It was his fault. He’d taken his family to Elan. He’d built up their hopes. He’d shown them a decent, clean life. His dream had died in fire and pain. It was a knowledge that prevented him from sleeping every night. Self-recrimination that made it impossible to talk properly to Liz. Misery at having to bring his lovely children back to this vile world that held him back from playing with them.
He was so wrapped up in self-pity he almost missed the turn. A fast pull on the wheel sent the Lapanto skidding around the sharp bend and down the little trail. Dusty soil puffed up from the back wheels as they spun. “Idiot,” he told himself.
After a couple of hundred meters the trail ended at an iron gate in a wall of terracotta-red concrete. Mark’s e-butler gave the gates his code, and they swung open. There was an oasis of lush emerald grass inside the wall. At the center was a long lime-green bungalow with red composite roof panels molded to resemble clay tiles. Several gardening bots trundled about, tending to the lawns and herbaceous borders, keeping them as neat as the building they surrounded. Mark always enjoyed the view from here; with the bungalow perched halfway up the hill they could sit on the patio and look across New Costa’s urban expanse as it rolled away into the horizon. From this vantage point it never seemed quite so objectionable as when he was down among the factories and the strip malls. All very different from his old house in Santa Hydra.
Kyle, Mark’s brother, leased the bungalow from the Augusta Engineering Corp; he could afford to with his high-paying job at the StVincent Loan & Trust. Everybody in Mark’s immediate family had offered to put them up when they got back from Elan. He’d accepted Kyle’s offer because he couldn’t stand the thought of having to move in with Marty, his father. Besides, he’d always got on well with Kyle, who at least was sincere in wanting to help, and the kids really liked their uncle.
He braked the Lapanto on the drive outside the front door, and went inside. All the reception rooms had glass doors, allowing him to look along the hall to locate his small family. Nobody was in sight, but he heard happy shouting coming from the patio outside the main lounge. Both Sandy and Barry were in the pool, with a suspiciously wet Panda lying on the sun-soaked slabs beside the pool. The dog looked up at him, but didn’t move.
“Daddy!” both kids yelled.
Mark waved at them. “Has Panda been in the pool?”
“No,” they chorused.
He gave them a fearsome disapproving look, and they both started giggling. Liz was lying on a sunlounger on the terrace below the pool. Antonio, Kyle’s boyfriend, was beside her. The terrace faced west, allowing them both to catch the last of the afternoon sunlight.
“Hi, baby,” Liz called. A maidbot was standing between her and Antonio, a wine bottle held in one of its arms. When he got closer, he realized both of them were naked. His throat tightened automatically. He didn’t say anything, because that would just show how small-minded and conservative he was.
Liz hadn’t got a job yet; the agreement was she would stay home to look after the kids. They weren’t in school, and Mark really didn’t want them to go to an Augusta school; he had too many bad memories of his own time at Faraday High. In fact, returning to Augusta was only ever supposed to be temporary; they arrived here purely because it was the first stop after Ozzie Isaac’s asteroid. He wanted them to move on soon, hopefully to somewhere like Gralmond, which was about as far away from Dyson Alpha as it was possible to get. But that took money, and the invasion had wiped them out financially, taking away their entire equity, and he knew damn well that even after the navy beat the Primes back into their own space Elan was ruined beyond reclamation. The mortgage he’d taken to buy their little vineyard and the Ables Motor franchise had left him massively in debt. If the insurance didn’t take care of it, he’d need a couple of lifetimes to pay it off. And the insurance company was based in Runwich, Elan’s capital. Nobody knew if the Commonwealth government would pay compensation to everyone from the Lost23, and even if they did it would take years if not decades for such a bill to work its way through the Senate. Right now tax money was being poured into building up the navy.
He knelt down and gave Liz a perfunctory kiss. “Hi.”
“Wow, you look like you need a drink.” She pointed to the maidbot. “We’ve got some extra glasses.”
“Not that, thanks. I’ll maybe get a beer.”
“No problem,” Antonio said. “Sit yourself down, Mark, the bot’ll get it for you.”
Mark gave him a tight smile, and sank onto an empty sunlounger. “How long have the kids been in the pool?”
“Not sure,” Liz said; she drained her wineglass and held it out for a maidbot to refill. “Half an hour.”
“They should be getting out soon. They need to have their tea.” He didn’t actually ask: What have you got them? But it was in there, implicit with the tone.
“The house array is watching them,” Liz said with a little too much emphasis. “This isn’t Randtown. The systems here are top of the line.”
“Always useful to know,” Mark replied coldly.
Liz turned around so she was looking out across the landscape below the hill, and sipped her wine.
“Hey, come on now, you two,” Antonio said. “We’re all on the same side. Mark, the kids know they have to get out at quarter past six, they always do. The kitchen is making tea for them.”
The timer in Mark’s virtual vision read: 18:12. “Fine, sure,” he grunted. “Sorry, it hasn’t been a good day.” Not that he was going to sit here and bang on about his day in the factory—that was too stereotype even for him; in any case he suspected they wouldn’t really be listening. He’d applied for and got the general technician job at Prism Dynamics the day after they left the asteroid. The salary wasn’t anything special, not for maintaining assembly bays that built fuselage sections for the aerospace industry; but he did actually enjoy the work. It was the combination of practical troubleshooting and writing program fixes that he was most at home with. He took it because there was no way he was accepting charity from anyone, not even family. That was a gene he’d inherited direct from Marty.
A maidbot trundled up to Mark and handed him a bottle of beer. He flipped the cap and took a decent drink. Liz was still ignoring him.
“Giselle Swinsol called,” Antonio said. “She said she’d be here at seven to interview you.”
Mark waited a moment, but Liz didn’t say anything. “Is this for me?” he asked.
“Yes.” Antonio gave him a baffled look. “Didn’t you arrange an interview?”
“No. Why would she call you?”
“It was to the house array, not me personally. She said she wanted to be sure you were in this evening.”
“I’ve never heard of her.”
“Probably an agency headhunter,” Liz said.
“I’m not registered with any agencies.”
“Could be the insurance company,” Antonio suggested. “They’re paying out for the invasion.”
Mark drank some more beer. “Not with my luck,” he muttered.
Liz shot him a look as she got to her feet. “I’m going to get the children ready,” she said and pulled on a robe.
Antonio waited until she’d gone up to the pool and started calling the children. “You two okay?”
“I guess so,” Mark said limply. “We’re just finding our feet, that’s all. Honestly, Antonio, we had the most perfect life on Elan. Now there’s nothing left to go back to.”
“It’s tough, man. But you can beat it. I see that in Kyle. You Vernon guys don’t give in. You’re a scary family.”
Mark raised his bottle, and even managed a feeble grin. “Cheers. But you’re wrong. First hint of a job on a planet far from here, I’m taking Liz and the kids.”
“You sure about that?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Well, I think that would be a big mistake.”
“How come?”
“Look, the Big15 are where they’re going to build all the ships an
d weapons hardware. Right? Yeah sure, other planets will get subcontracts, and High Angel does some assembly work, that’s politics. But here: this is the heart of the fight back, man. That means they won’t let Augusta fall. Earth will be overrun before we are. We’re gonna have the best protection it’s possible to have. Think about it. Wessex was the only planet to see off the Primes last time. Sheldon and Hutchinson made damn sure the invasion failed there. You want my advice, stay here. I don’t care what all the news show analysts are saying, this is the safest place in the Commonwealth.”
Mark wanted to laugh the idea off, but he couldn’t fault Antonio’s logic.
A long black Chevrolet limousine drew up outside the gates at two minutes before seven. Liz had just managed to coax the kids upstairs after tea, and Antonio was getting sober and dressed for his hospital shift. Kyle still wasn’t back; he usually worked in the StVincent Loan & Trust office until after seven. Mark didn’t understand how he kept the relationship with Antonio going; they only ever saw each other for a couple of hours a day. Perhaps that was why it had lasted so long. He and Liz barely saw each other for longer, but that didn’t seem to be helping much.
Giselle Swinsol wasn’t quite what Mark had been expecting. The limo should have clued him in: no agency manager would have a car like that. She was a tall brunette with the ambition of a second-lifer gunning for an executive slot, and the arrogance of a direct lineage Dynasty member. Her smart gray and oxford-blue suit cost more than Mark’s monthly salary, complemented by makeup superior to that of most unisphere news anchors. High heels clicked loudly on the hall floor.
She hadn’t waited to be invited in; she simply marched past Mark when he opened the door, and headed for the living room.
“Excuse me, but I didn’t know we were due to have a meeting,” he said. He wanted it to be sarcastic, but it came out woefully lame, not helped by the way he was scampering along behind, trying to catch up.
Her answering smile reminded him of a shark preparing to feed. A shark with cherry-glossed lips. “I don’t normally inform people in advance that they’ve been selected.”
“Selected?”
She sat down in one of the couches, leaving him standing in the middle of the lounge. “Do you like your job, Mr. Vernon?”
“Look! Who the hell are you?”
“I work for the Sheldon Dynasty. What does it bring in? A couple of grand a month?”
Thoroughly irritated, he snapped, “More than that, actually.”
“No it doesn’t, Mark, I’ve seen your contract.”
“That’s confidential.”
She laughed. “At your current level of earning, and extrapolating a mild level of promotion, it’ll take you about eighty years to pay off the loan for your house and franchise garage on Elan. That doesn’t take in factors like paying for the kids’ college fees, and your own R and R pension.”
“We’ll get compensation, eventually.”
“Granted, if the Commonwealth still exists in ten years’ time, they might pass a bill letting you off the interest payments. Anything else: stop fooling yourself.”
“Prism Dynamics is just temporary. I’ll get a better job than that.”
“That’s exactly what I want to hear, Mark. I’ve come to tell you I’ve got that better job all lined up for you.”
“And what would that be?” Liz asked. She was standing in the lounge doorway, wearing a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. But there was a fixed look on her face that Mark was familiar with. When Liz made up her mind not to like someone, they were frozen out of this life and the next.
“It’s confidential, I’m afraid,” Giselle Swinsol said. “Once you sign up, then you will be told.”
“Ridiculous,” Liz said. She sat down on a long leather couch opposite the woman, and tugged gently at Mark’s arm. He sank down beside her. The three beers he’d drunk in quick succession out on the terrace were starting to buzz in his head. His e-butler told him a file had arrived, sender Giselle Swinsol. When he opened it, an employment contract slipped down his virtual vision. The salary made him blink in surprise.
“It is far from being ridiculous,” Giselle Swinsol said. “We take our security very seriously indeed. You have already proved your discretion.”
“Ozzie’s asteroid?” Mark asked. “No big deal.”
“Even in today’s climate, the news shows would be very interested indeed in Mr. Isaac’s home.”
“I don’t get this,” Mark said. “I’m not some superphysicist. I repair machinery. What’s so important about that? Millions of us do it.”
“You’re actually very, very good at maintaining electromechanical systems, Mark. We checked. Thoroughly. The project you’ll be working on requires a great deal of robotic assembly. Although there are other factors which brought your name to our attention.”
“Such as?” Liz asked.
“Apart from respecting confidentiality, you have acute financial problems which we can remedy. If you agree to take this job, we will pay off every debt you accrued on Elan. Mrs. Vernon, you have the kind of biotechnology skills which we can utilize. It’s not as if we’ll expect you to act the dutiful housewife for the duration of the project. I’m sure that will make a pleasant change for you.”
Liz sat perfectly still. “Thank you.”
The contract was still flowing down Mark’s virtual vision. “If I say yes, where will we be based?”
“Cressat.”
“The Sheldon world? I didn’t think anyone else was allowed there,” Liz said.
“We are making exceptions for this project. However, we don’t have to in your case. Mark’s a Sheldon, that qualifies his whole family for residency.”
Mark tried not to flinch when Liz turned to stare at him. He’d never considered his heritage worth talking about; if anything it was mildly embarrassing. “Hardly direct lineage,” he muttered defensively.
“Your mother is only seven generations removed from Nigel. That’s good enough.”
“Wait,” Liz said. “This isn’t a navy project?”
Giselle Swinsol gave her a blank smile. “Mark?”
“What? You want an answer now?” he asked.
“Certainly.”
“But you’ve told me nothing.”
“You will be working in a job that will provide an excellent lifestyle for your family, far greater than the one you enjoyed on Elan. You will be rid of all your debts. And we absolutely guarantee your safety. The only downside will be restricted communications with your friends and immediate family. This project must remain secret.”
“I don’t like offers which are too good to be true,” Liz said. “They usually are.”
“Not so. This is on the level.”
“Is it dangerous?” Mark asked.
“No,” Giselle Swinsol said. “You will be working with sophisticated assembly systems. It is challenging, not dangerous. Look, this is not some game, Mark, I’m not in the business of going around defrauding people. In any case, I can’t scam you; you don’t have any money. This is a genuine offer. Take it or leave it.”
“How long is it for?” Mark asked.
“Difficult to say. Hopefully not more than a year, two at the outside.”
He glanced at Liz. “What do you think?”
“We’re broke. I can probably live with it. Can you?”
What he didn’t want to ask his wife was how much she’d been drinking that afternoon; alcohol tended to bring out a bullish streak in her, so she might well want to change her mind in the morning. Looking at Giselle Swinsol, he didn’t think there was any kind of second thoughts get-out clause being put on the table for them. The file was open at the part on health care and schooling. The contract he had with Prism Dynamics didn’t even have that section. “Okay, we’ll take it.”
“Excellent.” Giselle Swinsol got to her feet. “The car will pick you and the children up at seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Please be ready.”
“I’ll have to tell Prism Dynamics,” Mar
k said. The speed this was happening was leaving him disconcerted, almost as if he wanted an excuse to say no.
“That’ll be taken care of,” Giselle Swinsol said. “You can tell your immediate family you’ve got another job on a new planet. Please don’t tell them where you’re going.”
“Right.”
“Your certificate, Mark, please.”
“Oh. Yes.” He told his e-butler to add his certificate to the contract, and sent it back to her.
“Thank you.” She started for the hall.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Mark asked.
“No, Mark, you won’t.”
The front door closed smoothly behind her. Mark ran his hand back through his hair. “Goddamn, what a ballbreaker.”
“Yeah, but one that’s saved our asses. I wonder what the project is?”
“Some big military production line. I guess that’s where the automated assembly comes in. They’re going to bypass High Angel; that was only ever about politics.”
“Could be.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“It really doesn’t matter. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow.”
“You sorry I said yes? We could always not turn up.”
“I wouldn’t like to try that, not with Ms. Giselle Swinsol on our asses.”
“Guess not.”
“But you did the right thing. I just didn’t like the way she tried to bump us into saying yes. Then again, I suppose if you are building military systems right now, you can’t afford to waste any time.”
“Yeah. You know, I think I feel good about this already. I’m doing something to hit back at the bastards.”
“I’m glad, baby.” Liz put her arm around his neck, and pulled him close for a kiss. “How come you never told me you’re a Sheldon?”
“I’m not, really. Not part of the Dynasty, anyway.”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 138