The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  Jill appropriated Petra’s champagne glass and offered a toast. “Here’s to OSI,” she said. “The Fifth Quadrant.” Softly, she added, “Spirit save us.”

  PETRA AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE sound of her beeping wristcom. “Yeah?” she mumbled.

  “Petra Nash?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good morning, Petra Nash. This is Whit Bartholemew. How are you today?”

  That was a question Petra was not prepared to answer just yet. She felt too awful to be able to calibrate precisely how awful. The only response she could manage was a weak groan.

  “Sorry I missed you at the reception last night, but I was called away on business,” Bartholemew said. “I was truly looking forward to seeing you. I hear you were the toast of the Quadrant.”

  “I was?”

  “So they say. But I would prefer not to rely on mere gossip. I’d much rather see for myself. Would you consider having lunch with me today?”

  “Uh…”

  “Wonderful. I’ll send a limo for you, say, about noon?”

  “Uh…” Petra looked around for the first time and realized that she was not at the Ellisons’. She seemed to be in a bed in Gloria’s suite at the hotel. “I’m at the Imperial Cantabragian,” she said.

  “Yes, I know. Noon, then?”

  “Uh…yes, noon is fine.”

  “See you then, Petra Nash.”

  Petra tried to get up, didn’t quite make it, but managed to swing her legs around and sit on the edge of the bed while the room gradually stopped whirling around her. She took a few deep breaths and noticed her pad on the bedside table, glowing orange to announce a message. She reached out and keyed it.

  “First things first,” Gloria said brightly. “There are some No-Regret tabs in the bathroom. Elaine and I are off to the committee venues. I got a call from Pug, who says he hopes you’re feeling better and that he’ll be checking out Stavros & Sons today. He says he’ll see you tonight at the Ellisons’. I don’t know what you had planned for today, but if you need to take the day off, go ahead. Oh, and Elaine says you’re welcome to borrow some of her clothes. Have a great day, and I’ll talk to you later.”

  Petra made her unsteady way into the bathroom, found the pills, and swallowed two of them. Then she stepped into the shower, hoping she would be lucky enough to drown. She didn’t, and by the time she turned the shower off, the pills had taken effect and she was feeling marginally human, if not exactly chipper. She remembered most of what had happened last night and gave the bottle of pills a skeptical look. “No regrets, huh?”

  She supposed that she had not completely disgraced herself, but she had probably come pretty close. Prancing around in the nude in front of all the Dexta bigwigs of Quadrant 4 might not have been a prudent career move, now that she considered it. On the other hand, with Gloria there, it was possible that no one had even noticed. Gloria was like a black hole, sucking in light and energy from the minor bodies that orbited her, and sometimes it was impossible for Petra not to resent her. Still, Gloria couldn’t help being what she was, any more than Steffany Fairchild could help being a tall, blond, big-titted bitch. Petra, fated to be cute and little, felt that she had to resort to extreme measures in the presence of such overpowering competition.

  If Pug thought he could take her for granted and cuddle up to Steffany while Petra labored away for Dexta and OSI, maybe he needed a little reminder that Petra Nash was nobody’s doormat. Whit Bartholemew seemed to think highly of her, at least, even if nobody else on this fucking planet did. He’d missed the show she put on last night? Okay, she would put on the same show for him today. She didn’t bother with borrowing something from Elaine, but found her black-and-gold pareu and knotted it recklessly low on her hips. Just the thing for a casual lunch.

  Petra ordered coffee from room service, and while waiting for it to arrive, she rummaged around in Gloria’s room until she found the inevitable package of jigli. She lit up one of the potent cigarettes and settled comfortably in a chair to smoke and stew. By the time the coffee arrived, she was tingling all over with sexual arousal and righteous indignation.

  THE LIMO DRIVER EXPLAINED TO PETRA THAT she would be having lunch in Bartholemew’s office rather than a restaurant. That was probably just as well, Petra reflected, as she got out of the limo in front of the Bartholemew Building in downtown Central. The provincials of this two-crown world didn’t seem to be used to the sight of sophisticated Manhattan ladies striding past them at high noon, bare-breasted and practically nude. Come to think of it, this would have been pretty extreme even for Gloria. So be it; Petra Nash, Dexta Tiger, didn’t care.

  She arrived at the top floor (the elevators in this building, thank the Spirit, were working) and was quickly ushered into Bartholemew’s private office by a secretary who kept giving her disapproving sidelong glances. Whit Bartholemew greeted her with a wide smile and wider eyes.

  “I didn’t have a chance to change after last night,” Petra explained as Bartholemew kissed her extended hand.

  “Why change perfection?” Bartholemew said as he focused his gaze on her pert breasts and sensuously bared belly. Petra felt a surge of jigli-fired tingles.

  Bartholemew took her hand and led her on a short tour of his palatial, fiftieth-floor office as he explained that Bartholemew Enterprises, of which he was president, was really a holding company that managed fourteen different concerns. They ranged from the moribund but occasionally useful B & Q Shipping to a financial company that underwrote construction projects throughout the Quadrant. “My father, of course, is the one who built this overweening enterprise,” he said. “And through no fault or merit of my own, I now sit in his big chair and crack the various whips that keep the serfs busy and productive.”

  “You sound as if you regret it.”

  “Endlessly. I tell you, Petra Nash, if not for the disadvantages of my birth, I might have amounted to something in life.” He led her to a small table, where wine and a salad course were waiting for them.

  “Well,” Petra said as she sat down, “it’s not too late. I mean, you could still just chuck it all and go…do what? What would you have done with your life if you hadn’t been burdened with wealth and position?”

  “Interesting question, that,” Bartholemew said as he poured the wine. “Poet? Politician? Proctologist? In a way, I’ve had to be all of those things anyway. Especially the last one. You wouldn’t believe how many assholes I have to deal with.”

  Petra smiled. “Me too,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t doubt it. Tell me, whatever possessed you to join that gang of fascist file clerks?”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. Dexta’s just another bureaucracy, with all the faults of any bureaucracy. I joined because I wanted to make something of myself and help run the Empire. Maybe do a little good in the galaxy. Why are you and your mother so down on Dexta, anyway?”

  Bartholemew sipped a little wine and leaned back in his chair. “You’ve met my grandfather?”

  Petra shrugged. “Not really. But Gloria knows him well and thinks he’s a wonderful man.”

  “Gloria, no doubt, would. Actually, I barely know the man. I’ve only met him three times in my life, and the last time was over twenty years ago. But I know what he is, what he’s done. He’s a tyrant, nothing less. He absolutely controls our pathetic self-indulgent, milksop Emperor, and has the goods on everyone in Parliament. I tell you, Petra Nash, no one can be trusted with power, let alone absolute power. Least of all, Norman Mingus.”

  “His power is hardly absolute,” Petra pointed out. “He has plenty of trouble just controlling Dexta, from what I hear. As for the Emperor and Parliament…well, we do have an Imperial Code, don’t we? Dexta is just one part of the balance of powers.”

  “Right out of the textbook. Is that what they taught you back at dear old Alexander Hamilton High School in lovely Weehawken? Odd that they should name the place for a man who was killed there, don’t you think? Why not Aaron Burr High School?
”

  “You’ve been checking up on me,” Petra said with some annoyance.

  “From the moment I met you,” Bartholemew agreed. “You intrigue me, Petra Nash. You are intelligent, witty, charming, and beautiful in a way that your famous boss could never be. You’re a real person. I like real people. I’ve met so few of them in this charade I call my life.”

  “Why are you so bitter?”

  “Better to ask why everyone isn’t that bitter,” Bartholemew said. He drank some more wine. “Everyone certainly has cause to be in this benighted Empire of ours. Why aren’t you bitter, Petra Nash? You certainly have cause to be, after all the miserable cards you’ve been dealt. Absentee father, shrew of a mother, egotistical, self-absorbed boss, weak-kneed, two-timing boyfriend…”

  “Now, wait a minute!” Petra felt a hot flush of anger burning her cheeks. “Ever since I got here, you’ve been going out of your way to insult me, my job, and all the important people in my life. What the hell gives you the right to set yourself up as the Universal Judge?”

  “Nothing,” Bartholemew admitted. “You’re quite right. I’m no more qualified for that job than anyone else. And that’s my whole point. My contempt, I assure you, is not directed at you, or Gloria VanDeen, or Pug, or even Norman Mingus. It’s a purely impartial contempt, aimed at one and all—Whitney Bartholemew, Junior, not excepted. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “Yes, you are. There’s some color in your cheeks. And your exquisite nipples are so stiff, they look like gun barrels aimed straight at my heart.” Bartholemew clasped his hands over his chest in mock agony.

  Petra laughed, in spite of herself. She took a sip of wine and stared at the man across the table from her. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone quite like him. If he was obnoxious and hurtful, he was also brutally honest. There was something to be said for that. Bartholemew seemed to be a man who was determined to live without illusions—or maybe he just preferred the illusions he created for himself.

  Bartholemew hit a button on his wristcom, and an instant later a wheeled robot dumbwaiter came in and served the main course of fish, rice, and vegetables. The robot departed, and Bartholemew poured more wine.

  “As long as I’ve already provoked your pique,” he said, “allow me to annoy you even more. I must confess that I didn’t invite you here simply so I could insult you and stare at your lovely face and that splendid little body—which, by the way, I am extravagantly grateful to you for revealing so completely. No, I have another motive, entirely. I understand that you paid a little visit to that old fart Quincannon.”

  “Yes. I needed some information about B & Q Shipping for an investigation I’m doing. I didn’t know that you owned the company.”

  “But now you do know it. And much more. You downloaded all of the company’s files, sixty years of them.”

  Petra nodded. “I needed to find out about a B & Q shipment in 3163. I didn’t want to spend hours looking for exactly what I needed, so I just downloaded everything.”

  “So I gather. That nitwit Quincannon apparently didn’t realize that something like that would immediately show up in our master computer. I would never have approved letting you do that, had I known.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered whether you approved it or not,” Petra told him. “I’m investigating a possible link to terrorist activity. I didn’t have a warrant, but I could have gotten one easily enough.”

  “Possibly. That’s neither here nor there. If you are investigating something that happened in 3163, you hardly need all of B & Q’s records, do you?” Bartholemew offered her a friendly smile.

  “I told you, I didn’t have the time to do a specific search. But once I’ve downloaded everything from my pad to the office computer, I’ll be able to find the stuff I need.”

  “Fine. And what of the stuff you don’t need?”

  Petra shook her head. “I have no interest in that.”

  “In that case, before you dump all of that information into the maw of Dexta’s computers, would you be kind enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, then permanently dispose of the chaff?”

  “Why? I told you—”

  “Yes, I know, you have no interest in that. But someone else might. That’s my problem. You see, some of the material that is of no interest to you contains information that could be, shall we say, embarrassing, to B & Q Shipping and Bartholemew Enterprises and to me, personally.”

  “Look, if you have some skeletons in your corporate closet, don’t worry about it. I couldn’t care less. The only thing I’m concerned with is that shipment to Savoy in 3163, and Pug and I are the only ones who are going to be using that data. Your secrets, whatever they may be, are perfectly safe.”

  “I wish I could be certain of that. But the ugly truth is that it’s not simply a matter of a few skeletons in a closet. Apparently no one has told you about my father.”

  Petra frowned. “What about him?”

  Bartholemew drank some more wine, then sighed. “You see,” he said, “the fact is that my sainted father, Whitney Bartholemew, Senior, spent his entire adult life working in and for the zamitat. Those records, Petra Nash, do not constitute a few skeletons in a closet. They constitute an entire fucking boneyard.”

  “Oh,” said Petra.

  “Indeed. So you can understand my reluctance to let you drop the whole sordid mess into the hopper. It’s not simply that I would be embarrassed. I’m not even in their damned cartel. But if the zamies ever got wind of it, there could be some unpleasant consequences for everyone concerned. Me, Quincannon…possibly even you and Pug. You unwittingly downloaded a time bomb into your little pad. For my sake, and for your own, it would be wise of you to get rid of all that information as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “I see,” Petra said.

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  “I’ll have to think about it. What you’re asking is, in itself, illegal. I mean, just asking me to do that is a felony. Actually doing it…Spirit, I just don’t know.” And she didn’t. Petra had never been confronted with anything like this and didn’t have a clue how to deal with it. The zamitat? What had she gotten herself into? She felt a sudden chill up and down her bare back.

  They finished their lunch in relative silence. Bartholemew opened another bottle of wine, poured some more, then led Petra to a corner of the vast office that appeared to be a small library. He put his arm around her back and gently massaged her right shoulder.

  “You needn’t be afraid of me,” he said.

  “I’m not. But I am curious. Your mother married a man in the zamitat. Mingus must have known. Is that what went wrong between them? Did he object to her marriage?”

  To her surprise, Bartholemew erupted in a genuine laugh. “Object? Hardly! He arranged it. Or more precisely, he forced her into it. More precisely still, he sold her to that fucking thug I am pleased to call my father.”

  Petra looked up into his eyes. “But why?” she asked him.

  Bartholemew shrugged. “It suited his needs. My grandpa needed something from my daddy, so he gave him my mommy, and everyone lived happily ever after. Heartwarming, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand. Why would she go along with a thing like that?”

  “I can see that you don’t understand power. I mean serious, enduring, political, economic, and societal power. Stay with Pug a while, and maybe you will.”

  Petra thought about it for a moment and nodded. “I think I see what you mean,” she said. “I’ve seen the kind of power the Ellisons have. I mean, I don’t think Pug really wants to take that job on Pelham, but…”

  “But he will,” Bartholomew said with flat confidence. “Just as my mother married old Bart. She was in love with another man at the time—and that, too, had been arranged by my kindly old grandfather. But then his needs changed, so he redirected his daughter’s life. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been Whitney Bartholemew, Junior. I’d have be
en Cornell DuBray, Junior.”

  “DuBray?”

  “None other. He was Mingus’s assistant at the time, and it must have seemed an obvious and convenient match. But then, events intervened. Mingus made DuBray break off the engagement, then delivered his innocent young daughter into the waiting and eager arms of the biggest bastard in the Quardrant. And Mother went along with it, because what choice did she have? None, really; no more than those ancient princesses who were bartered off to unholy wedlock with foreign kings and potentates because it suited someone’s needs. The needs of power.”

  “I can understand the marriage, I guess,” Petra said. “But why did she stay with him all those years?”

  “You don’t divorce a man like Whitney Bartholemew, Senior. And, in time, a bond developed between them. Call it love, if you like. My mother was beautiful, glamorous, and well connected; my father was handsome, powerful, and domineering. She made him look respectable, and he made her feel needed. But she never forgave her father for what he did to her.”

  Petra looked up at Bartholemew. “It must have been difficult for you,” she said.

  “Compared with what?” Bartholemew shrugged. “It was the only life I knew. I suspect that it was actually pretty easy compared with, say, growing up in poverty in a broken home in Weehawken, New Jersey.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t so bad, either. Not really. It was the only life I knew.”

  “And yet now, you seem to be prepared to embark on an entirely different sort of life. Consort, or perhaps wife, to the scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Empire. Are you sure that’s what you want, Petra Nash?” Bartholemew raised his right hand and stroked her gently under her chin with his index finger. She looked up into his dark eyes.

  “I…I’m not sure,” she said. “I love Pug, but…”

  “And I’m reasonably sure that Pug loves you, as well, as far as he is able. And yet, at this very moment, he’s with Steffany Fairchild.”

  Petra pulled away from him. “No, he’s not,” she insisted. “He’s busy with Dexta work.”