Since mat was exactly what I had been about to tell her, I thought about it for a moment. "Strong colors and pretty good technique," I said finally. "But it's going to overwhelm the wrong decor."
She quirked an eyebrow in what seemed to me genuine amusement. "And the subject matter?"
Fragging squirrely didn't seem to be a politic thing to say, so I settled for, "Interesting."
"Yes," she agreed with an arch smile. "Isn't it?"
Frag, that's one of the reasons I hate dealing with elves. No, correct that-with some elves. It's that pervasive "I know something you don't, nyah nyah" attitude so many of them have. Irritating, big-time.
Chantal Monot gestured to the open door. "Please," she said. "There are some things I'd like to discuss with you."
Of course there were. I shrugged, and I preceded her through the door into her office.
I was familiar with the way Diamond Head looked from the west-from the Honolulu side. Now I got to see it from the other side, and I had to admit it was just as striking. The TIC building was only three stories tall, but it seemed to be built on some kind of ridge or bluff, so there was nothing to block the president's view of the old, eroded crater.
While I was still staring, Monot took a seat behind the large desk. She gestured to one of the comfortable-looking guest chairs, and I sat down. "Tea?" she asked. Before I could either refuse or accept, she'd turned to a silver samovar on the credenza beside her and prepared two cups. Glasses, actually, in the Russian style. She handed one over to me. I sniffed, then sipped appreciatively. Never tried real Oolong tea? Your loss.
"I was serious about the subject of the paintings outside," Monot said at length. "Have you ever realized quite how pervasive the legend of a sunken continent, a lost world, actually is?"
I shrugged. "It's never really kept me up nights," I had to admit.
"It is interesting, though. What do you know about Lemuria?"
Again I shrugged. "It's where lemurs come from?"
I'd meant it as a smart-hooped comeback line, but she nodded approvingly. "In a way, yes. Did you know that, before geologists understood about continental drift, scientists were puzzled by the fact that fossilized lemur bones were found on two distinct continents, separated by thousands of kilometers of ocean? How had the lemurs crossed from one continent to another… if there hadn't once been a land bridge, a midoceanic continent, connecting the two? Since mere was no land bridge in existence, the only logical conclusion was that it had sunk centuries or millennia before."
I decided to stick with my response to the paintings. "Interesting." (Actually, I could hardly have cared less, but I figured it's best to be polite about the crank beliefs of the president and chief executive officer of Telestrian Industries Corporation, South Pacific Operations.)
"Isn't it?" she agreed. "What I find even more interesting is that the legends of Lemuria indirecdy involve the islands of Hawai'i. Do you know who originally colonized the islands, Mr. Montgomery?"
I shook my head, and she answered her own question. "Polynesians from Tahiti. According to some beliefs, they crossed the ocean, looking for their own sunken continent. There are even some who claim that this sunken continent will one day re-emerge from the water, with the volcano of Haleakala as its highest mountain peak."
She smiled enigmatically. "It's interesting how different, seemingly unrelated factors are actually connected, if you look below the surface." She paused, and I knew she was getting down to biz; all this drek about lemurs and sinking continents was just preamble.
"Like you, Mr. Montgomery," Monot continued after a moment. "You seem to be one of those unrelated factors. Yet you're not unrelated, are you? You're actually connected, directly or indirectly, with many different… well, let's call them threads."
I snorted. A tight feeling had been building in my chest throughout her lemur prattle. Now I realized what that feeling was-anger. "Look," I said sharply, "I've had enough of all this vague, oblique and veiled-reference crap, you scan? Everybody's talking at me like I know a lot more about what's going down than I do, and it's torquing me off. Barnard did it. Ho did it, fragging Ryumyo did it, Harlech did it, and now you're doing it…"
I stopped in midpurge as Monot raised a slender hand. Her brows knotted in a frown. "Who?" she asked.
It took me a moment to get my derailed train of thought back on track. I ticked them off on my fingers. "Barnard, Ho, Ryumyo, Harlech-"
"Harlech," she repeated, interrupting again. "Who was that?"
I hesitated. There was something strange in Monot's expression-something that made me suspect she knew all too well, and didn't like it one bit. "Quentin Harlech," I told her. "He said to call him Quinn."
She went slightly pale, and she whispered something then, under her breath. It could have been a repetition of the name I'd given her, but in the order you'd find it in a 'puter database, last name first. Or it could have been something else. ("Big worm / bakeware" time again…)
"That's the slag," I confirmed. Even though I didn't know jack about what was going down, I kept a good dose of bluster in my voice. If something had knocked Monot off-stride, maybe I could use it to my advantage. "But what's the big deal?" I asked, "He's an elf, too."
Chantal Monot's pale eyes flashed with momentary anger. Then her professional control took over, and I watched as she forced herself to calmness. "He may be an elf," she said at last, "but elves don't speak with one voice. Particularly on an issue as important as this." (Important, neh? I filed that gem away for future reference.)
I shrugged. "From what I've read, TIC is in like this"-I held up crossed fingers-"with the Tir government. Sometimes, your corp's an instrument of policy for the Tir nation. And if that isn't speaking with one voice-"
She broke in again. "We may be an instrument of policy for the Tir's leadership" she corrected coldly, "not for the nation." (And I filed that one away, too. It didn't make any sense at the moment, but maybe later…)
Monot gazed out me window at Diamond Head. The rock face was washed with the ruddy light of early morning. After almost a minute she turned back to me. "You spoke with… Quinn Harlech, didn't you, Mr. Montgomery? What did he tell you?"
"It didn't make much sense," I told her truthfully. "He said he was going to blow the lid off something. Let him do it for all I care-it's no skin off my hoop."
Monot nodded slowly. "Did he say how?"
"Not as far as I could tell." Then I hesitated. "Now I think about it, he implied he'd already done it"
"And I assume he knew of your association with Gordon Ho."
I nodded at that one. "He knew, all right." He'd seen my deputy's badge-gone, now-and certainly seemed to know what it meant.
Apparently that wasn't good news. Chantal Monot looked like one troubled elf. After a few more moments of thought she sighed. "Thank you for coming in, Mr. Montgomery. I appreciate your candor."
I snorted. "If it's candor you wanted, you could have gotten it without the narcodart," I pointed out.
Monot at least had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "I apologize for that, Mr. Montgomery, but our operative"- she must have meant the biff with the bracers-"evaluated your mental condition as being dangerous, to her and to yourself." (Translation: scared to the point of drekking myself. Granted.) "She made the field decision to incapacitate you rather than risking something a lot more unpleasant for all concerned."