Black Glass (5 page)

Grist shook his head and sighed, but let it stand, though he found the shapely SmokeSucker distracting.

“That smoke sucker thing is really tacky,” Claire said, looking more disgusted than offended.

Hoffman’s smart-chair changed shape as he leaned back into it. “So. Let’s get on with it. A few observations ...
One
: You, Grist, introduced us to the semblant process–”

“To the great profit of our shareholders,” Grist interrupted complacently. “And Slakon thrives on pleasing its shareholders.”

“
Two
: Some of our semblant programs have been compromised, quite probably copied,” Hoffman went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “They copied Yatsumi’s semblant program, so I understand—Claire’s, Alvarez’s, Bulwer’s—someone’s copied their semblants out of me-trix databases ...
Three
: You have the only ‘ware that could make use of these encoded me-trixes–”

“That’s a naive assumption,” said Grist. “Someone’s always a step ahead of us, somewhere. Some hacker, some roaming coffee shop Bedouin.” ‘Coffee-shop Bedouin’ was an outmoded term but Grist had always liked the sound of it. “Obviously someone else wanted your semblants. And, humiliating and embarrassing as it is for me to even have to say this: I really don’t have the faintest possible motive–”

“Yes, truly, my friends,” Alvarez said, his voice a little muffled by the cigarette—Alvarez was one of those annoying people, Grist noticed, who liked to talk without taking their smokes out of their mouth. Possibly it was Old Time Movie damage. “This is not appropriate, to make accusations based on ... on supposition.”

“I must agree, it is inappropriate,” Yatsumi said, in his clipped intonation.

“I’ve been in this business too long,” Hoffman said, “to kiss anyone’s hind-parts. You two may do it for me, if you like.”

Yatsumi stiffened; Alvarez coughed.

“As to motive,” Hoffman continued, “if you have our semblants, Grist, you have
us,
in a way. Which might eliminate, well, so many inconveniences—like opinions which diverge from your own.”

“Oh, for—this really is outrageous, Hoffman,” Claire PointOne said, looking wistfully at Alvarez’s cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in years, but one never entirely lost the craving. “Unless ... in the unlikely event you have some definite evidence ...”

“Perhaps I do,” Hoffman said. “Perhaps I’m going to play the proverbial cards close to the proverbial vest.”

Grist shook his head, chuckling. “You’re suggesting I’ve stolen your semblants and I’m going to use them for some shady purpose? We haven’t always been simpatico, Hoffman, but—that’s sort of pitiful, really. Even ... diagnosably paranoid.”

“Paranoia is a skill,” Hoffman said firmly, unruffled. “Since I led the vote to have your finances frozen during the multioptions audit—well, we’ve had to resort to mediators three times, you and I, on three separate issues. And I suspect you’re through mediating.” He stood. “If the rest of you wish to be used in this way—that is your own affair. Up to a point.”

He walked out of the boardroom, followed by Grist’s snort of derision, ten voices of objection, and one muffled cough.

Looking down at his private screen, as the others dished Hoffman for his bad taste and dramatics, Grist wondered what they’d be saying if he weren’t in the room.

On Grist’s console, set to be unseeable by anyone not in his chair, were images of Claire, Bulwer, Yatsumi, Alvarez, in 3D boxes, side by side. Grist looked at them, then at the originals ...

A peep from the stud in his ear announced a high priority call. He tapped the smart console: “Receive private call.”

“Mr. Grist?” It was Targer. “Halido wants to talk to you about Candle.”

Grist touched “Transmit”, and the jaw-stud picked up his murmured reply. “Why me?” He dug a finger in his ear; he didn’t use the implant often, it gave him an unpleasant buzzing.

“He says he resigns if it isn’t you personally, sir. And he is right on top of ... that thing you were concerned about.”

“Put my semblant on it. Halido won’t know.” He’d get the story from his semblant later.

“I thought so; just wanted to make sure it was okay ...” Grist brushed his fingertips over a corner of the console, transferring his coded semblant to Targer’s line. His mind straying back to Hoffman. What did this little drama today portend?

Absently glancing out the window, Grist noticed it was raining. Again. They came in so fast nowadays, the rains. Yet there never seemed to be enough water to go around. Things were getting better since the new conservation—system came online: There hadn’t been a water riot in a couple of years. He really ought to see what corner of the privatized utilities he controlled. A detail he’d forgotten. Potable water—untainted water—was so precious. So valuable.

And yet there it was: All that water, falling so carelessly from the sky ...

How did you privatize the sky? he wondered.

As the others nattered on, Grist found himself persistently thinking of Candle. Easy enough to say,
let the semblant handle it
, but hard sometimes to accept it really was doing as good a job as you’d do yourself. Only, it almost always was. But still. Rick Candle. The man had quietly let it be known, through channels, that he knew Danny Candle was being made an example of; that he was taking the fall for Danny but he wasn’t going to forget it.

But Candle wouldn’t come at him directly. And meanwhile. . . Meanwhile, there was intelligence suggesting that a certain thorn in his side was interested in Candle. Hoffman had been researching Rick Candle. And if he could get hold of Candle,
and put pressure on him ...

It might actually be a good thing if Candle was out. Anyone Candle allied with would likely be Grist’s enemy. Candle could lead him to a number of rat’s nests.

He’d have to make sure, after the board meeting, that his semblant was fully in the loop on his thinking. They’d do the optimum mindscan.

Hunkering on the van’s seat so he could see a bit farther out the window, Shortstack stared at the sign over the metal doors.

California State Penitentiary - Downloading Division.

“I thought it was called UnMinding or Reminding or something,” Shortstack said. A balding, long-nosed dwarf in a long, third-hand Army coat, Shortstack was only barely visible from outside the van. He was behind the wheel, using prosthetics to drive. Sitting beside him was Nodder; six foot five and three hundred pounds, he seemed almost to fill the van’s cab.

Nodder shrugged. “That’s the public name, downloading. It’s a misnomer because they don’t exactly ever take it out, they just crowd it in some corner of the brain, so its like asleep all the time. They sort of block it with something. Then they put his mind where it should be, awake, let it have control back. Who cares? What am I doing here? That’s the key question. I’ve got it! I’m insane, ’Stack. That’s the explanation. I’m waiting for him to get out, and I’m not even going to–”

Nodder slumped over, nodding with narcolepsy, but it was a mild slide and when Shortstack elbowed him in the ribs he came out of it with a jerk, almost hitting his head on the van’s ceiling, finishing: “... for him get out and I’m not even going to kill the wretch.”

“He was the best cop who ever arrested you, Nodder. And up till now I wasn’t sure the story was true, maybe he isn’t getting out after all ...” He took a hit from his asthma inhaler.

“—but Nodder ... that guy in the other car, there, you see him?”

Nodder sipped coffee from an Envirofoam cup, and glanced at the car across the street. “I think that’s ... you mean the blue sedan?”

“Only one with a guy in it you can see from here, for fuck’s sake.”

“Isn’t it that bottom-feeder Halido?”

“I think so. And who’d he start working for? Cast your sleepy mind back.”

“Targer.”

“Right. And who got Candle busted?”

“Targer. And friends.”

“So that makes me think the fucker really is getting out today. And Halido’s on him ...”

“He’s looking at us. You see him close his left eye?”

“I saw it. His right is enhanced, he’s zooming to ID us. Transmitting our faces.”

“Halido can go to the devil.”

But Shortstack made himself even smaller in his seat.

The display in Halido’s sedan lit up, at the same moment as he turned on the windshield wipers, as if some wire had crossed. But Grist’s face glared up at him from the little screen next to the glove compartment: Was it Grist—or his semblant? You couldn’t tell, with the new ones. “Well, what is it?” Grist asked, voice small but clear. “Wait, adjust your camera, I’m only picking up half your face.”

Halido reached out and tapped the swivel on the lens. “It doesn’t track very well anymore ... There ...”

“That’s better ... Well? What do you want?”

Halido hesitated, thinking he had probably done something stupid, insisting on talking to Grist directly about this. The wipers swished rain from the windshield; the interior was beginning to steam up. Halido hit the devapor as he spoke. “Uh—Are you the semblant or the real Mr. Grist?”

“What difference does it make? It’s all Mr. Grist. Reality is subject to revision—like your salary. You know, we use people like you, instead of in-house pros, because you’re more deniable—and because some things we don’t want known in-house. You should think about the implications of that. Deniable is expendable.”

“You’d lose a good man. I’ve done a lot of work for you and
Mr Targer the last three years—and I did good work. But things come up–”

“If you have a problem, why couldn’t you have bothered Targer with it?”

“Well, boss ... . There are some other guys waiting for this Candle motherfucker, and at least one of them is a genetically engineered dwarf and this little asshole, to my certain knowledge, crippled two dumb
pendajos
who were trying to rip off the chips that he ripped off first from Indonesian Import–”

“So what?”

“So—you combine that with Candle, who doesn’t
just
cripple a man, you get him mad enough, and I ain’t being paid, uh, like,
corresponding
to my risk. I’m also going to need help. I don’t have any damn semblants to pick up the slack, boss. I need, say, warm bodies, air support, birds-eye surveillance, and—I don’t know what all. Targer said he ‘could not authorize it’.”

“Your tone is repellently disrespectful,” Grist said coldly.

“Okay, I’m sorry, that’s just my barrio talking, that’s how we roll–”

“And you want more money ... Of all the vulgar trash.”

“No, not really, Mr. Grist. It’s not exactly ‘more money’. I want a real job with a real office and a real secretary and real benefits including face-forming and organ cloning. I want to come in out of the fucking acid rain, Mr. Grist, and I’m tired of being Targer’s freelance butt-boy, and I don’t care what I’m risking, I don’t have a lot to lose–”

“Now that is the statement of a man who’s never been strapped to a table under a microwave probe for a few hours: Nothing to lose.”

Halido’s mouth went dry.
Strapped under a microwave probe. For a few hours.

“Halido ... Let me guess. You think that I value nerviness, and you’re gambling that giving me shit is going to impress me.”

“Uhhh ...”

“You are not even remotely correct. I value only results. You give me some major results on this and maybe
then,
subject to various considerations, only right
then
do I
think
about giving you an office and perks. Don’t go around Targer again. Pup Benson
has been whining about wanting out of the guard job, so he’s going to come and help you. That’s two of you. And when you find out what you’re supposed to find out, like you were assigned to do, like you said you could do, you will get air support and all the rest.”

“Um, I–”

“You
understand,
yes, you sure as hell do. I take it Candle has not come out yet?”

“He’s late.”

“Probably a psychiatric hassle. He’ll come out. Don’t lose him. He’s adept at spotting RPV surveillance so I don’t want to use that until I have to. It would lead him to assume things about who was on him. If it looks like you’re going to lose him–”