Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel (19 page)

“How you doin’ this morning?” Preston asked, keeping his voice low.

“I’m okay.” Paul started to turn away.

“ ’Cause if you want to talk about anything,” Preston said, lowering his gaze to catch Paul’s, “or if you see anything you want to tell me about—”

Paul recognized the look in the security guard’s eye. It was Loser’s Solidarity, and Paul had seen it before during his long fall from grace in academia. Back then some colleague who was even worse off than Paul would meet his eye in the hallway or across the faculty lounge, with a mournful, liquid gaze that said,
Aren’t we a couple of sad bastards?
This look had been worse than being ignored by old friends, worse even than being condescended to by graduate students, because it usually came from some haggard, aging adjunct at the end of his string or, worst of all, from some clapped-out, tenured old hack who, after forty years, had never risen above the rank of assistant professor and hadn’t published a book since the Eisenhower administration. It was a look that said,
It’s alright. Just lie down and die with the rest of us
.

Paul stepped sharply back as if Preston had tried to touch him. Who the fuck
is
this guy? Paul wondered. Another retired military man padding out his pension. The last thing I need, Paul thought angrily, is sympathy from some ex-master-sergeant. His throat seized up, but he managed to say, “I’m okay,” as he moved away across the lobby.

Back in his cube he kept his head down, happy to let the nubbly walls block out the wider horizons of the office. He left only once, to go to the bathroom. At the urinal he found his pulse racing as he strained to pee, and he emptied his bladder at last out of sheer willpower, in squirts and dribbles. The men’s room seemed too quiet, as if someone was waiting for him to leave. At first he couldn’t bring himself to look up at the ceiling, though he glanced up in the mirror as he washed his hands. The panels were in perfect order. Hurrying back to his cube, he plucked up the nerve to look into the empty cube next to his. The cubicle had been stripped bare. The computer and office chair were gone; not even a stray paper clip remained.
The bare desktop gleamed, and the shampooed nap of the carpet stood in pert swirls.

As he tried to concentrate on the RFP, Paul was aware of Olivia Haddock across the aisle, glaring wide-eyed at her own monitor, her spine rigid, her lumbar pillow jammed tight behind her backside. She battered the keys of her keyboard as if she were trying to drill them through her desktop. What could she be typing with such determination? The poor dead tech writer, the late, unlamented Dennis, had been hired because she couldn’t write code, so she certainly wasn’t finishing whatever he’d left undone. Indeed, Paul wondered if the tech writer had left her anything to do. No doubt Dennis had hung on, with his death’s-head gaze and his whistling breathing tube, until the last keystroke, in mortal hope of a final paycheck. It was as if Olivia had said to him, You can’t even
die
until you finish the job, as if Death himself had told him, No,
you
take this job and shove it.

So now Olivia could only be pretending to work, in the grip of desperation about the safety of her job. She knows I’m watching her, Paul thought. She must feel my gaze like needles on the back of her neck. He wanted to rise from his chair and cross the aisle and peer over her shoulder; he wanted to breathe his hot, accusing breath on the livid rim of her ear. She’s vamping, he thought. I know the signs. She’s trying to look busy, trying to look as if she hasn’t
killed a guy
, obsessively filling her screen with nonsense like that poor sap in
The Shining
, “All work and no play make Olivia . . .” Make Olivia
what
exactly? Less guilty? Innocent? Nobody’s innocent, thought Paul bitterly, listening to the angry clatter of her keyboard—certainly not Olivia.

The ghostly watermark on his own screen—
DRAFT DOCUMENT
—swam in and out of focus behind the clotted text of the RFP. When had Dennis had time to add it? Before or after he finished his own work? Was it the last thing he’d done before he staggered, gasping, back to his own cube and keeled over dead? None of the text in the RFP seemed to make any sense
to Paul now, or rather, it all seemed to say the same thing, over and over, marching slowly up the screen while the watermark shone through like a phantom:

All work and no play make Dennis dead.
All work and no play make Dennis dead.
All work and no play make Dennis dead. . . .

At lunchtime Paul left his cube in search of Callie, but he couldn’t find her. In Building Services, Ray merely shrugged when Paul asked where she was. So to avoid the oppressive bonhomie of another lunch with the Colonel and his sidekicks, Paul left the building and went across the street to a sandwich shop and ate half of a meatball sub that he couldn’t really afford. Afterwards he walked once around the GSD Building in the baking heat until he was covered all over in a fine sheen of sweat.

After lunch Paul again sought the comfort of Callie, if only for a moment. He peered through the mail room window on the first floor, where he didn’t see her, then he doubled back through the lobby and up the stairs to Building Services, where he didn’t see her again. Back at his desk, he bitterly enjoyed the almost unprecedented achievement of seeing Olivia’s cube empty while he was settling in to work. After a moment in his chair, in fact, he stood again, furtively surveyed the cube horizon, and then stepped across the aisle to peek at the document on Olivia’s computer. Her screen saver was running, a labyrinthine array of self-replicating pipes, and he nudged her mouse with a fingernail. The document popped into view, and Paul’s heart stopped: On Olivia’s screen, in a two-page display, Paul instantly recognized the numbered paragraphs of the RFP. The print was too fine to read, but the twin chevrons of the watermark bled through the text like a brand.

“Oh fuck,” muttered Paul, staggering back and catching himself in Olivia’s doorway. Pulse racing, knees trembling, he
trotted up the aisle towards Rick’s office. “Oh
fuck,”
he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It was still the tag end of lunch hour, and cubeland was mostly empty. He rattled past Renee’s cube without encountering her; the cubes of his three colleagues on the outsourcing project stood empty; not even Nolene was at her desk. Before he could calm himself, Paul erupted through the door of Rick’s office, only to be stopped short by the sight of Olivia hovering over Rick like a vampire. Rick’s gut was pressed against the edge of his desk; he had spread his elbows, and he drummed his fingers arrhythmically. His eyebrows wobbled as he scowled at a print copy of the RFP, spread across the desk like stunned prey. Olivia bent over his shoulder close enough to bite him, indicating a line of text with one razor-sharp talon. As Paul caught himself in the doorway, Rick continued to frown at the document, but Olivia looked up with the slow, steady, heartless gaze of a raptor.

“
Hel
-lo!” she trilled, in a piercing singsong. “You’re back!” She stood erect, away from Rick, and very pointedly glanced at her watch. “Did you get my note?”

Paul clutched the sides of the doorway, rocking on the balls of his feet, ready to flee. “What note?” he breathed.

“I messaged you,” she said, “to tell you we had a meeting with Rick”—she glanced at her watch again—“well,
now.”

Paul gripped the metal doorjamb tightly, afraid that if he let go his buckling knees would topple him to the floor. Rick was still pouting at the RFP, and now he lifted his gaze to Paul, his eyebrows bouncing nearly to his hairline.

“You comin’ or goin’ there, Paul?” he said. “Is you in, or is you ain’t?”

Paul pried his fingers off the doorway and slithered into the room. He pressed his back against the wall and crossed his arms awkwardly, then let them drop. Finally he shoved his hands in his pockets. He fixed his eyes on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look at Olivia.

“Way-ul.” Rick flung himself back in his chair. “Let’s get all our ducks in a barrel.” He beamed at Paul. “I’m happy to announce a reallocation of manpower—” Rick’s state-sponsored
sensitivity training pulled him up short like a leash. “Or womanpower. Or whatever. Y’all know what I mean.” He dropped his hand on the desk. “Anyhoo, as of today, Olivia is joining the RFP team as a consultant. Seems her other project . . .” Rick sucked his cheeks, gazing at a point in the middle of the room.

“Luckily,” Olivia volunteered, rescuing him, “Dennis was able to finish his work before he left us.” She pressed her palms together just below her breastbone, as if squeezing some poor, defenseless creature to death.

“That’s right!” said Rick, a little too loudly. He drummed his fingers once on his desk.

“Beta testing,” muttered Paul, glowering at the floor. He clenched his fists in his pockets.

“Sorry?” said Rick.

Paul swallowed against a dry throat and said, a little louder, “Beta testing. Dennis didn’t have a chance to
test
the program before he . . . before he . . .” He felt his face get hot.

“Testing the program wasn’t part of his job,” Olivia said, widening her eyes in Paul’s direction. She spoke as if to a child. “He was only hired to
write
it.”

Paul’s fists felt like rocks in his pockets. He lifted his hot gaze to Olivia and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“I reckon that’s all water over the roadway,” said Rick, and he hiked himself up to the desk again. “I just wanted you to know that Olivia here is going to be sitting in with us from now on, giving us a new perspective on thangs.” Rick glanced at Paul, his eyebrows dancing. “I’m counting on you, Paul, to fill her in on the details, since you’re the tech writer and you know the innards of the thing—”

“Rick gave me the password,” interrupted Olivia, “so I could print a copy off the server. While I was waiting for you to come back from lunch.” She leveled her huntress’s gaze at Paul again. “Did you know, Paul, that paragraph 4.3.3 in ‘Parts, Supplies, and Fluids’ is identical to paragraph 6.2.3 in ‘Repair Parts Management’?”

Paul squeezed his fists bloodless and muttered, “There’s some redundancy built into the document—”

“Whatever.” Olivia squared her shoulders and fixed her gaze on the top of Rick’s head. “Is that all for now?”

“What?” Rick was caught off guard, flicking his fingernail at a spot on the fat end of his tie.

“Do you need me anymore right now, Rick?” said Olivia. “I have a
lot
of work to do.”

“Git along, then!” cried Rick. “Y’all get back to work and we’ll reconvene at a later, uh, a later . . .” He waved his hand vaguely, then gathered up the loose sheets of the RFP in both hands and rapped the edges against his desk. Olivia took the pages from him and maneuvered around the desk towards the door. Paul could feel her force field press up against his; he could almost hear the hum. He pushed himself against the wall as Olivia minced past him, her spine taut, her chin lifted, the RFP pressed to her bosom like a breastplate. When she was out the door, Paul sagged away from the wall and painfully unclenched his hands; his fingernails had squeezed little, white half-moons into the heels of his palms. Rick cast about his desk and grabbed a folder at random; he spread it wide and dove into it. Paul edged up to the front of the desk, and Rick acted as if he hadn’t noticed, lifting a page of the document in the file folder to peer unseeing at the one underneath. Paul knew he was shamming because Rick was reading the file upside down.

“Am I working
for
that woman,” Paul asked, his voice low and tight, “or
with
her?”

“Hm?” Rick blinked up at Paul.

“You heard me.”

Rick’s eyebrows wobbled, and he drew a deep breath. “Well, son, you’re working for the Texas Department of General Services at their sole discretion. So just like me, and Olivia, and everybody else in this cheer building, you do whatever’s necessary to serve the people of the great state of Texas.”

He held Paul’s gaze until Paul looked away. The twisted limbs of the dying oak beyond Rick’s office window seemed to be reaching for him.

“Is that all?” Rick lowered his eyes to the file folder.

Paul leaned over the desk and, with both hands, turned Rick’s file right side up. Then he wheeled out the door. Back in his own cube, Paul could
feel
Olivia across the aisle working her pen like a scalpel through the RFP. He heard the busy tap and scratch of her pen, heard it stop, heard her utter a bonechilling “
Hm
.”

I can’t do this, Paul thought. I can’t sit here all afternoon while she does
that
. Callie, where the hell are you? He stood and snatched three soda cans from the row of empties against the back of his desk. Squeezing the cans together between his hands, he bolted around the corner into the fluorescent glare of the elevator lobby. He half expected to see Dennis the Dead Tech Writer beyond the tall window, smoking a cigarette and laughing at him, but the landing was empty. On wobbly knees Paul approached the recycling box, a waist-high, square-topped cardboard shaft with a single, can-sized hole in its fitted lid.
ALUMINUM ONLY
, it read across the front,
NO BOTTLES PLEASE, NO TRASH
. Paul set the cans on top of the lid, and he violently flattened one of them between his hands, raising sharp angles against his palms. Squeezing his lips bloodlessly together, he jammed the can through the lid, expecting to hear it hit the other cans in the box.

Only he heard nothing. After the
pop
it made going through the hole, the can had made no metallic
clink
of contact with the other cans. It made no sound at all. Paul stood very still for a moment, then leaned over and peered into the hole. All he saw was blackness, so he bent lower and turned his ear to the opening. He still heard nothing, but was that a slight breeze he felt, dank and cold, brushing his earlobe?

He cradled the second can in the curl of his fingers. Without crushing it, he gingerly stuck it through the hole and held it there for a moment. Then, at the instant he released it, he jerked forward over the hole and peered in. Again, nothing, so he turned his ear once more to the hole, listening, listening, until he almost thought he heard, after a long, breathless wait, a tiny, distant, echoing
clink!