House of the Sun (9 page)

"They're
always
around, brah. Some people are never satisfied with what they got. Yanks out, Japs out,
haoles
out..."

I cut him off. "Howlies?"

"Haoles
." He spelled the word. "Anglos, brah. White folk. Foreigners ... like you, okay?" The smile I could hear in his voice robbed the words of offense. Then he continued, "Like I said,
haoles
out, corps out ..." He snorted again, letting me know what he thought about that attitude.

We pulled out of the airport compound, and onto a modern six-lane freeway. Scott opened up the throttle, and the Phaeton's turbine sang. I glanced at the wet bar, thought about it, then—what the frag anyway?—cracked it open and searched through the miniature bottles inside for some Scotch. Glenmorangie, twenty-five-year-old single-malt—well,
that
would certainly make the grade. The limo's active suspension ate up the road vibration so I had no trouble pouring a healthy shot into a heavy crystal glass and adding a splash of water. I silently toasted the back of Scott's head, and in the rearview mirror I saw his eyes crinkle in a smile. I sipped, and let the Scotch work its magic.

"Scott," I said after a couple of minutes, "you know who I am, right?"

He paused, and I knew he was thinking about how best to answer. "Of course I do, Mr. Tozer," he said at last.

I smiled. "Call me Dirk," I reminded him quietly.

He smiled again and admitted, "Okay, yeah, I know who you are."

"And Jacques Barnard told you what I was here for?"

"Don't know any Jacques Barnard," he lied firmly. "My boss is Elsie Vogel at Nebula." He paused. "But yeah, I know you're here to deliver a message, and I know who you're going to deliver it to."

"Tell me."

He shook his head. "You don't need to know that yet," he said, and for the first time I could hear the hint of steel under the friendliness. This well-dressed ork wasn't just any corp gofer, I realized, he had some juice. "I'll drive you there when the time comes," he went on, and again his voice was geniality itself. "Don't you worry about that."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, probably. The man you're to meet—he's on one of the outer islands today—won't be back till late tonight, early tomorrow morning. Emergency trip, or something like that." He turned for a moment and grinned at me over his shoulder. "Means you've got the whole of today and tonight to see the sights, brah. And me at your disposal." He hooked a large thumb at his chest. "Number one tour guide, that's me."

I sighed and contemplated that over another sip of Glenmorangie. I didn't really want to admit it, but I was enjoying myself. I kind of liked Scott—even knowing he had corporate steel under the good-ol'-boy exterior—and I
certainly
liked the idea of having a chauffeured limo at my beck and call. But . . .

But I had to keep my level of paranoia up. Despite all the trappings, this wasn't a vacation, this was biz. And, worse, I was in the dark about a lot of what the biz entailed. I didn't know who I had to meet, or why. I didn't know what would happen to me afterward. And I didn't know who or what had any interest in getting between me and the objective. I was out of my territory—I had to keep reminding myself of that—playing in someone else's yard, and out of my comfort zone. Who knows: Everything might come off as smooth as synthsilk. I deliver the message, maybe receive a reply, then Scott ferries me back to Awalani, and I'm winging my way home to Cheyenne. But if it didn't, and I suddenly found myself rather dead because I hadn't taken precautions, then I wouldn't even have the satisfaction of being able to haunt Barnard through all eternity. The fault would be my own, not his. I
was
exposed—that's what I had to remember, every moment of every day. And I had to do what I could to minimize that exposure. Which reminded me . . .

"Scott."

"Yes, Mr. Dirk?"

"I had to leave some ...
personal
effects .. . behind me on the mainland, if you know what I mean." The back of his neck wrinkled, and I knew he was grinning like a bandit. "I
want to correct that problem. Can you help me out?"

"You really don't need it, y'know." He rapped on the driver's side window with a bulging knuckle. "Do you have any idea what it takes to punch through this stuff?"

I wasn't going to be put off that easily. "Even so," I pressed. "Call it a good-luck charm .. . like a rabbit's foot. I just wouldn't feel comfortable without it."

He laughed aloud at that. "Yeah, a nine-millimeter rabbit's foot, I bet." He sobered quickly. "Okay. It's chill, brah, I'll buff you out." He glanced back again. "And I'll get you some appropriate clothes, too. Okay?"

"I've always been partial to kevlar," I told him, "if you can get it in one of my colors."

Ahead of us, against the blackness of the sky, I could see the lighted ziggurats of skyrakers. For a moment I had one of those moments of disorientation. I could as well have been cruising north on Highway 5 toward downtown Seattle as west on Hawai'i Route 1. In the dark most cities looked the same.

Again, Scott seemed to pick up my unspoken thought. "Too bad you had to catch the red-eye. This is a real nice view—a good intro to the city, y'know what I mean?"

"So what's Honolulu like?" I asked him. "You live in the city, don't you?"

"Yeah, I've got a place in the Nebula complex." He shrugged. "It's a city, y'know? It's got its good points and it's got its bad points. Places you shouldn't miss, and places you shouldn't be caught dead. It's got its corporators, it's got its
burakumin
"—he used the Japanese term for the homeless or dispossessed, an insulting word that was gaining currency among corp suits to refer to people without corporate affiliation—"and it's got its tourists." He laughed.
"Bruddah,
does it have its tourists."

"High-level corps types?"

"Most of them, yeah. Whole swarms of them coming over from Asia, and some from Europe. But there's still the mom-and-pop types who've saved for years to get away and splash money around for a while."

"That's what drives the economy, isn't it? Tourism?"

"That's what the mainland guidebooks say," he agreed. "But most of it's corp-driven, really. Hey, Hawai'i's the biggest corporate free port going. Where do you
think
the money comes from?"

I thought about that for a while as the skyrakers reared up around us, constellations of electric stars in the firmament. "So what are the bad points about the city?" I asked at last.

"The politicians," Scott responded at once with a humorless laugh. "I don't know what they're like where you come from, brah, but here they're like the trees: crooked with their palms out." He chortled as he pointed out the window to a coconut palm on the street corner.

He slowed and swung the big limo around a tight corner.

We sighed to a stop, and he killed the engine. "We're here," he announced unnecessarily.

"Which is where?" I asked him a few moments later as I watched him unload my single bag from the limo's hangarsized trunk. I looked up at the building looming over me: white as only artificial marble can be, multiple complex curves that seemed to give the building a sense of movement in the faint pink of the predawn.

"The Diamond Head Hotel," he told me, "right next to—you guessed it—Diamond Head itself."

"Open to the public?"

"You've got to be kidding, brah," the big ork snorted. "Even
I
don't have high enough corp connections to stay here. You pack big juju, even if you don't know it."

I nodded as I followed him up the ramp toward the lobby. There were corporate hostelries in Seattle—places open only to various ranks of corporators, regardless of their actual affiliations—but the concept hadn't really caught on there yet. (In Cheyenne? Maybe that backwater burg will catch up in a decade, chummer.) Apparently, the high-tone suits like the hostelries because they contribute even more to the separation between them and the
burakumin
... a class that included me, which gave the whole thing a nice touch of irony, didn't it?

We breezed right through the lobby. Scott didn't even glance at the smooth-faced slot behind the front desk, so I didn't either. Up the elevator we went—I noticed the ork had to wave a keycard at the control panel before the door would open and again before the elevator would start—and out onto the landing on the seventeenth floor. The hotel—corporate hostelry or not—had the same feel and ambiance as modem hotels anywhere in the world, all the individuality and character pressed out of them. I could just as well have been in the Sheraton in Seattle.

I followed Scott all the way down to the end of the hall and waited while he waved the keycard again at the door. The maglock snapped back, and he pushed the door open with his foot, stepping aside to let me enter first.

Well, okay, this
wasn't
like the Sheraton ... at least, those rooms in the Sheraton I've had cause to visit. Come to think of it, it was conceptually the nonmobile analog of the Phaeton's passenger compartment: similar overstuffed couches, similar entertainment suite, similar wet-bar arrangement.

Pure, packaged hedonistic luxury, in peach and aqua. Chuckling softly at my reaction—probably a pretty good gaffed-fish imitation—Scott carried my case through into the bedroom of the suite and placed it gently on a bed big enough for one hell of a party. As he came back toward me, I had the momentary urge to slip him a tip.

"You want to grab some shut-eye?" he asked.

I thought about it, glanced at that bed, and thought about it again. "Not a bad idea," I admitted.

"No problem." He checked his watch, a pricey Quasar chronograph (yet more evidence, if I'd really needed it, that he was more than a simple limo driver). "How's about I swing by in about three hours?"

"Make it four," I told him. "And—"

He cut me off with a grin. "Don't worry, Mr. Dirk, I'll bring you your rabbit's foot.
And
some real clothes."

* * *

True to form—whenever I really feel like I need sleep, it happens this way—I didn't slip into the deepest, most restful phase of sleep until fifteen minutes before I'd set the alarm to go off. So my eyes were still dry and gritty, my thoughts just a touch fogged, when I rolled out of the party-bed.

Sun was pouring through the picture window, and I was diverted for almost a full minute by the view as I stood there naked in the middle of the room. I was looking out toward Diamond Head—I assume that's what it was, at least—a huge outcropping of weathered rock. From this angle it didn't look so much like a diamond as a slightly crooked anvil, but at that moment, I couldn't have cared less. It was beautiful as all hell, wreathed around its base by lush foliage and even lusher mansions, silhouetted against a sky that was a clearer and purer blue than any I'd ever seen before. If there was any drek in the atmosphere—particulates, NO
_x
, and other miscellaneous nasties—there wasn't enough of it to take the edge off the view's clarity. Not like Seattle—in fragging spades—or even like Cheyenne. One of the advantages of being an island in the middle of the Pacific, I figured, watching the trade winds stir the coconut palms lining the shore: The prevailing winds blow all your pollution problems out to sea. Not a bad system, if you can arrange it.

I shook off my fascination with the view and headed for the bathroom to take care of the fur that had built up on my teeth, in addition to other matters. I'd thrown on a bathrobe and was debating doing something drastic with my hair—mousse, maybe or (better yet) some fragging varnish—when the suite's door signal chirped.

You know how you can tell a
real
luxury hotel from a wannabe? A front-door intercom in the bathroom, within easy reach of both drekker and bathtub. The Diamond Head Hotel definitely fit the first category. I leaned over and hit the intercom switch. "Yeah?"

The two-centimeter thumbnail screen lit up, and I saw Scott's grinning face. "You up and around, Mr. Dirk?"

"More or less. Come on in, make yourself at home. I'll be out in a couple of ticks." I hit the key labeled Door Unlock.

When I emerged a few moments later, the big ork was standing in the middle of the living room staring out the picture windows, transfixed by the same view that had nailed me earlier. He was in mufti. He'd looked big enough in his tailored business suit. Now, the impression of overwhelming size was emphasized by the fact that he wore a Hawai'ian shirt—yes, those things were still in fashion, apparently—that made him look like a profusion of jungle flowers that had decided to take a stroll. On the couch near him were a couple of parcels.

He turned as I emerged from the bathroom. "Sorry to keep you waiting," I told him, running my hands through my hair, which still stood out in places like stickpins.

Scott chuckled and patted one of his own unruly cowlicks. "I hear you, bruddah." He gestured to the parcels on the couch. "Brought you some things. Want to try them on?"

"Did you guess at the sizes?" I looked again at the chauffeur's two-ax-handle shoulders. How good would he be at judging the size of anyone with a normal physique?

"No need, I just checked your file. One-eighty-five height, eighty-nine mass. One-oh-five regular in the chest, eighty-four centimeters in the waist. Right?"

"Not quite." I was perversely glad that he'd got
something
wrong. Christ ... if Barnard had my fragging
measurements
on file, what else did he have in my docket? An itemized list of sexual conquests? An estimate of my daily calorie intake? "Closer to eighty-six in the waist these days."