Alan Foster: Cyber Way

The polarized bubble glass in the window turned Greater Tampa into a fish bowl. It was a view which never failed to please Kettrick, and why not? He’d worked hard to earn it.

By rights he shouldn’t be where he was. For years engineers had insisted anything over thirty-five stories high built within a half mile of the beach would eventually begin to sink into the saline muck that was coastal Florida. The bubble glass that lined his office was on the fiftieth floor. So much for engineering. There was sufficient solid ground here, just as there were always solid business opportunities. That had been one of his father’s many mottoes. Nobody was better than the old man when it came to digging up business. The actual construction work he left to his son.

Whenever Kettrick thought of his father it was always with fondness. The old man had fought bravely against the weak heart which had killed him early, leaving the company to his son. Kettrick had built on that, just as he’d built this impossible structure on this inadequate land.

From the fiftieth floor you could see far out into the Gulf. Like a sheet of pressed sky, the lazy blue water stretched westward until it melted into a pale white horizon. Inland lay the industrial corridor that crawled northeast to Orlando, framed and constrained by the greenbelts which offered sanctuary to wildlife, recreation to workers, and salve for the consciences of those who had built the plants. Southward somewhere lay the eternal Glades, still surviving in spite of the pollution. Nature could be a tough old bitch.

Kettrick had seen pictures of early Florida. Flat two-dimensional images recorded on paper, old videotapes reconstructed for mollystorage. Cypress and pine, swamp and mud. Funny how the wildlife had adapted. Blue herons, snowy egrets, gators, and manatees thrived in the city parks as lushly as in the Glades themselves. The three gators who made their home in the indoor garden of this very building had never expressed any desire to move on.

Man adapts to the world, and the world adapts to man. The only thing man couldn’t seem to adapt to was himself, which was why Kettrick had pushed the security switch the instant his unannounced visitor had appeared. He appraised, then relaxed, seeing no weapon, sensing no threat. Security personnel would arrive momentarily. Hail he been truly concerned, he would have thumbed the red button instead of the orange one disguised as an inlay in his desk. Concealed nozzles would have buried the intruder in a shell of quick-drying immobilizing foam.

Kettrick knew there was no need to employ such measures. No need, because he recognized the intruder. Silently he vowed that this would be the last time he would indulge this particular individual. Even the traditional Kettrick courtesy had its limits, and these had now been exceeded.

No need to be nervous. His visitor was not psychotic. Merely obsessed.

The man gazed at the door through which he’d entered, as if aware his time was limited. Then, before speaking, he turned to nod at the sweeping panorama visible through the bubble glass behind the desk.

“I can see that you are an admirer of the natural order.

It causes me to wonder anew why you will not sell me the picture.”

“My love of beauty is what attracted me to the picture in the first place,” Kettrick replied. “Why would I want to turn it over to you? We’ve been through this before. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that I never sell anything from my collection. I told you that the last time.”

“I needed to hear it from you again. There is always a first time. I must have the painting.”

Since he had not invited him to come in, Kettrick did not invite him to sit down. He left him standing, convinced that the man posed no immediate threat. Kettrick chuckled to himself. Now, his son-in-law, the gargantuan white boy his daughter had married, that was a threatening personality. Cody had to be, since by profession he played backup nose-guard for the Bucs. This irritation who had burst into his office was only a little more than average height and of slim build. Hardly an imposing physicality. Kettrick thought that the man’s straight black hair was exceptionally dark even for an Amerindian. The industrialist found himself wondering if Indians could tan. The intruder’s clothing was simple and utilitarian.

All you really noticed were the obsidian eyes. You noticed them because they didn’t notice you. They seemed to be focused on something behind Kettrick even though the man was gazing directly at him. Odd. Nor was his visitor out-grabed. He was much too coherent for that. There was no telltale clouding of the corneas, no nervous trembling in the fingers. Though come to think of it, this fellow did hold his hands in a strange fashion, with the fingers curved back and up like hooks. Or like paws.

He could be wrong, and although he wasn’t an expert, Kettrick knew an addict when he saw one. Friends of his son-in-law were always hinting that it would be nice if he could obtain the latest designer steroids for them. All because a small chain of drugstores was included among his diverse holdings.

Of course he refused all such requests, no matter how oblique. Should it come out in the media, a single such story could harm the business, not to mention his social standing in the community, in which he took considerable pride. He had no intention of risking any of that simply to do a favor for some of his son-in-law’s buddies or even to improve the team, on whose behalf he annually expended far too much money for season tickets. Of course the company paid for those, but still…

Strange face it was, and not only because of those eyes. It was sharp of side, like a piece of dark marble whose rough edges had been hacked off but not yet polished smooth. High cheekbones, nothing anywhere soft or rounded, the result a perpetually questioning expression. Lines ran from the base of his nose up into his forehead, which was itself unlined. The crow’s-feet at the comers of the eyes seemed transplanted from someone far older. What might appear to some as arrogance was in truth only preoccupation. It was as if this stranger were too busy with his thoughts to pay much attention even to the conversation he had begun.

A single earring of silver and blue, as pure as the Gulf outside the window, called attention to one ear. He had yet to smile. Kettrick studied the strange visage and decided it was an expression foreign to this face. In contrast to the dark hair, his eyebrows were astonishingly light—almost not there. The few wispy hairs seemed to grow Hush with the skin. He stood with a slight slouch, as though suffering from curvature of the spine. After a while Kettrick realized there was nothing physically wrong with his visitor. It was simply his natural stance.

And all the while, he kept the fingers of both hands curved up and backward. At any moment Kettrick half expected him to drop to all fours and approach on his knuckles. Distant he was, yet intense.

Well, if he was wrong about him, there was always the red button in case the visitor made a sudden move toward his host. Kettrick’s fingers tapped on the desk close to the false inlay.