Liesmith

by Alis Franklin

  Perhaps she fights on, or tries to. Perhaps not. Either way, like all casualties in this pointless, foretold war, she ends up sinking in the mud, eyes turned toward the sky.

  Perhaps the last things she sees are two ravens, landing by her side. They whisper secrets in her ear, and the woman does not die alone.

  Perhaps. It’s a nice thought, anyway.

  THREE

  “…So there’s me, halfway up this hill in the middle of bloody nowhere, trying to wrangle this ancient wheezing ox we’ve got, pulling this enormous wagon.”

  Strike one: It wasn’t an ox.

  “And you can see what comes next, right?” Lain’s voice, floating over the cubicle partition. “Shitty little gravel path, overburdened cart—”

  “Oh, no.” That was Divya, leaning against Sigmund’s desk, listening to Lain’s stories.

  “Oh, yes,” Lain said. “And my brother and his mate, charging ahead on their scooters”—strike two: They were not on scooters—“and taunting me all, like, ‘Lain, Lain. Glaciers move faster. We’ll be dead before we get there.’ ” Strike three: They hadn’t called him Lain. “And finally I’m, like, ‘Right. Screw you guys.’ ”

  “Uh-oh…”

  If nothing else, Lain knew how to play an audience, Divya rocking back and forth in her anticipation for the tale. Sigmund wouldn’t mind but for the fact that she bumped his desk on every oscillation.

  Divya was nice, really. In small doses. At a distance. Which made Sigmund feel like the world’s biggest jerk, because it wasn’t Divya’s fault she had a voice like a banshee and was followed by miasma of cheap shampoo strong enough to cause complaints from two states away. She tried hard, and was nice.

  And irritating. Really, really irritating. And Lain was new, and Divya was talkative, and so she came over and Lain told her stories that were mostly lies and scratched the inside of Sigmund’s head, and Divya shrieked laughter like a fire alarm and the whole thing just made Sigmund want to scream.

  “So I lean forward, and slap this ox, right on the rump—”

  “No, you didn’t! Poor thing!”

  “Whack! Hard enough to be heard in Norway. And the ox, which has been half asleep the entire bloody time, just flips its shit.”

  “That serves you right! You shouldn’t hit animals.”

  “Well, it gets its revenge, right? Because the cart, it’s, like—the ox starts to buck, rodeo style, and the cart’s just, like”—some action Sigmund couldn’t see, which had Divya make a sound loud enough to evacuate the building—“and I’m, like, ‘Ffffuuuu—!’ And then there’s this horrible crack of snapping wood, and the next thing I know, I’m rolling head over heels, dodging broken cart, all the way down the hill.”

  Divya gasped, a whole body motion that sent Sigmund’s desk slamming against the window. “Oh, oh no! Were you okay?”

  “Nothing broken,” Lain said, which was strike four. “But the barrels on the cart smash, and by the time my brother and Homer”—five: Not the friend’s name anymore than Lain’s was Lain—“find me down at the bottom, I’m bleeding and groaning in a pile of wood and rocks and wine.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “No, the earful I got from my brother was terrible, for smashing all the barrels. And the fact we’re all still stuck on this damn hill, with this ox we have to get to the next town. Except the cart’s gone, so we end up with me walking the rest of the way, dragging the thing behind us on a rope.”

  Sigmund scowled. “They didn’t let you ride on the, uh. To ride?” he asked.

  Lain’s head appeared over the partition, as if surprised that Sigmund had been listening. Surprised, but not displeased, judging from his expression. “Nah,” he said. “My brother said it was ‘punishment’ ”—Lain made air quotes—“for the wine. Hell of a thing, though. I mean, ox hair plus full-body gravel rash? Infection. Central. I swear I was oozing pus for weeks.”

  “Oh, gross. That’s so awful,” Divya said.

  Sigmund thought that was an understatement. He scowled at his keyboard, picking old crumbs from between the keys and reminding himself Lain’s unnamed brother—whomever he had been—was dead.

  There was comfort in that thought, something dark and vicious Sigmund wasn’t used to. So much resentment against a guy he’d never known. A guy whose name he didn’t even know. Because this wasn’t the first story Lain had told about his brother: It was only Wednesday, but Sigmund must’ve heard half a dozen by now, always by eavesdropping over the partition while Lain narrated to someone else.

  They were all the same, the stories. Lain and his brother in some ridiculous situation, Lain doing something foolish, then being punished by the universe for his act.

  Then getting the same again from his brother.

  They would’ve been funny, if not for the latter part. And maybe Lain was right, and he did bring things on himself, and maybe there were a million other stories he didn’t tell that ended happily ever after. Maybe. Sigmund liked to think so, if only because it made the odd black ball of hate sit lighter in his gut.

  Divya hung around for a while after Lain was done talking, too-loud voice grating through Sigmund’s mind. He tried to tune it out, head down and headphones on, working through an email archive recovery. Mindless stuff, watching blue bars fill while deep below in the depths of some cold, dark server room, tape drives spun up and down.

  —

  A week passed, more or less. As far as cubicle mates went, Lain turned out to be not the worst Sigmund had ever had. He was funny when he spoke and unobtrusive when he didn’t, and, according to initial tests, was not a raging douchebag. A bit of a magnet for the women on the floor, which meant Sigmund’s corner got a lot more visitors than usual.

  “It won’t last,” Lain confessed to Sigmund on Thursday. “They’re just here for the enormous hands”—he wiggled his fingers in demonstration, and, yeah, they were pretty big, now that he mentioned it—“and cheekbones like razor blades. They’ll move on in a few weeks. When they realize what an asshole lives beneath.”

  That sounded like another story—like a lifetime of stories, maybe—so Sigmund decided not to ask. Lain was nice enough, but there was that whole thing about the dead brother and the jail time and maybe Sigmund didn’t want to push too hard.

  The brother and the jail and the fact that “Lain” was an absolute, utter, pathological liar. Scare quotes not optional because, go figure, Lain wasn’t Lain’s actual name. He used it, and he answered to it, but he hadn’t been born with it.

  People asked him about the name all the time. Because it sounded foreign, Sigmund supposed, and not in the usually identifiable ways. Lain said it was Icelandic, except that was a lie, too, even if Lain really had been to Iceland. He hadn’t been born there, though, and neither had his parents. Nor had he gone to school…anywhere, as far as Sigmund could tell. Lain was pretty good at tailoring his life history to his audience, but listening to it still left Sigmund with a head full of itching.

  Lain’s alleged IT credentials were, in Sigmund’s opinion, also suspect. Lain had a story for it, of course: how everything at TAFE had been based on the wrong architecture, in the wrong areas, thirty years behind current corporate practice. Except that was a lie, too, and not just because Lain had never actually been to TAFE. He was wicked smart, and didn’t need telling twice, but he did need telling once, even for things he maybe should have needed telling nonce at all.

  Still. He was an okay guy, despite everything. Sigmund figured there were worse things.

  FOUR

  So here’s the deal.

  You know what you can get away with doing, being the world’s third richest man? Being CEO of the world’s largest fucking technology company?

  Fucking. Anything.

  Power. Money. It comes with the territory. Everyone has a price; everything can be bought.

  Every day, a thousand mortal souls come to pray within my temple. Come to lay their sacrifices—their minds, their toil, their money—at
my feet. Every day, millions more carry my idols in their pockets, have them hold pride of place within their homes. Billions of hours, spent in supplication at my altars.

  When they share secrets—wicked prayers, tapped through keyboards or whispered into mikes—they share them all with me. Wishes, hope, fantasies. Revenge. All dark words uttered in my name.

  This is power. This is the way that gods are made.

  This is me. Now.

  But it wasn’t always.

  Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

  —

  Tuesday morning, I get in early and make a call. It has some very, very specific instructions. The sort only a CEO can make without any awkward questions.

  After the call, I get in the elevator.

  Upstairs, in the foyer of the executive suites, it’d been Travis Hale who stepped through shiny chrome doors. On the seventh floor, it’s Lain Laufeyjarson who steps out.

  See where this is going?

  This isn’t the first time I’ve played King Incognito among my own unwashed masses, but I admit it’s been a good decade between cons. And the previous ones were mostly corporate-development-type stuff, making sure managers weren’t assholes and the staff were happy with the hamburgers, that sort of thing. This time, it’s personal.

  Because sure, the desks are nice and ergonomic and the windows let in plenty of light (when people haven’t pulled the blinds down), but I’m only halfheartedly making an index of that stuff. Mostly, what I’m here for is—

  “Lain!”

  —that.

  I turn, ensuring my grin is bright and open and my slouch is appropriately apologetic for my height. I’m tall compared to Sigmund. I don’t want to loom.

  And here he is, rounding one of the partitions, Sigmund Gregor Sussman de Deus himself. Father, David Sussman, born in Sydney, son of post–World War II Jewish migrants. Mother, Lynne Sussman, née Maria Madalena Silva de Deus. Born in Brazil, immigrated in the ’70s. Died when Sussman was a toddler. Father never remarried, because the Wyrd is a bitter spiral.

  Sigmund was born right here and never left. Unremarkable at school, unremarkable at university. Computer Science/Accounting, the former for himself, the latter for his father. Grades were better in the latter, because life is never fair.

  Scraped into LB on the grad program last intake. Competent, unambitious, liked well enough by his peers. Might make it into middle management in a decade or two if he’s lucky.

  Two main associates: Evdokia “Emily” Ivanovich and Wayne Kalinda Murphy. Both women, the latter cursed with the legacy of 1980s unisex parenting. Both very fond of black and spikes, judging from their Tumblrs. Sigmund and Ivanovich went to school together, Murphy met them at university. Ivanovich works in the Basement, doing INFOSEC. Murphy pulls part time at a comic shop while studying at the Computer Arts Academy, an LB talent funnel.

  All the background information money can buy, hidden in a file in my drawer upstairs. Shit. At least I hope it’s in the drawer. If I left it on the desk, I’m kinda screwed.

  “Dude. Harrison’s looking for us.”

  “Oh?”

  I follow Sigmund into his boss’s office. James Harrison is a hulking meat slab of a man, ex-infantry, with a tendency to shout at office politics rather than work around them. He’ll never be anything but what he is, but his staff like him and, sometimes, that’s enough.

  “Sussman. Lain.” Harrison gestures at us. “Come in.”

  He gives the briefing, mostly for Sigmund’s benefit. I know the story because I invented it, filtered down through managers and subordinates until it reached the Basement.

  “You’re needed upstairs, right now.”

  “Upstairs?” Sigmund shifts from foot to foot, fingers twitching and flexing. I know he’s thinking of his run-in with me—with Hale—back at the Christmas party.

  “Right up,” Harrison says, confirming Sigmund’s fears. “To the Big Boy rooms. Our Fearless Leader needs someone to fix his printer.” He holds out a small white card, and Sigmund takes it.

  “Don’t we have other guys for this?” I say. I mean VIP Support, neat assholes in suits, trained more in babysitting execs than dealing with IT. Everyone fucking hates them, myself included.

  “VIP sent someone up already,” Harrison says. “Hale threw him out. Allegedly his words were ‘I need a geek, not an MBA.’ ” This is technically a lie, but it is a dutiful recitation of the events people have been told to tell. And, to be fair, it’s only a lie for this particular instance. When I say I hate dealing with VIP, the feeling is definitely mutual.

  “Jesus.” Sigmund, also not a fan of the office babysitters, is trying not to laugh.

  It gets a smirk out of Harrison, too. “VIP is fuming. I said we’d handle it. And guess who happens to look the part?”

  Somewhere, beneath dark skin, Sigmund blushes. He knows what he looks like, all ratty jeans and Game of Thrones/Pulp Fiction mashup T-shirt. Plus the nerd glasses and explosive pile of wiry hair. If I’m the Hollywood version of a TV-acceptable geek, Sigmund’s very much the real deal.

  The option for us to decline Harrison’s task is illusory at best, so, a minute or two later, Sigmund and I are riding up in the elevator. There are only two that go to the exec floor, and only one that goes all the way to the penthouse above that.

  It’s a long trip up. Sigmund is jittery, watching the numbers on the screen slowly increment by one. When we reach twelve he says, “This is my dad’s floor. I’ve never actually been above it.”

  Fuck. He’s just so adorable. “You know you can just, like, press the buttons randomly, right? Go wherever you want? There’s a balcony on thirty-two that has a really good view of the lake.” It occurs to me, as soon as I say this, that it’s information new staff-member Lain really shouldn’t know.

  Fortunately for said new staff member, Sigmund is too busy being nervous to notice the discrepancy. His anxiety oozes out of him, thick and yellow in the enclosed space of the lift. Worried he’ll run into Hale again after the mortification that was the party.

  That one wasn’t his fault. Meeting Sigmund was an accident, but once I saw him…Christ. All I could feel was cold winter sun on my skin, and all I could smell was the blood and ash and death of war. Old memories from a forgotten life, a debt paid in blood, lost and buried.

  Not my blood, though. So maybe paid is an exaggeration. Maybe the word I’m looking for is transferred.

  I had to know. So I got close, made sure he wouldn’t recognize me in the dark, and listened to him pour his heart out over a dream that’s going nowhere.

  Sigmund is never going to be the designer behind a breakout indie video game. His Wyrd has something much, much better in store for him.

  With a chime and a cheerful recitation of the floor, the doors open.

  “Wow.” Sigmund stops so abruptly outside the elevator that I almost run right into him. “This is…posh,” he says.

  “I guess?” It’s designed to be impressive, all the plushest carpet and richest wood money can buy.

  There are exactly two offices on this level. A set of eyes watches us from the second.

  “The card, please.”

  Sigmund startles at the voice, and at the fact that he didn’t hear the owner as she approached. Nicole Anne Arin, LB’s senior vice president, as cold and sharp and thin as the circuit board I found her in, all those years ago.

  She’s also giving me the dirtiest look over Sigmund’s shoulder. I give her a wink, and the corresponding drop in the room’s temperature is literal as well as figurative, given Nic’s connection to the HVAC. Not to mention everything else in the building.

  “I’m, uh. I’m Sigmund,” Sigmund starts. “This is Lain. We’re from—”

  “I know who you are.” This is directed at me, over Sigmund’s head. So maybe I’ve been obsessing over the guy a bit since Christmas, and maybe Nic is the only other one up here to hear. Maybe. Nic continues: “Mr. Hale’s office is that way. His tablet won’t print t
o the printer, and this is what you’re here to fix. You will not touch anything in Mr. Hale’s office, other than the desktop, printer, and his tablet. A document is open for you to test. You will not close it or attempt to open any other application.”

  Sigmund is going grayer by the minute, so I make Cut it out, Jesus motions to Nic behind his back. She does stop talking, but only with a withering glare that leaves me under no illusions re getting it in the neck from her later. She hates the idea of me chasing ghosts. And Sigmund? He’s about as ghostly as someone can get while still breathing.

  Quite literally, at the moment. So I come to the rescue with a “Don’t worry, Ms. Arin. We’re professionals. We won’t disrupt Mr. Hale’s day any more than it’s already been.”

  I think I actually feel the cables in the floor shift beneath the carpet. I’m astounded they don’t rip through the wool and strangle me where I stand.

  Nic is great at a lot of things, like PR and predicting the stock market. She’s not so great at dealing with people in the one-on-one. Sooner or later, she’ll always fail the Turing test.

  Sigmund is still fixed in Nic’s glare like dead pixels on a monitor, so I clap him on the shoulders and say, “C’mon!” Then walk across the floor toward my office.

  The doors are currently closed, two huge things made from a Huon pine older than I am. The LB logo is inlaid in the front in brass: three big upright pillars, a hole in each and an indentation in the top. As I go to push them open, Sigmund says:

  “You know, I walk past the statue every day, and I never did manage to figure out the logo.”

  He’s talking about the enormous monstrosity downstairs, just outside the foyer. The original set of three stones I had shipped here from Iceland, and on which the LB brand is based.

  I could tell Sigmund what it means, but I don’t. It isn’t a nice thing, and I suspect he’ll remember that trauma soon enough.

  We walk into the office.

  “Wooow. It’s good to be the CEO.” Sigmund laughs nervously, shooting a glance over his shoulder to see if Nic’s still listening (she is).