"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 hangar-sized 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.