“You have a home here, I assume?” asked Van.
“My family home is out beyond Eastbreak. I don’t see it that often these days. But we’ll get you settled.”
“Eri?” Van turned to the tech, looking across the aisle.
“I have family here, but my sister’s house is small, and my mother lives in Sytka. That’s one of the southern continents. My mother’s research took her there, and they liked it so much that they stayed.”
Less than an hour later, the shuttle landed without announcements, and they carried their bags off. There were no officials waiting, although Van did sense the screening as they walked through the corridor from the shuttle to the terminal foyer.
Once they stepped through the last set of portals, and into the late afternoon sunlight, and a warm and fragrant breeze, Desoll turned to Van. “We will have to carry our own gear. Groundcars are frowned upon, and most transit is by the subtrans—or walking.”
“You don’t have a groundcar?”
Desoll laughed. “I have one small one. It’s at the house. The annual usage taxes are almost what it cost.”
Van winced.
“The Coalition uses the market system to ensure the environment remains protected. You can own anything you want, but, for some things, the environmental taxes will bankrupt you.”
“Do they tax foundations and multis the same way?”
“Mostly. We do have a multiperson groundcar at the office. If we have more than four people going somewhere we can use it.” Desoll walked briskly toward a low portal, with ramps and steps downward.
They waited ten minutes for the induction tube train. Although it was mostly full, there were seats. As the subtrans approached a station announced as Westbreak, Desoll stood up and motioned. The three took the ramp up from the underground station, coming out in a gardenlike plaza.
Desoll pointed northwest, along a tree-lined boulevard, to a ridge rising out of trees a good half klick away. “There’s the office.” He began to walk toward the ridge. “To build it, we also had to build the park. The park is about thirty hectares.”
Van couldn’t believe that. The “ridge” was a structure that angled up from the parklike setting to the west until it loomed over the forest below. But the ridgelike office structure looked to be six or seven floors, and no more than a hundred fifty meters by forty, and for that, IIS had been required to create a park that was a hundred times the footprint of the building?
“Of course, it makes a pleasant setting, and everyone who works there enjoys it. So do all the neighbors,” Desoll added dryly. “Getting the architecture and the terrain to blend was a challenge, but the designers worked it out, I’m told.”
“How old is it?”
“About eighty years old.”
That explained the maturity of the trees and the serenity of the setting as the three walked down the tree-lined promenade from the station to the IIS structure. When he neared the building, Van could see that the irregular exterior was a greenish bronze composite that looked neither metallic nor stone, but somewhere in between, almost like someone had polished an irregular ridge jutting from the ground, then left it. There were no visible windows, and only a simple archway, leading to a closed portal.
Desoll pulsed the portal open. The foyer beyond was modest, but well lighted, and empty.
On the rear wall of the foyer were lifts. To the right were ramps.
“Eri…you can go on up. We’ll go to the offices first.” Another smile crossed Desoll’s face, and he looked to Van. “You have one.” He stepped into the lift, and the others followed.
The two men stepped out on the fifth floor, into a wide corridor, leaving Eri to continue up. Desoll turned to his left and walked quickly westward.
Natural light flooded in from clerestory windows set in nooks between offices, although the windows had not been visible from outside. The doors to the offices the two passed were generally open. Each office seemed to be the same size, five meters by five, with a window wall overlooking the park. Several of those working looked up from their consoles as the two passed, but most did not. A few smiled politely.
A stocky black-haired man stood waiting near the end of the corridor, inclining his head slightly. “Director Desoll, Director Albert.”
“Van, this is Joseph Sasaki. Joe is the Cambrian director of IIS, the one who really runs the operation. Generally, I do what he recommends.”
Sasaki laughed gently. “Except for the twenty percent of the time when I’m wrong.”
Beyond Sasaki, Van could see three open doors—old-fashioned wooden doors, like all those they had passed. The center door showed a conference room with a long table, flanked with wooden chairs, without upholstery. The doors to the left and right opened onto corner offices that looked to be six or seven meters square—about two-thirds the size of the conference room. Each corner office had slanted wraparound windows, an old-style table desk with two consoles, a single desk chair, three chairs facing the desk, and two low bookcases. The only difference that Van could see in the offices was that the bookcases of the office on the right had antique books in it, while the shelves of the one on the left were empty.
“I’ve noticed already that he doesn’t make many mistakes,” Van observed.
Now.
Van caught the subvocalization as if Desoll had dropped it onto an open link and almost said something before he realized that Joe Sasaki hadn’t even noticed.
“No, he doesn’t.” Sasaki gestured to the office on the left, the one with a southwest exposure. “This is yours, Director Albert. You can certainly change the furniture arrangements, and I imagine that over time, you’ll add the touches you want. We just wanted to make sure that it was ready for you when you got here.”
“Thank you.” Van wasn’t sure that he could have said anything else. The more deeply he was getting involved with IIS, the less he understood
