The Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough Page B

time to save him from a slapstick tumble down the rest of the stairs. He righted himself and put his smile back on. “Mr. Blackfield,” he said, extending a smooth white hand. “So nice to meet you.”
    Russell thought that if he opened his mouth he might never stop laughing, so he returned the handshake instead.
    “Michael Carney,” the man said. “Immigration director, Orbital Council.”
    He spoke with a strong British accent, punctuated by dangling jowls that shook with each word. He wore glasses, a rare thing in this day and age, perched on the end of his nose so that he had to tilt his head back in order to look through them.
    “Immigration,” Russell said. “Why’d they send you?”
    “I volunteered,” Michael replied. He sucked in a breath through his enormous, hairy nostrils. “Haven’t been down here in a decade, I wanted to smell the rain.”
    “Well gosh. We’re honored to let you have a sniff.”
    “Cheers, cheers.” If he noticed the sarcasm, he did a good job of hiding it. “Thanks for allowing the climber to come down.”
    “Thank me when I decide it can go back up.”
    The man’s eyes flickered back and forth. A few secretaries waited patiently behind him, at a polite distance. Russell’s own security detail loitered a dozen meters away.
    On the opposite side of the loading yard a team worked to detach a food container from the climber. From a third car, a repair crew disembarked. They wore matching gray overalls and were bound for one of the desalination plants across the bay. One of the giant processors had malfunctioned, and Russell felt he’d shown considerable goodwill in allowing the repair team to piggyback on the lone climber.
    “Enough with the pleasantries,” Russell said. “You’re here to negotiate, so negotiate.”
    Michael glanced around. “Somewhere more private, perhaps?”
    “Here is fine.”
    “Ah … right then.” The man took a breath and gestured to the container of food. “A peace offering.”
    “Don’t need it,” Russell said. “Do better.”
    The man’s eyebrows ticked up, if only for a half second. “My visit proves the climbers are working fine. The power fluctuation last week, while certainly odd, should not continue to hamper our trade agreements.”
    “Odd?” Russell asked. “That’s all you can say about it? Odd?”
    “We’ve tripled-checked everything on our end, Russell, and found nothing wrong.”
    “Try harder, then. Until I get an explanation, the climbers stay put.”
    “There’s nothing left to check, Russell. Perhaps if we could assist in your analysis down here?”
    Many years ago, Russell received a piece of sage advice from a wrinkled old con man. “If someone you just met repeatedly uses your first name in conversation, they’re either lying to you or hiding something.” He’d never forgotten the tip, and it had proved useful many times.
    “You think we’re doing this on purpose,” Russell said. “That we, what, faked the blackout?”
    “All I can tell you is we’re not ruling anything out,” he said with a smug grin.
    A politician, through and through. Russell wanted nothing more than to ram his fist into the man’s uneven teeth.
    Rain began to patter the ground around them. Thick, warm drops. The sprinkle grew to a downpour in the space of seconds.
    “Perhaps,” Michael Carney said, “we could move indoors?”
    Russell turned and stalked away, leaving the councilman scurrying to keep up. He thought of doing the polite thing and guiding the visitor to his opulent office, but a better idea came.
    Increasing his pace further, Russell turned toward Nightcliff’s massive southern gates. Two huge doors, both patchwork quilts of rusting metal and hasty welds. He angled toward a scaffold stairwell beside the huge entrance and clanged up the steps two at a time.
    At the top he paused to let Michael Carney catch up.
    The Brit was breathing hard by the time he hit the last step. His once flawless business suit had