The Unincorporated Man (46 page)

Still, he wondered. On the occasions Hektor
had
seen Kirk’s chief administrative assistant, a mild-mannered wallflower whose only claim to fame was his boss and his loyalty, he’d always been treated rudely—dismissed like some mangy pup begging for scraps. In fact, thought Hektor, following his gut, he never once heard about Kirk’s secretary getting any special trips or bonuses that office gossip and quarterly reports always laid bare. Just to be sure, Hektor checked and found that the man hadn’t gotten any bonuses, had been paid the minimum for someone in his position, and took no vacation days. Using a fairly ingenious spy program, he checked the financial records and saw that Kirk’s assistant lived like a penny. He hadn’t subscribed to any entertainment channels, took no trips other than on GCI business, and rented nothing having to do with sex—male or female. He’d even, if the automated pizza receipt records were to be believed, spent the last thirty Mardi Gras in his studio apartment. That made no sense to Hektor. Kirk didn’t pay his secretary much, but he was certainly paid enough to live better than a penny with a bad line of credit.

What does Kirk have on the guy?
wondered Hektor.
No one stays that loyal while being treated like such shit. The guy’s got no friends, no hobbies, no interests, no vices, no family ties. It’s like he’s living in his own little…
Hektor smiled before he even finished the thought.

“Gotcha.”

It was simple to get the secretary alone. He’d called the man, saying he had a hard-copy document that needed to be handed over to the DepDir personally. The man came in shortly and stood impatiently in front of Hektor’s desk. Hektor closed the door and activated his suppression system. Not a suspicious act in and of itself, as Hektor did that when anyone walked in. The man, noticed Hektor, was of average height, with no muscle tone to speak of, and hair kept very short. His clothes were utilitarian, almost severe in their simplicity. Around the upper staff it was assumed that this was the “look” that the secretary was going for. But Hektor knew that it was not affectation, it was consequence.

After his perusal he got right to the topic. “Evan, how long have you been a VR addict?”

Hektor saw Evan’s eyes light up, and then quickly recover. He then saw what he knew would be Evan’s inevitable conclusion—resignation.

“Thirty-five years,” he managed in a whisper.

“Lemme guess,” asked Hektor. “Kirk found out thirty years ago?”

“Yes,” answered Evan. His shoulders had sagged.

“You do know that you work for me now.”

Evan looked up, a little surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Yes.”

“Excellent,” answered Hektor. “We’ll start by giving me access to everything you have access to, and figure out the rest later. When Kirk is removed from power—and mark my words, he
will
be removed—you’ll be given a job in some basement somewhere and allowed to continue your ‘pastime’ without interruption.”

Evan bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. He’d assumed this day would come and it would mean an immediate end to his addiction. It was a moment he’d dreaded for years. The fact that the moment had arrived, and that this Sambianco fellow had agreed
not
to cut him off, was plenty fine for him. Let the Titans fight it out. What did he care? As long as they left him and his worlds alone.

“I assume,” continued Hektor, “you’ll get caught. Your kind always does, but, rest assured, it won’t be because of me.”

Again, Evan nodded his head in agreement.

“If you tell anyone of this arrangement,” said Hektor, putting both his hands down on the table and lifting himself up, “your psyche audit will be swift and painful.” Then, looking sternly at his entrapped prey, he said, “We do understand each other.”

It was not a question.

“Yes,” answered Evan, and then after a second’s pause, “sir.”

Hektor smiled as Evan left the room much more quickly than he’d entered.

When Neela got back to the apartment she found a note from Justin fastened to the foyer mirror. Her smile at the anachronism quickly dissipated when she read the contents.

“Evelyn,” she said to her DijAssist, “please get me a flight to Boston.”

“That won’t be necessary, Neela. Mr. Cord has leased three executive aircars for a period of one year. His avatar has informed me that one has been left for your personal disposal. It is sufficiently fast enough to get you to Boston sooner than a t.o.p. would—given traffic around Giuliani.”

In a little under twenty minutes Neela found herself standing in the lobby of a commercial complex with a magnificent view of Boston Harbor. Justin emerged from a side permiawall and greeted her warmly.

“Justin,” she said, “what’s going on?”

He led her through the permiawall. Neela saw that he still had the odd habit of holding his arm out as far as he could and touching the door with his finger to activate it. When she got to the other side she saw a large work area filled with people and drones working together at large tables, or individually in cubes. It had the requisite buzz and clamor of a typical workspace. A few heads looked up to see who’d come in, but quickly rebusied themselves with their tasks.

“This,” he answered, beaming proudly, “is what’s going on.”

Though she had her misgivings about the endeavor, she was more taken aback by how fast Justin had managed to put the roots into his grassroots organization.

“So you’re actually doing it,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I’m not,” he said, scanning the area, arms outstretched. “They are.”

Neela didn’t speak, unsure of what, if anything, to say. She was happy that the man in her care was finally feeling empowered, but scared of what that empowerment might actually lead to.

“Don’t you see, Neela,” he continued. “They can free themselves of the burden of owning, and in so doing make the world ready for the next step.”

Neela was a little dubious. “Which is?”

“Why, the end of mandatory incorporation, of course.”

“And how long,” she asked, not bothering to mask her incredulity, “do you think it will take?”

“Any idea, sebastian?” asked Justin.

“Approximately two hundred years by my calculations, Dr. Harper.”

“Why that long?”

“Any faster,” interjected Justin, lest his avatar misconstrue Neela’s question to be directed at him, “and people could get hurt. I understand that the corporate world functions moderately well and isn’t going anywhere for a while—which is just fine by me. And it’s also why I’ve started contributing funds to political parties with similar philosophies.”

“Like the Majority Party?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re small and unorganized, but I think their hearts are in the right place. Like I said, Neela, I’d really only like to end mandatory incorporation… and do it
slowly
. History’s littered with the corpses of the unwilling who died because some big-headed idiots thought their cause was more important than the lives they were meant to protect. Well, I’m no Stalin or Osama. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are more worthy role models.”

Neela shrugged. “Interesting choice… Boston,” she said, changing topics.

“True birthplace of freedom,” he proffered.

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Not Washington, D.C.?”

“You mean,” he answered with disdain, “the place where most of my beliefs were shot down and/or destroyed in the name of the common good? Don’t think so. Besides, Boston’s the true birthplace of freedom.”

“Then what was Philadelphia all about?”

Justin shook his head. “It was a convenient meeting place. Boston was where Americans first started to fight for their precious freedom and, by God,” he said, leading her into his well-appointed office, “it’s where we’ll start to fight for ours!”

Hektor pored through the newly garnered records and formulated a plan of attack. He had to hand it to Special Operations. They’d kept tabs on all the important and potentially important people in the system, and their file on prospective troublemakers was interesting. Hektor figured to start small. If he could find one of these on-edge, un–psyche audited troublemakers within Justin’s new party and push them just enough to fall off the edge—perhaps even manipulate them into doing something outrageous in the name of the divestiture movement—then Hektor would be able to put the blame squarely on Justin’s doorstep. This would give him the consensus to attack Justin directly. Of course, he’d need to be the DepDir by then, but Hektor was confident that that would soon come to fruition or, conversely, that he’d be so far from the seat of power that he wouldn’t care. His first activation would be one Sean Doogle—rated, according to the files, as nominally unstable. As a rule Hektor wouldn’t dare involve himself in the affairs of a family as powerful as the Doogles, but Sean was technically under the wide wings of Justin, pretty much disowned, and the publicity of the name would help rivet the public on any newsworthy actions Doogle might, with a little connivance from Hektor, be able to affect. And with the Doogle character Hektor knew exactly what button to press—the file made that perfectly clear. It was sad about the human collateral involved, but as far as Hektor was concerned, it was a small price to pay.

At first glance Sean Doogle didn’t seem like a world shaker. He appeared young and in good health. But this was not remarkable in the world he had grown up in. His fashion was way out of date, as he sported pants and a jacket made up entirely of patches, a fad that was twenty years dead and showed no sign of returning, except among Sean’s more fervent followers. His hair was long, and he had a couple of extra pounds lingering about his waistline. He’d only have a nanofat flush when it got to be a problem, and then would go back to eating too much, but in the corporate world being overweight wasn’t a real problem either. Real obesity was as dead as taxes and cancer. But it wasn’t just his looks that threw people off. It was his ancestry. The Doogle family had been wealthy and powerful for generations. No one in Sean’s immediate family tree failed to have majority assured by their twenty-first birthday.

And Sean was no exception. His life had been well charted. He’d attend the best schools, take the most exclusive grand tours of the solar system, and network with the most select social set. It was also true that Sean wouldn’t have to work hard or contribute much to society, but his ancestors had done all that so that he wouldn’t have to. After sixty or so years he’d think about settling down, getting married to a woman of the same acceptable background, and digging in for a life of luxury that most of the rest of society could only have dreamed about. Yes, Sean Doogle’s life was meant to be one of safety, wealth, interest, and ease.

This is what would have happened but for two small problems. One was that Sean was very intelligent and withdrawn from an early age. This was only a small handicap, and his avatar would have directed him toward similar people in his social strata. It is indeed likely that he, via his meddling avatar, would have “found” a woman who was also withdrawn and shy, and they would’ve had a happy, eccentric life together, perhaps as husband and wife college professors, or even botanists, with their own island to play with. But the second event in Sean’s young life proved to be far more problematic and not as easy to solve.

Sean fell in love.

It was the most dangerous and cruelest sort. Love at first sight. From the moment he saw the raven-haired laughing girl he knew she was the one he was going to marry. He, of course, knew nothing about her, but that didn’t stand in his way. After all, Sean was used to getting what he wanted. He spent so much time daydreaming about her, as only withdrawn fourteen-year-old boys could do, that a week went by before he worked up the courage to find out who she was.

He was delighted to find out that her father worked for the family. In fact, he’d just been hired as the head of the stables. In a reversal of the cliché from the ancient romance novels, the young, rich, shy boy soon fell in love with the stableman’s daughter. Her name was Elizabeth Reynolds, and she was, at least from what Sean could tell, fearless with the horses under her charge, and almost equally wild and free. Not free in the corporate sense; she was, after all, a penny, having been born into a family of 25 percenters, but certainly free in every other respect. Like her father she excelled at training, and since this was something that machines and drones were not able to do as well as humans, it was one of those specialty areas humans had not been displaced from.

Sean, who until then would have been hard-pressed to tell you where the stables were, developed a passion for horse riding. Every day he’d be seen going down to the stables, and every day he’d work hard to improve his form. After a while he became a fair enough rider, and was even allowed to help with the care of the horses—something Elizabeth’s father would not have allowed unless Sean had earned it. It was, ironically, one of the things he was proudest of in his early life. He’d
earned
the right to clean up stables and to care for and groom horses. No one had handed it to him on a silver platter. But the real reward, of course, was Elizabeth. Every day with Elizabeth.

Sean’s new passion was of some concern to his parents, but it was assumed that he’d grow out of it. After all, a boy of Sean’s class could and did start enjoying intercourse with a great many different men and women from a wide variety of classes and places. But this was not the case with Sean. He was truly in love. And in an age when a boy of Sean’s years was hard-pressed to still be a virgin, he’d managed to stay one, waiting for the day to consummate the act with his one true love.

For a while Elizabeth was flattered by the attention. To be so completely loved by a boy who would grow up to be a wealthy man was not without its attractions. But what for Sean was a complete and all-consuming love was for Elizabeth a childhood romance. As she grew older she grew away from the young man who was still infatuated with her. She did care for him, and didn’t want to see him hurt, but the love he’d professed for her was not now, nor ever going to be, reciprocated. Had Elizabeth been a more mercenary sort—only interested in “the three Ms” of money, majority, and matrimony—her life would have been set. But that wasn’t Elizabeth.