It was from Clara Lang. Good morning. Just reminding you that lunch is in the Conservatory at 1 pm. Otherwise the morning is all yours. Remember, the kitchen staff are at your disposal for breakfast!
Hmm. A room-service breakfast, and a morning with nothing in particular to do. So, this was the life of the idle rich …
Smiling, Rita rose and went to the shower, where she enveloped herself in steamy water that jetted from four different directions, ignoring for now the bathtub, which was the size of a small pool.
Refreshed and wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe, she wandered into the living room, and stared out at the snow. It was no great blizzard, the flurries came and went in veils, and in the clearer moments the lower slopes of the Wheel could be seen off to the east, wet and glistening. If anything, the weather seemed to be clearing.
Even so, she would not be venturing out onto the balcony any time soon. The weather panel by the airlock doors showed green, but it was still windy out there, and the temperature was minus twelve degrees Celsius. Who needed that after a warm shower?
She turned to the kitchen. It had everything necessary to fix a basic breakfast of her own—but what the hell, she was a billionaire for a day. She dialled room service, and ordered poached eggs with toast, spinach and hash browns on the side.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ was the answer. ‘We’ll have that up to you in about fifteen minutes.’
In the kitchen a gleaming coffee machine waited, its instruction manual sitting politely alongside, but she dug beneath the counter and found drip-filter equipment, then proceeded to grind the beans and make herself a coffee, straight and black.
Sipping it, she took another lap around the apartment, noting the perfect proportions of the rooms and the perfect placement of the furniture, and the warm, steady silence.
She was, she realised, at a loss as to what to do with the morning—or with the following four days ahead of her.
She was not used to idleness anymore, that was part of the problem. Since the great change in her life of twelve years ago, she had worked, worked and worked. First for a year to complete her secondary education as a mature-aged student, after ignoring it so appallingly in her late teens. Then through the five years of her vet degree, all the while holding down a variety of part-time jobs, as she had come away from the collapse of her old life and the split with Anne with only slender financial resources. (She had, of course, refused to ask her father for money.)
Then the real work had started. Her first internship at a veterinary hospital had made university look like a breeze, with fourteen-hour shift stacked upon fourteen-hour shift, rotating from day to night with scarcely a day off in between, let alone a holiday. Indeed, in the five years since graduating, she had taken barely six weeks leave out of the twenty she was due, and even then, only in dribs of three or four days at a time. It was only of late, really—now that she finally had a measure of confidence in her own abilities in the emergency ward—that she had been able to imagine stepping away from the job for a proper break.
So she had taken two weeks off for this trip, even though she would be only five days at the Observatory. And that made this, it seemed to her now, something of a significant juncture, a still point of reflection after the long mad dash of rebuilding herself from the ground up.
She was at the window again, gazing out to the snow. It had thickened momentarily, an opaque wall of dancing particles, some falling, some rising as the wind eddied about her balcony.
Another reason, of course, that she had not taken any extended holidays in the past ten years was the problem of what do with such a break when it was just her, alone. Her last real trip, all her real trips, had been with Anne. She had dated no one since, not seriously. Oh, there had been sex, yes, she wasn’t a fucking nun, and even some longer-term flings; there were the clubs she frequented with the circle of friends she had made at university, or hook-ups arranged via apps on her phone. But no one had claimed her heart the way Anne had, and Rita was not sure she had even wanted anyone to—she’d had other priorities.
But now, well, the rebuilding phase was over, that was a fact … and she wasn’t getting any younger.
It was strange to think about really. What did she want? This Rita Gausse, this sensible, independent professional woman, living her ordered, quiet life in her ordered, quiet, river-view flat. What sort of partner would this Rita choose, if she could?
Not someone like Anne, that was for sure. In a way, Rita herself had become Anne. That was not to say that Anne had been staid or quiet or dull. She had been anything but! Yet she had always been the more grounded of the two of them, the saner. The old Rita, spinning wildly further and further away from her own centre, had needed that. But the new Rita didn’t need grounding. Didn’t need Anne.
Even so, she still missed her sometimes, god only knew. And right now, on this dim grey morning, in this warm luxurious hideaway, with the snow falling outside and the wind murmuring deliciously cold through the glass, and the great soft bed waiting … well, lord.
The doorbell chimed, and Rita forgot about past loves and future holidays.
Breakfast was here!
▲
Afterwards, she decided she would go for a swim. Not in the pool up on the Terrace obviously. It was hardly outdoor weather, though by the time she finished breakfast the snow had stopped. She would visit the Observatory’s indoor pool, the Cavern Pool as it was called. Her glimpse of it during yesterday’s tour had been intriguing.
So she dressed, then packed her bathing suit into a light bag she found in the wardrobe, and made for the door. In anyone else’s private home, or even in a hotel, she would have walked to the pool with her suit already on under a bathrobe, or hell, with just a towel thrown over her shoulder. But somehow that didn’t feel right here. It would show a gauche lack of … well, not breeding maybe, but of familiarity with wealth.
Amused at herself, she went out into the passage. The usual quietness greeted her, the hallway deserted, not even the impression of a footprint visible on the thick carpet, as if there was no one else in the whole building. And when she came to the Helix Staircase and looked up and down the great twisting monolith to the levels far below and the great dome of the Atrium above, there was still not a soul in sight.
She descended one of the barrels of the staircase, trying not to feel self-conscious in her solitude. The silence didn’t help. It was not oppressive. Not exactly. Indeed the space was calm and spacious and well-designed. But it was there, and it was bigger than her.
The Helix Staircase itself was also disconcerting. There was a parallel flight of stairs entwined with your own that you could never see or meet, and it was all too easy to imagine that someone was secretly ascending or descending those stairs, invisible to you. A trick of the mind only, maybe, but nagging and persistent. When Rita came at last to the bottom, the recreation level, she could not help but dart a quick glance back up at the great tower, as if to catch a face staring down at her from some high railing. But again, there was no one.
‘Why, hello there.’
She spun. From this lowest landing there opened only two passages. One led, as Rita remembered, to the Cavern Pool. The other she had not been down yet, for it led to the Games Arena, which she had yesterday declined to visit. Emerging now from this latter hallway, dressed in shorts and T-shirt and running shoes, mopping a sweaty head with a hand towel, was the youthful IT expert, Eugene.
‘Oh,’ Rita said, ‘good morning.’
‘Swimming or running?’ he asked, with a nod to the bag she carried.
‘Swimming. You’ve been running?’
‘Oh yes. I do ten kays every morning. Usually earlier than this, but I slept in after last night. Richman is down here most mornings too.’
‘Ten kilometres? Around and around on an indoor running track? That must get a bit tedious.’
Eugene paused in mopping his head. ‘You haven’t seen the Games Arena, I take it. There’s nothing tedious about running i
n there. You really should go and have a look.’
She glanced down the passageway. But no, she still did not feel ready to view the place of her father’s death.
‘Maybe some other time,’ she said.
He hesitated, perhaps remembering belatedly. ‘Oh. Well, have a nice swim. I’m for the shower. See you at lunch.’ And with a spring he started up one spiral of the Helix Staircase.
Rita watched until he vanished from sight, then she was alone again, the silence all the more intense for having been broken. Finally, she turned and followed the hallway to the Cavern Pool. The lighting grew dimmer as she rounded a single bend and came to a set of wooden swinging doors, almost like lights going down before a curtain opening on a show. Then, pushing through the doors, she was borne into an underworld of stone and water as fantastical as any theatre.
Before her spread a paved terrace, beyond which a vast body of water opened, blue-green under a ceiling of native hewn rock. First there was an Olympic-sized rectangle, marked into lanes for those who wanted to swim mundane laps. But on the far side of this functional space the pool widened out into a lake of sheer whimsy. Around its shore rose a tiered complex of ponds, water splashing from the higher to the lower—no silence here, the air was alive with the laughter of cascades. Elsewhere flooded tunnels, shimmering with light, wound away into the rock to ends beyond view; and in other places again grottoes beckoned enticingly, some of them intimate little caves with hot spas bubbling within, others misted and secret behind waterfall entrances.
Lovely.
But also deserted. Rita could see no one in the water, nor any clothes or towels draped on any of the cane chairs that were arranged poolside. She explored a little. At the rear of the terrace a fire burned in a hearth. To one side a doorway led off to a line of private dressing rooms and toilets. On the other side of the terrace another doorway led to both a sauna and a steam room, as well as a chill-looking plunge pool. But she found nobody using any of these facilities. She was alone.
And the more she looked, the more extravagant the emptiness felt. There was no sign that anyone had visited the pool before Rita today, and maybe no one would have come at all, if not her, but still, everything was in readiness. The fire was burning—the flame was gas—just so that if someone should drop in, it would be there to welcome them. Lights were on everywhere, even in the steam room and sauna. And she could only begin to imagine the size of the filtration and pumping systems that lay behind the pool and the waterfalls; all of it kept running merely on the off-chance that someone might show up for a swim.
The wastefulness of it seemed extraordinary. But then what did wastefulness matter, she supposed, when there were billions of dollars at hand? There were no childproof fences here either. It seemed money could bypass every concern, even the strictest of zoning laws.
Time to get in. Rita slipped into a dressing room, changed, and reemerged. Dropping her things on a chair, she moved towards the steps that led into the water. And who cared whether the pool was an obscene indulgence or not, it wasn’t her money that had been spent on it, so why judge? The truth was she found it all marvellous, a fairyland lake hidden within the mountain. It had been dug out by machine, yes, but the cavern felt uncannily natural. And unlike any other indoor pool she had ever visited, there was no smell of chlorine, no waft of warm humidity—the air held only a cool, flinty scent.
But the water, as she set foot on the first descending step, was pleasantly warm, and utterly clear against a greenish floor. Subtle lighting, below and above the waterline, made the whole pool glow gently. She took a few more steps, up to her thighs, then sank deliberately and pushed off from the stairs, surfacing a few yards out.
It was delightful, just warm enough without being cloying. She put her head down and swam a few strokes, staring down at the lines, her eyes not stinging at all. But it wasn’t lane swimming she wanted. She lifted her head, studied the vault of the stone roof overhead, then considered the grottoes, and finally the tunnels that wound off into gloom like newly discovered underground rivers. How far might they run?
With a gentle breaststroke, she chose the nearest opening and glided inwards. The rock ceiling arched low over her. She almost had to laugh. To think, she was swimming along a watery tunnel that was set two and a half kilometres up in a spire of stone!
Ridiculous. Who would even think of such a thing? Except, well, her father had thought of it; or perhaps Richman had, and it had been made real. And here she was, the only person using it.
The thought gave her pause. She put her feet down and found the water to be only chest deep, which was reassuring, even though she was a confident enough swimmer, for the main pool was already out of sight behind her, lost around the curve of the tunnel.
But good lord, she wasn’t an explorer venturing down some uncharted subterranean waterway—this was all man-made. She was perfectly safe. She forced herself onwards, taking long languid steps now rather than swimming. So gloomy had it become that overhead, on the rock ceiling, pinpricks of luminosity stood out like glow worms. But surely they weren’t real glow worms. Were they?
She drifted on. Around another turn the light ahead grew stronger, and there came the sound once more of falling water. Increasing her pace, she turned a final bend and was shocked to see daylight before her. Real daylight, sky and clouds, bright. Her stomach flipped, for it seemed that the tunnel simply debouched into open air, that the river in which she swam must simply flow clear out onto the face of the Mount, there to fall, in a dreadful cascade, to the sea far below …
She drew in a breath, calmed herself. Of course it wasn’t open air. She was looking at a wall of glass set flush into the side of the Mount. And though the water seemed to flow over a lip into nothingness, and though she could hear the sound of it falling, in reality it must be a trick, an infinity edge set just short of the glass wall.
But it was an uncanny illusion. She drifted closer. The view was to the west, an immensity of ocean and sky. On the other side of the glass, only feet away, a last flurry of snow was scurrying along the cliff face, a bizarre counterpoint to the warm water in which she floated, but beyond, the western sky was pale blue, clearing to sunlight.
Rita waded as close to the window as she dared, and found that in fact it leaned out somewhat, so that the nearer she came to the infinity edge, the more she could see down and down and down to the ocean. Her senses were all in a tangle, her wet skin telling her she floated in a pool that was held secure within solid stone, her eyes and gut exposing the truth of the precipice below. God, for all its wonders and beauty, this house was a terrible place for those afraid of heights!
But she lingered all the same, studying the ocean far below, slate grey and veined with white. Nowhere in that vast, bleak field of grey could she spy a ship or any other sign of mankind. Indeed, it was probably one of the least-travelled expanses of water in the world, for no trade routes ran this far down into the Southern Ocean, and when the tourist cruises came to see the Wheel, they did not venture west of it.
The only ships that might appear out there would be fishing trawlers, or research vessels on their way to bases in Antarctica. It was one of the latter, the Australian Antarctic vessel Aurora Australis, that would be picking Rita up four days from now, on its way home to Hobart after its latest sojourn to the ice. Richman had called in certain favours—Rita didn’t know of what sort—to get the ship detoured. It did not normally carry non-research passengers, and its crew would no doubt resent the imposition, but all Rita cared about was that the ship was big, and that it would have plenty of people on board.
But that was four days away yet, and after a while of staring out at the last few flakes of snow, and at the empty ocean rolling away, Rita began to feel cold despite the warmth of the water.
She turned and waded back through the tunnel to the main cavern. To banish the last of the chill, she put her head down and swam four stiff laps of freestyle, up and down one of the lanes. Then, breathing hard, she
made her way to the stairs. Once on dry land, she took up a towel from a waiting pile and stood in front of the fire to dry. And while rubbing at her head with the towel, she heard it. Or thought she did.
She stopped, listening. The cavern was both echoey and yet sound-absorbing, the patter of the waterfalls camouflaging the greater hollowness. And now, beneath the splash of water, she heard it again. A woman’s voice, muffled and distant, but crying out.
Rita strained to listen. What were the words? Was it Hello? Or was it Help? She couldn’t be sure. And where was it coming from?
She stared about. Not from the dressing rooms, nor from the sauna, nor from beyond the main doors, nor from the grottoes or tunnels. If anything, it seemed to be coming from the fire—that is, from somewhere behind the fluttering gas flames.
She examined the hearth, frowning. To the left of it was an alcove lined with shelves holding more towels. Stepping into that alcove now, Rita discovered that one side of it was a false wall, hiding the entry to a short passageway that ran off further to the left.
It ended in a closed door.
Hello? she heard more clearly now, though still muffled. Hello, can anyone help me? The tone was not, as she had at first thought, one of fear, but rather of impatience and frustration.
Hesitantly, Rita moved down the passage, and tapped on the door. It bore no sign or marking, but she guessed that it must be a staff entry. ‘Hello? Are you okay in there?’
Silence.
Rita paused a moment longer, then tried the door. It had no lock and swung open at her push. Immediately, a hum was in the air. She was looking down a plain corridor, the walls lined with unpolished concrete. Along one side ran bare metal pipes and plastic electrical conduits, and a short distance ahead the passage opened into a large machine room of some kind. Rita propped the door open—there was a latch for the purpose—and, feeling like she was trespassing, crept forwards.
‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Hello?’
The hum grew louder. She came to the machine room. It was crowded with what she assumed must be plant equipment for the pool. Large steel pipes emerged from the wall and joined with other pipes attached to esoteric metal boxes and tanks that might have been filters or pumps, or even boilers for the steam room.
The Rich Man’s House Page 18
