Company (15 page)

The phrase “ten years” gets him. This is scarily plausible: Jones can imagine himself slogging through a decade of corporate politics and day-to-day drudgery, steadily losing his enthusiasm until he is experienced and mercenary enough to qualify for the kind of position that Eve is offering him right now.

“Heh. You're cute,” she says. “It's like you're broadcasting your thoughts right there on your face.”

Jones gets flustered. He pulls the Audi over to the side of the road. He actually feels bad about having to kill the engine. After a minute he says, “Okay. I'm in.”

Eve grins. “Good. I'm pleased.” She puts one hand on his thigh and squeezes. “Now we'd better get back. I need to cancel the computer-porn story.”

At 4:00
P.M.,
the Credit department implodes. Until now, Credit's job has been to make sure that before any Zephyr department accepts an order, the customer has both the means and the inclination to pay. The customers are all other Zephyr departments, of course, but some manage their finances better than others. There have been cases where departments—there's no need to name names—
ordered something then tried to delay payment. These are Credit's mortal enemies. To defeat them, it wields a terrible weapon: the Credit hold.

When successfully deployed, it cripples the victim, leaving it unable to carry out the critical, life-supporting task of buying things. Poison floods through its fiscal veins. The only known way for a department to cure a Credit hold is to persuade Credit that its finances are in terrific shape—which is difficult to do while its operations are paralyzed. Every department ever infected with a Credit hold has perished. Which, as Credit has pointed out, proves how prescient it was to deploy it in the first place.

A lot of money has been wagered around the company on which will happen first: whether Credit will strangle Human Resources or Human Resources will sack Credit. This battle of the superdepartments has been a long time coming, and warning shots have been fired over the bows of both sides. Last month, Credit issued a warning on certain bloated Human Resources expense accounts; in response, Human Resources trimmed Credit from twenty-eight employees to twenty-six. Tensions escalated. Alliances formed in darkened meeting rooms. A rumor began circulating: Senior Management was thinking about downgrading the Credit hold from company policy to a simple advisory. If true, war was inevitable, because Credit would have no choice but to attack Human Resources while it could. A lot of annual leave was being hastily arranged in the Credit and Human Resources departments.

But all this is now moot, thanks to two hundred missing sheets of letterhead. On Monday morning, these sheets, fresh from Corporate Supplies, vanished. They could be replaced for a little under three dollars, but Credit's manager declared the theft to be not merely criminal but an assault on that most sacred of principles: teamwork. He issued a department-wide demand for the return of the pilfered papers. Inquiries began. Staff were called in for one-on-one discussions. Work records were studied. Desk drawers were opened and their contents carefully sifted through. As the investigation heated up, careless accusations were thrown. Employee morale, already strained from tensions with Human Resources, fell to bitter new lows.

This morning, Credit employees arrive at their desks to find a memo from the manager. It upbraids three people for shoddy work practices, which were uncovered as a by-product of the recent investigation. It stresses the importance of completing two major projects. And finally, off-handedly, it says the manager has located the missing
stationery, which he misfiled in his desk, so that matter is closed.

Enraged Credit employees storm the manager's office. The manager is lucky to get to the door in time; he locks it and takes cover behind his desk. As the workers outside shout and bang on the glass wall, he stabs at his phone for Human Resources. He wants to lay off the whole department, he says: all of them, all of them! Human Resources is happy to oblige. Within two minutes, a dozen blue-uniformed Security guards step from the elevators.

By the time the last employee is dragged away and Security has begun to clean up, Human Resources has issued a company-wide voice mail. It announces that Credit has chosen to lay off all but one employee as a cost-saving measure. And since a group of fewer than ten people does not qualify as a department, the entity Credit no longer exists. Forthwith, Credit holds will be issued by Human Resources.

“Where did you go?” Freddy says. “Someone came around to look at your computer. We thought you'd been sacked.”

“Someone looked at my computer?”

“Yeah, some guy from Security. But it turns out he was just installing new drivers.”

Jones says, “How do you know?”

“That's what he said.”

“Did he install anything on your computers? Holly?”

“You know, Freddy's right,” Holly says, heading for the watercooler. “You
are
getting paranoid.”

“Don't you think it's weird that—” He stops himself. “Sorry. You're right. Sorry.”

Freddy waits until Holly's left. “Speaking of weird, I heard you went for a ride with Eve Jantiss!” He smiles. It looks painful.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Wow.” Freddy shakes his head. “I have no idea how you managed that.”

Jones realizes that this is as close as Freddy can bring himself to asking what the hell Jones is up to. “Oh, I just, you know, we got to talking about those flowers, and she thought maybe I'd sent them to her, and I said no—”

“She thought
you'd
sent them? But I started sending her flowers before you even got hired.”

Jones starts to sweat. “Oh. Well, that's weird.”

“How could she think they were from you?”

“I guess—anyway, I said they weren't, but I might know who sent them. And she was like, ‘You
have
to tell me.' I didn't, of course”—Jones injects, because Freddy now looks to be on the verge of a heart attack—“but she wanted to find out, and she offered me a ride in her car, so . . . that's how that happened.” Freddy doesn't say anything, so Jones adds, “She's really intrigued by the whole flower thing. I think you should tell her it's you.”

Freddy stares. “Maybe I should speak to her.”

“Exactly. Exactly. Get to know her a bit, then when you tell her about the flowers, she already knows you're a nice guy.”

Freddy nods slowly. “Thanks. Thanks, Jones. You know, at first . . . I thought maybe you were moving in.” He laughs.

“No, no! Come on.”

Freddy smiles: genuinely, this time. “You're a good man, Jones.”

“Come on,” Jones says. “Come on.”

At seven fifteen in the morning the lights of the Zephyr building burn in the fog like the port windows of a sinking ship. Tendrils of dawn sunlight leak into the night sky, but it makes no difference to Zephyr Holdings: inside, thanks to the eternally vigilant fluorescents, it's always 9:00
A.M.
Turning off the lights, after all, would imply that employees are expected at some point to leave. So at Zephyr the lights stay on regardless of whether anybody's home.

Jones walks across the parking lot, gravel crunching under his shoes. He is surprisingly alert for this time of the day, considering he hasn't had a coffee yet—but then again, he is en route to his first secret Project Alpha meeting. He enters the lobby and squeaks his way across to the elevators. All four cars are open and waiting for him.

Jones steps inside and sets down his briefcase. Eve gave him specific instructions on how to reach level 13, these being: (1) choose an empty elevator, (2) swipe his (upgraded) ID card, (3) press the 12 and 14 buttons simultaneously, and (4) press
DOOR OPEN
when the elevator is roughly level with 13. This doesn't sound too complicated in theory, but Jones expects to spend a bit of time bouncing between floors before he's nailed step four, which is why he's here fifteen minutes early. But he gets it right on his first attempt: the screen flashes up 13 and the doors open on blue carpet and muted lighting. Jones feels mildly proud of himself.

He walks down the glass corridor, following the sound of voices, and enters a meeting room. There are half a dozen people already here, including Eve Jantiss, who is leaning against an oak table roughly the size of Jones's apartment. This table can't be a single piece of wood, because that would be ridiculous, but it certainly looks like it. It is a rich, warm brown, not so much reflecting the recessed lights as gently spreading their luminence around; it is a table so beautiful that Jones actually notices it despite the fact that Eve is right in front of him in a short black skirt and buttoned shirt. “Jones!” she says. “You just won me fifty dollars.” She points through the glass wall to a bank of monitors. “Level 13 on the first try. Tom thought we'd need to go fetch you.”

“Hi,” says Tom, a middle-aged man with a bright blue tie who is browsing the buffet table on the other side of the room. Jones nods hello.

Eve says, “You know, one time I tried that trick at the Hyatt in New York, pressing 12 and 14 then
DOOR OPEN
at 13, and I surprised a bunch of FBI agents. I swear I'm telling the truth.”

The room chuckles at this, so Jones wipes the amazed expression off his face and replaces it with a smile. He looks around for somewhere to stash his briefcase.

“Under the table,” Eve says. “And help yourself to a
pastry.”

This occupies Jones for the next few minutes, along with introductions to the other agents of Project Alpha. They all seem reasonably sociable, but the common thread is that they are clearly very smart. Jones realizes he will be running along behind these people for a while.

“Ah, the wunderkind,” a voice says behind him. Jones turns to see Blake Seddon grinning at him from the doorway. Blake is Alpha's plant in Senior Management. He is deeply tanned, in his late thirties, wears pinstriped suits, and has teeth so bright that Jones finds himself squinting. Did his parents just take the gamble that he would turn out a square-jawed hunk with great hair, Jones wonders, or was that brought on somehow by his name? There's a whole
nature-versus-nurture debate right there. “You know, if you're meant to be the hot new thing here, you should get yourself a new suit.”

Jones realizes he's been insulted. He looks down at his suit, which is two months old and cost four hundred dollars.

“Oh, fuck off, Blake,” Eve says amiably. Blake laughs. Eve takes a seat and gets to work on her croissant. “Jones,” she says, through a mouthful. “Come sit.”

Jones obeys. The chair surprises him, giving in some places and supporting in others. This, he realizes, is an expensive chair. He experiments, moving his butt and arching his back. It gets better. Jones had no idea that chairs could do this. To think, all his life he has accepted that chairs provide a certain standard level of comfort, while society's elite were enjoying
this.

“Ignore Blake.” Eve doesn't deliberately aim this at Blake, but she doesn't lower her voice, either. “He's just threatened.”

“Why?”

She looks at him. “You don't know? Wow. You
are
cute.”