The White Elephant of Panschin

Finishing setting up the art show at the White Elephant.

     Airik plunged into the Jandinaire specifications report, able, at last, to concentrate. As he had expected, they had glossed over certain maintenance issues he already knew about while highlighting only the successes of their patented processes. The report was very carefully written so that anyone without prior experience would assume that their safety equipment would perform flawlessly, be easy to maintain, and thus worth the high cost. He, however, knew better. He had read their reports in the past along with analyses supplied by their competitors.

     "Upton?"

     His secretary sprang to attention. "Yes, sir?"

     "Take notes. The Jandinaire equipment has the following flaws so Shelleen requires the subsequent improvements and price reductions if they expect a deal," Airik said and reiterated them in detail.

     As he took dictation, Upton felt himself relaxing. The daimyo was back on track at last. It might have been worth it to hide in this dump in Dome Two.

     They spent the next few hours working their way through the most important proposals. During that period, Elliot supplied sandwiches from a restaurant that Miss Bradwell recommended called the Dappled Yak. Airik appreciated that they were simple, well-made, and quite good. Somehow, the Dappled Yak managed to avoid the metallic pong he kept noticing in the greens he had eaten at the Twelve Happiness.

     His only other interruption came about an hour after Miss Bradwell left Airik to work in peace. Nunzio decided it was time to take a stroll through the White Elephant, looking for possible security issues. On his return, he told Airik of his findings.

     "Sir? As Miss Bradwell said, there's five people living here. One old lady plus the four young ladies. The old lady gets a room to herself in the other wing, the other ladies share, two to a room. None of them look to be those kind of women, like what the hotel kept offering. If they are, they don't bring their work home. The other three bedrooms in the other wing are empty."

     "Empty of people?" Airik asked. Had Miss Bradwell lied about other staff or servants? It was very odd that a building of this size would have only five people living in it and all of them female. There were twelve bedrooms alone and that didn't include servants' quarters wherever those were hidden and then there was that ballroom. What was going on? And why did he care?

     "Barebones empty, sir," Nunzio replied. "Those rooms didn't have so much as a broken chair in them. Swept clean regularly from the look of them, but nobody lives there. Upstairs there's a rooftop terrace that covers the whole house. It's mostly empty too. Got a few chairs and a table at one end and a small painting setup at the other. Nice view of the area from up top if you don't mind knowing there's all that glassteel overhead."

     "And downstairs? Miss Bradwell implied there were belowground levels to the house."

     Airik knew, from his preparations for the trip to Panschin, that much of the city lay beneath the domes in repurposed mining tunnels. The vast majority of the working-class population lived in the tunnels, many of those miners and their families rarely coming aboveground into the domes. Even fewer ever went outside the domes.

     "Haven't checked yet, sir. Downstairs aboveground is a nuthouse. All these people getting in each other's ways trying to hang more ugly pictures. Miss Bradwell's riding herd on them and not getting any place."

     "I see," Airik said. He paused. "Does she require assistance?"

     Upton stared at his boss's profile and exchanged surprised shrugs with Elliot, who looked equally baffled. Nunzio had better control but he was also standing in front of Airik.