some of it was informal. As I’d built skills and contacts I was often hired under the table to repair everything from the Orishen equivalent of personal vehicles and radar detectors to industrial extruders and weaving machines. I went through the full litany for Tony Zed.
“And so, you can see that I’ve worked on almost everything Orishen,” I said, wrapping up. I didn’t mention all the non-Orishen tech I knew.
“Do you have any experience with industrial transportation equipment?” asked Zwilniki.
“Sure. There were so many old troop hauler starships around from the Pâkk-Orish War that I mastered the art of keeping them running. They made great long distance freighters.” I didn’t mention that my clients, the kinds of businessmen who would hire a Terran on a student visa to work sub rosa for low wages because he couldn’t complain to the Freelance
Protection Association, tended to use a lot of surplus military equipment.
“Good to know,” said Zwilniki. “There must have been a lot of old hardware from the war around.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Mulbiri Tech was even using some of the old starships for labs and classrooms. A lot of them retained their mutability functions and could shift from troop transport to commodities transport to bomb carriers.” I didn’t tell him I’d figured out how to transform the Transdimensional Thermodynamics classroom into a clandestine student casino late in my first year on Orish. I wasn’t so dependent on getting packages of M&Ms from home for living expenses after that. The house always gets its cut.
“Excellent,” said my host. “And have you worked with horticultural technology?”
“You mean for the orchid greenhouses? Or for larger scale stuff like custom-designed fruits and vegetables?”
“More the former than the latter,” said Zwilniki, “but please feel free to tell me about both.”
I told him, but I could sense that he’d already heard what he’d wanted to hear and this question was just misdirection. What would VIGorish Labs want with military hardware? Starships even? Could it be something for the clients who use his military training simulations? Might he want old troop haulers to transport drugs off planet? I’d have to tell Tomáso.
“…the orchid maintenance droids required very fine tolerances to ensure none of the fused stamens and pistils were damaged. As far as fruits go, I spent several weeks repairing tenders for a kiwi-lope vertical hydroponic farm near the university. Have you tried them? They’ve got the skin and dimensions of a cantaloupe, but the inside is green, like a kiwi. They tended to get so large they would snap their own stems. I had to modify the tenders to prop them up.”
“Very good, Mr. Buckston,” said Tony Zed. “It sounds like you have just the right skills for what I need. I’d like to hire you full time for the next week for a special Orishen tech-related project.”
“I wish I could give you that much time,” I said. “I’m sure it’s a fascinating project but the most I could give you is eight hours.” Even that was pushing it. With my current client list I was already committed for more than forty hours this coming week. If I brought Mike from WT&F on yesterday it would still take me time to get him up to speed so that he could free up more of my time.
“I’m sorry but I absolutely need your full-time commitment,” insisted Zwilniki. “It’s imperative.”
I did a quick calculation and came back with a revised figure.
“The best I could manage is sixteen hours,” I said. And that’s with only six hours of sleep a night. When would I have time to get to know Poly better with that sort of schedule?
Zwilniki didn’t look happy.
“Sixteen hours, then,” he said with a frown. His words had an undertone of “if that’s how it has to be” or perhaps “we’ll see about that.”
“Now can you tell me the details about what you’d like me to do?” I said, not liking his subtext.
“In the morning,” he said. “Here. First thing. Seven a.m.” He said it like someone who was used to being obeyed without question.
“I’ve already got plans for Saturday morning,”I said, smiling on the inside as I’m thinking about breakfast and the First Contact Day parade tomorrow with Poly. OMG! And dinner tonight, too. What else was I forgetting?
“I’d be glad to be here at seven on Sunday morning.”
“If that’s the soonest you can be here,” he said gruffly. “Meet me out front and you can follow me to the work site.” He seemed to grow more unpleasant when he didn’t get what he wanted or wasn’t showing off.
Zwilniki picked up his brandy snifter in one hand and his cigar in another. I’d thought they were simulations. Were they real or was he just messing with my head? He took a sip of the brandy. I heard the liquid pass his lips and after he put the brandy down I could smell the cigar when he lit it.
“That will be all,” he said.
He waved the cigar peremptorily indicating it was time for me to take my leave. Ms. Rocha somehow materialized at my elbow and I followed her out along St. James’ Park and into a station for the City & South London Railway, builders of the first deep level tube in the Underground back in 1890. We were both wearing late Victorian-era clothing. I surreptitiously brushed my leg. I was still wearing the khakis that I’d put on this morning. That part of the simulation was purely visual, thank goodness. I didn’t want to think that someone had undressed me without my knowledge.
At the bottom of a short flight of steps was the entrance to an old-style lift. Ms. Rocha played the role of elevator operator. The steps meant we were now on the fifth floor below ground, I think. How far down did this place go? I thought about icebergs with nearly 90% of their mass underwater and felt goosebumps shivering down my back. Whatever Zwilniki was up to, it was big. The Gilded Age elevator clanked and clinked its way up several stories—it was hard to tell how many—and when the doors finally opened I was standing in the first floor elevator lobby I’d left an hour before.
Ms. Rocha was wearing her original stylish suit and I felt like a second class citizen standing beside her in my white XSC logo polo shirt and khakis. She walked me through the highly distracting Plexiglas tube-filled lobby—as if I wasn’t distracted enough already—and guided me to the wide double doors that led outside. She held out her hand, palm up, and I removed my VIP visitor’s badge and gave it to her.
“Have a nice day,” she said with a pinched smile.
The subtext was “Don’t let the doors hit your ass on the way out.”
I didn’t have to be asked twice.
I left.
Chapter 18
“Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.” ― Sun Tzu
My phone had warned my van that I was on my way so it was softly making bassoon noises and waiting at the curb for me when I left VIGorish Lab’s headquarters. It was just past 3:00 p.m. I was very glad to be out of the building and putting distance between myself and Anthony Zwilniki. On the way to the public feeder road on the edge of the V-Labs’ complex I was stuck behind more than a dozen converted school buses repainted in VIGorish Labs’ color palette of black, electric blue and white. They had pulled out of the rear parking lot of the headquarters building and were trundling along slowly, sounding like a string bass section on tranquilizers. I could make out several pink humanoid shapes in the back window of the bus directly ahead of me.
“Please magnify 10x,” I told my van. The windshield switched to an enlarged view of my surroundings. I took another look at the back window of the bus in front of me and could see several men and women wearing pink camouflage body suits like the ones I’d seen in the military simulation tubes at VIGorish HQ. If each bus was full and held fifty passengers that meant there were at least six hundred people being trained. That’s enough to be the nucleus of an impressive private army. For all I knew they could be a private army with VIGorish Labs training them for an oligarch or a smaller nation-state. Still, I hadn’t noticed any unit identification on the military trainees floating in tubes in the lobby. Some oligarchs might opt for keeping a low profile but elite forces for nation-states tended to show the flag and identify their affiliations proudly.
The only identification I’d remembered seeing on the pink camouflage body suits was a subtle VIGorish Labs’ stylized cylinder logo on the shoulders embroidered in deep pink thread. Maybe the body suits were standard issue for anyone getting military training at VIGorish? James Bond’s familiar theme music started playing in my head, unbidden. Maybe Tony Zed resembled a Bond villain in more ways than one and these people were his private army? I hoped not. The articles about him in the business press didn’t make him out to be any more or less of a sociopath than the average CEO, but I wasn’t looking forward to whatever he wanted me to do for him starting on Sunday.
The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that I di
dn’t want to be working for Tony Zed in any capacity. I’d call him or email him soon and let him know that I wouldn’t be working for him, no matter how much money he offered. The guy made my skin itch. I’d wait and talk to Tomáso first before resigning from the gig, however. Tomáso might want me see what more I could find out about Zwilniki before cutting connections completely.
The bus directly in front of me finally made it to the public feeder road. It turned right and followed the other buses ahead of it, like a military convoy in tight formation. I could see the farthest bus a quarter of a mile down the road heading into the parking lot of a three star, ten story HMH hotel. It was a larger Hilton-Marriott-Hyatt property, one of several close to Hartsfield Port.
“Follow those buses,” I told my van.
“As you wish,” my van said.
Who was teaching it Princess Bride quotes? I’d have to have a conversation about that with my phone.
My van turned into the hotel parking lot behind the last bus, found a spot in a remote corner with a good view of the front of the property, and shifted to standby mode. There were plenty of parking places. The windshield magnification let me see everything clearly. Each of the buses in turn dropped off at least fifty people in pink body suits then left the hotel and headed back toward VIGorish Labs. The people leaving the buses and entering the hotel were all young, fit individuals with short haircuts and no nonsense, take no prisoners expressions. They looked like the drill instructors I’d met when I was customizing off-planet obstacle course simulators for the USMC at Parris Island. More than half were men and it seemed like a truly international collection of individuals. I didn’t spot a single Galactic, however. They were all Terrans. After the others had entered the building, four men and two women who looked even harder and more fit than the rest stood under the hotel’s porte-cochère, talking.
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