All at once she hated him. She’d killed once for not much more of that kind of smug assholery than he’d just given her. The problem was, in his case, he was trying to make her do a deal on his terms, and in that she almost admired him for that same insulting toughness. It was so much like, well, her.
“So, if we could make a deal, what makes you think I could get the others?”
He smiled broadly. “Let’s all meet for lunch tomorrow in my suite at the Stellar. I can be very persuasive.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” she warned him.
He nodded sagely. “You do that. You think about it a great deal.” And, polishing off his beer, he got up and left, saying no more.
VI: A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
They had all come.
Somehow, that had surprised An Li, although it didn’t seem to surprise Sanders at all. She had an idea that very little surprised the slimy weasel.
Just overnight, she’d discovered a lot about him. That he was, in fact, a rich producer of thrillers, and that a percentage of the net was a joke in his industry about akin to saying “when pigs fly.” With some good accounting even the most successful productions somehow never saw a profit; nobody, it seemed, ever had produced a single thing that had made one single penny. Funny about that. Buy cheap, make a fortune, and, through creative bookkeeping, keep said fortune. Show business sounded like the same sort of thing as the kind of folks who’d loaned her the money for the earlier expedition, only Sanders and his types were always legal. What a racket!
She’d also fingered his traveling associates, a young, muscular guy and a woman with a face and body to die for. She hadn’t put them together until she saw them both at Sanders’s hotel suite, setting up things for a working lunch, as it were.
All the time she’d spent sizing him up as a mark, and they were already on her tail and reporting to the boss on her movements. He dangled his bait and she’d taken it, thinking she was conning him.
The penthouse of the Stellar was sumptuous, even for Sepuchus. There probably weren’t but one or two like this on the whole planet, and they were here only for the kind of people who were outfitting a city or a fleet. Its sheer opulence was testament to what a knowledgeable designer could do even with salvaged parts.
The table was real polished wood, not synthetic, polished so perfectly that you could use it like a mirror, and the chairs were firm but plush, made of wood and natural fabrics. Sanders himself had not yet made an appearance, but they expected him to emerge from behind massive bronze doors at some point. The two assistants were now acting as host and hostess; the man, who seemed barely out of boyhood, introduced himself as “Jules, Mister Sanders’s personal assistant,” whatever that meant, and the sexy young woman with more than ample everything and a voice that was higher than An Li had ever heard before said she was Mister Sanders’s secretary, Suzy. Neither spoke or revealed very much, but they didn’t have to. The few present who hadn’t seen these types in their natural habitats still knew what they were. Randi Queson had tired of rolling her eyes, Lucky seemed amused by them, while Sark and Jerry Nagel betrayed their hormonal directions even as they pretended to be strictly business.
An Li had already briefed them on the basics, but left out the Three Kings part for the moment. She had also warned each of them that, if they had anything at all in their wallets, they should grip them tightly in Sanders’s presence.
There was a buzz at the main door, and Jules answered it. It turned out to be a small army of men and women dressed in white pushing carts full of what had to be food into the room and towards them. They proceeded to set the table and then place the food on it in containers that preserved the proper temperatures. It looked and smelled wonderful.
An Li wondered how much it cost to tip this kind of mob to do what two machines could have done just as well, but she kept quiet. Any man who could waste this kind of money just feeding his ego by showing off human service was somebody who certainly should be listened to.
Suzy went over to the bronze doors, knocked on one, then opened it just a small bit and said something to whoever was on the other side. In a moment, Norman Sanders strode out and towards them, wearing a genuine crimson silk dressing gown. It was one of the most breathtaking of all the examples of opulence they’d seen, but, An Li thought with some satisfaction, he still looked like an unmade bed.
“Good day, everyone,” he said cheerfully, if a bit sleepily, taking a seat at the head of the table. He waved his hand at the steaming items on the table. “Go ahead! Be my guest! Dig in! I never eat much for breakfast. Never feel like I’m started. Some coffee, maybe some eggs Benedict, that’s about it for now.” He suddenly realized that most of these people hadn’t seen real food in their whole lives, and the one or two who had probably had forgotten the look of it.
“Omelettes there at the end, with lots to put on them if you like, and those over there are crepes, and those are breakfast meats. All real, I’m assured, with one or two minor exceptions. There’s apparently some farming done here, in very limited amounts, just for the hotels and the bosses. Those are teas and juices, and over there are various sandwiches if you’d rather lunch than breakfast, with, I think some onion soup in the tureen. Go ahead, dig in, eat, get joyously full, and then we’ll talk.”
He was as good as his word, and the food was as rich as he promised. In fact, some of the food didn’t taste all that good to them, with one notable exception. They’d been on the artificial and reconstituted stuff so long, some forever, that they had no appreciation for the taste of real things.
The exception was Randi Queson, whose only real regret was that she hadn’t much of an appetite. She hadn’t been sleeping well, even with some help from a medical computer. She kept having nightmares about cold, alien voices dismissing the human race as irrelevant.
Still, she managed some old favorites she’d neither eaten nor been able to afford in a very long time.
During the whole thing Norman Sanders said little except pleasantries and “Pass the coffee,” but they all sensed his mind going behind that dull, cherubic bearded face as he carefully watched each of them in turn.
And when they had regretfully watched the ample leftovers being cleared and taken away after none could manage any more, An Li couldn’t help but wonder where those leftovers went. Not anywhere she knew could use them, that was for sure.
Leaving only coffee and tea, the army of cooks and waiters had left with the remainder of the food, and it was again only them. Suzy took a seat on a divan across from the table and said nothing; Jules stood by the table to pour anyone’s coffee or tea but otherwise to stand impassive looking at them all. Clearly neither was going to be a central part of this forthcoming discussion.
Finally, the producer stuck a big cigar in his mouth, which Jules promptly lit. After puffing on it a bit and beginning to fill the air with thick and unpleasant smoke, Sanders began to speak. As he did, air filtration clicked on, drawing the smoke up and to his rear, out of their own nostrils. It was a nice touch.