Outlier

by Kyle Harris

  “Because I wasn’t put together the right way,” she told him. “There were a few defects when I came off the assembly line.”

  “And those pills fix you?”

  “No. Nothing will ever fix me. But they get me closer.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Entering the biosphere of the wealthy brought back memories.

  Being able to reach up and touch ceiling had once been a milestone on the growth chart. In high orbit, on the Nova Atlas, Chaz had been a couple months shy of her eleventh birthday when her limbs had finally stretched long enough to accomplish it. Preteens regarded it like some competition, but it was never fair—the slummier residence tunnels had ceilings so low you’d scrape your head on them, whereas if you were moneyed up, touching your own ceiling might never be possible.

  Because it was never really a game about who was growing the quickest. Up there, headroom was a sign of status. Claiming you could touch your own ceiling was admitting you lived in poverty, and that drew out the bullies.

  The nearest stop to the Wehrlein building was Innovation Square—a concentrated cluster of major tech companies, superstructures of glass and steel that reached but never touched a cloudy ceiling. The foray into the city center was marked by many stops and starts, each rotation of passengers more eye-catching than the last. Just about everyone flaunted expensive threads—mainly business attire—but Chaz had no interest in the thermal sport coats or pencil dresses. It was more the little things: gemstone-studded jewelry, authentic Omega and Rolex wristwatches, cashmere scarves, and personalized gold- and chrome-trimmed taskers from all the major brands.

  So much loot out in the open. Tempting, but too dangerous. All it would take was a barkskin wallet with an antitheft chip—an alert goes out that it’s been separated from its owner—and she would be marched straight into the can as a petty thief. Goodbye to the apartment and all her things.

  As the car pulled up to the last platform, a news bulletin flashed on the window next to her. A headline announced that a group of hackers had pirated the automatic flight code for a line of commercial Hamman hoverplanes. The newswoman was muted, but the captions made it clear that the company was concerned with possible remote hijacking of the more than one hundred Hamman aircraft currently operating both in the city and off planet. Theoretically, a “malicious-minded individual” could fully commandeer the aircraft and crash it into a densely populated area. Clients were urged to authorize the latest software update.

  Chaz found herself daydreaming about having her own private transportation service far above the scum in the streets. Pretty fucking nice thought. Then the news bulletin was gone, and flashy animation informed her about a new brand of no-leak pantyliners.

  The doors whisked open, and she got off. The clock at the station said it was ten till four, and the whole place had the noise of nonstop bustle. She followed a swarm of bodies that seemed to twist and turn in the general direction of where she was heading, while the biggest advertisement screens she’d ever seen enshrouded the heads in front of her with light curtains of antiperspirants and boner pills.

  Entering through the Wehrlein building’s revolving doors, she knew right away this place was loaded. As on the Nova Atlas the metric was headroom, and she could see all the way to the top of the building from a spot near the center of the lobby, two slopes of glass meeting at some fine point where the elevator shafts stopped. And the superfluous features: squat marble plateaus in the floor that seemed to provide no additional function other than breaking up the uniformity, ornate stone benches that looked direly uncomfortable, a custom breed of genetically enlarged sunflowers that changed into all the fluorescent colors of the rainbow, and something like a miniature nature area with falling water and audio of birds tweeting.

  Wealthy, and broadcasting it.

  After stating her business to a Cybernex-brand civvy, she was escorted into an elevator by two guys who looked like henchmen. Square jaws, close-cut hair, double dose of RBF, tactfully tailored dark suits, wireless earpieces, hands obediently clasped at their waists. Yeah, definitely henches, or private security with a terrible taste for incognito. On the ride up, she studied them in the elevator’s mirrored panels, trying to decide if those bulges at their hips were guns and if so why a conglomerate like Wehrlein would need men packing heat.

  They traded turns looking at her, but they didn’t say a word.

  Chaz absently scratched at the pocket containing her cigarettes.

  The elevator bumped; the doors opened. Thirty-fifth floor. The henchmen sandwich directed her across a short catwalk, then into a white hallway of ceramic diamond tiling and soft recessed lights.

  The door at the end led into an office. The sign on the wall to the right said: ISRAEL KENNEDY, WEHRLEIN GENERAL MANAGER.

  “Mr. Kennedy will see you now,” said the henchman in front of her. Gravelly voice with an accent she couldn’t place. He stepped aside and held out his arm to the room, giving her a glimpse of a dark-brown holster pressed against his navy-blue waistcoat.

  The office was the size of the Starry Palace’s main floor. The far wall was windows; skyscrapers were crowded in like they were trying to peek inside.

  The tall man whom Chaz assumed was Kennedy stood behind a wide, black desk, and his silver hair was so flawless it had to have been sculpted by software. Each hair was a perfect double-apex wave combed back behind his ears. If it really was a scalp transplant, then all he had to do to change his hairstyle—she’d seen a video of it—was pull out his tasker and pick a new one. There were hundreds of preset options baked in.

  Everything below the forehead was more conventional: photochromic black-rimmed eyeglasses, dark-gray two-button sport coat, trousers that were straight and pressed. The only part of him that wasn’t clean or wrinkle-free was his grizzled stubble.

  Chaz couldn’t tell if she was looking at a man who was forty-five years old or seventy.

  When he saw her, he gasped like he’d been holding his breath, and he rested his chin on one hand like a telepath contemplating what number she was thinking of.

  “There she is,” he said. “Charlene. Please, please, have a seat. I’m delighted you could attend.”

  The chair was two parallelogram armrests and a couple of foam slices—clearly the design of a comfort-ignorant fascist. She sat.

  “You want coffee? Water? Tea? Do you like herbal tea? Oh, my mother’s to blame for that one. She’d take me on Sunday afternoons to a teahouse, and she’d meet all her friends there. They’d all be dressed up—because if you weren’t, it wasn’t proper etiquette. Ah, she was obtuse in the way that all religious people are, but she had a good heart. She wasn’t like my father. Or my brother. Charlene, if you wish to witness the irreparable brain damage that we colloquially refer to as Christianity, speak to him. I propose a competition: see how far you can go without wanting to gouge his eyes out.” He laced his fingers across his waist. “I also have soft drinks, Charlene. Mango juice, a very fine London gin—”

  “Chaz,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  She combed her hair back with her fingers. “Charlene isn’t my name.” The slip was irritating, but it revealed something: Kennedy had nosed around in her biometric profile—the only way he’d know her birth name. Why? Maybe he was just cautious about who he hired.

  “Okay. Chaz.” His smile rivaled his hair for authenticity. “Duly noted.”

  She glanced around. Her henchmen buddies had taken up flanking positions—one on the sofa against the wall to her right, the other on the edge of a heavy stone-potted fern to her left. They were smiling like they’d been enjoying the talk, but they weren’t looking at their boss. Okocha’s men had done something similar when she’d first met him. Standard intimidation tactics.

  “Okocha told me you had some kind of job,” she said. “What is it?”

  Kennedy dodged the question: “I understand you are a sort of private investigator—someone who’s called a looker.”

  He h
adn’t phrased it as a question, but Chaz nodded anyway.

  “What about your client base? Who are they, typically?”

  “Wives. Husbands. Anyone who wants to know if the other one’s cheating.” She hesitated, then said: “I won’t do corporate espionage.”

  Kennedy’s smile changed—less amused, more intrigued. “Why would you think that what I’m offering is corporate espionage?”

  “You wanted to meet here, in your office, and you couldn’t do it alone.” She glanced at each of his security members. “If you suspected your wife was fucking a boy toy on the side, this meeting would’ve been private. They always are.”

  Kennedy leaned on his desk, which didn’t make him seem any shorter. “I believe you are the only person who can do this job.”

  Not denying it. “No thanks,” she said, starting to get up.

  Kennedy raised his hand to her. “No, no, no, not yet. Let me at least borrow your ears until you’ve heard everything, and then you can make a well-informed decision.”

  She reluctantly dropped back into the seat. “And compensation?”

  “We’ll get to that, trust me.” He pushed off his desk. “With no further ado, as they say. On with the show.”

  Behind Kennedy, the row of windows dimmed, and the mob of skyscrapers faded into a black screen. The lion’s head and text of the Pruitt Financial logo appeared in their place.

  “Tell me, Chaz, what do you know about Pruitt Financial?”

  Her shoulders were already in the motion of shrugging, but Kennedy had turned away, so she said, “Nothing.”

  He went on: “Just five years after the first astronauts walked on the dirt that we are standing above right now, Pruitt was offering real estate loans. Can you believe that? In just five years?” His hands slipped into his trouser pockets. “Henry Akerman and Scott Raynes have just hopped off the Poseidon shuttle with Fross’s body in front of hundreds of cameras back on Earth, and the zoning process is already under way. Pruitt’s drawing up claims and auctioning them off to the highest bidders, which was all kept from the public. It was a very classified project. I guess they knew something that the rest of us didn’t.” He paused. “And even when people were arriving here, it was complete chaos. You have these people who’ve been inside a ship and haven’t seen a real sun in years, and they’ve come here and these structures are half finished, roads are still being put down, there’s no law and order. Some of the colony ships delayed their return journeys just so families could have a place to stay. Did you know that? A promise for a new start, and this is all it is?”

  The silence felt like an intermission for something longer. Chaz said, “I didn’t come all the way here for a history lesson.”

  Kennedy looked back at her, swiveling his whole body like he had no joints above the knees. “Of course. Pruitt is the largest financial services company in the city. Any major corporation that you can think of probably financed their headquarters through Pruitt.”

  Chaz made sure he heard her sigh. “I’ve already given you my stance on corporate espionage, which means I’m not doing anything that involves breaking into that place. You want to corrupt some accounts? Steal loan records? Cool, but I’m not the one to do that.”

  “You will not be doing that. But the matter I want your help with does involve someone intrinsic—the CEO.”

  If there was an emblematic model of middle age—the receding hairline foreshadowing male-pattern baldness, the droopy off-kilter eyes, a pile of forehead wrinkles, dark hair turning gray, and probable erectile dysfunction—Matthew Rolf Pruitt was it. The photo was credited as an appearance for some Christian foundation fundraiser, and Pruitt was squinting at the flash. That plus his mouth locked in a slight grimace made it look like he had constipation.

  “You’ll be focusing on him,” said Kennedy, frowning at the large face like it had whispered some insult that Chaz hadn’t heard. Then: “No history lesson. Pruitt has something that I want, and I would be extremely grateful if you could get it for me.”

  “What is it?”

  “A very special computer program. Something that he would keep either on his person or where he lives. Pruitt calls it Wallflower.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Chaz sat forward. “Hold on. You want me to sneak into his home and steal this fucking thing, but you won’t tell me what the fuck it is? Pruitt’s net worth is probably up in the billions—You know how much security that rich asshole is going to have? I’m no foot soldier.” She sat back in the chair. “My answer hasn’t changed.”

  Now Kennedy wore a little smile. “I still believe you are the only person in the city who can pull this off. And you won’t be sneaking in. I understand the dangers as much as you, Chaz.” He turned to face the screen again. “No, Pruitt’s home will be open to you.”

  She didn’t care much for his smartass tone, but she listened.

  Pruitt’s cheerless face was gone. Now there was a woman there, blonde hair, maybe late teens or early twenties if that skin was natural. She was outdoors, and the focal length was far away, like it was a pap-snap.

  “Pruitt maintains a very interesting philosophy—if you can call such nonsense a philosophy.” Kennedy paced back and forth as if standing still inconvenienced him. “Pruitt comes from generations of Christian Scientists—Have you heard of these, Chaz? It’s this lunatic sect that believes the power of prayer—listen to this—the power of prayer can heal sickness. It can heal anything. He believes that all you see around you, everything you can touch and smell and taste, is a product of this great universal mind that we all share, and disease can be eradicated by understanding it and willing it into nonexistence. And it sounds absolutely absurd, doesn’t it? In a world of science and interstellar space travel, there exist fairy tales that have no foundation in our reality. I say it’s a great shame that the infinitely truthful word of God did not preach the power of flight through faith; these people would still be leaping off buildings in the expectation that gravity would not apply to them.”

  It had been pecking at Chaz’s brain, and now she finally realized what it was: Kennedy’s issue with Pruitt was personal. He fucking hated the guy’s guts. There was definitely a past relationship of some kind—Maybe old business partners? Longtime rivals?

  “You gonna tell me who the chick is?” asked Chaz.

  Kennedy stopped his pacing and looked at the image. “Lilibeth Katherine Pruitt.” He turned to face Chaz. “There’s something else I haven’t told you about Matthew. If I may use the vocabulary of his totally credible religion, he has been cursed with infertility. Rumors swirl whether it’s genetic or a disease, but guess what? Praying for it to go away hasn’t changed a thing. And Lilibeth”—he pointed at her image—“is the only bundle of joy he’s ever going to have. Unless, of course, he converts to the widely accepted doctrine of sanity.”

  The whole picture still had holes. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “Chaz, I have just given you a way in.”

  “How?”

  “Well, she’s like you. She’s cut from the same cloth.” He extended his hands, as if holding out the answer for her to see. “She’s…well, she’s a lesbian.”

  From the corner of her eye, Chaz studied her henchman escorts; their mouths were drawn into smug grins, as if they’d known the whole time. She imagined taking Okocha’s pliers and yanking out all their fucking teeth one by one. How about now? Still smiling?

  That was it, then. Kennedy hadn’t reached out to her because of her reputation. This was just matchmaking with expedient profits.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Is there a fucking sign around my neck?”

  “Listen—”

  “Or has one of your pretty boys here been following me around? Did he have to mark off a lesbian checklist?” She scratched an imaginary pen across an invisible sheet of paper. “‘Eight out of ten, good enough?’”

  Kennedy cleared his throat. “Say I wan
t to hire—hypothetically—someone who has a good idea what the optimal steel output needs to be for each of the next three months so Wehrlein doesn’t waste resources. You think I’m going to go down to the street, ask the first vagrant I come across? ‘Yes, hello, excuse me, sir, I need you to tell me how many employees I need, taking into account sick days and unexpected accidents. Oh, and what orders we’re going to receive between now and then, including from startups and our regular clients. And to maximize profits, I need to know the price of supplies, equipment repairs, meals, health insurance.’ Do you see the picture? Do you see the picture?”

  “So. Because I have this slit between my legs and I like girls, that makes me an expert on lesbianism. Is that it?”

  “Among many other useful skills.” He tapped his desk, repeating a four-finger beat several times. “It was not my intention to shame you, if you feel I have done so. Yes, before bringing you into my office, I needed to know what kind of person Charlene—Chaz, excuse me—what kind of person Chaz is. And if you want to hear me say it, yes, your sexual orientation was critical for my consideration. The candidate had to be just right. And you are my first and only choice.” Then, after a pause: “I understand—more than most, I’m sure—how you feel.”

  Chaz tried to decide if he was being truthful, but with suits it was never easy. And Kennedy’d had his natural hair replaced. Who’s to say his face hadn’t been touched up too? Appearing and sounding honest might just be another setting on his tasker.

  “Pardon me for a moment.” Kennedy retreated to a back table to refill the mug he’d been sipping from.

  The picture of Lilibeth was still up on the back screen. Her mother’s genes must’ve laughed away her father’s in the womb, because she hardly looked like him. They both had pale skin—hers being wind chafed in the photo—but that was it. Made sense: they were Christians, and old man Pruitt probably had a tiny sign hanging above his dick that said WHITES ONLY. If it wasn’t whole milk, he wouldn’t drink it.

  She was kind of pretty, though. Blue eyes, a bob of hair with deliberate tangles, lips plumped like a bull’s-eye for another mouth. Chaz tried to picture the two of them together, but it was a fleeting image. Seeing as she was rich offspring, Lilibeth was about guaranteed to be a fucking snob. She didn’t need a girlfriend like Chaz; she needed her teeth knocked in. The only way for a rich bitch to understand humility was to give her something to cry over.