To thine own self
by Ainzfern
2
"Very well." Looking up from his console, Iason nodded at the calculations Raoul had been making most of the morning in response to Iason's directions. "Final figures, if you would?"
Glancing up at Iason, Raoul laid his pen down with a definite air of finality, a certain feeling of accomplishment filling him. "Total allocations amount to eighty-six percent, leaving a budgetary surplus of fourteen."
Iason smiled, ever so slightly, his pale eyes reflecting his satisfaction. "Most pleasing. That is a marked improvement on the last financial year."
Raoul's expression was artfully bland. "Well, you've tightened our belts a little, this time around, Iason."
"You have complaints?"
"Me?" Raoul waved an elegant hand at him. "Most certainly not, my friend." His expression grew slightly smug. "Besides... my department got what I asked for."
"Your department had an acceptable mitigant," Iason's reply matched Raoul's smug smile, "and the fact that you submitted your budgetary request well in advance of the deadline predisposed me to generosity." He turned back to his consol, once more reviewing the data. "Most sections still received an allocation within ten percent of what they requested."
Raoul snorted softly. "Most sections would have exaggerated their figures by ten percent anyway."
"My very thought." Iason sat back in his chair, lacing his long fingers together. "All in all, I feel, a most satisfactory outcome."
Raoul neatened his pile of calculations and pushed them to one side, pleased enough that this rather vexing task was over for at least another year. "Quite," he nodded at Iason. "Even Tahna Lam and his department of Arts and Antiquities fared well."
"He'll still scream that I robbed him, of course."
"Naturally." Raoul's chuckle dripped with delighted malice. "Dear old Tahna. He has such a reliable disposition, hasn't he?"
Iason grunted softly with ill-concealed distaste. "That's one description, certainly. Still, I will admit, as abrasive and obnoxious as his behavior tends to be, he does have a genuine gift for aesthetics. The post he holds suits him well. The historical museums and art galleries of Tanagura have never been as successful."
"...and he's a 'force majeure' when it comes to hosting all those gala openings for his gallery events," Raoul admitted grudgingly. His eyes flashed wickedly. "Well he would be. He's a born prima donna."
Iason chuckled and shook his head. "All character assassination aside, my friend, I believe we are done here."
"I believe we are." Raoul paused then, thoughtfully, as he tapped one finger on the arm of his chair for a moment. "There was, however, a separate matter that I wished to discuss with you... seeing as we now have the opportunity."
"By all means."
"I hoped I might be able to prevail upon you to allow me to temporarily utilize Katze for my project." Almost even as he was speaking the words, Raoul noted Iason's expression becoming... odd. Almost as if the Elite was amused by something. However, he made no actual comment, thus Raoul continued. "I'm afraid the technical modifications; monitoring systems and the like, just aren't coming along as efficiently as I would like."
"I see."
Raoul nodded. "I already know that your man has a genuine gift for computers and technical gadgetry..."
Iason arched a vaguely quizzical brow.
Feeling a perplexed little frown cross his brow, and more than a little suspicious that he was somehow being laughed at, Raoul narrowed his eyes. "If it were only for a few hours, perhaps it might not even be worth asking, but as I would need to incorporate him into my team for at least a week..." he left it hanging.
Iason nodded urbanely after a moment. "Raoul, it is indeed a sensible idea to ask."
"I thought so."
"But ask Katze... not me."
Raoul stared at him, watching as his friend's face softened slightly and he vented an almost sorrowful sigh.
"Raoul," Iason sat forward, his sharp eyes serious. "Perhaps your assumption is understandable; considering that, as a rule, Katze does tend to acquiesce to most – if not all – of my requests, even now." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I'd like to think that this stems from choice, out of courtesy. Sadly, however, I believe it is most likely a case of leftover conditioning." He lifted his chin, gazing levelly into Raoul's eyes. "But know this... Katze is not my Furniture anymore. In truth, he should not be regarded as beholden to me in any way. I no longer hold any claim over him. He has earned his freedom from that, many times over."
"I... I see." Raoul blinked, and then nodded. Strangely he was not really as startled by the revelation as he perhaps ought to have been.
"If anything," Iason went on quietly, "I suppose you could rightfully call him my business associate." He lifted one broad shoulder briefly. "It's quite true, after all."
"So, my request isn't likely to have a significantly negative impact on that business?"
"That is a question you would have to put to Katze, my friend." Iason sat back, his expression firm.
"Very well," Raoul set his shoulders decisively, consciously accepting what Iason had told him. "I shall do so forthwith."
"Good." Iason frowned slightly then, as if a thought had occurred to him. "I understood, Raoul, that you had formed an acquaintance with Katze yourself," he remarked almost curiously.
"Of a sort, I suppose."
"Yet you still felt compelled to put your proposal to me, instead?"
"Yes." Raoul sighed, slightly troubled by the question. "Yes... I really thought..." he shrugged, almost helplessly. "I was following protocol, I suppose."
Iason smiled understandingly at him. "Not so binding as it once was, I think you'll find."
"Hmm." Raoul rose to his feet, his smile warming as Iason stood and clasped his hand firmly. "Thank you, as always, for your honest insights."
"Any time, my friend." Iason released his hand, one elegant brow rising slightly. "Perhaps you might drop by the penthouse towards the end of the week? It's been some time since you and I caught up properly."
Genuinely pleased by the invitation, Raoul nodded. "Of course. I would like that very much." He turned to leave Iason's office.
"Raoul?" Iason called to him, just before he reached the door. "One final word regarding Katze."
Raoul looked over his shoulder. "Oh?"
Iason looked vastly amused for some reason. "If he does decide to accept your offer... please ensure that he eats at least one meal a day."
"I beg your pardon?"
Iason resumed his seat behind his desk. "Katze does tend to become somewhat... enamored of technical challenges, often to the detriment of all else. It's just something I would like you to keep in mind, that's all."
Feeling a little baffled, Raoul shrugged. "As you wish, Iason." He gave one final perplexed nod by way of farewell and stepped quietly from the Syndicate Leader's office.
Seated at one of the courtyard tables in a tastefully discreet café called 'Zephyrs' located just inside Eos Central, Katze pushed his sunglasses a little more snugly onto his face and sipped his undeniably fine coffee.
His lips twitched into a slight smirk. The damned coffee would want to be good. At his calculations, it was costing him about two credits per sip.
Taking another quick glance at his watch, Katze scanned the passing crowed again and wondered once more; just what the hell he was actually doing here. An ex-Furniture, sipping espresso in the Elite part of town? Now there was some serious incongruity to ponder.
Admittedly, he didn't actually stand out all that much. At least not these days. With his hair carefully styled to conceal his scarred face, and his dark glasses covering his light brown eyes, the rich red of his hair meant that he actually fitted into the scenery here. Couple that with the fact that he was dressed in fine enough attire to pass for any wealthy young citizen, and even the waiting staff who served him didn't credit him with a second look.
So here he was, sitting in the late afternoon sun, waiting for the second in command of the Tanagura Syndicate to make his appearance and explain what the hell was so important that Katze had to come out here to meet him.
In public, even.
Now that was a bit unusual.
Lighting up his third cigarette since he'd initially sat down, Katze signaled towards the waiter hovering discreetly at one side of the courtyard. Although the invitation hadn't specifically mentioned lunch, Katze couldn't actually recall the last meal he'd bothered to eat and the smells wafting from the interior of the café were having an undeniable effect on his stomach. He ordered a light, and startlingly expensive, meal of pasta and then sat back comfortably, smoking with evident pleasure and considering Raoul Am in more depth.
A Blondie. A high-ranker, second only in the Syndicate to Iason Mink himself; a biological scientist of some considerable note and occasionally a skilled medical practitioner as well.
Iason's dearest Elite friend.
Katze absently stirred his coffee before taking another appreciative sip, his pale brow furrowed with thought. For quite a long time, when he had been Iason's Furniture, the fact that Raoul was Iason's friend was pretty much all Katze had known about the man. Katze's duties had been to care for his master's Pets and look after his household, not to rub shoulders with his glittering Elite social circle.
Of course, some considerable time after Katze had been released from his post in the Mink residence, fate had conspired to ensure that Raoul Am of the Syndicate and Katze of the Ceres black market would not only come to know each other, but would temporarily have to act as co-conspirators.
Partners in crime, so to speak...
Driven by a mutual concern, a joint interest, they had agreed – perhaps unwisely; certainly, in hindsight, pointlessly – to hide the fact that Riki had survived Dana Bahn, from the Blondie who loved him.
Even though they'd had a common goal at the time, Katze couldn't really say that he had liked the man. At that early stage of their serendipitous association, Katze had actually been rather wary of the grim-faced and distant Elite. And with good enough reason, looking back. Raoul had obviously been concerned for Iason's welfare, but Katze hadn't known him well enough to fully trust the Elite's motivations. Plus he had, sadly, endured personal experience of the fact that Raoul Am's temper could go from zero to one hundred in less than a second, and that he wasn't at all shy about displaying that temper in quite a physically painful way upon the vulnerable flesh of a mongrel human.
Katze still bore the small scars on his shoulder from the night Raoul had gripped him with furious dreadful force in the annexed basement lab in Jupiter Tower for pushing exactly the wrong buttons with one too many questions.
So... Katze had pretty much learned to consider Raoul in the same light as any other Elite. Well, any other Elite beside Iason, of course, Katze amended silently as he drained his coffee and smirked at the table top. And that was as powerful and dangerously unpredictable beings that, quite frankly, were just better off being avoided wherever possible.
But then, Katze leaned politely out of the way as the waiter set his pasta down in front of him; then Iason had discovered that Riki was still alive and everything had changed. Raoul had obviously been given the shakeup of his life discovering that Jupiter had sanctioned Iason's relationship with a mongrel. Enough so, that when Katze had suggested they get drunk on the contents of Iason's wine cellar, Raoul had agreed.
And Katze had found out during the course of that rather bizarre moment of traditional male bonding that Raoul Am, just possibly, wasn't such a bad guy after all.
For a Blondie.
It was as he crushed out his cigarette and reached for the fork laid on the side of his plate, that a plainly recognizable shadow fell across his table. Looking up, Katze nodded in both greeting and welcome as Raoul Am sat down, folding his long and elegant limbs gracefully into his seat with the unconscious physical ease of all Elites and rather deliberately laying a thick bound document on the table in front of him.
Katze couldn't quite help the wry smile that whispered across his face as he considered the tableau that they made. In years past, it would have been a most serious breach of protocol and etiquette for Furniture, or any servant of an Elite, to dare to start eating before their master had arrived.
But... Katze was most definitely not a servant any more.
And it was with this thought in mind, that Katze happily ate the first bite of his meal without hesitation, before grinning at his elegant companion.
"So..?" Katze picked up the heavy linen napkin beside his plate and wiped his mouth. "Can I ask a question right at the outset, Raoul?" he ventured without preamble.
With only the tiniest lift of one brow, Raoul nodded slowly.
Katze forked up another mouthful of pasta. "Why the hell does everything in this place cost three times as much as the restaurants in Midas?"
Raoul Am stared at him for a long moment, his face utterly expressionless, before his rich mouth twitched and a genuine light of amusement filled his green eyes.
Just barely. But it was there.
Sitting across from the ex-Furniture, watching him finish his meal with almost uncharacteristic tolerance, Raoul sipped occasionally from a tall glass of iced tea as he explained his proposal to the red-head. He was quite gratified to see that Katze was very obviously interested, if his physical mannerisms could be believed. He was sitting slightly forward, his shaded eyes intent on Raoul's face as he spoke, even the smoldering cigarette between his long fingers was momentarily forgotten as Katze gave his full attention to Raoul's words. When Katze reacted almost indifferently to the mention of a standard remunerative compensation, Raoul suddenly realized, the red-head was going to do this simply because he wanted to.
But then of course, Raoul reasoned, Katze did have a significant source of income already. Money was obviously not exactly a motivating force when it came to this particular mongrel.
Even as he continued to discuss the logistics of the project, Raoul's formidable mind almost absently pondered the man sitting in front of him. For the longest time, he had viewed Katze as he would have viewed any native resident of Ceres. Atypical, driven by baseless emotion and possessing of no real refined intellect.
But, as circumstances subsequently conspired to show him, he had been rather mistaken on those points.
It truly seemed that Iason's Riki was not the only Ceres mongrel capable of surprising him.
Looking back on the more recent months as he had slowly come to know Katze on a somewhat more personal level, he could appreciate that the red-head's character had surprising depth and was filled with intriguing nuances and impressive subtleties.
Observed purely from an analytical point of view, naturally.
For example, he was now quite certain that Katze was going to accept his proposal, not because of money or a desire to gain status, but because of the intellectual challenge it represented.
That was almost an 'Elite' thing to do...
Sitting back as he wound his initial overview to a close, Raoul's sharp eyes travelled almost absently over Katze's sunglasses-covered face and quite elegantly suited body. He was mildly startled to realize that he had rarely seen the man other than at nighttime, sallow-faced with his eyes darkened by shadows. At times, Katze had seemed almost nocturnal in his habits. But, suddenly, now having an opportunity to appraise him under the clear light of the sun, it occurred to Raoul that Katze was actually quite pleasant to look at.
In fact, slightly more than just 'pleasant' if the truth was to be told.
In this light, Katze's hair was actually quite a rich color, almost auburn; and his skin, while undeniably paler than most mongrels, was smooth and unblemished. His body was a little too sparse of flesh, perhaps, but well formed, nonetheless. Slightly taller than the average mongrel, broad through the shoulders and lean through the flanks, he cut quite an attractive figure in his understated, but obviously expensive casual suit.
"So... when do you want me to start?" Katze was asking him, pulling Raoul out of his moment of private reflection.
Raoul slid the document he had set down across the table to Katze. "Shall we say the day after tomorrow?" He gestured to the thick file with one almost languorous hand. "That should be sufficient time for you to become fully conversant with the project specifications and projected time frames."
Looking down at it, Katze opened the document to the outline on the first page, removing his sunglasses so that he might better read the text. "I see you've actually pulled some of your staff out of another location."
"Yes," Raoul nodded. "The bio-mechanical fabrication laboratory on the edge of Tanagura. It is, of course, still a future project that I intend to expand upon. But, for now, the priority is the completion of the portable medical amniotic units."
Katze's face snapped upwards and he met Raoul's gaze with widening eyes. "Bio-mechanics?" his voice was filled with curiosity. "Now that is something I would like to see."
For a moment, just an instant, Raoul felt that same mild sense of surprise wash through him as he looked into the ex-Furniture's eyes. They had actually quite a remarkable color. Too light to be considered brown, they appeared almost golden in the afternoon sunshine.
How strange, he thought, that he hadn't noticed this before.
With a sort of internal shake, Raoul cleared his mind of such irrelevant observations and considered Katze's comment. "You have experience in bio-mechanics?" he asked him.
Katze snorted softly, closing the project file. "Hardly. Just call it an interest."
Raoul relaxed back into his seat, folding his hand casually in his lap. "Perhaps I can arrange an access pass for you at some stage... if you would care to tour the facility, that is."
Katze lifted one shoulder slightly, but his eyes seemed very bright. "I would. Thanks."
"So," Raoul gestured once more to the file in front of the red-head. "Your decision?"
Grinning at him, Katze once more donned his shaded glasses. "Raoul? As we say in the black market... you've got deal."
To thine own self – chapter 1 << >> To thine own self – chapter 3