Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330)

by Mitchell, Laura Remson

  A stern look from Tauber cut him off in mid-sentence. “Ethan,” Tauber said a moment later, “I’m afraid I’ve been very rude. You two haven’t met, have you? This is Keith Daniels. Our lawyer. He’s the one I told you about. The one who’s handling the lawsuits.”

  Rensselaer ran his fingers through his hair and stroked his mustache before extending his hand—more out of forced politeness than interest, Keith thought.

  “Good to meet you, Daniels.... Now what about the Nitinol, Hank? And what about this Wraggon idiot? I’m out there on the firing line. I don’t want any more surprises.”

  Tauber gave Rensselaer a steady look that seemed to last forever. “Don’t worry about Wraggon,” he told the admiral. “Charlie won’t be causing us any more problems. As for the Nitinol.... Well, give me a little time. If things went too easy, it wouldn’t be worth the struggle, now would it?”

  “Easy’s just fine with me,” Rensselaer grumbled.

  Tauber smiled tightly. “Like I said, Ethan, don’t worry. Every disaster’s really an opportunity just waiting to happen. Isn’t that what they say in Fleet?”

  Rensselaer grimaced. “That’s what the desk pilots tell the boys with their asses on the line, but let me tell you, I’ve been there, and it still adds up to a bum leg as far as I’m concerned. Don’t go pulling crap like that on me. I didn’t decide to work with you just so I could listen to a new bunch of bromide pushers.”

  Tauber patted the admiral congenially on the shoulder. “I know that, Ethan. You joined forces with me because you figured I could make you President. And you were right.” His expression suddenly turned hard, and his fingers dug into the flesh near the older man’s neck. “Now just go about your business as planned until you hear from me again. And make sure you destroy those printouts the usual way.”

  Rensselaer nodded silently, and Tauber released him. Rubbing his neck and shoulder, the admiral turned to leave. “Keep up the good work with the lawsuits, Daniels,” he said. Though there was no overt act of deference, Keith could sense the salute in Rensselaer’s manner toward his former junior officer.

  ***

  “Astie turds!” Tauber said as the apartment door slid shut behind Rensselaer.

  “Uh, maybe I’d better—”

  “No, no, Daniels,” Tauber said, fixing Keith with an odd look. “Stick around for a while. You’re the one guy I can talk to, and—” Tauber suddenly snapped his mouth shut and stiffened into a military posture. “I’ll only be a minute.” He indicated the firm cushion of his dingy, brown couch, “Sit down.”

  Keith swallowed and reluctantly took the offered seat. He didn’t like it when Tauber started getting too friendly. It made him ill at ease—and all the more conscious of his conflicting loyalties.

  “Sounds as if there’s some trouble,” Keith commented as Tauber darted back and forth, inserting a disk into a free-standing, off-line computer on the other side of the room.

  “Yeah,” Tauber droned, “but it’s nothing I can’t handle. Just need to make some notes here, and I’ll take care of the rest later. Got to tell some people to revise their plans. Got to take care of Wraggon, too.”

  Keith shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Maybe Wraggon had a good reason for doing what he did. Maybe you should talk to him before you do anything else.”

  Tauber stopped tapping the keyboard and turned to Keith. “You’re beginning to remind me of an old friend of mine, Daniels.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Merchanter pal name of Derek Marsden. Used to be my best friend—till he had an accident out in Beta Colony and went soft on me.”

  Keith pressed his lips together and lifted an intricately carved chess piece from the board on the block-like table next to the couch. The set reminded him of a finely crafted army of toy soldiers. Each one was complete and unique and finished down to the smallest detail.

  “You play?” Tauber asked as, temporarily finished with his other business, he pulled up a chair and seated himself on the other side of the chess table. “Most people these days use holographic sets,” he said without waiting for Keith’s response, “but I like a chessman I can feel.”

  He picked up a king. “This set’s made of zero-gee tempered creatinum. Got it on my last trip to the colonies,” he said. “Snuck it aboard ship.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush. “Not supposed to carry any ‘extraneous material’ on board, you know.” He winked.

  “It’s a beautiful set,” Keith agreed. “I used to play a little. Haven’t for a long time, though. I was never very good, I’m afraid. Never could think enough moves ahead to do very well.”

  Tauber’s mouth curved into what, for most men, would have been a friendly smile. On Tauber, it was more of a sneer. “Chess is more than a game, Daniels. It’s life. You know?”

  Keith looked at him questioningly.

  “Take Operation Strong Man. We have our kings and queens and knights and bishops and rooks. And pawns.” He smiled again. “We have lots of pawns.”

  “And what are you, Hank?”

  “Me? Hell, Daniels, I’m nobody’s chessman. I’m the guy who moves the pieces!”

  Chapter 23: Something in the Wind

  “Thanks for bringing me back.” Rayna greeted the familiar surroundings of home like an old friend as she and Keith crossed the threshold into her apartment. “Even with all the modern conveniences, a week in the hospital’s no fun.”

  One sniff confirmed what she had suspected. “Smells like the inside of a cheap permastore crate in here!” She activated the mechanism to clear the opaqued glass of the patio door, then directed the door to slide open, welcoming the fresh air with a stretch and a lung-cleansing breath.

  “You sure you want that open? It’s a little chilly today.”

  Rayna couldn’t help laughing. “I had a concussion, Keith, not pneumonia.” Touched by his worried expression, she took his hand and kissed it. “Honestly, I’m all right. No headaches for the last 48 hours, and all the tests show my brain is perfectly normal.”

  Keith frowned, but his eyes had that familiar, devilish twinkle. “Normal?” he repeated gravely. “Well, I don’t know about that.” The sentence ended with a grunt as Rayna jabbed him in the solar plexus. He grinned and hugged her.

  “So,” he began, flopping down onto the sofa, “what are you going to do now?”

  “Oh, I guess I’ll just take it easy. Maybe there’s a concert or a good play on HV tonight. Want to stay for dinner?”

  “Can’t. Got an appointment with a client. Besides, that’s not exactly what I meant. What’re you going to do about living expenses now that you’re out of a job?”

  Rayna pursed her lips unhappily. “Oh,” she sighed. She gazed out the patio door, noting the lengthening shadows cast by the low afternoon sun. “The school board wants to avoid any possible controversy over my—” she cleared her throat theatrically “—over my sudden departure. So they’ve got me on medical leave for the rest of the academic year. I keep drawing my teacher’s salary, and they avoid a scandal.”

  “What about your health-care expenses?”

  “No problem there, either. I’m still covered by MediNet. Last I heard, they didn’t cut off your medical benefits for taking an unpopular political stand.”

  Keith ignored the bitterness. “That’s great. Then you don’t have any financial problems for the moment.” She nodded grudgingly and sat down next to him. What was wrong with him? Didn’t he realize what had happened? Here she was, her career ruined by a bunch of small-minded bureaucrats, and he figured everything was just fine as long as she could pay her bills! What she wanted from him was a little righteous indignation! What she wanted was.... What she wanted....

  “Mmmmm—that’s nice,” she purred as his fingers began kneading her shoulders.

  “You’re all tense,” he said after a while. “Last time your neck muscles were this tight was the day Arthur called and told us he was getting close to finding out who your real parents were.”


  Rayna remembered. “Tense” was a vast understatement. “It’s funny. You know how upset I was about the whole adoption thing. But I think part of me was actually happy when I found out.” She leaned forward and cocked her head to one side, examining the holographic seascape across the room.

  The holopainting held a special magic for her. Holography, computer technology and art merged to create a picture-window view of an active yet somehow calming sea, bathed in sunlight and set against an azure sky. With the twist of a dial, Rayna could alter the time of day in the scene. Left alone, the picture would automatically reveal the passing of the hours. By nighttime, the moon would replace the sun: Silver patches of reflected moonlight would play hide-and-seek in the gently moving water, and waves would break along the shore, displaying a phosphorescent glow as they arched onto the beach.

  The seascape gave her urban apartment a beach-house view. Yet, on the other side of the glass was not the ocean but merely a wall separating two rooms. The scene was comforting, reassuring—as long as she didn’t think about it too much, as long as she refused to see it as a techno-artistic construct rather than a window on the real thing. Sometimes, she told herself, you just need to forget about the realities and enjoy the illusions.

  She shook her head and leaned back again. “I guess I’ve always felt sort of incomplete. As if there was a piece of me that was—well, not exactly missing, maybe, but something I didn’t know about. Something I ought to know about.” She looked at him. “Even though I was shocked about the adoption, I guess I was hoping the records would fill in the blanks.”

  “Well? Have they?”

  Rayna raised her eyebrows. “Yes and no. I have a lot more of the details, but the total picture is as big a puzzle as ever. I still don’t really know who I am. I get the feeling that I have all the information now, but I just can’t seem to put it together.”

  “Not many of us ever do,” said Keith. “But, then, maybe understanding ourselves is too much to hope for. Maybe we should just try to be happy. I’ll tell you this much: The fact that you’re on the mend sure makes me happy.”

  “Happy?” She looked at him for a moment, searching for the right words to express the dread inside her. “I appreciate your concern for me, but how can anyone really be happy these days?” She stood, took a few steps, and then did an about-face. “Everything’s a mess. Look around. Everybody’s angry and afraid. And you know what happens when people get that way.”

  His eyes were strangely expressionless, his mouth firmly set. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “People who are angry and afraid hurt each other, Keith. They strike out blindly, and they hurt each other. Like at the debate.” She studied his face, hunting for a sign of recognition, for some indication that he shared her concern. “I-I think we’re headed for war with the colonies.”

  He pressed his lips together. It was his turn to look away.

  “They’re already talking about converting civilian aerospace plants back into weapons factories,” Rayna added. “Even if we manage to avoid interplanetary war, it looks as though we’re in for a lot of trouble right here on Earth. The Middle East is just an explosion waiting to happen.”

  Keith shifted restlessly on the sofa, muscles twitching at his temples.

  “I thought we could make a difference,” she said, “that we could stop it somehow. But—”

  “What did you expect?” he exploded, jumping to his feet. “The two of us can’t change the world. We’re not gods, you know!” Rayna gaped at him. “Maybe you want me to be like your grandfather and wish it all better. Well, I can’t do that!”

  “I know,” she said, her body vibrating with every heartbeat. This wasn’t like Keith at all. She wasn’t sure whether to say something soothing or to object to his sudden attack. She decided on the former course. “I didn’t mean.... I just meant we should be able to do something.”

  “Like what?” he challenged, returning to the sofa.

  She raised her hands uncertainly, then sat down in the old-fashioned armchair next to where she’d been standing. “I was hoping you could tell me. You’ve spent a lot of time with Henry Tauber. Haven’t you learned something that might help? Anything at all?”

  “Nothing I can really—”

  “Wait a minute!” she interrupted, sitting bolt upright. “I just remembered!”

  Keith pulled a stick of cherry licorice from the pocket of his tunic, unwrapped it and took a bite.

  “Did you see the broadcast of the debate, Keith? I mean, did you hear it? Did you really listen?”

  “Yeah, I watched on HV. So?” Clamping his stick of licorice between his teeth, he removed another from his pocket and offered it to Rayna, but she shook her head and pursued her own line of thought.

  “Althea Milgrom said the reason she wanted President Aragon to contact the colonies again was that it looked like there might be...‘some irregularity’ is the way she put it, I think...some irregularity in the communications between Earth and the colonies!”

  Rayna awaited a response but Keith simply continued to eat his licorice.

  “Well?” she said. “Don’t you see?”

  Keith hiked his shoulders. “See what? So Milgrom thinks she found some problem in the communications. She’ll never figure out what’s going on.”

  Rayna stared at him. He sounded as if he didn’t want Milgrom to figure it out! What was happening to him? His expression offered no clue. His face was a mask—a frighteningly distant, noncommittal mask.

  “But if we contact her, tell her what we know about Tauber—”

  “No!” Keith shouted, springing from the sofa. “We can’t do that!”

  “Why not, for heaven’s sake? Althea Milgrom’s the one person who may be able to help, to put a stop to all this. She has the resources of the entire CDN to call on.”

  Blue veins throbbed at Keith’s temples, standing out in sharp relief against the surface of his skin. He scowled and sank back onto the sofa. “You don’t understand, Ray. Tauber has connections that go much higher and much deeper than we ever thought. If we contact Milgrom, he’ll get suspicious. I don’t want to risk messing up the relationship I’ve got with him.”

  Rayna looked at him hard. “And what kind of relationship is that?”

  Keith hesitated, averting his eyes when he finally spoke. “Tauber trusts me. He tells me things he doesn’t tell anyone else.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Ray, listen to me. Just leave things alone for a while. Let me try for more information.”

  “But what good does information do us if we don’t act on it? We have to tell someone sometime or else we’ll just be observers along for the ride. And I don’t like where this ride is going.”

  Keith laughed bitterly. “Boy, when you recover, you really recover, don’t you? Less than three hours out of the hospital, and here you are, the general sounding the call of battle! Maybe you ought to be the one talking to Tauber. You could exchange ideas on how to control people and make them say ‘yes’ to whatever you want.”

  Rayna felt the blood drain from her face. “Just leave things alone for a while!” Keith insisted.

  He was upset, Rayna told herself. He had to be upset. This simply wasn’t like him.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, “but please understand, I can’t just sit around and watch my friends get fired because of who their relatives are or because of their political beliefs. I can’t stand by while the Earth-Firsters drive us to war, or listen quietly while they brand anyone who disagrees with them as a ‘dirty Astie.’” She gazed hopefully at Keith. “I thought we both felt that way.”

  Keith started to speak, then changed his mind and tore off another hunk of cherry licorice. “Sorry,” he said after a while, his eyes glazed and distant, “but I just can’t go to Milgrom.” He hesitated before continuing. “Tauber doesn’t completely trust anybody. I’m on his good side for now, but that’s no guarantee things’ll stay that way. He’s
a very dangerous man.” Keith’s eyes probed hers. “I think he’s going to have Wraggon killed.” Briefly, he described what he’d learned in his last meeting with Tauber—up to and including Rensselaer’s involvement in the plot.

  “Good God! This thing keeps getting bigger and bigger. But that’s all the more reason to contact Althea Milgrom. At this point, we need some outside help.”

  Keith leaned forward and shook his head emphatically. “No!”

  “Keith, I....”

  “I said no!”

  Rayna looked at him steadily. “You’re shouting,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  He shifted his rear on the sofa. “I can’t contact Althea Milgrom,” he said in simple, carefully measured syllables. “I won’t! And I don’t think you should, either. Tauber knows how close we are.”

  Rayna wanted to go to him then, to embrace him, to remind him just how close they were, but something in his manner stopped her. A coldness crept through her as she continued to watch him and consider her next move.

  “As it happens, Keith, I have a perfectly logical pretext for seeing Mrs. Milgrom again. She insisted that I come to CDN headquarters after I got out of the hospital. She wanted to give me a special tour of the facilities. You could tell Tauber that, couldn’t you?”

  “I could,” Keith agreed reluctantly.

  “And he’d believe you?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t want you to do it.”

  Rayna closed her eyes briefly. “Maybe we’d better talk about something else.”

  Keith nodded, and Rayna took a deep breath, sucking in the air as if a new supply of oxygen might somehow clear away the growing tension between them.

  “I’m looking forward to the next few days,” she told him. “I think maybe I’ll read over some of Alec Zorne’s papers and my grandfather’s old journal entries. Who knows?” She forced a laugh. “Maybe his powers were genetic!”

  The corners of Keith’s mouth turned up tentatively but unconvincingly. “Yeah,” he said, “maybe.” He stood, obviously preparing to leave. “Well, I think I’ll let you get some rest. I’ll call tomorrow.”