Engineman - Eric Brown [58]
Hunter smiled. "Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am, Jose."
They chatted for a while longer, before Delgardo excused himself and cut the connection. Hunter sat back in his armchair and released a long breath. Yesterday he had contacted Johan Weiner, the UC representative on Earth, and discussed his report with him. Like Delgardo, Weiner's response had been guarded - but he had not dismissed Hunter's claims out of hand, and had agreed to meet Hunter and his team in Malaysia. It was all Hunter could reasonably ask.
Of course, the meeting at Ipoh would come to nothing if he did not succeed with his plans over the next couple of days.
Which reminded him...
He glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve, and time for his dinner engagement with Mirren and the others.
Chapter Ten
Mirren and Dan Leferve hurried along the crowded avenue towards the golden bauble of the Gastrodome. Hordes of tourists promenaded, enjoying the clement evening. Within the vast dome which covered central Paris the temperature was controlled: not for these rich visitors the sweltering night heat that suffocated the rest of the city. High overhead, tiny lights on the inner curve of the dome simulated the constellations.
Caspar Fekete was waiting for them beside a news-fax kiosk. He was impressive in a magenta djellaba, his bulk emphasised by the console, surely augmented since his discharge from the Line, which spanned his shoulders.
"Ralph, it's wonderful to see you again." He took Mirren's hand in a limp grip, gold bracelets and rings flashing.
He was conscious of Fekete's gaze taking in his unkempt appearance: his balding head, his gaunt, unshaven face. They strolled along the avenue.
Fekete said, "Have you ever been to the Gastrodome, Ralph?"
Mirren gazed at the dome. "I've always thought it a bit up-market."
"You're in for an experience." Fekete smiled to himself.
"I've been," Dan said. "Once. Hated the place."
The restaurant was the decommissioned astrodome of a bigship - or rather the inflated inner mylar membrane - removed and set down on the banks of the Seine. The dome stood on a circular plinth of marble which served as a staircase, and was surrounded by an exotic display of extraterrestrial flora. Unlike in the outlying districts of the city, where xenobiological specimens flourished without restraint, this garden was designed and tended by a team of the finest off-world horticulturists. Similar gardens had been all the rage eighty or ninety years ago, when the first bigships forged their way to the stars and returned with all manner of botanical wonders. Then it had been a status symbol to own land given over to the trees and flowers of Hakoah or Songkhla. With the arrival of the interfaces, however, and the subsequent invasion of the alien spores, such gardens had become passé. This one, and everything about the Gastrodome, was an intentional exhibition of nostalgia, a harking back to an era when Paris was the centre of the space industry on Earth - a display, thought Mirren, of kitsch for the nouveau riche of Oceania who had never experienced Paris and the space-age in its hey-day.
They mounted the marble steps to one of the triangular entrance hatches. From within drifted the sickly strains of a band playing the hits of twenty years ago. Mirren recognised Continuum Blues, but done with an excess of strings to emphasise the sentiment. The maître d' met them on the threshold. "Gentlemen... a table for three?"
"We're meeting a Monsieur Hunter at midnight," Mirren said.
"Of course. If you would care to come this way." The maître d' was garbed in the dark blue uniform of a bigship Captain - but there was something overdone, almost pantomime, in the width of the scarlet piping, the chunkiness of the epaulettes and the jutting peak of his cap. His dress, like everything else about the place, was more lampoon than honest imitation.
The interior of the dome was a series of ever smaller galleries which rose in tiers from the floor, encircling an inner area where the band played and patrons danced. Each gallery was