Tyson snorted. “Absolutely not. I may as well shoot myself onstage.”
“So you’re going to lie to us?”
“Us?”
Elsa crossed her arms over her chest. “I have a couple thousand shares, thank you very much. I may be presenting, but I’m a member of the audience, too. Should I be on my tablet selling them right now?”
“That would technically be insider trading using privileged information, and quite illegal. The trade would be invalidated, you’d lose the money anyway, and you would be placed on an indentured contract for five to ten years.”
“C’mon, they don’t actually enforce those laws, do they?”
“Some transtellars don’t.” Tyson’s eyes narrowed. “But, mine does.”
Elsa put up her hands. “Okay, okay. I get it. So my best bet at a comfortable retirement is to lie convincingly for you.”
“I’ll never ask you to lie. I may be required, on occasion, to ask you to keep certain things confidential.”
“You asked me to lie to Beckham.”
“Yes, but that’s different. You want to lie to Beckham.”
Elsa pursed her lips in consideration. “Yeah, I really do.”
“Good, glad we could settle that. Ah, here we are.”
The pod slid to a stop at the service entrance of the Civil Auditorium, an enormous double-clamshell structure in the model of the Sydney Opera House on Earth, but with a Lazarus flair in size, and a small update in tech. While technically an open-air auditorium, the atmosphere within the volume made by the overhang was kept sequestered from the “outside” through a very clever system of ionic flow manipulators that allowed the building’s air conditioners to keep everyone cool, and only very occasionally interacted poorly with certain older models of artificial hearts. That had been an unpleasant surprise, but it had been more than a century ago and anyone with one of those old clunkers in their chest cavity had been dead for decades anyway. The docs printed clone replacements from scratch these days.
A small gaggle of media and their attending camera drones had snuck past the ropes and barriers to the receiving area, as they usually did. Tyson didn’t see any of the INN talking heads among them. These were from the gossip rags, little better than paparazzi.
“Tyson! Hey, Tyson. Who’s your lady friend?” one of them shouted.
“She’s a doctor, and we’re just colleagues,” Tyson answered, dismissively shooing away the drone that swooped inside their personal space.
“Who is she wearing?” demanded another.
“Clearance rack.” Elsa shot back. “My colleague pays his scientists like shit.”
This was met with approving laughter by the assembled vultures, and threw them off the scent long enough for the two of them to get inside the building.
“You know that line will be a meme in about ten seconds, right?” Tyson admonished.
“Sorry, it was the first thing that popped into my head.”
“No, no. It was good. Self-deprecating and passive-aggressive all at the same time. Plays into the out-of-touch CEO stereotype perfectly. They’ll focus on me being a stingy jerk instead of asking questions about you.”
“So … you’re not mad?”
“Why would I be? I’m paying you exactly what you asked for.”
“God dammit.”
Tyson smirked. “Keep that spark alive. You’ll need it shortly.”
Elsa looked back through the glass doors to the vultures waiting outside to swoop back in once they left. “Is it like this every day for you?”
“Not every day.” Tyson paused. “But enough days. C’mon, let’s get you to the green room. I’m going up in a few minutes, I’ll probably drone on for about twenty minutes giving the rah-rah dog and pony show, then I’ll introduce you. Paris?”
“I’m here.” Paris’s holographic avatar, her old one, coalesced in the hallway from a series of projectors hidden in the ceiling. Tyson briefly wondered why she hadn’t updated her avatar to reflect her new carapace, but filed the thought away.
“Can you escort Dr. Spaulding to the green room, please? I have to get into makeup.”
“Of course.”
“Makeup?” Elsa giggled. “Like you’re playing King Lear.”
“‘All the world’s a stage,’ my dear. Go with Paris, she’ll get you settled in.”
Tyson watched them go, then found his own way to the changing room and the stylists waiting to attend to him. He sat in the adjustable chair in front of a huge illuminated mirror.
“What do you think, Julia?” he asked the woman standing by with a foundation pad and eyeliner pen. “Jacket or no jacket tonight?”
“On a Tuesday night?” she asked as she went to work on Tyson’s cheeks and forehead. “The crowd is still in workweek mode. No jacket would come off too casual and unserious. Ditch the tie, though, and undo your top shirt button.”
Tyson looked down at the cerulean, fractal-patterned fabric hanging limply from his neck. “But it was a Christmas present from my niece.”
“It shows.” She snapped her fingers and an assistant yanked the tie free without Julia breaking eye contact with Tyson’s crow’s-feet. “We can just laser these off, you know.”
“I feel like I’ve earned them.”
She snorted. “A luxury men miraculously still have.” She caked on a bit more foundation around the corners of his eyes, then punched up the contrast of his face with highlighting tones on his cheekbones, nose, and forehead. A little subtle shadowing around his eyes and the effect was complete.
“All right, off you go,” the artist said as she shooed him out of her chair.
“Thank you, Julia. Lovely to see you as always.”
“Break a leg.”
Tyson found his way to backstage and made his presence known to the stage director, then settled in behind the curtains. Music penetrated even the heavy red velvet fabric of the curtains. A local revisionist rock group had won the right to warm up his crowd in a battle-of-the-bands competition two months earlier. From the sounds of it, they were approaching the zenith of the final song in their set.
As much as Tyson loathed his frequent meetings with his board, and as private as he usually kept himself, he had to admit, there was something energizing, even intoxicating about taking the stage in front of so many people gathered to hang on his every word. It was a strange thing for an introvert to have come to enjoy, even relish, but here he was. He’d prepared a speech, but like most previous addresses, he’d only memorized the outline and planned on keeping it light, casual, and freewheeling. A conversation between friends, if a bit one-sided.
“Thirty seconds to curtain,” the director said from just behind Tyson’s shoulder as he attached a remote mic epaulet to his jacket lapel.
“Test mic three.” He clapped his hands three times. “Okay, you’re green, Mr. Abington. It will go live to the PA system as soon as you step through the curtains.”
“Thank you.”
“Ten seconds. Five, four, three…” The director moved to a silent countdown with his fingers. When he reached “one,” he pointed to the stage. Ignoring the flutters in his stomach, Tyson strode toward it with purpose and confidence as the crushed red velvet parted at his approach like he was being reborn into a new and different world.
To his left, the band’s lead singer leaned into his old-school corded mic stand and threw a hand in Tyson’s direction even as their mobile stage retreated to the side and out of sight with the rest of the band and all their equipment.
“And now for tonight’s real rock star, the man we’ve all been waiting to hear, CEO of Ageless Corporation, Governor of Lazarus, our host, and number one in our hearts, Mister Tysoooooon Abiiiingtooooon!”
The crowd surged to their feet in applause that was two-thirds genuine, and maybe a third sucking up to the boss as if he could pick out individuals to show favor through the blinding stage lights.
Tyson let the wave of adulation crash over him and echo through the she
ll for maybe a beat longer than was strictly necessary. Fuck it, he didn’t get these moments very often and he’d had a rough couple days. He would forgive himself for a few seconds of self-indulgence.
Before the spectacle became obscene, Tyson raised his arms and fluttered his hands toward the floor, asking for everyone to bring it down to a dull roar. The crowd obeyed.
“Thank you, associates, stockholders, citizens, and our friends in the media for coming tonight. Let’s have a round of applause for our opening band, The Lemon Potemkins! Make them feel good, they earned their time on this stage tonight.” The crowd obliged. “Excellent, excellent. This is what Methuselah is all about, building each other up, providing opportunities. That’s what brought us here to this little ochre dirtball. Well, not us, we’re all too young.” The crowd laughed appropriately. “But our ancestors, yours and mine. Because they shared a vision of an oasis in the desert, and to make it bloom.”
Tyson was in his groove now. It was a familiar story, one he’d told in one form or another at most of these gatherings for going on seven years now. Everybody loved origin stories.
He was so busy going through the familiar beats that it took him a few stanzas to notice the change spread through the crowd. It was subtle at first, isolated people reaching to check their tablets or wrist displays, or getting the thousand-meter stare of someone watching something in their AR environment. He mistook it for the sort of casual, inattentive rudeness one saw in almost any public gathering these days. But soon, the isolated people were elbowing the attendees next to them and pointing at their screens. Groups appeared and grew until they merged like water droplets running down a window, gaining size and momentum. With shocking speed, it seemed no one was paying attention to him.
“Get out of there,” Paris said into his internal com.
“I’m in the middle of a speech, Paris.”
“Trust me, you just finished. Pretend your mic stopped working. Just. Get. Off. The. Stage.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“When you’re in the pod getting the hell out of here.”
“Dr. Spaulding—”
“Is already moving. Go.”
Shaken, Tyson’s gaze returned to the crowd, which had stopped staring silently and had started shouting and waving their tablets or wrist displays. He couldn’t make out the individual barbs, but he didn’t need to. Their tone and body language told the story.
He apologetically pointed at his radio mic and made a “giving up” gesture with his hands, then turned and walked back off the stage to a rising chorus of boos. The stage director jumped out from behind the curtain holding a replacement mic.
“I’m so sorry. I checked the charge on it myself.”
Tyson held up a hand. “The address has been canceled.”
“It has?”
“Yes.” He kept moving forward without an explanation. “Jesus, Paris. What is going on?”
“Somebody leaked the Grendel news. Everyone in there just read about NeoSun pulling out of the partnership. And the Xre incursion!”
“What?!” Tyson shouted into his head and out loud. “That’s not possible. I was the only person in the room.”
“There are probably at least four people in the chain of custody for that file to get it here from New Vladivostok,” Paris said.
As he started to jog down the hallway, he knew she was right. He wasn’t the only one with a spy problem. Valeria had a mole. Just ahead, Tyson saw Paris’s holo standing in the hallway next to Elsa ready to make the handoff.
“What’s going on?” Elsa asked, but Tyson didn’t have time and grabbed her under the arm a little harder than he intended to.
“Talk and move.”
“Let go of me!” She wrenched her arm away from him and almost looked like she was setting it up for a return trip to his face, but stared instead.
Tyson stopped and took a breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But something really bad just happened and the address has been canceled. We have to get out of here quickly before things turn uglier.”
“Fine, just tell me that. I’m not your kid to drag around.”
“You’re right. Will you please follow me?”
They made a quick retreat to the rear service exit. Ji-eun Park stood dead-center of the sliding doors as they parted.
“Tyson!” she shouted over the din of paparazzi as her camera drone dropped lower. “Would you care to comment on tonight’s revelations?”
“I have no knowledge of any revelations.”
“Come on, Tyson. You just canceled your quarterly address.”
“I left the iron on. You’re hanging out back here with the vultures now, Ms. Park? That’s a big step down for you.”
“I go where the story is.”
“Come now, Ji-eun. You of all people should know you can’t believe everything you read.” Tyson pushed a tabloid reporter out of the way with a dismissive shove, then helped Elsa inside the waiting car before stooping to enter himself.
“Immortal Tower. Emergency limiter suspension,” he said. The pod took off like a spurned quarter horse, pushing them both back into their seats.
“Holy shit,” Elsa said. “I didn’t know they went this fast.”
“They can go two hundred kph, but it has a bad habit of turning pedestrians into pudding.”
With all the lights and crosswalks on their route between the auditorium and the tower locked to red, and the pod pushing its maximum speed, the trip was a short one. But not short enough to escape the board.
Nakamura buzzed in first as his hologram appeared inside the windshield glass of the pod.
“We need to talk.”
“Not now, Takeshi.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, does another time work better for you, Tyson?”
The rest of the board buzzed in one by one until, ready or not, they were having a full-blown meeting.
“I’m not alone in here.” Tyson nodded in Elsa’s direction. “It’s not secure.”
“What the hell is secure at this point, Tyson?” Durant chirped back. “All of our most damaging secrets of the last two weeks have already been blasted across the net like a celebrity sex holo.”
“This really can’t wait, Tyson,” Meadows said calmly, but firmly. “Myself and I think the rest of the board are comfortable with Dr. Spaulding sitting in as long as she signs an NDA. Is that all right with you, Doctor?”
“I mean, sure?”
“Like it matters,” Nakamura muttered. “It’s just going to be pillow talk for them anyway.”
“Waaay out of line, Takeshi,” Tyson snapped. “If we’re bringing this trash fire to order, you’re starting with an apology to the good doctor.”
Nakamura straightened in his chair. “Yes, you’re right. I am sorry for questioning your professionalism, Dr. Spaulding. You’ve worked diligently these last weeks to see the company through this crisis and the board applauds your efforts. I spoke out of turn merely from frustration.”
“I accept your apology,” Elsa said coolly.
“Good,” Durant said. “Now that’s out of the way, can we get down to what the fuck just happened?”
“Obviously our spy got the better of our IT security again and decided to spread a little mayhem,” Tyson said.
“Spy? Or an internal leaker?”
“Our investigation has not uncovered any—”
“Your investigation, Tyson,” Nakamura cut him off. “And in a month, your investigation has only uncovered half a dead girl.”
“I assure you, no one has greater motivation to unravel this mystery than I.”
“It’s not your motivation we’re questioning, Tyson. It’s your competency.”
Tyson’s face went hard as marble. “I beg your pardon?”
“What Takeshi is saying in his indelicate fashion,” Meadows injected diplomatically, “is the rest of the board believes these overlapping crises are too big for any one of us to tackle in a vacuum. You
’re taking on too much, Tyson. Let us help.”
“And none of your typical micromanaging,” Durant added. “We need full access to your sources and methods for once. No more of this off-the-books shit. Leave that to Navy Intel, their black budget eats up enough of our profit margins as is.”
“Our stakeholders expect results,” Nakamura said. “All they’ve seen for the last month is a transtellar freefalling toward a singularity.”
“Most of the damage that’s been done is because things we preferred kept in the shadows were dragged into the light before we were ready. If we start airing all our dirty laundry ourselves, it’ll not only exacerbate the problem, but signal to whoever’s behind the espionage that their plans are paying dividends.”
“I agree,” Meadows began, “with Takeshi. No matter what’s been happening behind the scenes, publicly we’re coming off as entirely reactive. Our stakeholders need to believe we’re getting out ahead of these issues forcefully and with a plan. I’m sorry, Tyson. You can put it to a formal vote if you want, but the rest of us have already spoken about this privately and we’re in unanimous agreement.”
“Tell him the rest, Foz,” Durant said.
“And…” Meadows hesitated. “And if things don’t turn around soon, we may have to entertain merger offers. At least on a preliminary basis.”
Tyson went completely rigid, as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a wild horse. It took him a full three seconds to return to himself and respond. “You would abandon two centuries of this company’s bedrock independence over a hiccup!”
“This isn’t a hiccup, Tyson,” Nakamura said. “The union bigwigs are already making rumblings about a general strike. The fuse is already burning. Unless you want to be the CEO of a cinder, we need to act fast and decisively.”
So it had come down to this. Conspired against from the outside by his enemies, and from the inside by his own board. Tyson couldn’t believe he’d been so completely outmaneuvered. What had Sokolov’s message said? Not everyone on his board had his best interests in mind?
One of them was part of this. Only someone in his very innermost circle had the access necessary to leak what had escaped. But which one? The answer would have to wait. For now, he had to play along, lest the traitor begin to suspect their cover was blown. As the pod slowed on its approach to the Immortal Tower, he made his next move.
In the Black Page 25