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"We'll get it," Nakamura told him.
"Yes," Nikki said. "I do believe we will."
It was in the end a simple business deal. Nelson supplied muscle to complement
Double En's forces, as well as a dummy leader in the form of the President of
the United States. Nikki threw open the vast storehouses of the Third World,
rich in resources and labor.
And Nakamura supplied -- what?
Nobody had really spelled it out. But he'd given them a sample, when he'd
blown Claude Barre's brains out the back of his skull.
The will. The iron. The destiny to seize the time and take the future.
Nelson paused at the door to the conference room, his face slowly settling
back to stone, as a receding flood reveals the rock that was always there.
"The American people," he said, his voice thick and plummy, "will be pleased
to assume their rightful place as leaders of the planet."
Nakamura felt a certain queasiness in his gut. In a horrible sort of way,
Nelson actually believed those ridiculous words. The man had somehow convinced
himself that an end had been decided, and any means were justified. What kind
of insane world did he live in, anyway?
Nikki only chuckled.
Nakamura glanced at him. Nikki, at least, lived in the real world. Nakamura
understood that someday he would have to do something about Nikki.
Someday. But not yet.
"Long live America," Nakamura said, and passed out of the room. At last, he
had forged his own sword.
He already had the will to use it.
Hawkshaw Cribbins was house staff, not part of the new bunch that had come in
when Nakamura had taken up residence at the big country place. He didn't
approve of all the weird ones, the little Orientals with their strange eyes,
the big, meat-laden mercenaries whose footsteps crunched the grass and made
slooshing sounds in the boggy parts near creeks.
Hawkshaw had grown up in these parts. His momma had cooked in this house when
it was smaller, and he'd hired on right after high school graduation.
Now he walked post near a new boundary. He still wasn't sure how Nakamura had
acquired the mountain. It was supposed to be a state park or something. But
nothing the rich did ever surprised him. The rich had all the power anyway. It
was enough that his pay was good and the work was usually easy. Except when
that empty-eyed sonofabitch Oranson was around, looking at everybody like they
were cockroaches or something. Then he had to hup to it, all right.
But now, with the last of the sun disappearing, leaving long, bruise-colored
smears across the sky, and the crickets quieting down and the pine woods
taking on the shadows of night, it was okay. Oranson wouldn't come here now.
Probably wasn't even around, now that the high mucky-muck Jap had left for the
big city.
Hawkshaw settled his ass down on a pile of fallen branches next to a big pine
and fished around in his pocket for a cigarette. The stock of his assault
rifle poked painfully against his spine and he shifted around till he was
comfortable. He put the cigarette to his lips, lit it, and glanced at the big,
old-fashioned watch on his wrist. He'd got it from his daddy, a keepsake, but
it still kept time just fine.
Seven o'clock. Stars were coming out overhead, one here and one there. The sky
had become a deep, purplish blue color, and the night air smelled clean and
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fresh and full of evergreen. Usually his cigarettes tasted awful, but just
this once the flavor of the smoke was good, a sharp brown tang on the evening.
He exhaled softly. Another hour and off walking post. Back to the barracks for
a big supper, then maybe a few Buds and some poker.
Easy work...
He never saw the thing with red, blazing eyes and claws as long as ten-penny
nails that took out his throat in a single snarling rush. Felt it only dimly
as things like bunches of knives sank into his belly and released a long,
gushing warmth.
The last thing he saw, against that perfect night, was a flash of white, like
some big gauzy curtain fluttering down, covering him.
Taking him away.
--------
*Chapter Eleven*
Bobby Schollander stood beneath the ferocious glare of the overhead lights in
the main computer room and stared through a wall of monomole plex at the
silent sapphire cubes that made up Levin's heart.
Two sleepy technicians hunched over their consoles on the other side of the
huge room and ignored him. If they thought it was strange that the newly
elected Chairman of the Board of Luna, Incorporated, had chosen to pay a call
at four in the morning, they kept it to themselves.
He wasn't even sure why he was here himself. He hadn't been to bed yet, and
doubted that he would sleep at all this night. He was still keyed up from the
previous day's victory, when he, guided carefully by the Machiavellian schemes
of Auntie Elaine and
Mason Dodge, had vanquished Eaton Vance's ragtag coalition of recalcitrant
board members and a few conservative stockholders in the final tally.
Chairman of the Board!
What a title. What a weight. Yet he felt strangely buoyed by this sudden
assumption of final responsibility, much as even a reluctant driver grabs for
the wheel when his car, driven by another, heads wildly for the trees at the
edge of the road.
Perhaps it did run in his blood. His grandfather, along with Mitsu Fujiwara,
had created Luna, Inc., and his father had nurtured it through the difficult
days of its adolescence. Was it only fitting, then, that he should be the
third Schollander to run the company now, in the days of its greatest
challenge?
Yet he felt suddenly young and quite alone. Oh, no doubt that Auntie Elaine,
Mason Dodge, even Susan Fujiwara would be ready and eager with advice, but in
the end, the title, and all it meant, was his alone. He would make the
decisions which determined whether Luna, Inc. would survive the almost
incalculable threats represented by Arius, by Shag Nakamura and his unholy New
Church, perhaps even by Jack Berg and Gloria Calley.
He gazed thoughtfully at the silent working of the great computing machine
called Levin. Perhaps even this, Karl Wier's most telling triumph, was a
threat. Could a machine, an Artificial Intelligence, rebel against its makers,
become an enemy? It was a ludicrous thought, in one sense, a potboiler idea
from the lurid science fiction novels of his childhood, and yet --
And yet what? Levin had not responded to command since Berg and Calley had
completed their titanic duel with Arius. He didn't even know who had won that
fight. Karl Wier, before the assassination attempt, had not seemed unduly
worried, but he was no longer
able to reveal the source of his confidence. What if Arius had control of
Levin, of Berg, of the very heart of Luna's information capabilities?
Although the computer room was kept at a constant moderate temperature,
Schollander felt a sudden chill. He stared intently at the sapphire cubes
which hung suspended like incredibly precious beads on a string behind the
crystal wall.
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"What about it, Levin, huh?" he mumbled softly. "Cat got your tongue? Or
Arius?"
Then he felt foolish. What would those stockholders think, who had so recently
elected him to lead them, to run their company, if they could see him now, in
the darkest watches of the day, muttering at a silent hunk of stone and metal?
Crazy. All of it was crazy. That was what Eaton Vance had not been able to
recognize with his business as usual, take the money and run attitude. The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]