Paradigm (13 page)

“A reporter?” said Sam, surprised. “But the mayor told me there weren’t any. He said there were no newspapers or anything.”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” said Ida Caxton, in a voice that rasped like some of the louder birds in the Wilds. “The fact is—”

“Later, my dear.”

Bast steered Sam away and over to the last couple.

The woman was slim and elegant and dripping with jewels but seemed on edge. Sam could relate to the feeling, but wondered what brought it on in her case—he was fairly sure she hadn’t tried to steal anything. Then he noticed the way Carolyn Bast was looking at her husband. It was the same expression a cat has when it has located a nest crowded with baby birds on the day that the chicks have to learn to fly.

“Dustin,” she said, her voice silky and deep. “This is Sam Cooper. Sam, this is Dustin Farmer, he owns three banks here in Century City. And this is Tiffany, his wife. You look lovely, my dear. Most people can’t wear
quite
so many diamonds and make it work.”

The lovely Tiffany smiled thinly and moved to link an arm with her husband, which he deftly avoided by stepping forward to shake Sam’s hand. Carolyn Bast then abandoned Sam for the attentions of the banker, strolling to the far side of the room with him and speaking urgently.

Tiffany sighed and looked Sam up and down.

“You’re very young,” she said, her voice languid as if nothing was really a surprise any more. “Come on, let’s get you a proper drink.”

“It’s okay, I have a—”

“A
proper
drink. You’re going to need it.”

“Why?” said Sam, following her to the bar, his stomach lurching. “What’s going to happen?”

Tiffany glanced back at him and smiled.

“You needn’t look like that,” she said. “She may be something of a maneater but she doesn’t actually
eat
them. At least, I don’t think she does.”

She handed Sam a dark brown drink in a heavy-bottomed glass and looked over to where her husband was still deep in conversation with their host.

“It might be nice if she did, though,” she muttered, downing her own drink in one go and getting another.

“So why do you think I need a drink?”

“Because you’re embarking on the most tedious night of your life. If it wasn’t for the fish course, I’d have begged off. Had a convenient headache or something.”

“But I’d heard the fish was…not good.”

“I don’t know who told you that. Bast has them flown in specially. Sends a helicopter up there or something. You’ll never get it fresher…unless you go up and haul it out yourself, of course. But you’d have to be mad to try that.”

“Why?”

“Lord!” Tiffany rolled her eyes. “Where’ve you been living? It’s big business. The kind of big business that doesn’t like competition.”

“Or witnesses.”

Sam spun around. Ida Caxton was standing behind him, helping herself to another martini from the bar.

“Witnesses?”

“Yeah. Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing. That’s the least of it, though. What happened to the local people may have been an accident to start with, but it ended up getting a whole lot worse. I did an expose on Tahoe while I was with the Reno Tribune. Didn’t get published, of course.”

“So what happened to them?”

“The leak from the research lab turned the water toxic back before the second collapse, as far as anyone can reckon. But the poor saps had been drinking it for years before Hermes Industries decided that maybe they should ‘fess up about it. That was right before the third collapse, when we still had some kind of a national government. Kicked up a hell of a stink. People were dying and the kids were lucky if they made it to fifteen without developing some terminal disease or other.”

“Wait…if it all happened before the third collapse, what was your expose about?”

“Drug trafficking. Everybody wanted the little fishies, y’see. The locals made quite a good living, but it was only a matter of time before the cartels moved in. Next thing the locals are gone, wandering around like the lost tribes.”

“The Rovers.”

“Yeah. The cartels fought amongst themselves for a while before forming a syndicate and settling down to rake in the cash. The paper wouldn’t publish. Too scared, I guess. Can’t really blame ‘em.”

She meandered off to speak to Bast and the banker, leaving Tiffany to take another slug of her drink and snort disdainfully. Sam noticed that the more she drank the less attractive she looked—her studied poise and manner slowly disappearing.

“Did you see that? The way she just walked away?”

“Well, I—”

“Everyone does that. They all want to talk to the rich guy. Well, she’s got a surprise coming.”

“What d’you mean?”

“She’s working on some kind of story about Dustin’s banks and the Bast woman’s company. She thinks they don’t know.”

“But they do. So?”

“You’re not drinking.”

Sam smiled and took a sip. The stuff was sweet like syrup but packed a wallop at the back end that left him gasping. Tiffany looked pleased.

“So…” he wheezed, “Why does it matter if she does a story?”

Tiffany took another large swig of her drink and leaned in close to Sam, her hot whisky breath betraying the fact that she had started drinking much, much earlier in the day.

“Who are you again?” she asked.

“Sam Cooper. Carolyn introduced me—”

“Yes…but
who
are you? I’ve never heard of any Coopers so you can’t be first families…Perhaps I’ve said too much.”

She suddenly looked really worried and Sam couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. If all their social engagements were like this the strain must be incredible.

“It’s okay. I’m new in town. I was born in San Francisco City.”

“Were your parents First Families?”

“I don’t—”

“Dinner is served!”

Sam turned around. An elderly man in yet another dark suit was standing in the doorway in an attitude so stiff it could have given a metal bar a run for its money.

“Thank you, Hobbs.” Carolyn Bast smiled her lizard smile. “Please take your seats, everyone. There are place cards, I believe.”

She strode to the head of the table, not even looking as Dustin pulled out her chair for her. Sam thought of stories he’d read about the olden days when kings and queens never used to look to see if there was a chair—they just sat and some flunky invariably arrived with the needed seat just in time.

He followed Tiffany to the table and found that he’d been put next to Bast, with Tiffany on his right. The reporter, Ida Caxton, was seated to Bast’s left, with Dustin next, then Phyllida. Setzen took the foot of the table with oilman Hector to his left next to Tiffany.

Sam couldn’t remember the last time that he’d felt so out of place.

He was fine with the kind of joints they had in the Wilds—diners and bars and maybe the occasional sit-down meal in someone’s house. But never anything like this. This was like something out of one of his books, with ranks of cutlery stretching out from each side of every plate and at least four different glasses for each diner. He’d read enough to know that he was supposed to use the cutlery from the outside in and that each glass was for a different kind of beverage (white wine, red wine, champagne and water, most likely), but that wasn’t really the problem.

The problem was that for the first time in ages he actually felt like a kid. It was the feeling of not quite understanding what was going on. Being among people who behaved one way, while clearly feeling another.

He’d become so used to always having a handle on things that it felt as if he’d been struck blind. Added to this, of course, was the awareness that Carolyn Bast hadn’t just included him in this shindig to make up the numbers. She wasn’t the kind of woman you stole from with impunity, so he didn’t have very high hopes of ever getting out of DETH, Inc. alive, let alone surviving a dinner party.

He thought about Nathan, huddled in the cell in City Hall, wondering where he’d got to. He probably thought Sam had abandoned him. Taken it on the lam in the old car and left him to his fate. For some reason, that bothered Sam more than his impending death.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

He almost knocked over the wine that yet another flunky had poured into one of the glasses. Carolyn Bast was leaning forward in that cat-baby-bird way again, her large brown eyes taking in every detail of his face.

“Um…nothing.”

“Come now, a smart boy like you, I imagine your thoughts are piling in on each other so fast right now you don’t know up from down.”

Sam pushed the hair out of his eyes and glared at her.

“I was just wondering what kind of game you’re playing, that’s all.”

“You know,” she said, reaching for her wine with a long, pale hand, “You really have cleaned up remarkably well. And your eyes are different colors. Interesting.”

“They are?” said Tiffany. “I hadn’t noticed. Look at me. Well, so they are. I had a cat once that had different colored eyes. He was deaf, poor baby.”

“Did the two things have anything to do with each other?” asked Ida Caxton, holding her hand over the top of her glass so the waiter couldn’t pour the wine and then tipping her martini into it instead.

“What two things?”

“The deafness and the eyes.”

“I’ve no idea. I never thought about it.”

Ida stared at Tiffany in disbelief, as if she couldn’t fathom how her body was able to function at all, given the obvious absence of brain cells.

“You mustn’t mind Tiffany,” said Carolyn Bast, her voice dripping with condescension. “Dustin didn’t marry her for her brains, did you dear?”

“No,” said Dustin, smiling.

“That’s right,” Tiffany shot a poisonous glare at her husband. “He married me for my Daddy’s money. Could I get some more wine?”

Her husband squirmed in his seat and turned his attentions to Phyllida in a way that made it clear that anything was better than looking at his wife.

“And how have you been, Phyllida?” asked Carolyn, adopting an expression that Sam guessed was suppose to look like concern, but which he thought read more like constipation. “I seem to recall you were suffering from allergies last time we met. Did the treatment help?”

“Why, thank you for remembering!” trilled Phyllida. “As a matter of fact, it did. I haven’t sneezed in weeks.”

She snuck an overly-arch look at Setzen that was the last straw for Sam. The whole thing was ridiculous, no one seemed to want to be there. He certainly didn’t. Why couldn’t the lunatic woman just kill him and be done? He stood up and pushed his chair away from the table.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” asked Carolyn Bast, surprised.

“I’d like to go back to my—”

“Sit down and stop acting like a child.”

Sam opened his mouth to protest, but her glare spoke volumes. He sank back into his seat.

“Besides,” she whispered, “You’d miss all the fun.”

Sam stared at his plate. He had to get out. Somehow, he had to get out. He tried to calm down and examine his options. Just running wouldn’t work. He had to relax. Maybe she would drop her guard. It wasn’t likely, but it was the only thing he could think of right now.

Maybe if he concentrated on the food. If he looked like he was taking an interest maybe she’d delay killing him. He just needed some time…

Fortunately, focusing on the dinner didn’t present much of a problem, because when the grub finally arrived it turned out to be really good. The first course was some kind of tiny bird served over a salad with a garlic dressing and raisins. Sam had no idea what kind of bird it was, but it tasted fantastic. Next came the soup and Sam began to feel slightly better about the whole event.

“It’s asparagus,” explained Carolyn. “There’s a small farm in Washington that still grows it. The whipped cream has truffle oil in it.”

“Truffle oil?”

“It was a kind of fungus. It was rare to start with, but there’s none left now. The culinary institute in Paris created a passable imitation. Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing.”

She was about to say something else when the sound of a giant slurp rang around the room. It was oilman, Hector Stone. Apparently he really liked the soup too. Phyllida looked disgusted.

“Good, huh?” growled Setzen.

“Sure is. Best food in town,” said Hector, his eyes shining.

“Tell me, Hector,” said Carolyn, “Is it true that you’ve reopened the oil fields to the south of the city?”

“Yep. They’re nearly played dry, but we’re having problems keeping up with demand.”

Sam noticed that Dustin glanced sharply at his host, as if recognizing a signal.

“Have you thought of exploring further afield? I hear there are still plenty of deposits out Bakersfield way.”

“There sure are, but I think Peterson Oil would have a few things to say if I just upped and started drilling on their fields! Not to mention the government of Bakersfield City! You can’t just drill where you like, you know!”

“Yes, but Bakersfield is a very small city,” said Carolyn.

“It is,” said Dustin. “I was just there last week. Bought out Bakersfield Fidelity.”

“You bought a bank in another city?” Phyllida was clearly impressed.

“Why not? People used to do it all the time. Banks used to be in business clear across the country. In other countries, even.”

“Yeah,” rasped Ida. “And look what happened.”

“What?” asked Tiffany, all wide-eyed innocence.

“The first collapse, that’s what.”

“Oh, right,” said Dustin, clearly irritated. “Blame the banks.”

“If I remember my history correctly, that’s exactly who was at fault.”

Dustin’s face turned an interesting shade of puce as he turned to give Ida his view of history. Sam was pretty interested to hear the pro-big banking theory of the first collapse, but Carolyn Bast wasn’t about to let the conversation get off-track.

“Ida…Dustin, I hardly think this is the place to get into a rage over something that happened over seventy years ago.”

“Well, no, but—”

“Ah, here’s the next course!”

The waiters hustled in with another eight plates. Sam was delighted to be presented with a two-inch thick filet mignon, topped with a large ravioli and some kind of sauce.

“The ravioli is confit duck and mushroom,” explained Carolyn. “And that’s Madeira sauce. I know this ought to be the fish course, but I prefer to have the meat and then the fish. I do hope you don’t mind.”

Sam’s stomach did swift three-sixty. For a moment he had almost forgotten where he was, but suddenly he knew what she was going to do. She was going to kill him with the toxic fish.