I waited almost an hour for Dermotte to return, and it turned out that the tech guest quarters were one door down the outside tunnel.
“Adequate” was the right word to describe them. The tech quarters consisted of a small study, a single bedchamber with a bath/fresher, and a kitchen with eating space—all on the same lower level as the bottom floor of my previous guest quarters. And not one of the rooms was really large enough for even my restricted Juchai workouts.
Once I was resettled, with my equipment case, and Dermotte had left to arrange for the repair of the main guest quarters, I readied myself to go shopping, not that I really had much choice.
34
The rest of sixday was a blur of boring necessities. Even before I got out of my temporary quarters, the local patrol arrived, and I had to take them through what had happened. Then I ended up spending most of sixday going from shop to shop because Passova didn’t really have a unified link-shopping net. I just hadn’t thought about that, but such an infrastructure was anything but cost-effective for a low population consisting of isolated pockets of high density where everything was either in walking distance or within a short tunneltram ride.
Then … the kind of singlesuits I liked weren’t exactly in style in Passova, and that meant special fabrication and more duhlars, not to mention waiting and going back to pick them up late on sixday. Pretty much every aspect of replacing personal goods involved some degree of waiting and frustration. Given that it had been a long night on fiveday, and a longer day on sixday, I wasn’t surprised that I was ready to collapse early … although I did sleep fairly well.
First thing on sevenday, after the normal morning routine, I checked on what might be happening, or not, on my former quarters. All the debris had been removed, and a temporary barrier placed where the armaglass had been. The quarters were otherwise empty, and it appeared no work was scheduled for the day. That wasn’t totally surprising, given that it was indeed sevenday.
So I went to my space in the Survey office and immediately accessed all the measurements and reports on the storm that had savaged my quarters and belongings. In terms of wind velocity it had been below average, and it hadn’t lasted all that long.
Then why hadn’t the lights come back on until so much later?
Looking into that took another half hour, but the records were clear. The lights had been out for a little more than an hour. I’d only thought they came on at half past six.
Because you’d been gassed and your body was trying to recover?
Next I tried to find recordings of any linknews clips that concerned me. Short stories had run on every scheduled broadcast in the last day and a longer story was on the continuous news feed. Every single one mentioned that I was a Survey Service consultant sent from Bachman, and that I’d denied being an investigator. Every one of them also mentioned I was scheduled to brief at least one member of the Planetary Council, and most mentioned that the accident seemed freakish, since the storm hadn’t been that severe.
The news implications were that someone didn’t want me talking to the Council, and the only question was who benefited from such a story. My initial thought was that Melarez or her boss did. But why would they try anything that obvious? Obviously, there was something going on that I didn’t understand.
But … there wasn’t too much more I could do about that, and in the end I spent much of the day looking over the records and reports filed by Syntex and checking them against what I’d seen and measured at the installation. Not exactly to my surprise, by midafternoon I determined that there were no discrepancies.
The next item on my agenda, given the lack of space in my temporary temporary quarters, was to look into the possibility of finding some place where I could work out, preferably privately, or largely privately.
When I searched the linknet, I found that there were more than a few “personal trainers” listed, but only a comparative handful of exercise facilities and one private gymnasium. I linked with the gym and immediately got the image of a pleasant figure, as androgynous as Amarios, who immediately delivered what was a set message.
“Clyantos is presently not accepting applications for membership. If you are interested in applying for the waiting list, please say so to begin the application process.”
That wasn’t going to help me in the slightest, not when I really—hopefully—only needed to use such a facility for a short period. So I broke that link, and kept looking through the information on each “exercise facility.” Most of them were located well away from my quarters and the Survey offices, and in the end, I decided to visit the nearest one, Shriver’s Fitness, since I wasn’t about to make any decisions based on just linknet information. From what I could determine, it was less than three blocks from my quarters, if seven levels down. One thing I did discover immediately was that while there were ramps and lifts for the upper levels of Passova, access to the lowest four levels—levels six through ten—was by staircase or tunnelcar ramp only. Since I didn’t have a tunnelcar and didn’t want to rent one or hire one, even if I’d known how or wanted to link the information, I decided to walk.
Going down wasn’t difficult, but as I descended, I wondered about climbing back up. Still, when I left the stairs on level seven, the pedestrian tunnel looked the same as other pedestrian ways—well, the same as the narrow tunnels near the arboretum. The light seemed the same, but there was a sense of griminess, a feel rather than a smell, though, and I couldn’t place it.
I checked my link directions, but they assured me I was on the right level and headed in the right direction.
“Interested in some fun?” asked a professionally sultry voice from nowhere.
I glanced around before I realized it was projected sound without the holo, except a woman stepped, or more like leaned out of a doorway several yards ahead. She was fully clothed, after a fashion, but in a single flowing gown that turned transparent intermittently. Whether that transparency revealed what was beneath the gown or another fantasy was largely immaterial to me. I wasn’t interested in that kind of fun. Even the legal kind of fun had been too expensive for me.
“No.”
“You play for the other team? We got guys, you know?”
“No,” I repeated.
The sound vanished, as did the apparition posing as a woman.
I neared the next cross tunnel with some trepidation, despite the fact that two scrawny girls were playing some sort of dance game on a projected light grid on the side walkway. That they paid no attention to me and moved in a jerkily rhythmic way suggested they were intensity linked to something that passed for music.
Two clearly older women crossed in front of me, coming down the other tunnel way. Whether they were truly old or old before their time, I couldn’t tell. From their near-indifference and their weary walk, I had the feeling that the distinction was immaterial.
Shriver’s was in the next block, past a bistro that bore the unlikely name of Malarky’s, with only a handful of men with faces ranging from angry to tired seated at the cheaply templated black chairs irregularly gathered around equally cheap circular black tables.
Standing outside an archway with the name Fitness Center in squarish block letters above it, I wondered exactly what lay beyond the doors. There was only one way to find out. I stepped through the projected screen in the archway and into another long corridor that stretched a good fifteen meters straight ahead.
From the seemingly solid wall to my right came a man with a baton, and I reacted, if more slowly than I should have, moving into a Juchai switch-and-reverse. The man vanished, and I realized that it had been a holo projection.
“Not bad! Not bad!” The speaker who stepped out of an alcove was a wizened figure of a man, if trim and still with muscles visible under the formfitting garment that resembled a leotard and was likely a holo projection suit. “You here to try out for the remote fight completion?”
“No,” I admitted, deciding not to offer my real reason. “I saw t
he sign outside, and I was curious.”
“Too bad. You’re in shape, and you got good technique and reactions. Haven’t seen many trained in Juchai in years. You might get good ratings just for that.”
Ratings? “The competitions are linkcast?”
“Not the regular way. Can’t do that. Private subscription. Payment’s delayed a day or so. No more, I promise.”
I shook my head. “Not right now. If other things don’t turn out, I might be back.”
“You do, and you ask for Gregorio. That’s me. We pay better than the other fitness centers, too.”
“If I do, I will.”
“Still think you’d make a lot as a Juchai…”
I just smiled before I left, trying to move deliberately.
Once I was back in the tunnel way, I almost shook my head. I had no idea whether the “competition” was full or partial contact, or totally remote, and I didn’t care. I was practiced, but not trained, and the last thing I wanted to be involved with was some form of semilegal or illegal fight club.
After visiting Shriver’s and knowing that the other fitness/exercise centers were on even lower levels, not to mention that, from Gregorio’s offhand comments, they were also likely disguised versions of remote fight clubs, I trudged back up all seven levels, deciding that, at least for the day, that would have to substitute for exercise. I still couldn’t believe that there weren’t exercise facilities in an underground city like Stittara, and I had to ask myself what exactly I was missing.
35
Oneday morning found me up early, readying myself for the eight hundred meeting or briefing of someone on the Planetary Council. While staff assistant Melarez had intimated that Councilor Morghan had wanted the briefing, I had my doubts about whether the good councilor would actually be present.
I allowed myself plenty of extra time, and it was a good thing I did, because the tunneltram to the Planetary Council center was jammed, most likely because many support types who worked there were supposed to be at their consoles at eight. Then I discovered that I’d gone the wrong way on level three and that I had to retrace my steps back to the tunneltram stop and head east, instead of west. I should have checked my link, but … I’d thought I knew exactly where I was headed. Even so, I arrived at the anteroom inside the archway labeled 471 with eight minutes to spare.
No one was there.
I waited several minutes, wondering whether to open the door behind the vacant console, or to go to an adjoining chamber or office. Just as I was about to open the door, a tall, gawky, and very young man stepped out. He looked at me and blinked, as if asking what I happened to be doing there.
“Dr. Paulo Verano,” I offered. “I was asked to do a briefing this morning by Paem Melarez.”
“Oh … just a moment.” He waved his hands before the console. “Ms. Melarez … Dr. Verano is here.” He looked up. “She’ll be here in a few minutes, sir.”
A few minutes mounted to almost fifteen, most likely a form of punishment because I’d been so inconsiderate as to be unavailable the previous fiveday. Then the door behind the nervous young man opened, and Paem Melarez stepped out, closing it behind her.
“Dr. Verano … we’ll be walking over to the councilor’s office.”
“Where is that?”
“About three doors east,” Melarez replied.
As I walked beside her, I decided not to bring up the storm or the media interest until she and the councilor or whoever else might be there were all in the same chamber. Just after Melarez opened an unmarked door and before she stepped into it, she brushed back a short lock of heavy black hair.
The space into which we walked was definitely not a briefing room, but the very private personal office of the councilor. Morghan was a big woman, slightly taller than I, with a well-toned physique and not a gram of fat. Muscular as she was, she wasn’t slender. Her hair was jet-black, as were her eyes, and her skin held just a touch of amber honey. She didn’t rise from behind her console, but gestured brusquely to the chairs facing her.
As soon as I sat down, the councilor looked at me. Her eyes were actually warm, almost amused. “Before you begin, I’d like to inform you that everything you say will be recorded and documented. Is that clear?”
“It is.”
“Why are you really here on Stittara? Try to avoid all the meaningless rhetoric.”
“My former spouse got the court to seize ninety percent of my assets for her and our daughter. The court said that they might take more in a year. Our daughter hadn’t talked to me in two years, and my ex-spouse was screwing the father of my daughter’s boyfriend. My advocate turned out to have friends in the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry had received word from an oversight committee that the Deniers felt the Survey Service was far too hard on the multis on Stittara. The Ministry decided that I was impartial enough that none of the parties in the government, or the opposition, could complain. I needed a lot of money. They provided it. Here I am, a consultant with a good reputation for hire.”
Morghan laughed, not totally humorously.
Melarez looked surprised, if only momentarily.
“You’re more than that, I think,” said Morghan. “We’ll leave it at that … for now. What is your official mission and how do you see it?”
“My official mission is to assess the overall environmental situation on Stittara, and to report on whether the Survey Service is too aggressively applying the Unity standards, applying them judiciously, or failing to apply them as necessary.”
“That gives you a great deal of latitude.”
“Theoretically, but I have to back up any recommendation or observation with data, an overwhelming amount of data, and that data has to support it.”
“What have you discovered so far? Please don’t give me platitudes about the sanctity of data or the need to reserve judgment until you’ve finished.”
“I can tell you what I’ve discovered so far. But I’m less than a tenth of the way through what’s required, and when ninety percent of the job is still undone … I’m sorry, but I will withhold judgment.”
“Go ahead.”
“Every multi I’ve studied so far is complying with existing standards, and the standards have been applied fairly. There’s been no sign of excessive enforcement pressures, and none of the environment directors I’ve met, or any of the executives, have complained about standards being excessive or unfair.”
“What is your opinion of the Stittaran Systems Survey Service?”
“I’ve so far dealt with only a small percentage of the Service.”
“But you’ve dealt with and met most of the key headquarters people.”
“That means little until I’ve met with the field people and determine whether the view and the facts are the same in both places.”
Both Morghan and Melarez nodded at that.
I had the feeling I’d just made a tactical error, if not an out-and-out mistake.
“Have you had a chance to evaluate how the local Survey handles the outies and their impact on the environment?”
“No. I’ve made preliminary inquiries and found that there’s insufficient data in the environmental files.” I didn’t want to mention enforcement files, because I hadn’t had a chance to get beyond a quick survey.
“Why do you think that is?”
“My initial feeling is that no one in enforcement has consolidated the information developed in individual cases into an integrated database. That’s generally not an enforcement function.”
“Is this true elsewhere?”
“Unfortunately. I’ve had to deal with that problem more than once.”
“Has the Service been cooperative?”
“They’ve provided everything that I’ve asked for without hesitation or reservation.” Even if I’ve had to request additional information a few times.
“Do you think that the destruction at the guest quarters was an accident?”
“I don’t know enough to answer th
at. It seems unlikely, but until I actually measured Stittaran storms, I would have said that they were not only unlikely, but physically and environmentally impossible.”
The questions went on for another half stan, but I had the feeling that the later questions were a cross between formality, the need to provide a documented broad range of inquiry on the part of the councilor, and an attempt to move my attention from some of the initial questions.
As I could tell the questions were heading toward the end, I made a comment of my own. “This has been, shall we say, rather puzzling.” I went on before either Morghan or Melarez could interrupt me. “I’ve done any number of ecological surveys, a few times after devastating storms, but this is the first time I’ve had half a dozen newslinkers at my door. Most surprisingly, they all knew who I was and what I’ve been doing.”
“Why would that be surprising, Dr. Verano?” replied Morghan, her voice as cool and smooth as ever. “According to the reports we receive from Bachman, the linkers there report everything, and Bachman is far larger. We don’t receive ecologists from Bachman that often. Is it surprising that they are interested in you, especially when you are involved in one of the few cases of storm damage in years?”
“Oh … I can understand the interest. What I found interesting is that they knew not only who I was, but where I was and what I was doing. So far as I know, there’s been no public knowledge of that. Most interesting of all was that they knew I’d be briefing you this morning.” I smiled.
I had to give the two credit. Neither of them looked at each other.
“Doctor,” said Morghan slowly and distinctly, “nothing can be kept secret on Stittara unless it is known to one person and one person only. Sometimes not even then.”
The One-Eyed Man Page 20