House of the Sun s-17

by Nigel D Findley

  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."

  18

  And so, yet again, I got to ride in a fragging Rolls Phaeton. It was almost too much deja fragging vu for me to handle. If the driver had run down the bullet-proof partition, turned round to me, and grinned with Scott's face, I'd have taken it in stride and offered him a fragging drink.

  Once we were off the TIC facility grounds-the corp building looked just as wiz from outside as it did from in- the driver wanted to know where to take me. That took some deep thought. All the places I'd already flopped were blown, one way or another, and my invitation to a meet with Chantal Monot had interrupted my search for another. I chewed on it for a few minutes while the driver "orbited" Kapiolani Park. Finally, I gave up, and did what I probably should have done from the outset. I asked the driver.

  Frag, it's not that illogical, is it? Cab drivers know all the best bars, the best restaurants, the best flops, and the best places to get into deep trouble. And when you get right down to it, a corp chauffeur's not that much different from a hack driver, is he?

  I laid out my requirements to the chauffeur-low profile, no questions asked-and let him think on it. Not so much as a minute later he nodded his head, and we took off in the direction of Waikiki.

  (Hold the phone: Wasn't getting the chauffeur involved a major breach of security? Well, yeah, talking solely in terms of fieldcraft, it was a drek-headed move. Speaking practically, though? If Monot and her colleagues at TIC wanted me dead, I'd be dead. If they wanted to know where I went, they'd had several hours to plant a tracer-inside some body cavity, if they wanted to make it secure-that I'd never be able to find. The way I had it figured, getting the chauffeur to help me out didn't increase my exposure any. In fact, it decreased it, by saving me from blundering into something unwelcome as I'd done the night before.)

  The Phaeton rolled west on Monsarrat, then turned right onto Kalakaua Avenue. Into the gleaming heart of Waikiki we drove, then the chauffeur cut right and cruised down a ramp into an underground parking lot. The security guard in his little booth flipped my driver a quick salute and raised the blast-proof barrier. Without slowing, the limo rolled on into the parking concourse.

  We pulled up right in front of a bank of elevators. A big crest identified the place as New Foster Tower.

  I rapped on the transpex partition and gave the driver a "what the frag now? look.

  "Ms. Monot always has a number of rooms reserved here in TIC's name," the chauffeur replied via the intercom, "to handle unexpected visitors." (I reckoned I certainly fit that categorization…) "Room nineteen-oh-five is yours for as long as you need it."

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Once he'd figured out where he was going, it wouldn't have taken the driver much effort to link the car's computer system with the hotel's and check me in, but… "What about the key?" I asked.

  "It's already programmed for your thumbprint," the driver answered.

  Oh, really? That meant Monot had scanned my thumbprint into the TIC computer system while I was sleeping off the narcodart, and my records were accessible from a mobile computer system, i.e., the limo. The driver had obviously contacted the TIC central system, and had it download my print data to the security system at New Foster Tower. Efficient as all hell.

  But I didn't like it, not one bit. Throughout my career, I've gone to great lengths to keep personal data flags like prints out of corporate records. I can think of too many ways to frag with someone's life once you've got access to flags like that. Of course, there wasn't squat I could do about it at the moment. When I had some time-and some cred-to spare, I'd have to make arrangements for new fingerprints.

  I pushed the limo door open and climbed out, heading for the elevator. I turned at the soft whine of a power window behind me.

  "Here, I was told to give you these back." The driver tossed the two objects, which I caught a little clumsily. My deputy's badge from King Kamehameha V. And, more important, my Manhunter. I drew breath to thank him, but he'd already powered the window back up and was pulling away. Just as well-I didn't have any cash to tip him anyway.

  Room 1905 at New Foster Tower wasn't anywhere near as luxurious as my room at the Diamond Head corporate hostelry. That still left it one giant step above anywhere else I'd stayed in my life, though. The entire convenience suite at the Ilima Joy would have fit into the bathroom-fragging near, at least-and while the bed wasn't quite big enough for a Roman-style orgy, I couldn't imagine that I'd have any opportunity to be disappointed by the fact.

  The view was nice, too-a southwestern exposure, looking out over Mamala Bay. The hotels on the other side of Kalakaua Avenue-the ones that actually lined the waterfront-were too tall to give me a view of Waikiki Beach itself. They were "terraced," though; the buildings between me and the ocean were lower than New Foster Tower… as, presumably, the ones behind the Tower were taller. (Good civic planning there, now that I thought about it.) That meant that, even if I couldn't see the beach, I could still see the ocean, in its impossible blue. As I watched, a huge ocean-going trimaran-forty-five meters along the waterline, if it was a millimeter-was outbound under full sail, its garishly colored spinnaker seeming to burn with its own internal light. For the first time in a long time, I actually saw Hawai'i through the eyes of a tourist rather than as a shadow-slag running for his life.

  It didn't last, though. Biz was pressing. Doss at New Foster Tower or no, my nuts were still in a very tight vise. It was time to do something about mat.

  Room 1905's telecom didn't measure up to the one at the Diamond Head hostelry either, but that didn't matter. I didn't need any more than the most rudimentary of features at the moment. Jacking in ray Quincy-modified 'puter, I quickly established my own equivalent of a blind relay-a simple little subversion of the telecom's programming so it wouldn't append an accurate "originator address" to any messages I sent. Once I was happy with my attempts at security, I placed a call.

  Jacques Barnard picked up almost at once. (Didn't the slag ever do anything but hang by a phone?) His face clouded up the moment he recognized me, and he opened his mouth to bitch, but I overrode him. "I want out, Barnard," I almost yelled. "Now, chummer, okay? You got me into this, now you get me out."

  The corporator blinked wordlessly for a moment; I guess senior veeps or whatever don't get screamed at very often. Then his brows drew together in a nasty-looking scowl, and he snarled, "You've got a lot of gall-"

  "That's not all I've got, you slot," I broke in again. "You owe me, okay? You said so, and I'm holding you to it. I've found out a few things over here about Yamatetsu's operations that might attract a little unwanted attention, karimasu-ka?" That was pure bluff, of course. I didn't have any dirt on Yamatetsu-nothing I could use, at least. But Barnard didn't have to know that.

  Not that the gambit worked anyway. His nasty scowl became an equally nasty smile. "I doubt it, Mr. Montgomery. I seriously doubt it. And as to debts? Well, I consider any beholding I might have felt toward you to have been voided when you broke security."

  That set me back a little. "Play that one back," I told him. "'Broke security'?"

  Barnard looked almost pityingly at me. "I expected better of you, Mr. Montgomery." And with that, he reached out to cancel the connection.

  "Wait," I barked. "Just wait a tick, okay?" Barnard's face shifted into an expression of much put-upon patience, but at least he didn't hang up. "I'm not running a scam here," I told him as sincerely as I could. "I don't know what the frag you're talking about."

  "I seriously doubt that."

  "It's true, frag it all," I shouted back. 'Tell me what the frag you're talking about. Then, if I did 'break security,' I'll snivel and crawl and kiss your hoop at midday in downtown Kyoto, or whatever the hell you want. But at the moment I honestly don't know what the frag you're accusing me of."

  Barnard gave a long-suffering sigh. 'The Ali'i, Mr. Montgomery," he said wearily. "Your meeting with the Ali'i. It was supposed to be confidential." He hesitated. "Or, at least, the fact that you
were serving as my agent was supposed to be confidential.

  "Yet what did you do? Virtually the moment you left the Iolani Palace, you started spreading the word that you were a corporate emissary, conveying personal messages from the Corporate Court to King Kamehameha V. Do you have any understanding of how damaging that has been?"

  I shook my head. "Bulldrek, I did that!" I shot back. "Pure, unadulterated kanike, okay? I didn't tell anyone. Look somewhere else for your security leak, goddamn it."

  Barnard's voice was deceptively quiet, and his expression had settled into a cold, emotionless mask. "But I did look elsewhere, Mr. Montgomery. With no success whatsoever. You are the only possible leak."

  "Bulldrek I am!" I shouted again.

  "If not you, then who?"

  "What about Ho himself?"

  "Ho?" Barnard laughed aloud at that. "That's the last thing Ho would leak. If the rival faction in the legislature plays their cards right-and there's no reason to expect that they won't-he stands to lose his throne… and possibly more. Try again, Mr. Montgomery, hmm?"

  "Christ, I don't…" I pulled up in midbluster. Maybe I did know. "Do you know someone named Quentin Harlech?" I asked.

  "The name doesn't mean anything to me."

  "Then maybe you should run it through your 'puters and your databases and your legions of fragging informants, Barnard. I'd lay long odds that Harlech's the one who blew your op." Yes… as I spoke, I grew steadily more convinced that it had been the strange elf. After all, hadn't he as good as admitted that he'd blown my cover? I hadn't known what he was yapping about at the time, but now I thought I had it chipped.

  Barnard's expression made it clear that he wasn't even a little convinced mat I was telling the truth. But at least he didn't seem to be quite so convinced I'd ratted him out.

  "I'll run the name," he said slowly.