Page 12 of Breaking Point
He was still gripping the railing, only now he stepped closer to it and lowered his voice.“I have no agenda other than I want to talk to you.That’s it.I could have called, or left you a message on the Forum, but I thought you would react this way.”
“And now you know you are right.”She turned back to her monitor.
“Tell me, have you slept much, the last two days?”His voice was still low.Low enough that she could hear the deeper registers.She had heard them before, when her head had been on his chest.
She shook off the intruding memory.“I’ve slept just fine,” she said airily.
“I, too, have slept like a baby.”
Her heart was jumping about again.Luciana gave up pretending she was working.She swiveled the stool once more and looked at him.“There is no need for dinner.Not even to talk.”She gave him a brittle smile.“We’re both adults, Brice.Leave it at that.”
“No.We don’t end it here.We do it the way adults do.A conversation where it is private and we can say what we need to.”
She gripped her hands together.“I can guess what you will say.I don’t need to hear it.”
“You have no idea what I will say.”He let go of the railing.“It’s just dinner.I’ve never invited anyone to dinner.You should say yes, or I will be psychologically scarred for life and be unable to invite anyone ever again.”
“You would be mentally maimed over ‘just dinner’?”she shot back.Then her gaze fell to the cane.Hewasmaimed.He wasn’t the unmoving wall he liked to project.“Yes, I’ll come to dinner,” she added, surprising even herself.
He straightened, as if she had shocked him, too.“As soon as you’re done for the day.”
Luciana tried to regroup.“Should I bring anything?Wine?And don’t say roses.They’re off the menu.”
“There won’t be a rose or a candle in sight,” he promised, walking away.
Chapter Five
LUCIANA CLIMBED OUT OF THEtaxiboat and straightened up her dress.“Thank you,” she told the bot, while trying to ignore the big house.
“You’re more than welcome, Luciana Hume,” the bot replied.“Do you need a ride back tonight?”
“Most definitely!”she said quickly.“Only I don’t know how long I’ll be.”Not long at all, if she had her way.
“Then you can call for a taxi when you are ready and we will arrive as soon as we can.”
She wasn’t sure if the bot was referring to itself in the third person plural, or all the taxiboats.Since she had last been in the Palatine, all the human taxiboat drivers had gone.All the boats were bot-driven now.She had always preferred human drivers.
The taxiboat lifted up from the pad and barely ruffled the hem of her dress, while she stood examining the house the boat had delivered her to.She only recalled now the fuss that had been made when the house was built.It had been designed in an ancient Earth style called “Brutalist,” that someone had found in the archives.She supposed that “someone” was Brice, as he lived here.Or perhaps he had bought it from the historical architecture buff.The house was all concrete and angles, with dark glass surrounding the living spaces.A cantilever deck hung off one end of the house.Vines and green growing things dangled from all the horizontal surfaces.
It shouldn’t fit in with the flower-filled glade it occupied, yet it did.It looked as though it had been here forever, and would last another millennium.
Not for the first time, Luciana considered the wisdom of stepping into this house.Only, she had agreed to come, so she was committed to at least presenting herself at the front door.
If she couldfindthe front door.
Then she noticed the path of tamped down pebbles, lined with ferns that softened the edges.The path wound around to the side of the house under the deck.She followed it, and found herself at a door that was glass like the rest of the walls under here.
Brice was standing at a kitchen counter, doing something that she couldn’t quite determine, because the darkened glass hid details.She knocked on the door, for there was no call pad.
Brice looked up.He moved around the counter, cane in hand, wove through low couches and armchairs (which were not big like the one in his office, her jittery, yammering mind whispered), and opened the door.He didn’t smile.“I’ve left something boiling.Come in.”He turned and moved back to the counter, moving fast.
Bewildered, Luciana stepped inside and shut the door.It was surprisingly heavy.Then she moved over to the counter.It was a lot wider than the standard peninsulas that came with the standard houses in the Capitol and the Esquiline.Although it was hard to judge the true width because at the moment it was covered in vegetables.She had only seen vegetables in videos and once at an Endurance Day picnic, when someone who had painstakingly grown vegetables in soil, here in the Palatine, had brought them to the picnic to show them.His table had been surrounded by curious people for hours, who prodded and sniffed at them.“Vegetables?”she asked.“You…grow them?”
Brice didn’t smile.“I printed them.”
“I didn’t know the food printers could print whole vegetables,” she confessed.
“The food printers can print a lot more than that, if you dig into the files.”He was standing behind a silvery metal container that had steam coming from the top of it and he shook something into it as she watched.
