Outside the compound, the forest had been allowed to run more or less riot. Inside, everything-the position of every tree and shrub, even the proportions of the winding driveway-seemed to be laid out with mathematical precision. I felt like I was cruising through a tropical version of a Japanese formal garden… which is exactly what I was doing, of course.
I gave a heartfelt sigh and shot Scott a sour look. "You could have told me Tokudaiji was a fragging yakuza oyabun," I pointed out.
"Hey, don't give me that stink-eye," he protested. "Not my idea, brah. Just following orders."
"What an original excuse," I muttered.
The oyabun's mansion nestled up against the steep slope of a greenery-clad hill. He'd obviously got himself a good architect, had the yak boss-every line of the house and its outbuildings harmonized perfectly' with me contours of the terrain around it. How many million nuyen would a place like this set you back? I wondered. More than I'd ever see.
As we pulled up, I found myself looking around for more of the suit-clad samurai who'd greeted us at the gate. I couldn't see any, but I could feel their presence. Nothing happened for almost a minute. Scott killed the Rolls's engine, but he didn't open the door, didn't even move. I figured he knew what he was doing, so I concentrated on doing the same kind of nothing. Again, I imagined invisible fingers of electromagnetic energy scanning the car and our clothes, counting rivets and fillings and the like.
Finally, a figure emerged from the front door of the mansion-another suit-clad samurai-and stopped a couple of meters from the front quarter of the car. As if that had been his signal-which it probably was, of course-Scott climbed out, came around, and held my door open for me. As I emerged from the air-conditioned comfort of the car, the heat and humidity-and the unmistakable smell of jungle-was like walking into a door.
"Just take this all chill, okay?" Scott whispered, without moving his lips. I snorted. What the frag did he expect me to do? Go ballistic for no good reason, and try to cack the samurai with my bare hands? Yeah, right. For an instant my left hip felt awfully lonely without the weight of the Seco. Scott took up station to my left and one step back as I walked toward the Armant6-clad samurai.
When I was a couple of strides away, the man turned wordlessly and strode off toward the front of the house, ob¬viously expecting me to follow. With a shrug, 1 did. Through a set of large double doors we went-the chrysanthemum motif was carved into those doors as well, just in case a visitor hadn't gotten the message already-and into the atrium of the house.
And "atrium" is exactly the right word. The place was laid out like a Roman villa with a central open area. I guess I expected something more in the neighborhood of a Japanese rock garden complete with fishpond and hoi. Wrong, chummer. No rocks growing in the sand, no mutant immor¬tal carp. The atrium was paved with marble and sported a couple of benches plus a handful of classical-style statues. (Suddenly I flashed on the formal garden in the background of Barnard's vidcall. Did he and Tokudaiji share the same fragging decorator or what?) In the bright Hawai'ian sunlight, the white marble glared.
Our samurai guide turned left down a… well, if this was a church, I'd call it a cloister-a corridor open on one side, looking out over the atrium. (Weird mixture of styles and symbols in this house. But somehow they seemed to mesh and the amalgam worked.) Two more side-boys materialized out of nowhere flanking me and Scott a couple of paces back. Again, no weapons were visible; but, again, the way they carried themselves convinced me they wouldn't need weapons to take down anything less man a fragging dzoo-noo-qua.
We played follow-me-leader halfway down the cloister, then hung a left through another heavy wooden door. (No chrysanthemum on this one, as if it mattered.) Two more suit-clad sammies were waiting for us in the room-a small antechamber decorated in muted tones, very serious and elegant. The two new sammies pulled out scanners and went over every centimeter of my body. Very polite about it, they were-as polite as you can be when you're doing something like that-constantly murmuring "Sumimasen, chotto, excuse me." Never once did they touch me-no pat-down, no search of my pockets or whatever. The process took a couple of minutes and evidently they were satisfied with the results, confident mat I didn't have a heavy pistol concealed in my left ear or a hand grenade in my cheek. Both sammies bowed formally to me with one last "Sumimasen," and focused their attention on a resigned-looking Scott.
His anxiety about a cavity search was misplaced-they never so much as touched him either. Granted, they were a little more intrusive in terms of how close they brought the scanners, and they didn't give him even one "Sumimasen," but there was nothing invasive or proctological about the procedure. One of the sammies, an older slag, with strategically silvering hair and hollow cheeks, showed specific interest in a stickpin Scott wore in his lapel. To me it looked like some land of Hawai'ian idol, a pot-bellied little guy with big wide eyes, made out of sterling silver. The old slag didn't scan it with his detectors, but just stared at it for a while, a slightly puzzled frown on his face. Then he shrugged and moved on. 1 shot Scott a questioning look. The big ork just-shrugged.
Finally, the scanning and examining was done, and the door on me other side of the antechamber swung open. One of the Armante garbed sammies gestured us through. As I stepped forward, Scott again took up his position a step back and to my left I strode through the door…
And stopped. I've always been a sucker for books. Real books, the paper and ink kind, the kind you can hold in your hands, the kind with real covers and bindings. (Sure, I know, it's the content that really counts-you can't judge a book, drekcetera-but if you don't already understand the pure, sensory pleasure of opening a book and flipping the pages, you probably never will… and your loss.) As a bibliophile, it's always been my dream to have a library-one room devoted entirely to books. If I had to envision that room, it would have a couple of large windows for natural light, but every other square meter of wall space would be taken up with bookshelves. There'd be one chair specifically for reading-a big old wing chair, preferably (although I'd probably retrofit a massage unit)-a couple of small tables to hold decanters of single-malt Scotch, and maybe two or three other (lesser) chairs in case I ever invited friends into my sanctum sanctorum.
Rescan mat description. That's exactly the room we were ushered into, all the way down to the cut-glass decanter of smoky amber liquid on the side table. My first reaction was, "Yeah, all right." My second, "There ain't no fragging justice." And then I suppressed both those reactions and focused all my attention on the slag watching us from the wing chair.
He looked old and frail with bones as thin and fragile as a bird's, his skin pale and parchment-thin. He was nearly bald, and his hands-steepled thoughtfully before his lips- were scrawny and fleshless. It was his eyes that caught and held my attention, though; dark, intense eyes, the eyes of a hawk. Intelligence and awareness glinted deep in those eyes, like windows into the soul of a young and vibrant man who only happened to be wearing the body of an octogenarian. Strength of personality radiated from him in waves. Here was a man to respect, I realized-a man to fear, perhaps, but also a man to like.
I felt Scott's presence at my elbow. Behind us, I heard me library door click shut. I blinked, and for the first time I noticed the aide-another twenty-first-century samurai- standing silently behind the oyabun's chair.
Mr. Ekei Tokudaiji was silent for a few moments as his eyes scanned my face and-mat's what it felt like, at least- probed the depths of my soul. Eventually, his thin lips drew up in a gentle smile. "Mr. Montgomery," he said. His voice was smooth as velvet, not loud-but then it didn't have to be-and totally accentless. "Welcome. Please." He gestured to a chair-another leather wing chair, but smaller than his-mat faced him.