One of the crowd was an Earther, in a plain gray suit.
“Mr. Jones?”
“Yes,” he said, appalled that the man going through this clandestine charade of code words hadn’t bothered to look other than what he was—Earther to the core, and near the Trend.
“We can take the number 4,” the man said, punching in a code on the nearest bank. And said, blocking with his hand an annoyed woman who tried to input her own destination, “Sorry. This car is locked. Maintenance.”
Damned sure the Earther didn’t look like maintenance. He was as conspicuous as a missionary in a Blunt Street bar. Procyon looked a mortified apology at the woman, at two others watching the embarrassing little scene.
The car came. The escort waved him inside. He went, and the escort followed.
The door shut. The car moved.
“I want to see the badge,” Procyon said, furious, and the agent reached to his pocket and flashed it. “Up close, please.”
The man gave him a slower look at it. The badge had a number, a photo ID, and the governor’s seal. James Peter Fordham was the name. The number was 980S. Procyon logged that to memory, leadoff to a day he was sure was going to be excruciating. The Old Man would want detail. He logged every detail to memory, including that number, in case even getting there went wrong.
“Why don’t you walk on ahead down the street when we get out and I’ll follow you?” he suggested to the cop.
Fordham wasn’t, surely, entirely unaware of his appearance. “I’m supposed to take you to an address.”
“Just head right, and I’ll follow you,” he said. “I’ve no interest in losing you. I’m clearly not Earther. You clearly are. I’m afraid there are already questions.” His sister’s visit last night loomed like a bad dream. He’d been public, getting into the lift. Someone in the crowd might, worse, know his face. He hadn’t been looking around. But he wasn’t exactly incognito on the street, and when Earthers came throwing police authority around to get a lift car, it made noise. If anyone had noticed him, gossip would say Procyon had been in a suit a second day in a row and that a government slink had put him in a lift car. And he was going to have to live with it.
Ardath would get up to face her own day, usually noonish. Everybody in her circle might know about his doings by then. If they did, they’d tell her. And damn it, then there’d be another round of chatter and gossip.
She’d follow through with the program they’d agreed on. She’d say he’d been stupid, and that he’d gotten himself in trouble.
But if the governor wasn’t more careful than he had been, then the rumor would get out that he’d met with Gide. He hadn’t even thought of the timing involved. His sister denied everything, and then the governor’s handling of this whole affair let the big news hit the street. He’d be notorious by suppertime. Ardath would have to disown him for real. He might not be able to venture onto the Trend for weeks without drawing comments behind hands, and catcalls in some of his old haunts. It was more than inconvenient. It was a disaster, before the day even started.
And given the meeting with Algol, and Algol’s going to his sister with gossip—hell, he didn’t know what to do.
The lift took a turn, dived, and zipped along. Probably it would have been common sense to sit down during the gyrations. Fordham didn’t, so he didn’t.
The blue panel light flashed imminent arrival at their destination. The car slowed to a stop, and Fordham keyed the door open on one of the really high-priced locales—up in the official residencies, near where the governor lived, Procyon guessed, if not in the same neighborhood. He doggedly didn’t gawk at the decor, just took in the fancy windowed balconies, every one jutting out further toward the street than the one below, until the green and white hanging plants dripping off those balconies closed in the overhead. He’d seen this place in vids, he realized. It was Concord Street, the heart of the Earther sections. Lights embedded in the tiles came up from the centerline of the deck to make the plants grow. You could walk on those light-circles, and they did, crossing the street, a moment of intense warmth and illumination that came and went, in the heat-budget of this sector. Foot traffic moved slowly along these streets, sparse, concentrated around a handful of corners. No shops. No eateries. Just a handful of clustered gardens and fountains.
They turned down a side street where balconies were slanted in the other direction, and brilliant sim-sun filtered down from above, past rising curtains of vines, sheets of flowers. The plants shed a few leaves and dead petals onto the walk, and a small dome-shaped cleaner-bot idled along, nabbing the recently fallen detritus as prey and reward.
Another turn, to a nook not that different from Grozny Close, except the garden enclosed here held sizable trees. What was truly remarkable to his eye—there was only one door in this whole close, with numerous off-ground windows.
Ultimate luxury, Procyon said to himself. Real privacy. Huge premises and a private courtyard. Could anybody have more than that?
Fordham led him up to the door in question and punched the button. “Mr. Stafford to see Ambassador Gide.”
“Alone,” the door speaker said ominously. And the door opened.
Fordham, duly advised, stayed back. Procyon took a deep breath and walked into an inside foyer decorated in plants, glass, and polished stone.
The door immediately hissed shut behind him. He hadn’t been that worried about his physical safety until he heard that door seal. The governor’s man was outside, but he was completely on his own in here. And his heartbeat raced.
He walked forward a few steps, where the foyer gave a view of two side rooms and a hall ahead. He looked to the left. Fancy cream-colored furniture, pale arabesque tilework. Potted palms, each with a growth light.
Machinery whirred behind him. He looked back toward that other room, and met the gold, tear-shaped containment that he’d seen on the news.
“Mr. Ambassador?” Trembling with fear never helped. He took a deep breath and tried a deeper, steadier voice. “I’m Procyon. I’m told you want to see me.”
“I do see you.” The voice came from the containment, deep and rich in proximity. The machine trundled forward with a soft whirr of gears. So positioned, it occupied the foyer and blocked the way out. “Mr. Jeremy Stafford. Young. Outsider. And of course highly modified.”
“Yes, sir.” A little nod. He felt a cold regard all over his skin. “That’s who I am.”
“You certainly look human.”
“I am human, sir.”
“A point of controversy, where I come from. But all the same, you present a decent appearance.” The gleaming gold surface fumed, condensing a fog around it, and acquired blue tones. It deformed, and astonishingly extruded a bubble that became a face, a head and shoulders as large as life.
And it thought hewas an oddity.
“Procyon. That’s the name you prefer, Mr. Stafford?”
“Yes, sir. I rarely use my registry name.”
The machine rolled closer. The head was eye to eye with him, now, and he didn’t like it.
“You work with Marak. You’re his personal observer.”
Attack. Straight to the issue. “I can’t discuss my work, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Well, well, and also working closely with Chairman Brazis.”
“I can’t discuss my work, sir. I truly can’t. I’d like to help you, but there’s no way I can talk about that.”
“You know the Chairman, and you work directly with Marak. No need to discuss it. We know. We know, for instance, that Marak is in some immediate danger down on the planet. A sea is pouring into a very large basin and he’s on a rather precarious neck of land chasing after his missing transportation.”
He was disturbed that this creature knew things he didn’t—the ship must have gotten into ordinary communication flow, likely from Earther sources—and he was even more disturbed that Marak might be in danger he hadn’t known, but he tried not to react.