The ParVenue, being the latest word in virtual country clubs, demanded that its patrons attire themselves appropriately when on the premises. This meant I exchanged my polo shirt for a navy one of a lighter weight and pricier designer label. Over it went a yellow cardigan sweater of a hue I've only seen in snow. The knickers that replaced my pants matched the sweater in color and fastened tight right below my knees. My blue and yellow plaid socks got tucked beneath the knickers, and my pseudo-golf shoes were a merciful black without any spikes.
'I'm not wearing my cap,' Jimmy growled.
Oh yeah, my cap was a tarn that matched the socks. In silent agreement with him I sent it flying like a Ms-bee into a wastebasket. 'Comes a point when a man just has to put his foot down.'
I swung my locker door closed, giving Jimmy his first full look at me. 'Wolf, my mother used to dress her poodle in that type of outfit.'
I growled at him. 'Hold your arms out at your sides and in those red togs you'll look like the poodle's favorite fire hydrant.'
'Point taken. Hope these women are worth it.'
I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall-mounted mirror. 'I'm beginning to doubt it, but let's not keep them waiting, just in case.'
As strange as it may seem, Jimmy and I were not the oddest-looking individuals at the club. The corridor leading from the locker room to the bar and restaurant had a glass-walled section that let us look into the huge warehouselike structure onto which the front facade had been grafted.
Jimmy paused and stared out at the people gathered there. 'Just think, if they were bees, how much honey they'd be making.'
I nodded at his apt analogy. Honeycombed stacks of small golfing stalls rose from ground to ceiling. On the bottom two levels the stark white rooms had golfers fitted with simsense helmets. Little mechanical ball-setters placed golf balls on tees or appropriately angled sections of astroturf. As the players swung through the balls, they blasted them into nets at the other end of their golfcave. One guy, at the far end of the row, endured a driving shower and buffeting winds produced by the chamber as he sought the absolute most in sim-golf experiences.
Just above them golfers also wore simsense helmets, but hit no balls. They still swung their clubs with wild abandon, and one man snapped a putter in half and tossed it down into the net protecting the floors below. Other golfers went through the motions of delicately chipping a shot onto a green, and one man stood with driver in hand, desperately waving at an imaginary ball to get over the imaginary trees and onto the imaginary green.
The top level had smoked-gray caps on the hexagonal rooms. Up there golfers were pulling down simsense data directly from the ParVenue's golf course database. These did not need the challenge of weather and balls and perfect posture or square groove clubs. They played solely in their minds. For them the challenge was besting golf courses in places dreamed up by madmen arid physicists and modeled on the fastest decks available. They might play two holes on the front nine from the Sea of Tranquility, then shift to a course imagined for the blazing surface of Venus. Changes of gravity and density of atmosphere were their enemies.
I saw one golfer on the lower level miss his shot and twist around before falling to his knees. 'Do they have spitballs in golf?'
Jimmy shrugged. 'I dunno. Maybe that was a water hazard.'
I smiled and led the way to the bar. We passed two soaking wet guys who were swapping stories about playing the club's simulation of the Burning Tree course during Hurricane Felicia and I spotted our dates immediately. Of course I didn't know any of the half-dozen men watching them from the bar and surrounding tables, but I gathered neither did the women, and they liked that situation just fine.
I smiled at Lynn Ingold and gave her a hug and a kiss as I reached the table. She'd braided her copper hair, and the braid dangled down the front of her white blouse to the tip of her left breast. Her pert nose and quick smile combined with bright green eyes and a scattering a freckles to make her seem full of elven mischief from back in the days when that didn't mean gunfire and magic. The top of her head came up to my nose, and my arm fit around her shoulders as if we'd been designed as a set.
'Jimmy Mackelroy, this is Lynn Ingold and that is probably your greatest fan in all of Seattle. Valerie Valkyrie, meet Jimmy Mackelroy.'
Val is normally quick-witted and I expected a verbal jab for my introduction of her, but she was awestruck enough to just ignore me. Like Jimmy, she was of African-American descent, but her blue eyes and cafe-au-lait complexion suggested a liberal dose of other things in her bloodline as well. She wore her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Taller than Lynn, but with the same slender, long-legged figure, she was sufficiently gorgeous to make the Pope reconsider his vow of celibacy.
In fact, if not for the barely noticeable jack behind her left ear, she'd have been the picture of the sort of fashion model Jimmy dated, according to the tabloid trid.
Jimmy took her right hand in his. 'I am very pleased to meet you, finally.'
That shook Val out of her trance. 'Finally?'
Jimmy smiled. 'Section seven, row five, seat twelve. You've got the whole box, paid for and all. Everyone on the team has been curious, but the team's deckers can't find out who you are.' Val blushed and sat down. 'Oh, that, well…'
'Jimmy,' I said, nodding toward Valerie. 'She's the reason we're members here. Could your father's deckers do that?'
'No, I don't think they could.' His smile broadened as he glanced from Val to me. 'I guess now I'm going to owe you a favor.'
'Excuse me?'
Jimmy smiled sheepishly. 'Remember when we met you said you'd owe me a favor? Well, introducing me to Ms. Valkyrie here fulfills that and then some. Oh, and dinner and drinks are on me-the team had a pool collected for the first man to learn her name.'
All of us laughed, easing a bit of the nervousness Valerie clearly felt. It struck me as funny because I knew she was bold enough to deck her way into even the most secure of corporate databases without even a hint of anxiety. With other deckers, the problem would have been just trying to interface with something that wasn't silicon-based, but Val's never been a social disaster. She was really taken with Jimmy and almost paralyzed because of it.
Lynn clearly sensed the same thing in Valerie and took the conversation initiative before any silence could become awkward. 'Jimmy, I've never been able to get Wolf to tell me how you actually met. I know he's helping you now, but I gathered you've known each other since before that.'
Jimmy nodded easily and leaned forward onto the table. 'You remember the night when the gangs all went nuts and blew up that apartment complex?'
Lynn nodded. She knew of it in die same way that almost everyone else in Seattle did-by what she heard on the trid and read in the newsfax. This meant she had no idea about my involvement in the events of that evening. As she's a pacifist who never seemed too interested in trying to find out exactly what I do in working with Doctor Raven, I never felt inclined to give her a blow-by-blow description of what had happened that night. Not that I repeated stories of that night all that often-describing almost dying leaves something to be desired.
'About a week later, at the Dome, I saw this guy leaning against my car. I wasn't getting a clean read off him, but he didn't seem overtly dangerous. He introduced himself as Wolf and asked if I'd be willing to make a personal appearance at a pizza place downtown.' Jimmy shrugged. 'I almost referred him to my agent to blow him off, which is what I normally do.'
Before Jimmy could continue his story, a man who had managed to create a fashion atrocity within the strictures of the club's dress code sauntered over to our table and lightly slapped Jimmy on shoulder. 'Jimmy Mackelroy, isn't it?'
Jimmy nodded and shook the man's proffered hand. 'And you are?'
'Phil Knobson. I own the Mitsu dealership over in Bellvue. Ace Mitsubishi. Heard of it?'
Jimmy thought for a second, then shook his head. 'Sorry, but I put most things out of my mind during the season, you know?'
'Yeah,' the man replied automatically as he waved a woman over. Her outfit matched Phil's and I started looking for a phone to call the haute couture police. 'This is my wife, Maggie. Maggie, this is Jimmy Mackelroy. I've told you about him, right?'
Maggie nodded, her blond perm as stiff as an acrylic spider web. 'Phil, he never misses your games.'
