Филип Керр - The Second Angel

King nodded thoughtfully. Then he looked at his watch and smiled. ‘Well, I’ve enjoyed our little talk. It’s been interesting to see the workings of your mind, Dallas. But I really ought to be getting along.’

The two men stood up.

‘I’m very impressed with what you’ve created for the Deutsche Seidlungs Blutbank. I think they’ll be pleased with the results.’

‘Thank you, director.’

King left the Stereoscopic Theater and returned to his office, where Rimmer, Terotechnology’s head of security, awaited his arrival, his feet resting on a valuable antique Japanese table.

With his watery blue eyes, pale skin, and lifeless yellow hair, Rimmer did not seem a very healthy person. Even less salubrious was his personality — when he wasn’t sniggering at the misfortunes of others, he was sneering jealously at their successes. There were some in Terotechnology who even thought him disturbed, with some justification. Rimmer knew this and encouraged the idea, with the result that most people in the company were afraid of him. Even those who weren’t thought it wise to stay out of his way. King regarded him as a necessary evil, like a guard dog, and treated him accordingly.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘You asked me to come,’ replied Rimmer.

‘Did I say you could make yourself at home in my office? Take your feet off that table.’ King made a show of sniffing the air. ‘You’ve made it stink in here.’

‘Have I?’ Rimmer grinned. ‘What was I thinking of? But then, being considerate of others has never been one of my strengths.’ Rimmer sniffed the air critically. ‘Even so, I can’t smell anything.’

‘It stinks,’ repeated King. ‘It stinks of your ghastly aftershave and your underarm perspiration and your grubby little mind. You’re the most offensive person I know, Rimmer. How someone like you has managed to remain RES Class One, I’ll never know. Just looking at you makes me feel I’m in danger of catching some kind of ghastly virus.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Rimmer insisted.

‘Don’t talk nonsense. If there was nothing wrong with you, Rimmer, then there would be no point to your existence. You’d be surplus to this company’s more nefarious requirements. It’s fortunate for you that your mind is as twisted as your shoelaces and that you lack any sense of personal morality. Except for those particular character defects you’d be quite useless to me.’

‘I’m sure I’m very flattered.’

‘Don’t try to be clever, Rimmer. I don’t keep you for my amusement. I keep you to bite the people I want bitten, and bitten hard.’

Rimmer was silent for a moment. Then his gap-toothed smile widened, his mouth taking on a rodentlike aspect.

‘Now I understand,’ he said. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Dallas is what this is all about. You’ve had him checked out, and you’ve discovered the truth of what I was saying.’

Rimmer nodded with quiet satisfaction, his ugly smile sustained by an enormous sense of personal vindication. He had been right. And what was more, he had been right about Dallas, someone who treated him with even more contempt than King. Rimmer had been waiting for an opportunity to hurt Dallas. Spying on him at every available opportunity. The computer search of his daughter’s hospital records had been an inspired bit of thinking.

‘Your favorite boy,’ he chuckled. ‘Dallas. That’s what you find so offensive about me. Because I’ve been proved right about Dallas.’

‘Don’t assume you can ever know the limits of how offensive I find you, Rimmer,’ hissed King.

Rimmer shrugged silently and, still smiling, started to clean his fingernails with a toothpick.

‘I asked him about his daughter,’ growled King. ‘And he said that she was going to be fine.’

Rimmer didn’t look up. Just kept on cleaning his nails and flicking the debris onto the thick Persian silk rug.

‘Wishful bloody thinking, if you ask me,’ he finally said.

‘If you’re right and the child really is ill, I can’t understand why he didn’t talk to me about it,’ said King. ‘Why he didn’t throw himself on the company’s mercy and ask for help.’

‘Because he’s not stupid,’ snorted Rimmer. ‘Because he knew what the answer would be. He knows the company policy on blood loans.’

‘I don’t make the rules,’ King said, almost defensively.

‘That’s right, director. You just carry them out. Of course. Well, take my word for it, Dallas knows the score. That’s why he didn’t throw himself on your so-called mercy. In any case, my investigations show he’s already put his weekend house up for sale, so he can get his hands on some of the blood he’s got on deposit.’ Rimmer laughed. ‘Not that it’s going to keep him going for very long. The doctor I spoke to about his freaky daughter estimates that he’ll be cleaned out within a couple of years. The sooner that happens, the greater the potential security implications for this company. Wouldn’t you agree, director?’

King stared gloomily at the floor, hating himself for having to listen to Rimmer’s poison.

‘I mean, what would our beloved clients say if they discovered Dallas had an unfortunate situation at home, one involving his own life’s blood? I think they might justifiably worry that he could at some stage be compromised, that he might even contemplate selling information on our Rational Environments to the highest bidder.’

‘I don’t believe Dallas would ever betray this company or its clients,’ insisted King.

‘Maybe not now. But in a year’s time? Who knows what someone in his shoes might do? In his circumstances, I’d probably do the same thing myself.’

‘That I don’t doubt,’ King said bitterly.

‘But there’s another problem you may not yet have considered, director. As his supplies of big red run out, his financial position is going to become seriously eroded. Dallas has speculated quite a bit on the blood futures market. He’s already selling one home to cover himself. Chances are, eventually he’ll have to sell another — his main home, here in the city. Maybe move to a poor area, outside the Zone. And that might expose him to the risk of viral infections. I don’t think our employees would care for that any more than our clients, do you?’

‘Damn your questions, Rimmer.’

‘Easily said, but the question is, what’s to be done about it, eh? What’s to be done about your favorite boy? Your little protégé?’

‘Shut up and let me think.’

‘Nothing to think about,’ insisted Rimmer, looking over his fingernails. ‘You know as well as I what the proper course of action needs to be.’ Rimmer fed the toothpick between his thin lips and started to massage the gaps between his teeth. When he inspected the toothpick once more there was blood on the point. It was as if, he thought, someone was trying to tell him something.

‘Blood for blood’s sake. I’ve heard you say it often enough,’ said Rimmer. ‘To protect blood, you shouldn’t be afraid of spilling it now and then. An interesting paradox, that. One of many that’s inherent in this noble business.’ Rimmer pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A developed sense of irony is essential to our work, don’t you think, director?’

‘We’re not the same, Rimmer.’

‘No, that’s true. Thank goodness, I’m just the errand boy. You’re the one who has to make all the difficult decisions. Me, I couldn’t live with that responsibility. I couldn’t look myself in the eye.’

King had had enough. ‘Kill him,’ he said firmly. ‘Kill Dallas. And kill his family — if it weren’t for them, we’d still have our best designer.’

Rimmer inhaled sharply. ‘You see what I mean?’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought of killing his family as well. That’s what makes you the director and me just the employee. You have a commendably Machiavellian sense of neatness, if you don’t mind me saying so. That’s what makes you such a prince among men, director.’