Free Parallax View by Eric Brown, Keith Brooke Page A

unthinkingly racist newsgroups liked to describe her cultivated blank responses as “inscrutable”.
    “I am already under contract,” she told him. Why was Anton wasting her time like this?
    “Please, Mae,” said her manager. “Give Signor Ventori a few minutes of your time.”
    Ventori continued, untroubled by Mae’s attempted rudeness. “I understand from your manager that you have a break before you next perform in Paris. PKS would like to extend our hospitality by proposing that you take a week’s working holiday at our facility near Périgueux in the Dordogne. Your manager confirms that it does not contravene your arrangement with Sony-EMI.”
    Mae looked from Ventori to her manager. “A ‘working holiday’?” She loaded the phrase with all the sarcasm she could muster. In the mirror she saw that, without make-up, she looked like a petulant child.
    “Many of our artistes use the Chateau d’Arouet. It is well-equipped and secluded. I guarantee that in your time there you will not be hounded by the paparazzi and other filth of today’s sorry world. Indeed, one of our artistes – something of a prodigy – will be sharing the facilities with you. We would be very interested in seeing the two of you working together.”
    Anton leaned forward. “Two hundred thousand Euros just for your time,” he said.
    Mae was aware of Anton’s restraint. He would say no more – he knew just how far to push her – but he wanted that money. Two hundred thousand Euros meant nothing to Mae, but the seclusion Ventori offered was seductive.
    “Okay,” she said, and turned away, determined to retain her cool facade. “I need a break – I will do it.”
    It was only later that she asked herself, Do what, exactly?

    She woke in her room, secure in the heart of the Chateau d’Arouet.
    As soon as PKS’s Corsair had landed at Limoges the previous evening she had felt a sense of peace – of safety – descending. She had spent the flight from Helsinki cocooned under a headset, playing Sectrix, listening to various music stations – they were all playing tracks from the new Lennon album at the moment – and, just to remind herself of the awfulness of the world, watching the various news channels. Famine in China and most of Africa; human rights groups protesting in Brussels about the introduction of a new law sanctioning the “psychological adjustment” of the criminally insane; civil war in any number of cities that all looked alike in their ruination; the Pacific states panicking about the rising seas.
    A polite young French woman had greeted her and led her through the airport building – no cameras, no armed guards, only a few sudden looks of recognition – and into an unmarked company car which was to take her the remaining seventy kilometres to the chateau.
    The Dordogne was beautiful in a way that the most beautiful places, with their souvenir shops and cafeterias, their holiday parks and congestion, had long ceased to be. The wooded hills were cloaked in the sun’s gold as they drove to the chateau that evening, a sight she would treasure, so untainted by modernity.
    The chateau itself was an ugly mix of the new and the old, but its clearly visible security was reassuring: the guards at the gate, the high wall patrolled by dogs with sensor-packs mounted across their shoulders. In a world as volatile as today’s, the rich took such protection for granted.
    She slept well that night, and woke ready for whatever the day would bring.
    She was surprised to see Ventori when she was shown down to the breakfast room. Her facade must have slipped, for he smiled and said, “I am on a working holiday also.” He paused, then went on. “You have complete freedom of the chateau, although I caution you not to go too close to the perimeter wall: the dogs are programmed to stay within ten metres of it, and to apprehend any human who enters that zone. It gives us peace of mind.
    “If you wish to explore – the cathedral at