Orchid, Page 2

  “Yes, of course, sir. Nevertheless—”

  “Every intelligent, educated person knows that there’s no such thing as a human lie-detector.” Rafe moved one hand in a gesture of disgust. “If there were, there would be no need for courts and criminal trials.”

  Hobart coughed slightly. “You’d be surprised to learn what a strong grip some of the old notions have on the average man on the street.”

  “I’m not looking to marry the average man on the street.”

  “I understand, Mr. Stonebraker. But the bottom line is that we are dealing with a serious image problem here.”

  He was beset with image problems these days, Rafe thought. After all these years of living life on his own terms, he suddenly had to worry about how others saw him. It was damned annoying.

  “Even if it were true that strat-talents can detect lies,” he said patiently, “what is so off-putting about the idea? I assume that you would only match me with a reasonably honest wife.”

  “Think about it, Mr. Stonebraker.” Hobart gave him a very level look. “Would you want to be married to someone whom you believed could detect even a tiny, polite, social lie? Would you want to live with a wife who would know you were not telling the truth when you said she looked like a film star in a bathing suit? The occasional, graceful half-truth is vital to the conduct of a civilized life.”

  “Okay, okay, I see what you mean. But the fact is, I don’t possess any magical ability to know if someone is telling me the truth.”

  Not exactly.

  It was true that the same hunter’s intuition that served him well in business and in his hobby of private investigation sometimes gave him warning signals when others tried to mislead him. But that was a far cry from being able to detect lies, he assured himself. It was certainly not the kind of personality flaw that should keep a woman from marrying him.

  Hobart peered at him. “More people than you would believe have an aversion to the notion of marriage to a strat-talent. They are afraid there might be some truth in the old shibboleths. But even those outmoded misconceptions, difficult as they are to correct, are not our only serious challenges, Mr. Stonebraker.”

  Rafe folded his arms and propped one shoulder against the end of the bookcase. “You mean I’ve got other defects?”

  “Well—”

  “Tell me, Batt, have I got anything at all going for me in the marriage market?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What in five hells is that supposed to mean?”

  “One of our most difficult challenges is not the nature of your talent. It is the fact that you are a Stonebraker.”

  Hell. He had been counting on his family name to overcome some of the complications posed by his talent. “I would have thought that was one of my few pluses.”

  “It is and it isn’t.”

  “Damn it, Batt—”

  “What I mean is, of course your family name speaks for itself. Everyone in the tri-city-states is aware of Stonebraker Shipping. The Stonebraker name commands enormous respect in the highest social circles as well as in the business sphere. Your family has made great contributions to New Seattle.”

  “Get to the point, Batt.”

  “The point,” Hobart said carefully, “is that you have chosen not to involve yourself with Stonebraker Shipping. You have not followed in your grandfather’s footsteps. You did not even pursue a career in academia as your parents did. Instead, you have completely disassociated yourself from the source of the family fortune.”

  “Ah.” Rafe closed his eyes in brief resignation. “I think I see the problem.”

  Hobart’s mouth tightened with disapproval. “Matters would be greatly simplified if you had taken your place in the Stonebraker empire.”

  Hobart was right, Rafe thought. As challenges went, this one was probably among the more difficult for a professional matchmaker. Any woman who could be persuaded to overcome her aversion to marrying a strat-talent who happened to be a Stonebraker would naturally expect to move in the same elite social circles as the rest of the clan. He had turned his back on those circles and the family fortune at the age of nineteen.

  Rafe considered the problem from a hunter’s viewpoint. In a sense he was a victim of his own strategy.

  As Hobart had just said, virtually everyone, at least everyone who had even the smallest connection to the business community, had heard of Stonebraker Shipping. Fortunately, Rafe thought, almost no one was aware of the current, highly precarious condition of the shipping dynasty his great-grandfather had founded.

  There was still time to save the company and the livelihoods of the two thousand people, including the many members of his extended clan, who depended upon the firm. Rafe had been working night and day on the problem for weeks. He had only three more months to get all of the necessary duck-puffins in a row.

  One of the most crucial duck-puffins was a wife. He needed one to present to the board of directors of Stonebraker Shipping at the annual board meeting when he made his bid to grab the C.E.O. position.

  A wife was not merely a matter of window dressing in his case. Corporate tradition as well as the usual St. Helens social bias in favor of marriage dictated that only a married or seriously engaged person would be elected president and C.E.O. of Stonebraker Shipping.

  His chief competition for the job was his ambitious cousin, Selby Culverthorpe, who had been respectably married for six years and had two kids to show for it. Selby’s status as a family man as well as his long-term loyalty to the family business gave him a strong edge in the eyes of the conservative Stonebraker board. Selby fairly radiated trustworthiness, maturity, steadiness, and loyalty. All the characteristics of a good little Founders’ scout.

  Rafe, on the other hand, was all too aware that he had a reputation as the mysterious, unpredictable renegade of the clan. Although he was the great-grandson of old Stonefaced Stonebraker, himself, and the grandson of the present C.E.O., Alfred G. Stonebraker, he could not deny that he had walked away from his heritage a long time ago. Everyone in the clan had strongly disapproved of his decision to go his own way.

  Alfred G.’s fury had been truly monumental. The battle between grandfather and grandson had assumed the proportions of family legend. Alfred G. had cut Rafe off without a penny. The two had not spoken for years following the explosive rift that had shattered what had been, until then, a close relationship.

  Everyone who knew anything about Stonebraker family history knew that Rafe did not have access to the family fortune or social circles.

  That was about to change. Unfortunately, Rafe could not advertise the fact. To do so would be to sacrifice his one edge in the coming war for the control of Stonebraker. He needed the element of surprise for several more weeks.

  He also needed a wife or, at the very least, a fiancée to help him reshape his image.

  But since marriage was for life on St. Helens, he intended to make his selection as carefully and as rationally as possible. He had assumed that meant using a good matchmaking agency, the way most intelligent people did. On the whole, everyone agreed, the first generation Founders had been right when they had established the matchmaking system and reinforced it with all the weight and force of law, custom, and social pressure at their disposal.

  Occasionally marriages were contracted without the assistance of professional agencies, but those alliances were rare and generally frowned upon.

  Theoretically, marriage agencies such as Synergistic Connections, with their scientific techniques and synergistic psychological tests gave individuals the best possible chance of contracting satisfactory marriages. Unfortunately, it looked as if the best agency in New Seattle was failing in his case, Rafe thought.

  He had the sinking feeling that he had wasted the past three weeks concentrating on his other duck-puffins while he left the wife-hunting problem to Synergistic Connections.

  He realized that Hobart was watching him with an expectant expression. But he could hardly announce that he
fully intended to become the next C.E.O. of Stonebraker Shipping. Secrecy was critical at this juncture. His entire plan to save the family firm depended on it. If Selby were to discover too soon that Rafe was maneuvering to take control of the company, he would have three months to take action to prevent the coup.

  Selby was only a tech-talent, Rafe thought, but lately the sneaky little bastard had shown a surprising flair for business strategy.

  “It’s not as if I’m not gainfully employed, Batt.” Rafe unfolded his arms, straightened and walked across the room to a low, heavily carved table. He plucked a small white card from the pile he kept in an ornate glass bowl. The embossed black letters read The Synergy Fund.

  With a flick of his wrist Rafe sent the crisp business card sailing toward Hobart.

  It landed on the immaculately pressed pleat of Hobart’s pale gray trousers. He gingerly picked up the card and glanced at it. “Yes, yes, I’m well aware that you manage a very successful stock market mutual fund. I, myself, own some shares in it. I understand that your personal financial picture is extremely sound. That is not my point.”

  Hobart was obviously not impressed. Rafe decided not to make things worse by mentioning his evening hobby. After all, he only indulged himself in the off-the-books private investigation stuff when he was especially bored or restless.

  “What is your point, Batt?”

  Hobart cleared his throat. “Surely you understand that some of the image challenges we face could be greatly mitigated if you were employed in the executive branch of your family’s firm.”

  Rafe smiled coldly. “You mean if it looked as though I’d finally seen the light, decided to join Stonebraker Shipping and henceforth start moving in the right social circles, some of your clients might be willing to overlook my strat-talent?”

  “Frankly, yes.” Hobart reddened but his expression remained professionally determined. “It would make my job a good deal easier if you gave the impression of being a, shall we say, more conventional Stonebraker.”

  Such an impression was exactly what he could not afford to give at this point, Rafe thought. “Let’s try this from another angle, Batt. Perhaps you should introduce me to some less than ideal candidates. Who knows? I might be able to change my image in their eyes.”

  Hobart’s eyes widened in alarm. “See here, I’m a professional, Mr. Stonebraker. I’m not about to allow you the opportunity to try to intimidate any of my clients.”

  “I wasn’t talking about intimidation,” Rafe said smoothly. “I was talking about persuasion.”

  “Persuasion?” Hobart looked skeptical.

  “Give me the chance to convince some potential spouses that their preconceptions about people with my kind of talent are wrong.”

  A surprisingly steely gleam appeared in Hobart’s eyes. “Before you consider trying to talk a lady out of her preconceptions about strat-talents, there is another course of action you might wish to consider. One that would greatly simplify things.”

  “What is that?”

  “You could try dropping a few of your extremely narrow personal requirements.”

  Exasperation shot through Rafe. “I do not consider my personal requirements excessively narrow. I’m not choosy about eye or hair color or even bra size. I thought I made that clear.”

  “I refer to your insistence that your wife be a full-spectrum prism, among other things.”

  “I realize that a lot of matchmaking agencies don’t think that full-spectrums and high-class talents make good matches, but as we just discussed, I’m only a class six. There should be no problem on that score.”

  “No, no, that’s not the issue.” Hobart flapped one beringed hand in a dismissive motion. “As it happens, I have recently confirmed two very successful matches involving full-spectrum prisms and very high-class talents. I no longer place much credence in the old theory that the two types never make good marital alliances.”

  Rafe raised one brow. “I’m acquainted with Lucas Trent and Nick Chastain. I attended both of their weddings.”

  “I see. Then you do understand.”

  “I understand that they each found their own bride but that you later verified the matches, Batt. You signed off on them even though many professional matchmakers would have hesitated because of the old thinking on the matching of unusual talents and prisms. That’s one of the reasons I requested your services. You’re supposed to be the best and you’re willing to accept new data.”

  Hobart looked gratified. “I like to think that I’m good at what I do. Indeed, I consider my work a calling. And my experiences with Mr. Trent and Mr. Chastain did teach me to keep an open mind when it comes to some of the more traditional thinking on the subject of scientific matchmaking.”

  “So my request for a full-spectrum prism shouldn’t bother you too much, Batt.”

  Hobart grimaced. “I might be able to find you a full-spectrum prism, although I confess I have no idea why it is so important to you.”

  It was important, Rafe thought, but he could not explain why to himself, let alone to Hobart. His inner certainty flew straight in the face of the results of all of the syn-psych research on the subject as well as conventional wisdom.

  It was assumed, not without some evidence, that there was a natural antipathy between high-class talents and full-spectrum prisms. Powerful talents were vaguely resentful of full-spectrums. They did not appreciate the fact that nature had made them dependent on prisms for extended, full range use of their own, personal psychic energy.

  Most full-spectrum prisms, on the other hand, found high-class talents arrogant, rigid, and demanding. In addition, full-spectrums were said to be extremely picky when it came to choosing spouses.

  But for some time now, Rafe had become increasingly convinced that he needed a woman who could link with him on the metaphysical as well as the physical plane. All of his strat-talent instincts urged him to that conclusion. That was one of the reasons he had been driven, albeit reluctantly, into a state of celibacy for the past several months. He was tired of the self-enforced loneliness but he could not work up any enthusiasm for a casual affair. In some fundamental, primitive manner he did not want to investigate too deeply, he knew that it was time to find a mate.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Paranormal abilities were supposed to be gender neutral. The rules of the metaphysical plane were different than the rules that applied to the physical plane. Any prism could focus for any talent without any sense of sexual or even personal intimacy on either side.

  Or so the theory went.

  But Rafe had long suspected that the exotic nature of his power made him different in this area, too. Perhaps it was because his psychic energy was so closely allied to his physical senses. He only knew that the yearning he felt for a mate extended into the metaphysical realm.

  There was another, more pragmatic reason for insisting that his future wife be a full-spectrum prism. It was one thing to conceal his off-the-chart talent from business acquaintances, casual friends, marriage counselors, and even some members of his family. But there was no way he could hide the extended range of his paranormal abilities from a wife.

  Bluntly put, he had to find a woman who would not completely freak out when she discovered that she was married to what some would call a psychic vampire. Based on the recent experience of his two friends, Nick Chastain and Lucas Trent, he had concluded that a full-spectrum prism was his best bet.

  Rafe could not think of any diplomatic way of explaining that unique need to Hobart, however, so he focused on a different issue.

  “What’s wrong with having a few personal requirements in a wife?” he said. “After all, I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life with her, whoever she is.”

  Hobart gave him a look of polite reproof. “You don’t think it’s just a bit limiting to demand that, in addition to being a full-spectrum prism, your future wife must be an admirer of meta-zen-syn philosophical poetry?”

  “It seems perfectly reasonable to
me that she share my literary tastes.”

  Hobart glared. “What about your requirement that she also be a practitioner of classic meta-zen-syn meditation and exercise? Few people outside of that ivory tower think-tank crowd up in Northville have even heard of meta-zen-syn.”

  “It’s not that uncommon,” Rafe said defensively.

  “And then there’s your demand that she be an admirer of Later Expansion period architecture.” Hobart cast an exasperated glance around the firelit chamber. “No offense, Mr. Stonebraker, but very few people admire this particular style anymore.”

  “It’s an acquired taste.”

  “Which almost no one acquires,” Hobart retorted. “Any realtor will tell you that mansions such as this one are almost impossible to move when they come on the market.”

  Rafe followed Hobart’s gaze around the room. It was true that the gothic elements that characterized Later Expansion period mansions were not to everyone’s taste. He could not even explain why they were to his taste. He only knew that the arched doorways, the intricate patterns in the tile work, and the elaborately molded ceilings pleased something deep inside him. He had even gone so far as to restore the original jelly-ice candle fixtures and fireplaces, although he had also installed discreetly concealed modern lighting, heating, and air conditioning as well.

  For a few seconds he tried to see his home through Hobart’s eyes.

  Fifty years ago the somber, overwrought architecture of the Later Expansion period had been extremely fashionable, an overreaction, perhaps, to the excessive ebullience of the Early Exploration period that preceded it. But the demand for the dark, brooding style had quickly faded.

  Today many of the old houses in the district were shuttered and locked. Faded “For Sale” signs sagged from the massive gates that barred the long, elegant drives. Weeds sprouted where skilled horti-talents had once tended exotic gardens. Windows remained dark after the sun set. The sidewalks that lined the street were cracked.

  No doubt about it, the neighborhood had gone into a slump.

  Most of the dynasty-founding business families who had once made their homes on this particular hillside overlooking the city had moved to newer, more fashionable hills.