Emerald Eyes

by Emerald Eyes (new ed) (mobi)

  Belinda Singer had invested in the SpaceFarers' Collective heavily; most of what had already been, in 2025, a considerable fortune. It was a gamble that had paid off in astronomical numbers. She was the SpaceFarer Collective's largest downside shareholder. Assuming the uneasy truce between the U.N. and the SpaceFarers continued to hold, as it had for over two decades, Belinda Singer might well go to her grave the richest woman on Earth. The SpaceFarer businesses continued to grow at an amazing rate; everything from biologicals to zero gravity processing to their trade with the Belt CityStates, upon which they had a near monopoly.

  The SpaceFarers' Collective was not a government in the traditional sense of the word; it was foremost a business, concerned with making a profit.

  "A heavily armed business, true," conceded Belinda Singer. Her floatchair hummed smoothly in the enclosed elevator as they ascended to the 408th floor, to the offices of Kalharri Enterprises, Ltd. Malko Kalharri stood at her side, with her two bodyguards behind them. "But that's the charming part of it all, you know."

  Malko Kalharri nodded. At sixty-nine he was still an imposingly large man, who moved easily and with grace; the years had given his face a certain harsh character. The once blonde hair had turned entirely gray. "Yes. Charlie Eddore--you know Councilor Eddore, I think--was telling me a while back about the problems his Council Subcommittee had negotiating a workable access agreement for the Mars gravity well. The SpaceFarers don't seem to think there's a problem, and even if there is there's nobody with enough authority to dicker for the SpaceFarers without convening a shareholder's meeting to appoint a negotiator."

  'Selle Singer grinned wickedly. "It's better than that, Malko. Those silly bastards started the whole thing off on the wrong foot entirely; proposed a treaty with the Collective."

  Malko laughed aloud. The sound boomed in the small enclosure. "They didn't."

  "Yes," said Belinda Singer cheerily, "and then they realized that if we signed the silly thing--and I was tempted to for that reason alone despite the fact that it was an offensively one-sided document--it would be tantamount to officially recognizing the SpaceFarers' Collective as an autonomous body. Secretary General Amnier was enraged."

  The elevator decelerated to a slow stop, and the door slid aside. Malko led Belinda Singer and her entourage down the corridor to their offices. "I would imagine. Darryl has little patience with fools."

  Belinda Singer shook her head. "Charles isn't a fool, Malko, and you'd do well not to think so. He is impetuous, but that's a common failing of the young. So much ambition."

  "Yes," said Malko Kalharri, and he was not thinking of Charles Eddore. "I know exactly what you mean."

  "Elite Commander Breilleune, Officer Emile Garon reporting."

  Commander Breilleune was a tall man with the face of a recruiting holo. He was in full dress uniform, now as always. Emile Garon had never seen him otherwise. The skin of his face was somewhat stiff; a knife would not have made much of an impression upon it. That was one of the only two visible signs of the vast changes that had been engineered in him. There was a hole over the center knuckle of his right hand; a laser was embedded in the bone behind that knuckle.

  He was a Peaceforcer Elite.

  Brass balls, Americans called them.

  Cyborgs.

  Breilleune smiled at the Peaceforcer standing at attention before him. He did not return Garon's salute. "Emile, how are you?" He did not offer Garon a seat.

  Garon said instantly, "Quite well, sir."

  "I am told otherwise." Garon said nothing, and Breilleune sighed, the smile fading. "Sit down, Emile. What are we to do with you?"

  Garon folded himself into one of the small chairs before the Commander's desk. "Sir, I do not believe that there is anything that needs to be done. I do my job. I do it well."

  Breilleune nodded. "True. I have no quarrel with your ability to perform your functions for the DataWatch. But--forgive me, Emile, for your own good I think we must remove you from the DataWatch."

  The words struck Garon like a blow. The world went vague and hazy for a moment, and when he returned to himself he saw Commander Breilleune nodding to himself. "I thought so. Emile, you have served us too well for me to allow you to waste yourself like this." Breilleune opened a folder and withdrew two sets of documents. "I have drafted two sets of orders for you. One set relieves you of your duties here and returns you to Paris. I know you have been homesick. There are several administrative offices that will be vacated in the next few weeks, any one of which you would be ideal for." Breilleune sat and waited expectantly.

  Garon had the sense to say only, "And the second?"

  Breilleune said simply, "Three months of vacation. You will be forbidden to access the Information Network during that time. On June fifteenth you will board the SpaceFarer vessel Bernardo de la Paz with fifty other officers of the PKF, to arrive at LaGrange Five to begin training."

  Garon said, through a mouth suddenly dry, "LaGrange Five?"

  "Yes."

  "You wish to make me one of the Elite."

  "Does the idea scare you?"

  Garon decided in that instant. "No. No, sir, I am honored."

  There was true warmth in Breilleune's smile. "Good. I think you shall find that the change is not so difficult as you have heard. And the advantages are--" He hunted for a word, and said finally, "fantastic."

  Three of their five guests were already there as Malko arrived with Belinda Singer. Tio Sandoval, a renowned womanizer who was the majority stockholder for Sandoval Biochemicals, and son of the company's founder, had cornered Jany McConnell. At Sandoval's side was a plain-faced middle-aged woman in elegant clothing that obviously made her uncomfortable. She was clearly out of her element, and unsure how to behave.

  Jany McConnell, facing the two of them, stood ramrod stiff, slightly pale, her features carefully controlled. Malko had the uneasy impression that Sandoval had already touched her once.

  The other two waited quietly at the conference table. Marc Packard sat at attention, sweat trickling down his cheek. He was the representative of Tytan Industries, and in his own person the least wealthy of the five whom Carl and Malko had invited to the meeting. Tytan Industries controlled nearly all of Halfway's electronics and computer manufacturing, and Marc Packard had, for fifteen years, essentially controlled Tytan Industries. It made Packard the most powerful human in the great, growing, geostationary collection of ships and factories and living donuts known as Halfway. It did not surprise Malko Kalharri that the man was sweating; this was the first time he had been on Earth in over five years, and the gravity must have been difficult to readjust to. Packard would not have come downside for any meeting of less than the greatest importance; it was a measure of his regard for the advantage the telepaths might give Tytan Industries, and his distrust for the security of normal channels of communication, that he was there. His bodyguard Malko first put at the age of forty to forty-five. A second look altered the impression slightly; there was a slight looseness to the skin about his neck that was unavoidable even with the best geriatrics. Upward of sixty, then, and possibly in his seventies. He was fit, well muscled and in good tone, despite the deceptive potbelly he carried. He sat in a chair at the opposite end of the room, where he had a clear view of the room and the door. The bodyguard picked up an eyebrow at the sight of Belinda Singer's muscle; he examined and, to all appearances, dismissed them in the same moment.

  The bodyguard spent a disconcerting moment examining Malko himself, and then nodded almost genially in Malko's direction and returned his attention to the rest of the room.

  Randall Getty Cristofer, the owner of most of SunGetty Oil, and thereby of most of the remaining oil on Earth, was deep in conversation with Carl when Malko escorted Belinda Singer into the conference room. Cristofer wore a fluorescent red business suit of conservative cut. Cristofer immediately broke off his conversation with Carl, murmuring an apology, and bowed low to take the hand that 'Selle Singer offered to him. He spoke with a pro
nounced Australian accent. "Belinda dear, how've you been?"

  The old lady smiled at him sardonically. "Quite well, Randy. Yourself?"

  "Ah, not so good. Wouldn't you know it, just this morning I'm hearing that somebody's bitched up me bid to take over the Venus Geological Services."

  Belinda Singer's smile was all shark. "Imagine. Well--they do say competition is the lifeblood of business."

  Malko counted his blessings; his earphone relayed him a message in time for him to step in before the sniping got worse. "I am told," he said loudly, "that M. Chandler is on his way down. Would you like to take your seats?"

  Carl had testified before the Unification Council on several occasions, and he had learned the first rule of speaking so well that it was second nature: Keep it short.

  "I am thirty-one years old," Carl told them. "For nearly twenty years now, I have been gathering information for the United Nations Peace Keeping Force. As of 3:30 p.m. yesterday that is no longer the case. We have over two hundred functioning telepaths whose services are now available to be leased. I moved my people into the old Chandler Complex in south Manhattan back in August, and we owe seven months back rent on it." He directed himself to the man who sat directly across from him. "I'm indebted to you for your generosity, Mister Chandler. It won't go unpaid."

  Francis Xavier Chandler shook his head. His features were set in an attitude of perpetual fierceness. He was the most conservatively dressed man in the room, and the eldest, in a Brooks Brothers suit that had not been in style since the mid-forties. His hair flowed in a thick black mane, over his shoulders and down his back. "Nonsense, young man. It was a good business investment, and it is about to pay off handsomely."

  "Malko Kalharri," Carl continued, "has paid for these offices for nearly a year now; he sold his house to do so. I intend to see him paid back for that. We owe money to the lawyers who've represented us before the Unification Council, and are continuing to do so. There are--other projects--which I'd like to see Kalharri Ltd. embark upon.

  "The key to all of this, of course, is money. We're not exactly desperate; but we are in debt. We are capital starved. Folks," said Carl, "we're not ever going to get cheaper."

  "I am somewhat curious," said Marc Packard, his breathing labored, "as to what exactly you are selling today."

  Carl shook his head. "Our services, not mine. Peaceful work that the children can do. I did ghost work for the PKF for nearly fifteen years, and I did become in many ways the evil that I still behold in them. What I have done in the past is done, but I am now finished with it."

  "I presume," said Tio Sandoval with a languid smile, "that you're going to show us what these" He waved a hand negligently. "brujo's skills are, that you're going to sell us."

  "That would be difficult. We've agreed not to read your minds." Carl grinned widely. "Though, if we wanted to, that poor half-crazy telepath at your side wouldn't be much protection."

  "I did not truly expect," said Sandoval in his accented English, staring at Carl with a cool challenge.

  Carl looked away from Sandoval and swept his gaze around the table, still smiling, gathering their eyes to him. "I think you can assume, though, that what we promise, we can deliver. The reputation we have among the Peaceforcers is...largely deserved. What we can promise," he said more slowly, "includes reading the minds of executives in the companies of your competition, looking inside closed objects or behind locked doors"--he turned to Randall Cristofer--"and finding oil with one hundred percent certainty in a fraction of the time conventional techniques take." He hesitated. "Also the ability to manipulate small objects ranging in size from, say, dice, all the way down to the atomic level."

  Belinda Singer blinked rapidly. Before she could say anything, Francis Xavier Chandler whistled long and low. "I was wondering about that one myself. I'd heard rumors."

  "The rumors are substantially true," said Jany McConnell. Her voice was quiet, but clear. "The ability to manipulate objects at the atomic level is somewhat limited, however. Only the stronger telepaths can distinguish detail at that resolution, and of that number, only those well trained in physics have success manipulating objects the size of atoms. We have only a few of those. But they can indeed induce hydrogen to fuse."

  There was a momentary silence, and then Chandler leaned forward. "Let's dicker."

  The meeting lasted three hours; Carl was left drained but satisfied at its end, with a deep-seated respect for the negotiating skills of the five people who had shared the table with him. Chandler Industries had probably done the best for itself due to the goodwill that it had carried into the negotiations, but none of them had done poorly.

  Nor had the telepaths. Two hours into the meeting Jany said, Carl?

  In mid-sentence Carl switched tracks, devoting the greater part of his attention to Jany. Yes?

  I've been calculating fees. Their down payment to us is going to cancel our debt.

  I'll be damned, thought Carl in short amazement, and returned to the negotiations.

  Yes, very likely.

  As the meeting was ending Carl saw Sandoval corner Jany again and nearly decided to break it up. Malko merely glanced at him once, and Carl nodded, turned purposefully away from Jany so that he need not look at Sandoval, and instead motioned F.X. Chandler aside. "A moment, sir?"

  Chandler raised an eyebrow. "A moment, certainly, but I've little more. I'm running quite late."

  "Certainly. I intend to purchase a Chandler MetalSmith Mark III within the next week or so. I'll be having it extensively customized, and I would like to know if there are any shops you can recommend where I might have the work done."

  Chandler looked at Carl without expression for a moment. "I'm afraid not, son," said the founder of the largest hovercar company in the world, "since I don't drive anymore. It's not safe since they gave over so much control to TransCon. Still, if you're interested, see Tony Angelo at the Chandler dealership upstate. He's a Speedfreak, he knows as much about these machines as I used to."

  "Thank you, sir. I do appreciate this."

  Chandler nodded and turned to leave. He stopped in mid-turn and glanced back at Carl. "Young man? What are you driving now?"

  Malko was still sitting next to Belinda Singer; Carl was distantly aware of the older man watching them. "I don't have a car, sir. This will be my first."

  "Oh? Why?"

  "The Peaceforcers have never paid us very well," said Carl simply.

  Chandler's lips moved in what approached a smile. Too quietly for anyone else to hear, he said, "Have Tony arrange driving lessons for you. The MetalSmith is not designed for amateurs. It's a lot of car."

  "Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm not sure--" The outspeaker cut Carl off.

  "M. Castanaveras? There is a call for you."

  "Who is it?"

  "Unification Councilor Carson, sir."

  In the immediate silence that engulfed all conversation in the conference room, Carl said calmly, "I'll take it in my office." He glanced across the room at Malko, and Malko moved his head in a single curt shake that meant no. Alone, Carl went into his office and sealed the door behind him.

  The holofield was already up; Carl could see its faint, almost invisible outline, all the sign the field gave from the wrong side of the desk.

  Jerril Carson, from the shoulders up, looked at Carl out of the field when Carl sat down. He appeared the same as always, a man in his sixties, almost cadaverously thin. The skin hung on his face in folds; once, decades ago, Carson had been overweight. It seemed to Carl that Carson's complexion was paler than normal, but it was difficult to be certain.

  Carson had not allowed himself to be caught in the same building with Carl Castanaveras in fifteen years.

  "Good afternoon, Councilor."

  Carson smiled at Carl with a precision that came from four decades of political smiling. The edges of his smile might have been measured in millimeters and never varied. "Good afternoon, Carl. Congratulations on passage of the Amendment."

&nbs
p; "Thank you, sir. What can I do for you?"

  "I really didn't think you would get it passed," said Carson conversationally. "With the Secretary General making his position so clear--well, even with M. Kalharri's aid, Wednesday's vote succeeded in surprising me." He looked thoughtful. "And the Secretary General as well, I believe. You controlled yourself quite well during testimony. I doubt if most of the Unification Council has the vaguest idea how erratic and dangerous you are."

  "Well, I hope not myself," said Carl politely. "It's always nice to be under--"

  "Nothing," Carson whispered as the mask dropped from him and left something old and insane in his eyes, "has changed. Nothing."

  The holofield went dead and faded.

  Inside Carl the old familiar rage struck him with the suddenness and heat of a maser. He brought his hands together and gently interlaced the fingers atop his desk.

  Allie ran up to Johann, breathless. With her newly developed Gift, she asked, Where's Carl and Jany today, Johnny? Are they going to be back tonight?

  Johann shook his head. Don't know, kiddo. Let me try--

  Suddenly he went rigid. Allie knew instantly that something was terribly wrong, and instinctively she reached for him in the new way--

  She screamed once, a terrible high pitched sound, and collapsed on the grass.

  Carl Castanaveras knew nothing of the pain he had caused. Inside the rage rolled through him in slow, murderous waves. The desk on which his hands rested vibrated as though it would shake itself apart.

  On the dark, handsome features he presented to the world was nothing but serenity.

  * * *

  4.

  They drove back that evening through crush hours traffic.

  They waited for nearly half an hour in the downlot beneath the Kaufmann Spacescraper, as other cars left ahead of them, being fed out one by one into the hideous traffic leaving the great city. Carl was asleep before they made it out of the downlot. Malko spent nearly half their waiting time paging through the screens that showed TransCon's broadcast of the various street levels. Ground level was a mess; a twelve-fan had turned over on Forty-Second Street. The five levels of underground streets weren't much better; TransCon showed that it was rerouting a lot of the surface traffic down below, at least until the cars left the immediate vicinity of Manhattan, and could be redirected into the comp-controlled TransCon highway network.