Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra Page 3

  “Why tell me?” He did not mean the question to sound so terse. It just came out that way.

  “The proposition I have in mind has to do with this colony. I want your help in solving a problem there.”

  Treet’s next question was just as terse as the one preceding it: “Why me?”

  From nowhere the Chairman’s beautiful administrator appeared and handed him a laserfile reader. Chairman Neviss held it in his hands while it spooled information across its black screen, then began reading what he saw there: “Orion Tiberias Treet… son of Magellan Treet, noted historian and astronomer … conceived in vitro at Spofford Natal and engineered by Haldane Krenk on December 30, 2123 … graduated from Blackburn Academy in April, 2149 … received your first degree in anthropology from Nevada Polytechnic in March, 2160 … second degree in history from the Sorbonne in June, 2167 … third degree in journalism from Brandenburg Institute in August, 2172 … joined the staff of the Smithsonian, rose through the ranks and, as a result of an unfortunate dispute over editorial philosophy, left as editor-in-chief in May, 2200 … became food critic for Beacon Broadcast System, and quit in 2216 … taught philosophy at the University of Calgary until 2245 when the school was closed due to failing enrollment… have spent the last thirty-two years traveling and writing—mostly about history.”

  Here the Chairman paused and looked up. “Our information, as you can see, is quite extensive. I could go on, but you get the idea.”

  Treet nodded, although such information was readily available from any of several sources if someone cared to spend the time assembling it—which apparently they did. It still did not answer his question, but he let it go.

  “In short, you are the man for this special assignment. I want you to go to Empyrion, Mr. Treet. I want you to study the place and write about it. I want you to find out all about it—how it’s developing economically, culturally, philosophically. And I want you to send back reports, Mr. Treet.”

  Although stated quite reasonably, the idea struck Treet as preposterous. He had to suppress an astonished laugh. “You want me to write for you?” he asked incredulously. “That’s why you have had me followed, drugged, and brought here?”

  The Chairman made a deprecatory gesture. “Varro has informed me of the unfortunate incident at the airport—an overzealous agent who will no doubt think twice before exceeding himself next time. He was to have simply contacted you and persuaded you to accompany him here. I gather he had considerable trouble locating you and lost his patience.”

  “He thought I was some kind of criminal,” scoffed Treet softly.

  The Chairman glanced quickly at Varro, who shifted his eyes uneasily. “He was mistaken. A misunderstanding, as I said.” The Chairman coughed suddenly, a deep, wracking cough that rumbled in his chest with a hollow sound. This brought on a fit of coughing which doubled the Chairman in his seat. Varro stood and started forward, but his boss held up a hand. “No, I’m all right; but I must rest now. Please, Mr. Treet, you are to be my guest this evening. I have requested a private apartment to be prepared for you. The building service will supply you with anything you need, and there is a very good restaurant on the nineteenth floor.”

  Varro got up from his chair and gave Treet a look which indicated that he was to follow. Treet rose reluctantly, still vaguely unsatisfied by the answers he had received to his questions. “Thank you, Chairman Neviss, I’m sure I will be quite comfortable.”

  “And think about my proposition. I’ve instructed Varro to answer any other questions you may have. He will also attend to any contractual arrangements which you may agree on.” He smiled briefly, and Treet saw that his eyes had gone a little glassy—from pain?

  “I will give it most careful consideration, Chairman. Thank you.”

  Treet was hustled from the old man’s presence so quickly he felt as if the coughing spasm had been staged—a prearranged signal to bring the meeting to a close. But he said nothing as they left the domed room and walked back through the gallery.

  Once outside, when both sets of doors had closed securely behind them, Treet turned, put a hand on Varro’s arm, and spun the round-headed man around to face him. “Okay, Varro, what’s this all about?”

  THREE

  Feet propped on a handsome and no doubt costly antique walnut table, hands atop his head, reclining in a comfortable, well-made, and also excruciatingly expensive leather couch. Treet ignored the holovision before him and instead replayed his conversation with Varro a few hours earlier. It played no better this time than it had originally. “Something is not right,” he said aloud. He often spoke to himself; some of his best thinking was done aloud.

  What he was thinking now was not some of his best. Try as he might, he could not come to any substantial conclusion about what it was that Cynetics was up to and why it should involve him.

  “The Chairman has read your work; he respects your talent and ability. He’d like to see you on our team,” Varro had told him when they had settled in the round-headed man’s office—more an apartment or luxury suite than an office.

  “Whatever the Chairman wants, the Chairman gets—is that it?”

  “Something like that.” Varro put on a wry smile. “You’ve met him. You see how he is. He’s explained to you his reasons for wanting you.”

  “Yes, he explained. But why don’t I believe him?”

  “What is it that you find so difficult to believe?”

  “That I should have been hauled in here like a wanted man, for one thing.”

  “But you are a wanted man, Mr. Treet. Chairman Neviss wants you.”

  “Your agent,” he said the word with some contempt, “told me he was being paid thirty-five thousand in metal for finding me. Isn’t that a lot of money to arrange a simple job interview?”

  Varro simply shook his head. “No, it isn’t. Not when you’re the Chairman of Cynetics Corporation. Chairman Neviss is a man who is used to—”

  “Used to getting what he wants—so everybody keeps telling me.” What Treet wanted was to grab the smarmy man and pummel him. He forced the lid back down on his anger and tried a new approach. “For another thing, I find this proposal highly suspect. It was all I could do to keep from laughing in His Highness’s Royal Face, if you care to know the truth.”

  “What exactly is your difficulty?” Varro blinked back at him; his round gray eyes held genuine puzzlement.

  “Don’t let’s be coy, all right?”

  “I don’t see a problem, Mr. Treet. Perhaps if you’d elaborate—”

  “Certainly I’ll elaborate. Setting aside the fact that it is well nigh impossible to even get to Epsilon Eridani from here, it would be equally impossible to keep an extrasystem colony a secret. Why keep an achievement of that magnitude secret in the first place? And then there is the problem of wanting me to go there to write about it. Why me in particular? You must have dozens, hundreds, a thousand people equally or better qualified for such an assignment already on payroll. Why bring in an outsider? Why do it at all? If you want to know about Empyrion, why not go there yourself and find out? Better still, why send anyone? Why not have someone who is already there write back to you? Shall I continue?”

  Varro laced his fingers beneath his chin and nodded slightly. “That is quite enough. I’m beginning to see it from your point of view, I think. Yes, looking at it that way it might seem rather odd.”

  “Odd? Oh, I wouldn’t say odd. It’s raving lunacy!”

  “But you do not fully appreciate our situation here.” Varro continued as if Treet’s outburst had not occurred. “What you have been told is true. Cynetics has, as you know, several extraterrestrial colonies. Mining is an important part of our business. Empyrion is a colony like any other—it just happens to be on a rather more distant planet.”

  “One that just happens to be in another star system.”

  “Undoubtedly Chairman Neviss would prefer to visit Empyrion himself, but that is out of the question. As Chairman, he must remain here whe
re his services are most needed. And then there is the matter of his health. He is simply not well enough to make the trip.”

  “What’s wrong with him? He didn’t look all that ill to me. And if he is, why isn’t he in a hospital?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss his medical condition with you. But he is being cared for, around the clock. The entire floor below this one is a private hospital. Small, but one of the best in the country, I’m told.”

  “All for him?”

  “He is the principal recipient of its services, yes. But anyone may use it. Any Cynetics employee.”

  “What about the secrecy?”

  Varro leaned forward in an attitude of perfect candor. “Have you any idea of the legalities involved in creating a colony?”

  “I imagine there is a certain amount of red tape,” Treet allowed.

  “Mountains of it. Not just here in the United States, but in every other nation and paranation as well. Colonies are considered free states under international law—countries in their own right. We lose a certain amount of control as soon as the colonial charter is ratified in the League Internationale.”

  “You create a colony, finance it, and then give it its freedom. So? That’s the cost of doing business, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. But an extrasystem colony would be an entirely different matter. First of all, there would have to be scientific studies carried out by the Lein and when they were through tramping around, trying to determine whether we had any right to be there, it would go to debate in the House of Nations, and then new legislation would have to be written, voted, enacted, and so on. Decades would pass before we saw a charter, Mr. Treet. If ever.”

  Treet had nothing to say to this. He had simply never thought about it before.

  “Now then, suppose you were in a position to establish such a colony, what would you do?” ‘

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. You are an intelligent and practical man; you would choose the path of least resistance.”

  “And form an illegal colony?”

  “Not illegal, Mr. Treet. Extralegal. There are no laws to govern this situation; they do not exist as yet.”

  Treet granted the point, then asked what had been uppermost in his mind all along. “But how do you get there? Even traveling at the speed of light—which we’ll never get anywhere close to— it would take over ten years just to reach Epsilon Eridani.”

  “What would you say if I told you the trip could be made in slightly less than twelve weeks?”

  Treet did not let his jaw drop, though he felt like it. “Are you telling me you have a vehicle that can travel faster than lightspeed?”

  Varro smiled broadly. “I don’t believe anyone has suggested that at all, though we are working on it. No, we have discovered something quite different.”

  “But you’re not at liberty to tell me what it is, am I right?”

  “If I told you and you declined the Chairman’s offer, I’m afraid that would put us at something of a disadvantage.”

  Something told Treet that Cynetics was seldom at even the slightest disadvantage. “I see.”

  “Let’s just say that it might be possible to make the distance between points a good deal shorter.”

  Treet ran his hands through his hair and rubbed them over his face. He didn’t know what to think. There were theories that such a thing as telescoping space might be possible under certain circumstances—black holes, for example. Anyway, no one had ever gotten close enough to a black hole to find out exactly what did happen, nor was anyone likely to in the near or distant future.

  Still, suppose what Varro was telling him was absolutely true. What then? “Are you saying that this whole scheme is merely the whim of an eccentric, wealthy old man?”

  “I wouldn’t use just those words, but yes, that’s the sense of it. But don’t give me your answer just now. Think it over; sleep on it. We’ll talk again in the morning.”

  Varro showed Treet out and led him to the private elevator. The uniformed attendant was there waiting for him. “Enjoy your evening, Mr. Treet. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again.”

  As he sat in his luxury apartment, thinking about all that had taken place in the last twelve (or however many) hours, it occurred to Treet that he could make no sense of the situation because he had not eaten in at least that long. His brain cells were shrieking for nourishment.

  He rose, somewhat dizzily, and made his way to the window that formed a wall of his apartment. He was somewhere in the middle of the building, judging from the height as he had estimated it from the top story (if Neviss’ floor had in fact been the top story). A violet twilight, thick with faintly luminous haze, trailed across the landscape—mostly hills dense with short round trees: live oak and mesquite. Away toward the east (he presumed it was the east since he could not see the sunset at all), the faint glimmer of lights smudged the horizon. There was not enough to be seen from his vantage to tell if they were the distant lights of Houston or someplace else.

  Treet gazed out upon the scene as the twilight deepened. The sky had clouded up during the latter part of the afternoon, and these clouds hung as if they were steel wool, rusted in spots and suspended on wires from an iron firmament. He looked on until he realized that he was staring but no longer attending to what he was seeing; his eyes were simply open to the view with nothing taken in.

  He turned, put his shoes back on, and left the apartment, feeling the key in his pocket on his way out. Oh well, he thought, walking back to the private chauffeured elevator along a quiet, deserted, and well-lit corridor, if nothing else, he would have a good meal and a free night’s lodging out of the deal. What could be so bad about that?

  FOUR

  “I am so glad you could join us, Mr. Treet. I do hope you will come back again very soon.” The maitre d’ placed the silver coffee urn on a warming cradle, tilted his head, and nodded as he backed away from the table. “Enjoy your dessert.”

  Glazed strawberries the size of hen’s eggs swam in thick, sweetened cream in a chilled bowl on a silver tray before him. Spoon in hand, he stared thoughtfully at the luscious extravagance, but he was not thinking about the strawberries. He was instead puzzling over something that had been going on all during his meal: a polite but incessant stream of diners had made their way to his table to introduce themselves to him and make his acquaintance as if he were a holovision celebrity.

  How did they all know his name? Was he so conspicuous that every Cynetics employee—he supposed that the thirty or so other diners in the restaurant were all Cynetics employees—knew who he was on sight?

  Obviously they had been told of his arrival and instructed to greet him. But why? Was it really that important to the Chairman that he feel welcome? He imagined an order that may have been issued:

  Executive Memo

  To: All Cynetics Division Heads

  Re: Arrival of Orion Treet

  All employees using the restaurant facility this evening are instructed to extend every cordiality to Mr. Orion Treet, who is visiting at the special request of Chairman Neviss.

  Anyone found not in compliance with this directive will be terminated immediately with total forfeiture of all company benefits.

  Varro

  The thing that bothered Treet about all this, besides the interruption of one of the best meals he had eaten in nearly three years—not counting that dinner with the uranium heiress in Baghdad eighteen months ago—the thing that needled him most was that the lavish attention he was receiving was all out of proportion with the proposed assignment. In his mind Treet had begun calling it the supposed assignment; he felt that uncertain about it.

  Treet spooned thick white cream over the ruby berries, sliced one in half with his spoon, and slipped it into his mouth as he turned the problem over in his mind, letting out a little sigh of pleasure as the strawberry burst on his tongue. The easy answer was that, as Varro had suggested, Chairman Neviss was an extremely—no, make
that unimaginably—powerful man who was accustomed to having his slightest whim satisfied instantly and in spades.

  He wanted Treet, and Treet he would have at whatever cost. The expense did not matter; it was not a factor. Money itself had no meaning to a man like Chairman Neviss. He wanted what he wanted; the money simply made it happen. For some quirky reason—perhaps all those spoony history articles he had written over the years to finance his wanderings and keep his brain from ossifying—Treet had struck the Chairman’s fancy; so here he was.

  Treet ate another strawberry and, with eyes half closed in gastronomic ecstasy, decided that perhaps he was being unduly moronic not to take the Chairman’s proposal at face value. Besides, here was a chance to make some money. How much money? A seriously large amount of money; a sum quite radically excessive in the extreme. More, at any rate, than he was prepared to imagine on the spur of the moment.

  For the first time since being surprised in the public bath at Houston International, Treet began to relax and warm to the idea that there may be something to this enterprise after all.

  He was basking in this sunny notion when he heard an inviting female voice utter in a throaty whisper, “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mr. Treet.”

  “Uh—Oh!” His eyelids flew open. “No, not at all.” The woman standing next to him bent slightly at the waist as she slid onto the edge of the empty chair to his right.

  “They are delicious, aren’t they.” She indicated the bowl of strawberries, now half full.

  “An unparalleled pleasure … Miss, ah—”

  “My name is Dannielle.” She held out a slim, long-fingered hand and smiled. “I always have them with a nice Pouilly-Fuisse. It’s a wonderful combination.”

  The girl was stunning. “I am happy to meet you, Dannielle. I much prefer a Rheinpfalz myself.”

  She glanced around the table. “But you’re not drinking wine tonight?”