The Ghost in the Doll (Fox Meridian Book 6) (15 page)

On the jetty the boat was heading for, a couple were waiting, dressed in matching suits and wearing almost identical smiles: the reception committee, Fox figured. Certainly they both bowed deeply as Fox stepped off the boat. Fox returned a less inclined bow and smiled, waiting for them to speak.

‘Konnichiwa, Meridian-sama,’ the man said. ‘I am Enemoto Unkei, manager of Kannotekina Atsuryoku. We are very pleased to welcome you to our humble establishment.’

‘I am Enemoto Natsuko,’ the woman added. ‘We hope you will enjoy your stay with us.’

They were both offering identity packets for her to take, so she did. Back in time, it would have been business cards, but now it was all electronic. Fox returned the gesture with a smile and talked to the tops of their heads. ‘Thank you for the warm welcome. I’ve heard very good things about your resort. I’m here to relax. Out of the public eye.’

The Enemotos finally straightened up. ‘Your privacy is
absolutely
ensured at Kannotekina Atsuryoku, Meridian-sama,’ Unkei said. ‘If you have any problems, please do not hesitate to come to me. My wife can supply any need you may have.’

‘Our staff,’ Natsuko went on, ‘is almost entirely synthetic, absolutely reliable, and available for any service you may require of them.’ There was a very slight emphasis on ‘any.’ The meaning was pretty clear even if the managers of such a place would not be so crass as to suggest that their clients were bound to want to fuck the robots.

‘Thank you. Rest and sun are all I need right now. Could I see my room? It’s been a long trip.’

Apologising profusely for not thinking of that sooner, the Enemotos escorted Fox down the jetty and into the main structure, chattering away about the facilities as they went. There was a full lounge, restaurant, and bar on the second level, and a private sun deck above the administrative level. At the bottom was an exercise room, fully staffed, and one could hire scuba equipment, with instruction and guide divers if required. The bay was noted for its wide diversity of marine life, including a rare porpoise and horseshoe crabs. And, of course, various other water sports were available, including motorboats, jet skis, and water skis.

Fox listened to the lists of activities and noted the ones which were not mentioned. The staff were mixed, androids and gynoids, and all of them from series that Aphrodite Cybernetics produced. Kit had the full commercial data on all of them, which included the set of commonly produced face sculptures. None of the ones here were custom sculpts, and there were a couple of repeats. The staff on general duties were dressed in fairly formal outfits, even if the women tended to shorter skirts than might be considered business wear. There were plenty of others around dressed largely in swimwear, brief swimwear, and often accompanying a guest.

An elevator took them down maybe fifteen metres, opening onto another lounge area, and the pretence of respectability more or less went out the window. Here, the staff were dressed in swimwear at most and the guests were hardly more covered. Light filtered down from above but was largely drowned out by the internal and external lights. You could see fish swimming past the domed windows. Fox spotted one of the Ghost Dolls among the people lounging around the room, but this was not the time for excessive curiosity.

‘Our guests have complete privacy here,’ Unkei said. ‘They may do… whatever they wish without anyone outside being aware of it.’

Fox noted the cameras liberally scattered around the ceiling. Not obvious to someone without knowledge of security systems, but there all the same. How much blackmail material had the Fukui-kai gathered in this place? ‘Unless the fish have cameras,’ Fox said, smiling.

‘Oh, we keep the media fish well away,’ Natsuko said, smiling back.

There were six doors off the lounge, all of them fitted with pressure doors. The doors were open, but Fox figured having them there was a health and safety requirement. One of the corridors beyond the doors led to other observation domes and further guest rooms, but five led directly to guest rooms extended out from the lounge on corridors of their own.

‘This gives further privacy,’ Natsuko said as they walked down one of them. ‘There is a pressure door on your room, quite soundproof, and there is the distance between room and lounge. It is not possible to see into one room from another.’

‘Sounds perfect,’ Fox replied. ‘I believe I’ll take a nap before I see what else your beautiful resort can do for me. My body clock is still on… Actually, after the last couple of days, I’m not sure what time zone I’m on. I was visiting a friend on the L-one station yesterday, which was two days ago.’

Natsuko gave her a solicitous look. ‘Oh dear, that kind of thing can wreak havoc with the metabolism. Please speak to me after your rest. I can recommend several methods of regaining your equilibrium.’

Fox stepped through the heavy door Unkei had opened for her and into her lodging for the next few days. ‘Thank you. I’ll do that. And this is beautiful.’

It was not exactly beautiful. Actually, it was kind of bland with a lot of cream, beige, and white. Close to the door there was a computer system of some sort built into the wall, a bathroom off to the right which had to be too small to have a bath in it, and the remainder was more or less open plan with a lounge area closest to the large domed window, a bed screened off from it, and a small kitchen counter. The window made up for a lot of bland, however. Lights outside it showed fish jetting past. Light from above gave flickering glimpses of the sea floor and other aquatic denizens further from the resort.

‘We try to ensure our guests have a pleasing, relaxing, and sensuous experience,’ Unkei said. ‘Kannotekina Atsuryoku caters to
all
the senses.’ Smiling, he turned and indicated the computer panel. ‘All the functions of the room can be accessed via your in-room terminal, which can be accessed remotely via our service application. Lights, both internal and external, are controlled from there, as is the privacy lockdown on the door. A number of in-room entertainments can be obtained directly, or ordered.’

‘Thank you,’ Fox said, bowing. ‘All I need right now is a little time to adjust.’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you think they practise walking backward through a narrow door while bowing?’ Kit asked when the door was closed.

Fox stepped up to the computer panel and began working through on-screen touch menus. ‘I’d have to.’ There was a solid-sounding set of clicks from the door. ‘Download their app, but I want it checked with everything you’ve got available before I execute it.’

‘Of course. The room is likely bugged.’

‘Uh-huh. There’s a camera pointed at the bed, another on the lounge area.’

‘Won’t that make it hard to recharge?’

‘Secretly, yeah, but my passport data says I have “extensive cybernetics” and I’m told there were plenty of fairly lurid reports in the media about what happened in Chiba. Needing additional power isn’t that uncommon in large-scale cybernetic replacement and you can bet the Fukui-kai has access to my records.’

‘Okay. You’re going to run a sleep cycle?’

Fox headed for the bathroom to wash her make-up from her face. ‘Uh-huh. Drop notes to Jason and Yuriko telling them I’ve arrived safely. When I wake up, we’ll take a closer look at this place.’

~~~

It was early evening by the time Fox emerged from her room to take a proper look around. The resort had a fabricator on-site, so she had ordered a couple of fresh bodysuits and a black version of the skirt she had worn to her mother’s party: the combination, without a jacket, was meant to look sexy, but somewhat restrained. Given that most of the thirty or so guests were showing little restraint at all, Fox felt overdressed.

‘Put an order through for a bikini, would you, Kit?’ Fox said as they rode up in the elevator. ‘Something… small.’

‘You generally prefer swimsuits,’ Kit commented. ‘I’ll need to find a suitable pattern.’

‘I… suppose I do, but for this place I think I need something with a lot of string in it. Need to fit in.’ Fox stepped out of the car and into the restaurant lounge.

People were eating at some of the tables. You could get food in the lower lounge, or your room, but it seemed as though the upper-level lounge was the area to take a meal rather than indulging in something more akin to a Roman orgy feast. Downstairs, people ate lying down. Upstairs, they sat at tables and had conversations over food and wine. Fox figured she could play the time zone card and avoid eating here for one night.

‘That service app came up clean?’ Fox asked.

‘Nothing was detected by the programs I ran on it. I am executing it in a virtual machine with activity checks, just to be sure.’

‘Has knowing Vali turned you paranoid, or is this just natural caution?’

‘Both. Vali’s capabilities with regard to hacking certainly give one pause. However, Minotaur was no slouch in that department, and we are staying in a hotel basically run by a criminal organisation that has video and audio bugs set up in every location they could fit them.’

‘Good point.’ Fox turned as Natsuko Enemoto rushed over, executing an immediate bow.

‘Meridian-sama, are you feeling better?’

‘Much, thank you. Not hungry yet and everyone’s eating…’

‘Room service is available twenty-four hours a day. However, I would recommend trying to sleep further tonight. It will help you adjust. I can recommend a light sedative, or some other, more personal, method of assisting you to sleep.’

Fox smiled. ‘I’ll be fine. I usually adjust fairly quickly.’ She looked around. ‘Are all your staff Aphrodite Cybernetics models?’

‘The Eiko no Tenshi series, their premier production model. The name can be read as “glorious angel.” Their face and body sculpting is done by quite famous designers and their production quality is second to none.’

‘And I understand you have the new bioroids, the Yurei no Ningyo, here too?’

There was something, something so fleeting that Fox doubted she would have noticed without her enhanced rate of perception. It passed over Natsuko’s face in an instant and was gone. Revulsion? ‘We do. There are eight here and one could be provided for you, if you wished, but I feel that a lady of your tastes would find them…’ She trailed off, apparently not sure how to put her thoughts into words.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it. From what I’ve read recently, they
aren’t
to my taste. Your English is excellent, by the way. I’m so glad. I don’t speak Japanese aside from a few words.’ Which was sort of true, given that she got subtitles when she saw or heard the language.

‘Thank you, Meridian-sama. Unkei and I have studied nine languages between us, to better serve our guests.’

‘Very diligent. I’m just going to wander around for now. Get the feel of the place.’

‘Very good, Meridian-sama.’ Bowing, Natsuko left and Fox continued her walk around the lounge.

In all, Fox spotted one human couple at the tables. There could have been more in the resort, but she had the impression that coming here was more of a solo thing. There were a couple of people eating alone, but most had a companion. One of the Glorious Angels, and Fox fairly quickly started recognising their features. There was more variation in the females. She counted, and Kit confirmed, twelve female and six male variations. These were added to with further variation in hair colour and style, and a few small variations in skin tone, but you could basically pick one of the droids out of a line-up fairly quickly if you were observant.

‘How are the companions ordered?’ Fox asked.

Kit immediately brought up a display of the resort app. ‘There is a menu,’ Kit said, sounding vaguely disgusted. ‘You can select by gender, body type, hair colour, and then by picking through portraits of the individual units available. The Yurei no Ningyo available are on a separate menu, and come at a surcharge.’

‘Right.’ The resort was basically all-in aside from a few extras. Apparently, hiring the latest sex toy counted as an extra.

‘You can also order for companionship over your meal, for an entire day or night, or simply for an hour with the option to extend. I am
very
glad that my function is not to provide this kind of service. I believe I would find it entirely degrading.’

‘I’d imagine you would. I’d imagine I would too, and yet people have managed to do it since exchange of goods and services was invented.’

‘The Eiko no Tenshi is installed with a class three AI. I doubt that they have the emotional capacity to feel degraded, even after a long period of utilisation. Perhaps serving as a personal companion to one user would be better.’

‘That almost certainly depends on the owner.’

Taking the elevator up again got Fox to the level where the Enemotos had their offices and possibly their apartment. If any of the other staff were human, they apparently lived away from the resort. There were towns nearby and a ready supply of boats. Whatever, the guest elevator let out onto a corridor which took you out onto a balcony, and that got you to stairs which led up to the roof.

It was dark now, the sun had not set long ago, but it was night and no one else seemed to be interested in the view of the bay. Not that you could see much of the bay itself given that there was a headland in the way. There were sun loungers up here, but the surface was laid out with marking for a helipad. Presumably that was reserved for VIPs and emergencies. Fox leaned against the railing and looked out over the water, watching the flickering of the underwater lights through the slight swell.

‘It’s pretty,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox. ‘Oh, I’m not transmitting. You’re the only one who can see me.’

Fox nodded, and kept her answer to the inside of her head. ‘It’s beautiful. Quiet too. There’s no noise from below.’ About the only sound came from the waves lapping against the jetties.

‘Yes. It’s tranquil. I think I like it. Though tranquillity could hardly describe what’s going on below us.’

‘Huh, yeah. How much is this place costing us for a few days of possibly useless pseudo-espionage?’

‘I don’t think you want to know the answer to that. Just try to avoid looking at the expense claim.’