Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

“They promised me something was going to be done about the problem. I began to figure out they didn’t mean the same problem I did when Akabane unveiled his commodified contracts scheme. They weren’t trying to do anything about the bad preps, just about NewEgypt’s financial liabilities! When I complained to Rog, he told me to pipe down or I’d be fired, and I pointed out that if I were fired, I’d have no reason to pipe down, and he went real quiet, and then he promised me he’d do something. By that time, I didn’t trust their ideas about problem-solving one bit.

“I’d been following Lisa Sato on the news for a year or two by then. She seemed to me one of the few people on Kibou who wasn’t just arguing about the money. I mean, moral arguments, you know?”

Her detractors had certainly been arguing about the money, though, from the bits Miles had seen. The corps claimed her schemes would just set up a rival corp run by the government for the poor, for which everyone would pay. Illogically, they also claimed her scheme would damage their business, but if they weren’t taking in those poor patrons anyway, Miles didn’t see how they were losing anything. The N.H.L.L. just wanted to set fire to all the metabolically disadvantaged regardless of net worth. Though they certainly wanted to start with the rich, which suggested a certain shrewd efficiency in liberating their hypothesized legacy.

“So I went to see Lisa Sato in person. I didn’t even make an appointment over the comconsole, just went and knocked on her door one night. And she was everything I’d hoped she would be! I went again, and gave copies of all the data I had to her and George Suwabi, poor guy, and that’s when they came up with the rally speech idea, to release it all at once in a way the corps couldn’t quash. I thought it was all fixed.

“A few days later, when I went into work, Rog called me in to his office, and suddenly I was being given a shot of fast-penta. They squeezed everything out of me.” He hesitated. “Almost everything. Everything about the rally plan, and then they ran off in a hurry to do something about it. That’s where Hans and Oki first got into it, I think—they did the legwork setting up the riot. I think Oki had a relative in the N.H.L.L., actually, which gave them their in.”

“Who all was present at this interrogation?”

“All of them. The big four, I mean.”

“Was that legal or illegal here? The use of fast-penta on an employee, I mean?”

“Kind of legal. I guess. I mean, they’re allowed to use it in suspected cases of employee theft and crimes on the premises and so on. You have to sign a release when you’re first employed.”

“I see.”

“There are rules about how it has to be conducted to make it admissible in court, later. But I don’t think they were paying much attention to those in my case. Because the last thing they’d want is for any of this to get to a court. Because then they locked me up in Security’s holding area.”

“Was that also kind-of-legal?”

“They’re allowed to hold suspects till the real police arrive. Except, of course, the police never did. By the time they let me out, two days later, it was all over for Lisa and her people.” He bit his lip, clenched his hands. “I was helpless. Although not as helpless as the Gang of Four had figured, thanks to Lisa.”

“How was that?”

“When I brought her and George the data, she told me to place a copy somewhere secret—lawyer, bank vault, wherever—with instructions to simultaneously release it to a bunch of places—the courts, all the Prefecture departments of justice, the news, the net—in the event of my death, freezing, or disappearance. Which I did.”

“And that bought you protection from your bosses?”

“No, they had the location out of me in no time. Thing is, Lisa and George also hid copies, and by the time NewEgypt figured this out, they were both… well, Lisa was frozen and George was dead. The Gang searched, but they never found the other two copies.”

“How do you know?”

Leiber smiled grimly. “I’m still above room temperature and walking around.”

“Ah. Reasonable inference.” Miles rubbed his lips. “Were Suwabi and Tennoji murdered on purpose, then? By Hans and Oki, perhaps?”

“By Hans and Oki, but I don’t think they were told to kill anyone. I think those were attempted snatches that went wrong. They managed to get Kang and Khosla and Lisa, though.” Leiber’s lips twisted. “Speaking of job security. Both were given bonuses and raises, after, despite the big screw-ups. I wasn’t privy to the under-the-table agreements. They can’t turn in their bosses without incriminating themselves, and vice versa. And I think the Four kind of liked the idea of owning their own dirty-work squad. In case they needed someone to handle people like me again.

“Anyway, the impasse bought everyone time to calm down and think, even me. I felt so badly about it all. Especially Lisa. I mean, I’d destroyed everything she’d worked for, even though I was just trying to help. So when I was offered the bribe, I took it, even though I didn’t believe it for a minute, because I thought it would pacify them .” He brooded. “They’d bribed Rog a lot earlier, I think.”

“What form did this bribe take?”

“Nothing immediately useful, they knew better than that. It’s all unvested stock options that cut in after a certain numbers of years. I always figured they’d fire me just before they had to pay anything out, but I don’t know. They did let me do some real work—I developed a noninvasive scanner test for the bad preps, which wasn’t a task they could have assigned to anyone else, after all. The first payment option was due to cut in soon, though, and that’s what I set my plan on.”

“What plan?”

“To rescue Lisa.” Leiber’s eyes brightened, and he met Miles’s gaze for almost the first time. “It’s what’s kept me going for the past year and a half.” His voice lowered, beseeching. “I had to keep my job with NewEgypt in order to have access to her cryochamber, do you see? I realized it practically right away. Originally, I figured to save enough money to rescue them all, Kang and Khosla and Lisa, ship all three cryochambers secretly to Escobar for revival there. But it cost a lot more than I thought it would. Time was drawing on, I thought the Four were finally dropping their guard on me a bit, so I revised the plan to take just Lisa, alone. Take her to Escobar, make the charges against NewEgypt and the whole corrupt system from there, where we’d be safe.”

“You’ve thought about this a lot, I see,” said Miles neutrally, and pressed his hand to his lips to prevent the escape of any premature editorials.

Leiber’s expression grew almost exalted. “It would have worked! We could have been safe, together. We wouldn’t even have had to come back to Kibou, if we didn’t want. With my credentials, I could have found a job, supported us both.”

A slight, indignant disturbance of the curtain, Miles saw out of the corner of his eye. He carefully didn’t turn his head that way.

Leiber cast a speculative look at Raven. “Maybe even a place like the Durona Group.” His gaze grew more urgent. “Maybe, if you people could help me, it still could still work out—”

Leiber’s heroic visions were abruptly interrupted by the curtain being yanked back, and Madame Sato pounding on the glass and yelling something, alas made unintelligible by the barrier. Miles pointed helpfully to his wristcom.

Leiber nearly fell off his chair. “Lisa!” he cried, whether gladly or in terror Miles wasn’t sure.

Madame Sato apparently didn’t get the message about the wristcom, because she clenched her fists and whirled to dodge out her booth door, instead. Raven lurched up to intercept her, although only to hastily make her don a filtering mask before their own booth door slammed open—Roic had prudently moved out of the way.