"The corp meat-mechanics refer to him as the first Al in a wet chip. Bastards."
"Amen to that." I whipped the wheel around and pulled into the semi-circular drive in front of the ParVenue. "We're here."
An ork valet opened my door and helped me out. "Be nice to my car and I'll be nice to you," I told him with a smile. He glanced up at me, surly, until he met my eyes. The dark ring surrounding my green irises zapped a little respect into him.
"Yes, sir. Not a scratch, sir."
I nodded happily. What's the purpose of having Killer Rings in your eyes if you can't make use of them? A howl from the Old One rose from the depths of my mind, but I stifled it.Not this time, you old tick hound. Nothing and no one to fight here.
The ParVenue Club had some fairly unique architecture. The drive led to a simple three-story brown-stone facade, much like the one Doctor Raven used as his headquarters. The prefab granite looked suitably weathered to give the building an air of antiquity, and the copper awnings glowed green in an advertisement for building fossilizers. In a high-speed, low-drag world where a venerable genealogy means respectability and virture, this building came off like an old-money family with a virgin daughter.
The door elf, nattily attired in a long, scarlet wool coat with gold braid, smiled cautiously as Jimmy and I approached his station. "Good evening, gentlemen." He turned the word into a title that implied his pleasure at seeing us, though his tense stance and sour glance belied his words.
"Evening, yourself." I gave him a hey-everything-is-cool-here-chummer smile. "You'll want to verify our memberships?"
His tension eased just a microvolt. "Yes, sir, I am afraid I must." He reached back and touched a brick with a white-gloved hand. A panel slid up and the hole in the wall extruded a blocky lucite sheet. I smiled and pressed my right hand to it. A light passed under it and back, then the beeped verification of membership. The elf smiled. "Very good, sir. And this is your guest?"
I speared the man with a questioning glance. "Guest? Mr. Mackelroy is a member." Winking at Jimmy, I waved him forward.
The door elf paled-which is quite a feat for an elf anyway. "I am afraid you might be mistaken, Mr. Kies. He can enter as your guest, but…"
Jimmy hesitated and the door elf looked stricken. "Trust me, gentlemen." I smiled. "Mr. Mackelroy is a member."
"Wolf, I don't know about this," Jimmy murmured.
"Don't worry, Jimmy. Just imagine you're running Jackie Robinson's statsoft."
Jimmy pressed his hand to the printscanner, and the elf didn't hide his surprise at the affirmative beep. He smiled as sheepishly as an elf can. "Welcome to ParVenue, chummers." He swept the door open and smiled. "Locker room is to your left. Your lockers will be in berths four and seven. I've made sure they're upper units."
I stabbed a credstick down into a discreet socket beside the door and zapped him a five-nuyen tip. " 'Predate it, chummer. Don't let the corporators get you down."
"Slot and run," he said with a laugh, then let the oak and glass door slide shut behind us.
As we entered the locker room we saw a single bank of twenty-four lockers facing us. Two of the lockers in the upper row, in slots four and seven, withdrew back into the wall. It left the row looking like some gillette's broken grin for a moment or two, then new lockers slid into place. We both exchanged glances, then shrugged and located our appropriate lockers by the little laminated name plates slotted into them.
I opened mine, then sat down hard on the bench. "Oh, Val, whathave you done?"
"Do we have to wear this stuff?"
"Dress code." I groaned aloud. "Your clothes will fit perfectly. Valerie is pretty sharp, but her taste runs a bit odd."
The ParVenue, being the latest word in virtual country clubs, demanded that its patrons attire themselves appropriately when on the premises. This meant I exchanged my polo shirt for a navy one of a lighter weight and pricier designer label. Over it went a yellow cardigan sweater of a hue I've only seen in snow. The knickers that replaced my pants matched the sweater in color and fastened tight right below my knees. My blue and yellow plaid socks got tucked beneath the knickers, and my pseudo-golf shoes were a merciful black without any spikes.
"I'm not wearing my cap," Jimmy growled.
Oh yeah, my cap was a tarn that matched the socks. In silent agreement with him I sent it flying like a Ms-bee into a wastebasket. "Comes a point when a man just has to put his foot down."
I swung my locker door closed, giving Jimmy his first full look at me. "Wolf, my mother used to dress her poodle in that type of outfit."
I growled at him. "Hold your arms out at your sides and in those red togs you'll look like the poodle's favorite fire hydrant."
"Point taken. Hope these women are worth it."
I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall-mounted mirror. "I'm beginning to doubt it, but let's not keep them waiting, just in case."
As strange as it may seem, Jimmy and I were not the oddest-looking individuals at the club. The corridor leading from the locker room to the bar and restaurant had a glass-walled section that let us look into the huge warehouselike structure onto which the front facade had been grafted.
Jimmy paused and stared out at the people gathered there. "Just think, if they were bees, how much honey they'd be making."
I nodded at his apt analogy. Honeycombed stacks of small golfing stalls rose from ground to ceiling. On the bottom two levels the stark white rooms had golfers fitted with simsense helmets. Little mechanical ball-setters placed golf balls on tees or appropriately angled sections of astroturf. As the players swung through the balls, they blasted them into nets at the other end of their golfcave. One guy, at the far end of the row, endured a driving shower and buffeting winds produced by the chamber as he sought the absolute most in sim-golf experiences.
Just above them golfers also wore simsense helmets, but hit no balls. They still swung their clubs with wild abandon, and one man snapped a putter in half and tossed it down into the net protecting the floors below. Other golfers went through the motions of delicately chipping a shot onto a green, and one man stood with driver in hand, desperately waving at an imaginary ball to get over the imaginary trees and onto the imaginary green.
The top level had smoked-gray caps on the hexagonal rooms. Up there golfers were pulling down simsense data directly from the ParVenue's golf course database. These did not need the challenge of weather and balls and perfect posture or square groove clubs. They played solely in their minds. For them the challenge was besting golf courses in places dreamed up by madmen arid physicists and modeled on the fastest decks available. They might play two holes on the front nine from the Sea of Tranquility, then shift to a course imagined for the blazing surface of Venus. Changes of gravity and density of atmosphere were their enemies.
I saw one golfer on the lower level miss his shot and twist around before falling to his knees. "Do they have spitballs in golf?"
Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe that was a water hazard."
I smiled and led the way to the bar. We passed two soaking wet guys who were swapping stories about playing the club's simulation of the Burning Tree course during Hurricane Felicia and I spotted our dates immediately. Of course I didn't know any of the half-dozen men watching them from the bar and surrounding tables, but I gathered neither did the women, and they liked that situation just fine.