Dark as Day (12 page)

Alex felt sure that his mother neither knew nor cared. Certainly, she seemed at ease as she advanced steadily toward the man standing on the richly-decorated carpet that covered the central fifteen meters of the room. The whole chamber was a recreation of some ancient Earth style, with pillars shaped as carved odalisques, red-lipped, full-bodied, and diaphanously clad, set at intervals around the walls. The furniture was all armchairs, dark and massive, with a low rectangular glass-topped table set in front of each.

The man in the middle of the ornately-furnished room was Cyrus Mobarak, known to Alex in appearance and reputation from media descriptions. Mobarak was in his fifties, shorter and more strongly-built than the video images would suggest, with a thick neck that bulged against a blue-and-white wing collar half a size too small. If Mobarak Enterprises had a “traditional” uniform for meetings like this, you would never discover it by looking at Mobarak himself. His suit was plain gray, lacking medals, decorations, or jewelry. His nose was prominent, he wore a thick shock of hair that he had allowed to gray naturally, and his brow ridges overhung pale, unreadable eyes.

Was this the famous “Sun King,” the powerhouse whose inventions had transformed energy generation and transportation systems from Mercury to the Oort Cloud? It hardly seemed possible.

And then Mobarak spoke. His voice was deep, his words quiet and conventional; no more than, “Hello, I am Cyrus Mobarak. Welcome to Mobarak Enterprises. I hope that before you leave you will have an opportunity to tour my home and workplace, and see what we do here.”

The man seemed to expand and glow as he spoke, investing simple words with warmth and pleasure and just a hint of humor.

Alex felt his own positive response as he said a polite greeting and shook Mobarak’s hand. His mother, so far as he could see, melted, crashed, and burned on first contact. When it was her turn to take Mobarak’s hand she seemed ready to have an orgasm on the spot.

“This is
such
a thrill. Of course, I’ve heard about the Sun King for years and years, and longed to meet you. Unless you have other plans, you and I and Alex and Lucy-Maria could go off together and have a meal. I thought, maybe a quiet place where we could begin to get to know each other.”

“That’s a splendid idea, and I wish it were possible. But I just can’t.” No one, listening to Mobarak, could doubt for a moment that his regret was genuine. “It’s my own stupid fault, arranging too many meetings in too short a time. I have to leave very soon. But there’s nothing to prevent the three of you from going off together—I know a perfect place, exclusive and quiet. Why don’t the three of you go? Unless, of course, you feel that the youngsters would be better left to themselves, just the two of them. I suspect that they might enjoy that.”

In half a dozen sentences, Cyrus Mobarak convinced Alex of three things. First, Mobarak was a master at dealing with people. He had implied that Lena Ligon would be about as necessary to the forthcoming meeting as breasts on a spaceship, but he had done it in such a way that Lena was nodding agreement at the notion that the younger generation should be left alone. Second, Mobarak had decided to take a look at Alex before he introduced Lucy-Maria. Apparently Alex had passed that test. And third, Mobarak was as interested in a union of the two families as Prosper Ligon or anyone else in Ligon Industries. Suddenly, Alex wondered what he was about to meet. He had seen pictures of Lucy-Maria, but you could fix a picture to look like almost anything. A king of ancient England had agreed to marry on the strength of an inaccurate picture (and had later executed the man who arranged the whole thing).

Mobarak led the way to a half-open door. Alex, prepared for the worst, followed.

The room beyond was furnished and decorated in the same lush style of a departed era. By contrast, the young woman seated on a two-person love seat defined personal rebellion and a clash of times and cultures. Her dark hair was cut in the absolute latest style, straight across her low forehead with framing curves around her cheeks and shaped to touch below her chin. Her arms, shoulders, and bosom were bare, her breasts exposed almost to the nipples. Every square inch of that glowing, dusky skin was covered with the iridescent glitter points that Alex had never seen before except on entertainment stars. She sat cross-legged, so that a split skirt showed bare leg and more star glitter all the way to her upper thigh. The overall effect was stunning. What had Hector said? That she looked terrific? For once in his life, Hector was right.

Mobarak said, “Lucy, I would like to introduce you to Alex Ligon, and to his mother, Lena.”

The young woman nodded at Mobarak’s words but made no attempt to stand or speak. Which left it up to Alex. Running on shocked autopilot, he followed his mother’s earlier suggestion. He stepped forward, lifted Lucy-Maria’s hand to his lips, and kissed it.

That produced a frown, followed by an unreadable little smile.

“Sit down, Alex,” Mobarak said. And then, as Alex did so, on a chair facing Lucy-Maria, Mobarak turned to Lena. “I wonder if you might like to see a little more of Mobarak Enterprises. If so, I would be delighted to give you a guided tour.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned at once toward a smaller door set between two marble statues of winged lions. Lena didn’t even glance toward Alex as she followed.

So much for support and guidance, or any idea that Alex might receive helpful cues from his mother. He placed his hands on his knees and wondered how his computer run was going, back in the plain surroundings of the government offices. He wished he were there.

As an innocuous opening remark, he said, “Your father seems like a most impressive man.”

There was a long and empty silence. The great antiquated room lacked even the normal hiss of an air supply system. Alex wondered if Lucy-Maria had some kind of hearing problem that no one had bothered to mention. Looking into her eyes, big and dark, was like looking into space. There seemed to be nothing behind them.

At last she said, “Impressive? Not if you talk to my mother.”

“She’s here?”

“Good God, no. She’s back on Earth in Punta Arenas. He pays to keep her there. I visit a couple of times a year. She tells me he’s a real shit.”

As a line of conversation this one didn’t seem promising. Alex, after a few dead seconds, said, “I didn’t have a father in the usual sense. My mother preferred an
in vitro
development. The genetic material on the paternal side came from a combination of nine different males that she selected, providing a variety of different potentials.”

Lucy-Maria raised iridescent eyebrows and stared at him. He finally read an expression—“What went wrong, if you’re the result?”—in her dark eyes. She finally said, “You mother looks real good. Is she a Commensal?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Afraid? Afraid of what? I’d be one, too, if they’d let me. But it’s supposed to make you sterile, and I’m the Mobarak prize cow. Breed if you want to feed. You, too?”

“I suppose so.”

She examined him from head to toe. Finally she said, “Do you usually dress like that?”

“No. I
never
dress like this. My family put pressure on me to wear these clothes, because they’re supposed to show our family tradition.”

“You look like a Husvik whore-master.” She leaned forward confidentially. “I had to meet with you, or get chopped. But I didn’t want to. I’ll bet you were the same.”

“I was.” It might not be polite, but it was the truth.

“So we’re supposed to sit here and imitate armchairs, and bore each other to death. But we don’t have to. They said get to know each other. They didn’t say we have to stay here.”

“I’m not sure that my mother—”

“I saw the way my father looked at her, and she looked at him. They’re probably climbing all over each other. Talk about a family merger. I’ll bet there’s one going on right now.”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“I do.” She stood up, in a fluid swirl of movement and a flash of long leg. She was taller than he had realized, eye to eye with him. “Come on. You just follow me, there’s a way out of here that the security Faxes monitor but don’t record.”

She was off, toward a wall panel that swiveled as they approached. Alex—had he gone crazy?—followed Lucy-Maria through into a darkening corridor. Twenty paces. He counted them. He was ready to stop and ask her where they were going when his next step found nothing and he fell face-forward.

It was a drop chute. They riddled Ganymede’s interior, and Alex was used to them. The difference was that this one had no trace of lighting and he was falling through blackness and accelerating at a steady sixth of a gee. That was fine—until you reached the bottom.

“Lucy-Maria?”

He heard her laugh from below him. “Relax, I’ve done this a hundred times and I’m navigating for both of us. We have to pass through seventeen branch points. Ten minutes free-fall, then we reach the arrest phase. Lie back and enjoy. And call me Lucy. I’m only Lucy-Maria for official family business.”

But this
was
family business—or supposed to be. And enjoying was one thing that Alex couldn’t do. What would his mother do and say when she found that he and Lucy had disappeared together?

The descent chute went on forever. Ten minutes! That would take them down hundreds of kilometers, far below all residential levels, far below the government office levels, below the agricultural levels, closing in on the deep interior where the blue-green prokaryotes produced the oxygen for all of Ganymede.

Where could she be taking him?

They had long ago reached terminal velocity. The wind whistled past Alex’s ears and tousled his hair. His hat, that silly conical family-tradition white hat with its stiff peak, had vanished long since into the darkness. And now, finally, Alex felt the arrest field. He was no longer falling at constant speed. A gentle hand, the same one that had held him clear of the walls of the chute, turned him upright. Now he was falling feet-first, and far below him he saw a small circle of light.

As he slowed, his surroundings became steadily brighter. The walls of the tunnel carried a faint green luminescence. By that light he caught his first sight of Lucy since they had left Mobarak headquarters. She was maybe thirty meters below him. On the way down she had somehow transformed her long green skirt into a rainbow version that ended at mid-thigh.

She landed lightly, and was waiting for him barefoot when he arrived. She held her shoes and skirt in one hand, but dropped them to the floor as she came close to Alex.

“All right, let’s take another look at you. Stand up straighter.”

Alex stood up straight and stared around him, wondering where his hat had landed. He was on a level he did not recognize and had surely never been before. The lower end of the chute formed a chamber with walls so luridly painted that he suspected that the finishing Von Neumanns had never been brought in. Three openings big enough to admit a human stood equally spaced around the walls, each one shimmering with the Moiré patterns that indicated the presence of metal detectors and sonic inhibitors.

“These have to go.” Lucy was stooped at his feet, loosening the buckles on his two-toned yellow-and-white shoes.

“Because they contain metal?”

“Because they’re extremely hideous.” As Alex stepped out of his shoes to reveal canary-yellow socks, she felt the fabric of his jacket. “This, too. It feels like it’s made of hardboard and the style is pure geeker. It has to go. I have a reputation to protect.”

“What
is
this place?”

“Holy Rollers.
The
place to be. I knew you’d led a sheltered life, just from one look at you. What do you do when you’re not taking orders from Mummy?”

“I build predictive computer models for solar system simulation. I don’t take orders from my mother.”
But he did
. Alex glanced at the despised jacket, which had joined the crumpled mess of clothes on the floor. “I should be running my predictive model now.”

“Computer models. Boring. Boring beyond death.” Lucy rubbed at the ruby studs on his shirt. “These, on the other hand, are pretty damned fine. Rubies are right in this season, and bright yellow is daring.” She surveyed him again. “You’ll do, especially those socks. When we get inside and meet my friends, tell them that you’re Alex Ligon, of Ligon Industries. Nothing about models, and for God’s sake nothing about computers. I don’t want to have to disown you. Let’s see, where shall we go?”

She glanced at the three shimmering openings. “Not Hispano-Suizas, because apparently it’s doing virtuals tonight. And it’s a bit early for Bugattis, they do a slow first few laps. So it has to be Lagondas. You’re not certified, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Of course you’re not. Hold tight to my hand, or it won’t pass you.”

She grabbed Alex’s hand in her own—it was warm and surprisingly strong—and pulled him toward one of the openings. There was a tingle over his whole body, then he stepped through into a roar of sound and a flicker of colored lights.

“You wait right here,” Lucy shouted in his ear. “If someone asks you to dance, don’t accept. Don’t speak. Just shake your head.”

She eeled away to the left. Alex stood rigid, wondering how he had ever been so stupid as to come with her in the first place. Lagondas—if that was the right name—was packed with people, some slowly moving together in couples and trios and quartets, some leaning against counters along the sides of the big octagonal room, others sitting on isolated round objects like giant mushrooms. In four of the corners stood square columns about two meters high, from which long hoses protruded ending in some kind of shiny guns. The columns were labeled: 87, 89, 91, 93. A dozen people clustered around each one. Judging from the elaborate dress and jewelry, everyone was rich. The wall paintings showed ancient forms of personal transportation that had dominated Earth in previous centuries.

The level of noise was astonishing. Everyone seemed to be talking against a background of recorded sound, rhythmic dance music overlain with the whine and roar of high-revving engines and the scream of over-stressed tires. Alex smelled fumes, like incompletely-burned hydrocarbons. He wondered why Lucy Mobarak had worried about someone asking him to dance. Unless they screamed right into his ear, he would never hear the invitation.