'She knows,' Airik thought. 'This won't work. She wants an affair, she wants money, she wants something. I'll be stuck with that damned hotel. I'll never get anything done and this entire trip to Panschin will have been wasted.'
"I believe most of the conference events are taking place in Dome Six. There are several transtube stations within walking distance. I'll mark out the best ones for you," Veronica said. "Officially, the transtube station in the business district is closer, but everyone here uses the one down the block when they have to go to Dome Six."
"Thank you, Miss Bradwell." Airik couldn't quite conceal his relief.
She hemmed for a moment, worrying Airik again.
"Ah, will you be wanting separate rooms?"
"Yes. And I will need space to spread out paperwork."
"I can do that. Will you be staying long?"
"Until the end of the conference, Miss Bradwell."
Veronica thought her heart would stop. Almost two weeks of paying guests! And four separate rooms!
"That will be," she named her price, "for each of you per night. In cash, please and in advance." 'Please, please, please, let him agree and pay,' she fretted.
Airik added up the numbers mentally. This Miss Bradwell's rates for their entire stay wouldn't cover the cost of a single night for him alone at the Twelve Happiness.
"This does include breakfast?" he asked suspiciously.
"Yes, that's why we're called a bed and breakfast," Veronica shot back and wanted to bite her tongue off. She smiled at him as apologetically as she could manage.
'She doesn't have any idea who I am,' Airik realized. 'If she did, she would have fawned all over me and then asked for ten times as much money.'
"This is acceptable, Miss Bradwell."
"Veronica! Do we have guests?" a voice called out from overhead.
"Auntie Neza, yes we do. Mr. Jones? My aunt Neza Molony."
Airik took a good look at the old woman limping down the stairs, shiny pink cane in hand. There was no sign of recognition on her curious face as she looked him and his group over carefully.
"Is there anything else I should know, Miss Bradwell?"
The gate shrieked its warning, footsteps came crunching up the gravel at a good clip, and the front door was flung open. Two young women came trotting in, both out of breath.
"Veronica, Shelby didn't wait for us. Do you know where she is?" Florence panted out.
Lulu took a moment to stare at the strange men standing next to Veronica by the hall table and the open guest book at Veronica's hand. "We got guests?"
"Yes, we do. Shelby came home already. She's upstairs. Go check on her, while I deal with our guests," Veronica said. She tried to beam a message to Florence and Lulu to not ask any more questions and to her great relief, they each gave the Jones men searching looks and then went around them to climb the stairs and disappear upstairs. Auntie Neza turned and slowly made her way back upstairs as well.
"Are these other guests, Miss Bradwell?" Airik asked.
"No, they're my sister and my, uh, cousins," she answered.
He seemed to be the only member of the Jones party who was able to speak. How strange that was, Veronica thought, although he was not the only one with eyeballs. That Upton cousin made no bones about enjoying the view of Florence and Lulu trotting up the stairs. Fortunately, he didn't speak. The other two men, if they paid attention, were far more discreet about their roving eyes.
Airik had also watched Florence and Lulu, both attractive young women, trot up the stairs along with the old woman to meet another presumably attractive young woman, although he did not leer. His expression never changed. And here was Miss Bradwell, also very attractive, standing in front of him with only a table to separate them. He thought of the concierge at the Twelve Happiness and his salacious 'special services' with an inward shudder. Better to get it over with and discover exactly what kind of a hotel he was standing in.
"I beg your pardon for asking. Do you make introductions, Miss Bradwell? Intimate ones?" he made himself ask. That was the most respectable way of phrasing the request he could think of on the spur of the moment.
Veronica stared at him for a long, deeply uncomfortable minute while she tried to figure out what he was asking. Then she got it.
"Certainly not!" she snapped, rearing back in outrage. "We are a respectable household. If you insist on that sort of, of, uh, accommodation, you will have to go elsewhere. Like Dome Six."
'Damn,' she thought. 'What else is he going to want? Better get it over with.' She plunged in with "I also do not provide sightseeing tours, introductions to important people or local celebrities, arrange for shopping expeditions, provide transportation or do anything else that a hotel does." She stared at him, waiting tensely to see what he would say.
"I see. If I may, what do you provide, Miss Bradwell?" Airik asked doggedly.
"A clean room for each of you, privacy, and breakfast. If you want other meals, you have to arrange for them in advance and I'll have to charge you for them."
Airik couldn't figure out why he kept questioning Miss Bradwell, remaining in her presence. He should have checked in by now and been in his room reading briefing papers. "You do want to rent rooms to us, though. Is that correct?"
"Yes, yes, of course. But Mr. Jones, I want you to be comfortable and happy with us and that means you have to understand what I will and won't do," Veronica replied.
"Very good then, Miss Bradwell," Airik replied. He liked clear rules and these seemed clear enough, although the word 'happy' had come to have unpleasant connotations of organized, mandatory cheerfulness with a psychotic edge. "We will have privacy?"
"Yes. Oh, lordy. I forgot," Veronica said and bit her lip.
Airik arched an eyebrow at her.
She gritted her teeth, hoping he wouldn't decide to leave for greener pastures someplace else when she told him what was in store for the evening.
"The White Elephant is hosting a gallery showing starting tonight for the Panschin University Artists' Collective. There will be some noise but as long as your group stays upstairs, you won't be bothered."
Mr. Jones looked puzzled. "An artists' collective?"
"Yes," Veronica said. She waved her hand around at the paintings adorning the space. "They created these paintings. My sister is a member and we help them out by hosting showings. All of these paintings are for sale. Our opening night, that's tonight, will have lots of people, food, conversation, and maybe," – she rolled her eyes in disdain – "someone will buy a painting. There's more in the ballroom and a few more are arriving in the next two hours." She inclined her head towards the blank space right behind her. The movement shifted her ponytail of glossy, dark hair draped across her shoulder and against her neck.
Airik looked around again at the paintings adorning the creamy white walls, taking his time. They did not improve with a more careful viewing. Nor did the sunlight streaming in from above highlight any of their attractive attributes as it did with Miss Bradwell's hair.
He noted his thought with some surprise and wrenched his attention back to the topic at hand. "Are they all like this?"
"I'm afraid so," Veronica replied. "It's, so I am told, avant-garde art that is beyond the understanding of mere bourgeois mortals like me." She smiled suddenly at him and chuckled.
Airik felt his heart seize at the sound of her sharing what he thought might be a small joke with him. He firmly repressed the curious, unfamiliar sensation, along with his sudden awareness of her glossy, dark head of hair.
"Anyways," Veronica went on, "I'll try and keep the noise of the last-minute preparations down. Oh! I know I don't provide meals other than breakfast, but we will be serving extensive nibbles this evening if you and your," she hesitated and glanced at each of them in turn, "cousins wish to come downstairs. Otherwise, I provide a list of local restaurants who would be thrilled to have your business."
Airik's expression did not change, while Upton looked interested. The other two men's expressions remained blank. 'Servants,' Veronica thought suddenly, remembering where she had seen that lack of facial mobility before.
"Very thoughtful of you, Miss Bradwell," he said.
"However," Veronica said, "if you do come down, please do not show any interest in any of the paintings unless you actually want to buy one. These artists, you can't imagine what they're like, will pester you to no end if they think you have any money."
Airik allowed himself a cool smile, thinking of other money-grubbers who had pestered him. Artists couldn't possibly compete in that avaricious league. "That won't be a problem."
"As long as you don't encourage them, they'll leave you alone," she added, wanting to be perfectly clear about the peril her guests were venturing into.
"These artists understand the meaning of 'no'?" Airik asked, eyebrows slightly raised. In his experience, that didn't always happen.
Veronica waved her hand at the paintings again and made a face. "They're used to rejection. I'm sure you can see why." She noticed that Mr. Jones had cool, very intelligent hazel eyes.
"Very good." Airik then paid the fee she had asked for, in cash, and without another quibble. Veronica wanted to scream and dance as he counted out the heavy silver coins, each adorned with proud Ares crushing a representation of Olde Earthe beneath his armor shod feet.
"May I ask where you're from, Mr. Jones?" she asked as she scooped the coins up and stuffed them into her coverall's pockets. She congratulated herself for not giggling manically with each coin she picked up, earmarking them as she went for current and future needs.
Airik hesitated. "Barsoom."
Veronica caught his hesitation and thought 'sure you are, wearing brand-spanking-new coveralls like I see on the streets every day but what do I care?' Aloud she said smoothly, "How exciting. All the way from Barsoom for the mining conference. I've never been there. Panschin will be very different for you, I'm sure. Shall we go upstairs and get you settled?"
She walked around the table and picked up Airik's bags, sitting there on the floor where he had set them down, next to the other luggage.
He stared at her for a moment, unmoving, so she waited for him to get the hint.
"Do you have no staff, Miss Bradwell?"
'Oh lordy,' Veronica thought in dismay. 'What is it now?'
"No, I do not," she said. "Me, my sister, my aunt, and my cousins, as I said. Let's get you upstairs before the Collective shows up."
"Put my bags down, Miss Bradwell, and step away. Now."
'Please, please, please, don't back out when I've finally got some money,' Veronica prayed, but she did as he asked.
To her surprise, Airik stepped forward and picked up his valises.
"You may proceed, Miss Bradwell," he said.
Veronica gave him a quizzical look. Not one of her other, very few guests had ever carried their own luggage. She shrugged mentally and smiled at him. Then, even more surprising, Mr. Jones caught his cousin Upton's eyes, flicked his own at the valise and large case at his cousin's feet, and Upton picked up his own luggage, as did the other two cousins who didn't look at all like relatives. She noticed that they did not have to be reminded to carry their own luggage. Definitely servants.
"Thank you, Mr. Jones. Right this way."
As Airik followed Veronica up the stairs, he turned the thought over and over that Miss Bradwell had no staff to assist her. He wouldn't be bothered. He would be left in peace. He could work. He could feel himself relax with each step up the properly designed, winding staircase to the second floor. He had made the correct decision.
****
Upstairs, Veronica turned to the right side of the landing, leading her new guests down the normally empty wing. She was deeply grateful that they had cleaned the guest wing from top to bottom in anticipation of the Biennial Mining Conference. Every room sparkled and there wasn't a terraformer to be seen. She hoped that Neza or someone, knowing that they actually had guests, had thought to open all the windows in the guest rooms and pull back the drapes, letting the light inside to show off how spotless the rooms were.
Airik paused as soon as he entered the hallway as the ceiling caught his attention. It was studded at regular intervals by what looked like shiny, giant faceted stones, as though he was looking at the bottom of diamonds in their settings. There were four in all. They glowed, spilling light into the otherwise unlit hallway. A window at the far end provided the other illumination as did the light coming from the open ceiling from the atrium. He had studied that too, having never, before coming to Panschin, seen buildings with big holes left open to the sky deliberately cut into their roofs. In his experience, skylights required glass and plenty of flashing to keep out the weather.
"What are these objects in the ceiling, Miss Bradwell?" he asked.
"Deck prisms," she replied. Most houses in Dome Two have them and I suppose plenty of other places in Panschin do too."
She pointed towards a coordinating set of equally shiny flat disks set in the floor of the hallway, one disk in front of each pair of doors. They were the size of dinner plates, indicating the tops of their ceiling counterparts directly overhead were the same size. Each door, Airik noted, was topped with an open transom, probably to catch and distribute the light.
Veronica said "as you can see, we've also got deck prisms in the floor and there are some on the ground floor for sublevel number one. They let sunlight fall through from the dome into the house."
Airik stepped up to the floor disk and peered down. He couldn't see through it. He looked up to its partner in the ceiling overhead. The faceting kept him from seeing through it to the outside. This was probably, he deduced, the reason why he couldn't see down through the floor prisms to the level below. The faceting refracted and broke the light, increasing the sparkle while maintaining privacy. Fascinating. He would have to see about installing some of these prisms in the manor house in Shelleen.
"I can step on these, Miss Bradwell?"
"You sure can, Mr. Jones."
He studied the prisms again, making the rest of his party wait patiently, then made his best guess after running down the possibilities. What a wonderful concept for maximizing free sunlight. "Are they glass?"
"They are, Mr. Jones."
"Why are they called deck prisms? I understand the prism part but not the deck."
Veronica puzzled over his question. She finally said "You know, I have no idea. Everybody calls them that."
'How nice,' she thought. 'He waited for me to answer and he's not being nasty because I don't know why they're called deck prisms.' She smiled at him again. Airik Jones was surprisingly easy to smile at. The light streaming from the prism over his head caught the reddish tint in his hair, making it catch fire.
Airik stepped on the disk and then stepped off it, testing how it felt underfoot. 'Honesty is so refreshing,' he thought. 'She didn't lie or make excuses. She didn't know and she said so.'
Behind them both, Upton watched the interchange and wanted to groan. He was tired, his nose was running again, his arms hurt from the weight of the typewriter in its case, and if Airik thought this was the way to make conversation with a pretty young woman, he was mistaken.
The gate shrieked its warning.
"Oh, dear," Veronica said. "That must be the Collective with the last of the mud paintings. Uh, this door" – she indicated the first door on the left – "is the shared loo. We have our own so you'll have some privacy. The door opposite is for storage. After that, the next six doors are guest rooms."
She trotted down the hallway to the second door on the left, opening it for Airik to follow.
He peered inside, seeing a quiet, simple room. The bamboo floors shone in the cool light coming in from the open windows. Their heavy, deep pink brocade drapes had been fully pulled back. The walls were pale cream. The furniture consisted of a large bed, dresser, a small table, a chair, a mirror, and, surprisingly after the dreadful paintings he had seen downstairs, a fairly good rendering of a vase of flowers. A brightly colored braided rug lay next to the bed.
"Are all the rooms like this, Miss Bradwell?"
"Yes, they are." Veronica was distracted by the sound of the front door opening and people coming in and talking. It sounded like Lulu had taken charge. Good. She wouldn't take any grief from the Collective. An older student had once, during a previous show, goosed Lulu on her rear end. She had whipped around and slapped him across his face as hard as she could and screamed at him to keep his damned paws to himself. The onlookers were appalled and delighted at the free show. The student was mortified at being caught out so publicly, and according to Shelby, spent the rest of the term living it down. Lulu remained unembarrassed and uncowed and that student never again got fresh while at the White Elephant. Even better, the other more forward members of the Artists' Collective also got the message. Their eyes might still roam but since their hands did not, Veronica counted it as a win for her makeshift little family.
Lulu also didn't tolerate laziness.
Veronica decided to relax about the situation now unfolding in the first floor of the atrium. She could take the time with her paying guests upstairs, knowing downstairs was in good hands.
"The rooms are all the same so you can choose as you like," she said.
Airik turned around slowly, taking in the space, then walked to the open window to look out. Down below, he saw several young men wrestling large, flat, wrapped rectangles through the double doors.
"More paintings, Miss Bradwell?"
Veronica came to the window to stand next to him and peered out. "Yep, sure are. These paintings are from Professor Vitebskin's special students. They've graduated, but they're working on careers in the fine arts so they still show with the Collective."
"I see," Airik said, wondering how you could have a career painting pictures that looked like a close-up of a badly managed excavation site. He didn't want to move away from the window, as it was very pleasant standing so close to Miss Bradwell. She smelled faintly of violets, also very pleasant.
He pushed that thought away.
"Does each room have a table similar to this one?"
"Yes, they do."
"I may need to move them around to give me enough space to spread out my reports."
A crash resounded from downstairs.
"Damn them," Veronica swore. She flushed, wanting to bite her tongue again. "Forgive me, please. Move the tables around as you need to, Mr. Jones. I'll bring up the restaurant list so you and your cousins can get dinner later on." She nervously shifted her weight, caught between helping paying guests and keeping an eye on the Collective.
Airik noted her distress. "Go take care of downstairs, Miss Bradwell."
She smiled at him again, wondering why it was so easy to smile at this stranger. She said, "remember, if you go downstairs to see the show, you don't have to buy anything."
They heard another, smaller crash followed by a woman swearing. Her invective was loud, inventive, detailed, colorful, and she did not once repeat herself.
"Lordy," Veronica said. "I'd better rescue Lulu before she strangles some idiot student."
She ran out the door, making sure to close it behind her, her quick footsteps echoing on in the hall.
"Well, this place is sure different from the Twelve Happiness," Upton said, taking a good look around. Where was the plush carpet that his feet could sink into up to his ankles? The expensive art? The mirrors? The exquisite objects carefully arranged on each flat surface? The immense floral arrangements scenting the air? The complimentary champagne, array of pastries, and fruit tray?
Airik gave him a long, cool gaze that reminded Upton, clearer than any words could, who was the daimyo and who was not.
"Yes, quieter and far less intrusive in every way. Nunzio, I may need you to move the tables from room to room so I have space to spread out reports. Elliot, take care of the baggage and as soon as Miss Bradwell sends up the list of local food places, I want you to go out and place an order. Annotate the map as you need to. Upton, get those reports unpacked. I'll start with the Jandinaire specifications."
He was rewarded with a chorus of 'yes, sir'.
"Sir?" Nunzio said.
"Yes?"
"When everyone has gone downstairs for this artist thing, I need to take a good look around the White Elephant. See what I can see."
Airik gave his bodyguard a cool nod of approval.
"Report back with your findings."
"Yes, sir."
*****
Veronica marched down the stairs toward the sounds of Lulu telling someone off, with a backdrop of chatter, unwrapping noises, and thuds. She hoped that Shelby had gotten herself together enough to participate in setting up the last few paintings. If Shelby didn't show up, it would be talked about. If Shelby arrived looking hurt and wounded, it would be talked about more. The best-case scenario was for Shelby to work hard while helping set up the last few paintings while keeping her head high. Then, despite any gossip, no one could find fault with her behavior.
Her own behavior now, that was a different story. It was going to be darned hard to keep control of herself, while wanting to throw the entire pack of the Collective and all their ugly canvases out onto the street. Veronica paused halfway down the stairs to breathe slowly, her fingers clenched around the bannister. She would earn half the money taken from tickets and, despite having Mr. Jones' cash safely tucked into her pockets, that wasn't good coin she could throw away. She would never allow the Bradwell home to be used again to host a gallery showing but who knew when the next guest would show up?
That led to thoughts of Mr. Jones. He had been surprisingly easy to talk to since it seemed like he genuinely wanted information. He had looked very uncomfortable asking about 'intimate introductions'; almost as though he was forcing himself to ask such a question because he felt he had to for some strange reason. That Upton cousin, now he would have leered and said something racy, no doubt on that score, Veronica felt. Not Mr. Jones. He was a gentleman.
She stopped again. Why did she feel comfortable around Mr. Jones?
Veronica bit her lip again, thinking hard. Comfortable was not an emotion to trust. She had felt comfortable around Dean Kangjuon and look how that had ended. No, emotions of any kind weren't to be trusted, especially with a man she didn't know at all. Fortunately, once the Biennial Mining Conference was over, Mr. Jones would leave, along with his mysterious cousins who so obviously weren't cousins. And why would someone who could afford servants stay at the White Elephant?