Smooth and Wrinkled Club
Jordan Parker Pavilion
City of Mendel
Planet Mesa
Mesa System
So this is how the other half lives, Kayla Barrett thought as she followed Arianne McBryde through the corridors and airy rooms of the Smooth and Wrinkled Club. The S&W, as Arianne referred to it, was a private club whose membership was by invitation only. It occupied an entire level of the Jordan Parker Pavilion, a modest little ten-floor structure set amid the water features of the Jordan Parker Greenbelt, near the heart of Mendel. A building that short, on such astronomically valuable real estate, was about as ostentatious a statement of conspicuous consumption as it was possible to make.
And the sheer luxury of the pavilion’s interior only emphasized that point.
One thing she already knew about the S&W was that it cost an arm and a leg to join…although not, apparently, for everyone. She’d done a discreet investigation of the McBryde family’s finances. They were certainly in a comfortable position, but there was no indication they were especially wealthy. It was possible the cost of a club membership had been waived or at least reduced in their case, and if so, the reason was almost certain to have been their affiliation with the Alignment. On the other hand, the S&W had been around a long time, and more than a few of its memberships had been passed between generations. It was entirely possible the McBrydes were grandfathered in from one of those earlier generations.
Which, again, might well be because of that Alignment affiliation.
The Smooth and Wrinkled Club’s premises were certainly large enough for a clandestine subset of its membership to operate quietly—and without any public notice—from within it. So far, Barrett had seen three meetings taking place in various meeting and conference rooms they’d passed—and that was only counting the ones who’d left their doors open. There’d been any number of closed doors, with no way to tell whether the rooms on the far side were empty or in use.
“Well, this is about as upper crust as it gets,” a voice muttered behind her.
She was pretty sure Daud al-Fanudahi was talking to himself, not her. One thing she’d already gathered was that the Solarian wasn’t what one might call a huge fan of ruling elites, whether they were Solarian or Mesan. She suspected that it had quite a bit to do with how many millions of people the Solly elite had managed to get killed. Nor had what he’d learned so far about the Alignment been designed to make him any fonder of the Sollies’ Mesan counterparts.
He was obviously very good at his job, however, and Barrett was confident that was why Arianne McBryde had wanted him for the Solarian representative to this meeting. She hadn’t provided much detail as to what the meeting was for and who would be attending, but it had all the earmarks of a gathering to persuade people of something. And that “something” couldn’t be anything other than what Barrett had come to think of as the WOG issue: Who are the Other Guys?
Her thoughts had distracted her from her immediate surroundings, and she half-stumbled as an awkwardly placed side table forced her to shift to her weak side. She caught herself on her cane before her bad leg could buckle, but she also felt a hand under her elbow as she brought herself fully back upright.
“You okay?” al-Fanudahi asked.
“Sure.” She flashed him a crooked smile. “The damned leg’s getting stronger all the time. That’s what my therapist keeps telling me, anyway.” She shrugged. “But I could wish I wasn’t one of the people who regenerate so slowly.”
“Better than not regenerating,” he told her. “One of my cousins?” He shook his head. “Can’t regenerate at all. Lost an arm in a grav ski accident when he was only about…what? Thirteen T-years old? Went through three prostheses before he finished his last growth spurt.”
“Well, at least I managed to avoid that. I will say, though, that I’ve developed an entirely different perspective on the term ‘obstacle course.’”
“I imagine you have.” He chuckled. “I have to say, I’m just as happy I’ve managed to avoid ever being—”
He broke off whatever he’d been about to say as Arianne came to a halt at a very fancy and ornate-looking door. The old-fashioned wooden panel bore the words Yardley Room, inlaid in ornately flowing script that looked like genuine, antique gold leaf. Below that, a more modern electronic display added: “Private Meeting. By Invitation Only.”
If Arianne had announced their arrival somehow, Barrett detected no sign of it. But the door was already opening—inward, as if it were on hinges of some sort. Speaking of “old-fashioned”… Would they squeak? she wondered, hoping they would.
No such luck, though. The mechanism might be anachronistic, but the technology underlying it wouldn’t be.
The person who’d opened the door didn’t look antique, certainly. From her indefinable poise, Barrett was sure the woman was well into her fourth or fifth decade, although her rather…gaudy fashion choices suggested someone considerably younger than that.
“Nice to see you again, Arianne,” the woman said, and waved a hand toward the room beyond. “Come in. Everyone’s here already.”
As she stepped into the room, Barrett saw that it shared the antique flavor that appeared to be the hallmark of the Smooth and Wrinkled Club. It was large and high-ceilinged, with what certainly looked like a floor of genuine hardwood sprinkled with armchairs that looked like overstuffed monsters from a pre-technic age. She rather doubted they actually were, however, and three of them were already occupied, by two men and a woman. The woman who’d let them in walked past them to drop gracefully into one of the vacant chairs.
That left five empty ones. Arianna walked to the one that more or less faced the foursome who projected an aura of “the audience” and seated herself. Barrett chose one a bit to the side. Al-Fanudahi gave her a hand as she settled into it, then crossed to a chair of his own, to Arianne’s right.
As Barrett had guessed, the armchair was extremely comfortable, adjusting almost instantly to her shape and preferred posture. It might look like an antique, but it definitely wasn’t one.
“Hello, Arianne.” It was the man on the far left of their audience. He was slender to the point of looking a bit skeletal, with blond hair, light skin, and eyes that were very pale blue. “Do the introductions, would you?”
“This is Captain Daud Ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi of the Solarian League Navy,” Arianne said, waving her right hand at him. “He’s with the Office of ONI’s Operational Analysis. He arrived in Mesa just recently as part of a Solarian investigative team.”
“Investigating what, exactly?” asked the woman who’d let them in.
“I’m part of an informal group within the Solarian government—mostly from the Navy, but we include some Gendarmes—who have been investigating all the incidents the Grand Alliance claims are the work of what they call ‘the Alignment,’” al-Fanudahi replied. “That includes—”
“You can go into the details later, Captain,” the blond-haired man interrupted with a small, courteous smile. “Let’s finish the introductions first.”
“Of course.” Arianne waved her other hand at Barrett. “This is Lieutenant Kayla Barrett, from the Mesan Unitary Magistral Police. Before she was recruited for that, she was a sergeant in the Internal Security Directorate.”
The spokesman’s eyes widened. So did those of both of the women in his group. The other man, however, only nodded slightly.
“She’s one of Director Saburo Lara’s closest subordinates,” Arianne continued, and, despite herself, Barrett snorted a laugh.
“I’m his only ‘close subordinate,’ for the moment,” she explained when the others looked at her. “The Mumps are very much a work in progress.”
“The ‘Mumps’?” the man who hadn’t yet spoken asked. “I’m Gebhardt Juarez, by the way. Call me ‘Geb.’”
“‘Mumps’ is the slang term for the Mesan Unified Magistral Police,” Barrett replied.
“You’ve already got a nickname?” Juarez sounded surprised, and Barrett smiled.
“Sure. Saburo saw to that right away. It’s the reason he hung that clumsy excuse for a name on us. He says the hoi polloi—that’s an old term—”
“Yes, I know what it means.”
“Well, Saburo says they’re bound to develop a nickname for the cops before long, and he wanted to make sure it was the right sort of nickname. Somewhat disrespectful—that’s a given, he says—but not one that projects too much in the way of overbearing authority or menace.”
All four of the people they’d come to meet stared at her. Then Juarez nodded again.
“I’d heard he was shrewd.”
“Oh, yes. He’s that, for sure,” Barrett agreed.
“And he doesn’t have a problem with your being a former ‘Misty’?” the woman sitting next to Juarez asked.
She didn’t look any older than the woman who’d admitted them to the meeting room—or than Barrett herself, for that matter—but she was much more conservatively dressed. Now she pointed at Juarez with a thumb.
“I’m Geb’s cousin. My name’s Janice Delgado.”
“No, he doesn’t have a problem,” Barrett replied. “In fact that’s one of the reasons he enlisted me. He wants enough people in the Mumps who come out of the old security services to keep the full—former full—citizens from getting too twitchy.”
“Shrewd indeed,” Juarez said. “What do you think of him?”
Barrett thought about that for a moment.
“Well…I have mixed feelings about Saburo,” she said. “And it’s a peculiar mix. On the one hand, he’s scary as hell.”
“Threatening?” Delgado asked with a frown.
“No, not at all. He seems completely relaxed and easy-going, pretty much all the time. That’s what I find scary. I pulled up his file—which he’s made no attempt to hide, by the way. It’s partial as hell, of course, but what we did know about him…”
She paused again, pursing her lips, like a woman trying to decide whether or not she liked the taste she’d just sampled.
“There’s something really scary about a really scary person who makes no effort at all to seem scary,” she said finally, and Juarez nodded yet again.
“Yes, that I can believe. What else strikes you about him?”
“He’s extremely capable—that’s already obvious. And…well, the truth is I’m starting to like him. He’s a damn good boss, that’s for sure. Way better than any I ever had in the Misties.”
Juarez considered that, then looked at al-Fanudahi.
“You say you’ve been investigating this so-called ‘Alignment’ for some time, Captain. But not officially, I take it.”
“Not until very recently. Before that—”
“Do I take it that ‘before that’ refers to the change in the Solarian League’s…ah, ‘management,’ let’s call it?”
“Yes.” Al-Fanudahi nodded. “Before that, we just referred to ourselves as the Ghost Hunters.”
“And did you find any ghosts?” Juarez asked with a smile.
“Oh, yes. By now, we’ve compiled a lot of evidence that there is indeed some…malignant force at work. Among other things, over forty highly placed Navy officers and civilian bureaucrats have keeled over and died of ‘natural causes’ when we took them into custody. You wouldn’t believe how varied those ‘natural causes’ have been. But the fact that they all dropped dead as soon as they realized they were under arrest is pretty compelling evidence that whoever’s been playing us has been doing it for a long, long time. And that they’re ruthless as hell.”
“So you agree with the Grand Alliance’s claim that what they call ‘the Alignment’ is responsible for all these mass murders?” It was the man who’d started the conversation but still hadn’t been identified. When al-Fanudahi looked at him, he added: “I am Kevin Olonga. The one—the only—member of our group here who has an official status that’s relevant. I sit on the recently convened General Board of the Provisional Government. The very provisional Provisional Government.”
“And may I ask who all the rest of you represent?”
“Us?” The man gestured towards his three companions. “Well, what we represent—and Arianne—is what we call the Alignment. Which is one reason we’re curious about whether or not you agree with the Grand Alliance.”
The Solarian rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully.
“I suppose the answer is yes…and no. We agree with them that somebody is up to no good. For our part, we just called whoever it is the Other Guys. But we haven’t officially signed on—yet—to their theory of the Alignment.”
“Yet?”
“I think the odds are that we will in the end,” al-Fanudahi said. “They have a coherent theory that hangs together and fits all the evidence we’ve been able to accumulate. So, many of the Ghost Hunters—most of us by now, including me—are strongly inclined in that direction. For that matter, we just got copied on an analysis Director Gannon—he’s the new head of ONI—commissioned. I haven’t had an opportunity to really go through the underlying data yet, but in general, its conclusions agree very closely with the ones Captain Zilwicki’s reached independently. But as far as who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing, we’re keeping an open mind until we’ve had a better opportunity to test their theory. Trying to, at any rate.
“But I should also say,” he added, raising one hand in a warding gesture, “that we don’t think—and neither does the Grand Alliance, by the way—that your Alignment is responsible for any of the killings.”
“Well, that’s a start, anyway.” Olonga leaned back in his chair.
“So what do you want from us, Captain?” Delgado asked.
“Your cooperation and assistance. We’d like you to be involved in the investigation. Among other things, the more we can learn about you and your organization’s history, the better the fix on where what the GA is calling the Malign Alignment split from the rest of you. And, frankly, with the perspective we can bring to it, you may actually be able to identify more of the Malign Alignment’s cadre for us than you think you can.”
“Arianne?” Delgado looked at the younger woman. “What do you think?”
“I agree with them, and I think that’s exactly what we should do,” Arianne replied firmly. “In fact, I’ve already been doing it, as an individual. Now I think we should do it as an organization, too. If for no other reason than to clear our name.”
“A nice thought, but I’m afraid that’s a lost cause by now.” Olonga shook his head. “Oh, I agree that we need to clear ourselves, but that name’s hopelessly tainted now. We need a new one.”
All three of his companions frowned at that, but not Arianne.
“He’s right,” she said firmly. “So I propose we call ourselves the Engagement. We need to come out of the shadows and engage with the rest of the human race—which is what we should have done T-centuries ago.”