New Title 32 (3 page)

Llewellyn? What the…?

It was my own fault. I had been so busy staying on top of everything, I’d never noticed her last name. I switched to the personnel database and pulled up her record. Born in Vancouver. Dual Canadian and American citizenship. Masters in programming from UC Santa Barbara. Interned for three years with Llewellyn Industries doing application development. Letter of recommendation from Josephine Llewellyn, CEO, Llewellyn Industries. Previous residence Gilead, BC. Emergency contacts were Aerin and Angus Cullan, Santa Barbara, California. Mother and stepfather.

Damn it. She would have been a great replacement for Pete.

I closed the file. She hadn’t tried to hide who she was, which made no sense if she was here as an industrial spy. Nadia did good work, and I needed her. I got up and looked out the window.

Find their weakness and exploit it
.

The Llewellyns knew more about me than I did about them. Nadia could help clear some of the fog of war off our playing area. I might even be able to get her to give me an insider’s perspective on this whole affair. Friends close, enemies closer and all that. Besides, she
would
be a great replacement for Pete. If she was an example of the kind of workers the Llewellyn family produced, I’d need every one I could lay hands on.

A few minutes later, I waved Nadia in and closed the door behind her. Once again, my side table hosted our meeting.

Nadia got straight to business. “I was a little surprised to see Geneva in the lobby. Did Auntie Josephine make you an offer you can’t refuse?”

I nodded. “Pretty much. How do you know Ms. Rolling Thunder?”

“She’s my mother’s bodyguard, personal attorney, and life manager. Mother…has some memory issues. Traumatic brain injury resulting from a gunshot wound to the head during a bar fight. Geneva helps keep her life in order. Whatever Geneva came to talk to you about, it’s important enough for Mother to do without her assistance for a whole day. My aunt Josephine is one of the few people Mother would do that for.”

I let that digest for a while before asking, “Do you have any idea what Geneva might have meant by saying her employer did her own wetwork?”

She didn’t flinch. “It means my mother has a…respectable body count. Not as high as her husband Angus has, but he was in the military. If it helps any, the people in my mother’s ledger were far from innocent. Most were armed when they died. And that’s all I’m comfortable saying on this topic.”

I looked out the window, remembering the sight of my arrow punching through Vikan’s head, and the scream of a man I’d just thrown off a half-mile-high cliff. I remembered the feel of my sword, slicing through bone and flesh on its way into another man’s heart. The weight of the steering wheel in my hand as I yanked it over, rolling my Cherokee in order to kill Randall. The satisfaction—the
glee
—I’d felt watching Thain’s undead minions rip him to shreds and devour him.

Database administrators aren’t supposed to rack up a body count, but there it was. I never enjoyed killing—well, except for Thain—but I didn’t feel guilty anymore about having to do it. I could even describe the people I’d killed the same way: armed, and far from innocent.

I looked up and said, “My hands aren’t clean either. I can’t judge your mother’s actions. I wouldn’t want someone judging me based on the fact that I chose kill instead of be killed.” For a moment I wondered what the hell her mother did for a living. Something told me she wasn’t a soccer mom. I changed the subject. “So, what’s the plan you wanted to discuss?”

She grimaced. “It might be moot. I didn’t know Geneva was coming. Did Auntie Josephine threaten you with an embargo?”

“Would it have involved her asking me who runs Bartertown?” I smirked and shook my head at her glare. “That specific word has never come up, but Geneva did say no Llewellyn personnel would be allowed to work on
Living Land
if I accept this offer. Is that what you mean?”

Nadia shook her head. “No, but we still need to work fast. I want to get one group of Llewellyn employees to work on optimizing the art assets, and a second to take on the code. I think we can reach a basic level of playability in six weeks and a functional demo in ten.”

“Six weeks?” I stared at her. “I’d love to believe those numbers, but even with proper assets, we’re a long way from a playable demo.” I shook my head. “Right now we’d be hard-pressed to come up with an animated demo film.”

“No. We need a game.” She started to say something, but pulled it back. Straightening her shoulders, she said, “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”

I put on my best mock-English accent. “Always.”

“No offense, but you can’t even keep Mitch in line. Josephine is going to grind you to dust.”

I shook my head. “There’s an issue with Mitch. It’s…”

“Complicated?” Nadia shook her head. “No, it isn’t. He’s destroying the company and he needs to be cut loose.”

“He has a contract,” I said. “I’m embarrassed to say it, but I extended his contract before I knew how outrageous his demands were. I thought I was smart enough not to need a lawyer. Unless I can fire him for cause, his exit clause will bankrupt the company.”

“You need a better lawyer. Hoping he just screws up isn’t much of a plan.”

I smiled through the irritation. “How would Josephine handle our buddy Mitch?”

Walls went up behind Nadia’s eyes. “She…would convince him to take a buyout offer.”

“Just like that?” I shook my head. “I had no idea she could be so
persuasive. You’re not leaving a step out, are you? Maybe something involving a horse head on his pillow?”

“She’d never do that. Too much forensic evidence.” She tried to laugh the idea off, but the attempt fell flat. She took a deep breath, exhaling through pursed lips. “Sorry, bad joke. What I’m trying say is that Josephine wouldn’t stop until she got rid of him. If she had to, she’d close the company rather than allow someone like Mitch to have power over her.”

“That is one option I’ve considered. To get back on track, do you have any advice on what to do with Josephine?” I smiled and hoped Nadia would go along with the change in subject. Rose had already threatened to pull Mitch apart and eat him rather than pay out his contract. It was a tempting thought, but I have this pesky commitment to the triumph of intellect and romance to live up to.

A flash of relief flitted across Nadia’s face. “Accept the offer, but make getting
Living Land
to release a non-negotiable demand. Work with her on how and when, but stick to that demand. You have to play hardball with Auntie Josephine. She will trample all over you if she thinks you’re weak—and that isn’t a metaphor. She will physically invade your space and try to intimidate you if she can. I’ve seen her knock people down and walk right over them.”

“Blessed Mother…No offense, but she sounds like a nut job.”

Nadia nodded. “I know, but she isn’t. She is sane and rational. You can negotiate with her. Whatever Geneva offered you, it’s just an opening bid, and Auntie opens low.”

Fifty million dollars is LOW?
“I’ll give it some thought. I’d better have a specific list of demands and some fallback items.” I hesitated before asking my next question, but the chance to get some additional information was too tempting. “Do you know anything about some kind of world-changing resource management game Llewellyn Industries might be working on?”

“A game?” Her brow furrowed as she shook her head. “LI doesn’t do games. Too many intangible variables. They stick to applications with specific purposes and clear, defined parameters. There’s only one project that…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes went wide. She stood up and walked to the windows on the west side of the office, holding one hand up to her mouth.

Without turning around, she said, “There is one project that might fit that description. I’ve heard a few things about it, but it’s pretty much a classified, off-the-books type item. The only thing I can tell you I know about it is that the company has been working on it since before I was born.” She turned around and added, “I can’t imagine the family letting it go after all the work invested in it.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “So why would they offer it to me?” I gave her a condensed version of Geneva’s offer, though I was vague on the details of the fusion battery.

When I finished, Nadia nodded and said, “Well, at least she wasn’t talking about hitting you with an embargo. That single-project focus is how the company works. One project per team, everyone working with absolute focus. It makes things easier to control.”

“People as well, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

“Yeah. More than just a little bit Jonestown.” I gave her an apologetic smile and added, “No offense intended.”

“We get that a lot. Gilead isn’t your average town.” She laughed. “Most people see the twenty-foot electrified razor wire fence around the property line and assume we’re in there sacrificing cats and having orgies while waiting for the Venusian mothership to arrive. Just a bunch of crap. I mean, for one thing, killing a cat is tantamount to a felony murder charge.”

I leaned forward. “Why is that?”

“It’s a custom the founders brought from the old country and wrote into the town charter. No orgies, either. At least not public ones. What Gilead does have is happily married families enjoying their privacy and raising children. There are a few stores and a diner in the middle of town, and a company-owned shopping center with a supermarket ten miles away next to the highway. There’s a fleet of electric buses that drive people back and forth to the plant in Vancouver, a private airstrip, a town marshal, and a volunteer fire department. All manner of threatening. I know.”

I said, “What about the armed guards?”

She laughed again. “They’re there to keep people out, not to keep the family in. You can’t tell me you don’t understand the value of privacy. Now, getting back to business, if you get matters settled with Auntie, you might wind up being able to visit Gilead sometime. Then you can make up your own mind.”

“I just don’t want to give up on
Living Land
. I think it would find an audience.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “I don’t want to think I wasted two years of my life on it.”

Nadia thought for a moment. “Let me tell you a story my stepfather told me. It may have happened, it may not have happened, but the truth is that long ago, there was a tribe of people who used flint weapons. These weapons could kill and dress deer, so the people were happy, and never learned to use anything else. Flint was their world.

“Then a great beast came to their lands, and the people’s flint weapons shattered against the beast’s hide. The beast killed the people, and their animals, and their children, and the people were powerless against it. This continued for many nights, and the people knew the beast would kill them all. At last, one man stood up and said he would go to the cave where the children of stone lived, and he would beg them for a weapon. This he did.”

“The children of stone listened to his plea, and granted his request. The price they demanded was an eye, which he plucked out with his own hands. With the price paid, the forging of the first sword began.

“The man watched as the children of stone extracted metal from ore, and poured molten iron into a mold of sand. He watched the hammers rise and fall, forming the blade. He watched as they shaped the edge, and as they bathed the edge with carbon paste to quicken the iron to steel. And he watched as they heated the blade to temper it and saw the color of the steel. But sight alone could not tell him the temperature of the oil the sword would be quenched in. He stuck his finger in the oil, and the master smith struck off half of the man’s arm with the sword he had just purchased. But even without his arm, the man remembered the temperature of the oil.

“The man returned to his village, and used the blade to strike the great beast’s head from its shoulders. He became a hero and acclaimed as the leader of the people. He taught his people the secrets of steel, and from that day onward they were not afraid of the night.”

Nadia paused and wagged her finger at me. “Now, student, were the years of working flint wasted?”

I shook my head. “The obvious answer is yes, so I’m going with no.”

“Correct. You win a cookie.” She leaned forward and said, “Nothing that makes you stronger is wasted. You are who you are because of those two years. What is the difference between a Hero and a Leader?”

I smiled. “I think I know this one. A Hero places him or herself between the community and the danger threatening them. A Leader makes the decisions needed to keep the community alive.”

“I’ll accept that. The answer Angus gave me was that a Hero was able to die for his people, while a Leader was able to go on living after sending his people to die. He’s retired army, so a little cynicism is to be expected.”

“It’s an interesting answer, but I think I’ll stick with mine.” I got up and said, “Let’s move this to Flatirons and look at the numbers again.”

When we got there, Rex, one of the guys on the simulation programming team, was sitting in my chair with his feet up on my solid oak conference table eating a roll filled with pulled pork and barbeque sauce. He was holding the sandwich off to the side so the globs of greasy sauce would fall on my carpeting instead of his shirt.

Rex looked at me and sprayed half-chewed sandwich everywhere. He got his feet off the table and tried to stand up. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just needed some peace and quiet, you know?” Standing up made it obvious his zipper was down. The cell phone on the floor kept running, and no, he wasn’t watching last week’s episode of his favorite television show.

I picked up a trash can and told Nadia, “Please go get Suzanne. I need her in here now.” She scampered. I held out the trash can and said, “This is not the break room.”

Rex looked at the trashcan and shook his head. “Dude, lunch cost me ten bucks! I’m not tossing it.”

I smiled at him, and didn’t need a mirror to know my eyes were shining with battle-joy. “Throw your food away and zip your pants or the EMTs are going to find you unconscious and bleeding in the bathroom.” I kept my voice level, but it did nothing to conceal just how much I’d enjoy his refusal.