Free House of the Sun by Nigel Findley Page B

And me at your disposal." He hooked a large thumb at his chest. "Number one tour guide, that's me."
    I sighed and contemplated that over another sip of Glenmorangie. I didn't really want to admit it, but I was enjoying myself. I kind of liked Scott—even knowing he had corporate steel under the good-ol'-boy exterior—and I certainly liked the idea of having a chauffeured limo at my beck and call. But . . .
    But I had to keep my level of paranoia up. Despite all the trappings, this wasn't a vacation, this was biz. And, worse, I was in the dark about a lot of what the biz entailed. I didn't know who I had to meet, or why. I didn't know what would happen to me afterward. And I didn't know who or what had any interest in getting between me and the objective. I was out of my territory—I had to keep reminding myself of that—playing in someone else's yard, and out of my comfort zone. Who knows: Everything might come off as smooth as synthsilk. I deliver the message, maybe receive a reply, then Scott ferries me back to Awalani, and I'm winging my way home to Cheyenne. But if it didn't, and I suddenly found myself rather dead because I hadn't taken precautions, then I wouldn't even have the satisfaction of being able to haunt Barnard through all eternity. The fault would be my own, not his. I was exposed—that's what I had to remember, every moment of every day. And I had to do what I could to minimize that exposure. Which reminded me . . .
    "Scott."
    "Yes, Mr. Dirk?"
    "I had to leave some ... personal effects .. . behind me on the mainland, if you know what I mean." The back of his neck wrinkled, and I knew he was grinning like a bandit. "I want to correct that problem. Can you help me out?"
    "You really don't need it, y'know." He rapped on the driver's side window with a bulging knuckle. "Do you have any idea what it takes to punch through this stuff?"
    I wasn't going to be put off that easily. "Even so," I pressed. "Call it a good-luck charm .. . like a rabbit's foot. I just wouldn't feel comfortable without it."
    He laughed aloud at that. "Yeah, a nine-millimeter rabbit's foot, I bet." He sobered quickly. "Okay. It's chill, brah, I'll buff you out." He glanced back again. "And I'll get you some appropriate clothes, too. Okay?"
    "I've always been partial to kevlar," I told him, "if you can get it in one of my colors."
    Ahead of us, against the blackness of the sky, I could see the lighted ziggurats of skyrakers. For a moment I had one of those moments of disorientation. I could as well have been cruising north on Highway 5 toward downtown Seattle as west on Hawai'i Route 1. In the dark most cities looked the same.
    Again, Scott seemed to pick up my unspoken thought. "Too bad you had to catch the red-eye. This is a real nice view—a good intro to the city, y'know what I mean?"
    "So what's Honolulu like?" I asked him. "You live in the city, don't you?"
    "Yeah, I've got a place in the Nebula complex." He shrugged. "It's a city, y'know? It's got its good points and it's got its bad points. Places you shouldn't miss, and places you shouldn't be caught dead. It's got its corporators, it's got its burakumin "—he used the Japanese term for the homeless or dispossessed, an insulting word that was gaining currency among corp suits to refer to people without corporate affiliation—"and it's got its tourists." He laughed. "Bruddah, does it have its tourists."
    "High-level corps types?"
    "Most of them, yeah. Whole swarms of them coming over from Asia, and some from Europe. But there's still the mom-and-pop types who've saved for years to get away and splash money around for a while."
    "That's what drives the economy, isn't it? Tourism?"
    "That's what the mainland guidebooks say," he agreed. "But most of it's corp-driven, really. Hey, Hawai'i's the biggest corporate free port going. Where do you think the money comes from?"
    I thought about that for a while as the skyrakers reared up around us, constellations of electric stars in the