The Pedestal (41 page)

Tim shivers. “Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on.”

Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but that actually seems to make me feel a little better. “Good to know. So that’s all you have to go on?”

“Basically.” He stares at the floor for a moment, snacks no longer on the menu.

“Still thinking about them?”

“Can’t wipe the image away, you jerk. Why would you even go there?”

“That’s what friends are for, you know?” I slap him on the shoulder and laugh again. My face hurts from smiling so much; I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. “Anyway, I see your dilemma. So what’re you gonna do?”

Tim breathes heavily through his nose and slaps a hand on the countertop. “I don’t know. I guess I figured it was time to enlist some help.”

“From who?” The police? The FBI?

Tim tosses back the dregs of his beer and burps. “I’m looking at him.”

At seven thirty a.m., I drag myself out of bed and into my brand-new home gym. Just looking at all this stuff wears me out. I take it slow—not only because it’s the recommended approach, but because I’m too wimpy to do it any other way. Ten push-ups—performed with the form of a narcoleptic misfire—ten sit-ups, a set of six bench-presses of sixty-five pounds. When I’m done, I feel as if I might faint, so I drop to the carpet and lie there for a while.

Eventually, the spell passes and I’m able to stand without seeing spots. I look back at my home gym and think,
You don’t look quite so scary anymore
.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the things Tim has done for me as a friend and a coworker over the years, but to say that I’m reluctant to grovel for my old job back at IDS is grossly understating reality.

I’d just as soon beat myself in the face with a dead cat.

In the end, though, I decide to do it—not only to help out Tim, but because I’ve never stopped hating Keith, never stopped longing for the day when he’s brought to justice.

And the idea of hastening that day is too appealing to turn away.

I have every reason to think that Keith will show me the door as soon as I peek into his office. In the best of times, we were never really on the same page. In the worst, I’m pretty sure he’d have killed me if he thought he could get away with it. But he doesn’t kill me or give me the boot. On the contrary, he jumps up as if I’m his long-lost brother and yanks me into a horrific back slap.

“Oh, man, Wil. It’s good to see you. Figured we’d seen the last of you around here.”

It’s Wilson
, I think—and only just refrain from actually saying out of habit. Oddly, it doesn’t really bother me. I don’t give a pile of circuit scrap what Keith thinks of me, so he can try to belittle me or ingratiate himself to me all he wants. Looking at him, though, I realize this is going to be much harder than I expected. When I consider all the damage he’s caused to my life—betraying Arthur and getting him killed, dragging me into the fray of his iniquity by first sneaking the list onto Arthur’s drive and then setting me up as a patsy for his own embezzlement schemes—it becomes utterly impossible to keep from diving across his desk and beating the life from him. I let my eyes settle just over his shoulder, where they can see something other than red.

“So what brings you by? You looking for a job?”

I nod, because it’s all I can do to bite my tongue.

“Hm,” Keith remarks. “Let me think.”

For a split second, I worry that he won’t rehire me. But Tim has convinced me that he will, and the more I consider Tim’s logic, the more certain I become that he’s right. IDS is months away from filing bankruptcy, and when that happens, the attorneys are going to swarm in and pick the books to death. It won’t take long before one of them discovers what Keith has done; he may have doctored things a little, but he won’t fool a professional for long.

Unless…

If he can get me back on board, he’ll have an opportunity to either turn me or further incriminate me. And if by some miracle I manage to help him turn the company around along the way, IDS might just escape bankruptcy—and that means the GFL gravy tram might just continue its midnight run moving forward. There isn’t much of a downside, when you think about it. The downside to not hiring me, however, is much steeper, because as long as I’m out of his sight, I’m unpredictable.  

“Got it!” he announces. “There’s still your IntelliQ program—it never reached the test partitions.”

Despite why I’m here, I have to admit I’m more than a little offended that my work didn’t warrant any attention in my absence. I’m also relieved that it still has a fighting chance of hitting the nexus. Even now, I have absolute confidence that it’s a cash cow waiting to be born.

“Really?”

“Yeah, without you or Arthur around, nobody was brave enough to take the reins.”

This isn’t an unreasonable explanation, but I know feces when I smell it. I start to throw in a jibe, to point out that my program is no different than any other we’ve developed here—we have programming standards so that personal bravery never has to be a factor when projects are shuffled around.

Again, I bite my tongue.

“Let me just make a couple of phone calls, Wil—”
It’s Wil
son
! Sorry, old habits die hard.
“—and I’ll give you a shout. You mind waiting out in the lobby for a few minutes?”

An hour later, I’m dusting off my old desk—my office has become a catchall for empty boxes and backup journals—and trying to remember how to program.

After work, I eat dinner with Tim at his apartment. It’s the ultimate bachelor pad—ugly but super-comfortable furniture, an entire shelf of his fridge devoted to beer—and it’s somehow even more depressing than mine. Maybe because I know it’ll probably always be a bachelor pad. The centerpiece of his dinner table is a pewter dragon-foot with talons wrapped around a crystal orb. I’m reminded of a nature show I saw when I was a kid where a male bird spent days making a nest to impress a female, only for some reason, the female was more disturbed than impressed by his handiwork, so she flew away, leaving the male to cock his head, as if to say
What just happened? Is it something I said?

Still, Tim wears bachelorship well. He’s content to watch cheesy movies and read nouveau graphic novels. Unlike yours truly, Tim’s just fine with who he is. As I’m thinking this, he takes a gulp of his beer and says, “So, you’ll never guess who Keith-sha”—that’s Tim’s newfound remedy for the Freudian slip—“called today.”

“Do tell, please.”

“Robert Marlin, our GFL rep.”

“Really? Do we even have any projects going that require hardware updates at the USS?”

“Nope. He’s just counting his chickens, I think. If we can get your IntelliQ project wrapped up, he’ll have an excuse. Our equipment’s fine, but it can always use a little beefing up. You just wait: he’s gonna start turning the thumbscrews on you any day now.”

“Fantastic. So what am I supposed to do? I mean, has anything changed since I left? How do we get the programs on the test partitions without Arthur?”

“Well, I won’t say the problem’s gone away, but it’s nowhere near as dire as it once was. We hired a private nexus consultant to help us with that.”

“So what’s the holdup? I mean, why didn’t you guys get the IntelliQ program up and running? It was already approved for testing before I left.”

“To be honest, I really don’t know. I’ve asked myself that question over and over. We’d be rolling in revenue if we had, that much is certain.” My cheeks warm that at least someone has some confidence in my work.

“Okay. So if I can get things worked out with this consultant, we can get the program up and running. And then Keith will start running his scheme again.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Okay, so then what? How can we bring him down?”

Tim runs his fingers through his hair. “Well, I suppose that depends.”

“On what?”

“How’s your programming these days?”

Yikes. “You mean in general? Pretty rusty, but it’s coming back.”

“Well, get to practicing. Because I’ve got a program in mind, and there’s no room for sloppy coding.”

I’m intrigued.

I’m feeling energized by my workout this morning. It’s only been a few days, and I’m already seeing a little difference—I’m
feeling
a huge difference. I’m starving at breakfast, putting away more food than I’ve put away in a single sitting since I can remember.

For the first time in a really long time—long before Mars, in fact—I feel really good, like I’m advancing toward something positive. At the same time, I’m stressing a little over my implant. The truth is—as much as I have avoided acknowledging it—I have no interest in getting it back. Sure, it was convenient and made life so much more fluid, but I’m enjoying the peace of its absence from my body. My head is so clear. No more retinal signage or daily planners, for example. On the other hand, I can’t just forget about it, either. It remains in my pocket most of the time, which allows me to access my apartment and office doors, transact credits, and satisfies my legal obligation to remain accessible to the nexus.

The problem is, my implant is useless in every other capacity, as long as it remains outside of my body. No contact requests—who knows how many have racked up over the past year?—no optional add-on updates, credit account accessibility, et cetera. I can get over not knowing where people are at any given time—in fact, I’ve always felt pretty slimy about that part of the nexus’s functionality—but never knowing who’s trying to reach me or the state of my financial affairs is an affliction I’m not able to cope with.

Fortunately, I know a guy.

As I pass through the lobby of my office building, I realize I don’t need any coffee for once. I’m plenty awake and feeling fantastic. There’s a line at the elevators, and for the first time ever, I blow it off to take the stairs.

Just as Tim predicted, Keith is primed to pressure me about the IntelliQ project. I take it in stride—it’s much easier to tolerate Keith when his behavior follows my plan.

“We need this thing done yesterday, Wil. Sorry if this puts you on the spot a little, but if you pull this off, IDS may survive the year. If not, well I’m sure someone’s already brought you up to speed—we’re barely hanging on right now. I had to let someone go yesterday, in fact.”