Kelley Eskridge (8 page)

“He's not my Neill. Why is it his fault?”

Carlos closed his mouth and turned to
cleaning the orange pulp off his fingers with his napkin. Jackal and
Snow exchanged a look.

“Papa.”

“I've said too much already.”

The trick with her father was to be quiet
and wait. He could no more keep his mind still than his body, and he
loved to talk things out.

“He's in my web, did you know that?” She
hadn't: it made it more personal, somehow, that her father knew Sawyer
so well and now he was gone. “Yes, he's older than he looks,” Carlos
went on, anticipating her next thought with an eerie precision. “He
hadn't done as well as some, but he was a good team lead. His boss,
she's another web mate, and she really wanted to find a way to make him
successful. This thing with Neill, that was his big chance to shine.
But—”

Jackal nodded. Sawyer's struggle had been
obvious from that first lunch. She said, “He got to be good at the
techniques. When he had to run one of our meetings, he could handle
himself just as well as anyone else. But he just never really seemed to
get comfortable. He never committed.”

“He talked to me about it a couple of
times,” Carlos said. “He was determined to manage it for the sake of
his career. But he said it felt wrong seeing independent, quirky people
suddenly turned into well-functioning worker units—I think that's how
he phrased it.”

“It's not like that,” Jackal said.

“Mmm,” Carlos said.

Jackal decided to ignore that. “So what
happened?” she asked.

“He was given a new project recently—” He
stopped abruptly. “The one you and your mother fought about, was it
Garbo?”

Jackal nodded.

“That's the one. Jeremy was supposed to
handle it until the transfer to Dona, that's why he came to talk to her
about it. He didn't know about the reassignment.” Carlos tried to
smile. “Jeremy stuck up for you. He thought you were very good. He said
everyone could see you'd be getting the same amount of attention even
if you weren't the Hope, because you were earning it.”

Jackal bet her mother had just loved that.
She would have to tell Sawyer not to…and then she remembered that she
couldn't tell him anything, ever again: he was gone, swallowed up by
one of the innumerable frightening things that awaited someone forcibly
disconnected from the world's most powerful corporation.

Her father said grimly, “He did it to
himself. He sat right where Snow is now and agonized over his damned
principles, whether he could work on a project that he didn't approve
of.”

“What was it he didn't like?”

Carlos shook his head. “He wouldn't say
anything specific, only that the technology was dangerous. Dona tried
to make him understand that she had access to all the records and she
could address any concerns, but he just kept saying it was a bad path
to walk. He has some pretty strong religious principles.…I don't know.
But he wouldn't listen to Dona.” Carlos pushed his hair back from his
face. “It seems that he went to Neill yesterday and begged to be taken
off the project, and Neill refused, and so Jeremy apparently went over
his head with some kind of ultimatum. And in less than twenty hours the
company held the necessary meetings, recorded the authorizations,
processed the paperwork, stripped his passwords, deactivated his net
status, sent in the packing team, and put him on the tunnel train with
all his belongings neatly palletized.”

He wrapped his arms around himself. “Mica
didn't even have time to say good-bye. Michelangelo is Jeremy's web
name,” he added, seeing her eyebrows wrinkle. Then, more quietly, “I
don't know why I should think of that now, we don't really use them
anymore.”

“I'm so sorry,” Jackal said, and got up
from her chair to give him a hug. He returned it fiercely for a moment
and then said, “Sit down, finish your food. Here, let me reheat that
for you.” He whisked her plate away while Snow made a
never mind, let him
hand signal at Jackal
below the edge of the table. So she made herself finish her lunch, and
then left on a dead run, due in Neill's office to discuss taking over
Sawyer's project. Garbo. She found a seat alone at the back of the bus,
feeling unsettled, on the edge of an anger she didn't quite understand.
It had something to do with the ruin of Jeremy Sawyer, as if he were
sliding down a cliff and she was frozen, knowing that one misstep would
send her following. Her carrybag slipped as she stood for her stop,
spilling her things across the floor so that she had to scramble while
people laughed and tried to help and only knocked everything farther
out of reach. She had a sudden wish to break all their noses: then she
thought of the headlines:
HOPE INJURES
12
ON
TRANSIT RAMPAGE: CARRYBAG BLAMED
and was able to shake her head
and chuckle. I'm not Jeremy, she told herself. I'm good at this work
and I'm safe, no matter how scared I am. All I have to do is keep on
working.

She made her way to the Executive One
building, hoping fervently that she wouldn't run into her mother. She
had a hard, busy afternoon ahead. After Neill, she would go to her
global history tutorial, where she would be expected to provide a
précis of the impact of isolationism on the representative
governments of early twentieth-century Western Europe. She had two
media interviews scheduled, and her public-relations team wanted ninety
minutes to prepare her for questions. And doubtless there'd be more
requests waiting for her confirmation that she could squeeze them in:
as the investiture drew near, media seemed to spring up around her like
chokeweed. She was expected at a boutique on the western end of the
island in the evening, to select the formal clothes she needed for the
dozen celebrations she'd be required to attend on Ko and then in Al
Isk. She also hoped to manage some time with Khofi: she needed his wise
eyes and the way he would wave his hands about, and his advice: how to
handle Chao, and what to do about making things up with Tiger. And she
was probably behind in at least one learning module. Yes, she was busy,
but that was good. It would keep her focused.

She took a deep mental breath as the
elevator leaped the seventeen floors to Neill's office, trying to let
go of her feelings about Sawyer. It was important to be confident:
Neill demanded it, and she understood that in some way he was her
lifeline these days. The work sustained her, and only Neill could help
her grow into it. Only he could judge her. She looked forward to her
private meetings with him with three parts excitement and two parts
fear, a mix that fizzed through her as she stepped through the office
door that was open, as always. He never needed to close his door to
keep people from intruding. He simply made them choose to go away.

He stood near one wall-sized window,
silhouetted against the Executive Two tower across the plaza, and the
iron sky beyond, and he didn't even give her time to reach her usual
spot on the maroon leather sofa at the side of the room before he said,
“You are a great disappointment.”

She knew that words could hurt and
frighten, but she had never before had them root her to the floor.

“You broke his nose,” Neill said, with a
precise, enunciated coldness that made his disgust absolutely clear.
“You are an idiot child. Have you learned nothing? Have I wasted all
this time and effort on you?”

No, she tried to say, but her throat was
too tight; so she shook her head.

“What else should I believe? That someone
with your apparent gifts for group management can't control her own
emotions for the ten seconds it would have taken to get up and walk
away? Or perhaps you think it adds to your credibility as a facilitator
to publicly injure someone who can't retaliate in kind against the Hope
of Ko?”

She felt her face go hot with shame. “It
was a mistake,” she stammered, “it won't happen again.”

“It certainly will not,” he said flatly.
“I will not have you perceived as unable to manage conflict. I will not
have you perceived as unable to be objective. You are the most
important investment that this company will make in this generation.
You will do everything in your power to justify that investment. You
are the Hope of Ko, and I am making you fit to serve, and you have done
well up to now. Listen carefully, Jackal, because I do not generally
overcommunicate my praise. You have the potential to excel at this
work. You will make every effort to realize that potential and you will
use it for the company's benefit, in whatever way the company sees fit.
You will control yourself.”

She shamed herself further by the fat tear
that slid from her eye to the corner of her mouth. She wiped it quickly
with the back of her hand.

“Do you understand?”

What could she say?
I
understand it all and it's too hard, I can't bear it, I don't want to
be the Hope
. But that wasn't true. What she wanted was to be
the real Hope. It was a knife-edged yearning that carved her hollow; to
feel legitimate, blessed by the accident of right birth and the anchor
of demonstrated talent, secure and serene in the face of the future.
Bright and shining and safe. “I just want…” she said, and then stopped
and clenched her hands to try to stuff the longing back inside herself.

“What do you want?”

“I'm trying…I want to be a good Hope but
what if I can't do it, maybe they should have picked someone else—”
Stop, Jackal
! “I mean—” Her heart was
pounding.
Fix it, fix it
. She took
a deep breath and made her voice as even as she could. “I just mean
that there must be others who could do the job better.”

He was silent for a long moment. “Being a
Hope has nothing to do with merit,” he finally said. He no longer
sounded angry, only dispassionate. “You know enough about public
relations to understand how associative symbology works. The first
children born into the world government visibly dedicate themselves to
that government. EarthGov ensures a role for the Hope guaranteed to
bring credit and pride to the Hope's people. And then these proud
people say, what a wonderful Hope we have; the government must be
wonderful too. It doesn't matter that it's specious reasoning. It's
still good basic psychology. But let's not fool ourselves—”

He stepped away from the window then and
came around the corner of the desk, putting himself on the same side of
what had been a barrier. It was a quintessential Neill move, a gesture
of inclusion and directness: let there be no obstacles between us.
Jackal had seen it, and used it, a thousand times, and still she felt
herself leaning in, listening more closely.

“Let's not fool ourselves,” he said again.
“As this symbol, you are immensely valuable to Ko. We've had the chance
to make some small contribution to the development of the Earth
Government. Your status as a Hope gives us a greater opportunity for
participation, and we intend to use it. This places a great deal of
pressure on you,” he added, with something momentarily like compassion.
“But it doesn't matter how you feel. You are the Hope of Ko. The
company supports you and expects your support in return.”

She nodded.

He asked again, “Do you understand?” but
this time she heard the real question underneath: Do you accept? It
startled her—here, now, after everything, to be given a choice. Do you
want to be the Hope, or not? She knew it meant agreeing to it all, the
conspiracy and the company's ambitions, and she didn't want that; but
she did want to be the Hope. More than anything. So what else was there
to say but, “Yes. Of course.”

“And, of course,” he said, matching her
inflection, “your continued success benefits your web and your family
as well as Ko.”

She nodded.

He perched on the arm of one of his guest
chairs and looked at her. “Is there anything else on this topic?”

She looked straight back. She remembered
to square her shoulders and relax her jaw, and she gathered up every
ounce of what she knew of professionalism to say, “No. No, there isn't.
Perhaps we should discuss my new project.”

“Very well,” he said. “Jeremy was
stopgapping Garbo until you were ready to take it up. I had hoped to
keep him there for another week, but it makes no sense to put someone
else in. You will have to manage the additional workload.”

She answered, “I can certainly rearrange
my priorities and take it on now. I wouldn't want the project to
suffer.”

She did not expect him to smile or nod,
but she knew when he answered, “Please sit down,” that she was
forgiven, or at least on probation. And not just with Neill. She
understood now that he spoke for Ko, and heard for Ko. She did not have
to tell him her secret: he was Ko, and he already knew.

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