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communication screen and log their replies. The caterer is going to be
temperamental at best, given the short notice, so we'll have to let him know
how many to expect immediately."
Myra ran the pencil in and out of her hair a couple of times as she braced for
a reply. "Mister Grego," she said, "thisis more than any one person can
manage-if I drop everything else, like-" she pursed her lips "-Company
business, for example."
Grego drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. "Yes, Myra. I know there's a lot to
do. Sandra can help a little-while she's not with Diamond. No, that won't do
it. Listen, have we had any applications for office jobs lately?"
Myra consulted some clipped-together papers. "Yes," she said. "Two yesterday."
"Good," Grego boomed. "Hire one of them this instant. That'll give you a
full-time assistant until we see the happy couple off to Beta. Also, you can
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spread around some of the detail work among the other workers in the office.
After all this Company has weathered in the past year, I think we can cope
with putting a large wedding together on short notice."
Myra nodded and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "Yes, Mister Grego," she
said.
"That's the stuff, Myra. I'll be down in a half-hour. I'm going directly to
the Conference Room for the department heads' briefing, so I should be at my
desk in less than ninety minutes."
After the meeting, Grego was chatting in the corridor with his Construction
Director.
". . . So, by developing Company-owned real estate, we can head off some of
the land grabbers and speculators, and still keep ourselves in an aggressive
posture-profitably-as the largest builder on the planet."
"'I see what you mean, Don," Grego replied. "It's human nature. People will
rent apartments and commercial space from us first if we have selection and
price. Volume will give us the price by drying up supply to the smaller
builders. It'll keep them from snowballing things for a fast buck-like what
happened out in Mortgageville."
Leslie Coombes tugged gently at Grego's sleeve. "Okay, Don," Grego said. "Work
up some presentations on specific projects and get back to me."
Then he turned to Coombes. "What is it, Leslie?" he said.
"I've been looking at your ops sheet for this wedding reception, Victor. Did
you know mat Jerry Panoyian is listed as the caterer?"
"Of course I know it," Grego said. "I specifically asked that he be the
caterer."
Coombes looked like he had just tasted something very sour. "But, Victor,
surely you know he's in very thick with all the underworld bigwigs."
Grego nodded. "Um-hmm. I know that. But as far as the police can find out,
he's only involved in catering their social functions for them. That aspect of
it is disturbing to me, I'll admit, but he is the best caterer in all
Mallorysport. And I want this to be a party to remember for some time to come.
I want to have only the finest of everything, so that means we'll be using
Jerry Panoyian." He looked sideways at Coombes, "However, if it'll make you
feel better, I'll have a couple plainclothes Company Policemen watch him from
the moment he sets foot in Company House until he and his people have gone."
"And count your silverware before you let them leave," Coombes added.
Chapter 13
Mr. Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis stepped deftly to one side of his wife
and presented her formally to the bride and groom-although they had met each
other before the ceremony.
"I hope you will be as happy together as we have been," she said, after
shaking hands with both Ahmed and Sandra. Then she turned her gentle face
toward her husband, with the soft light in Victor Grego 's living room
catching her white hair with a halo-like glow, and smiled at Mm.
"Oh, Claudette," Pendarvis said, "you'll make these young people blush."
"No one is ever embarrassed by love," she chided him easily.
It was only fitting that Claudette and Frederic Pendarvis be the first to join
the reception line. The newly weds had chosen him to perform the ceremony, and
Ben Rainsford was the only person in the room whose civil rank was higher.
They took their places alongside the bride and groom to greet the balance of
the guests-a process which might occupy the rest of the afternoon, judging
from the mob of people milling about the penthouse, the outdoor pavilion on
the terrace, and the bars and buffet that had been set up outdoors in the
shade of the north and east sides.
Next to join the line was Victor Grego, the host and the man who had given the
bride away, looking as jolly as a character from a Dickens novel in his
stand-up shirt collar and gray swallow-tail coat.
Properly, Ben Rainsford should have been in the reception line, too, as the
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ranking civil official, but he had begged off on the excuse that he had a
sprained hand and that standing there for so long would make his "gimpy
leg"-invented along with the sprained hand-start acting up.
Chief Earlie of the Mallorysport P.O. sloshed the ice around in his glass and
remarked to his opposite number in the Company Police Force, " Y 'know, Harry,
if I was a crook this is the time I'd pick to stick up a bank." He motioned to
where the temporary coat rack in the penthouse foyer was festooned with a
perfect jungle of pistol belts and berets, hung there by their owners whose
ethics forbade them to drink while wearing those badges of office. "Why, I bet
every senior cop in town is here this afternoon."
With the skyrocketing population every peace officer in the city no longer had
the luxury of putting on his tuxedo to attend a social event; they never knew
when they might have to drop everything and jump into some crisis. And, most
agencies had a current standing order to maintain a high visual profile to
reassure the citizens that there was literally a policeman on every landing
stage, esplanade, and escalator.
Harry Steefer nodded. "What I don't get is why George Lunt didn 't come over
for the wedding. He's only three hours away-and he and Ahmed are pretty close.
I mean, they go 'way back-to when George was a lieutenant and Ahmed was a
patrolman in the Constabulary."
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