by Jody Wallace
“Raises!” someone suggested. Everyone laughed. Hey, it was an honest comment.
Samantha smiled. “I know it can feel like you deserve hazard pay coming in to work some days. Like what happened with Ms. Singh. Would anyone care to speculate why it happened?” When no one answered the off-the-wall and over-personal question, Samantha pointed at them. “Come on, I know you’re all gossiping about it.”
“Nervous breakdown,” one guy said.
True.
“Drugs,” said an older lady.
Well, she thought so. She didn’t mean amp, either.
I was surprised they answered with candor instead of shrugging Sam off, but she’d shaken hands with a sizeable cross-section, and Mike’s chameleon effect couldn’t be discounted. Nor could peer pressure—honesty begat honesty. During the ensuing discussion, I gathered the blank evaluation forms and slipped out the door.
What next? I ought to head to the front desk for a map and a company directory. Unfortunately my sense of direction was less than supra. Luckily no one objected to a short, confused visitor poking around and opening doors. Either that or my fade was succeeding.
That’s what I’d tell Beau when I got back, anyway.
After I got my bearings, I forced myself to approach people. Pavarti deserved my best effort. Owning up to the fact I was an intern of sorts to smooth over my awkwardness, I asked the ones who’d attended the seminar a few questions.
Had they found it useful? Most had. Good job, Pavarti. Would they be willing to fill out this wee evaluation form? They all said yes, but a number had no intention of doing it.
Did they have any concerns about what had happened to Pavarti? When I asked the last question, I read their “real” responses and discovered two things. Most thought it was an odd query, and most felt a distinct ambivalence toward the misfortunes of others.
Modern offices are ant farms of cubicles, hallways, walls and doors. Some doors had keypads and some were simply locked. I tried them all. Using this method, I stumbled across the Human Resources department.
“Hi,” I said brightly to the woman at one of the desks. No one else was present
She glanced up with a weary expression. “Can I help you?”
“I’m from YuriCorp.” I tapped my visitor’s badge. “Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Sure, come in. A shame about your coworker.”
She didn’t mean it. I couldn’t tell if that was because she’d caused it or didn’t think it was a shame.
I squinted, but the mask around her didn’t clarify. “Are you the woman they said came to the seminar several times?”
Her eyes widened. “How did they know I was there?”
“Why wouldn’t they know you were there?”
I was hiding, said her mask, while her mouth said, “Yeah, um, I kept getting called away and I wanted to participate in the whole seminar. I was keeping track of, um, which of our employees participated.”
Hiding? What, behind larger employees? The fake ficus? Well, she was skinny. And sort of a cream shade, with pale hair and a white blouse. It’s possible she blended in to the fabric of the conference room chairs.
“I’m sure YuriCorp would be happy to supply the roster for each day.”
“I didn’t think of that.” She smiled in a way that made her thin face seem familiar.
“Wait a minute.” I scrunched my forehead. “You were in the meeting this morning, too.”
“My boss assigned me to assist our guests,” she lied. “Get coffee and stuff.” Her mask said, Nobody was supposed to know. I was hiding so well that man didn’t see me. Who is she?
“I’m Cleo,” I said, and mentally smacked myself for answering her unspoken question. “I’m supposed to follow up with everyone who took the seminar.”
“I’m Tina Harris. I was supposed to be there,” she insisted. Her mask provided additional information: I had to steal ideas.
“Nice to meet you.” What did she mean, steal ideas? Was she about to launch a rival management consulting firm?
My brain swirled like one of those crazy lollipops. Hiding. Chameleon. Red alert!
I stuttered. “We’re, um, assessing, um, I mean, could you fill out an evaluation form?” My conclusion flustered me so much I sounded like I was asking a movie star for an autograph.
“Okay.” She pulled out a pen. “I can do it right now.”
Was she the mole? Was she dangerous?
Nausea contorted my stomach, like Boris after cramming down too much kibble. I nearly ran like a scared little girl but gripped the door jamb to steady myself, and prevent the running.
Dammit, I had to keep it together! This might be our big break. I rustled around in the evaluation folder until I found a blank. Gingerly, I placed it on the outside edge of her desk and scuttled back. She might have a second power, the power of hoodoo. She might have a poisoned pen that overdosed you with amp. One quick jab and you were toast.
She plucked the form off the surface of the desk. When she clicked the pen, I jumped. She’d lengthened the nib.
“You can sit anywhere,” she said. “Everyone else is in the seminar.”
I was alone with an alleged thieving evil-doer burner-outer. I elected to remain by the open door where I could make a quick getaway. “Were you there when Pavarti Singh fell ill this morning? Maybe you could tell me what happened. She’s a friend.”
“I guess she got stressed. The guys from programming were acting up,” Tina said with a sneer. “She turned Richard down for a date yesterday, and he showed up again today. What a stalker.”
Something she said awoke a flutter across her face. An omission, while not technically a lie, sometimes resulted in a shadow. Was she lying about Pavarti, programming or this Richard person?
If she’d been the one responsible for Pavarti’s illness, her lie would have been black as tar stains on white pants. I took a stab at what was missing. “Who’s Richard?”
“Richard Anderson, VP of Marketing.” Tina glared at the evaluation form, her pen marking it so hard I could hear the scritch. “He’s a horn dog.”
“Pavarti wouldn’t have liked that.” Mike had listed two repeaters—the love struck VP and Tina, who thought he hadn’t noticed her. Pair cancellation? “Did Richard ever hit on you?”
“Hell, I mean, heck, no!” Her scowl made her look like an angry cotton swab. “We aren’t allowed to date internally.”
Ah, there it was. She was sleeping with Richard against company policy—and his marriage vows. Yes, he was a horn dog, and yes, she was stealing someone else’s man, but I don’t think that’s what she meant by stealing ideas.
“That’s harsh when the only guys you meet are at work,” I faux-sympathized. What else did I need to know to rule her out? “Do you have a second job?”
“This is all I do,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve been here what feels like forever.”
“And you can’t imagine anything else that could have freaked Pavarti out?”
“No,” Tina said, in all honesty. “Why are you so curious? She said she had a headache and started crying. Then she sort of fell on the ground.”
I blushed for the nth time today. Corporate snooping—I wouldn’t call it espionage because I wasn’t the one stealing ideas—was tougher than figuring out whether or not your boyfriend was lying (probably).
“I thought if I knew what caused her anxiety attack,” I explained, “I could help her.”
“Pressures of modern society?” Tina signed the bottom of the form with a flourish and handed it to me. “I like your twin set. That’s a great color on you.”
“Thanks,” I said, since it was true. “Level with me, Tina. Why do you go to the session every day? Is the catered lunch that good?”
She twiddled a piece of white-blonde hair. “Okay, okay. Everyone complimented the seminar so much, my boss assigned me to come up with an ongoing motivational strategy. Not that I was stealing your actual ideas.”
Good Lord, a norm w
ould have known she was lying.
“Our R&D teams follow kaizen. That means we try to eliminate waste and improve business functions.” It was both a disappointment and a relief she wasn’t our terrorist. She could barely fib about pilfering intellectual property, much less disrupting a fellow supra’s brainwaves.
“I’ll look kaizen up on the Internet. Thanks.” She pulled open her desk drawer and withdrew a small tape recorder. “I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on.”
I bet she did—she’d spent her week stealing Pavarti’s seminar. Did she realize she’d been in the presence of other supras? Did she know we existed or was she alone, like I had been?
“Hey, here’s a good joke,” I said, wondering how to broach the topic. “If you could have any super power, would you want to fly or be invisible?”
“Fly,” she said, because I can already be invisible. “That’s not a joke.”
“I told it wrong.” I backed out of the office feeling about as dumb as I’d ever been in my life. “Something about invisible flies.”
I hadn’t found anyone connected to the mole or Pavarti’s burnout, but I had found a sneaky blond chameleon.
~ * ~
On the way home, I told Samantha about Tina.
“John needs to come with us tomorrow,” I said. “She didn’t hurt Pavarti, but I think she’s a chameleon.”
“You won’t be on site tomorrow,” Samantha said. “Your part’s done.”
“I didn’t talk to everyone.” Returning to the software company, even knowing Tina would be lurking as well as whoever, or whatever, had burned Pavarti, was a break from the dumpster. The part of my day where I learned about management consulting was like being in school, but the part with Beau was like being in hell.
“I know you’d like to spend the day panting after John,” Samantha said with a mean grin, “but you’re not ready to interact with the public for extended periods of time.”
“I don’t pant after John.” It was a more refined admiration, with deep breathing. “We have a date this Saturday.”
“He’s helping you move furniture. That’s not a date, Cleo.”
It would be if my plans succeeded. “I did great today. Look at this stack of forms.”
“I want to tell you a joke,” Samantha mocked. “Do you have super powers?”
I’d initially glossed over my idiocy with Tina, but Sam had gotten her hand on my arm when we’d gathered her supplies, the sneak. Otherwise I wouldn’t have confessed that to Samantha or—dammit!—bragged I had a date with John.
“I don’t want you touching me anymore,” I said. “It’s unethical to manipulate your coworkers.”
“I don’t want you reading my lies anymore,” she retorted. “It’s unethical to pry into your coworker’s heads.”
I glared and did not avert my gaze. I didn’t use my skill to cause trouble like she did. “It’s my job.”
“It’s not your job to read me.”
She might not think so, but I wasn’t convinced. She was the one dating the Psytecher who kept trying to enlist me. “If you’re in my line of vision, I can’t help it.”
“I can’t always help it, either. If you think I’m bad, you haven’t been around enough touch supras.”
I didn’t believe her, though she hadn’t lied. “You know, I’ve always wondered. Are your tits real?”
Samantha pressed her lips together, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
Chapter 9
Hot Date, Not Date
Tina Harris turned out to be a full-functioning chameleon. The fact I’d stumbled across her partially alleviated the fact I hadn’t made any headway finding out what happened to Pavarti.
To everyone’s dismay, Pavarti had suffered more than a burn. She’d actually had a stroke. The normal doctors were attempting to determine the cause with little success, and our experts made little progress themselves. No thanks to me, we had no answers. We couldn’t even confirm Pavarti’s situation was artificially induced. Although she hadn’t had any of the usual contributing factors, supras did experience strokes at a similar rate to the rest of the population.
Roxanne Spivey, whose touch talent included chemical healing, visited her daily in the stroke unit to administer therapy. No other burnout victim had been affected so strongly, and the office was awash with rumors. Sheila had been the first supra who’d objected to site visits, but when Pavarti’s condition became known, several consultants asked to be reassigned to research. A few were considering jobs in less hazardous fields—or with less beleaguered corporations.
If Psytech was behind this, they’d made strides this week. Samantha had to pat a lot of hands and do a lot of damage control.
Since it was the only thing I could do—besides my job—I sent Pavarti a bouquet of sales flyers. I thought it might help for her to see something cheerful. I still had to make up my lost time with Beau. That was why I was sequestered in the lab Saturday evening, date night, when John was due to pick me up any minute.
Due? He was here. My phone buzzed in my lab coat pocket. Just as quick, a ping of nervous energy jolted me. Beau glared at me from the other side of the table in the soundproof room where we’d been conducting a test of my slowly improving chameleon skills.
“What’s that?”
“My, uh, phone.” I slipped it out of my pocket and flipped it open.
Even if I hadn’t had a date, okay an appointment, it was past the time most employees toddled home on a Saturday. It hadn’t been easy to extract John’s promise to loan me the use of his truck and his lovely muscles. After all my wheedling, I’d be damned if I missed his call.
Okay, not his call, his text message. Beau grabbed for my phone, and I leaned away to read my message.
I’m here. Ready?
So romantic.
3 minutes, I texted back.
“What were you thinking, bringing that in here?” Beau complained. “You’re not supposed to have anything metal or electronic on you.”
“Nobody told me that!” I covered my mouth in feigned shock. Beau’s ban on electronics was his personal preference, and Jolene and the other techs played along. They didn’t affect the equipment or most supra testing. Too bad I couldn’t call him on it.
“Dammit, Cleo. We’ll have to redo all of today’s work.”
“You call this work?” I was supposed to concentrate on being unnoticed while he played violent or emotional movie clips.
“Maybe if you called it work, you wouldn’t be so bad at it.”
“Meow.” Considering his choices, lab training today had been more like Rorschach for the MTV generation. We’d watched parts of The Breakfast Club, Platoon, Top Gun, Akira, Hellraiser and Tron. I had no idea how these cinematic gems affected my fading, but I bet I did a better job when Hellraiser was on.
“Get the phone out of here.”
I took his decree as my escape clause. “It’s past quittin’ time. See you Monday.”
I clattered out before he could stop me. Even so, I heard him yell, “You’d better come to work tomorrow!” at my retreating form. We’d be receiving my first formal assignment in a couple weeks, and he wanted me to work every day until then.
Hell, if things didn’t go well with John, I probably would. What else was I going to do, go to church with Lou? I’d considered it. She’d been teaching me permissible use of the Registry and her own indignant brand of supra politics. Aside from the door to door sales kids, the only Lampey from my complex I’d met was her ancient Uncle Herman next door, and he was half-deaf and cranky and always asked if I’d brought pie. At Lou’s request, I ran errands for the old guy. He’d had a hip replacement and couldn’t get around until it healed.
Such was my sad life. Mornings with Beau, lunch with some combination of Samantha, Lou, John and Ursula, afternoons with textbooks and training tapes, and, more often anyone should have to bear, evenings with Beau. You’d think the guy liked me.
He didn’t.
Tonight was my fi
rst expedition with John since I’d been hired, my need for his manly truck and mattress-lifting muscles a convenient pretext. I’d dressed for the occasion. Tight shirt, skirt, heels, make-up, hair in an up-do that threatened to become a down-do in that sexy, I swear it’s not on purpose way. Though my cleavage was exposed and as far as I knew he was straight, Beau hadn’t noticed, commented rudely about noticing, or lied about noticing. I’d let my lab coat gape open to see what he’d do.
Nada.
The first thing John said when I met him by his truck was, “You look nice.”
“Thanks. I’m finally acclimating to Tennessee weather.” It hadn’t gotten any cooler as spring was baked into nonexistence by summer. I fluttered the already low neckline of my shirt to air condition myself. “The trick is to dress for it.”
“Uh, right.” John tore his attention away from the girls and opened my side of the truck. He’d changed into shorts and a polo shirt that hugged his pecs in a gratifying way. He watched my legs as I slid into the seat. “Can you move furniture in those shoes?”
“They’re comfortable,” I lied. The strappy leather sandals with cute flowers on the toes propped me up three inches taller. I could almost bury my face in John’s neck at this height, and men did love to see a woman in foolish shoes.
A tiny frown creased his brow. “We can call Al.”
“No,” I said, a little too quickly. Tonight was going to be just me, John, and my new bed. “He’s busy with his kids. Dance recital.”
For a man who’d licked me on day one and flirted with me on day two, John had been slow to follow up on the possibility that was moi. There was that “No White Lies” factor, plus my penchant for prying, but he was attracted to me.
Even a woman without a neural lie detector could have figured that out.
YuriCorp had many unmarrieds of both sexes. Going to work was like a reality dating show for the X-Men sometimes, and it wasn’t restricted to our office. I couldn’t quit fantasizing about what it would be like to date someone who knew about me. It had to be better than the alternative.
John, good-looking to start with, had the added attraction of being one of the few YuriCorpers who wasn’t with someone and who knew the truly true truth about Cleo Giancarlo.