The neighborhoods became more colorful as they went north. Soon they were in an area where the buildings had two stories. Wide verandas circled them at the second floor level. “Rich people,” Arabis shouted above the engine noise. “Like to get up out of the mud. Can’t say I blame them.”
They crossed a large park, and now the city was cut across with broad diagonal avenues converging toward a complex of taller buildings dominated by one at least six stories tall.
Government House Square, Lysander thought. Lederle was laid out much like the capital city of the United States, where avenues too broad to be easily barricaded converged on the Capitol. Like Washington, Lederle was designed to let a small band of soldiers keep the mob at bay.
Tanith didn’t have any magnificent public buildings to match Washington’s. Government House shared the Square with a branch of Harrod’s and a Hilton, none of them more than five stories high. At the far corner of the square was Lederle House, Tanith headquarters for the ethical drug company that sponsored the first colonies on Tanith, and easily the finest building Lysander had seen in the city. It had terraces and fountains, and a rooftop botanical garden that blazed with colors.
They landed in the center of the square. A handful of men in dirty white canvass coats came up to help with the baggage, but Harv waved them away when one reached for Lysander’s trunk.
Lysander watched long enough to be sure that no one objected when Harv lifted a large footlocker on each shoulder and staggered across the square in Tanith’s high gravity. Harv claimed the privilege of looking after his prince, but it wasn’t worth making a scene over. They were already conspicuous enough. Not that his mission required much secrecy, but it was best not to attract attention.
The Hilton was no more than fifty meters away. The rain began before he got to the entrance.
The small lobby was up a flight of broad stairs from the street level. A ceiling fan turned endlessly above the registration counter. Opposite the registration desk was a wide door leading into a bar on a large screened and roofed porch. Half a dozen men and two women sat at tables in the bar room, but there was no one at the registration desk. Lysander tapped impatiently on the counter. Eventually a small Eurasian woman in a clean white canvass jacket came out from a back room. She wore a necklace of bright blue stones, and matching earrings.
“Yes, sir?” She was polite but seemed distracted.
“Lysander Collins and Harvey Middleton, of Sparta.”
“Ah.” She tapped keys on the console. “Yes, Your Highness. Two rooms. Right away, sir. We’ve put you in the Governor’s Suite. I’m sure you’ll find it satisfactory. Taxpayer Middleton’s room is just across the hall. Your suite is fully furnished; I’m sure everything will be to your liking, but if there’s anything else we can do, just call the desk.”
“Thanks. Right now what I most want is a hot shower.”
She nodded in sympathy. “Not much water on those liners, even in first class. That’s one thing we have here. Plenty of water. Thumbprint here, please—thank you.” She tapped the bell on the counter. “Joaquin will show you to your room.”
Joaquin was short and stocky. His white canvass jacket had sweat stains under the arms.
“Uniform?” Harv asked.
“Sir?”
“White jackets. Uniforms?”
“Yes, sir. Trustees. Let me take your trunks—”
Harv looked at Lysander.
“It’s OK, Harv.”
Joaquin loaded the trunks onto a cart and led the way to the elevator. “The service elevator isn’t working, sir. Please go up to the fifth floor, and I’ll follow you.”
“There’s room.” Lysander flattened himself against the elevator wall. It was crowded with the three of them and two footlockers.
The fifth-floor corridor was carpeted with some bright synthetic. The walls held plastic decorative panels depicting strange animals in bas relief. One of the creatures looked very like a giant woodchuck with three short horns. “Wouldn’t want to see him in the dark,” Harv said.
The Governor’s Suite was bright and airy, and the air conditioning had been turned on long enough to cool the room before they arrived. There were a dozen plastic pots of brilliantly flowered plants, and baskets of fruit, some familiar like oranges and kiwi, and others that Lysander didn’t recognize. “Very nice,” Lysander said. He handed Joaquin three five-credit bills. “Please see that the receptionist gets one of these.”
“Yes, sir. May I help you unpack, sir?”
“Thank you. No, but you might see if Citizen Middleton needs anything.”
“Citizen.” The bellman frowned. “Yes, sir.”
I’ll need to watch that, Lysander thought. Citizen isn’t a title of respect on Earth. Or here. He chuckled as he thought of the tests to pass and obligations to assume before one became a Citizen of Sparta. Different worlds, in every way.
When the bellman left, Lysander carefully bolted the door. It was the first time he had been alone in the weeks since they left Sparta, and he welcomed the feeling. He stretched elaborately, and sought out the shower.
* * *
The bathroom was large. The floor was tile inlaid in intricate designs. Most of the fittings were gold plated. Lysander felt like a Sybarite. And I’m probably the only one on this planet who knows who the Sybarites were! The room held both shower and a round tub already filled and liberally furnished with water jets. The water was cold, but there were instructions on heating it and starting the jets. The instructions were written in a dozen languages and five alphabets, and there were diagrams for anyone left out.
Lysander chose the circular shower. There were five shower heads around three quarters of a circle. Each had separate hot and cold controls. The control handles were shaped like sea creatures, the cold water tap like a fish, hot something like a dragon. Lysander frowned at them. “I’d hate to meet that—”
“Meet what, sir?”
He turned, startled. A girl, younger than himself but definitely a woman, stood naked at the shower entrance. Her dark red hair was beginning to curl from the steam of the hot water. Lysander dropped momentarily into fighting stance, then relaxed. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.
“Ursula, sir. I’ll be your hostess. I thought you might like to have me scrub your back.”
“Hostess.” He nodded to himself. He’d heard of such customs. “Thank you, I can shower by myself.”
She smiled slightly. “As you wish. Would you like me to turn on the hot tub? Or do you care for a cold plunge? Afterward I can massage your back.”
“That’s a fairly tempting offer. Cold plunge and back rub.”
She knelt to feel the water in the tub. “Cold enough, I think. I’ll wait for you—”
“No, you needn’t do that. I’ll come out when I’m ready for a back rub.”
She shrugged slightly and smiled again. He retreated into the shower compartment to sort out his thoughts.
Ursula. He liked the name, and he liked her smile. It was clear that she was offering herself to him. That was exciting. He hadn’t had much experience with women.
Melissa will never know. And the Hilton won’t have a diseased hostess.
She was definitely available, even eager, but what were the conditions? What obligations would he have—
He chuckled mirthlessly. None, of course. The girl was clearly a whore.
Ugly word. He didn’t like “prostitute” much more. Ursula looked altogether too young, and her eyes—were they really as green as they had seemed in this light? Whatever color, they didn’t have the hardness he associated with the women of Minetown’s dance halls.
He had tried to read up on Tanith customs, but the veedisks on the passenger liner only gave him standard tourist spiels. Visit exotic Tanith. Gorgeous flowers, bright plumaged birds, the thrill of hunting real dinosaurs. Not much about Tanith’s principal industry, which was hardly surprising.
And almost nothing about local customs.
* * *
Ursula had put on a rose-colored short-skirted one-piece garment that tied in front. It reminded him of the stola worn by hetaera in classical Greece. That’s a custom we could have revived with some profit. Maybe it’s not too late. He glanced around, half expecting to see a white canvass jacket somewhere, but if she had any other clothes here they had been put away. She was seated on a big easy chair with her legs tucked appealingly under her, and was staring at the big room screen. Words flowed swiftly across the veedisk reader screen, and she leaned forward in total concentration. Lysander walked up quietly behind her.
“The primary economic conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those whose interests are with the emergence of new economic activities. This is a conflict that can never be put to rest except by economic stagnation. For the new economic activities of today are the well-established economic activities of tomorrow which will be threatened in turn by further economic development. In this conflict, other things being equal, the well-established activities and those whose interests are attached to them must win. They are, by definition, the stronger. The only possible way to keep open the economic opportunities for new activities is for a ‘third force’ to protect their weak and still incipient interests. Only governments can play this economic role. And sometimes, for pitifully brief intervals, they do. . . .”