The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three (61 page)

Veronica blinked. She sat. "What does this mean?"

"It means that I think they've done it," I said. "Under impossibly high pressures, nanotubes can link, or so the theory holds. Carbon bonding is described by quantum chemistry orbital hybridization, and they've swapped some sp2 bonds for the sp3 bonds of diamond."

She looked almost sad. She kissed me. The kiss was sad. "What are its uses?"

"Everything. Literally, almost everything. A great many things steel can do, these carbon nanotubes will do better. It's super-light and super-strong, perfect for aircraft. This material moves the fabled space elevator into the realm of possibility."

"There'd still be a lot of R&D necessary—"

"Yes, of course, it will be years down the road, but eventually the sky's the limit. There's no telling what this material will do, if it's manufactured right. It could be used for everything from suspension bridges to spacecraft. It could open our way to the stars. We're at the edge of a revolution."

I looked down at the strand. After a long time, I finally said what had been bothering me for the last sixteen hours. "But why did Voicheck come to you?" I said. "Of all places, why bring this to a steel company?"

She looked at me. "If you invent an engine that runs on water, why offer it to an oil company?" She picked up the strand. "Only one reason to do that, John."

She glanced down at the red wire in her hand. "Because the oil company is certain to buy it."

That night we drank. I stood at the window on the second story of her townhome and looked out at her quiet neighborhood, watching the expensive cars roll by on Ridge Road. The Ridge Road which neatly bisects Lake County. Land on the south, higher; the land to the north, low, easing toward urban sprawl, and the marshes, and Lake Michigan. That long, low ridge of land on which the road was built represented the glacial maxim—the exact line where the glacier stopped during the last ice age, pushing all that dirt and stone in front of it like a plow, before it melted and receded and became the Great Lakes—and thousands of years later, road builders would stand on that ridge and think to themselves how easy it would be to follow the natural curve of the land; and so they built what they came to build and called it the only name that would fit: Ridge Road. The exact line, in the region, where one thing became another.

I wrapped the naked strand around my finger, watching the bright red blood well up from where it contacted my skin—because in addition to being strong and thin, the strand had the property of being
sharp
. For the tests, I'd stripped away most of the rubber coating, leaving only a few inches of insulation at the ends. The rest was exposed strand. Nearly invisible.

"You cut yourself," Veronica said. She parted her full lips and drew my finger into her mouth.

The first time I'd told her I loved her, it was an accident. In bed, half asleep, I'd said it. Good night, I love you. A thing that was out of my mouth before I even realized it—a habit from an old relationship come rising up out of me, the way every old relationship lives just under the skin of every new one. All the promises. All the possibilities. Right there under the skin. I'd felt her stiffen beside me, and an hour later, she nudged me awake. She was sitting up, arms folded across her bare breasts, as defensive as I'd ever seen her. I realized she hadn't slept at all. "I heard what you said." There was anger in her voice, and whole complex layers of pain.

But I denied it. "You're hearing things."

Though of course it was true. What I'd said. Even if saying it was an accident. It had been true for a while.

The night after I tested the strand, I lay in bed and watched her breathing, blankets kicked to the floor. Light through the window glinted off her necklace, a thin herringbone pattern—some shiny new steel, Uspar-Nagoi emblem across her beautiful dark skin. I caressed the herringbone plate with my finger, such an odd interlinking of metal.

"They gave this to you?"

She fingered the necklace, still half awake. "They gave one to all of us," she said. "Management perk. Supposed to be worth a mint."

"The logo ruins it," I said. "Like a tag."

"Everything is tagged, one way or another," she said. "I met him once."

"Who?"

"The name on the necklace."

"Nagoi? You met him?"

"At a facility in Brussels. He came through with his group. Shook my hand. He was taller than I thought, but his handshake was this flaccid, aqueous thing, straight fingered, like a flipper. It was obvious he loathed the Western tradition. I was prepared to like him, prepared to be impressed, or to find him merely ordinary."

She was silent for so long I thought she might have fallen asleep. "I've never been one of those people who judged a person by their handshake," she said. "But still . . . I can't remember a handshake that gave me the creeps like that. They paid sixty-six billion for the Uspar acquisition. Can you imagine that much money? That many employees? That much power? When his daughter went through her divorce, the company stock dropped by two percent. His daughter's divorce did that. Can you believe that? Do you know how much two percent is?"

"A lot."

"They have billions invested in infrastructure alone. More in hard assets and research facilities, not to mention the mills themselves. Those assets are quantifiable and linked to actuarial tables that translate into real dollars. Real dollars which can be used to leverage more takeovers, and the monster keeps growing. If Nagoi's daughter's divorce dipped the share price by two percent, what do you think would happen if a new carbon-product competitor came to market?"

I ran a finger along her necklace. "You think they'll try to stop it?"

"Nagoi's money is in steel. If a legitimate alternative reached market, then each mill, each asset all across the world, would suddenly be worth less. Billions of dollars would blink out of existence."

"So what happens?"

"We get the data. I write my report. I give my presentation. The board suddenly gets interested in buying a certain company in Europe that just happens to be working in carbon research. If they won't sell, Uspar-Nagoi buys all the stock and owns them anyway. Then shuts them down."

"Suppression won't work. The Luddites never win in the long run."

She smiled. "The three richest men in the world have as much money as the poorest forty-nine nations," she said. "Combined."

I watched her face.

She continued. "The yearly gross product of the planet is something like fifty-five trillion dollars, and yet there are millions of people who are still trying to live on less than three dollars a day. You trust business to do the right thing?"

"No, but I trust the market. A better product will always find its way to the consumer. Even Uspar-Nagoi can't stop that."

"You only say that because you don't understand how it really works. That might have been true a long time ago. The Uspar-Nagoi board does hostile takeovers for a living, and they're not going to release a technology that will devalue their core assets."

Veronica was silent.

"Why did you get into steel?" I asked. "What brought you here?"

"Money," she said. "Just money."

"Then why haven't you told your bosses about Voicheck?"

"I don't know."

"Are you going to tell them?"

She was silent.

"Are you going to tell them?"

"No," she said. "I don't think I am."

There was a long pause.

"What are you going to do?"

"Buy it," she said. "Buy the data."

"And then what? After you've bought it."

"After I've bought it, I'm going to post it on the internet."

The drive to meet Voicheck seemed to take forever. The traffic was stop and go until we reached Halsted, and it took us nearly an hour to reach downtown Chicago.

We parked in the same twenty-dollar lot and Veronica squeezed my hand again as we walked toward the restaurant.

But this time, Voicheck wasn't standing outside looking like a bouncer. He wasn't looking like anything, because he wasn't there. We waited a few minutes and went inside. We asked for the same table. We didn't speak. There was no reason to speak.

After a few moments, a man in a suit came and sat. He was a gray man in a gray suit. He wore black leather gloves. He was in his fifties, but he was in his fifties the way certain breeds of athletes enter their fifties—broad, and solid, and blocky-shouldered. He had a lantern jaw and thin, sandy hair receding from a broad forehead. The waitress came and asked if he needed anything to drink.

"Yes, please," the man said. "Bourbon. And oh, for my friends here, a Bailey's for him, and what was it?" He looked at Veronica. "A Coke, right?"

Veronica didn't respond. The man's accent was British.

"A Coke," the man told the waitress. "Thank you."

He smiled and turned toward us. "Did you know that bourbon was the official spirit of the U.S. by act of Congress?"

We were silent.

"That's why I always used to make a point of drinking it when I came to the States. I wanted to enjoy the authentic American experience. I wanted to drink bourbon like American's drink bourbon. But then I discovered an unsettling secret in my travels." The man took something from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and set it on the table. Glasses. Voicheck's glasses, one of the prescription lenses shattered.

The man caressed the bent frames with his finger. "I discovered that American's don't really drink bourbon. A great many American's have never so much as tasted it. So then why is it the official spirit of your country?"

We had no opinion. We were without opinion.

"Would you like to hear what I think?" The man asked. He bent close and spoke low across the table. "I've developed a theory. I think it was a lie all along. I think someone in your Congress probably had his hand in the bourbon business all those years ago, and sales were flagging; so they came up with the idea to make bourbon the official spirit of the country as a way to line their own pockets. Would you like to hear something else I discovered in my travels? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway. I discovered that I don't care much, one way or the other. I discovered that I
like
bourbon. And I feel like I'm drinking the most American drink of them all, because your Congress said so, lie or not. The ability to believe a lie can be an important talent. You're probably wondering who I am."

"No," Veronica said.

"Good, then you're smart enough to realize it doesn't matter. You're smart enough to realize that if I'm here, it means that your friend isn't coming back."

"Where is he?" Veronica asked.

"I can't say, but rest assured that wherever he is, he sends his regrets."

"Are you here for the money?"

"The money? I couldn't care less about your money."

"Where's the flash drive?" Veronica asked.

"You mean this?" The man held the gray flash drive between leathered finger and thumb, then returned it to the breast pocket of his neat gray suit. "This is the closest you're going to get to it, I'm afraid. Your friend seemed to think it belonged to him. I disabused him of that misconception."

"What do you want?" Veronica asked.

"I want what everyone wants, my dear. But what I'm here for today—what I'm being paid to do—is to tie up some loose ends. You can help me."

Silence.

"Where is the strand?" he asked.

"He never gave it to us."

The man's gray eyes looked pained. Like a father with a wayward child. "I'm disappointed," he said. "I thought we were developing some trust here. Do you know what loyalty is?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't think you do. Loyalty to your company. Loyalty to the cause. You have shown that you have no loyalty at all. You had some very important people who looked after you, Veronica. You had some important friends."

"You're from Uspar-Nagoi?"

"Who did you think?"

"I . . . "

"You have embarrassed certain people who have invested their trust in you. You have embarrassed some very important people."

"That wasn't my intention."

"In my experience, it never is." He spread his hands. "Yet here we are. What were you planning on doing with the data once you obtained it?"

Veronica was silent for a moment, then, "I don't know what you're talking about."

The pain returned to the man's eyes. He shook his head sadly. "I'm going to ask you a question in a moment. If you lie to me again, I promise you." He leaned forward. "I promise you that I will make you regret it. Do you believe that?"

Veronica nodded.

"Good. Do you have the strand with you?"

"No."

"Then this is what is going to happen now," he said. "We're going to leave. We're going to drive to where the strand is, and you're going to give it to me."

"If I did have it somewhere, and if I did give it to you, what happens then?"

"Probably you'll have to look for another job. I can't say for sure." He leaned back in his chair, taking on a pleasant expression again. "That's between you and your company. I'm just here to obtain the strand."

The man stood. He laid a hundred-dollar bill on the table and grabbed Veronica's arm. The way he grabbed her arm, he could have been a prom date—just a gentleman walking his lady out the door. Only I could see his fingers dug deep into her flesh.

I followed them out. Walking behind them. When we got near the front door, I picked up one of the trendy bamboo pots and brought it down on the man's head with everything I had.

The crash was shocking. Every head in the restaurant swiveled toward us. I bent and fished the flash drive from his breast pocket. "Run," I told her.

We hit the night air sprinting.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she screamed.

"Voicheck is dead," I told her. "We were next."

Veronica climbed behind the wheel and sped out of the parking lot just as the gray man stumbled out the front door of the restaurant.

The BMW was fast. Faster than anything I would have suspected. Veronica drove with the pedal to the floor, weaving in and out of traffic. Pools of light ticked past.