The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  “Life’s just one big roll in the grass for you Avatars, huh?” Petra grinned impishly at her boss.

  “Do not deny yourself joy,” Gloria intoned dryly.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t. And thanks, Gloria!”

  GLORIA ENTERED THE OFFICE OF QUADRANT 4 Administrator Cornell DuBray dressed, she felt, like a proper Avatar of Joy. She had changed to a white lace band skirt—just a hoop of all-but-transparent fabric four inches wide—slung low on her hips. Her breasts were similarly covered, but not at all concealed, by a narrower hoop of the same fabric. She didn’t normally come so close to outright nudity in the office, but it was, after all, a Visitation Day. And, in any case, she wanted to make a strong first impression on DuBray.

  Far above the lowly Lions, Tigers, and Dogs in the Dexta pecking order were the Eagles—Level VII’s and above—who actually ran the organization. Normally, a Level X like Gloria would never have any contact with a Level IV like DuBray. But the Charter of the Office of Strategic Intervention, written by Norman Mingus himself, gave Gloria broadly defined powers and responsibilities and virtually unlimited access to Dexta personnel and records.

  She had checked DuBray’s file before coming to his office to gain a little more insight into a man who was already something of a Dexta legend. Cornell DuBray—ninety-seven years old and still as handsome and vigorous as a man half his chronological age—had been Quad 4 Admin for nearly forty-two years. For purposes of comparison, Gloria noted that DuBray’s fellow Quadrant Administrators had been at their respective posts for twenty-three, nine, and six years. He had taken over the slot from Norman Mingus in 3176, when Mingus became the Dexta Secretary. He was the odds-on favorite to succeed Mingus as Secretary when Mingus finally retired or died—assuming he ever did.

  During his tenure in Quad 4, DuBray had built a reputation as a tireless, ruthless, and sometimes tyrannical Administrator who never forgot a friend or a foe, and whose rewards for the former and punishments for the latter were equally lavish. There was nothing about it in the files, but it was said around Dexta that some of DuBray’s early opponents had wound up on high-gravity prison worlds; there were, apparently, no recent opponents. DuBray’s loyalty to Norman Mingus was unshakeable, and it was reciprocated by the Dexta Secretary.

  He greeted Gloria at the door and ushered her into his palatial 110th-floor office. DuBray was just over six feet tall, beefy but not fat, and had long, pompadoured silvery locks and a thin mustache to match. His nose suggested Hazar blood, and his full lips looked supple and feminine. He had been married four times—leaving him one wife shy of Norman Mingus—and was said to pursue a sex life that the Sept of Joy might have noted with approval. He clasped Gloria’s hands in his and stared at her, head to toe, with undisguised appreciation.

  “Ms. VanDeen,” he said, “it is a true pleasure to meet you at last. I suspected and hoped that our paths would cross eventually. Norman speaks of you often, and holds you in the highest regard. And I believe congratulations are in order today, are they not? I don’t know that Dexta has ever had its own Avatar of the Spirit.”

  “Actually, there have been three,” said Gloria, who had checked, “although it’s been two hundred years since the last one. But thank you, Mr. DuBray. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, as well. I had hoped to make the rounds of all the Quadrant Administrators long before now, but OSI has kept me pretty busy.”

  “So I gather,” said DuBray. “Can I get you something to drink? Some wine, perhaps?”

  “That would be lovely,” Gloria said. She took a seat on a divan facing the windows, giving her a magnificent view of the January sunset over New Jersey. DuBray joined her on the divan a moment later, gave her a goblet of red wine, and clinked glasses with her.

  “To Dexta,” he said. “And to our mutual friend and patron, Norman Mingus.”

  “Long may he wave,” Gloria said. She took a sip of the wine and found it excellent.

  “A cabernet from the vineyards of Sonoma III, vintage 3196. The finest wine in my Quadrant and, for my money, the entire Empire.”

  “It’s marvelous,” Gloria agreed, taking another sip.

  “I’m glad you think so. I’ll have a case of it sent to you.”

  “Oh, please, don’t trouble yourself.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, I assure you,” DuBray said, smiling wolfishly. “I didn’t say I’d deliver it myself. Although I would be happy to do just that. You truly are a remarkably beautiful woman, Ms. VanDeen. I’ve seen the vids, of course, but having you here—in the flesh, as it were—adds an entirely new dimension to my appreciation of your charms.”

  “That’s very nice of you to say, Mr. DuBray. And please, call me Gloria.”

  “Very well, I shall. Now tell me, Gloria, what good fortune brings you to me today? What can I do for you?”

  “Well, as I said, I had hoped to make your acquaintance in any event, but I do have the excuse of some business matters. I wanted to let you know the OSI is going to be doing some work in Quadrant 4.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you. And what desperate shortcoming in my Quadrant, might I ask, requires your strategic intervention?” DuBray’s eyes had narrowed slightly, and the look on his face was not entirely pleasant. This was a reaction Gloria had seen before from planetary and Sector authorities. If an OSI intervention was necessary, it could only mean that there was a malfunction somewhere in the existing Dexta bureaucracy. No one was happy to hear that.

  “Oh, nothing desperate, I assure you,” Gloria said as lightly as she could. “But it does look as if there have been some financial irregularities in Sector 19. One of my people is preparing a full report, and I’ll send you a copy tomorrow. It only came to my attention this afternoon, so I’m afraid I don’t have many details yet. But, in general, it seems that there has been some double- and perhaps even triple-flagging of various freighters. If the records are accurate, some freighters have apparently been showing up in two or more ports at the same time. We aren’t sure exactly what’s going on, but of course there are tax implications and the possibility of hijackings and phantom loads.”

  DuBray nodded. “I see,” he said, and took a swallow of the excellent wine. “And what does Sector Administration have to say about all of this?”

  “Nothing, yet,” said Gloria. “Since we aren’t sure just who or what is involved here, we thought we’d hold off on notifying Sector. Under the circumstances, we felt it might be best to go directly to Quadrant.”

  “And swoop down on the malefactors from above, without warning?”

  “If necessary. Of course, at the moment we still don’t even know if there are any malefactors. It could all turn out to be accounting errors, or something similar. But to be safe, it made sense to handle it through Quadrant, initially.”

  “Indeed.” DuBray pursed his lips, crossed his legs, and stared beyond the slums of New Jersey toward the setting sun. “And you will be going to Sector 19 yourself?”

  Gloria shook her head. “An OSI team has already been dispatched, but I have no immediate plans to get personally involved. There is, however, another matter…”

  “More happy news regarding my Quadrant? My cup runneth over.”

  Gloria shrugged. “Sorry, but part of my job is to tell people things they’d rather not hear.”

  DuBray looked at her again. “And you dress this way to soften the blow?”

  “If it has that effect,” Gloria said, “then so much the better. But the truth is, I dress this way because I enjoy it, and I’ve noticed that other people generally enjoy it, as well. You certainly have.”

  DuBray offered her a smile. “Point taken,” he said. “Very well, then. Proceed.”

  Gloria took a deep breath, then launched into it. “Mr. DuBray,” she said, “I’m sure you’ve already heard about the two PAIN attacks in your Quadrant.”

  DuBray nodded. “Ugly,” he said. “Very ugly. But Internal Security is already dealing with it. What is OSI’s interest in this?”<
br />
  “One of the terrorists employed an old Mark IV plasma rifle,” Gloria said. “And last week on Cartago, another Mark IV was used in an attempt on my life. Both of those rifles were part of a shipment to Savoy in September 3163, just before the start of the war with the Ch’gnth.”

  DuBray gave her a sharp, probing stare, then abruptly got to his feet. He gazed at the glow on the horizon for a moment, drained the rest of his glass in one long pull, then went over to a sideboard to take the bottle and refill his glass. “Interesting,” he said finally, after taking another sip of the wine.

  “We need to get at the original records from 3163,” Gloria continued, “when the Quadrant Administrator’s office was on New Cambridge. Two of our people will be leaving for there in a couple of days. Of course, the OSI Charter gives them all necessary powers, but things might go a little easier for them on New Cambridge if they could take along an authorization from you.”

  DuBray took another swallow of wine and turned to look at her. “There were those of us,” he said, “who warned Norman that this Office of Strategic Intervention was a spectacularly bad idea. Dexta already has an Inspector General’s Office and a Comptroller, after all, and they have managed to keep the gears and cams reasonably free of grit down through the centuries, without any ‘strategic interventions.’ Some of us, in fact, told him to his face that his obvious infatuation with a certain young woman was leading him to make a potentially disastrous decision. But, of course, he ignored our advice—as was his privilege.”

  Gloria got to her feet and faced DuBray. “I see,” she said.

  “I doubt it. Come over here, if you would, Gloria.” After locking eyes with him for a few seconds, Gloria walked around the divan and approached DuBray. He regarded her frostily for a moment, then put his glass down and, with no preamble, unknotted her top and pulled it away from her. Then he looked down at her bare breasts and smiled crookedly.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  “Isn’t that obvious? I suppose you could say I’m performing a little strategic intervention of my own. If you want to play your games in my backyard, little girl, you’ll play by my rules, or you won’t play at all.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Gloria replied with some heat. “I’m not some bloody Fifteen anymore, and I don’t have to put up with this bullshit from you or anyone else now! I’m head of the OSI and a Ten!”

  “Yes, and I’m a Four,” DuBray said blithely. “You see where that leaves you, don’t you? Honestly, Gloria, did you really believe that things were any different at the upper levels of Dexta than at the lower ones? We just play the game with a little more finesse and style up here. When you were a Fifteen, you saved your job by letting the Pack Dogs fuck you on the floor of the restrooms, didn’t you?”

  Gloria could only stare at him in smoldering silence. She wondered how in hell he had heard about that.

  “Well,” DuBray went on, “I have a very comfortable bed in the next room. If you expect to strategically intervene in my Quadrant, you’ll join me on it.”

  The idea of having sex with a superior at Dexta to preserve or promote her career was hardly novel to Gloria. That had always been part of the game, and by becoming a Tiger she had committed herself to playing it. But after Mynjhino and her appointment to head the OSI, she had come to realize that her success at Dexta depended on the quality of her work more than on her sexual stratagems. And there was no one at Dexta—not even Norman Mingus—that she had to screw. So she was annoyed by DuBray’s arrogance and presumption.

  Gloria smiled sweetly at him. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your very kind invitation, Mr. DuBray. You might have had a shot at me if you actually had half the finesse you think you have. But you see, I’m allergic to assholes.”

  Gloria pivoted smartly and marched out of the office, leaving DuBray standing there holding the scrap of cloth in his hand.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said over her shoulder, but Gloria just slammed the door on him.

  “THAT MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD! THAT INCREDIBLE son of a bitch!”

  Gloria swept into Petra’s apartment like a thunderstorm, raging almost incoherently as she paced around in little circles, her thin lips drawn tight and her eyes blazing. Petra didn’t think she’d ever seen her so overwrought. Wearing nothing but a tinier-than-usual band skirt, her ruby mustard seed bouncing around between her breasts in her agitation, Gloria seemed to be on the verge of doing physical violence to someone. She usually reserved language like this for Charles—but somehow, Petra didn’t think it was directed at him this time.

  “Which motherfucking bastard?” Petra ventured to inquire.

  “DuBray! Cornell Fucking DuBray, that arrogant asshole! Who the hell does he think he is, treating me like a goddamn Fifteen?”

  “What happened?” Pug asked.

  “Nothing happened! Nothing at all, because I didn’t let it happen! I’m a Ten now, dammit, not some frightened, brainless Fifteen! How dare he treat me that way? How dare he? ‘If you want to play games in my backyard, little girl, you’ll play by my rules!’ Can you imagine? He actually said that! Little girl? Why, that arrogant, motherfucking—”

  Gloria stopped short when she finally realized that she, Petra, and Pug were not the only people in the room. Petra’s mother stood at the doorway to the kitchen, gazing at Gloria with more than her usual degree of disapproval.

  “Uh…Mrs. Nash!” Gloria stammered. “I didn’t see you. Uh…hello. How are you? I’m sorry, I didn’t…uh, I apologize…”

  “Mom,” Petra quickly broke in, “Gloria’s had a tough day at the office.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Mrs. Nash. “Perhaps she should have stayed there until she recovered some semblance of civility.”

  Petra sighed. Her mother had never approved of Gloria, or her daughter’s association with such a person. Oh, she didn’t mind the perks that went with knowing Gloria, like the invitations to fancy parties in Gloria’s penthouse, or the free family vacation Gloria had sprung for last year; but she had always found Gloria herself to be too wild and disrespectful of propriety. In particular, she disapproved of Gloria’s repeated public contretemps with the Emperor. In Mrs. Nash’s view, the Emperor—any Emperor—ought to have been treated with the utmost deference and respect. Of course, Mrs. Nash had never even met an Emperor, let alone been married to one.

  The only man Mrs. Nash had ever been married to in her sixty-three years was Mr. Nash, Petra’s father, who had fled some twenty years ago, when Petra was six. In consequence, she distrusted men in general—much as she distrusted women who consorted with them. She tolerated Pug, principally because he was from a wealthy family, but somehow always managed to convey the impression that she considered him to be beneath her daughter. Her mother, Petra realized, was a galaxy-class snob, probably because she had been poor all her life. Now that her daughter was moving up in the world, it gave her new opportunities to express her disapproval of and disappointment in virtually everything and everyone, including Petra.

  “Gloria,” Petra said, “Mom’s going to be minding the apartment while Pug and I are on New Cambridge. Uh…we’re still going, aren’t we?”

  “Damn right you are…I mean, yes, of course. You won’t have DuBray’s seal of approval, which may mean that you’ll have to do without any cooperation from the Dexta staff on New Cambridge. But you’ve got full authority under the OSI Charter, so don’t put up with any bullsh—uh, don’t—”

  “We won’t,” Petra said. “Can I get you a drink or something?”

  “No, no, I just wanted to let off some steam on my way upstairs.” Gloria turned to face Mrs. Nash and said, “I do apologize for my unseemly outburst, Mrs. Nash.”

  “That’s quite all right, Gloria,” Mrs. Nash said loftily, now that she had attained the moral high ground. “Tell me, though, do you usually dress like this at work? From the way my daughter dresses these days, it wouldn’t surprise me, but I confess, I didn’
t think you went around the office completely naked.”

  “Well,” Gloria tried to explain, “it’s been kind of an unusual day, Mrs. Nash. You see…”

  “It’s a Visitation Day, Mom,” Petra put in. But that didn’t impress Mrs. Nash, who had sampled and discarded Spiritism years ago.

  “Yes,” she said, “I believe I heard something about that vulgar…ceremony. I gather you are now some sort of Avatar? I suppose that means you can go around naked all the time, if you want?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, it does,” Gloria said. “But to tell you the truth—”

  “That’s quite all right, Gloria,” Mrs. Nash cut in. “You owe me no explanations. I don’t pretend to understand you young people in any case. However, I can tell you that when I was your age, we showed a little more respect for—”

  “Bullshit, Mom!” Petra had heard about as much as she could take. “When you were our age, old Darius was on the throne and people acted a lot wilder than anyone does today. So spare us your laments for the Good Old Days, okay? Gloria, I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I just needed to vent. See you at the office tomorrow. Good night, Pug…and Mrs. Nash.” Gloria made a hasty exit.

  When Gloria was gone, Petra, fists on hips, confronted her mother. “After all Gloria’s done for us,” she said, “you’d think you could make at least a little effort to be nice to her!”

  “After what she’s done?” Mrs. Nash said in frank astonishment. “You mean, after all you’ve done for her! Why, that woman could hardly function without you. And after what happened to you on Sylvania—”

  “I’ve told you before, that wasn’t Gloria’s fault.”

  “No, of course not. All she did was force you to work as a prostitute. And if a prostitute gets assaulted, why, it hardly matters, does it?”

  “Dammit, Mom, you know perfectly well I was working undercover as a bar girl, not a prostitute!”

  “Well, I suppose the distinction escapes me. I tell you, that woman has corrupted you, Petra. Yes, that’s it, she’s corrupted you! Just look at the way you’re dressed right now.”