Hot Sky at Midnight by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Pollution, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Contamination (Technology)
ISBN: 9780759225862
Publisher: ereads.com
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

WALNUT CREEK RESEARCH CENTER

So there was his answer, not that he really had any doubts left by this time.

The car, in the grasp of some invisible Kyocera-programmed highway brain, moved through the checkpoint, past a series of Babylonian-looking brick buildings, and into a reception dome.

M. Kurashiki was waiting for him there, no simulation at all, a real Japanese human person with a certain reptilian grace. Mr. Kurashiki bowed formally in the Japanese manner, a quick robotic click of his head. A quick robotic smile, too. Rhodes smiled back but did not return the bow. The formalities were done with; Mr. Kurashiki led Rhodes into a transport shaft that conveyed him upward and deposited him in an office that, from its ad hoc furnishings and general appearance of improvisation and barrenness, was obviously used only for just such impromptu conferences as these.

It was exactly noon.

Mr. Kurashiki vanished silently. Rhodes stepped forward. A surprisingly tall Japanese was standing at the precise center of the room, waiting for him. A different kind entirely, this one. He looked like something carved out of yellow-green obsidian: sharp features, shining skin texture, glossy wide-set jet-black eyes with a single dense unbroken eyebrow line above them. Powerful cheekbones, sharp as blades.

No bow from this one. A smile that seemed almost human, though.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Rhodes. I am so extremely glad that you were able to advantage us of your presence here today,” he said. “You will forgive me, I am sure, for our little subterfuge, our pretense of real-estate business. Such things a necessary sometimes, as of course I am certain you know.” His voice was deep and resonant and his accent was perceptibly alien: International Modern Japanese English, the purring accent of the exile race that in its various far-flung places of refuge had begun to develop its own new and characteristic way of speaking the world language. “But I have not introduced myself. I am Nakamura. Level Three Executive.” A business card jumped into his hand as if by a conjuring trick, elegant laminated parchment with gold trim, and he handed it to Rhodes in a smooth, practiced way.

Rhodes stared at the card. Its metallic lettering glowed with talismanic inner light. There was the Kyocera-Merck monogram, and the name HIDEKI NAKAMURA in flaring three-dimensional modernistic script, and a simple numeral 3 in one corner. The mark of status: Nakamura's place on the corporate slope.

Level Three?

Level Three was puissant managerial material indeed, just one notch below the two practically imperial levels that were occupied almost entirely by the hereditary plenipotentiary ruling families of the great megacorps. In his whole corporate career Rhodes had never laid eyes on, let alone spoken with, anyone higher than Level Four.

A little shaken, he slipped the card into his pocket. Nakamura was now extending his hand again, this time just for a conventional Western handshake, and Rhodes took it. It felt more or less like the hand of any ordinary mortal.

Nakamura was still smiling, too. But behind the smile Rhodes imagined

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