Hot Sky at Midnight

handed it to Rhodes in a smooth, practiced way.

Rhodes stared at the card. Its metallic lettering glowed with talismanic inner light. There was the Kyocera- Merck monogram, and the name HIDEKI NAKAMURA in flaring three-dimensional modernistic script, and a simple numeral 3 in one corner. The mark of status: Nakamura’s place on the corporate slope.

Level Three?

Level Three was puissant managerial material indeed, just one notch below the two practically imperial levels that were occupied almost entirely by the hereditary plenipotentiary ruling families of the great megacorps. In his whole corporate career Rhodes had never laid eyes on, let alone spoken with, anyone higher than Level Four.

A little shaken, he slipped the card into his pocket. Nakamura was now extending his hand again, this time just for a conventional Western handshake, and Rhodes took it. It felt more or less like the hand of any ordinary mortal.

Nakamura was still smiling, too. But behind the smile Rhodes imagined he perceived the cold rage that infested these high-level Japanese: despite all their wealth and power and intelligence, driven from their homeland by the furies of the sea. Forced to take up their lives here and there around the world in the midst of the hairy, ugly, smelly, big-nosed, pallid un-Japanese barbarians. And even to have to shake their hands now and then.

Nakamura said, “If I may offer you something to drink, Dr. Rhodes—I am partial to cognac, myself, and perhaps you would like to join me—”

They’ve really done their research, Rhodes thought admiringly.

“Yes,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly. “By all means. Please.”

14

enron said, “there’s a restaurant, over there. Let’s go have dinner.”

“Restaurant?” Jolanda said. “I don’t see any restaurant, Marty.”

“There. There.” Enron lifted her arm as if it were a jointed piece of wood attached to her torso and pointed with it. “That little place with the tables out front in the courtyard, the red-and-green awnings. The restaurants up here are all out in the open like that. Because you can breathe the air here, you see.”

“Oh,” she said dreamily. “Oh, yes. I understand.”

Did she? They had been on Valparaiso Nuevo for eight hours now and she was still moving around like a sleepwalker. Of course, this was her first time on any habitat, but still— still—

At the terminal where they came in, when all those smartass kids had come crowding around them trying to get him to hire them as tourist guides, she had seemed dazed and bewildered in the hubbub, standing by helplessly while Enron coped with them. “Who are they?” she asked, sounding like a confused child, as the insistent swarm pressed in close. And she had barely seemed to be listening as he told her: “Fucking leeches, they are. Parasites who want to charge you a fortune to help you get through customs and checked into your hotel, which any intelligent person is perfectly capable of handling for himself.” He had finally hired one anyway, a big blond pudgy kid who called himself Kluge. Had hired him partly because he had begun to suspect that their services really might be necessary in a place as corrupt as this, and partly to provide himself with someone who might be able to make connections for him as he settled into the task ahead. Which was, specifically, to help them locate her conspiratorial friend from Los Angeles, Davidov, on this little world where it was not necessarily easy to locate people who were not eager to be located.

Enron had explained some of this to Jolanda also, not all, and she had nodded; but it was a dull, sleepy sort of nod. There was no light of comprehension in her eyes.

Valparaiso Nuevo seemed to be acting on Jolanda so far like a drug, some sort of narcotic. You would think that she would be hypermanic on the first day of her very first trip to the L-5 worlds after so many years of fantasizing about going to one, goggle-eyed with curiosity, running around trying to take everything in all at once. But no, no, the shock of novelty had had exactly the opposite effect. Even though she was such a heavy user of hyperdex—Enron had seen her taking the stimulant several times, now; she gobbled it like candy—she appeared numbed, stunned, up here on Valparaiso Nuevo, shuffling around dragging her feet like the slow-witted sluggish cow that she really was, beneath all her babble of the importance of art and culture and the need to protect the planet and all the rest of her asshole California politics.

Maybe it was the fresh air, Enron thought, with its relatively high proportion of oxygen and the total absence of shit like methane and toxic contaminants. She couldn’t handle all that sweet pure stuff. Maybe her mind conked out if it didn’t have its proper CO₂ fix. Or the light gravity, maybe. It ought to be making her giddy but instead it was somehow turning her into a zombie. Down at the terminal in the hub, they had practically been floating above the pavement, the gravitational pull was so feeble, and almost from the moment of their arrival she had been slogging around with that glassy-eyed brain-dead look on her face.

Now, after all the maddening lunatic bureaucratic customs-and-immigration routines were done with and they had checked into their hotel, it was dinnertime and they were in a town called Valdivia, a little past midway up F Spoke toward the rim. The gravity here was about.6, Enron figured. A little closer to Earth-normal than at the terminal, anyway. So far it wasn’t making much difference. He hoped Jolanda would be livelier when they got back to the room after dinner.

They entered the restaurant courtyard. An oily-looking head waiter unctuously seated them. Menus blossomed out of visors set in the tabletop.

“What do you want to drink?” Enron asked.

“What?” She blinked at him.

“To drink, to drink! Wake up, Jolanda!”

“Oh. To drink. I’m sorry, Marty. It must be the jet lag.”

“There isn’t any jet lag in shuttle travel. We came right up here, bam, quicker than it would take to go from California to Tel Aviv.”

“Well, it’s something, anyway. I feel so strange.”

“You don’t like it here?”

“Oh, no, that isn’t it It’s a wonderful place! I knew the space worlds were beautiful, fabulous, but I never really imagined—the stars, the moon—I mean, the splendor of it all, all these shining glass walls, the fantastic views you get everywhere—and the air—it’s so fresh I feel drunk, Marty.

I’ve never breathed air like this.” She gave him a moony, apologetic look. “I’m so excited that I’m dazed, I guess. I feel like this is all some sort of dream. Oh, Marty, I’m so thrilled that you brought me here. —Get me a whiskey sour, will you?”

Good. At least she was coming to life a little.

Enron managed a smile. After punching the drink orders into the tabletop computer he reached across the table, took her hand, stroked it affectionately, squeezed it. Winked. Tonight in the hotel, he thought, I will lick every square millimeter of your glorious oversized body, I will drive you crazy with sex, I will fuck you sixty ways from Tuesday. And then in the morning we will go looking for your friends, your shifty Los Angeles friends who are supposed to be here somewhere, the ones who are planning to toss the old Generalissimo into the matter converter and take possession of this place. And when we find them, your Davidov and the others—

His eyes were roving randomly past Jolanda’s shoulder, exploring in an automatically inquisitive sort of way the tables behind her, as he fondled her. Suddenly Enron caught sight of someone whose presence here startled him extremely.

Well, look who’s here! The eyeless Kyocera Hungarian!

Enron’s fingers tightened convulsively. Jolanda let out a little yelp of pain and surprise and pulled her hand away from him. She stared at him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What is it? Is anything wrong?”

“No. Not really. But something very interesting. Don’t turn around, Jolanda. Just get up and walk across the courtyard. You need to pee, or something. Ask the waiter where to go. And take a good look on the way, without