A polite inquiry
Encrypted email to Emma Frost:
Appointment today with someone who was asking after William Stryker and a program of mutant experimentation. Brushed her off and added a veiled threat to keep her mouth shut, at least as far as my involvement in her quest goes. Black Knight met her and can give you a report to supplement mine, but I have to ask: is this about Wide Awake or something else?
4/4/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cloudy grey occluding Lower Manhattan meets its match in the brilliant lights that infuse the office buildings and turn glowing eyes out defiantly on the coming evening. In the lobby of one such building near Wall Street, the illumination is gentler, more natural, but no less bright on the smooth dark curve of reception desk and smooth dark head of the woman who helms it with quiet efficiency, a headset riding her ear and her eyes flickering between phone lines and infrequent visitors through the brass-and-glass revolving doors off the street.
The next figure that steps off that street belongs, insofar as tailoring and assurance can make her; belongs, too, in that ineffable air of familiarity that knows the corporate world and its privileged, efflugent air. Dressed in a pale grey pants suit and white coat, eyes covered by a pair of dark glasses, a young Asian woman passes through the revolving door and strikes for that oracle of knowledge: reception. "Sebastian Shaw?" a throaty alto murmurs, making a polite demand of the name.
"Your name, please?" is the receptionist's pleasant response, followed only after the last syllable by a placid look up at the visitor. A manicured finger rests easily, lightly, on a button of the main phone bank. The security guard loitering near the desk loiters a little closer: big, beefy, blond hair in a brush cut, blue eyes holding slightly bulbous assessment.
"Yuriko Oyama," the visitor replies, removing her glasses to bare the dark, slanted eyes of her race. Delicate features, youthful, perfect skin; she inclines her head to the receptionist in chilly, dispassionate courtesy before folding the arms of her lenses to tuck them away in a pocket. "I believe he is expecting me."
The receptionist shifts her gaze aside, to some list next to the phone, and then she produces a professional smile. "Yes, of course, Ms. Oyama. Eighth floor; you'll be met. Thank you for visiting Shaw Industries." The guard shifts his weight, patently intending to remain and watch until the visitor is safely swallowed by one of the elevators behind him, up and gone into someone else's domain -- someone else's problem.
The tycoon's visitor nods, acknowledgment and thanks in one brief salute, and crosses to the elevator to rest herself in silence. Time for other things to work: wheels, pulleys, motors, engines. The doors slide closed, erasing her from the lobby; the rise is swift, a model of efficiency. Yuriko watches lights flare behind numbers, stamping them out of darkness like foreshadowed stencils. At the appropriate floor, it stops. A bell rings. The doors open, and she steps out.
As promised, a man meets her, offering neither smile nor handshake, only a polite greeting. He is lean, brown, nondescript; his faded blue eyes encompass her, disdaining emotion for blank absorption. "Right this way, Ms. Oyama" he says and turns to lead her through the little elevator lobby, past a small navy-walled cube farm, down a corridor of closed doors interspaced with narrow, thick-glassed windows. . . . To a final door. The door. He knocks and opens without waiting for response, and his hand offers her egress: please.
Wordless, Yuriko follows, passed from one perfect automaton to the next. And at the end: the man behind the curtain? She steps through it with a cat's meticulous grace, deliberate without appearing so, self-aware without self-consciousness. The hands have made their way out of their pockets, the coat -- still worn -- bares the slim line of body between its part.
Shaw stands up from behind his desk and comes around it in no great hurry, led by a smile and a wave of healthy male pheromones and scent warmed by deep body heat. He does offer their visitor a hand to shake. "Ms. Oyama! Please, come in and have a seat. Can I offer you anything to drink?" While the man at the door quietly steps outside and away, back into the floor's end-of-business-day bustle.
"Mr. Shaw," the husky alto sounds again, greeting in turn with some small flexion of warmth. Politic, that, though the faint light that brightens Yuriko's expression serves to give it animation and softness: depth, warmth, a gentler personality. "No, I appreciate the offer. Thank you for seeing me," she adds, following the inevitable script of corporate courtesy. The hand that closes around Shaw's is fine-boned and firm, engulfed by his -- pale skin against darker -- before she retrieves it and drifts towards one of the suggested seats. "I know you are a very busy man."
"I am, but not too busy to host someone who's travelled so far to see me." Curiosity prickles faintly through Shaw's genial baritone reply, which follows her as he does, back around the desk and into his chair. He sits up and forward in it, making the leather squeak more, and clasps his hands attentively on the cleaned mahogany surface before him. His respiration is easy, but that little spike in heart rate, the jump of intrigue in blood's pulse-- "You're sure you don't want anything? There's water, tea, coffee. . . . I thought about having a little, myself. It would be no trouble to make one into two."
Hesitation marks the second demural, an uplifted hand and tilt of head that sketches negation -- and then swerves as suddenly, touched with the hint of rue. "I am in America," Yuriko recalls, "and I should be more American. Yes, thank you. If you are having some tea or water, I would be grateful. It is very difficult to remember," she adds in feminine, Japanese humility. The guest chair claims her; she folds into it with the telltale signs of training, the tedious and implacable rigors of a finishing school translated to habit.
The curiosity is briefly stronger, full enough to push up through his eyes' sable mask. Then Shaw nods acquiescence and thumbs the intercom ("Stacy, tea for two, please? Yes, herbal") without easing his attention from Yuriko . . . and it gentles into acceptance for the humility she's offering. Even his pulse steadies, and he smiles again, demure lips over even white teeth. "Not a problem, as I said. I don't want to keep you here longer than you want, waiting for what simple service we can provide you." The plural pronoun tantalizes: referring to the tea, of course, as suggested by the impatient flick of gaze to the door.
"I have been advised," Yuriko admits in that same meek vein, almond-dark gaze, raven-black head slightly lowered under that masculine regard, "that you prefer the American method of address, Mr. Shaw. It is very much like rudeness for my people, but I will attempt it, if you will accept my apologies in advance?" The opaque glance slips up through lashes, lit by a faint smile; Oyama tilts her head, hands folding restfully in her lap. "I do not wish to waste your time."
"You aren't," Shaw gives her absently. He stills a twitched tilt of black-suited shoulders and blinks. "'Advised.' You have done your homework. All for me, Ms. Oyama?"
The young woman looks apologetic. "I fear so, Mr. Shaw. It is family business, but it is still business. It would not be respectful of me to come unprepared for the meeting. Enough," she amends, "to learn how you prefer to be addressed, if it is within my capabilities."
Shaw says, "You're doing fine," with more than a trace of bemusement, and then he's rescued by the arrival of tea: a proper silver service set on the desk, arranged, and poured for them both by the young woman bearing it. As she leaves, he taps in a sugar cube and a little milk. "Smells good," he comments with the cup as a steam-shimmering shield before his face. Eyes shift behind it, and the flare of nostrils for reasons more than olfactory. "Shall we drink to family business, then? And prosperity for all involved."
"Health and harmony," Yuriko says, accepting her own without condiment. Behind her own veil of steam, senses spin and gyrate, briefly overwhelmed by the sweet herbal scents -- Shaw's sugar; Shaw's musk -- and dark eyes close over a blanked expression. "There are three things needed for happiness, my people say. Prosperity is only the one."
"And the other two?" Shaw sips, sets the cup down, keeps it within long, careful fingers' cradle.
Yuriko says, "Health and harmony." Fingers trail across the teacup, cradling it between their pads. She glances back up at Shaw, life returning for a small, seedling smile. "All three."
"My mistake; I thought you meant something else." He sounds unconcerned, politely edified, but Shaw's telltales are tipping a little higher again. "Perhaps I'll settle for just the third. It seems the easiest to achieve, at least in the business sphere."
"You have already achieved it," Yuriko murmurs, "if financial reports are true."
Shaw's lips stay firmly closed on a slight smile that yields to the allowance of, "My company has seen worse days, if they /are/ true. No rest for the weary, though: I have to keep working at it." After a swallow of tea, he puts the cup down again, with finality, and suggests, "Should we talk about what brings you here, Ms. Oyama?"
The slender hand moves the teacup, returning it to its saucer and the pair to the table. Yuriko sits back, hands folded gently again. Tranquility. Serenity. Submissiveness. The Japanese mystique. "I am searching for a man named William Stryker."
The name sinks into Shaw's smooth surface and vanishes with a ripple of puzzlement. "William Stryker? I've heard that name--"
"Colonel William Stryker," says Yuriko, gaze on Shaw behind the courteous, gentle mien. "Of the United States Military. He was listed as -- the phrase is MFA? Missing from Action? I was told you might have some knowledge of him, with your military connections."
"Missing in action -- MIA," Shaw corrects her, and his puzzlement shadows into a frown. He taps his thumb on the desk by his teacup; its silver-set onyx ring glitters and clicks on the wood. "Colonel Stryker . . . Yes, I might have met him, but I meet a lot of military types, Ms. Oyama, and they all blur together in my mind." The frown shifts subtly: he is regretful, abashed at his shortcomings. "I haven't been in Washington, D.C., in many months, and I assure you, the Pentagon and the Department of Defense don't come up here to see me. Mohammed always, always goes to that mountain."
Disappointment moves across Yuriko's expression, more telling in its betrayal than in its presence. Her gaze lowers; lashes fan black lace across the pale cheeks. "I see," she murmurs, reclaiming her tea. The china is silent, the steam a mute, sympathetic warmth on her face. "Perhaps, then, with your contacts in the Pentagon and the Department of Defense, you have heard of a Colonel Stryker's program of mutant experimentation?"
Shaw sucks in his breath and frankly stares before he can master his expression. "Excuse me," he apologizes for that breach, with a firm, firm headshake. "Ms. Oyama, indeed I have /not/. Mutant experimentation?" He tightens one hand on the other, straightens his shoulders, in a posture of taken-aback -- disgust? Surely so. Surely, for he drops his voice, as if they might be overhead, to venture, "That must be illegal, right? I don't have many illusions about what my government does, but not /that/. I think you were -- mis-advised, I fear. Or sent on a wild goose chase."
"Ah," says Yuriko, and regards Shaw with an unreadable opacity of expression, sere, remote, before inclining her head into polite regret. "I see. I apologize. I have wasted your time. You cannot help me. Perhaps you are correct, and it is only a ... a wild goose chase, as you say." The tea finds its saucer again, a finger ghosting across its lip to trace the perfect circle of its mouth. "I am unfamiliar with your laws. Is it illegal?"
"I do apologize," says a contrite Shaw, leaning forward to add emphasis to his words. His hands stay knotted together, though, and his blood pressure is tangibly through the roof, the perceptive might say. "You're the one who came to see me, asked for my help -- and I can't deliver. I /am/ sorry." His gaze drifts to the office's paired windows opposite the door behind his guest, and he shakes his head again in a thinner arc. "Now, I don't know, to answer your question. My gut reaction is /yes/, because there can't be many good reasons for the military to be mixed up in any kind of experimentation, let alone on mutants-- You understand, I stand strongly in favor of registration, containment, understanding mutant threats to this country, but even I--" black asp's eyes snap back to her, and there are teeth, there are gently revealed teeth, rueful, so even and white-bright "--even I have my limits. Some things are just beyond the pale, even if you want to dump all the undesirables in the sea. Don't you think?"
Yuriko Oyama looks back at Shaw, listens to the race of blood through that powerful frame, tastes the eddies of power and unfinished truths, and considers. "Undesireables," she says, thoughtfully. "Yes. The man has disappeared. I do not know if the program has. I had hoped that you, with your connections and reputation--" Regret trails fine fingertips through the voice, eliding the rounded curves of her accent.
Shaw lowers his head. "I'm sorry," he repeats, but it comes out cool and contained: an oyster's hoarded calm. "I can make inquiries . . . and then I have to worry where that might lead. Word leaks out that a prominent anti-mutant spokesman who also happens to be neck-deep in military contracts is looking into a program of mutant experimentation. . . . Do you see the problem?" He raps his knuckles gently on the desk and sits back. "It would look very bad, for me and for anyone who might come to the press's attention at the same time, who's been linked to me, even innocently."
The pearl of the Orient cants her head, tipping it -- innocent, innocently -- in grave-eyed concession. "It is understandable," Ms. Oyama says gently. "I do not doubt that it could cause great difficulties for you. I apologize for troubling you, Mr. Shaw. I will look elsewhere for my answers. --Your tea," she adds, child-solemn, "is excellent."
"You're very kind," Shaw replies with bluff good humor. "Especially since I've failed you so miserably. Well. My door is open if I can do something else for you -- say, with your family business?" He crafts an elaborate pause of consideration, head-tipped surprise. "It /is/ in pharmaceuticals, right? So what would they want with Colonel Stryker or his program?"
"Not the business owned by my family, Mr. Shaw," Yuriko says, leaning to replace the saucer on the table. She stands, departure imminent; the lightly tinted mouth turns in a smile, lighting by proxy that pale, exotic face. "Again, thank you for seeing me. And for your hospitality. I have inconvenienced you, I regret--"
Shaw climbs to his feet and quick reassurance: "No, not at all. A nice break from the routine." That delivered, he rests his fingertips' light tent on the desktop and nods formally. "Thank you for the visit, Ms. Oyama. Stacy can show you out. Have a good evening."
Yuriko bows, Japanese after all, and drifts out on a final, quiet note. "Good evening, Mr. Shaw." And then she is gone.
[Log ends.]
Appointment today with someone who was asking after William Stryker and a program of mutant experimentation. Brushed her off and added a veiled threat to keep her mouth shut, at least as far as my involvement in her quest goes. Black Knight met her and can give you a report to supplement mine, but I have to ask: is this about Wide Awake or something else?
4/4/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cloudy grey occluding Lower Manhattan meets its match in the brilliant lights that infuse the office buildings and turn glowing eyes out defiantly on the coming evening. In the lobby of one such building near Wall Street, the illumination is gentler, more natural, but no less bright on the smooth dark curve of reception desk and smooth dark head of the woman who helms it with quiet efficiency, a headset riding her ear and her eyes flickering between phone lines and infrequent visitors through the brass-and-glass revolving doors off the street.
The next figure that steps off that street belongs, insofar as tailoring and assurance can make her; belongs, too, in that ineffable air of familiarity that knows the corporate world and its privileged, efflugent air. Dressed in a pale grey pants suit and white coat, eyes covered by a pair of dark glasses, a young Asian woman passes through the revolving door and strikes for that oracle of knowledge: reception. "Sebastian Shaw?" a throaty alto murmurs, making a polite demand of the name.
"Your name, please?" is the receptionist's pleasant response, followed only after the last syllable by a placid look up at the visitor. A manicured finger rests easily, lightly, on a button of the main phone bank. The security guard loitering near the desk loiters a little closer: big, beefy, blond hair in a brush cut, blue eyes holding slightly bulbous assessment.
"Yuriko Oyama," the visitor replies, removing her glasses to bare the dark, slanted eyes of her race. Delicate features, youthful, perfect skin; she inclines her head to the receptionist in chilly, dispassionate courtesy before folding the arms of her lenses to tuck them away in a pocket. "I believe he is expecting me."
The receptionist shifts her gaze aside, to some list next to the phone, and then she produces a professional smile. "Yes, of course, Ms. Oyama. Eighth floor; you'll be met. Thank you for visiting Shaw Industries." The guard shifts his weight, patently intending to remain and watch until the visitor is safely swallowed by one of the elevators behind him, up and gone into someone else's domain -- someone else's problem.
The tycoon's visitor nods, acknowledgment and thanks in one brief salute, and crosses to the elevator to rest herself in silence. Time for other things to work: wheels, pulleys, motors, engines. The doors slide closed, erasing her from the lobby; the rise is swift, a model of efficiency. Yuriko watches lights flare behind numbers, stamping them out of darkness like foreshadowed stencils. At the appropriate floor, it stops. A bell rings. The doors open, and she steps out.
As promised, a man meets her, offering neither smile nor handshake, only a polite greeting. He is lean, brown, nondescript; his faded blue eyes encompass her, disdaining emotion for blank absorption. "Right this way, Ms. Oyama" he says and turns to lead her through the little elevator lobby, past a small navy-walled cube farm, down a corridor of closed doors interspaced with narrow, thick-glassed windows. . . . To a final door. The door. He knocks and opens without waiting for response, and his hand offers her egress: please.
Wordless, Yuriko follows, passed from one perfect automaton to the next. And at the end: the man behind the curtain? She steps through it with a cat's meticulous grace, deliberate without appearing so, self-aware without self-consciousness. The hands have made their way out of their pockets, the coat -- still worn -- bares the slim line of body between its part.
Shaw stands up from behind his desk and comes around it in no great hurry, led by a smile and a wave of healthy male pheromones and scent warmed by deep body heat. He does offer their visitor a hand to shake. "Ms. Oyama! Please, come in and have a seat. Can I offer you anything to drink?" While the man at the door quietly steps outside and away, back into the floor's end-of-business-day bustle.
"Mr. Shaw," the husky alto sounds again, greeting in turn with some small flexion of warmth. Politic, that, though the faint light that brightens Yuriko's expression serves to give it animation and softness: depth, warmth, a gentler personality. "No, I appreciate the offer. Thank you for seeing me," she adds, following the inevitable script of corporate courtesy. The hand that closes around Shaw's is fine-boned and firm, engulfed by his -- pale skin against darker -- before she retrieves it and drifts towards one of the suggested seats. "I know you are a very busy man."
"I am, but not too busy to host someone who's travelled so far to see me." Curiosity prickles faintly through Shaw's genial baritone reply, which follows her as he does, back around the desk and into his chair. He sits up and forward in it, making the leather squeak more, and clasps his hands attentively on the cleaned mahogany surface before him. His respiration is easy, but that little spike in heart rate, the jump of intrigue in blood's pulse-- "You're sure you don't want anything? There's water, tea, coffee. . . . I thought about having a little, myself. It would be no trouble to make one into two."
Hesitation marks the second demural, an uplifted hand and tilt of head that sketches negation -- and then swerves as suddenly, touched with the hint of rue. "I am in America," Yuriko recalls, "and I should be more American. Yes, thank you. If you are having some tea or water, I would be grateful. It is very difficult to remember," she adds in feminine, Japanese humility. The guest chair claims her; she folds into it with the telltale signs of training, the tedious and implacable rigors of a finishing school translated to habit.
The curiosity is briefly stronger, full enough to push up through his eyes' sable mask. Then Shaw nods acquiescence and thumbs the intercom ("Stacy, tea for two, please? Yes, herbal") without easing his attention from Yuriko . . . and it gentles into acceptance for the humility she's offering. Even his pulse steadies, and he smiles again, demure lips over even white teeth. "Not a problem, as I said. I don't want to keep you here longer than you want, waiting for what simple service we can provide you." The plural pronoun tantalizes: referring to the tea, of course, as suggested by the impatient flick of gaze to the door.
"I have been advised," Yuriko admits in that same meek vein, almond-dark gaze, raven-black head slightly lowered under that masculine regard, "that you prefer the American method of address, Mr. Shaw. It is very much like rudeness for my people, but I will attempt it, if you will accept my apologies in advance?" The opaque glance slips up through lashes, lit by a faint smile; Oyama tilts her head, hands folding restfully in her lap. "I do not wish to waste your time."
"You aren't," Shaw gives her absently. He stills a twitched tilt of black-suited shoulders and blinks. "'Advised.' You have done your homework. All for me, Ms. Oyama?"
The young woman looks apologetic. "I fear so, Mr. Shaw. It is family business, but it is still business. It would not be respectful of me to come unprepared for the meeting. Enough," she amends, "to learn how you prefer to be addressed, if it is within my capabilities."
Shaw says, "You're doing fine," with more than a trace of bemusement, and then he's rescued by the arrival of tea: a proper silver service set on the desk, arranged, and poured for them both by the young woman bearing it. As she leaves, he taps in a sugar cube and a little milk. "Smells good," he comments with the cup as a steam-shimmering shield before his face. Eyes shift behind it, and the flare of nostrils for reasons more than olfactory. "Shall we drink to family business, then? And prosperity for all involved."
"Health and harmony," Yuriko says, accepting her own without condiment. Behind her own veil of steam, senses spin and gyrate, briefly overwhelmed by the sweet herbal scents -- Shaw's sugar; Shaw's musk -- and dark eyes close over a blanked expression. "There are three things needed for happiness, my people say. Prosperity is only the one."
"And the other two?" Shaw sips, sets the cup down, keeps it within long, careful fingers' cradle.
Yuriko says, "Health and harmony." Fingers trail across the teacup, cradling it between their pads. She glances back up at Shaw, life returning for a small, seedling smile. "All three."
"My mistake; I thought you meant something else." He sounds unconcerned, politely edified, but Shaw's telltales are tipping a little higher again. "Perhaps I'll settle for just the third. It seems the easiest to achieve, at least in the business sphere."
"You have already achieved it," Yuriko murmurs, "if financial reports are true."
Shaw's lips stay firmly closed on a slight smile that yields to the allowance of, "My company has seen worse days, if they /are/ true. No rest for the weary, though: I have to keep working at it." After a swallow of tea, he puts the cup down again, with finality, and suggests, "Should we talk about what brings you here, Ms. Oyama?"
The slender hand moves the teacup, returning it to its saucer and the pair to the table. Yuriko sits back, hands folded gently again. Tranquility. Serenity. Submissiveness. The Japanese mystique. "I am searching for a man named William Stryker."
The name sinks into Shaw's smooth surface and vanishes with a ripple of puzzlement. "William Stryker? I've heard that name--"
"Colonel William Stryker," says Yuriko, gaze on Shaw behind the courteous, gentle mien. "Of the United States Military. He was listed as -- the phrase is MFA? Missing from Action? I was told you might have some knowledge of him, with your military connections."
"Missing in action -- MIA," Shaw corrects her, and his puzzlement shadows into a frown. He taps his thumb on the desk by his teacup; its silver-set onyx ring glitters and clicks on the wood. "Colonel Stryker . . . Yes, I might have met him, but I meet a lot of military types, Ms. Oyama, and they all blur together in my mind." The frown shifts subtly: he is regretful, abashed at his shortcomings. "I haven't been in Washington, D.C., in many months, and I assure you, the Pentagon and the Department of Defense don't come up here to see me. Mohammed always, always goes to that mountain."
Disappointment moves across Yuriko's expression, more telling in its betrayal than in its presence. Her gaze lowers; lashes fan black lace across the pale cheeks. "I see," she murmurs, reclaiming her tea. The china is silent, the steam a mute, sympathetic warmth on her face. "Perhaps, then, with your contacts in the Pentagon and the Department of Defense, you have heard of a Colonel Stryker's program of mutant experimentation?"
Shaw sucks in his breath and frankly stares before he can master his expression. "Excuse me," he apologizes for that breach, with a firm, firm headshake. "Ms. Oyama, indeed I have /not/. Mutant experimentation?" He tightens one hand on the other, straightens his shoulders, in a posture of taken-aback -- disgust? Surely so. Surely, for he drops his voice, as if they might be overhead, to venture, "That must be illegal, right? I don't have many illusions about what my government does, but not /that/. I think you were -- mis-advised, I fear. Or sent on a wild goose chase."
"Ah," says Yuriko, and regards Shaw with an unreadable opacity of expression, sere, remote, before inclining her head into polite regret. "I see. I apologize. I have wasted your time. You cannot help me. Perhaps you are correct, and it is only a ... a wild goose chase, as you say." The tea finds its saucer again, a finger ghosting across its lip to trace the perfect circle of its mouth. "I am unfamiliar with your laws. Is it illegal?"
"I do apologize," says a contrite Shaw, leaning forward to add emphasis to his words. His hands stay knotted together, though, and his blood pressure is tangibly through the roof, the perceptive might say. "You're the one who came to see me, asked for my help -- and I can't deliver. I /am/ sorry." His gaze drifts to the office's paired windows opposite the door behind his guest, and he shakes his head again in a thinner arc. "Now, I don't know, to answer your question. My gut reaction is /yes/, because there can't be many good reasons for the military to be mixed up in any kind of experimentation, let alone on mutants-- You understand, I stand strongly in favor of registration, containment, understanding mutant threats to this country, but even I--" black asp's eyes snap back to her, and there are teeth, there are gently revealed teeth, rueful, so even and white-bright "--even I have my limits. Some things are just beyond the pale, even if you want to dump all the undesirables in the sea. Don't you think?"
Yuriko Oyama looks back at Shaw, listens to the race of blood through that powerful frame, tastes the eddies of power and unfinished truths, and considers. "Undesireables," she says, thoughtfully. "Yes. The man has disappeared. I do not know if the program has. I had hoped that you, with your connections and reputation--" Regret trails fine fingertips through the voice, eliding the rounded curves of her accent.
Shaw lowers his head. "I'm sorry," he repeats, but it comes out cool and contained: an oyster's hoarded calm. "I can make inquiries . . . and then I have to worry where that might lead. Word leaks out that a prominent anti-mutant spokesman who also happens to be neck-deep in military contracts is looking into a program of mutant experimentation. . . . Do you see the problem?" He raps his knuckles gently on the desk and sits back. "It would look very bad, for me and for anyone who might come to the press's attention at the same time, who's been linked to me, even innocently."
The pearl of the Orient cants her head, tipping it -- innocent, innocently -- in grave-eyed concession. "It is understandable," Ms. Oyama says gently. "I do not doubt that it could cause great difficulties for you. I apologize for troubling you, Mr. Shaw. I will look elsewhere for my answers. --Your tea," she adds, child-solemn, "is excellent."
"You're very kind," Shaw replies with bluff good humor. "Especially since I've failed you so miserably. Well. My door is open if I can do something else for you -- say, with your family business?" He crafts an elaborate pause of consideration, head-tipped surprise. "It /is/ in pharmaceuticals, right? So what would they want with Colonel Stryker or his program?"
"Not the business owned by my family, Mr. Shaw," Yuriko says, leaning to replace the saucer on the table. She stands, departure imminent; the lightly tinted mouth turns in a smile, lighting by proxy that pale, exotic face. "Again, thank you for seeing me. And for your hospitality. I have inconvenienced you, I regret--"
Shaw climbs to his feet and quick reassurance: "No, not at all. A nice break from the routine." That delivered, he rests his fingertips' light tent on the desktop and nods formally. "Thank you for the visit, Ms. Oyama. Stacy can show you out. Have a good evening."
Yuriko bows, Japanese after all, and drifts out on a final, quiet note. "Good evening, Mr. Shaw." And then she is gone.
[Log ends.]