The Aston Martin reached Monaco's perimeter road, where the seamless translucent shell of the dome rose out of the concrete sea wall, curving gradually overhead, massive enough to hold up the sky. She could see a couple of jetties on the outside, sleek white-painted yachts bobbing gently at their moorings. Large circular tidal-turbine lagoons of gene-tailored coral mottled the quiet sea all the way out to the darkening horizon. Monaco still refused to plug into France's electrical grid, remaining resolutely independent.
On the other side of the road were dignified hotels with black-glass lobby doors and long balconies. She watched them go past, feeling a vague sense of amusement that a town which had so meticulously recreated the ambience of long-lost imperialistic elegance in its fabric and culture should seek shelter by huddling under a hyper-modern structure like the dome. It was a failing of the set she moved through, she thought, that they never strived for anything new. The talent and resources deployed here could just as easily have been used to create something bold and innovative. Instead, they turned automatically to the past, drowning themselves in the safety of their genteel heritage.
Yet, for her, the replication was less than perfect. She recognized the quality of crispness in the lines of the buildings, a cold efficiency in the determinedly handsome layout which betrayed the mentality of its originators. Monaco was a compact bundle of wealth, its borders jealously guarded. It had become an enclave, a fortified castle of the rich, complete with drawbridge.
Even with her whiter than white passport and prepaid hotel reservation the Immigration officials had taken their time before allowing her in. Permanent residency within the principality was strictly limited; you had to be proposed by three residents and demonstrate assets in excess of four million Eurofrancs before you could even register for consideration.
So Charlotte stood in the airport arrivals lounge in a queue of impatient, nervous people watching enviously as resident card holders zipped through their channel without any fuss. She had been afraid the hard-nosed woman behind the customs desk would open the flower box in her flight bag, ask questions about it. But the customs and immigration setup seemed more like a ritual than anything else. The wait, the questions, underlining that Monaco was different, not some common tourist resort or gambling state.
It was while she was standing there that she saw the man for the second time that day. He was in the same queue, ten places behind her. There was something about him, the way his cool eyes were never looking at her when she turned round, his phlegmatic indifference to queueing, which set him slightly apart, creepy almost. At any other time she would have guessed him to be a hardline bodyguard for some Monaco plutocrat, coming home after a holiday. But she had seen him earlier in the day at the Cape Town spaceport, mingling among the crowd of friends and relatives that had greeted the other passengers on her spaceplane flight. If she had seen him in the departure lounge, waiting for the connecting flight to Monaco, then it would only be natural for him to be standing in the queue behind her. But what had he been doing in the crowd waiting for the spaceplane?
Finally, her passport had been cleared, her invitation and hotel reservation validated by the Immigration officer, a matronly woman in a stiff blue uniform. Charlotte obediently thumbprinted the declaration on the officer's terminal, confirming that she had read and would abide by the principality's laws. She received her temporary visa from the unsmiling woman. Their eyes had met for a second, and Charlotte read the uniquely female contempt for the thousandth time. She had worn a scarlet Ashmi jumpsuit for her flight back to Earth, tucked into black leather cowboy boots, gold Arnstrad cybofax wafer clipped into her top pocket, Ferranti sunglasses. About as expensively casual as you could get; she enjoyed the look in the mirror, a designer test-pilot. Then the Immigration bitch went and smashed her mood.
It was an appropriate entrance to Monaco, she thought later; scorn and suspicion dogging her steps.
The El Harhari hotel wasn't much different to the others ringing the inside of the dome. A little larger, perhaps. Its colonnaded frontage a pearl-white marble that glowed pink in the directionless sunset. The Aston Martin swept smoothly up a looped drive lined by tall, bushy-topped palm trees. There was a stream of cars ahead of it, disgorging passengers outside the hotel's main entrance.
The El Harhari was hosting the annual Newfields ball, a charity that sponsored educational courses for underprivileged children throughout Europe. There was nothing remarkable about the charity, or the ball. At least half a dozen similar fund-raising events were held in Monaco every night. But Newfields rose far above the ordinary by having Julia Evans on its board of trustees, making its ball the social event of the month. Tickets were seven thousand Eurofrancs apiece; touts charged twenty and cursed their scarcity.
Dmitri Baronski, Charlotte's sponsor, had managed to get her one, shaking his head in dismay when she phoned him with the request. "What on Earth do you want to go to that function for?" he'd asked. His thin, lined face seemed more fragile than usual, white hair drooping limply. The valley outside the Prezda arcology where he lived was visible through his apartment's picture window behind him.
"I just want to see Julia Evans," Charlotte had replied equitably. "I've always admired her. Meeting her would be a real treat." She didn't like holding out on the old man, but it was a harmless piece of fun, exciting too, in its own way. That was the real reason she had agreed to make the delivery. She had spent years striving to bring stability into her life, overlooking the fact that it was the partner of monotony.
"All right," Baronski had grumbled. "But all she'll do is shake your hand and thank you for supporting the charity. Same as everybody else. You won't be invited back to Wilholm Manor for tea on the lawn, you know."
"I don't expect to be. A handshake will suit me fine."
It had taken him six hours to track down a ticket for her. She never doubted he could do it. Then when he called her at the Cape Town spaceport to confirm, he also told her to introduce herself to Jason Whitehurst as soon as she reached the El Harhari. "He's a nice enough old boy; and he's English, too, so you should get on fine."
"OK." She had kept her face perfectly composed, just as Baronski himself had trained her, not letting her disappointment show. But it would have been nice to go to just one ball as a regular guest.
Baronski squirted Jason Whitehurst's data profile into her cybofax for her to study during the flight to Monaco, and signed off chuntering.
She smiled fondly at the cybofax screen after his image had faded. Nothing ever seemed to faze the old duffer, no request too obtuse for him to handle; his shadowy web of contacts rivalled a superpower's intelligence agency. It was a job Charlotte would love to take over when he retired. She suspected most of his girls shared that ambition.
The footman who opened the Aston Martin's door was dressed in smart grey livery. Charlotte alighted gracefully, careful not to smile when she caught his eyes straying to her legs as her skirt rode up on the car's cushioning. She'd had ten-centimetre bone grafts put in her legs, six centimetres above the knee, four below. Her muscles had been recontoured around the extensions. It was an expensive treatment, but well worth it. Her new legs were powerfully athletic, beautifully shaped; designed to make men wish.
Five huge aureate chandeliers hung in the El Harhari's lobby, throwing a silver haze of light over the guests as they filed into the ballroom. The men wore formal dinner jackets, although some of them had military-style regalia complete with swords. The women were all in long gowns, dripping with diamonds.