Chapter Nine
You Gee One—Phonetic for UG One, the underground (UG) terminal where Lutt Hanson Senior’s private tube train picks up passengers bound for his subterranean offices and shops built in an old MX missile site.
—Atlas of the Powerful
From the moment he learned they were headed for You Gee One, Lutt realized he was headed for a family confrontation. Morey was maneuvering again! Never let up, do you. Brother?
The infernal rickshaw lurched and Lutt caught Morey’s gaze for a moment, easily forcing the younger man to look away.
No guts!
“This hallucination about an alien in your body can be dispelled quite easily by modern medicine,” Phoenicia said.
Lutt let it rest. With any luck, Morey would take the revelation merely as a sign of weakness, something to exploit with L.H. Let them believe in a head injury. God! This morning was sure to lead into an awful day.
Perhaps you should reinforce the impression of mental instability, Ryll suggested. Your brother appears hostile to you. Perhaps I was a bit impetuous insisting you reveal my presence.
Right! Let’s have some fun.
Abruptly, Lutt shouted: “Graaar!” He waved his arms wildly and leaned toward his mother and brother with a look of menace. “You think I’m nuts, eh?”
Phoenicia and Morey recoiled.
Her voice cracking, Phoenicia said: “Of course not, dear.”
Lutt found he still could read her emotions as well as ever. So like father. Poor dear. An uneven personality.
Lutt had once heard her describe him to someone on the vidcom: “He looks rather bookish. It’s partly his glasses. His hair is still reddish-brown but beginning to thin prematurely.”
Yes, Lutt agreed. I’m the sort of person you might find in the dusty stacks of a library. But that’s not where you’ll often see me. My lessons come from life.
He knew it was bragging but he liked to tell people he was a newspaperman who rarely read anything except headlines.
Morey studied him with fearful expectation.
Lutt wished he were elsewhere. The brief flash of enjoyment over Morey’s discomfiture vanished. Mother, he noted, had a brown leather case by her feet. Prepared for a stay? He settled into the seat, legs extended.
I’m slouching, Mother.
He knew what she would say next.
“Don’t slouch, dear,” Phoenicia said.
Right on cue every time. Dear this, dear that. It’s always dear.
“I’m Lutt!” he shouted, and this time there was no pretense. “Don’t call me ‘dear’! Don’t call me ‘Lutt Junior.’ Don’t call me ‘Lout’! You know my name. Use it!”
Phoenicia looked hurt. “I’ve never called you Lout. I call both of my sons ‘dear’ out of love.”
Lutt felt anger pulsing in the serpentine blood vessel at his temple and put a finger on it.
Phoenicia shook her head, causing the golden circles of her earrings to bounce against her smooth neck. “Your father worries about you, Lutt. I do, too. And you really should not slouch. It’s ruinous to your posture.”
“I’m thirty-five,” Lutt said. “If I want to slouch, that’s my business. I don’t have to ask permission of you or Father when I want to do something.”
“But, dear, your attempts at invention are becoming quite dangerous. Someone has been killed.”
“An accident! Father wants to stop me because he’s afraid I’ll invent something better than he ever did. And I already have!”
“Your father knows what’s best to invent, dear. If he says something’s wrong, you should listen to him. After all, you are using his money.”
Lutt stared past her out the rear window and muttered: “I’ve earned that money with all the crap I’ve taken from him.” He saw Morey’s involuntary nod of agreement and felt a resonant chord—a shared but mostly unspoken suffering—two neglected sons of a man consumed by his business empire.
Phoenicia’s silence hinted that she shared this resentment. How much emotion had she invested trying to make up for L.H.’s neglect of his family? Was that what had driven her to her high-society friends? Perhaps. But as usual she went too far.
She’ll do anything for those fawning sycophants!
Morey chose this moment to make his contribution.
“I’ve noticed something about you, Lout.”
Phoenicia, quick to smell trouble, snapped, “You must not call your brother that!”
Morey shrugged, then: “You know, he always slouches like that when he’s in trouble or wishes he were somewhere else.”
“We all have our little idiosyncrasies, dear.”
“Sure we do,” Lutt growled. “And Morey’s is to play fast and loose with money trusted to him.”
Morey paled but Lutt’s satisfaction was cooled by his own involuntary reaction: sitting up straight. I’m still in trouble, Lutt thought.
Lutt touched a panel button to his left. An oval vidcom dropped from the ceiling on the end of a flexible tube. The tiny robot eye on the microphone positioned it in front of Lutt and blinked green to show it was ready.
“Shop Two,” Lutt said and he imagined the crystal bell sounding in the shop near Seattle where he had built his ship. The area was wooded and mostly uninhabited now. Once it had been a prime residential area but the senior Hanson had razed the homes after acquiring the property. It was a pattern repeated on all eleven family plots around Seattle.
“The Hansons want privacy and hunting preserves,” commentators said.
A high-pitched computer ditty signaled engagement of the scrambler system to ensure privacy on this call.
Presently, a bearded face appeared on the tiny screen and a deep voice said: “Hi, Lutt. Good to see you’re okay.”
“Yeah, Sam. You heard, huh?”
“Is Drich really dead?”
“And the ship is shot to shit.”
Phoenicia rolled her eyes heavenward. Lutt, dear boy that he was, could be so gross. And he kept such low-class company! This assistant, Sam R. Kand, was every bit as improper as the friends L.H. chose. Unsuitable, all of them.
“Can we salvage anything?” Sam asked.
“I’ll let you know later. Meanwhile, start building a new core. And I want you to make these modifications …”
Lutt noted Phoenicia’s eyes glaze over. She never liked technical details. And Morey was too interested in watching a shapely young woman walking a bloodhound at curbside.
The limousine came to a crisp stop, blocked by a truck backing up to a warehouse bay. Morey smiled and tried to catch the young woman’s attention but she did not even look at the garish limousine.
Lutt noted this with part of his attention. Everyone down here knew the rickshaw, of course.
While Lutt gave his instructions, Ryll absorbed the words for later examination.
Something about the fat-necked bloodhound at the curb caught Ryll’s attention. The dog reminded him of a hated proctor at the school for gifted children. What was it about that dog?
He saw differences between the dog and Proctor Shanlis, but the four legs and the dog’s facial expression struck a spark of memory. The dog’s face recalled Shanlis, Ryll decided: hang-jowled and morose, a wide Dreenish nose.
The animal sank onto its haunches and howled.
Ryll, seeing a vision of Proctor Shanlis doing this, laughed and heard the sound in the rickshaw, realizing he had forced this reaction on their body.
“Will you stop that?” Lutt shouted.
Sam on the vidcom screen looked startled. “Stop what?”
“Not you,” Lutt said.
“Are you all right, dear?” Phoenicia asked.
“Of course I’m all right! Sam, you know what to do?”
“Get things going. When will I see you?”
“I’ll call. But in the meantime I want you to send four sling-loaded turbocopters to retrieve what’s left of our ship.” Lutt glanced at the directions from Zone Patrol and repeated them, adding: “You’re my number-one assistant now, Sam. We’re going to build a better Vortraveler.”
Lutt sent the vidcom back into its concealed slot and looked at Phoenicia. She was smiling at Morey, responding to some exchange Lutt had missed.
She said she was glad Morey is more refined than you, Ryll volunteered.
Yeah! Morey the diplomat. Morey the kiss-ass. He even gets along with L.H.
Its way once more clear, the limousine accelerated.
“What’re you going to tell Father?” Morey asked. Definite signs of fear.
“Only what circumstances force me to tell,” Lutt said.
“He’s pretty angry,” Morey said. Gloating.
“I think he’s mostly concerned for your safety,” Phoenicia said. “And he doesn’t want you wasting time on insignificant projects.”
“He may not even dock your allowance,” Morey said.
“The hell with that!” Lutt said. “I want more money! Damn it! I deserve more money.” Lutt grinned at Morey. “Isn’t that the Hanson way, dear brother?”
Phoenicia smiled warmly. “Now, isn’t it better when you get along like gentlemen?” She blew a kiss to Lutt. “We’ll have you right as rain very soon, just as soon as the doctors ’ray you and do the other things they should.”
No! Ryll objected. You mustn’t allow anything that would reveal internal differences—our swiveling eyes, for one thing. Stay away from doctors. Too many questions we can’t answer. Tell her you’ll see your own specialists.
Lutt saw the wisdom in this and obeyed.
Phoenicia appeared mollified but still concerned. “Get the best money can buy, dear. I’m sure your father won’t object to that sort of expenditure.” She leaned forward and peered at Lutt’s glasses.
“You have new glasses.”
“That’s very observant, Mother.”
“I remember warning you about scratches on your lenses. These are quite clear.”
“I got them just before the accident.”
“They’ve come through it remarkably undamaged.”
Hoping to divert her, Lutt asked about her carrying case.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be staying at You Gee One, dear. This case contains a replica of a Byzantine vase.” She pronounced it “vazz.”
“What’re you doing with a replica?”
“That is embarrassing, dear. I purchased it last week at Shigg’s Auction House. Mr. Shigg himself assured me it was an original and one of a kind. Very rare. But when I got it home, I discovered I already had the original—or what I think is the original, purchased four years ago in Singapore. I now have two of them and two sets of papers purportedly authenticating each of them. I want your father’s help looking into this.”
“He’ll break some heads,” Lutt said.
Phoenicia put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I do hope … not.”
Lutt and Morey exchanged knowing looks—another point of accord. Phoenicia was not above using L.H.’s muscle when it served her purposes. Lutt sighed. He wished he, too, had time to devote to art collecting. A fascinating hobby. Profitable, too, when you went at it right.
But I have too many other priorities.
You do seem to use your time well, Ryll intruded.
This voice in his head hit the mark that time, Lutt agreed. In common with many successful people, Lutt knew he had learned a great secret: the ability to use small bits of time.
Observing now that the limo was entering the southbound freeway, Lutt estimated they would be at You Gee One in about fifteen minutes. Well, at least this mobile monstrosity carried all of the essential necessities to make those fifteen minutes useful. Lutt leaned over and flipped a tab near the floor. A wide, shallow drawer extruded itself between his feet. An electronic news receiver unfolded from the drawer and lifted into position in front of him.
“Look at him!” Morey sneered. “Can’t leave the Eleanor alone for five minutes.”
Lutt smiled. At least Morey knew the news jargon. These receivers were known technically as “ENRs,” and the initials had shifted easily into the vernacular “Eleanors.” In front of Lutt now stood a titanium frame with thin LCD screens for pages. He spun a black dial one-quarter turn and the top screen came alight with the Enquirer’s front page and the masthead he had ordered:
“L.W. Hanson, Proprietor.”
So the old man had not yet objected.
Lutt flipped through the pages, scanning headlines and bits of copy. One headline offended him.
INDY 5000 GIVEN
A NEW LEASE ON
ITS SPEEDY LIFE
Using his override, Lutt changed the headline to read:
INDY 5000 GETS
A NEW LEASE ON
THE FAST LIFE
“Can’t even use verbs right,” he muttered and, suddenly angry, he keyed a memo to Anaya Nelson, knowing the city editor must obey his orders in this but would do it with resentment and reluctance. She also would get the message of his anger in the fact that he bypassed Ade Stuart and made her do the dirty work. The memo was direct and curt:
“Whoever wrote the headline, today’s fourteenth edition, top of column five—fire that person!”
“You’re so full of energy,” Phoenicia said. “Just like your father.”
Lutt returned the Eleanor to its concealed drawer and grimaced. “What a shame I won’t step into Father’s big, stinky shoes and run his interplanetary business empire!”
“Who says he wants you to do that?” Morey demanded.
“He does, little brother. He does.”
Morey lapsed into sullen silence.
Phoenicia patted his arm and looked out at the brightly garbed robots pulling the limo. Lutt was right about the empire and the limousine, of course. The rickshaw and robots were garish. But she liked the limousine and using it was an indulgence she could justify to her friends:
“It was a wedding present from L.H. He’s really very sentimental about it and keeps it in superb condition.”
The vehicle was decelerating for an exit ramp. She could see broken-down shanties built of scavenged metal, cardboard, wire, bits of plastic and scraps of wood. The shanties, looking as though a light breeze would blow them down, were crowded into a narrow strip here along the city’s boundary.
“Lowtowns,” they were called wherever they sprang up around the earth and the other planets—low for the height of the decrepit buildings and the status of their occupants.
Poor creatures.
Taking the regular route Phoenicia preferred, the limo skirted Lowtown. She gazed out at ragged women crouched in doorways. Some of them nursed naked babies. All of the children she could see appeared sickly.
The women watched her pass. They always watched. No men were visible. The men, Phoenicia had been told, were busy at various curbsides hunting cigarette butts, or they haunted alleys and dumps scrambling for usable garbage.
Phoenicia thought it obvious that many of these people were mentally ill. The Enquirer said they were brain-damaged by undernourishment or bad genes. The eyes of these desperately impoverished people all looked alike to Phoenicia: forlorn, dull, without hope, almost lifeless.
Lutt gazed dispassionately at Lowtown through the side windows of pelletproof glass. He thought of the people there as life’s bystanders. They lived in a distant world of slower motions and accumulated filth.
Phoenicia opened her side window, letting the clamorous sounds and repugnant odors into the limo’s perfumed isolation.
She’s going to do it again, Lutt thought. When will she ever learn?
Phoenicia opened a refrigerated compartment beneath her seat and removed a plastic bag of food. She held the bag in the window opening, momentarily between worlds. One of her platinum bracelets dangled to the sill.
Lutt looked at this with what he thought of as objective judgment. He was a newspaperman considering a story about the contrast between extreme wealth and dismal poverty.
Dutifully, the limo slowed. Phoenicia extended her food package. Her slender, manicured fingers released their grip on the prize. It dropped.
“The fastest and strongest always get it,” she said, keeping her hand out the window and pointing at the older children and women who ran toward the package on the street behind the limo.
One girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, wearing a ragged skirt too short for her skinny legs, ignored the food package. She caught up with the slowed limo and coughed phlegm at Phoenicia’s extended hand.
“Ohhhh!” Phoenicia jerked her hand into the limo and grimaced at a gob of brownish-yellow spittle on her wrist.
“Pittance!” the running girl screamed.
The limo picked up speed quickly, leaving the girl and the crowd around the food parcel far behind.
Phoenicia cleaned her wrist with a square of French linen followed by disinfectant from a spray can in her purse.
Morey touched a button and the window closed with a soft thump. A fan whirred, cleansing the air in the limo. “They’re doing that much more frequently,” Morey said.
Lutt nodded. “Someday, one of them is going to steal a gun and give you more than spit. It’s damned foolish to open that window.”
Lutt remembered the scrambling people, the faces looking at the limo. He had seen no anger in the faces, only desperation. He knew the anger was there, though.
This gift of a food parcel had become one of Phoenicia’s rituals, Lutt realized. It’d make a helluva feature for the Enquirer.
Rich lady with fake conscience doesn’t accomplish jack shit for the poor. She does this for herself so she can brag to friends about her charity and talk about the deplorable behavior of the recipients. What would the old man say if I published that story? Can’t do it, of course. We take care of our own. Maybe we should do another Lowtown series, though. The downtrodden poor are always with us—the unfortunate wretches clinging to the shadows of our lives.
Ryll absorbed this. His adventure was turning out not at all the way he had imagined. The values of patience and attention to lessons began to gain new stature.
“Does L.H. know you do that?” Lutt asked.
“Now, I don’t want you telling your father I opened the window,” Phoenicia said. “It would only disturb him.”
“It’d do more than disturb him,” Lutt said. “He’d be furious after all his attention to security.”
“He thinks a nasty terrorist will throw a bomb through the window,” Phoenicia said.
“Or a bunch of those locator dots that stick to your clothes,” Morey said.
“Your father is positively paranoid about someone with an electronic tracker following us to his offices,” Phoenicia said.
Lutt spoke dryly. “It’s been tried, you know.”
“Sometimes, I don’t understand him,” Phoenicia said. “His business interests get more attention from Security than his own home.”
“It’s just a different kind of security, Mother,” Morey said. “He’s right when he says we don’t want to live underground. It’s bad enough to have to work there.”
“But he’s so secretive … even with his own family,” Phoenicia complained. “It’s like stories you hear about the military and … and ‘the need to know.’”
“Why don’t you hook a refrigerated container to the outside of the limo?” Morey asked. “Push a button in here and it dumps the food. Father’s right, you know, when he says a Hanson can’t be too careful.”
“Would you make such a device for me, Lutt?” Phoenicia asked.
“Sure. Only I’ll have the robots throw the food. That way, we’ll use the existing in-car communications system instead of a new signal button.”
“Oh, that would be splendid!” Phoenicia said.
Lutt shook his head in dismay at the things he could not say. Father’s mechanical coolies will throw pittances to the peasants. What a story if only I dared print it! Are you getting all this, Ryll?
You do have a strange family by any standards I have ever encountered, Lutt Ohhh … why are we stopping?
We’ve arrived at You Gee One.
Lutt heard the great security doors clang shut behind the limo, and brilliant artificial light bathed the interior parking area with its bustle of human and mechanical activity.
As usual, Lutt felt a tightening of his stomach.
A contingent of blue-uniformed Hanson guards ran toward the limo, weapons ready.
“Now, you two boys be nice for your father,” Phoenicia said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Aren’t you coming in with us?” Lutt asked.
“I have to get to the auction house and straighten out this little misunderstanding. Morey will speak to your father about it. He knows what to say.”
Yeah! Morey always knows what to say!