The Beam: Season Two (36 page)

“He’s a very nice boy. Very courteous.”
 

“You didn’t think to tell me this? You didn’t think to ping me?”

“I’m an old woman. Sometimes, I forget things.” Again, she hinted a smile.
 

“What the hell did he want?” Micah felt himself becoming increasingly agitated and tried to will himself to calm.
He was Micah Fucking Ryan
. Micah Fucking Ryan was
always
in control. But it was difficult to tether his outrage. Nicolai was supposed to be Micah and Isaac’s responsibility. He’d stopped being of any concern to Rachel back in the ’30s, and as far as Micah had always thought, Nicolai had been more or less invisible to her since. With fifty years passed, Micah had assumed she’d have forgotten him other than as a legend. And now he’d come here, to Alpha Place? It felt like a personal violation, and Micah Fucking Ryan didn’t tolerate violations of any sort. This was his mother; this was his personal life and personal business; this was the secret that he was supposed to be keeping and the ace he was supposed to hold. Nicolai had no business here.
 

“He was curious about our past,” said Rachel.

“What fucking business is
our
past to him?”
 

“Our past is entangled with his family’s past,” she said. “With his father. With the development of the nanobots you gave me and that started the pollination that our friend Noah was so interested in.”

Micah just stared. He felt like a house of cards was collapsing.
 

“What did you tell him?” he said.

Rachel had a small knit blanket across her legs. Her hands formed a fragile tent atop it. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m old. I get very confused.”
 

Her coyness felt like a blade tearing down Micah’s vertebrae.
 

“Goddammit, what did you tell him?”
he yelled.

Rachel’s innocent expression found a razor’s edge. “Don’t you dare demand anything from me, Micah. Do you understand? I own 34 percent of the company that Costa’s technology revitalized and made rich. That gives me a substantial interest in what has happened in it over the years and what it will do next. Thirty-four percent to your and Isaac’s matching 33s. This room life-logs everything I do and say and seem to think — not to mention what I specifically log on my own. Don’t you think for one fucking second that you can pull the rug out from under me. Even your shares are conditional — you and Isaac can’t pool them against me. Do I have to spell it all out? This company is mine until I die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The same as with Panel. You’ve tiptoed around those connections and those powerful people all your life, and I know how you salivate for my slot in the group when I die. You aren’t even supposed to know about Panel, Micah, so don’t make me end your tenure on it before it even begins.”
 

Micah blinked. “I just wanted to know what you told him.”
 

Rachel’s expression softened. Again, she gave him that hectoring naughty-naughty wag of her finger. “That’s not what you said at all, dear son of mine.”
 

“I’m sorry.”
 

“Of course. But the answer is that I told him what he needed to know.”
 

“He doesn’t need to know anything.”

“Doesn’t he? Didn’t you tell him the same things already?”
 

Micah exhaled, unsure what to say.
 

“I just filled in the gaps, Micah. I admitted to things he’d surely already suspected. Nothing that changed anything. Do you see what I really gave him, by doing that?”
 

“I don’t know, Mom.” Micah sighed, resigned.
 

“The illusion of control. Same as Isaac. You know he has a role to play in our futures.”
 

“Not necessarily.”
 

“Oh, well. Then my research is apparently better than yours,” she said.

“Noah Fucking West, Mom.”
 

Rachel made a little brushing-off gesture. “Enough. Just another loose end that Isaac let go and that you must pick up. Nicolai Costa won’t be going anywhere for a while. You have little to hide. He’ll sneak around, but I’d advise you not to discuss our conversation. Act like I don’t exist, like you normally do.”
 

“I don’t act — ”
 

“So are you prepared for Shift?”
 

Micah felt blindsided by the change in topic but managed to recover without a stumble.
 

“There’s not much to be prepared for. The presidents’ men handle it all. Isaac and I just make speeches.”
 

“As it should be. Which way do you think it will tilt?”
 

“Enterprise.”

“You’re sure?”
 

“It’s time.” Micah shrugged. “But does it matter?”
 

“Part of me wants Isaac to have a victory. It would be good for his self-esteem. When you see him next, will you tell him to visit me?”
 

“I don’t really see him often, Mom.” That was a lie. He’d just seen him, and Isaac had a way of crawling back over and over again. Rachel was one tether binding him to Isaac, and Natasha was another. But for some reason, he felt he’d given his mother enough today.

“Whenever
you talk to him then.” Rachel clucked her tongue and shook her head. “You used to see each other all the time. Why don’t you go out to dinner?”
 

“He’s kind of a wreck.”
 

“All the more reason,” said Rachel.” Do you think he’ll stay married?”
 

“I don’t see how he could get divorced. It would make him look so much worse. Natasha would take half of everything.”
 

“She has to be good for a lay now and then, too.”
 

Micah shot her a disbelieving look. Rachel gave him a lecherous little smile.
 

“I wasn’t always this old,” she said.

Micah wanted to stand in order to end the conversation, but he was already standing. As usual, she’d controlled the entire exchange from beginning to end while barely moving a muscle. She’d simply sat in her little chair, blanket on her lap, looking ancient and innocent.
 

So in lieu of standing anew, Micah pulled his handheld from his pocket and glanced at it, making a farce of checking the time. “I have to go, Mom.”

“Of course. You’re a very busy man.”
 

“Yes. I’ll be back in…”

“And I’m very proud of you.”
 

“Thanks.”
 

“Say hello to Miss Dreyfus for me, will you?” she said.

Micah met his mother’s eyes, wondering how the hell she could know who Kai was, let alone what she meant to Micah.
 

“Goodbye, Mom,” he said.

Rachel waved, and Micah left the room, feeling too much like his brother for comfort.

Chapter 6

Working from a park bench on an open AirFi connection on his mobile, his back to a ridge cut from a hill and his eyes darting around for watchers, Sam opened the Null forum and began typing a new private message.
 

His paranoia was probably over the top, and Sam was aware enough of himself to admit it. He had his anonymizer; he was mobile and using a different device than he typically used; he had the anonymous protection inherent to Null itself (a Null convention would be confusing. “Hi, I’m Null.” “Nice to meet you, Null. I’m Null, and this is my girlfriend, Null”); he was in the open in a place where many people were constantly hitting the network due to uploading media as part of the inane life-logging fixation. And as a final resort, if someone from NPS somehow located Sam through his many smokescreens, he could pocket his mobile and run. He even had a small slumbergun in his pack to disable pursuers. It was illegal, but no less illegal than everything else that Sam did.
 

Halfway through typing his message on the Null board, Sam felt his attention distracted by a mental squirrel. He opened a fresh window in his hacked mobile browser and, using the most stripped down, 2-D, antiquated presentation possible, began to scroll through the text version of Beam Headlines. At the very top was the same viral feel-good story about a puppy that had been Beam-top for hours now (it felt so contrived that Sam almost wanted to post on it, but he’d already decided to wait a few days). Farther down was a handful of news stories, many pertaining to Shift. Shift was just a week away, and every news outlet in the NAU seemed to have tossed its impartiality out the window. No one was siding with one party or the other (they paid lip service to impartiality), but all were rah-rah about Shift itself.
 

The Shift stories weren’t what Sam was looking for (what he’d been
distracted by
, he mentally amended; the stories were a squirrel on top of a squirrel, but he still opened a few for long enough to scan), but as he read them, Sam saw more of that high-level pattern emerge. Only the parties themselves (and their toadies) were saying “Go Enterprise!” or “Go Directorate!” but the stories all seemed to be saying some version of “Go Shift!” It didn’t matter which side you played for, according to the media and major Beam reporters so long as you were eager about the game itself.
 

The only viewpoint that wasn’t getting any voice on Beam Headlines was the idea that Shift wasn’t worth the excitement.
 

Sam thought back to his own history. Not counting his mid-period Choice when he’d turned eighteen, he’d only been part of a single Shift. He’d had Enterprise leanings from birth, it seemed, and remembered being nudged to reaffirm that conviction over and over back during the ’91 Shift. Others around him were shifting from Directorate to Enterprise. Sam and his fellow Enterprise die-hards had welcomed them with open, congratulatory arms. A few had shifted from Enterprise to Directorate, and Sam remembered the good-natured (but convicted) arguments against those deserters. Sam had argued that Directorate was a party of sell-outs, and that true free-thinkers were always in Enterprise. Sam’s opponents had argued that they all worked for the
Sentinel
as reporters, and that it was stupid to do a poor-man’s everyday job and stay Enterprise — free-thinker or not. Why would you choose to earn what the
Sentinel
could afford to pay freelancers on a whim over a tenured job with a guaranteed, above-the-line dole?
 

That had been six years ago. Although Sam couldn’t remember who had shifted where, he
did
remember every ounce of the emotion surrounding the debates over which was the superior party. It had felt like rooting for a professional game of Ball, and Sam — only twenty-two at the time — had looked upon his Enterprise team with shiny eyes, still optimistic and unbesmirched by life as Shadow.
 

Sitting on the park bench and scanning news stories on the eve of his second Shift, Sam found that his demeanor was different this time around. The public’s demeanor, however, was exactly the same. Everything was excitement and rah-rah. Neither party could do any wrong according to those who backed each of them.
 

“It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” he said aloud.

Watching his screen, Sam felt a bitter smirk cross his lips. The expression was supposed to refer to sportsmanship, but these days Sam couldn’t help but see the same words with a different, more cynical meaning. Did it really matter whether Enterprise or Directorate won or lost? Or did it only matter
how they played the game
— and how vested they made NAU citizens in their respective teams?
 

Sam’s handheld pinged, indicating new mail. It was an inconsequential message for Sam, not Shadow (his handheld was programmed to erase if sensors detected the wrong Beam ID in the wrong places, thus eliminating the Sam/Shadow connection), but the interruption was enough to jar him back into his first distraction, now one loop removed from the reason he’d come to the park in the first place.
 

He closed the Shift stories he’d opened and ran a search on Beam Headlines for “Beau Monde.”
 

As anticipated, around two dozen stories surfaced. All but three had been started by Sam himself, using a Beam-hopper’s worth of aliased identities. Some were honest articles, backed by research he’d uncovered. Some were deliberately over the top: tinfoil hat conspiracy theories unworthy of the most paranoid Null forum threads. The rest were a mishmash he’d posted under the spoofed names of his old colleagues at the
Sentinel
, under made-up names, or under the name “Null.”
 

He’d sent traffic to all of those stories, asking his followers to vote them up the feed so they could all see what happened when their visibility increased. Null was well-known for organizing Beam bombs and disrupting discussion network-wide, but they’d been unable to dent Beam Headlines when it came to the Beau Monde stories. None of the stories had more than ten votes, and they were all clustered at the low end of the feed like the final few flakes at the bottom of an empty cereal box.

It was okay that Headlines seemed to be so effortlessly slapping back Null’s voting assault, though, because the stories themselves were trial balloons. Sam had used them to eliminate variables — to see if Headlines had flagged his network ID, his sector, the names he used, the source of vote-ups, or anything else. Now that he saw that the only thing that the suspiciously downvoted stories had in common was the suggestion that a Beau Monde existed, it was time to crank the heat.