The Unincorporated Man (66 page)

Justin didn’t interrupt. He knew very well the effect he was having on the system. He’d just been hard-pressed to believe that he’d been the root cause of it all.

“You’re a threat,” continued Mosh, “and I’ve wished to Damsah I could hate you for it, but I can’t. I actually hope The Chairman succeeds, because I honestly believe you must incorporate, if not for your sake, then for ours. You’ll give up nothing you ever really had and gain everything a man could ever want.”

Justin sat silently, openly holding Neela’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” said Mosh, “maybe I said too much. Your life, your choice.” He then got up to leave.

“Mosh,” said Justin, insisting his old friend sit down, “you have every right to speak your mind. Maybe you don’t consider yourself my friend, but you and Eleanor have been companions of sorts, and certainly true friends of Neela’s. That counts for a lot.”

“Yeah,” interrupted Neela. “Besides, someone has to talk to my mule-headed friend here besides me.” She still couldn’t get the nerve up to say “companion” or “boyfriend,” but all present knew what she meant.

Mosh chose to ignore the inference. He was still a bit steamed that the courtship had taken place with one of his employees—felt it reflected badly on his judgment. But he was also old enough to know that there was no accounting for love. And even he had to admit that the circumstances under which the affair occurred were far from normal.

“I do have some good news for you,” he said, pressing on. “I made some inquiries and have arranged for you to work under an old friend of mine, Hildegard Rhunsfeld. She’s capable and owes me. You’ll be well looked after, Neela. I’ll also arrange to visit the research lab from time to time. Just to be sure.”

“That must be half a lifetime’s worth of favors you’re calling in. Mosh, you really don’t have to do all that.”

“Oh yes, he does,” insisted Eleanor.

Mosh managed a smirk. “Besides, if I didn’t,” he said looking over at his wife, “she’d kill me.”

“And,” said Eleanor, smiling triumphantly, “it just so happens that right about the time you’re going to be transferred, we’re going on vacation!”

As to why this piece of information was relevant, Justin had no idea.

“We’ve decided to spend some of our hard-earned wages on renting a private yacht, dear,” continued Eleanor. “We’re finally going to take that grand tour of the solar system—with you. We’ll be more than happy to drop you off at your destination.”

The look of genuine surprise on Neela’s face was enough to coax an ear-to-ear grin out of the curmudgeonly director.

“Mosh, Eleanor, that’s too much,” insisted Neela. “It must be costing you a fortune!”

“Already prepaid. Besides,” Mosh answered, with a slight twinkle in his eye, “you really don’t want to say no to Eleanor. Trust me, I’ve tried. One way or another she gets what she wants, and she wants you to join us… as do I, of course.”

Justin reached out and shook Mosh’s reluctant hand. “Yes, yes. She’ll go.”

Neela offered no resistance. The idea was appealing. It would give her time to clear her head.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Justin, giving Eleanor a bear hug, “I owe you both so much.”

“I’m not doing it for you, son,” Mosh said, admonishing Justin. “But if you mean that, I’d consider the favor paid in full if you’d just honestly think about what I’ve said today.”

“I can’t lie to you, Mosh,” Justin said. “The idea of incorporating has nothing to do with Hektor, The Chairman, GCI, or the government. It has to do with who I am fundamentally.”

“I know that, Justin,” answered Mosh. “But don’t forget, we’re all along for the ride. And don’t discount The Chairman. You haven’t really faced him, you know. Just his underlings and his opening moves orchestrated through those underlings. Eventually he’ll come after you directly, and with greater strength. There’s simply too much at stake for him not to. Plus, he’s now more powerful than ever and won’t stop until you’re incorporated.” Mosh chuckled. “I’m sorry. Here I am sounding like I should be in a spy holo. We’ll leave you two now. You only have a little time left, and the last thing you need to hear is the blathering of an old man.”

They didn’t object. Mosh and Eleanor took their leave and bid Justin good luck. As the medical director’s flyer took off into the clear blue sky, Justin waved. One by one, they were all saying good-bye.

The weeks passed far too quickly. Between running the Liberty Party, showing up at rallies, and having to deal with an almost constant and unrelenting attack on his assets, Justin and Neela found precious little time for one another. Perhaps it had been a good excuse to begin the process of letting go, he wondered. It was almost easier not to meet than to spend every waking moment together—an impossibility anyway, given the societal memes, their celebrity, and the striking breadth of their new responsibilities.

Before he knew it, Justin found himself standing with Neela at the Interstellar Marina in Oahu, Hawaii, where Mosh and Eleanor had rented a yacht for the run around the solar system. It was located near Pearl Harbor, and was about five miles west of Honolulu. The grand vessel’s living quarters, noticed Justin on inspection, were well appointed. They had over three thousand square feet to play with, and they used it efficiently, with guest rooms, viewing areas, and luxury appointments throughout.

Neela and Justin had barely said a word to one another on the way to the marina, preferring instead to hold each other’s hand in a tight embrace. They’d made love one last time, shared a bottle of wine—one last time. Snuggled together—one last time.

And now they stood facing one another at the departure dock, oblivious to the foot traffic, noise, and general goings-on of the space-faring port. Mosh and Eleanor were already on the boat, waiting patiently.

Justin held Neela’s hands in his. “Neela…”

“You can stop this,” she said. Her voice was plaintive.

“We’ve already been through that, Neela,” he answered, this time with just a hint of desperation. He was feeling her need for him, sensing her desire to stay. “I can’t, my love,” he added, “please forgive me. I wish to God that I could, but the price is too high.”

Neela managed a forlorn smile. She’d been outbid. The only man in the universe whom she could connect to, share a life with, laugh knowingly with… the only man she would ever want had been spoken for.

Her drawn eyes stared out in pained acceptance.

“Of all the beliefs you had to bring with you from before the Grand Collapse,” she implored, “you couldn’t have believed in some sort of ‘ism’?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “That would have been fine,” she continued, wiping away the driblets that had formed near her eyes. “Any one of them would have been fine… so… so many isms.” Her voice trailed off.

Is she having a breakdown?
wondered Justin.

“Or,” she continued, “it could have been… religion, Damsah knows we’re lacking in that department… the Buddha… yes… yes, the Buddha would have been fine… would’ve worked for us. Oh, Justin,” she said, small rivulets now beginning to stream down her face, “you could’ve built temples… temples to us.” Her voice was wistful, lost. She paused to gather her breath and wipe away the tears.

And then Neela’s face, which up until that point had been an amalgam of emotion, suddenly became a singly focused beacon of clarity. Justin was so taken aback by the swift transformation that he was tempted to step back.

“But you,” she said tenderly, “
you
had to believe in an ill-conceived principle that never worked in your time and doesn’t work in ours. You, Justin Cord, Mr. Unincorporated Man… Mr. One Free Man…
you had to believe in freedom
.”

With that she stepped out into the float field and was lifted up onto the ship. Justin waited for her to turn around—a last look—but she never did.

On a planet of well over twenty billion souls, Justin Cord was now truly alone.

14 Temptation

Be not afraid of greatness:

Some are born great.

Some achieve greatness,

And some have greatness thrust upon them.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
TWELFTH NIGHT
(ACT II, SCENE 5)

Unemployment at 10 percent. Hundreds of millions are now living on their savings, having used up their unemployment insurance. How long the unemployed can do that is a matter of personal circumstance. Those who were saving for a big stock purchase will be able to hold out for a couple more months. Those who had just made one are already being forced to sell their homes and find other places to live.

Calls for the Unincorporated Man to be forcibly incorporated were put forth by the Society to Preserve Society. The new group was formed out of business organizations, civic groups, and various parent associations, and is funded solely by small donations. Mr. Cord was not available for comment.

—ISN BROADCAST

J
ustin returned to San Francisco, and for a while attempted to get lost in the hubbub of work. But even with a steady swarm of humanity around him, the office seemed a cold and lonely place haunted by memories. He was giving serious thought to following Mosh into the wilds of space. He’d rent a yacht and tour the solar system. Maybe even visit the moons of Jupiter, fly by the rings of Saturn, or climb Olympus Mons on Mars—a shield volcano nearly fifteen miles high and over three hundred miles wide at its base. Such were the experiences that awaited Justin in this brave new world. He could even take up the 70 percent sports, activities considered so dangerous that only those with an ironclad majority could engage in them: Storm surfing on Jupiter came to mind. He’d always wanted to learn how to surf.

Justin figured that he should talk with Dr. Gillette again, but even the good doctor hadn’t been returning his calls.
Probably GCI’d like the rest of them
, he thought dourly to himself.

When sebastian finally did beep, Justin assumed his avatar was going to patch him through to the good doctor. After all, he’d been the only one Justin had tried to contact.

“Tell the good doctor…”

“It’s not Dr. Gillette, Justin,” interrupted sebastian.

Great
, thought Justin.
Now, even my damned avatar’s being rude
.

“Actually,” continued sebastian, “it’s not even someone on your approved list, but I think you may want to take the call.”

“Who is it?”

“Agnes Goldstein.”

It took Justin a moment to realize whom sebastian was referring to. In the rush of events he’d completely forgotten about the chipper 25 percenter Omad had introduced him to at the post–Mardi Gras get-together. But he sure was glad that she’d called.

“By all means, sebastian, put her on.”

Per Justin’s standing order, the communication was in voice only.

“Agnes,” he said with a slight lift in his voice, “it’s good to hear from you again. How are you?”

“I wish I could tell you ‘fine,’ Mr. Cord. But I can’t.”

Justin feared that yet another victim had been infected with his “association” disease—associate with Cord, get audited. But he knew, especially with regards to Agnes, that he’d been so very careful to cover his tracks.

“What is it, dear?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I didn’t know who else to call. It’s about the gift you gave me. I… I think I may be in trouble.”

“Is this immediate trouble, Agnes? I can arrange for you to stay in a safe place if need be.”

“I don’t think it’s like that.” She paused in thought. “God, I hope not.”

Justin made an instant decision. “Agnes, are you home?”

“Yes, Mr. Cord. I am. All the time, actually. I lost my job, and I haven’t been able to find another.”

Justin sighed. “I’m on my way, Agnes, and will you please call me Justin?”

_______

In retrospect, Justin should have realized things were a bit off when he got to Agnes’s neighborhood. It was downright picturesque. He was in a low-class neighborhood that was empty. There were no children playing. No flyers with people coming and going. In a part of town that should have had massive unemployment, there was no one home. And it was also only later that he’d realized that there were no mediabots—not very common when it came to lower-class neighborhoods but extremely common when it came to him. He’d started calling them flies, because, no matter where he went, they always seemed to be able to find him. But not today. Not a one.

In his beeline to Agnes’s he failed to notice the anomalies and walked blindly up to her front door. He was about to knock, but the door opened automatically at his approach. He looked around to see if anyone was on the other end of it, and when no one apparently was, he stepped inside the foyer.

“Agnes?” he called out.

He heard the distinct and very identifiable pop of a beverage can being opened. It was one of those sounds that had not changed at all in the centuries that had passed. He headed toward the direction of the noise.

“Agnes,” he said, walking toward the sound, “I came as soon as I could. Are you…?” Justin stopped in his tracks. Sitting at the island in the middle of the large kitchen was the one and only man Justin Cord had truly hated. Not even the treachery that his old assistant, Sebastian Blancano, had perpetrated roused the feelings of anger that Justin felt for the man currently occupying center stage in the kitchen.

“Hi, Justin,” greeted Hektor Sambianco, holding up a can. “Beer?”

Hektor seemed completely relaxed in a pair of board shorts, sandals, and an oversized Hawaiian-print shirt.

Without saying a word Justin turned and headed for the door.

“Justin, five minutes is all I ask,” Hektor called out.

“Fuck you,” answered Justin, without breaking his stride. He had one foot out the door when Hektor lobbed his missile.

“Leave,” he yelled from the kitchen, “and Agnes never gets majority. Hell, she might not even get out of jail.”

Justin stopped, clenched his fists, and whirled around. “You really are a son of a bitch.”

Hektor came out of the kitchen and stood staring at his foe in the doorway. “Yes, Justin, but I’m the son of a bitch who has gone through great effort to arrange this meeting.” Hektor left Justin and calmly walked into the living room. “Five minutes,” Hektor shouted from the room. “That’s all I ask.”

Justin stood in the doorway for another moment, knowing he had no choice. He marched back down the hallway and entered the living room, where Hektor had made himself comfortable in a big, overstuffed recliner. He was still sipping his beer. “Sure you don’t want one?” Hektor asked, holding up the can. “It’s a Hacker-Pschorr Munich. Your favorite, right?”

“How did you clear the street?” asked Justin, dispensing with the small talk.

“Easy,” smiled Hektor. “We offered everyone three times what their houses were worth with half up front. The other half being paid if and only if they left immediately for one day. This day. After that GCI closed off this bit of private property. Truth is, we’ll sell them back to them at market price… if they still want them. Congratulations, Justin, there’s at least one small part of this planet that’s damned glad you came to visit.”

“And not one person said no?” he asked suspiciously.

“In this economy? They couldn’t leave fast enough. Well, actually,” he said, “that’s not entirely true. There was one person who said no. Why, it was Ms. Goldstein. We even quadrupled the price this place was worth, but the lady wouldn’t budge. Go figure. You do encourage loyalty, I’ll give you that, Justin.”

“So you had her arrested?”

“Justin, Justin, she wouldn’t leave. After she made the call we knew we only had about a half hour to an hour before you’d be here. We had to buy the block, clear everyone out, and arrange a privacy zone. We were, shall we say, pressed for time?”

“So you had her arrested?” Justin repeated.

“Yes.”

“On what charges? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Oh, not at all. Trumped-up ones, to be sure. We implicated her in terrorist activity with the Action Wing.”

Justin shook his head in disgust. “You’re a real piece of work.”

“Thanks. I try.”

“If she made the call for you, how come she wouldn’t sell you the house? Or I suppose you just seized it.”

“Justin, Justin, she didn’t make the call for us. I had her communications tapped. I also had anyone who came in contact with you put under low-level observation and, where feasible, stock options taken out. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 20 percent of Ms. Goldstein’s shares were already being optioned out. No way to know who it was, but it smelled of you. I took a small gamble and bought out the rest of her shares.”

“I still don’t see how this puts us here,” he answered sternly.

Hektor gulped down the rest of his beer and crushed the can on his knee. “We had her under observation. She tried to access her account and found that none of her stocks were for sale. She called you, and we moved.”

“You were in New York. How did you beat me here by a half hour?”

“In that, Justin, I got lucky. I was surfing off Half Moon Bay when she called you. I was here in five minutes, and got the buyout going soon after that. Luckily there were no emergency situations, and I got what I wanted. The chance to talk privately.”

“Not yet.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I am. But you don’t get your five minutes unless you agree to my terms first.”

“And they are?” Hektor asked, smiling malevolently.

“Agnes is released immediately. You expunge all this crap about her being in the Action Wing. In fact, I want to see evidence that she is a member in good standing of the SPS. Hard-copy evidence I can give to my lawyer.”

“Next.”

“You will give her enough stock to achieve 70 percent control of her portfolio.”

“Next.”

“I see her… here.”

“It will take a little while to prepare.”

Justin headed for the kitchen. “Take it.”

An hour and a half later a slightly confused Agnes Goldstein walked back into her own house. Justin came out of the den and went up to her. “Are you OK?”

Agnes’s dazed look did not go away; if anything, it got worse.

“Justin, what on Mars is going on? I’ve been threatened, arrested, almost put on the list for psyche auditing. I couldn’t get a lawyer because they said that my insurance was canceled. But I know it wasn’t. When I thought that it couldn’t get weirder, I was released, picked up, and driven home in the nicest limousine I’ve ever seen, and… and, Justin, I’ve just been given supermajority.” Justin slowly steered the still talking Agnes to the kitchen without trying to break into her nonstop monologue. While she was talking he took her coat and got her a bottled drink called G! from the refrigerator. It appeared to be slimy, green, carbonated algae. Justin couldn’t drink the stuff, but it seemed to be the drink du jour.

“Seventy percent?” she gasped. “Can that be real?”

“Let’s check. Sebastian, can you confirm if Agnes owns seventy percent of her portfolio? Also, can you make sure that she’s a member of the SPS in good standing, and get her the top lawyer insurance plan for one year, prepaid. The one where the top-rank lawyer comes to your house and does your laundry.”

“Justin,” answered the faithful avatar, “her portfolio is indeed at 70 percent. The title is free and clear. Your lawyer has hard-copy proof that Agnes could not possibly be a member of the Action Wing, and assures me that she can manufacture more if needed. The lawyer is on the way.”

“Thank you, sebastian.”

Agnes was still staring, dumbfounded, at Justin. “Mr. Cord… Justin, why are you doing this for me? I thought you wanted me to earn it on my own. I kind of wanted to earn it on my own.”

“Agnes,” he answered, eyes warm in appreciation, “you did earn it. You stood by me against a man you knew to be dangerously powerful. Your acquaintance with me put you in danger, and this was the only way to give you a cushion of safety. So you most definitely earned and will continue to earn this. It’s the least I could do. From here on in, you’re going to be under the microscope. I’m so sorry that my coming into your life in even so minor a way has done this to you. If anything, what you’ve received today is not enough. You deserved the right to make your own future, and that’s been taken away. I only hope that when you realize what I’ve done to your life you’ll forgive me.”

Agnes was flabbergasted. “Are you insane? I have a supermajority! Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever get
that
. As for standing by you, of course I did. You tried to help me, and I was just returning the favor. Do you still need my help?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the man who had me arrested is still in my living room, and I’m pretty sure that he’s Hektor Sambianco.”

“He is Hektor Sambianco, deputy director of Special Operations, GCI, and a royal pain in my ass. You could help me out by giving us some breathing room.”

Agnes nodded her head. “Say no more. I don’t want to know. I’m going upstairs to take a bath, and then I’m going to bed. But if you need anything, you call.”

“I will. You enjoy your bath.” Justin watched her head up the stairs. Sighing, he got a beer from the fridge. There was indeed some Hacker-Pschorr Munich, but the cheap bastard had only bought synthetic, and in a can at that! Justin headed back into the living room to keep his part of the bargain. He found Hektor in a deep slumber. It occurred to him that Hektor probably didn’t get that much time to sleep. In fact, Justin concluded, he may well have been one of the busiest men in the solar system. With savage glee he kicked Hektor’s foot and shouted in his ear, “Five minutes, and the clock is ticking.”

The look of surprise on Hektor’s face was well worth the price of having to listen to him mouth off for five minutes—eternity that it may be.

“What,” groused Hektor, “no good-morning kiss?”

Justin sat down in a chair opposite his nemesis.

Hektor yawned. “Ahh, I can see that as usual you have no sense of humor. Very well. Justin Cord,” he said, in as officious a tone as he could muster, “I, Hektor Sambianco, have been duly authorized by the board of GCI to make you an offer.”