Part 3 (1/2)
He waved agreement without looking back.
He pa.s.sed quickly through the rest of the Deluxe Tier to the inmost core, jaunted past his own suite without stopping, and reached the executive offices on time. Warned of his arrival by Diaghilev, Tokugawa's own AI had materialized its Personal Executive a.s.sistant persona for him, rather than the Front-Desk Clerk avatar it would have shown to a guest. ”Good afternoon, Mr. Sasaki,” she said. Her voice was oddly flat and nasal, perhaps in an attempt to make her seem real.
”Good afternoon, Ms. Boswell.”
”Ms. Tokugawa will see you now.” The door to the inner sanctum dilated.
Jay jaunted through it, brus.h.i.+ng the doorway with his fingertips to decelerate himself to a stop inside.
Katherine Tokugawa was sittingkukanzen in the center of her spherical office, dressed in black ceremonial robes, her back to him. At the sound of the door hissing shut behind him, she unlaced her fingers, unfolded her legs from lotus, and flexed at the waist, rotating until she faced him. He politely spun until their local verticals matched, and they exchanged a bow. Then they each ”took a seat,” in the free-fall sense of the term, giving a short puff with their thrusters so that they backed away from each other and velcroed their backs and b.u.t.tocks to opposing surfaces, Jay maneuvering to avoid sitting on the door he had just come through; they sat more or less simultaneously.
”Well?” she said then, in the slow exhalation of one emerging from profound meditation.
It was all bulls.h.i.+t, of course, and Jay knew it. If she had really been meditating, she'd have velcroed herself to a wall or some other support. A person who sitskukanzen in the center of a room in zero gee, unsecured, sooner or later ends up b.u.mping against the air-exhaust . . . and shutting down the airflow only causes a ball of exhaled carbon dioxide to acc.u.mulate and smother the meditator. The Manager of the s.h.i.+mizu was-as the job called for-one of those people who prize appearance over content, style over substance, and Rinzai Buddhism was merely part of her admittedly impressive act. To have actually practiced it would have been an inefficient use of time.
But Jay was not about to let his boss know he saw through her. Not when he was about to p.i.s.s her off.
He slowed his breathing, adjusting to her rhythm. ”My brother said yes,” he told her.
She smiled wearily.
Tokugawa-he dared not let himself think of her as ”Kate” while in her presence-was a hundred and sixty centimeters long, and ma.s.sed forty-six kilos. In free-fall her small size had the effect of making her seem to be a little farther away than she actually was. Which made her seem just a little more crisply in focus than other people. She had stabilized her apparent age at forty standard years, with silver streaks in her hair that were in different places each time you met her. Jay had no idea what her real age might be.
She was the granddaughter of Yoji Tokugawa, who had succeeded Bryce Carrington as Chairman of the Board of the original Skyfac consortium back before the turn of the millennium, and her family still controlled a large share of s.p.a.ce industry today. She had their ”look of eagles,” backed by a competencethat few Tokugawas actually possessed anymore: shelooked so much like the Manager of the finest hotel in human s.p.a.ce that her genuine fitness for the job was almost a happy accident. Neither attribute particularly impressed Jay, but then, he had to work for her.
”Good,” she said quietly. ”It was about time for something to go right.”
”Troubles, Ms. Tokugawa?” Jay asked, testing the waters to see just how bad a time this was to bring up the matter of the two-month escape clause Rand wanted.
She made a flicking-away gesture. ”Not really. Just an infinity of minor nuisances.”
”How minor? Is the house still pressurized?”
”For the moment,” she replied drily. ”No, nothing serious. I've got a major economic summit coming up next month, with so much weight I'm going to have to double security, and-”
”Excuse me, I could have sworn you just said you were going to double security.”
”I did.”
Jay stared. ”There is no such quant.i.ty. You can't double infinity.G.o.d isn't as secure as a s.h.i.+mizu guest.”
She grimaced. ”If He had security like those five are going to have, Satan would never have gotten off a speech, much less a coup attempt. Their combined resources are . . .” She paused, and Jay waited, curious to hear what word she would choose. ” . . . impressive,” she finished, and he repressed an impulse to lift his eyebrows. Any personal fortune that impressed Katherine Tokugawa staggered Jay. ”If they ask me to, I'll have to taste-test their food myself-or anything else they want.”
”That does sound like a lot of pressure.”
”Special diets, special requirements, protocol headaches-the Muslim needs to know where Mecca is at all times, precisely, and the Chinese wants me to have that Soto Zen ros.h.i.+ flown in from Top Step to do dokusan with him, and as for the American-well, never mind whatshe'll want-and of course each and every one of them must be honored and coddled and pamperedprecisely as much as the other four, to the tenth decimal, never mind that it's apples and-” She caught herself, glanced down at her meditation robes, and took a long cleansing breath. ”Never mind any of it. It's par for the course these days. And not your pidgin. About your brother-any problems I should be aware of?”
Jay's turn to take a deep breath. ”One potential glitch . . . but I'll make sure it doesn't express. Don't even give it a thought.”
”Fine. What am I not thinking of?”
”He says he wants a two-month trial period. He'll finish out Pribhara's season-but if his wife and daughter don't like it up here, he'll quit then.”
Her eyes closed momentarily, and the ghost of a frown chased across her brow; those were the only external signs she gave. Those who choose style over substance are compelled to stay with style no matter how tough it gets. But Jay knew she was furious. And here he was, a convenient and fully qualified target . . . ”Why couldn't his family have come up with him the last time?” she asked quietly.
”His wife was on deadline and couldn't leave her desk for more than a few days,” Jay reminded her.
”She's a writer. Remember, they thought he had at least two more seasons-two more years-before the Board would make a final choice . . . and only a twenty-five percent chance it'd turn out to be him.”
Tokugawa had her hands clasped in thekukanzen mudra- but now she was unconsciously twiddling her thumbs. The effect was so ludicrous that he knew she would be even angrier if she became aware of it; he concentrated his gaze on her eyes. ”True,” she admitted grudgingly. ”We are rus.h.i.+ng him. His demand is reasonable. But if his wife decides she's a groundhog, the house loses face. d.a.m.n Pribhara-this is her fault.”
Privately he disagreed. Pribhara could not help being a perpendicular. None of those poor unfortunates could. If anything, the situation was the fault of the s.h.i.+mizu's Board of Directors, for not simply picking a shaper. The three-year rotating audition scheme had always seemed crackbrained to Jay; something like this had been bound to happen. But his advice had been ignored, and now was not the time to mention it.
The blame looked better on Pribhara than it did on him. . . .
”I'd better call in Martin,” she said. ”I hate speaking to the man, but this is his pidgin. Maybe he can . . .”
Her voice trailed off disconsolately.
Jay empathized completely. Even for a PR man, Evelyn Martin was a weasel; you wanted to bathe after talking with him on the phone. But hewas gifted at spin control- A metaphorical lightbulb seemed to appear over Jay's head.
”You're not looking at this right,” he said suddenly. ”This isn't bad news-it's mitigated good news. All it takes is a little spin control.”
”Explain.”
”Look, all Martin's press release has to say is that Pribhara has canceled for medical reasons, and that Porter has graciously consented to fill out her term. At the end of two months,maybe you have to announce that Porter has dropped out too, and let Choy and Mazurski carry on competing from there-a minor kerfluffle. But most likely his wife and kid will love this place as much as everyone else does-so you announcethen that he's been given the final position and has accepted. Either way, none of the Board's face is lost.”
”Your brother would accept that? Not announce that we've picked him as the final winner until he's committed himself? And not announce that at all, ever, if he decides to opt out?”
”Gladly, I think. It gets him out of an impossible situation too.” He had a rush of brains to the head. ”But you should b.u.mp him to the permanent salary right away.”
Her thumbs stopped twiddling. ”Done. Mr. Cohn!”
Her AI materialized its lawyer-persona between her and Jay, facing both of them. As always, Mr. Cohn reminded Jay of an impossibly motionless shark. ”Yes, ma'am?”
She gave instructions for the amendment of Rand's contract, relying on Cohn's legal software to translate her wishes from conversational English into Lawyerese, and spoke her signature. At Jay's suggestion, shehad Cohn upload a copy to Diaghilev so that Jay could pa.s.s the doc.u.ment on to Rand later that night.
Then she dismissed the AI and turned back to Jay. ”Sasaki?”
”Yeah?”
”You've earned your air today.”
He smiled; the first sincere smile of the day. He felt as if he had just successfully matched orbits by eyeball, without a computer-a terrestrial a.n.a.logy might be walking a tightrope over an abyss. ”Always nice to hear. I'll let you get back to your meditation.”