“Bumpy,” Cooper said.
The lawyer smiled. “Gliders take some getting used to. This is your first visit to New Canaan Holdfast, correct?”
His smile is bullshit. He knows who we are, but he’s keeping to the cover story. A knowledge hoarder. “Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“Very impressive.”
Kobb nodded, led them past a row of elevators to the last in line, and touched his palm to a featureless plate. The doors slid silently open. “It’s growing fast. You should have seen Tesla five years ago. Just dirt and sky.”
The elevator moved so smoothly that Cooper couldn’t say for sure if they were going up or down. He put his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels. A moment later the doors parted, and Kobb led them out.
One side of the hall was glass floor to ceiling, the sun dialed down from blast furnace to a warm glow. The other side was an ornate garden built into a tiered wall, greenery spilling over the edges of sleek inset planters. The air felt flush with oxygen. “Nice.”
“We use what we have here. And we have plenty of sun.”
“Isn’t it some sort of sin to waste water here?”
“They’re gene-modified, spliced with some form of cactus. The water needs are miniscule. I don’t really understand it,” Kobb said in a way that suggested he understood perfectly well, but suspected you might not. The lawyer led them past several conference rooms, then touched another featureless spot on the wall to unlock a door at the end. “Mr. Epstein’s office.”
Considering the wealth in play, the room was understated. Seamless glass on two sides that gave way to a tumbling view of the city and the desert beyond, a smooth wooden desk, a conference area with comfortable seating. A pale young girl, Cooper guessed she was ten or so, sat on the couch playing a game on a d-pad. Her hair was dyed a sickly Kool-Aid green. A niece? Epstein didn’t have any children.
The lawyer ignored her completely. “Please, have a seat. Erik will join us in a moment. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Allison?”
Shannon shook her head. Instead of sitting, she glided to one of the windows, stared out at the view.
“Hi,” Cooper said to the little girl. “My name’s Tom.”
She looked up from the datapad. Her eyes were a green almost as startling as her hair, and far too old for her body. “No it isn’t,” she said, then went back to her game.
He felt a snap of embarrassment laced with anger, swallowed it. The girl was obviously a reader; even beyond her casual call-out on his lie, she had all the signs: antisocial tendencies, a hunger for nonhuman stimulus, the need to physically express her difference. And it wasn’t really a surprise to think that Epstein would use the abilities of the gifted around him. He just hadn’t expected a child.
She must be exceptionally powerful. The thought came with a wave of discomfort. To a tier-one reader, the whole world was naked emperors. Her knowledge would go beyond knowing that he was lying about his identity; within a few minutes of listening to him, watching him, she would know things that his ex-wife didn’t.