Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [29]
As if really concerned, she said, “Can it wait? Mr. Hill is busy right now.”
“Your father is most insistent.”
Picard said, “You three go ahead. I trust my operatives implicitly, Miss Howe.” While she, Data, and Wesley continued up the stairs, Picard followed the butler back through the side door and along a passage lined with heavily laden bookshelves. They went through an entrance that could only have been a primitive airlock, and into an enormous greenhouse. Picard immediately began to sweat.
The butler said, “Watch your step, sir. Creepers.”
Aside from a sweat bath, this was the warmest room Picard had ever been in. He fanned himself with his hat as the butler led him along a winding brick path among the trees, bushes, and winding vines of a tropical forest. Fat drops of moisture fell from everything, including the butler and Picard. A sickly sweetness of too much perfume weighed down the air. Pale green light filtered through tentatively from the glass roof above.
In an open area a very old man sat in a wheelchair staring out through a glass wall at rolling grassy hills. Near him was a white iron table with a white telephone on it and a white iron chair next to it. A shawl was draped across the man’s shoulders, and a rug was thrown across his knees. The man looked like the bitter end of a life that had not been easy. Hands like unbaked dough plucked at the rug. His face was no more than many pouches of sagging skin crossed with tiny red and blue veins. His lips were thin and nearly the same color as the skin. Only his eyes were alive. They were the same sea green as his daughter’s, and they watched Picard, appraising him as if he were a head of beef.
“Mr. Howe, Mr. Hill,” the butler said, and went away. Somewhere beyond the jungle a door closed.
Mr. Howe invited Picard to sit down, and then he said, “I suppose my daughter hired you to see about her boogeymen.”
The word shocked Picard. Was it possible the computer would speak with him through this holoman rather than using its own computer voice? Carefully, Picard said, “Boogeymen?”
“Something wrong with the word? Ghost, then. Hobgoblin. Nightmare. Whatever.”
The computer was playing with him. It knew the creatures Wesley had created were called Boogeymen. Using the strange double-think that computers used so well, it had fabricated a man who not only did not know a computer problem existed but was unaware of his own computer origin. Picard wondered briefly if flesh-and-blood people were any more aware of their origins or the problems of their Maker.
“You don’t seem concerned,” Picard said.
Mr. Howe made a noise of dismissal and said, “Like her father, she has an active imagination. Sometimes it’s overactive. That’s all.”
“What do you expect me to do, then? Slug her upside the head and tiptoe out while she’s unconscious?”
“I don’t think the slugging will be necessary. Just tell her that we spoke and that you’re leaving. You may keep any money she paid you.” He shook his head. “It’s not your fault she’s a twit.”
Picard remembered something Dixon Hill had said in a book called Sweet Oblivion. He quoted it to Mr. Howe: “‘All I have is my good name. Imagine what my reputation would be like if I let people who weren’t my clients run me off cases.’ “
“I’m her father.”
“She doesn’t look like a child.” Picard stood up and said, “If nothing else, she needs to be comforted. Even if that’s all she buys, she’s doing all right.”
Mr. Howe studied his lap. Far away Picard heard the airlock door open, then the sound of people beating their way through the undergrowth. In a moment the butler came into the clearing followed