The Unincorporated Man (44 page)

“Let’s just say,” she answered, “that I find it a little curious for a ranking board member of GCI to be here without any assistants.”

“I don’t always travel with my associates, Ms. Nguyen,” countered Janet.

“Perhaps,” answered the reporter, now smelling blood, “but I would also venture to say that you don’t always travel with the newest associate of the GCI board either… and to this ward in particular.” Eva pointedly looked up at the sign that said PSYCHOLOGICAL AUDIT TESTING with the famous Lincoln quote paraphrased underneath: “A Mind Divided Against Itself, Cannot Stand.”

Silence.

“I know quite a few stockholders,” Eva continued, “who’d be quite curious about these goings-on.”

“These
goings-on
, Ms. Nguyen,” shot Janet, “are really none of your damned business. It is, I assure you, an entirely personal matter. Now, if you would be so kind as…”

For Eva Nguyen it was now or never. “Do you,” she asked, cool as ice, “want your version to be heard, or shall I just conjecture a point of view?” She knew it probably wasn’t wise to threaten the lead attorney of the most powerful corporation on Earth, but opportunities like this only came along once in a lifetime, and if she didn’t grab the bitch by the horns—especially at a moment like this—she never would.

Janet smiled inwardly, knowing that Eva was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The plan was working perfectly.

“How dare you threaten me?” she spat back, with the fiercest game face she could muster. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“I do,” answered Eva, “and my question still stands. Do you or do you not want your version heard? Because I can assure you, Ms. Delgado, threat or not, this story will go out on the evening spin.”

Janet stood her ground, glaring at her “foe.” Eva Nguyen could not possibly know that the answer she was about to hear had been rehearsed, sweated over, and put into motion weeks prior to this “chance” encounter.

“Alright, Ms. Nguyen,” she answered, after biting her lip… lower left, for exactly two seconds. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage… so I’m prepared to make you a deal.”

“Name it. If it’s within my power I’ll try and oblige.”

“You give up your source and I’ll tell you everything I know.” Janet smirked, knowing that it was she herself, using a voice-obfuscation protocol, who had been Eva’s “source.”

Eva stared stone-faced at Janet. “Ms. Delgado, the truth of the matter is that I don’t know who the source is, but I must be honest. Even if I did, I’d never give them up.”

“Sorry, then,” answered Janet. “No deal.”

“I’m sorry, too, Ms. Delgado,” answered Eva, silently cursing her bad luck. She turned around and started walking away, mediabot trailing closely behind.

Janet began counting to herself,
3, 2, 1
. . . “Wait!” she shouted to the reporter’s backside.

Eva Nguyen quickly spun around.

“Yes?”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Janet said, shrugging.

“No, I can’t, Ms. Delgado; however, we’re wasting precious time. So again, I ask you. How is it that a ranking member of the board is here with their newest associate presumably undergoing a psyche audit?”

“The answer to your question,” answered Janet, making every effort to sound as if the rest of the sentence was being pulled out of her forcibly, “is… is… Cord.”

A look of shock. “Justin Cord?”

“No, Santa Cord. Of course, Justin Cord!” Janet lowered her voice when other people in the lobby looked up to see where the outburst had emanated from.

“But Hektor Sambianco is upper-echelon GCI,” whispered Eva, pulled into the drama, “an assistant to the board, how…?”

Janet put just the right amount of desperation into her voice as she cut off the reporter. “We don’t know!” She gathered Eva closer and began whispering quickly, like a person desperately needing to talk to somebody, anybody, just to make sense of something they didn’t understand. Eva Nguyen nodded reassuringly as Janet spilled the story. “Cord only owns a single share of Hektor’s stock,” rambled Janet, “but his motion to have Mr. Sambianco psyche-audited sailed right through. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m telling you, Eva… can I call you Eva?” Eva nodded, and Janet continued, “I was at every hearing, and it just didn’t stop.” Janet grabbed Eva’s arm for effect. “It
couldn’t
be stopped. The motion for a psychological audit sailed right to the top and was certified,” she paused for effect, “. . .
in a week
.”

While technically everything Janet had said was true, she neglected to tell Ms. Nguyen that it was Hektor and herself who had pushed the motion through—much to the various committee members’ alarm. But Janet was sure this reporter would put the spin on it that Hektor had wanted. “He’s being audited as we speak,” Janet confided, slowly looking toward the wall marked PATIENT EXIT AREA. And almost against her will, so did Eva. Then Janet gave her “confession” the final touch. The one Hektor insisted must be in the script. “Damsah’s ghost,” she said breathlessly, “if Justin Cord could do this to Hektor Sambianco, why… why, he could do it to anyone. He could do this…
to me
!” Janet was waiting for that moment to see when Eva stopped being a reporter and started being a person. It was just a flash of worry in her eyes, but that was enough to let Janet know that Eva was hooked. And that the implication of what Janet had said had now been made painfully clear to the person best able to spread her and Hektor’s well-crafted message—that, in short, no one was safe from the Unincorporated Man. The reporter was back in a second, but the dart had hit its mark—with poison inserted.

As if on cue, the exit area they were still standing in front of opened up, and Hektor Sambianco emerged out of the depths of Audits and Corrections in a daze. He walked slowly, and his eyes did not seem to focus on where he was. Eva Nguyen was so preoccupied with getting to Hektor first that she never realized that Janet had purposely stayed back. “Mr. Sambianco,” Eva asked, “a couple of questions if I…” She paused because Hektor appeared to look right through her without any comprehension of who or what she was. He had a vacant, mindless gaze that silenced her. It was Eva’s, as well as society’s, worst fears of the repercussions of a psychological audit all rolled up into one frighteningly disarming image—just as Hektor had intended. As soon as Eva stopped talking, Hektor lost interest and stumbled mindlessly about in another direction. Janet, on cue, gently grabbed his arm, gave Eva a sad and knowing nod, and led Hektor, unharried by the usually tenacious but now stunned reporter, out of the building.

Hektor waited until they were safely in the car and beyond detection, then broke out laughing. His “brain dead” mask fell to the wayside, only to be replaced by the amused, cunning face that Janet was just now beginning to realize hid a man far more capable than she’d imagined.

“So, Janet,” he asked, “ya think she bought it?”

“Oh, she bought it alright,” answered Janet, eyes wide in admiration. “So now, if you don’t mind, will you please tell me why you had to subject yourself to a brain scour to get the result you were after?”

Hektor’s smile was, as usual, disarming. This was the sauce for the goose. The moment when he got to reveal the intricate machinations he’d put into play to achieve success. And this day, with its well-rehearsed and perfectly timed orchestration, had been a glowing success. Or, at least, would be when that prissy little Eva woman released the story in another hour or so.

Hektor waited a moment, relishing every breath. He took out a glass from the car’s pantry, grabbed a bottle from the shelf, and poured himself a single-malt scotch.

“Janet, my dear,” he began, “most people have fantasies, peculiar tendencies… strange, shall we say, ‘desires’? And if they act on them it’s usually with a willing accomplice. It’s when those fantasies become deviant compulsions that a psyche audit becomes necessary.”

“And you wouldn’t call this whole chicanery we just went through,” asked Janet, helping herself to some of what Hektor was drinking, “deviant?”

“No, Janet. In all fairness, I wouldn’t. I may be a bit of a scoundrel, which I’ll readily admit to, but I do play by the rules. Sure, I bend them a lot, even exploit them from time to time, but I’m at least willing to abide by them.”

Janet seemed dubious.

“If you recall,” he said, responding to her look, “I was on my way to a twenty-year stint on the Oort Cloud before I got dragged back into this mess. I took my shot with Kirk Olmstead and lost. But I was ready and willing to pay the piper. If that’s not playing by the rules, my dear, then I don’t know what is.”

Hektor could see by Janet’s lack of response that he was making his point.

“As luck would have it,” he continued, “the Oort Cloud and its denizens will have to do without me for the time being.”

“OK,” Janet said, grudgingly accepting his explanation, “that still doesn’t explain why you used the audit. There are plenty of other things you could’ve done to discredit Justin Cord.”

“Not really, my dear. As far as the worlds are concerned, Justin is perfection incarnate—nasty temper and all. With the psyche audit I had one major advantage on my side.”

“And that was?”

“Ignorance, of course,” he answered, staring at the scotch in his glass. He knocked it back. “Society’s, to be specific.”

Janet was rapt, not saying a word.

“The Unincorporated Man has to lose, Janet. History, economics, and society are against our ‘hero’ from the past. I’m just speeding up the process and doing whatever it takes to make sure that GCI benefits from his downfall.”

“As well as Hektor Sambianco,” added Janet.

Hektor didn’t bother to answer.

Justin had forgotten about his request to have Hektor audited psychologically until he got a notification from the Bureau of Audits and Corrections in the form of a fax. The hardware was different but the method was the same—paper delivered via machine. The device had spat out a simple one-line message stating that the audit had been performed and no evidence of improper or dangerous action had been detected, and further that no corrective action had been taken. Justin tossed the paper aside and went back to reading Alexander Chen’s well-reviewed work
The Grand Collapse
. He’d long since moved past his rage at Hektor Sambianco and took small solace in the fact that he’d succeeded in harassing the man who’d made his life a living hell. He wasn’t sure if it was the hormone therapy or his general contentment with his present situation. Either way, he was happy to relegate Hektor, like the notice he’d received only moments ago, to the proverbial dustbin.

About one hour after tossing the message he received frantic calls almost simultaneously from Eleanor, Neela, Omad, Dr. Gillette, and Manny. He took all the calls at once but heard nothing over the babble.

“Just turn on your goddamned TZ!” Omad had managed to yell through the racket.

“You mean TV,” Justin corrected, calmly.

“Whatever,” Omad managed to yell above the racket. “Just turn the damned thing on!”

Justin looked at the holodisplay. It saw that his eyes had locked onto it for more than a second and turned itself on. Leading the broadcast was a picture of Hektor Sambianco looking like a shell of a man. He was seen being escorted out of the Bureau of Audits and Corrections by the woman lawyer Justin remembered from the trial. It took two seconds for Justin to realize that the spin was not at all in his favor.

He saw that a stylishly prim Asian woman named Eva was leading the story. Justin stayed glued to her every word.

“Hektor Sambianco,” she reported, “was not the nicest man on the planet, but did he do anything to deserve a psychological audit? In a display of governmental and legal expertise far beyond anything he should have been able to muster, Justin Cord was able to bypass multiple safeguards, appeals, and barriers to get the audit done in record time, and all the power and resources of the system’s most powerful corporation could not stand up to him… .”
Bullshit
, thought Justin.
All I did was submit the thing
.
Unless Manny…

“. . . The truly worrisome point for this reporter is that Mr. Cord appears to be immune to any counterthreat. As of right now there is not a single individual who has standing in any court to demand an equivalent counteraudit of Mr. Cord. For all intents and purposes, he’s untouchable. He can do whatever he wants… to any of us. And so this reporter is forced to ask the question previously thought to be in poor taste, but now taking on a greater sense of urgency—namely: When will Justin Cord incorporate?”

Justin sat staring blankly at the screen of his holodisplay. The din of his peers making comments and questions failed to penetrate. He eventually snapped out of his stupor.

“Will all of you please calm down?” he pleaded. “I need you all to stop whatever it is you’re doing and get back to my apartment ASAP. Can you all do that?”

They all nodded in the affirmative and broke off contact.

Little man got me good
, Justin thought.
Two points for Hektor
.

Justin reviewed with concern the snippet from the Court News report as well as a few other similarly slanted pieces. He turned to his lawyer.

“Manny, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the psyche audit meant to screw Hektor?”

“You’re correct,” Manny admitted—a little too glumly for Justin’s liking.

“Then why do I get the feeling it’s me who’s being screwed?”

“Because you are,” seethed Neela.

“Justin,” added Manny, “I filed the request for the audit like you requested, and to be honest, forgot about it. It should have been laughed out of court the second any judge took a look at it.”

“Like you said it would,” said Justin.

“Correct. Now, it is possible that this might be some sort of internal GCI power play, and that someone else within the organization used your request to get at Hektor, but I don’t think so. The timing’s all off.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Gillette.

“I mean,” answered Manny, “that it happened way too fast. All seven stages of hearing were reviewed and passed. The only way that could happen would be if all parties were actively trying to get the audit done. Favors must have been called in to get speedy hearings with the appropriate judges, because not one,
not a single
roadblock was encountered.”