Blood Zero Sky (3 page)

“Dammit,” I murmur. One less employee means one thing: more work for the rest of us.
And Dagny was probably the strongest member of my team—although apparently HR’s Profitability Department didn’t think so.

“I can’t believe they got Dagny. She has to have a higher credit limit than me,” Carter muses nervously.

“Pretty skirt. I wonder if they’ll let her take it to the work camp,” Kate says.

“Dagny was good. It’s going to be rough without her,” Miller says, then looks at me. “What do you think, May?”

Instantly, every set of eyes in the room snaps toward me, the CEO’s daughter. I feel their stares burning into me, but I can find no words.

“One IC, like they’re fighting over it,” I manage to say finally, tapping the screen in the middle of the table with my finger. “And put them both in metal swimsuits or something—him in a Speedo, her in a bikini. Make the fireworks green to match the color of the IC. Do a couple of different mock-ups and send them to Shaw’s people, see what they think. ”

The members of my team all squint down at the ICs in their hands for a moment, letting their crosses translate their thoughts into text, which will be saved for them to refer to later.

“Anything else?” I ask gruffly, and they shake their heads, all of them carefully avoiding eye contact with me. “Good. Thirty minutes for lunch. Go.”

After everyone gets up and exits, I rise and linger for a moment, pacing the room. There’s an uncomfortable pain in my chest, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s causing it. Certainly, it’s not the fact that Dagny was repossessed. Human Resources is constantly evaluating all N-Corp employees. In the event that a person’s debt load (plus interest) outstrips the profit they generate the Company, then they’re designated an “unprofitable.” They get relieved of their possessions and transferred to a work camp. It’s a perfectly natural and reasonable solution. As my father has always pointed out, the greatest crime of all would be to let lazy and greedy people leach off Company profits and mess up the bottom line. With a repossession, the Company gets paid back the money they’ve loaned out, and the worker gets to atone for his or her lapse in productivity. It’s a perfect trade. Problem and solution.

So why is my heart racing? Why do I feel like I’m about to throw up?

I pace for a moment longer. The feeling has almost passed when I notice something under Dagny’s chair and pick it up. It’s one of her shoes, a charcoal-colored N-Splash Pump, fall collection, the one with the ivory heel. Not a bad shoe—for a mid-credit-level tie-girl like Dagny. I drop it in the trash as I head out of the room. After all, she won’t be needing it any time soon.

Walking briskly down the hall, I’m feeling much better, as if throwing out that shoe got rid of whatever was causing my discomfort. And why not? I have nothing to be upset about. HR will send me a replacement employee automatically within two weeks. There are people all over the world who would love to step into a glamorous, mid-credit-level job like Dagny’s. And people get repossessed every day.

The real question is, what should I have for lunch, baked ziti at N-Roma or stir-fry at N-Orient Café?

~~~

I return here over and over again, to this long-ago place.

A breeze cuts the night, breathing into the white sails, filling them. The air is warm across my face. The only sounds are the slight rustle of the jib and the whisper of the hull through the water. Dad’s cigar smoke smells sweet, comforting. If he’s still smoking, that means I must only be—what? Nine? Ten years old?

He sits, one lax hand on the boat’s oversized steering wheel, the other gripping his cell phone—this is before introduction of the ICs. His voice is deep and gravelly, but there’s something comforting in its sonorous rumble.

“Jimmy, mark my words. The shareholders mean nothing. They’ll follow us wherever we lead them. The merger is happening. . . . No, like I said, I’ll be back in the office on Wednesday. You’re going to take care of this. You’re the one with the golden tongue, buddy. . . . What? You’re goddamned right—or, G. D. right, I mean. And you can tell Yao I’ll be back on Wednesday, not a minute sooner. I’m teaching May to sail. . . . Of course she can sail; she’s my daughter! She’s a goddamned conquistador!”

The dark shape of his body turns toward me for a second, then back.

“My shrink said I should spend some quality time with her. I told him, ‘Bullshit, my little girl is doing fine—more than fine—she’s going to be the goddamn—er, G. D. president of the Company. She’s going to own us all one of these days!’ But here I am anyway, and here I’ll stay until Wednesday. You tell them if they don’t like it they can go piss up a rope. Now stop bugging me before I run us into a damned rock. . . . Okay, buddy. Cheers.”

He shuts off his phone, takes a puff of his cigar. I lean over the edge of the stern—Dad won’t let me say “back,” it has to be “stern”—and stare into the black water. The sky above and the foam below are tinged with pink—Dad says no matter how far we sail, we’ll never quite escape the stain of city lights.

There!

I gasp. Below the foam, there’s something amazing in the wake. A magical green light shines among the churning bubbles.

Of course, I’ll later learn that this is just phosphorescence caused by a type of plankton or something that glows when it gets stirred up, but today, and for years to come, I’ll truly, fervently believe that this is proof of magic. I’m on a path marked by magic, and if I look closely enough, I’ll be able to see it all around me. Pointing down to the radiant froth, breathless, I turn to my father—but he speaks before I get a chance.

“May,” he says through cigar-clenching teeth, “grab the wheel so I can take a leak.”

Awed by this new responsibility, I jump up, dodging lanyards and winches, and grip the wheel with my tiny hands, just like Dad taught me. He wordlessly tosses his cigar into the drink—we never call it “the water,” it has to be “the drink”—and lumbers down into the cabin. His urine starts up. I like the sound.

“Hey, May?” he says, his voice muffled.

“Hey what?” I say. He taught me to answer like that.

His voice drifts up from the cabin below: “I know you’re different, but don’t ever let the other kids give you crap about it, alright?”

Right now I don’t really understand what he means by “different.” In a few years it’ll make sense, but by then it’ll be too late. For now, I think maybe he means I have special powers, like Superman or something.

“Okay,” I say.

This is the only time in my life he will ever mention my “difference.”

Sounds float up to me: he zips up his fly, he cracks another beer.

I steer us straight through the dark on a path marked with magical light.

~~~

I walk the shopping plaza’s marbled halls. The grand, vaulted ceiling soars 120 feet above me, smooth white buttresses holding at bay a fragmented, glass-clamped night sky.

My IC beeps, and the screen shows that it’s Randal calling again.

I understand his anxiety about the presentation tomorrow morning; God only knows what will happen when we tell the Company’s board that they’re headed for the first financial loss in a generation. But talking about it endlessly with my madly neurotic best friend won’t help. When he’s stressed, he rambles and stutters and pulls his own hair, and it drives me nuts.

Me, when I’m stressed out, I wander the shopping plaza.

I ignore the call.

Amid the crush of countless milling shoppers, a couple walks past me, holding hands, all perfect hair and plastic skin. Do I imagine it, or are their eyes vacant, windows into the souls of mindless dolls? (It’s the pills that do it. Smiles on their faces and nothing behind their eyes. N-Pharm, at your service.) Their lips move, but they don’t speak to one another. Each of them is talking to someone else on their ICs. The man mumbles about interest rates, the woman chirps about the fall line, and they pass me by.

My gut knots up as they drift into periphery, and my neck seizes with pain and tension. The hatred, the contempt I feel for these people scares me, but it isn’t their vapidity that bothers me. No, it’s their love. Because like all the couples I see in this place they can be together openly, and they take that blessing for granted.

They’re gone, and I pass a planter where a tall palm tree grows, surrounded by a bristling pot of fake flowers. I pass a bench. I pass a makeup store with a tall, thoroughbred of a woman standing out front handing out samples of lip gloss. She gives some packets to a group of teenage girls as they pass, favoring them with a smile dripping with self-satisfied boredom. When I pass, she doesn’t even hold out a packet.

In the dark hollows of my heart, a voice cackles at her:
You bitch, you don’t even know: I’ll be a Blackie one day.
And I hate her for not noticing me, not seeing me.

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised by her not handing me lip gloss: I’m dressed like a man.

Women wearing pants went out of fashion years ago, when N-Style first decided to go with gender-specific clothing as a matter of policy. Since then, Cranton studies showed that nonconformist dress was a workplace distraction and a drag on productivity, and the practice was strictly forbidden by the HR handbook.

Unfortunately, it’s only when I’m wearing pants and a tie with my hair pulled back and stuffed under a hat like this that I truly feel like myself. It’s my release, my happy place. And, yes, maybe the forbidden nature of the act adds to the thrill.

So far I haven’t been caught. But even if my dirty little secret were to get back to Blackwell and his HR cronies, I have plenty of credit to pay whatever fines they might charge me, and they wouldn’t dare give me a demotion—not me, the daughter of CEO Fields.

Thinking of my father, I take out my IC and try to call him again. Again, his voicemail greets me. Ever since Randal’s revelation I’ve been trying to get a hold of Dad, to warn him, to get his advice. I’ve left messages at his office and at his house. I’ve sent them to his IC. No response. Typical. He’s too busy for me. Well, fine—he can be blindsided by my news like everyone else.

“Entry fee: fifty dollars. Your account has been debited,”
a synthesized voice croons as I enter N-Lumin, a candle shop.

The disembodied voice belongs to Eva, the artificially intelligent avatar who acts as my interface with the Company network and greets me from speakers hidden all over the N-Corp empire. She also lives in my IC, as my digital personal assistant. She greets me at the entrance to every Company building, and reads my mail to me, and reminds me of appointments. She’s everywhere, like a computer-based stalker following every Company employee in the world around during every minute of every day. God, how I hate her.

“Welcome, Miss Fields,”
she says, and I roll my eyes.

No one seems to notice that I’m not May Fields at all, but perhaps her long-lost, slightly effeminate brother.

I’m only a few steps into the store when raucous laughter echoes behind me, and I turn to the entrance of the store in time to see three squadmen amble past. Silver stars hang from large chains around their necks against their black, military-style shirts. The chrome and mother-of-pearl inlaid grips of the guns on their hips glint as they pass. Their baseball caps, each black and emblazoned with a white-embroidered “HR,” are cocked low over their eyes. These young men—each probably no older than eighteen years—walk slowly, joke loudly. A woman walking toward them changes her course, giving them plenty of space.

One of them sees me staring and looks back at me, his eyes filled with cold mirth. I don’t want to look away, don’t want to give him the satisfaction of bowing to his alpha-dog status, but I can’t help it.

Their strident voices fade, blend into the cacophony of bland music and inane conversation and disappear. With a hiss, I release the breath I hadn’t been aware of holding. My neck aches with tension.

All these years, and the squads still do that to me.

I pick up a red candle, sniff it. Coconut and cherry—or something like that. The smell reminds me of her, and I inhale again.
Kali.

I close my eyes, thinking of her, of summertime and the smell of her skin when she would come in from the sun, of the taste of her lips and the salt of her sweat and the feeling of giddy, electric fear at the thought of being caught in the divine act that was supposed to be so wrong but was really so right. Sweet Kali, long gone.

I put the candle down, then pick it back up. I’ll buy it, burn it tonight for her, and send a prayer her way, wherever she is. Whenever I think of her, I fear the worst.

The register is at the back of the store, and I weave my way through what must be fifty people crammed into the little shop, around table after table filled with elaborate candelabras, candles, pricks of quivering light. Before stepping up to the counter I sniff and blink my tears away.

Then I perform the checkout ritual without a second thought. Start by stepping on the black square. There’s no tingling, no pain, no feeling whatsoever as the checkout computer scans the black cross on my face, extracting all my information: name, age, credit history, medical information, buying habits and preferences, criminal record, and Company account information. Eva’s disembodied voice says: “
Welcome, Miss Fields
,” and I set the candle on the plastic shelf in front of me, wait for the sound of the beep, then place the candle in a plastic bag and leave. As I step out of the store, Eva’s eerie, endlessly friendly voice is there, too:

“
Thank you, Miss Fields. Please come again
. “

Even though the cross-identification program was my dad’s baby, even though I know it cuts crime, saves time and money, and sets apart all N-Corp debtor-workers from the unprofitables, there’s something disconcerting in never being able to escape my own name.

My IC goes off again, and this time I answer the call.

“Randal! Relax, would you? Everything is going to be fine!”

But even as the words leave my mouth, part of me knows I’m lying. Everything isn’t going to be fine. It never was. It never will be.