by Timothy Zahn
“Hardly an insightful guess,” Thorwald pointed out. “That’s everyone’s biggest headache. Even the best encryption methods I can get my hands on can’t keep up with the government snoops and industrial spies.”
“Indeed,” Quillan said. “And of course, there’s also that awkward time-lag whenever you’re transmitting across the Solar System. It would be nice to eliminate that, wouldn’t it?”
The gentle swirling of the coffee cup came to a halt. “I seem to remember from school that that’s a basic limitation of the universe,” he said, his eyes searching Quillan’s face.
“That’s what they taught in my school, too,” Quillan said. “Tell me, Hendrik: what would you give to have an absolutely secure information and transmission channel? I mean absolutely secure?”
Thorwald snorted gently. “Half my fortune. Cash.”
Quillan smiled. “Then you’re looking at a real bargain,” he said. “All it will cost you is a mere eight hundred million dollars. Paid to the right people, of course.”
Carefully, Thorwald set his cup on the polished crystal coffee table. “Tell me more.”
“I’ll do better,” Quillan said, getting to his feet. “I’ll show you.”
“Downstairs?” the broad-shouldered man repeated, his thick forehead wrinkling. “You were just downstairs yesterday.”
“Because downstairs is where the piano is,” Rey said, the frozen left half of his mouth slurring the words slightly. Grond was one of Rey’s caretakers, which meant he was on call whenever Rey needed something his chair or automated suite couldn’t handle.
He was also, Rey had long ago decided, something of a private watchdog.
“Yeah, but so what?” Grond grunted. “You’ve got a perfectly good keyboard in your room.”
“That’s a keyboard,” Rey explained patiently. “The piano downstairs is a baby grand. There’s a big difference in how it sounds.”
The wrinkles deepened. Obviously, that was something Grond had never noticed. Possibly music itself was something Grond had never noticed. “Mr. Quillan isn’t going to like you going downstairs all the time.”
“He’s never said I couldn’t,” Rey countered. “Just that he didn’t want me talking to anyone.”
“Yeah, but every day?” Grond objected. “You’re up and down those stairs like a yo-yo.”
“Would you rather get a couple of guys and move the piano upstairs?” Rey suggested helpfully.
Grond exhaled disgustedly. “Fine. Whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” Rey said. “Chair: library.”
He felt his heart starting to pound as the chair passed the second floor landing and began climbing down the wide staircase. Down here, on the mansion’s first floor, was where she worked. Let her be working in the library today, he pleaded silently with the universe. Please. Let her be in the library.
There were three women in traditional black-and-white maid’s outfits working on the brass and wrought iron when Rey reached the bottom of the stairs. None of them was her.
As usual, none of the maids even looked up as the chair rolled along the hallway toward the library. It was as if Rey didn’t even exist. Maybe they all had orders to treat him that way.
Or maybe they just didn’t like him. No one here really liked him.
Except.
There were two other maids dusting the old-style books lining the shelves as he rolled through the library door. Again, she wasn’t among them.
Rey’s heartbeat slowed back to a quiet ache as he made his way across to the baby grand piano, trying hard not to let the disappointment drag him down. All right, so two days in a row had been too much to expect. He would see her again. Maybe tomorrow.
“You got half an hour,” Grond warned, crossing the room ahead of him and moving the piano bench out of the way. “Then it’s back upstairs.”
Rey nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He settled his chair in place in front of the keyboard and punched in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the music desk. Tentatively, he began to play.
He wasn’t very good at it. In fact, he rather hated playing the baby grand. There was no way to play it quietly, and every mistake and hesitation seemed to echo accusingly back across the room at him. Grond’s glowering presence a few steps away didn’t help, either.
But he had to pretend he was enjoying himself. This piano was his best excuse for coming downstairs, and he didn’t dare let Grond know the truth.
He had finished playing what he could of the Beethoven and had shifted to some easier Stephen Foster when a movement across the room caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head to look—
And felt his heart leap like an excited child.
It was her.
His breath felt suddenly on fire in his chest as he watched her walk alongside the shelves, a brass-polishing kit in her hand. So far she hadn’t looked his direction; but her path was bringing her ever closer to the piano. Eventually, he knew, she would have to notice him.
And when that happened, would she smile again?
He kept playing, his suddenly stiff fingers feeling as wooden as xylophone keys. She was coming closer, and closer …
And then, just before it seemed impossible that she could avoid seeing him, she looked over at the piano. Her large brown eyes met his—
And she smiled.
It was like the first drink of water splashing down a throat of a weary desert traveler. This was no ordinary smile, not just the kind a proper servant would politely offer one of the master’s other employees. This was a real, genuine smile. The kind of smile a person saved for a good friend.
He had no illusions as to what she could see in him, not in this wheelchair and all. But between Mr. Quillan, the unsmiling caretakers, and the rest of the oblivious household staff, he longed for someone who he could just talk to. Someone who could care for him solely for who he was. Someone who could be his friend.
Maybe, just maybe, she could be that friend.
“Susan?” someone called from the doorway.
Her eyes and smile lingered on Rey’s face for another second, lighting his heart and soul. Then, almost reluctantly, he thought, she turned back toward the door. “Yes?” she called.
Susan. So now he had a name to go with the face and the smile. Susan.
“You haven’t finished out here yet,” a woman’s voice said, an undertone of disapproval to it. “Come do this first.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Susan said. “I’m coming.”
Her eyes flicked back to Rey, and she smiled again. Not the same wide smile as the first, but a smaller, private one. The kind of smile shared by friends who are both in on the same private secret.
The kind of smile that promised she would be back later.
She turned and walked across the room. Rey watched her go, the image of that smile dancing in front of his eyes.
He was sure of it now. She would be his friend.
There was a heavy tap on Rey’s shoulder. “You going to play, or what?” Grond rumbled.
With a mild surprise, Rey realized his fingers had come to a halt. “Of course I’m going to play,” he said, shifting back to the Beethoven with new vigor. Susan would be back, just as soon as she’d finished out there. She would be back, and she would smile at him again. Beneath his fingers the piano was singing now—
And then, from his chair, came a soft trilling sound.
He could have cried. No, he begged the universe. No. Not now. Not when she’ll be coming back any minute.
But the universe didn’t care. With a tired sigh, he let his fingers come to a halt again on the keys. “Chair: Mr. Quillan’s office,” he ordered sadly.
The master had called, and it was time to go to work.
“The basic neurological theories are obscure, but there for the taking,” Quillan said as he gestured Tho
rwald to a chair in his private, ultra-secure third-floor office. “The genius of our associate in Ghana was in pulling it all together. And, of course, having the will to act on it.”
“Telepathy.” Thorwald shook his head, as if not sure he approved of the word. “Frankly, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Quillan smiled. “Frankly, you still don’t,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. McCade thought you’d find the demonstration more effective if you were a few million kilometers away from him at the time.”
Across the room, the door chimed. Quillan keyed the remote, and the panel slid open to reveal Rey in his chair. “Come in, Rey,” he invited. “Hendrik, this is Rey, my personal terminal of the Old-Boy Network. Seventeen years old, in case you’re wondering. The younger they are when we get them, the better they react to the procedure.”
“A cripple?” Thorwald said, frowning.
“An unavoidable side effect of the process,” Quillan explained as Rey rolled into the room, the door sealing shut behind him. “It turns out the human brain hasn’t got enough spare neurological capacity to handle telepathy. Some creative clearing and retasking is needed.”
He stood up as Rey rolled to a stop beside the desk. “You basically need two clear areas to work with,” he said, circling around behind the boy. “The first is the section that operates the legs. No big loss; a programmed wheelchair can let him get around just fine.”
He touched Rey’s left cheek. “The other is the lower left side of the face. Smile for Hendrik, Rey.”
The skin around Thorwald’s eyes and lips crinkled with revulsion as Rey gave him that broken half-smile of his. “I see,” he said.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Quillan agreed. “All completely reversible.” It wasn’t, of course, and he and all the rest of the Old Boys knew it. Sometimes he toyed with the idea of telling Rey the truth, just to see what the boy’s reaction would be.
So far he’d resisted that temptation. Maybe someday when he was particularly bored he’d give it a shot.
“Has he actually performed any reversals?” Thorwald asked.
“At another eight hundred million a shot?” Quillan said pointedly. “Besides, in the fifteen years the Network has been running all the telepaths have worn out well before the ten years they signed on for. Easier and cheaper at that point just to replace them.”
Thorwald sent an almost furtive look at Rey. “Should we be talking this way … ?”
“Not a problem.” Quillan patted Rey’s shoulder. “Rey is an excellent telepath. I’m sure he’ll go the distance.”
“Besides,” he added, gesturing to the flesh-colored band around Rey’s neck as he sat back down again, “standard procedure is to give our telepaths a dose of TabRasa-33 after every session. Memory scrambler; wipes out all short-term memories for the preceding twenty to thirty minutes. I could tell him I’m going to kill him tomorrow and he wouldn’t remember a thing about it an hour from now. Well; let’s get started.”
Reaching into his desk, Quillan pulled out a stack of photos and a small picture stand. “Pictures of each of the others’ terminals,” he explained, showing Thorwald the stack as he set up the stand in front of Rey. “All Rey has to do is visualize the face, and the other telepath will pick up on the signal.”
“And then?” Thorwald asked.
“Then we’re in,” Quillan said, selecting the photo of McCade’s current telepath and putting it on the stand. “Go ahead, Rey.”
For a moment Rey gazed at the photo, as if trying to memorize it. Then, that familiar but still creepy look settled over his face. His eyes seemed to glaze over, his half-functional mouth went a little slack, and he let out a huffing sigh. “He’s in contact,” Quillan murmured. “Now it’s just a matter of the other telepath sending for McCade.”
“By phone?”
Quillan shook his head. “Single-tone, single-duration signal button on the wheelchair,” he said. “You never, ever want to have anything near your telepath that can record or transmit.”
“Including other people?” Thorwald asked.
“Especially other people,” Quillan agreed grimly. “Except for his caretakers, no one in this house is allowed to talk to Rey or even get within three meters of him.”
“Why don’t you just lock him up?” Thorwald asked.
“Counterproductive,” Quillan said. “You let your telepath get too bored or in too much of a rut and he burns out faster. It’s cheaper in the long run to let them roam around a little. You just have to make sure there’s no way to pass information back and forth. He’s not allowed any writing instruments, obviously.”
Abruptly, Rey seemed to straighten up. “Hello?” he said.
“McCade?” Quillan asked.
There was a brief pause. “Yes,” Rey said. “Quillan, I presume?”
“Correct,” Quillan said. “I have an acquaintance of yours here with me. Would you care to say hello?”
“Hello, Hendrik,” Rey said. “I trust Archer is treating you well?”
“Quite well, thank you,” Thorwald said. His eyes, Quillan noted, had the suspicious look of a small child watching his first magician. “What’s new at the ranch?”
“Well, we’ve got six new lambs,” Rey said. “Looks like we may get another twenty before the season runs its course. Has Archer invited you to drive up Ascraeus Mons yet?”
“He has, and I’ve turned him down,” Thorwald said. “Barbaric place, this. The next time we meet, I think we’ll do it at my house.”
“Now, be honest, Hendrik,” Rey said. “Is it Mars you find barbaric, or Archer’s lack of a proper wine cellar? When you visit him, Archer, you’ll have to talk him out of a bottle of the ’67 Bordeaux Sanjai. I understand he bought up the entire year’s vintage, except for a few bottles that went to some New York hotel by mistake. Which one was it again, Hendrik?”
“The Ritz-Aberdon,” Thorwald said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe this.”
“Neither did I, at first,” Rey said. “But as you see, it does work.”
“So it would appear,” Thorwald said. “So aside from allowing me to safely tell rude jokes about the President, Secretary-General, and Chairman of the Financial Reserve, what exactly is this good for?”
Rey made an odd snorting noise. “Shall we give him the standard example, Archer?” he invited.
“Certainly,” Quillan said, smiling. “At the moment, Hendrik, Mars is nine light-minutes from Earth. That means that information traveling by radio or laser takes nine minutes to get from there to here. Jonathan, what’s the Unified European Market doing at the moment?”
“Odd that you should ask,” Rey said. “As it happens, Bavarian General Transport hit a peak price of eighty-nine point three exactly four minutes ago. Two minutes later, the profit-hunters moved in, and it’s been on its way down ever since. Eighteen points so far, with no signs of a turnaround. I believe, Hendrik, that you have some minor investments in BGT?”
It was as if someone had touched a match to Thorwald’s lower lip. His whole body jerked, his eyes lighting up as the true reality of the situation suddenly caught up with him. “God,” he bit out, twisting his wrist up to look at his watch. “But—”
“Exactly,” Quillan said, reaching to his desk computer and punching up his InstaTrade connection. “The news of that eighty-nine high won’t hit the Martian Repeater Lists for another five minutes, and the downturn won’t start for seven. Would you care to place a sell order? Effective, say, six minutes from now?”
“God,” Thorwald muttered again, swiveling the computer around and starting to punch in his personal codes. “The possibilities—”
“Are endless,” Quillan agreed. “Stock manipulation, advance warnings of news events that could affect your holdings or your businesses, tips to share back and forth without all those ambitious young Turks listening in. The sky’s the l
imit.”
“Or rather, the sky is no longer the limit,” Rey put in dryly. “You can do conference calls, too, by setting out two or more photos for your telepath. That one can have uses all its own. As we all found out in that Estevez matter a few months back.”
“Indeed,” Quillan said. “The Securities Enforcement people got suspicious of Sergei Bondonavich and planted a spy on him. When Mr. Estevez suddenly disappeared—down an abandoned salt mine near Berchtesgaden, I believe—the rest of his group descended on Sergei like middle-management attacking the company Christmas buffet. He spun them a complete frosted sugar cookie, then hot-footed it onto the Network with a conference call and clued the rest of us in on the story he told. By the time their associates came knocking on our own doors ten minutes later, we were able to corroborate every detail.”
“All without a single indication that there’d been any communication between us,” Rey added. “As far as I know, they still haven’t even located Estevez’s body.”
“All right, I’m convinced,” Thorwald said. “What’s the catch?”
“There isn’t any,” Rey assured him. “Each of us in the Old-Boy Network has basically arrived. Each of us is powerful enough to be largely immune to attacks from the others, even if one of us was foolish enough to try. No, at this point our main focus is to bite off the heads of the smaller fish nipping at our tail fins.”
“And to deal with the self-appointed guardians of all that is right and good,” Quillan said contemptuously. “The solar system is our private pond now, to borrow Jonathan’s fish metaphor. Why not swim together?”
“I presume Archer’s already quoted you the price,” Rey said. “The only other requirement is that you share secrets and information with the others in fair value for what you receive. And, of course, that you maintain complete airtight security on the whole operation. If you’d like, we’ll give you a week to think about it.”
“No need,” Thorwald said, straightening up from the computer. “I’m in.”
