Larry Niven - The Barsoom Project

Oh, very well, Mr. Griffin. If you insist that your business is that important, and that personal, I suppose Mr. Fekesh could squeeze you in for five minutes tomorrow.

Mighty white of her.

Arriving in EnCom Plaza now, Griffin could begin to believe that the man was actually as busy as that.

The guard grudgingly took the card and entered it in a computer slot, read the results. He had a more respectful look when he returned to the door. Not much, but an improvement.

“One moment, sir.”

Alex stepped back as a door hummed open for him, and stepped into a shielded pocket between two three-inch-thick slabs of plastiglass.

He felt an initial humming, and then nothing for several seconds, although the skin on his forearms tingled.

Probably just nerves. Right.

The inner door slid open.

Alex watched everything. The guard clipped a card on his pocket, and said “Penthouse” unnecessarily, pointing toward an elevator.

Alex had seen the plans for the building-there were six elevators visible, and two hidden: Executive and Freight.

The door hissed shut behind him.

He didn’t find it easy to violate the ageless ritual of watching the numbers change on the digital display. It took effort to observe his surroundings. Typical elevator cubicle. Five feet deep, four wide. Seven feet high. Moved soundlessly. The walls seemed made out of burnished copper, but were smoother to the touch; they felt like some kind of plastic. Had the elevator started moving yet?

The door opened soundlessly.

Griffin found himself in a suite of luxury offices. The entire floor seemed to be walled in glass, partitioned off with wood. It made for an interesting mixture, somehow elemental: earth and sky mingled together.

A beautiful brunette at the front desk rose and extended her hand in greeting. “Mr. Griffin, of course. Mr. Fekesh is expecting you.”

I’ll just bet he is. “Thank you. May I go in?”

“In a moment. May I get you something?” The ritual question. Coffee. “Club soda, if you have it.”

She laughed musically. “In twenty-six flavors.”

“Lemon, then.”

“I’ll just be a moment.”

Alex sat, aware of his own nervousness, aware that he was probably being watched. The sweet lull of the music-what was that? Something by Mozart? He wasn’t up on his classical music, and for some reason that added to his discomfiture.

There were a dozen people working at various desks, in various stages of activity. But the real work was undoubtedly going on behind the various closed doors. They simply hummed with hidden power.

The receptionist returned clucking to herself as if she were keeper of the world’s best private joke. She handed him a foam-plastic cup. “And Mr. Fekesh will see you in a moment. Please.”

She motioned him to an office door down the hail. He smiled his thanks, took a sip. It was at the perfect edge of coldness, brisk and refreshing. He had always liked the way lemon tasted in fizzing drinks. Cleansing somehow.

The office door was open, and he walked in. The office was a little smaller than he would have expected, and perhaps a touch less opulent. There was a whisper of air, and a faint canned smell to it. He consciously noted something that had only been peripherally registered: the pneumatic hiss of the doors as they shut. Fekesh had a self-contained air supply, doubtless computercontrolled. No hydrocarbons or nitrogenous compounds for Fekesh’s aristocratic lungs.

The entire office was walled in glass. From Fekesh’s perch atop the world he could see the entire sprawl. Griffin looked out.

The damage from the Great Quake had gobbled a bit of shoreline, but something like that couldn’t stop developers, not when they were talking about the most expensive land in the world. So beach fronts had been reclaimed from the tide, at enormous costs passed right along to the consumers. Tidal breaks, stilts, condos with sub-sea-level apartments, and every stunt possible to human ingenuity had been employed to steal back a few extra meters from the sea.

Eventually the sea would have them back again. For now, the men and women who built her, who had stolen those precious cubic meters, could enjoy the illusion of a conquest worth the battle.

Until the next time. He would hate to be in one of those sublevel apartments, bedroom window looking out on the kelp beds, come the next quake.

The office door opened, and Kareem Fekesh walked in.

Alex was a little taller, and a little broader than Fekesh, and needed every cubic centimeter. The man was impressive.

It wasn’t just the clothes, although they made Alex feel impoverished. Or the grooming. A man with a personal barber on twenty-four-hour call could look as good as Fekesh. No problem. No, it was little things in the carnage. He moved like a totally healthy animal. His smile was broad and warm; his teeth an orthodontial dream. His eyes were bright, bright black, and were laughing even when the rest of the face was at rest.

Fekesh rolled into the room, sat at his desk, and smiled out at Alex. “Please,” he said. “Won’t you have a seat. I’m sorry that it has been so difficult for me to arrange this meeting, but there are, as always, a thousand things to do.”

“I understand,” Alex said, trying to create rapport.

Fekesh smiled a smile that said I doubt that, folded his hands, and said, “And so. What is it that I can do for you, Mr. Griffin?”

“I’m going to be presumptuous and assume that you know what I am,” Alex began.

“Not presumptuous at all. We have dealt before. If not directly, then over the video. I make it my business to know all I can about the people with whom I work.”

“This is going to be a difficult meeting, and I hope to simplify it a little.”

“Please, by all means.”

Alex cleared his throat. “As I believe you know, approximately eight years ago, there was an attempted takeover of Cowles Industries.”

Fekesh’s expression never changed. “And?”

“Although nothing can be proven, it is believed that you had a major stake in that takeover bid.”

“Mr. Griffin. Such things are hardly the concern of the Security Chief of Dream Park.”

“Mmm. But by an interesting coincidence, a terrible accident occurred at the same time. One which, if it had become public knowledge, would have driven down the price of Cowles stock, making a takeover all the more feasible.”

“Well, then, let us rejoice that the information never did become public.”

“Have you any interest in clarifying your role in all of this?”

Fekesh drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. “Mr. Griffin. I am a busy man. I was under the impression that you had matters of urgency to discuss, not issues dead a decade ago.”

“And I do,” Alex said. He opened his briefcase and extracted two folders. He pushed them across the desk to Fekesh. “I know that you have been a principal player in the Barsoom Project, so what I am about to say may sound a bit strange.”

“Yes.” Fekesh opened one of the folders, and glanced through the information, expression noncomittal.

“I spoke of a terrible accident at Dream Park some eight years ago. A woman who was an unwitting accomplice to the sabotage-we might as well call it that-”

Fekesh’s eyebrows lifted a quarter-inch in question.

“-recently returned to the Park to attempt to play out the same game that she was injured in. Someone tried to get her out of the Game.”

“Someone?”

“Someone. It suggests that whoever was responsible for the first occurrence is still present at Dream Park. This suggests the possibility that something is scheduled to happen. Something big.”

“Involving the Barsoom Project?”

“As you see in the folders, we know that someone has taken a major position on Cowles Industries again. There are indications that twenty-six percent of your liquid funds are tied up in assets unknown. You are known to be intimately involved with the Barsoom Project.”