Kieran got out and stood for a moment to take in the view, while Guinness sampled and registered the world of new odors, sights, and sensations. Then they walked up two levels of the terraces to Number 357 Park View, which formed the central section of the complex. June had redone her front door in orange and added a trellis with red and white roses to one side. Kieran nodded approvingly. “The feminine touch,” he remarked to Guinness, who pricked his ears up in response but remained unenlightened. Kieran produced a magnetic card bearing the code that June had forwarded and inserted it in the door. The lock disengaged. Kieran led Guinness in and put his carryon and briefcase down in the hallway.
There was a nice, feminine touch to the interior too, as Kieran would have expected—but with the professional, pragmatic feel about it that befitted somebody like June: not too much satins and pink; not too frilly and lacey. The living area had acquired a comfortable-looking couch of eggshell blue that complemented the pale lilac wall at that end, along with a few other knickknacks that Kieran didn’t remember seeing before. June had added to her collection of designs, prints and paintings: space views and Mars-scapes; architectural studies; some interesting abstracts; and of course, cats.
No sooner had the observation registered, when a fit of spits and hisses erupted from the passage leading to the back rooms. Teddy was arched to twice her height, fur standing out like the rays of a symbolic all-black sun, yellow-green saucers of eyes fixed on Guinness. The dog looked back amiably, tongue lolling, and sat on its haunches as if to dispel alarm. “Hello, Teddy,” Kieran sighed. “Oh, we haven’t got to go through all this again, have we? We’re long-lost friends back again, you silly animal.” He closed the door and ambled across to the kitchen area, with Guinness getting up to follow. At the dog’s movement, Teddy shot back to the far end of the passage in an inelegant display of rear end framed in fur, and about-turned to glare defiance from the bolt-hole of the half-open bedroom door. Kieran punched an order for a coffee into the autochef and filled a dish from one of the closets below the sink with water for Guinness. While the dog lapped appreciatively, Kieran unclipped the leash, took his comset pad from an inside jacket pocket, and slid out the handpiece to call June. She answered a few seconds later.
“Hi there. So you made it okay? How was the trip?”
“Smooth and uneventful. About the greatest excitement was fleecing four riggers in a poker game at the layover on Phobos. But I was a good boy and gave it back before we got off the shuttle. You know I only cheat cheaters.”
“Of course—you’ve always had that soft spot.”
“Just keeping my hand in. Anyhow, what kind of a welcome is this, when a man comes a hundred million miles and no one shows up to meet him? Things like that play havoc with this delicate complex that I have.”
“Sure. Right,” June said with just the right note of mock sarcasm. “Kieran, you know we had something big going on here yesterday. You just timed your arrival a couple of days too late. There was no way I could get away.” That was evidently as much as she was prepared to be overheard saying in her working environment. Kieran interpreted it as meaning that a crucial experiment he knew Quantonix had been working up to over the past few months had gone ahead.
“How’d it go?” he asked, dropping the flippancy.
She paused just long enough to convey prudence. “Just fine.”
“Okay, then I guess I’ll have to wait to know more. It’s too bad I couldn’t have made it in earlier. You know, sometimes I think that Triplanetary plans their schedule just to frustrate me.” Triplanetary Spacelines was the carrier that had brought him from the Belt to Phobos.
“And sometimes I think that God runs the rest of the universe just to suit you. . . . Anyhow, I take it that Guinness is well?”
“Of course. In fact, right now, slurping and drooling over your kitchen floor.”