Robert Charette - Never deal with a Dragon

“Hey, I still got a few connections in the biz,” Crenshaw laughed.

Marushige smiled broadly in response, but his eyes were cold and wary.

Sam was nervous. No doubt about it. His palms were wet and he wanted to find the nearest rest room. If they didn’t call him in the next few minutes, he could be out and back again before it was time to go in.

Sam tried to catch the eye of the red-uniformed guard who had been his escort ever since he had stepped out of the elevator carrying him to the upper stories of the arcology. The man’s stare remained as fixed straight ahead as it had since he’d taken up position across from Sam’s seat on the leather couch. His stance was only slightly less fixed and rigid than his manner. It was pointless trying to communicate with him.

Reaching a decision, Sam levered himself free from the sticky embrace of the couch. Before he had straightened, the guard was by his side, face expressionless, waiting for Sam’s next move. Doubtless, the samurai was as ready to be executioner as escort. Sam hoped the man wasn’t too disappointed by his charge’s slow walk to the receptionist’s desk.

“Excuse me.” He smiled politely when the woman looked up from her console. “Will it be much longer?”

Her earlier warm smile was a memory. She said nothing for a few moments, her stare and expression so harsh that all the beauty dissolved from her face. He had overstepped the bounds of expected politeness, and she intended to let him know. “Sato- sama will call for you when he is ready, Verner- san .

“But I just wanted to…”

“Please take a seat,” she interrupted icily.

Her lack of polite forms told Sam how rude she thought him. Rather than retreat to the clammy confines of his former seat, he gave himself a promotion based on length of wait. Crossing in front of the desk, he entered the other half of the spacious room, though he knew this was trespassing into territory reserved for those of more exalted rank. The receptionist did not react to his breach of manners, but he was sure she would record it. Let her. His minor rebellion against proper etiquette made him feel a little more in control of the situation.

This side of the reception area was no more capacious than the other, but its furnishings were more posh and it was more crowded. Two Red Samurai guards flanked the heavy wooden door to the inner office. Two more men sat on a couch that backed against that wall. One of those seemed to be dozing, but the other turned his head as Sam crossed the Persian rug. Though he couldn’t see the eyes behind the implanted chrome lenses, he was sure they were studying and evaluating him.

Sam selected a chair. This time, it was one upholstered in fabric; he didn’t need any help sweating. As much as he wanted to return the scrutiny of the man with the chrome lenses, Sam decided it was unwise to do so directly. Turning his head toward the glassed-in area behind the receptionist’s desk, he feigned interest in the activities of the bevy of office ladies hard at work inside, occasionally letting his gaze drift over the Red Samurai with him in the waiting area.

It turned out the samurai weren’t of much interest. Standard issue, they were hard, competent, no-nonsense types like his own red shadow. They would be dangerous in a fight, but they were no threat to a good employee like Sam.

The other two were different. Their lapels bore corporate pins whose expanding wavefront design was so familiar that he easily picked it out as Renraku. Despite their affiliation symbols, neither looked like Sam’s idea of a typical Renraku salary man.

With a start, Sam realized that he knew these men. Or rather, knew of them. In the week between Hohiro Sato’s arrival in Seattle and the granting of this interview, Sam had used his free time to do some research. He figured the more he knew about Sato, the better he might come off in the unexpected audience. He had learned that Sato always traveled with an entourage, as was natural for a man of his stature in a multinational corporation. Besides the usual crowd of office ladies, guards, aides, and chauffeurs, several people of more obscure function were frequently part of the Kansayaku’s traveling party.

From the pictures in the files, Sam recognized the chrome-eyed man as Kosuke Akabo, a public relations specialist. If he truly was what his job title stated, the relations he handled were not those conventionally assigned to such a functionary. He had the menace of a restrained predator, much like that of the Red Samurai guards. Akabo’s well-tailored gray suit was cut from expensive material, far too costly for a typical salaryman, though the outfit mimicked the currently fashionable cut. Even to Sam’s untrained eyes, it was clear that Akabo was something more than a desk jockey.

Calm but alert, Akabo made no extraneous movement, but showed none of the tense vigilance of the samurai guards. His was the composure of a man confident he would be instantly aware of any threat. As perhaps he would. His eyes had certainly been enhanced technologically; his other senses may have been as well.

Sam searched surreptitiously for telltale signs of modification, but beyond the chrome lenses, he saw no obvious cybernetic additions. That did not shake his conviction that the man in the gray suit was more highly modified than a street samurai whose reputation depended as much on visible chrome as fighting prowess. Akabo was a warrior, protection for his master. Sam was sure of it.

The other had to be Harry Masamba, because only one black man had been on the list of those associated with Sato. The dossier named Masamba as a time-management specialist, but his profession was as obvious from his indecorous attitude as from the symboHaden slouch hat that covered the upper part of his face. No respectable salaryman would sleep in the office of his boss. Masamba was a mage. Perhaps it was because his talents were as rare as they were valuable that he could take liberties in his personal behavior.

Sam considered the presence of the magician. He had been raised to believe most of their kind charlatans, trading on the beliefs of the credulous. Unlike his father, however, Sam had grown up in what people like Masamba called the Sixth World. There was too much evidence to deny that magic really existed. Still, he didn’t trust its practitioners.

Not everyone felt that way. The corporate world had embraced magic and magicians, not so much for profit as for protection. Magicians were too rare and unreliable to work on assembly lines, but they offered unparalleled capabilities in industrial espionage. And where there was magic on the offense, magic was needed on the defense, making mages a common feature of corporate security. Almost all multinational corporate heads had wizards on their personal staffs for protection. Lesser officials had to make do with the company wage mages, for a person able to manipulate magical forces was too rare a resource to be squandered lightly. That Sato had a mage of his own was a sign of his power.

Power was something Sato had a lot of in Renraku Corporation. He held the title of Kansayaku, but was much more than a mere auditor of financial records. He audited people as well, pruning the dead wood and nonconformists from the Renraku tree. His reputation as a hatchetman was fearsome. Now he had come to Seattle, where the arcology project was chronically behind schedule.

Sato’s appointment to the arcology didn’t worry Sam personally. Sam had not been involved in any significant tasks that might link him to the delays, and having been banished from staff operations when banished from Japan, he had no contacts with the management who would have to take responsibility for those delays. Even if they and their staffs were removed, he was likely to remain, checking files and crossreferencing data.