Mind Over Ship (40 page)

“But we
do
know what the donald’s ‘candy’ is.”

Fred took another look at the flask.

“Yes, Flush, specifically Raspberry Flush, a flavor you won’t find at any NanoJiffy because it doesn’t officially exist.”

“Then, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s Flush all right. If you or anyone else, who is not a donald, drank it, you’d be camping out on the toilet as you’d expect. But to a donald, you’re holding five hundred doses of the most mind-bending high you could ever imagine. They would kill to get their hands on it. The aslams and xiangs hate it, though, because the donalds get even randier than usual when they’re on it, and I’m told that’s a sight to behold.

“The task we have for you requires your actual physical presence on the docks, not your fecking proxy. So, let’s fix that. We are going to supply our freaky little friends with a steady source of Raspberry Flush. You won’t have anything to do with that. You won’t even be aware of its arrival, except that the flasks will arrive in shells like this one, and only your swipe will disarm them. The little tykes will need your realbody presence and cheery cooperation in order to get their buzz on. They’ll do anything to secure a supply of Raspberry Flush, even help you to reinstate realbody russ patrols. When they do, get yourself assigned to one of the spars servicing Oship freight and cryocapsules.”

“Is that all?” He spoke with sarcasm, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Yes. Nothing to it. Things will run pretty smooth after that. You’ll mostly just be around to handle glitches and, of course, to keep the donalds in line.”

Fred was about to close the shell, but the Veronica proxy said, “Wait. Look under the Flush.” Fred lifted the flask. Tucked into the padding under it was an ether-wrapped package with the spider logo of the Spectre Corporation. It contained a brand-new military-grade sidekick. “It’s so you can reach me,” the proxy said before vanishing.

The Spectre sidekick was a dream. A model favored by paramilitary organizations around the world, it was much closer to the HomCom blacksuit controller than the cheap, gutless sidekick that TECA issued its port security. Suddenly Fred’s visor cap fed him ten times more useful information than it had previously been able to. Now he could image concealed weapons, energy fields, cables and conduits behind walls, heat trails, concentrations of gas, and any number of other objects. He could make iris scan identification and voice analyses. The Spectre boasted a built-in lie detector, EMT adviser, bioevidence collector/compiler, access to proprietary tech and crime libraries, language translator, and much, much more. Happily, it could piggyback unobtrusively on his TECA sidekick. No wonder, as the firm’s advertising slogan claimed,
SPECTRE
means
RESPECT
.

WITH HIS SPECTRE set to image EM fields, Fred surveyed the corridors that led to the donalds’ blister. Wherever he found a comlink shadow, he plotted it on his map. Deep inside what he had come to regard as donald territory, he found the site of his earlier humiliation. There was no one there, but he was sure that that wouldn’t last long. He entered the blister and swam to the rosette of windows. While he waited, he double-checked the lock plate of the briefcase shipping shell he’d brought, as well as the charge of his omnitool.

A trio of donalds arrived first and blocked the exit, just like before. Fred started his Spectre recorder. More donalds arrived within minutes, about fifteen of the bastards in all. They spread out but kept their distance and mocked him without mercy. A few took spittle potshots at him, and these he singled out for positive identification. The excitement in the blister mounted, like at a packed stadium before the main event. Fred managed to remain somewhat calm through a stress-reduction mantra he had learned at the Russ Academy.

Before long, the chief donald showed up, the one who had assaulted Fred and who he had come to think of as Top Ape. Fred had decided to imitate the donald’s spare use of words, and before Top Ape got too close to him, Fred raised his hand like a traffic cop. Top Ape ignored Fred’s signal to halt, of course, and approached him to within a tail’s length. He grinned at Fred, exposing rows of teeth filed to points. Fred grinned back.

With everyone in place, Fred started the show. Like a magician setting up a trick, he slowly raised the small shipping shell over his head and wordlessly pointed at its lockplate and antitampering glyphs. His audience, eager to get to the good part, voiced their impatience with hoots and curses, but Top Ape seemed curious, and he popped his leathery cheek for silence. Fred raised his other hand and brought his open palm down in a grand sweeping pass over the lockplate. The bolts snapped, and he opened the case. When he pulled the flask of Raspberry Flush from it, like a rabbit from a hat, the crowd gasped, jaws dropped, and the blister fell silent enough to hear the drone of the ventilation system. Holding the flask of ruby-colored elixir aloft, Fred felt a rush of power like nothing he’d ever known. But the initial shock was wearing off, and he quickly returned the flask to the shell and closed, locked, and armed it with practiced efficiency.

The donalds roared their rage and surged toward him. But they halted at once when, like magic, Fred’s other hand now held his omnitool plasma cutter, its five-cm torch glowing like a sunny prick.

“Noooo!” cried the donalds in one voice. Even Top Ape was alarmed. Fred prolonged the moment as long as he could, wringing out of it every last drop of satisfaction, and then he plunged the cutter into the side of the shell.

With a
whump!
the case shell expanded into a sphere, and a jet of superheated pink gas screamed through the puncture hole. Fred let go of the shell, which ricocheted around the blister like a rudderless rocket. It pummeled the donalds, blistering the tails of those who tried to catch it and scalding those foolish enough to inhale its vapor trail.

The donalds screamed their rage at Fred, but no one dared move against him. When Top Ape had had enough, he silenced the blister with another pop of his cheek. He grinned at Fred with the same confident malevolence as before. It was a bluff that Fred was only too eager to call. Collecting saliva in his mouth, Fred stared into Top Ape’s laughing eyes, pursed his lips, and spat a big, juicy wad at him. His aim was true, he hit him between the eyes, and Top Ape’s expression flashed from shocked disbelief, to insane fury, to impotent rage.

Fred waited to see if Top Ape had any more bluster in him. He didn’t seem to, so Fred spoke at last. “Three nonnegotiable demands. One, call a truce with Applied People clones. Two, convince your handlers to reinstate realbody foot patrols. Three, get me assigned to Space Gate DN. Got it?”

Top Ape nodded. Then, to seal the deal, Fred shoved off from the blister window, aiming his trajectory to collide with Top Ape, almost hoping the donald wouldn’t give way. But he did, and Fred sailed through the
crowd unmolested. He paused at the door to issue a final warning, “Any disrespect to any of my brothers is disrespect to me, and I’ll be watching.”

AND ANOTHER THING: Fred’s new Spectre was able to pick up channels and forums blocked by his TECA sidekick. Some of them were devoted to the russ germline and offered content Fred had never even heard of before.

Zoranna Alblaitor rarely spent time at her Applied People headquarters in Fresno. It was Nicholas’s job to run their business, and he spared her the minor decisions and routine matters. When she did come in, it was usually by holopresence from her home office in the city. During the last month, however, she had come in every day in realbody. Lately, she was a driven woman. Applied People’s slide in the market was building momentum, ever since Capias World had bought out her chief competitor, McPeople. Applied People’s troubles were spreading to Europe and South America as well, where the company had once been dominant in its field. In the Asian market, where it had never been strong, there was a complete collapse. Unless the situation was turned around soon, Applied People’s seventy-five-year reign as the world’s premier supplier of iterant labor was over.

Zoranna was determined not to allow that to happen. She hired consultants, ordered customer surveys, ran dozens of E-Pluribus scenarios, and launched a multi-modal advertising campaign. She tinkered with her contract rates and ran a series of shock promotions. She even began to contribute to high-visibility charitable causes. Nothing seemed to work, and Nicholas pleaded with her to ease up a little and let him handle the situation.

She ignored him. She also ignored his objection to keeping Uncle Homer in the office. The dog’s condition had grown pathetic. Applied People’s financial position was so weak and its employees so demoralized that the dog no longer even had the strength to claw at its diseased skin. It just lay there on its side with its tongue hanging out. What had once been Nicholas’s brilliant modeling metaphor of company-wide health was now an indictment of his decades-long mismanagement.

One morning, one of Zoranna’s jerry couriers delivered a high-security
package into her hands. It was from a private investigation firm she had hired to dig into Jaspersen’s recent activities. But instead of the expected report, when she unlocked and opened the package, she found a datapin and a note written in a childish scrawl.

Dear Zoranna,

I now see, to my shame and horror, that I have unjustly wronged you. I canceled my many labor contracts with your firm based on false accusations, and I will work to undo the harm I have caused. Please view the material on this pin with Nicholas and no one else. Only your ID will activate it and only inside a null room. Secrecy is of the utmost importance in this matter.

Sincerely, Ellen Starke

 

 

“What do you make of that?” Zoranna asked.

Make of what?
Nicholas replied.
All I see is a blank sheet of paper.

ZORANNA DIDN’T TELL him why they were going into the office null suite. She only told him to make up a datacube mirror of himself for her to take in with her. He argued all the usual reasons as to why she shouldn’t put herself through the stress of a purge, but in the end he knew that she knew that all of his objections boiled down to just one: the visola would purge not only nits and spybots from her body but him too. Since their rubbing oil incident, he had persuaded her to install the standard set of biometry implants, strictly for health monitoring. They offered none of the sensory-motor feedback of his own custom implants, but they were better than nothing.

The Applied People null suite was a large conference room with all the amenities. It was regularly used by her senior staff, but Zoranna had not been in it for years. Once through the lock, she placed Nicholas’s datacube on the conference table and fetched herself a flask of Flush. An hour of purging later, she inserted Ellen’s datapin into the player and swiped it. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was safe to say that the last person she expected to see was Eleanor K. Starke. Nevertheless, there she was, looking fit and hale, accompanied by the attorney general persona of her Cabinet.

Nicholas immediately asked, “Are you an archival sim?”

“Only my persona is,” Eleanor said. “I am alive but currently between bodies.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Nicholas asked. “Between bodies.”

“That will become apparent to you soon enough, but it’s not what I came to discuss.”

“What did you come to discuss?”

“A possible joint counteroffensive against a common enemy.” She turned to Cabinet who provided Nicholas and Zoranna a thumbnail account of recent events, including the identity of Eleanor’s attacker.

When Cabinet finished, Zoranna said, “Andrea Tiekel? E-P? This is astonishing. You can prove these charges?”

“More or less.”

They were quiet around the table for a few moments, and then Nicholas said, “You claim that they are our
common
enemy. How are Andrea Tiekel and E-P our enemy?”

“Andrea was the one who planted the idea in my daughter’s head that Zoranna was responsible for killing me.”

“What? Me? That’s insane.”

“I know it is, but Andrea used my daughter’s traumatized condition and the fact of our past business rivalry to convince her. That was why Ellen fired Applied People employees from my worldwide labor force. And why she has worked tirelessly until my recent return to convince her business colleagues to do likewise.

“Andrea also assaulted Bishop Meewee,” Eleanor went on, “to learn my secrets, and she convinced Ellen to sell Heliostream to her.”

“Why does Andrea want Heliostream?” Nicholas said.

Eleanor smiled. “That’ll have to wait for a later discussion.”

“That’s not fair,” Zoranna said. “How do we know that you’re really Eleanor Starke, that this isn’t some sort of trick?”

Eleanor replied, “You and I are old friends and rivals, Zoe, yet in all that time we never established a means of verifying each other’s identity. I regret that now because I can’t easily prove to you that it’s really me. Instead I will need to rely on my persuasive abilities to convince you. Consider this, I believe Andrea Tiekel has made you a generous offer for Applied People.”