soft, indirect lighting.
Everywhere the detail of the home's finish was complete — no expense had been spared.
A succession of French doors stood open. The passage dead-ended at a hallway that curved gently out of sight to the left and right. This had to be the building she'd seen on the way up the mountain. On the outside it had looked like a resort hotel. On the inside, it looked like… Well, Laura had never seen anything like it.
Janet turned left, and Laura followed. The few doors they passed were all on the right side of the hall — on the interior of the concave hallway. The decor was less cluttered in this part of the house, just the occasional niche filled with statuary spotlighted by pale illumination. Maybe Gray was on a budget, Laura thought.
Throw everything you've got on the entrance and scrimp on the guest quarters.
Janet stopped at a twelve-foot door, which she opened into a room with fourteen-foot coffered ceilings. Wainscoting adorned the lower walls, its intricate woodwork painted glossy white. The wallpaper above was powder-blue, which transitioned to the deeper blues of the heavy draperies that were held gathered in bunches by ties. The sun streamed through the windows behind the curtains — the entire wall of glass thinly veiled behind white gauze.
Laura wandered in, marveling at the expanse of the room. A thick Oriental rug covered the hardwood floors, the sheer size of it making Laura feel small and out of place. There were bookcases with leather-bound books and tables covered with porcelain figurines.
Massive gold frames bounded oil paintings under lamps with brass shades. A grand piano stood unnoticed in a far corner, the sunlight reflecting off its black lacquered top polished clean of any trace of dust.
'This is your sitting room,' Janet said, leading her toward an open doorway on the far side of the rug. Laura followed Janet past a full-sized antique desk, past sofas forming a cove around a crackling fireplace, past a bar with what Janet said was a full kitchen behind dark wood panels.
Through the door they came to the bedroom. It was spacious, but not as absurdly large as the sitting room. It had a cozier feel.
Stacks of pillows bulged atop a broad four-poster bed. Janet pulled open the curtains, and the late-afternoon sun streamed in.
Laura walked up to the window, which ran floor to ceiling the full length of the wall.
She drew a deep breath, letting it out with the word 'Wow!'
The 'Village' lay half buried beneath the foliage nearly a mile below. The jungle, the open green lawns, the launch pads the black sand beaches, and the eddies of blues and greens of the sea were all right there beneath her bedroom.
'I love seeing this again through the eyes of someone new to the house,' Janet said. 'I remember when I first arrived. The dreams I had about life in this home.'
Laura looked over to see Janet's expression change completely. 'Well,' she said, returning to the tone of a bellman on a presentation tour of Laura's suite, 'all the views are on this side of the house.'
She wasn't looking at Laura or the view. 'The house itself is carved out of the mountain's side, you see.'
The moment — whatever it was — had passed, and Laura turned back to peer out across Gray's island. In the center of the vista stood the enormous, windowless building rising from the treeless green field.
'What is that huge thing?' Laura asked, but she felt no need to point.
There was only one structure that dominated the landscape below.
'That's the assembly building. That's where most of the manufacturing takes place. But you'll get a tour later, I'm sure.'
Janet next led their expedition through the marble bathroom, which had a whirlpool so large you could do laps, and private rooms for the toilet and bidet. On seeing the separate sauna and steam room, Laura muttered, 'No bathroom's complete without them, I always say,' to the amusement of her guide.
They then ventured into a closet that was itself a large room. It had full-length mirrors in front of raised platforms for fittings, upholstered benches and low seats in case she needed to rest, and row after row of rails for her wardrobe. Laura immediately grew self-conscious. The clothes she'd brought would fit on three or four hangers in one tiny corner of the closet, which was every inch the size of her entire apartment back in Cambridge.
When the orientation was finally over, Janet looked at Laura — waiting.
'Oh,' Laura stumbled, 'this ought to do fine.'
Janet burst out laughing, and she must have felt it inappropriate because she covered her mouth and turned away. She held her hand up, then finally gathered herself enough to say, 'I'm so sorry.'
She ended the fit of laughter with a smile of genuine enjoyment of the moment that made Laura wonder just how much Janet got out.
'Well,' Janet continued, composed, 'Mr. Gray's valet will see to your garments. If you need or want anything — personal items which you might have overlooked, articles of clothing, food or drink that isn't in the kitchen, anything — just dial zero on the telephone.'
'What if I want to make long-distance calls?' Laura asked. She meant to Jonathan, who'd made her promise she'd call, and to whom she couldn't wait to describe what she'd seen so far. But the image of the card with the FBI number in her wallet flashed through her head.
'Just dial it like you would in the States,' Janet replied.
Laura's eyes were drawn in disbelief to the full tea service that was laid out and ready for her use amid an array of sofas and plush armchairs.
When she looked around, Janet was gone. Laura was all alone.
She found her way back to her bedroom and saw that her bag had appeared sometime during the tour. The room was still. There didn't seem to be any noise in the great house.
Any life. Laura wondered if he was there, somewhere.
After unpacking, she did her own exploring. There was a computer terminal on the desk in the large sitting room, and on the wall hung one of Gray's sleek flat-screen televisions. She paid particular attention to the screen. They had begun appearing everywhere just two years before. After great fanfare, the giant American electronics companies had won the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to begin high-def TV broadcasting. No sooner had the first of those sets appeared on the market than the maverick Gray had begun offering his own system. The giants had cried foul. Winners of the multibillion-dollar competition to replace the old NTSC standard with the new high-def one, they petitioned the government for protection and, at first, received it. Washington barred Gray from doing business in the United States. Gray went right about his business, however, launching satellites, commissioning programming, and selling equipment in Canada, Europe, and the Far East.
'Gray market' sets began appearing in the United States, but Gray's satellite signal could be pirated from his broadcasts to Canada only in the northern tier of states. Still, people quit buying the FCC-approved televisions as article after article extolled the superiority of Gray's product and predicted the monumental failure of Gray competitors. Lawsuits were filed, government investigations were launched, and finally the consortium of companies that had won FCC approval offered Gray a joint venture. Gray had declined the offer.
Under intense public pressure from consumers, the FCC relented and approved the sales of Gray's system in the United States. The pent-up demand was unleashed like a dam breaking, and Gray's production and sales soared as his competitors and would-be partners filed for bankruptcy.
The icing on the consumers' cake came when Gray's system opened up access to the Web. The result was a merger of telephone, television, and computer technologies for users who spent a few extra dollars for the installation of digital lines into their home. Gray's system was the ultimate in interactivity. A small [garbled] the bottom of every, television became a broadcast studio unto itself.
'Channel surfing' and 'cruising the Web' became indistinguishable pastimes. With the punch of a button on the remote control, users could switch from C-SPAN to the Internet or back. On the Web one could find everything from slick infomercials to a kid in his parents' media room doing his best imitation of 'Wayne's World' — all with full- motion video and stereo sound.
At first there were doomsday predictions about purveyors of pornography running rampant, but a funny thing happened on the road to riches from sleaze. The pornographers were put out of business by amateurs who offered their smut for free. Laura had purchased the full system but never explored its capabilities until one Saturday she