“OK,” said Harry, nodding slowly. “Ten minutes.”
“See you there,” said Major Sparrowhawk. Then she turned on her heels and left the Supply shed, leaving Chocolate Harry scratching his head in bewilderment.
11
Journal #822-
A visit to Hix’s World appears, at first glance, to be a step into the deepest past. Yet nowhere else are you likely to find a society so completely dependent on an intimately interconnected, highly technological, spacegoing galactic community-and oblivious to that very dependence. Hix’s World appears to have been founded on the premise that one can eat one’s cake and still have it to admire. That, at least, is the only way I can interpret the notion of a bucolic existence that somehow manages to avoid such bucolic inconveniences as labor, famine, pestilence, and general misery.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Hix’s World is the belief of many of its citizens that their way of life embodies the deepest spiritual values of modern civilization. From the point of view of a thoroughgoing pragmatist such as myself, such a belief appears as paradoxical as the inhabitants’ belief that they have freed themselves from dependence on the technological infrastructure of the Alliance as a whole.
As far as I can tell, this belief is an utter delusion.
The customs inspectors at Hix’s World gave Phule’s luggage an unusually thorough going-over. Having spent part of the voyage reading up on the planet’s culture and customs, he was neither surprised nor unprepared. After replacing a couple of toiletry items with “Hix’s-safe” equivalents at the shipboard store, he received the inspectors’ thumbs-up and went on his way after only forty minutes. His immediate destination was a boardinghouse that catered to off-world clients, a likely place for Beeker and Nightingale to be staying-and a good place to stay, himself.
He arrived at La Retraite Rustique to find the sitting room full of tourists dressed in casual but expensive outfits, waiting to be called for the evening meal. The well-dressed young woman behind the desk shot an exasperated look in his direction, wrinkling her nose at his Legion jumpsuit. “May I assist you?” she asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear she hoped she couldn’t.
“Quite likely,” said Phule, setting down his bag. “First of all, I’m interested in a room.”
“Impossible,” said the woman, throwing up her hands. “We have been fully booked since the beginning of Waarmth.” Hix’s World had adopted its own eccentric calendar, featuring supposedly natural names for the time units equivalent to months.
“Ah, good for you,” said Phule, smiling broadly. “I’m glad to know that such a fine establishment is so popular- but I’m sure you can find an open room for one of the old regulars.” Phule himself had never been there, but his mother had taken vacations on Hix’s World several times while he was growing up-which was how he knew of the place.
“Regular or irregular, it is simply impossible,” said the woman, with an air of finality. “There’s not even a closet to be had. The entire district is full for the Floribunda Fete.”
Phule kept a broad smile on his face as his hand went into his pocket and returned with a small rectangular object which he placed on the counter just in front of the woman. She dropped her gaze to inspect it; when she looked up, with a gasp, her eyes were open wide. “A Dilithium Express card!” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Phule. “Do you think that’s good for a closet?”
“I think we can arrange something,” she said. “At your service, Mr.-uh…” She tried to make out the name on the card.
“Captain Jester will do,” said Phule. “Now-about that room…”
“Madame will be delighted to have you here, Captain!” she said. The young woman clapped her hands, and a man appeared from a door behind the desk. His tastefully rustic attire did not in the least disguise the fact that he was the bellman. “Andrew! Show the Captain to the Olympic Suite!”
The Olympic Suite was several degrees more elegant than any closet Phule had ever seen. Phule tipped Andrew, closed the door behind the bellman, and poured himself a cold glass of mineral water from the suite’s refreshment center. He sat down at the suite’s communications center, which was tastefully hidden inside a faux-Victorian rolltop desk. He’d learned from his mistakes on Cut ‘N’ Shoot and Rot’n‘art. No more dashing about on a wild gryff chase, or worse yet depending on locals whose entire stake in the success of his search consisted of a generous paycheck- an overly generous one, considering the lack of results on Rot’n’art. This time, he was going to use his own very ample resources to track down Beeker and Nightingale.
He synchronized his Port-a-Brain with the hotel’s web hookup, and began an automatic scan for Beeker’s machine, a virtual twin of his own. If Beeker’s computer had been connected to the planetary network anytime in the last two weeks, Phule’s machine would be able to detect it. Better yet, if the machine was currently in use, he should be able to locate it instantly. If that happened, he intended to charter a private jumpcraft to the exact location-with any luck, in plenty of time to catch his errant butler. Of course, if Beeker had turned on his computer, he should have seen Phule’s email. Had he not turned it on? Or had he seen the message and decided, for some reason, not to answer it?
Much to his relief, the Port-a-Brain was still functional; the special security systems hadn’t taken over. So Beeker must be in range. He started his custom search engine, and, while it ran, went to look out the suite’s picture windows, which overlooked a stretch of countryside that could have been somewhere in Provence, several centuries earlier. In fact, it was a careful reproduction of a stretch of ancient Provencal countryside, brought about by the most unintru-sive and organic methods available, of course. If an occasional bush was the wrong species or color, that was a small price to pay for a program of minimalist terraforming.
As he cast his gaze over the pleasant contours of the rolling hills, covered with Old Earthlike greenery, Phule could hear the Port-a-Brain gently whirring in the background. It was a very soothing sound, telling him that one of the most powerful artificial brains in the known galaxy was working to solve his problem. In the middle distance he saw something moving; just what, he couldn’t quite determine. Probably some creature imported from human worlds; the settlers hadn’t so much expelled the indigenous flora and fauna from the terraformed sections as gently persuaded them to take their business elsewhere. Even so, a few species had stubbornly resisted the program-part of the charm of the place, Hix’s World old-timers would tell you.
Then, all of a sudden, his eyes went into sharp focus and he forgot entirely about the whirring of the Port-a-Brain. There, crossing the faux-Provencal landscape, was none other than Nightingale!
The owner of La Retraite Rustique sat in her office, looking over architects’ renderings of the new addtion she planned for her hotel. She hated trying to extrapolate from the drawings to the actual structures they purported to represent. “Damn lying pictures,” she muttered. “Why can’t they show you what it’s really going to look like?” The answer was obvious, of course-if the drawings looked like the finished product, the customer was a lot less likely to pay for the work.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she growled, not really annoyed at the interruption as much as generally disgruntled. She’d once owned the most fashionable and lucrative resort hotel and casino on Lorelei. Now she was trying to start over on a new world-and finding it a lot more work than she had any appetite for.