Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

I'd been sitting at the window of my small cubicle for nearly an hour, listening to a Joussein symphonaria and watching the intricate drift of sunlight and shadow across the city from a hundred twenty stories up, when the call I'd been expecting all morning finally came. "Gilead? You in there?"

"Yes, sir," I replied, turning off the music with a wave of my control stick and standing up. The Carillon Building's intercom speakers were very good, and I had no trouble discerning the excitement and anticipation in my employer's voice. With Lord Kelsey-Ramos, that could mean only one thing. "I take it the raid is nearly finished?"

He snorted, just loudly enough for me to hear. "Is it that obvious?"

"It is to me," I said simply.

He snorted again. "Well, you're right. Come on in."

"Yes, sir." Stepping across the starkly plain room—kept so by my own request—I set the control stick down by the player and crossed to the second of the room's two doors. "Gilead Raca Benedar," I told it, speaking distinctly. The voicelock was a slightly ridiculous precaution, here in what amounted to Carillon's inner sanctum, but I'd long since stopped feeling annoyed by it. Paranoia, in one form or another, was one of the many burdens of wealth.

The door opened; and from my cubicle I entered Lord Kelsey-Ramos's office.

Lord Kelsey-Ramos himself had once likened the contrast of the two rooms to that between midnight and noon; but for me that comparison fell far short. From the dark at the bottom of a mine shaft to noon, perhaps; or even to the searing brightness outside a sunskimmer's slingshot pass by a star. For a pair of heartbeats I paused there on the threshold, senses struggling as they adjusted from the peace of my undecorated room and quiet music to the flamboyant luxury laid out before me.

To the luxury, and even more to the shrewdly engineered contradictions embedded within it. The milky-white living carpet, the shimmering Vedant woodling panels and camocarvings, the massive gemrock desk—the sense of the room reaching my eyes was one of extreme wealth, calm and stable. At the same time, the subtle yet distinctive sounds of the InWeb news/data analyzer and Wall Street Interactive machine gave off a totally opposite sense, that of frantic haste and unrest. It created just enough emotional confusion that first-time visitors were invariably thrown slightly off stride, though few of them realized on a conscious level just what it was that was bothering them.

And in the midst of it all, as much a study in contrasts as the office itself, sat Lord Kelsey-Ramos.

Seated straight-backed at his desk, gazing almost disinterestedly at the displays facing him, he blended quite well with the calm decor... but as I stepped closer, the lines around his eyes and the play of his facial muscles radiated the message I'd already learned from his voice. Somewhere out there, on some ethereal battlefield of paper and computer memory, a war was raging. A quiet, civilized war, fought by opposing sums of money... for no more purpose than the acquisition of even more of that same money.

The love of money is the root of all evils, I quoted to myself. But it was an automatic, almost ritual thought these days. Once, I'd thought in my pride that my mere presence might be enough to influence the way Lord Kelsey-Ramos handled his wealth; now, years later, I could barely consider myself lucky that that part of my own conscience hadn't become uselessly numb. Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall... Another ritual thought, and one that always included the reminder that destruction came in many forms. Including stagnation.

After eight long years, I still didn't fit in here. And most everyone knew it.

Lord Kelsey-Ramos shifted in his chair, the faint squeak of embroidered cloth on camileather reminding me I wasn't here just to indulge myself in self-pity. Over the familiar scents of the room's woodling and living carpet I caught a whiff of Marisee Tinge, the executive secretary's perfume; beneath that, I could smell the very human odor of Lord Kelsey-Ramos's tension. The images, sounds, scents—all of it blended together into the all too familiar sense of civilized warfare that I'd felt upon entering. I'd seen it many times before in my time at Carillon... but this time something about it was different. This time, there was something more than just money at stake. Something far more important...

And at that moment, it was abruptly over. The tension lines left Lord Kelsey-Ramos's face, and his eyes softened, and he looked up at me. "Congratulate me, Gilead," he said, his voice rich with overtones of satisfaction. "After ten years of trying, I've finally done it."

"Congratulations, sir," I said. "What is it you've finally done?"

Amusement lines replaced those of the earlier tension, and the sense of his satisfaction deepened. "I've obtained the Carillon Group a transport license for Solitaire."

My stomach tightened. "I see," I managed.

He peered up at me. "Bothers you that much, does it?"

I looked him straight in the eye. "It's the paying of a blood offering in exchange for wealth," I said bluntly.

His lip twitched, and some of the satisfaction left his face. But not very much. "I'm sorry you feel that way." Reaching to his desktop, he snagged his control stick and began punching buttons, my opinion already dismissed from his thoughts. "If it helps your conscience any, Carillon won't actually be handling flights in and out of Solitaire system, at least not directly. What I've done is simply to buy up a controlling share of HTI Transport, the company with this particular license. I thought it might be interesting to call up HTI's chief exec and see how he reacts to the news."

Which was why he'd sent for me, of course. "Anything in particular you want me to watch for?"

"Signs of resistance, mostly. HTI's always been stiffnecked jealous about its autonomy, and I want to know how badly they're going to resent being swallowed up. Ah—"

A decorative young woman had appeared on his desk's center display. "HTI Transport; Mr. O'Rielly's office," she said pleasantly.

"Lord Kelsey-Ramos of the Carillon Group," Lord Kelsey-Ramos identified himself. "Mr. O'Rielly will want to speak to me."

A flicker of uncertainty touched the secretary's face, but she was obviously knowledgeable in the names of Portslava's business elite and she put the screen into hold without argument. A moment later it cleared to reveal a middle-aged man wearing an expensive business capelet. "Lord Kelsey-Ramos," he nodded in greeting. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"He doesn't know yet," I murmured from just outside the phone's range.

Lord Kelsey-Ramos's eyelids dipped briefly in acknowledgment. "Good morning, Mr. O'Rielly," he said. "I just wanted to call and personally welcome you into the Carillon Group."

O'Rielly's face went the whole gamut—shock, disbelief, more shock, outrage—all in the space of a second and a half. Behind him, the out-of-focus background shifted as the camera tracked his lunge forward, and through the stunned silence I could hear the faint click of nervous fingers on control keys. One look was really all he needed. "Spike you, anyway, Kelsey-Ramos," he snarled. "You putrid, smert-headed—"

"Thank you, but I've heard it all before," Lord Kelsey-Ramos interjected calmly. "I'll leave it to you to inform the HTI board of this, and I'll want a meeting scheduled to discuss any changes that'll need to be made. In the meantime, do you have anything besides insults you'd like to say? On or off the record, of course?"

Some of the pure fury was fading from O'Rielly's face, to be replaced by an icy bitterness and more than a little discomfort. "What, off the record with your little pet lie detector Benedar there somewhere?" he sneered, eyes darting around as he searched the limits of his screen for some sign of me. The sarcasm wasn't nearly strong enough to cover his discomfort. "Or did you think I didn't know about him?"