“Centre,” she directed Merry, settling forward in her seat again and folding her arms about her. “We’re going to pay another call. ITAK’s due one.”
vii
It was very like the Labour Registry, the circle which was the heart of ITAK: it was only wider, taller, and perhaps deeper underground.
The Centre drew a great deal of traffic, cars prowling the circle-drive . . . probably every car in East, every car on the continent resorted here regularly, in a city where everyone but the higher ITAK officials must rely on public transport. A space was available in front of the main doors, probably vacant because it was restricted; Raen directed and Merry eased into it, parked, let them out and locked the doors.
She and Jim were actually well into the building before the reaction set in among the betas. It began with shocked stares. Word apparently flashed then throughout the building, for by the time she reached the main hall, with its central glass sculpture, there was a delegation to meet her, minor executives anxious to escort her upstairs where, she was assured, the Board was hastily assembling to meet her.
She cast a glance at the sculpture, which ascended in a complex shaft to a light-well all its own, and took advantage of beta Hydri’s glare to illumine colours and forms all the way down. “Lovely,” she murmured, and looked at the betas. “Local, Seri?”
Heads nodded. Anxious gestures tried to urge her elsewhere, hallward. She shrugged and went with them, Jim treading softly in her wake, playing at invisibility. No one spoke to him, no one acknowledged his presence: the tattoo let them know what he was despite his dress. Bodyguard, they would think him, not knowing his harmlessness, and therefore he served the function well. Betas crowded about them, one babbling on about the glass-artist, an Upcoast factor’s son.
They entered the lift, rode it to the uppermost floors, entered directly from it a suite of offices the splendour of which equalled many an establishment on Andra, and a second crowd waited to greet the visitor: division heads, secretaries, minor officials, a chattering succession of introductions.
Raen smiled perfunctorily, reckoning those who might be worth recalling, met the Dain-Prossertys again, and ser Dain himself, the president, and two more Dains high on the staff. The inner office was opened, revealing chairs arranged about a vast hollow table, and the ITAK emblem blazoned on the wall like the Kontrin symbol in Council.
Illusions, illusions. She smiled to herself, and brought Jim in with her, offered him a seat at the table beside her, offending them all. Azi women appeared, to take requests for drinks. She ordered for herself and Jim, the same that he had ordered on-ship, and leaned back, waiting, while betas took their seats and made their orders and hissing whispers tried to solve the problem of a disturbed seating arrangement. A chair was brought in. The first drinks arrived: Raen’s, Jim’s, President Dain’s and the Dain-Prossertys’.
Raen sipped at hers and studied them all, who had to wait on theirs. The serving-azi hastened breathlessly . . . decorative, Raen thought, eyeing the young women with a critic’s cold eyes, reckoning whether they were homebred or foreign, and whether they were equally to the taste of the beta women on the board.
Foreign, she decided. Mixed as populations were in the Reach, seven hundred years had brought some definition among azi, whose generations were short and subject to brief fads. These had the look of Meron’s carnival decadence, elegant, sloe-eyed.
The last drinks appeared; the azi took themselves hence very quickly. Raen still mused the question of beta psych-sets, looked at Dain, who was murmuring some courtesy to her, and nudged herself out of her analysis to look on him as a man, plump, nearly bald, eyes full of anxiety. She kept seeing labs, and the Registry’s grey honeycomb of cells.
“Ser Enis Dain,” she said. “I recall your message.” She smiled and regarded the others. “It’s very kind of you to disarrange your schedules. I’ll take very little of your time.”
“Kont’ Raen Meth-maren, we’re very honoured by your visit.”
She nodded. “Thank you. Your people have been very co-operative. I’ve appreciated that. I know that my presence is a disturbance. And you’re doubtless wanting to ask me questions; let me save you time and effort. You’d like to know if my coming is going to disturb your operations here, and most of all whether the seri Eln-Kest, personally lamented, had anything to do with bringing me here.”