The Octagonal Raven (44 page)

Definitely vanity. With a laugh, I closed the door and went to find Majora.

Kewood

I’d already reviewed and asked for changes in Recardo’s series on transport. I wanted a harder emphasis on how the glider tax actually didn’t fully pay for the guideways, and how the tax was structured effectively to keep it easy for the well-off, but prohibitively high for most others. I also wanted more on the obsolete maglift trains and their cramped and worn confines—and the fact that they didn’t exist in areas that served pre-selects, another subtle emphasis on “out of sight, out of mind.”

Recardo had just grinned and said, “Those kinds of changes I can make, Director. No problem.”

I didn’t have to do much with Cyhal’s series on education. The visuals and the numbers were striking enough. Ninety-five percent of pre-selects went on to higher education, and ninety percent of those went to institutes and universities that ranked in the top ten in their field on any scale. I’d known that, intuitively, but to have the numbers beat intuition—at least for an information and propaganda barrage.

I had barely finished with Cyhal when the gatekeeper clinged, and the square face of Lyenne DeVor appeared. “You called, Director Alwyn?”

“I did.” I used the remote to close the office door, then sat back at the conference table. I still didn’t always feel all that comfortable behind the cherry desk that had been Father’s. “I’d called about holdings and management. I’d found out from several other sources that EDA is one of the holders of Octagonal Solutions, or perhaps the only holder now.”

“We—or perhaps it would be better stated that the sole trustee of EDA holds roughly eighty percent of Octagonal Solutions.” A faint smile crossed her lips.

“I see.”

“The stipulation requires that EDA Trust make no changes in top management, except with the consent of those involved, for the first year after the transfer.”

“Can you tell me who the current director general is?” I asked.

“That position is vacant. The senior director is Meryssa Elysa D’bou.”

“So the current trustee really has limited influence for the next eleven months or so.”

“That’s the way we see it.”

“Is there anything else I should know about this arrangement?”

“If anything happens to the current trustee, half goes to his trustee, if he has one, and the other half to the Society of Dynae.”

“The Society of Dynae is likely to get quite a bit more power and wealth.”

“It has quite a bit already, Director. I’d prefer matters remain as they are.”

“So do I.”

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Are there any communications in the files concerning the request for the UniComm stakeholders’ meeting? Besides those you sent?”

“No, ser. Those were all that the Trust has ever had.” She smiled. “I can confirm that.”

I trusted her smile and words…somehow, although the facts were troublesome. “Thank you. I’d appreciate it if you would let me know if there are any other developments of this magnitude—Octagonal Solutions, that is.”

Lyenne Devor offered a tight smile, the first indication from her that she wasn’t exactly easy with the way things were going, and then broke the connection.

I was back looking at program-script drafts, when Majora slipped into the office. I didn’t like the look on her face.

“What is it?”

“Your friend Darius Fynbek requested the results of your privacy waiver before the CAs about the attack on you and your solicitor.”

“That’s privileged to the case at hand,” I said. “That’s what Anna told me.”

“It may be, but he’s appealing it to Supreme Justiciary.”

“How long will that take?”

“Three to five weeks.”

“I think we need to do a special piece on the honorable Darius Fynbek—his record, his support of his friends, and his threats against me.”

“It’s already begun.” Majora offered the impish smile.

“Oh…and if we can find it, his residence, and a good picture of it.”

“That’s breaking privacy.”

“Not if we pose it as a question. Is this the dwelling you expect for an advocate for all the people? Do you expect an advocate to live in posh…wherever he does….”

“You could get in real trouble there,” she said slowly.

“I already am,” I pointed out. “Or…we already are.”

“This is one you need to run by the legal folk.”

“After it’s finished. I don’t want them suggesting words from the beginning.”

Majora nodded slowly.

I could sense the doubt, the kind I was feeling all the time. After a moment, I asked, “Any luck with anything more about the aliens—beyond the first plague?”

“There’s not a trace of anything.” She frowned. “There’s not even a trace of something missing.”

“That would seem to mean…” I began.

“He did it all himself.”

“Or through his Octagonal Solutions,” I added. I stood up and slipped around the coffee table, easing my arms around her and holding her tightly.

We just hugged each other for several minutes.

After she went back to her office, I looked at the sheaf of assignment sheets on the polished cherry surface of the conference table. Paper…and words…and music…and I thought I could change the world with them?

Maybe we’d be more successful than Eldyn…hopefully, with far fewer casualties.

Kewood

With only two days left before I uprooted the entire programming structure of UniComm, both Majora and I were pushing frantically, and yet trying not to seem so, since I’d conveyed to those working directly for Brin Drejcha—who was still in Mancha—that the programming changes would not be implemented, at the very earliest, until the beginning of fall. The production staff—all norms—assured me that the changeover would go smoothly. I had more than a few doubts, since nothing had gone easily in the past six months.

I still only had the first three stories based on Devit Tal’s material about the multis, and hoped the rest would come, but we’d run the first ones and hope we could keep ahead. If not, some would get rerun. Some changes would still have to be phased in, and we were still having trouble with all the small “pointer” factoids and cross-leads. And I was trying to create another several dozen, reaching even into the depths of the porndraggies and raw sports challenge games.

The gatekeeper dinged and an image appeared on the screen—one of ours—from AllNews.

The gatekeeper clinged again, and I switched to the InstaNews story, which was essentially the same except for the last few words.

Devit Tal was definitely right. I didn’t have much time.

I walked out of the office and down the ramp to Majora’s office.

“I heard,” were her first words. A shock of her thick brown hair, short as it was, drooped onto her forehead, and there were dark smudges on her left cheek. She looked even more frazzled than I felt.

“Can we move things up another day?” The question was stupid, and I wished I hadn’t asked it, but that was the way I felt.

“We’re pushing as it is, Daryn.”

“I thought so, but I hoped.”

The belt gatekeeper clinged again. In fact, it was now receiving things all the time, and I’d had to reset it to limit those that got my immediate attention to roughly twenty names.

This one was Devit Tal—but again, merely an enclosure, with a voice-over, not even his image. The enclosure was a OneCys strategy paper for merging OneCys and UniComm. Gerrat would have remained as senior director, and Brin as managing director. Father would have been made an emeritus member of the advisory board.

How much of it I could use was another question—and how.

I gave Majora a quick hug and started back to my office and all the cross-leads and back-promos.

One of the production staffers passed me on the ramp and grinned. “We’ll be ready, director.”

“Good. We’re counting on you.”

How much…he had no idea.

Helnya

After a too-late dinner, Majora and I sat sprawled, side by side, on the settee in the great room that faced her garden. Twilight had long since faded into night, yet it had been one of the earlier evenings we had gotten away from UniComm, simply because there wasn’t that much more we could do—not that was meaningful. Also, I thought we would need a good night’s sleep, since I had a definite feeling we might not in nights to come.

I was sipping verdyn, she a dolcetta-like desert wine.

“Are you worried?” she asked gently, leaning her head against mine.

I laughed softly, ironically. “I don’t think there’s been an hour since the morning I showed up in your garden where I haven’t been worried. I worry that I’m wrong, and I worry more that I’m right. I fret about whether this plan will work, even to get the minor shifts in Federal Union policies and outlooks and to get them to look at the PST group, and I fret that it won’t be enough.”

“If it’s not enough…?”

“Then…I suppose that people will get what they deserve.”

“That’s cynical, Daryn.”

“It is…very cynical. But people have been trying to kill me, and my family, for the last six months, mostly because, arrogant as everyone claims we are, we’ve tried to oppose the growth of a hidden tyranny—”

“A greater hidden tyranny.” She straightened up and patted my shoulder. “Control of the less able by the more able is still a tyranny.”

“I’d agree, but things didn’t exactly work out well for anyone when the less able were controlling society. I just want society to be fluid enough so that anyone who is able can rise to the top.”

“My husband-to-be, the noble elitist.” She smiled.

“You forgot arrogant. The noble arrogant elitist.” I shook my head. “That hurts, in a way. Devit Tal said something before he took over Mahmad’s assignment—”

“The bit about your being arrogant, and yet the last chance?”

“He’s sending me stuff from all over, and it all fits with everything else, but it’s always on a delay link. It’s as though he doesn’t trust me.”

“In his boots, would you?”

“No,” I had to admit. “He’s supposed to supervise the switchover, and I don’t even know if he’ll be back.”

“He will be,” Majora predicted.

“What do you think will happen? A few demonstrations? A fizzle? Massive revolts?”

“I don’t know. I get angry when I look at what we’ve produced,” she said slowly. “Is that because I was already angry? Are people so apathetic and into themselves that they’ll just nod and say it’s more of the same, and of course you can’t trust those pre-selects?”

“There’s anger out there. I’m just trying to get it focused on the real problems.”

She shook her head sadly. “No. We can’t focus on the real problem. The real problem is the same one that’s always been there. Some people have more ability than others, and people with greater ability like to use and often abuse their abilities, and too many of those with less ability refuse to accept their limitations. Nothing we do will change that.”

“More targeted violence…? I don’t know. I hope that there’s at least enough of an outcry that the PST idiots retreat into the background and that the secretary director does something besides attacking UniComm. It doesn’t help that we have very little hard evidence, only suggestion after suggestion.”

“In this kind of situation, Daryn, really hard evidence doesn’t arrive until you lose everything, and until you start seeing norms and pre-selects brain-damped on trumped up charges, and the less-able children of the able taking power that they can’t handle, and then it’s too late.”

In the end, what else could I say? What else could we do? We had little enough that would qualify as hard evidence or proof, not under evidentiary standards.

So I just held Majora and hoped, looking out into a dark garden toward an uncertain morning. Hoped, knowing that we had but a day or perhaps a handful of days before we would find out how right—or how wrong—we had been.