Acts of Conscience (7 page)

He started silently disconnecting the monitor system while I reeled in my tools and stood down the engine’s internal operating system. Finally, he said, “Gaetan, I was the one who was responsible for seeing to the throat settings.”

So. I was wondering if he’d just let it slide. Maybe be pissed at me for seeing it, even though... “Jimmy, did Rossignol
tell
you you were responsible?”

Silence. Then, “Um, no. He just took a quick peek before Todd and I shut the casing.”

Well. Todd Sanchez knew I’d be coming back to finish her up. And he knew I’d be the one to sign off on the whole job. Have to have a nice chat with Ross, maybe during afternoon break. I said, “Don’t worry about it. Thanks for telling me.”

With our appendages pulled in, we backed out of the exhaust bay and started moving up the outside of the ship’s hull, toward the forward airlock pressure curtain, where the others would be waiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if asshole Sanchez was trying to slip one by me. Rossignol? Damned sloppy is all. He knew I’d be coming back to the job. Knew God damned well I’d be thorough, would catch any mistakes.

So he just fucking let it slide.

I could imagine what he’d say when I brought it up: I’m sorry, Gaetan. Jesus, we’ve just been so damn
busy
... Sometimes. Yeah. Right. 

o0o

Going home already, the end-of-work conversation with Rossignol already fading. No more than shadowed memories of taking him by the shirtfront as we floated in a dark, empty, private corner of the locker room, bracing myself with feet and free hand, swinging him around my center of gravity, hauling his face close.

I think he was pretty surprised. I’m bigger and stronger than most of the mechanics at ERSIE-5, I guess, but it never matters. I haven’t gotten in a brawl the whole time I’ve worked here. Haven’t hit another person in anger since... well. Kids. You know.

Rossignol’s eyes popping with astonishment as I held him close and told him what a lazy fucking shit I thought he’d become. Pitching my voice probably lower than I ought to have, I told him he’d have to have a chat with Todd Sanchez if he wanted to keep the peace on his crew and... I’d let him go, told him to fuck it, kicked off from the front of a nearby locker bank, making the flexible plastic boom, sailing away from him, toward the door, going on home.

How many times have I come here like this, come in and slumped in my chair, staring at an empty wall, waiting... Not waiting for anything. The appliances know what I want, listen to my thoughts, anticipate my needs... like servants in some old movie, some movie from before the days of vidnet, before the days of... anything at all. Image of silent men and women dressed in black and white, silent men and women standing in the shadows, reaching out silent hands for rich man’s coat and velvet top hat...

Slim silent woman in black dress and white apron, polishing silver and wood and... Rich man’s eyes on her slim, starved back, eying a curve of hip, the hidden length of thigh and...

Somewhere now, the icemaker tinkled, making me whatever the bartender software thought I wanted, knew I might be needing just now, while the vidnet display swirled, turning the far wall to a wilderness of mist and color. What would I see next? A cooked up script about those far gone days? I can just imagine. Now I’ll see some skinny, famished maid, some
charwoman
bending over her silver-polishing job, bending over, back of her too-short black dress rising up...

Here and now, a pulsing yellow light of warning, superimposed over the landscape of my stock exchange access node. Somewhere in my head, a soft whisper, whisper from the apartment sentience: Important message from the trade controller AI, Mr. du Cheyne. Important message...

Go ahead.

Jesus, I can’t make these decisions. Call up the ERSIE lawyers and tell them I’ll take the eight hundred thousand? Or sit tight and wait for the resumption of trade you think is coming? Another whisper, in a subtly different inner voice: Cusp of decision axis may come with insufficient lead time for you to participate effectively in procedural processes, Mr. du Cheyne. Rule sieves suggest you grant this software
per diem
power of attorney. Meaning it thought it was going to have to jump fast when the time came.

Uh. “Granted.” Said aloud, seeming to echo eerily in the empty apartment, though the walls were as acoustically perfect as cheap consumer technology permitted. A quick look. OK. So nothing’s really happened since last night. B-VEI still flagged and frozen. Board of Trade Regents now in closed session. At the stock ticker... the transitional value of twelve thousand shares of ERSIE stock was valued at 817,468 livres. OK. So it’s gone up a little bit.

What does it
mean
? Does it mean the bidders believe ERSIE will win the legal battle going on in Kiev just now? Does it mean I should sell? Eight-hundred-seventeen-thousand livres, for Christ’s sake...

But what if they’re wrong? What if my software knows what it’s doing? How much is that B-VEI stock going to be worth tomorrow if... if... Then that familiar soft touch from the apartment: You have a visitor, Mr. du Cheyne. That wretched Mr. Rothman, come to sneer at my things and offer me more money? Or brandish ever scarier threats?

The AI said, A Miss Tallentyre, representing client services for Berens-Vataro Enterprises. A small, hard clenching inside, filling me up with nameless dread. Next act.

o0o

Much later, I sat in the darkness, staring at an empty wall. The household kept trying to read my thoughts, trying to bring up the vidnet link and do what it was supposed to do... a faint blush of dawn forming on the far wall, hesitating, then going dark again.

Miss Tallentyre’s visit wasn’t so different from the previous night’s meeting with the ERSIE lawyer. A round of meaningless chatter, then getting down to business, telling me historical bullshit I already new, her company’s opinion of what might happen, again, just a rehash of news reports. Asked me how much the lawyer offered me for the stock options and didn’t seem surprised at the answer. Asked if she could look at my stock ticker.

I’m not sure why I let her do it. A slim, pretty, blonde woman, quiet and serious, with pale blue eyes that didn’t seem to be seeing anything when they looked at me. A typical modern woman’s slim, trim figure outlined under a tan linen suit. Not as sturdy looking as a working girl, I guess.

I was wondering what it might be like to be... involved with such a woman, wondering as well how much B-VEI was paying her... two, three, maybe four times my mechanic’s salary... she’d surfaced suddenly from the AI’s composition tables and, without preamble, offered to buy back all my options at the program’s estimated parity value.

Cool, empty blue eyes, pale blue eyes, staring into mine.

Well, Mr. du Cheyne?

What I said then was the same thing I’d told the ERSIE guy. And got the same little speech in reply. Is this realistic? Is it? I don’t know. I’m not the only one holding a chunk of B-VEI stock, after all. There are dozens of Miss Tallentyres out tonight, visiting little shnooks around the solar system, making similar offers to... Why the hell would they do it, if they thought ERSIE was going to win?

Because ERSIE’s made them a very nice offer for
their
stock holdings? Sure. If ERSIE wins, it gets everything. If it loses, maybe it will have bought up B-VEI at a steep discount. Just like that. And if the B-VEI people think ERSIE has a good chance of winning, it’s certainly to their advantage to sell.

Shit. No matter what happens, somebody is going to have to continue working the B-VEI technology. If ERSIE wins its case before the board of Trade Regents, Doctors Berens and Vataro will probably be offered vice presidencies with ERSIE, maybe directoral seats, maybe...

On the wall, the AIs had finally managed to overrule my will that the net link stay dark. Light and motion and a swirling depth of detail... A moment of confusion, followed by a moment of recognition. This was an old drama, made in the middle of the twenty-second century, just a generation or so after the first interstellar crossing, in the days when starships were new and wonderful and strange.
Into the Stardust
. About the development of the first faster-than-light vessel, about it’s voyage to the galactic core...

They thought it would happen soon, didn’t they? Space travel begun in the middle of the twentieth century. Space colonization in the middle of the twenty-first. Interstellar expeditions opening up the twenty-second. All this wonderful new science, medicine, physics and engineering,
starships
, for God’s sake!

All right, so it took five hundred years, but...

Cold chill of realization.

It’s happening
now
.

o0o

At lunch the next day, I sat with all my usual friends, Garstang and Phil sitting together, diagonal from me. Millie Ai-chang and Zell Benson with their heads pressed together, bent low over a placard display of travel brochures, bright pictures throwing moving blue shadows on their faces, travelogue an animated whisper I couldn’t quite make out. Rua Mater down the other end of the table, node clip hanging in her hair, eating with her eyes closed.

Empty chair opposite me. Empty chair opposite her.

An alternate history suggests itself. Passion rising in the night by the shores of Lake A71K, soft wind stirring across my back as I lay on her in the faux-wilderness of Manhattan Island. Rua Mater whispering under me. Oh, Gaetan. Oh, my God.

The feel of her innards clutching my prick.

The spasm of my orgasm. The clenching of hers.

Lying together, pleasantly sweaty in the night, holding each other, satisfaction rather than desperation settling in, making itself at home.
And so they lived happily ever after
. But I was looking at an empty chair, not at her. And she was lost in whatever ersatz dream she’d provoked from the net.

A shadow on the table then, falling over our food, Garstang looking up with a start, seeming to recoil against Phil Hendrickx’s side, surprise, fear, visible in her eyes, the set of her jaw. There were two beefy guys from corporate security standing at the end of the table, looking us over. Two guys with a look of the gymnasium, a look of athletic drugs about them, stun rods dangling from their brown belts.

Looking us over, eyes almost amiable. Then looking right at me, one of them said,  “Gaetan du Cheyne?”

“Uh, sure.”

“You’re wanted in the shop supervisory office.”

Albacore
? Maybe Ross hadn’t taken as well as I thought to... “I’m off the clock now,” gesturing at my lunch. “Why the hell didn’t they just send a netmemo?” Garstang’s voice, a little shaky: “Gaetan...” Unstated:
These are security guys
!

The one who was doing the talking put his thumbs through his belt, heel of one hand bumping the stun rod, making it swing a little. He said, “You’re wanted in the shop supervisory office. Right now.”

Rua Mater’s voice from the other end of the table: “Gaetan, you want me to call the shop steward for you?”

Rua Mater maybe not so disinterested after all. Maybe I
should
have climbed in the shower with her, brief jolt of memory even now a slight pang somewhere in the neighborhood of my prostate gland. I eased back my chair and stood. “No. I guess not.”

The security asshole smiled and glanced at his chum. “Smarter than he looks.”

So what did these little bully boys think was going on? Were they looking forward to zapping me in front of a whole room full of workers? Probably dumber than they looked.

Garstang said, “What’s this about, Gaetan?”

I shrugged. Why tell... But then I said, “Probably about my Berens-Vataro stock options. They’ve been trying to get me to sell them.”

Garstang’s eyes wide. “
Sell
?”

I turned away, walking beside the two security guys, walking away from the table, grabbing my equilibrimotor from the wall rack and... Voice inside: What do you think? Are those livre signs in her eyes? Nice big £’s waking up her libido?

So what am I imagining? Am I imagining once she finds out how much money is at stake here, I’ll get her back from Phil Hendrickx after all these years? She must
care
you know. That business with Rua Mater... She was still staring at me from across the room when the elevator door slid shut, closing us off from one another.

o0o

Then, I sat in a supervisory office, somewhere deep inside the main ERSIE-5 administrative complex, sat in an antique wooden chair across a wooden desk from a woman in a creaky leather chair, woman dressed in a fine azure suit of soft, watered silk, no one I’d ever seen before. She smiled and reached out her hand for me to shake. “How’re you doing, Mr. du Cheyne?”

The name on the door. “Miss Yoshida?”

She nodded, still smiling. “Do you have any idea why you’re here?”

All I could do was shrug, try to smile back. You’re not in trouble. No trouble at all. Nothing’s at stake but a decision on whether to hold out for the most money you can possibly... “Well. If there’s no trouble with the
Albacore
decommissioning project...”

The net node embedded in her desktop was flickering, displaying images for her eyes only. Maybe Rossignol
did
send in a report. They could bust me a whole step for grabbing him like that. On the other hand, they’d find out just what happened. Maybe I’d be getting a bonus. Maybe Ross would be losing his gold belt, sitting in another office somewhere nearby, sweating your proverbial bullets.

I said, “I’m guessing this is about the stock options thing.”

The smile slowly faded. “Du Cheyne, I don’t
know
what this is really all about. I got a router instruction this morning... waiting for me here when I logged on. I...” A long hesitation. An odd look. What had all the smiling been about? Maybe she figured I’d let her in on the secret before... She said, “Look, this is nothing personal. I’ve got a router instruction in my pad and a job to do. You understand?”