House of the Sun

by Nigel Findley

  I thought about that for a while as the skyrakers reared up around us, constellations of electric stars in the firmament. "So what are the bad points about the city?" I asked at last.

  "The politicians," Scott responded at once with a humorless laugh. "I don't know what they're like where you come from, brah, but here they're like the trees: crooked with their palms out." He chortled as he pointed out the window to a coconut palm on the street corner.

  He slowed and swung the big limo around a tight corner.

  We sighed to a stop, and he killed the engine. "We're here," he announced unnecessarily.

  "Which is where?" I asked him a few moments later as I watched him unload my single bag from the limo's hangarsized trunk. I looked up at the building looming over me: white as only artificial marble can be, multiple complex curves that seemed to give the building a sense of movement in the faint pink of the predawn.

  "The Diamond Head Hotel," he told me, "right next to—you guessed it—Diamond Head itself."

  "Open to the public?"

  "You've got to be kidding, brah," the big ork snorted. "Even I don't have high enough corp connections to stay here. You pack big juju, even if you don't know it."

  I nodded as I followed him up the ramp toward the lobby. There were corporate hostelries in Seattle—places open only to various ranks of corporators, regardless of their actual affiliations—but the concept hadn't really caught on there yet. (In Cheyenne? Maybe that backwater burg will catch up in a decade, chummer.) Apparently, the high-tone suits like the hostelries because they contribute even more to the separation between them and the burakumin ... a class that included me, which gave the whole thing a nice touch of irony, didn't it?

  We breezed right through the lobby. Scott didn't even glance at the smooth-faced slot behind the front desk, so I didn't either. Up the elevator we went—I noticed the ork had to wave a keycard at the control panel before the door would open and again before the elevator would start—and out onto the landing on the seventeenth floor. The hotel—corporate hostelry or not—had the same feel and ambiance as modem hotels anywhere in the world, all the individuality and character pressed out of them. I could just as well have been in the Sheraton in Seattle.

  I followed Scott all the way down to the end of the hall and waited while he waved the keycard again at the door. The maglock snapped back, and he pushed the door open with his foot, stepping aside to let me enter first.

  Well, okay, this wasn't like the Sheraton ... at least, those rooms in the Sheraton I've had cause to visit. Come to think of it, it was conceptually the nonmobile analog of the Phaeton's passenger compartment: similar overstuffed couches, similar entertainment suite, similar wet-bar arrangement.

  Pure, packaged hedonistic luxury, in peach and aqua. Chuckling softly at my reaction—probably a pretty good gaffed-fish imitation—Scott carried my case through into the bedroom of the suite and placed it gently on a bed big enough for one hell of a party. As he came back toward me, I had the momentary urge to slip him a tip.

  "You want to grab some shut-eye?" he asked.

  I thought about it, glanced at that bed, and thought about it again. "Not a bad idea," I admitted.

  "No problem." He checked his watch, a pricey Quasar chronograph (yet more evidence, if I'd really needed it, that he was more than a simple limo driver). "How's about I swing by in about three hours?"

  "Make it four," I told him. "And—"

  He cut me off with a grin. "Don't worry, Mr. Dirk, I'll bring you your rabbit's foot. And some real clothes."

  * * *

  True to form—whenever I really feel like I need sleep, it happens this way—I didn't slip into the deepest, most restful phase of sleep until fifteen minutes before I'd set the alarm to go off. So my eyes were still dry and gritty, my thoughts just a touch fogged, when I rolled out of the party-bed.

  Sun was pouring through the picture window, and I was diverted for almost a full minute by the view as I stood there naked in the middle of the room. I was looking out toward Diamond Head—I assume that's what it was, at least—a huge outcropping of weathered rock. From this angle it didn't look so much like a diamond as a slightly crooked anvil, but at that moment, I couldn't have cared less. It was beautiful as all hell, wreathed around its base by lush foliage and even lusher mansions, silhouetted against a sky that was a clearer and purer blue than any I'd ever seen before. If there was any drek in the atmosphere—particulates, NOx, and other miscellaneous nasties—there wasn't enough of it to take the edge off the view's clarity. Not like Seattle—in fragging spades—or even like Cheyenne. One of the advantages of being an island in the middle of the Pacific, I figured, watching the trade winds stir the coconut palms lining the shore: The prevailing winds blow all your pollution problems out to sea. Not a bad system, if you can arrange it.

  I shook off my fascination with the view and headed for the bathroom to take care of the fur that had built up on my teeth, in addition to other matters. I'd thrown on a bathrobe and was debating doing something drastic with my hair—mousse, maybe or (better yet) some fragging varnish—when the suite's door signal chirped.

  You know how you can tell a real luxury hotel from a wannabe? A front-door intercom in the bathroom, within easy reach of both drekker and bathtub. The Diamond Head Hotel definitely fit the first category. I leaned over and hit the intercom switch. "Yeah?"

  The two-centimeter thumbnail screen lit up, and I saw Scott's grinning face. "You up and around, Mr. Dirk?"

  "More or less. Come on in, make yourself at home. I'll be out in a couple of ticks." I hit the key labeled Door Unlock.

  When I emerged a few moments later, the big ork was standing in the middle of the living room staring out the picture windows, transfixed by the same view that had nailed me earlier. He was in mufti. He'd looked big enough in his tailored business suit. Now, the impression of overwhelming size was emphasized by the fact that he wore a Hawai'ian shirt—yes, those things were still in fashion, apparently—that made him look like a profusion of jungle flowers that had decided to take a stroll. On the couch near him were a couple of parcels.

  He turned as I emerged from the bathroom. "Sorry to keep you waiting," I told him, running my hands through my hair, which still stood out in places like stickpins.

  Scott chuckled and patted one of his own unruly cowlicks. "I hear you, bruddah." He gestured to the parcels on the couch. "Brought you some things. Want to try them on?"

  "Did you guess at the sizes?" I looked again at the chauffeur's two-ax-handle shoulders. How good would he be at judging the size of anyone with a normal physique?

  "No need, I just checked your file. One-eighty-five height, eighty-nine mass. One-oh-five regular in the chest, eighty-four centimeters in the waist. Right?"

  "Not quite." I was perversely glad that he'd got something wrong. Christ ... if Barnard had my fragging measurements on file, what else did he have in my docket? An itemized list of sexual conquests? An estimate of my daily calorie intake? "Closer to eighty-six in the waist these days."

  Scott grinned triumphantly. "I figured they might be old figures, so I took the libery of letting the waist out a touch. Check 'em out."

  With a sigh I picked up the parcels and headed into the bedroom to change.

  The clothes fit perfectly, and I had to admit that they were a hell of a lot more practical than what I'd brought. A couple of pairs of light-colored, lightweight slacks—five-pocket things, with slightly baggy legs, pulled in at the ankles. A couple of Hawai'ian-style shirts—floral prints, but a lot more muted than Scott's choice—slightly oversized, short-sleeved, cut to be worn outside the waistband of the pants. A second package contained a set of Ares Arms form-fitting body armor—short-sleeved, of course—that fit me like a reinforced second skin. I selected bone-white slacks and a dusty blue shirt with a red hibiscus pattern. As long as I kept the shirt buttoned up high, you couldn't see I was wearing armor underneath.

  Scott nodded approvingly as I re-emerged. "Much
better," he told me with a grin. "You look almost like a Kama'aina."

  "What abou—?"

  "Your rabbit's foot?" he finished for me. "Here." He reached up under the waist of his shirt, pulled something out, and tossed it to me.

  I snagged it instinctively and examined the object. A Seco LD-120 light pistol, in a compact, cut-down waist holster. I pulled out the blocky black macroplast weapon, dropped the clip, worked the action. Perfect condition—as I'd expected, when you came down to it. The holster had two side pouches, each holding a spare clip—thirty-six rounds in total, then. The little pistol didn't have anywhere near the stopping power of my trusty old Manhunter, but if the fertilizer hit the ventilator, I'd at least be able to give an opponent something to think about. With a nod of thanks to Scott, I slipped the holster into the waistband of my pants over the left hip, attaching the clip to the belt. I checked in the mirror, and saw that the loose-fitting shirt concealed the weapon almost perfectly.

  "Feeling luckier now?" Scott asked.

  * * *

  The first order of business was food. I hadn't bothered with the light meal served on the suborbital flight, so the last time I'd eaten was almost eighteen hours ago. My stomach was starting to suspect my throat had been cut.

  Scott led me downstairs to the restaurant—opulent, as I'd expected—and out onto an open patio where white-coated staff were tending a breakfast buffet. For a moment I wondered about the tactical wisdom of an open patio, but then I saw the little warning signs positioned every three meters along the patio rail. Notice: Protective Magic in Use, they read. I nodded in understanding. A physical barrier of some kind, I figured, backed by some kind of spell barrier. It couldn't have been a mana barrier, because birds flew unhindered between the patio and the surrounding palms.

  The patio was empty, apart from me and Scott, and the serving staff ... and about a dozen little beige birds that looked like some kind of dove. The big ork led me to a table by the patio rail and asked me what I wanted for breakfast.

  While he went off and filled my order—I could get used to this kind of personal service, I realized—I enjoyed the view. The view of Diamond Head was blocked by some buildings from this vantage point, but I could look out to the west, toward downtown Honolulu and, beyond that, toward Awalani Airport and Pearl Harbor. The still, azure water of the bay was dotted with pleasure craft of all types and sizes. Brightly colored spinnakers gleamed in the sun, while here and there speedboats kicked curtains of spray into the air as they cut tight turns. In the distance, halfway to the horizon, I saw a high-speed craft of some kind, going like a bat out of hell but leaving almost no wake. Some kind of hydrofoil, I figured; possibly an interisland ferry.

  As Scott returned with my loaded plate—he'd either erred on the side of generosity or else judged my appetite based on his own—I heard a distant ripping sound. I looked up and to the west.

  Two vicious little darts were shooting through the air, climbing and accelerating out over the ocean—fighters of some kind, no doubt launched from Pearl. Even though I knew they weren't any faster than the suborbital I'd ridden a few hours earlier—hell, they might even have a lower top speed—they looked much faster. Pure, violent energy, that's the way they seemed to me at that moment: volatile, apparently ready to maneuver in an instant or lash out with weapons of grotesque power.

  Now that I was looking to the sky, I noticed something else, something that I'd seen only a couple of times on the mainland. It was the contrail of a high-altitude plane, but this wasn't the geometrically perfect straight line of a highspeed civilian transport. No, this was like donuts on a rope—a central line contrail surrounded by evenly spaced torus-shaped loops. From what little I knew of aerospace technology—the kind of drek you pick up from scanning the popular press—the only kind of engine that could create that characteristic donut-on-a-rope structure was a pulse-detonation propulsion system. As far as I knew, pulse-detonation engines were used on only one kind of craft: hypersonic spy planes, Aurora class and up.

  I frowned, thinking. Pulse-detonation is pretty hot fragging stuff. Even now, decades after it was introduced, it was still a touchy thing. Anybody could make a standard jet engine—turbofan, ramjet, even SCRAMjet—but only a very few engineers could design and build a pulse-detonation drive that actually worked without blowing itself into shrapnel. I wouldn't have imagined that Hawai'i had the resources—monetary and personnel—to develop something that sophisticated.

  But then, I realized, maybe the kingdom didn't have to develop it from scratch. When Danforth Ho's civilian army suppressed the Civil Defense Force and basically took over the islands, he might well have "acquired" a lot of interesting tech by default, as it were.

  And that thought brought up a whole drekload of other questions. Now that I considered it, I realized that the descriptions I'd read of Danforth Ho's coup and the islands' secession from the U.S. had been pretty fragging superficial on a couple of pretty major points. The Pacific fleet business—that I could understand. A task force commander doesn't argue with Thor shots. But what about the materiel at the military bases throughout the islands? And the bases themselves? Would the U.S. government have let them go so easily, without a fight? Or had there been a fight, and the official records modified to gloss it all over?

  I turned to Scott. He'd gotten his own plate of food—heaped even higher than mine—and was already halfway through it. "You're native-born, aren't you?" I asked him.

  He nodded. "Oahu born and bred," he acknowledged around a mouthful of Belgian waffles.

  "So tell me about the Secession."

  He chuckled and wiped syrup and whipped cream—real whipped cream, for frag's sake—from his lips. "How old do you think I am, brah?" he asked. "That was back in 'seventeen. I wasn't even an itch in my father's pants."

  "But your parents were around in 'seventeen, right?" I pressed. "And you'll have met a drek-load of people who were around, maybe even involved. People talk."

  Scott shook his head as he finished off another gargantuan mouthful. "That's the thing, bruddah—they don't talk, not about Secession. Well, okay, they do—but, like, about the stuff leading up to it, and about the days after it. What actually went down, what the kahunas did to the CDF, all that kanike—all that bulldrek—nobody talks about it much."

  "Why?"

  The ork shrugged. "Don't know, hoa, really I don't. I'm just a simple wikanikanaka boy here."

  "Wikani-what?"

  "You got to learn to sling the lingo around here, brah," the ork said with a laugh. "Everybody speaks a kind of pidgin—lots of Polynesian loanwords, okay? Like hoa—that means 'friend,' 'chummer.' Kanike—that means the sound of stuff clashing and clattering together, but it's used like 'bulldrek.' And wikanikanaka—that's 'ork.' You'll get used to it.

  "Anyway," he went on, getting his thoughts back on track, "like I said, nobody really talks about the Secession."

  "Like there's stuff they don't want other people to know?"

  "Maybe," he allowed, "or maybe stuff they don't want to remember."

  "Like what?"

  The ork shrugged, apparently a little uncomfortable. "You hear stories, sometimes," he said vaguely. "Old people talk, sometimes ... but then you ask for more details, and they clam up on you." He paused. "You talk to enough people, you hear really weird stuff. Dragons, for one. Big storms—unnatural storms—rolling down out of Puowaina. That's Punchbowl crater, just north of the city. Weird drek going on in Haleakala Volcano on Maui. Kukae, some old geezer even told me once he saw something big—something real big—moving under the water in Pearl Harbor, next to the old Arizona battleship memorial. Said whatever it was, it was bigger than the battleship and it looked at him with eyes the size of fragging basketballs." He shrugged again. "Believe as much of that kanike as you want. I don't know the answers." He folded his napkin and put it on the table. "Now eat up and let's roll, hoa, okay?"

  6

  I waited in the open-air lobby while Scott pulled the Phaeton u
p and out of the underground parking lot. The big Rolls sighed to a stop in front of me, and the rear passenger door swung open.

  I gestured no to that, crossing my hands edge to edge like karate chops meeting each other. Scott's voice sounded from an exterior speaker. "Problems, Mr. Dirk?"

  "I don't want to ride in the playpen," I explained—feeling a touch foolish at talking to a car that was so obviously buttoned-up. "Any objection to company up front?"

  I heard the ork chuckle, a slightly tinny sound through the speaker. "Your call, bruddah, but you're going to have me forgetting I'm a chauffeur here." The passenger compartment door shut again, and the right side front door clicked open. I walked around the big car, slid inside, and chunked the door shut. The driver's compartment was nothing compared to the playpen in back, predictably, but it still was more comfortable and well-appointed than some dosses I've lived in.

  Scott grinned over at me. The hair-thin optic cable connecting his datajack to the control panel seemed to burn in the sun. "Okay, Mr. Dirk, anything in particular you want to see?"

  I shrugged. "You're the kama'aina," I said. "You tell me what I should see?"

  His grin broadened. "You got it, hoa." At the touch of a mental command, the limo slipped into gear and pulled away. "Any objection to a little music? Local stuff."

  I shrugged. "Just as long as it's not 'Aloha Oe,' " I told him.

  He laughed at that. "Not in this car, you can bet on that. Ever hear traditional slack-key?" I shook my head. "You're in for a treat, then." As Scott sat back comfortably and crossed his arras, the stereo clicked on and the car filled with music.

  I've always had a taste for music—real music, stuff that shows some kind of talent, some kind of musicianship, not the drek that anyone with an attitude and a synth can chum out. Old blues or trad jazz preferably, but I've got a relatively open mind. Hell, I've even listened to country on occasion. Slack-key was something new—acoustic guitars, alternately strummed and intricately finger-picked. Something like bluegrass in technique, but with a sound and a feel all its own.