Jik Dain Bedlip
Dain gloated over the Notice of Competition poised in one corner of his holoscreen. In his race
against Norma's deadline, this success came as a fresh wind at his back. He switched back to Lugar
and narrowed his eyes to disguise his pleasure. "You can deliver Le Coeur's proposal now."
"Not on the first day after posting, Dain. That will arouse suspicion. Collectives dislike
coincidence when it comes to business."
Suspicious in his own right, Dain asked, "Isn't it ready? What happened to that 'final draft' we
reviewed point-Eight Sevener ago?"
Lugar sighed. "It's ready, Dain. I just want to polish it a bit, and that takes time I haven't
got right now."
"Let the ollomani run themselves."
"My job—"
"Deliver the proposal, Lugar. We've unleashed our hounds, so you can stop playing Governor Sigma
and start earning your Geld as Strategist Sailie. Let the Rollkeepers do their jobs, and
get on with your new life. You know very well that I can't submit the bid, nor can Thy."
"I—"
Kär flashed a priority interrupt flagged with Pizi's glyph. Dain met the information with surprise
— no deadline impended — and mistrust — gleests famously disdained contracts — and took the
can-see for those reasons. Kär muted Lugar without telling him.
Dain frowned as Pizi's scrambled faces unfolded in the meeting panel. A glyph shaped like a thorn
hung in a corner.
"I'm done," Pizi said. "Attached to this meeting, the anonymity splinter. And I can move into
Ganj Dareh's Em-Deh coag, jumble it good, exile it, frag up their virtual-to-cerebral reality
connection. Anytime, any time you want."
Pleased, Dain considered the thorn-like glyph. Suspicion of a different color milked his
enthusiasm, but he decided to accept the delivery and its quality on its face. He wanted this
capability now; he needed to move on down his plan ahead of schedule. He focused on the virtual
fright he was going to throw into the Ganj-Dareh Collective. "No," he said to Pizi. "Don't do
anything to their coag. In fact, I'm going to make sure that their connection to the Em-Deh has
never been more solid, more dependable." Deliver his message loud and deliver it clearly.
"Kär," Dain said in an aside, "Tell Streicher in Ganj Dareh to return Em-Deh to zero-defect. Get
that mewling executive of ours back in the Collective's good graces he's been groveling after."
The simulacrum nodded its compliance.
Dain refocused on the garble that passed for Pizi's face. "This, uh, 'splinter?' With it, I can
write into their meetings/will-be-heard without being identified?"
"You asked for that; I built that. No other gleest could've."
"No doubt," Dain answered absently. Lugar consistently reported on the dead bodies produced by his
ollomani. Now Dain wanted to take those little bits of zhuhndí, those brutal pinpoints of
experience with limited line-of-sight impact, and smear them across Ganj Dareh's cyberspace like a
ghost writing on its virtual walls. He triggered the glyph, watched it turn green, then quiver
while it moved its unique chunk of code from point to point in the Em-Deh, and finally molt into
red and freeze. "It had better work."
Pizi snorted and said, "My bonus?"
"You've got it." Dain flapped a hand at Kär to make it happen.
"I'm gone." The meeting panel vanished.
Dain didn't care. He was thinking about Ganj Dareh's Beobachtung data and the images of premature
death it contained, images that he kept secret from the continent, all with bureaucratic sleights
of hand. First, he'd discovered that Norma's father, Hamil himself, had caused the tools to be
changed so only highly skilled operators could use them. Then, Dain had concentrated all those
operators here in Byukan-Hamil under his control as the Surveillance Support Center. Finally, just
days ago, as one of his first acts as Partner for the Rendezvous of Futures, he'd put into place
white lies that severed anshin links to those operators. A minor work, but very sweet, especially
now.
Kär chimed. Dain looked around. Highlighted in the holoscreen, a panel contained Lugar's face
wearing anger tinged with confusion. Not the time now to queer this partnership, Dain realized.
He still needed Lugar to work the Ganj-Dareh Collective, deliver the proposal, attend the related
meetings, answer the inevitable questions, negotiate the final bid, and sign the agreement that
gave Le Coeur its first legitimate contract and make it a viable purchaser of other combines.
"Anacol." He used their normal signal of surrender in the reactivated will-see. "I'm sorry, Ges
Lugar. An interrupt distracted, urgent, but not nearly as important as you are. I apologize
profusely."
Lugar stammered, his anger suddenly without target. "I ... I ... I'll take a quick meeting with
each of my five Rollkeepers, then I'll give our proposal one last polish. I'll deliver it
tomorrow, Dain, that I promise, then I'll move directly into strategic marketing." He gave a
formal head-bow. "As Strategist Sailie, I'll make Le Coeur proud."
"I know you will." Once Dain had sold every BH combine he controlled to Le Coeur, once he had
traded across that commercial bandwidth, he could resign his Senior Partnership, then re-emerge as
Chief Executive of the newest and most powerful consortium on Popovich. Then he would
dissolve this partnership too.
He continued with Lugar, "I have some marketing of my own. Anonymous pressure on the Collective to
make a drastic change in their lives."
"Anonymous? That's impossible! How—"
"Never mind, Lugar. You do your one job and I'll do all of mine. To victory!"
"To victory!" Lugar answered and adjourned the will-see.
His eye on the splinter Pizi had delivered, his mind filled with nothing but anticipation, a
glowing future where a million souls twisted in a virtual wind of dismay, Dain started telling Kär
exactly what he wanted done.
