As big as the building was, nobody exited or entered. The sight gave me a little shiver. What was the deal? Were people afraid of the place?
The driver dado joined his pal and the two looked at me with those blank doll eyes.
“Thanks for the lift, guys,” I said. “Wait here for me, okay? I won’t be long. Keep the engine running.” I started up the stairs. The two dados followed right behind me. I guessed they were making sure I didn’t bolt. Just to mess with them, I stopped suddenly. I hoped they would be surprised and stumble or something. They didn’t. The instant I stopped, they stopped. I took another step, they took another step. It was like these two were wired to me. I took a step, then quickly whipped around and stared at them. They didn’t flinch.
“What are you guys? Robots?” I said.
They didn’t react. Oh, well. At least I was amusing myself.
“Challenger Red,” Nevva called. “Please hurry. We’re running late.”
I jogged up the rest of the stairs. She greeted me with a small smile. A very small smile.
“Good morning. Challenger Red,” she said formally.
“Where have you been?” I asked, trying to sound as irked as I felt.
Her answer was a quick glance to the dados. I got it. She was saying, “Don’t talk in front of the robots.”
“We must go right to the trustee chambers,” she said. “Veego and LaBerge are already there.”
“Sure,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to keep Pete and Re-Peat waiting.”
Nevva started for the front door. I followed. The dados didn’t. I figured their job was done once they handed me off to Nevva.
“Bye, kids,” I said cheerily to the robots. “Go get yourselves an ice cream, on me.”
The dados didn’t react. We entered the building through a grand revolving door. Inside was a massive lobby that soared three stories high. On the wall directly in front of us was another huge silver sign that said: blok.
“What’s with the big signs?” I asked. “Are they afraid they’ll forget who they are or something?”
“The trustees like to maintain an impressive presence,” Nevva answered without breaking stride.
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”
Nevva took a quick glance around. I wasn’t sure why; there wasn’t another person to be seen. The place was huge and empty. Our footsteps echoed back at us.
“Everyone is observed. Always,” Nevva said under her breath. She didn’t look at me as she spoke, in order to give the illusion we weren’t talking. “The meeting here will answer some of your questions. Did you bring the item I gave you?”
“Item?” I didn’t understand what she was talking about at first. She gave me a quick, stern look… and I remembered. “Oh yeah, right. The item. Yeah, I’ve got it.” She was talking about the blocking diode.
“Good,” she said. “You’ll need it.”
“Want to tell me why?” I asked.
“No,” she answered flatly. “I told you, we’re being watched.”
Okay, I figured it would be best to play it her way. We were on her turf. She was a Traveler. I had to believe she knew what she was doing. She led me to an elevator that was already open, waiting for us. Usually in big buildings like that there’s a whole line of elevators. Not only one. We got in and the door closed instantly. I saw that there were no buttons to push. The elevator rose on its own.
“How does it know where we want to go?” I asked.
“This elevator only goes to the chambers,”Nevva answered.
“So anybody could come in here and head on up?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “As I have told you now three times, we are being watched.” Oh. Right.
“What’s your job here?” I asked. “You can answer that, can’t you?”
“I am the special assistant to the trustees of the company,” she answered professionally. “I schedule their appointments, handle their correspondence, and generally make sure that their every need is met while they are working.”
“Company,” I said, my mind spinning. “Working? Blok is a business? I thought it was, like, the government or something.”
Nevva chuckled. “Blok is the largest company on Quillan. It is larger than any government on the territory, and far more powerful.”
“Wow,” I said. “A company that’s more powerful than a government. That’s… scary. What do they do? I mean, what’s their business?”
“Blok has many enterprises,” she answered. “But above all else, it is a store.”
The elevator doors opened and Nevva stepped out. I didn’t. Had I heard right? Blok was a store? A store? Like, where you bought stuff? I remembered back to the plates I’d found in that warehouse. They were all marked with the Blok logo. The products on the shelves of the stores had the Blok logo as well. I couldn’t get my mind around the concept.
“Please follow me. Challenger Red,” Nevva said firmly.
I drifted out of the elevator, trying to make sense of what Nevva had revealed. We were in a bare room that had no furniture and a single door on the far wall across from the elevator. On either side of the door were big Blok logos, no surprise. Nevva hurried over to the door and turned to me.
“Don’t ask questions,” she said. “Answer only if you are asked directly. This shouldn’t take long. Do you understand?”
I said, “Understand? You’re kidding, right? I don’t understand anything.”
Nevva leaned in to me and said softly, “You will.”
With a quick wink she opened the door and stood aside for me to enter and meet my future… and the future of Quillan.
(CONTINUED)
QUILLAN
It looked like a courtroom. The first thing I saw was a group of people sitting on the far side behind a high, long benchlike desk that faced into the room. The bench was black. Very imposing. I had to believe these were the trustees. There were ten of them. Five men and five women. They were adults, though I couldn’t guess how old they were. They sat there wearing the same kind of dark suits that Nevva wore, looking every bit like supreme court judges. They faced an audience that sat in rows. It looked like there were about fifty people in all. They were mostly dressed in the same gray, drab clothing that I saw on the people out in the city.
There was a center aisle that cut through the audience, and a space of about twenty feet between the trustees and the onlookers. In the middle of that space was a small platform with a podium on it. Right now a man stood on this platform, facing the trustees, giving a speech. Nobody else spoke. For as many people as were in the room, it was amazingly quiet.
Nobody fidgeted or coughed. I wasn’t even sure if anybody was breathing, that’s how still it was. They were all focused on the guy giving the speech.
Before I tuned in to what the guy was saying, I caught some movement off to my right. Looking, I saw LaBerge waving for me to join him. He was in the audience with Veego. He was the only guy dressed in something colorful. It was a suit that was cut like everybody else’s, only it was lime green. Clown.
I looked to Nevva. She nodded for me to go, so I left her and made my way toward Veego and LaBerge. My footsteps sounded like thunder in that quiet room. I got a lot of dirty looks. Veego was sitting next to LaBerge and didn’t look at me as I sat down next to her. LaBerge gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up. I scowled at him. He shrugged.
I turned my attention to the guy on the platform. He looked nervous as he spoke to the trustees. He kept shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“I need to point out how difficult it has been for the last three quads,” he said. “The weather has been unusually warm, so the demand for thermal outerwear has dropped considerably. Combine that with the fact that the last shipment of product we received was far more than we requested-our profit margin has suffered. Now if-“