Cyber Rogues (85 page)

Corrigan sighed. “Let’s see what himself wants and get it over with. Slot the reporter in when you can for later.” The Meechum interview had apparently made an impression—this was the third journalist this morning asking for more information.

“She’s being very insistent,” Judy said. “She seemed to think you’d recognize the name.”

Corrigan grinned as he signed some letters that he had been checking when Pinder called. “A good try, but I’ve never heard of her. Fix an appointment, will you, and put Celia through. Oh, and could you try calling Tom’s place one more time, Judy?”

“Will do. You’re through,” Judy’s voice said. At the same time Corrigan’s schedule for the day appeared on the screen, with Celia’s face framed in a window in one corner.

“Top o’ the mornin’,” Corrigan said, accentuating his brogue.

“Hello, Mr. Corrigan. I’m sorry to drop this on you at such short notice, but Mr. Endelmyer would like to meet with you rather urgently. Could you get over here for, say, eleven o’clock this morning?” Coming from such heights, it was an order couched as a request merely for form. God, Corrigan thought to himself, he must really have stirred things up. He saw on his schedule that he had a couple of things fixed for around then, but they would just have to be shifted.

“Yes, that will be fine,” he replied.

“We’ll see you at eleven, then.”

The window with the face vanished, and Corrigan called up a color bar to indicate to Judy the appointments that would have to be changed. Her voice came through again a moment later.

“Still nothing from Tom. I’ve put Lola Ellis in to see you here at four-thirty this afternoon. Uh-oh . . .” Judy had just seen Corrigan’s changes flagged on her monitor outside. “What’s this? Has something come up for this morning?”

“I have to report to the general,” Corrigan said.

“What’s up?”

“Celia didn’t say. Firing squad, probably.”

Judy paused just long enough to be discreet. “I thought you were very good. But you did rock the party boat a bit.”

Corrigan snorted. “Well, maybe this is where I get told that I’m not going to get my captain’s hat.”

“That would be a shame,” Judy said.

“Ah, not a bit of it,” Corrigan told her. “We can always go and work in a bar.”

But to Corrigan’s surprise, the summons was not for him to be shot. He arrived to find that Victor Borth had come down unexpectedly that morning from New York. Pinder was there also, along with a couple of the other CLC vice presidents. It turned out that Borth had not contacted Endelmyer the night before to vent fury about Corrigan’s performance, but to commend it.

“I was gonna get him fired,” Borth admitted candidly. “I was as mad as hell.” He made a short, stabbing gesture toward where Corrigan was sitting. “This turkey had loused everything up. It was going to be panic out there—backers running in a stampede to get out after some of the things he said.” Corrigan caught Pinder’s eye across the table. They shrugged at each other, both equally at a loss as to guess what might have changed things. Borth went on. “Then I get a call from Milton Perl.” Perl was Chief Executive Officer of Berrenhauser Trusts, one of the major backers, who had marshaled a consortium of commercial banks and investment houses behind the project. “And what do you know—Milt loved it! You see, they
had
been getting bad vibes for some time over the whole project, and they
were
talking about pulling out—the whole shooting match, the consortium, the works. Those guys aren’t so stupid. . . . I mean, you don’t get to be worth that much if you don’t know your head from your ass, right? They knew it wasn’t going to happen the way they’d been hearing it. ‘Vic,’ Milt says to me, ‘I’ve been worried.’ See, his people
knew
that nothing even close to this has ever been tried before in history, and that there are all kinds of questions nobody has answers to. But they also know that you never get anywhere if you won’t take risks. ‘We were willing to take a risk, Vic,’ he says to me. ‘But in return we expected honesty. All we wanted to hear was somebody tell us to our faces that there could be no guarantees. Then we’d know we were all on the same side and working to solve the same problem, right? But that wasn’t what we got. Instead, all we got was bullshit.’”

Borth pointed at Corrigan again. “Until
he
said it! And now Milt and his friends are happy people.” Borth spread his hands and treated everyone to an uncharacteristically appeasing smile. “Okay, I admit that I laid it on a bit, too, at times. But I’m not one of these tech-whiz geniuses. I guess a lot of people got carried away in the excitement, eh? But now everybody’s feet are on the ground again, and this is a good time to reappraise things.”

Endelmyer looked startled. “Reappraise things? What are you saying, exactly?”

Borth raised a restraining hand. “Oh, it’s okay, Ken. Don’t get me wrong. I used the wrong word. ‘Consolidate’ might be better. The project stays, no question. But Milt does want to go over the goals and purpose again, now that people are making sense, so we’re probably talking about putting back the start date.”

“I hope he’s not asking for a redesign,” Pinder said apprehensively.

“Nothing like that,” Borth assured everyone. “Like I said, Milt is a happy man today. But he does want to be clear on what the limits are and what can realistically be expected. As far as Oz goes, the technical design, organization, and operations stays with CLC, the way we’ve always agreed. The only thing that Milt
did
insist on in that area . . .” Borth leveled a finger at Corrigan again, “is that he wants
him
in charge of it.”

They stayed for the remainder of the morning discussing details, and then went to lunch, which Borth insisted on standing. And so there it was. After months of rivalry, backbiting, and infighting that had produced nothing but tension and bad feelings all around, Corrigan accepted, as the talk flowed around him, that in under a day he had attained everything he’d wanted. And it had not had to be fought for or conceded grudgingly, at that, but was being thrust upon him eagerly. Just a little integrity had worked wonders when the compounded results of suspicion and fear of failure had been about to bring disaster.

And it was all due to this extraordinary situation that he found himself in, whereby he was able to apply an older man’s experience to a young man’s circumstances. If it had proved this effective in the course of one day, he wondered if there was any end to where it might lead in the years still ahead of him.

Back in his own office that afternoon, he found himself wondering if this might explain the phenomenon of genius, that the world had been baffled by for as long as people had been around to think about it. He had convinced himself by this time that his experiences of the day before had been nothing more than a peculiar form of déjà vu, brought on by the sudden activation of a heightened level of consciousness at which he was now functioning. Events since yesterday were diverging so rapidly from anything in the “dream” that any feeling of having lived this time before had for the most part already left him.

But the altered perspective and perspicacity of vision that had accompanied that strange sensation of regression—the calm, inner confidence that he knew where he wanted to go and why, knew how to get there, and that it would not be the end of everything if he messed it up anyway—remained. He felt like a mouse that had been raised to some privileged vantage point from where he could watch the others still scurrying about in the maze. He could see where all the courses led, what lay at the end of every decision path, and in which direction changes would alter them.

Perhaps, far from being unique, this altered state of perception that seemed, as yet, beyond the ability of physics and psychology to explain, was something that had happened to many individuals of exceptional achievement and ability throughout the past. If so, it was little wonder why so few of those affected had cared to speak out. Far better to be an Einstein or a Da Vinci without the complications of trying to explain what would probably never be believed anyway, than risk being locked up as insane. And then again, maybe many of those who did try to convey their experiences had been put away, excommunicated, burned, banished, or whatever for just that. It was often said that the borderline between genius and madness was very thin. And as he got to thinking more, it struck him as significant how much of the world’s religious teachings could be interpreted as coded references to undergoing a mystical rebeginning of life: “born again;” “life after life;” “inner enlightenments” that can only be experienced, not described. Suddenly, it all took on a new meaning.

Through the afternoon, he went mechanically through the routine of taking calls, seeing visitors, checking on the project, and dealing with queries from Judy. There was still no word from Hatcher, and he told Judy to check with the police to see if there was any record of an accident. Pinder called to let him know that the rumor was already going around the top floor of Corporate HQ that Corrigan was tipped to be the technical director of Xylog. The news must have got back to New York ahead of Borth, too, for Amanda Ramussienne was on the line a half hour later.

“I see Pittsburgh is in the news,” she crooned from the screen, giving him one of her special sultry looks through half-closed lids.

“Why? What’s happened?” Corrigan asked.

“You don’t watch it?”

“No time for trivia. Anyhow, I only believe the advertising. What’s happened?”

“Oh, I assumed you’d know about it. There was a shootout at the airport there—less than an hour ago. A maniac went wild and shot some police officers. Anyhow . . .” She smiled a seduction. “But, as a matter of fact, if the rumors I hear are anything to go by, you are getting famous down there too. There’s a whisper that you’re going to get the tech-chief slot at Xylog.”

“Who whispered that, now?”

“Oh, a little bird.”

Corrigan shook his head despairingly. “Nothing’s confirmed. We’ll see how it goes.”

Amanda became more serious. “So there is something to it, then?”

“It’s looking promising,” was all Corrigan would say.

She brightened up. “So when are you coming up to New York again? We need to celebrate.”

“I told you, nothing’s definite.”

She pouted. “Well, what’s wrong with
practicing
celebrating? I need your kind of company.”

An icon indicated another call waiting, with a message caption superposed from Judy that read: MILTON PERL, BERRENHAUSER. “Amanda, sorry, but I have to go,” Corrigan said. “Something’s waiting.”

“Let me know soon, then?”

“Sure. ’Bye.”

Perl was calling to suggest that he and Corrigan ought to meet sometime and get to know each other better. Corrigan agreed, and they fixed a dinner spot for the end of the week. Then Endelmyer’s secretary came through again to advise that a meeting was being scheduled for the following week to reappraise Oz, and the Board would like Corrigan to present his assessment and proposals.

But commercial and material success were by now beginning to look mundane to Corrigan. Carried away in his inner speculations, he found himself wondering about the possibility of devoting himself to more profound callings. He experienced a conviction of being destined for greater things: things that would shake the world, rewrite a chapter of science, shape history. . . . And then Judy buzzed through to say that Lola Ellis from California had arrived and was waiting outside.

As soon as Judy showed her in, Lola wearing a blue coat and carrying a white purse, Corrigan knew that they had met before, but something looked wrong. And she obviously knew him, for instead of acting like somebody being shown into the office of a stranger, she stood waiting expectantly . . . yet at the same time showing apprehensiveness, as if unsure whether he would know her.

Ellis, Essell. Lola. . . . Of course! He should have gotten it from the name alone. She was twelve years younger too, of course, but he should have known the features well enough.

It was Lilly, from his dream life. A twelve-year-younger version of Lilly.

But that made nonsense out of everything that he’d come to terms with over the last two days. For she didn’t belong here. How could somebody from a dream fabrication suddenly walk into this life?

He nodded to Judy, and she left, closing the door. Corrigan and Lilly stood, staring at each other.

He shook his head, nonplussed. Lilly watched his face, giving him that same uncanny feelings that she had always been able to that she was reading the thoughts going on behind. Then she nodded, and he realized in the same moment what she had been looking for and had seen there.

“It’s happened to you too, hasn’t it?” Lilly said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Idiotic fantasies! Megalomaniac delusions!

Corrigan asked himself yet again how he could have allowed himself to be so carried away by it all. All he had needed to do was check the list of Air Force volunteers who were coming to Pittsburgh to see if it included a Lillian Essell from California. If it did, then she had not been a fabrication concocted in his head. Neither, then, had the rest of the simworld existence that he remembered.

They walked slowly along the embankment by the river between the Gateway Clipper Landing, where the tourist riverboats berthed, and the Smithfield Street Bridge. The day was dull and overcast with a hint of rain on the way, the river gray and sluggish. On the far side, the evening traffic was building up on the Penn Lincoln Parkway at the foot of the vertical, rectangular foothills of downtown Pittsburgh. They had got out of Xylog to be on their own and try to think through what it meant. Corrigan had been silent for a long time. Lilly stared ahead, her hands thrust deep in her coat pockets, leaving him all the time he needed.

Yesterday she had woken up to find herself twelve years younger, back in the hotel where the Air Force volunteers for Oz had been lodged that long ago, the day after her arrival from California. She remembered going to Xylog with the others, but her recollections of exactly what took place were vague, since, like Corrigan, she was recalling them from a perspective of many years later; soon after that they ceased completely, and the next thing she knew was being confused and slowly coming together again in the same kind of way as he had experienced.