by Sean Platt
“Have you decided on how you’d like to proceed?”
Isaac swallowed. He’d known the question was coming but was reluctant to volunteer his proposition. Purcell held a very important position within Panel and was in many ways the opposite of Isaac’s role within the Directorate Party. Isaac’s title was Czar of Internal Satisfaction, which basically meant that he was in charge of keeping the cattle sedated, happy enough to hold still for their milking. The joke in both parties (among those who knew about Panel, anyway, which was an almost nonexistent subset), was that Purcell was the unofficial Czar of Dissatisfaction. Purcell, in essence, was always holding a sharp blade. The question wasn’t if he’d cut someone, but rather who it would be, and the depth of the ensuing gash.
“Natasha’s decided to stage a new concert,” Isaac said. “The beauty is that it’s before Shift, so a sabotage there will effectively handle the other concert — the one after Shift — as well.”
Purcell, sitting in the large chair with his legs crossed, smiled. He had perfect dark-brown hair, combed straight back with a widow’s peak. He was wearing a dark suit with wide pinstripes, a red tie, and a white pocket square. His shoes were polished to a mirror finish, his teeth white like chalk. But what chilled Isaac most was the knowledge that while avatars could be dressed and appointed any way the user wanted, Purcell’s required none whatsoever. He was looking at the man as he’d appear in life — always stylish, always young, always immaculate in appearance, with a crocodile’s smile.
“Two for one.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Isaac.
Purcell nodded as he weighed Isaac’s request. Anyone who knew of Panel’s existence could request a meeting with the man, but the ensuing meetings always had the feel of a bargain for one’s soul. You didn’t tell Aiden Purcell to do anything. You didn’t even request that he do anything. You pitched him ideas, like an angel on his shoulder. If he liked the idea, he’d adopt it and take credit for it. If he didn’t like it, nothing happened, and there were no appeals.
“The way I figure it,” Isaac continued, drawing on his earlier discussion with Micah about the riots’ true nature, “it’s a good volley. Micah conducted a public upset designed to make Directorate look bad. This would be a fitting response.”
“Doesn’t it seem coincidental that so much Directorate/Enterprise strife would be carried out at the same woman’s concerts?” said Purcell.
“It would be a perfect place to cause a bit of controlled chaos, though,” Isaac argued. “Nobody knows she’s even planning the concert except for me and a few of Natasha’s toadies.”
“Really,” said Purcell, cocking his head. That had been a dangerous thing to say to a man who prided himself on having the best information.
Isaac stammered. “It’s brand new. I only found out by going through her files. You know about this thing with the demonstrators and the fight downtown? Where the kids were trampled?”
Purcell laughed. He would. The issue had become a hotbed, with everyone accusing everyone else of misdeeds and holding the children high as evidence.
“Natasha wants to do a benefit for them,” said Isaac. “A small thing, but a loud thing. It’s on a rush. Not at the Aphora, which would be the obvious choice, but at a place called The Sap.”
“Hipster joint,” Purcell said.
“It’s a hipster event. Very socially aware. She’s doing it before Shift as a PR move. She’s still Directorate, see, so the thinking goes like this: Why would she do an extra concert when she gets her regular dole regardless? Clearly, she’d only do it because she has a heart of gold, so everyone should love her. If I had to guess — and knowing the predictable dickholes she works with — she’ll start some sort of a fundraiser early, begging her showbiz friends to buy expensive tickets and donate them to the kids’ parents. Then she’ll deck the place out in 2-Ds and video. She’ll have neurals culled from all the existing news footage — AI predicted, I mean, and with Beau Monde Beam AI, so it’ll be good data — and she’ll know the cues to put into video montages of the crushed kids in order to best get the mothers crying on camera. She’ll work one night, raise a fuckload of money for hospital bills (idiotic, seeing as all but one of the families are Directorate, but nobody will remember that), and come out looking like a queen. Then, after Shift, she can cash in on her comeback show.”
“Without consequence, you mean,” Purcell said.
“Right. The goodie-goodie of the pre-Shift event will make her immune in the post-Shift event. Why not support Natasha Ryan in her bold comeback as she puts her neck on the line, moving out to perform without a net, in Enterprise once again? She’s an angel who helps kids, not a greedy, duplicitous cunt.”
“Not a bad move on her part,” said Purcell, grinning, clearly enjoying Natasha’s manipulative mind.
“Well, sure. But it’d be even more advantageous from your position — well, I mean, I think, not that I’m telling you your business or anything — if you, I mean if we, or if I…”
“I gave Micah my blessing on his plan to stage riots at her concert because it was elegant.” Purcell shifted in his chair, looking up at Isaac as he remained standing. “The trick is to keep the tension on just enough that everyone has someone to blame for where they are. Someone other than themselves, I mean. Enterprise is a poor structure because although everyone thinks they’re special, almost no one is. So when they get frustrated, they need someone else to look to, to account for their own failure. Otherwise, Enterprise crumbles. Enterprise isn’t the problem, they feel; it’s that the Directorate slobs out there are messing up the works! Same goes from the other side. Directorate is flawed, too, because the line is set so low that few people truly have what they need. That’s partially by design, of course — people need something to chase beyond what they’re given; it keeps them awake — but we can’t have them realizing it. They must feel that Enterprise is the reason society’s ruined. Each wishes the other would go away so that everything could be hunky-dory, and that makes them allegiant to their party. But arranging those pieces on the board is an art, Isaac. Push too hard, and anger turns toxic. It’s like tending a controlled fire. They burn swatches of land to renew forests, but if they’re not careful, well…”
Isaac looked around the room, still searching for a place to sit. The simulation’s artificial reality was telling his leg muscles that they were restless and fatigued, and he was feeling disproportionately cowed by Purcell’s presence as he stood before him like a supplicant. But there was nowhere to rest, and if he called for a chair, the disruption would seem almost insulting.
“I see where you’re going,” Purcell continued. “But if it’s true that I like a volley — and I do — then it seems to me that Natasha is doing it well enough on her own.”
“That’s not a volley,” said Isaac. “Two big strikes against Directorate. Which, by extension, are strikes against me.”
“You realize that I don’t care how this impacts you?”
“Well…”
“I understand what you’re saying, though. Even though she’s still Directorate, it’s a move toward Enterprise, and what benefits her now benefits her post-Shift. But I care what happens post-Shift even less than I care about what happens to you.”
“Micah said my position — being his brother — is essential. In the public eye.”
“Well, yes. You have to exist, and you have to be the czar.” Purcell chuckled. “But frankly, it’s fun to root against you.”
“What about the Directorate Party?” said Isaac, aghast and unable to hide his mingled senses of indignation and despair. “Doesn’t Directorate deserve a champion?”
“Not really. I’ve always regarded them as a party of people who will do what they are told, and hence don’t mind a figurehead who is like them.”
“You would say that. You’re Enterprise.” As Isaac said it, he realized how vastly he’d overstepped his bounds. Here came a death blow, and according to the rules, he’d have no
choice but to accept it.
But instead of reacting in anger, Purcell smiled.
“There’s no such thing as Enterprise and Directorate, you idiot. You haven’t figured that out?”
Isaac, who’d flinched against anger, could only return Purcell’s look.
“There is just ‘up’ and ‘down’ in our society, same as there has always been. I made my fortune. You were given yours. Micah did something in the middle. Your wife ripped throats out all the way up and, honestly, even in her current jaded state, is more worthy of applause than you are. But below us — once you get below what’s commonly called Presque Beau — citizens are citizens. They merely need to think there are sides — other than the true two sides of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ of course.”
Isaac thought he’d caught something in that last sentence that he didn’t like: a very, very subtle tic in the word “us” that almost seemed to imply sarcasm directed at Isaac.
“My job is to keep that balance — or perhaps, that imbalance,” Purcell continued. “Can’t let the parties get too chummy, or they’ll start melting together and lose their sense of difference. It doesn’t take much to maintain a healthy animosity between them, and even that matters little once Shift is over. People settle into their lives once all the hubbub dies down. It’s only at the next Shift that they start to wonder who they are again, who the others are, and if they’re where they should be.”
“And if too many of them shift Enterprise because you’ve skewed things so far in their favor?”
Purcell shrugged, as if to indicate that the matter was irrelevant. “You seem to be trying to convince me based on an argument about party membership,” he said. “If you want to persuade me, convince me that a response is actually warranted. We’re a week out, and there’s been a major clash on the streets since you first came to me. Maybe too major. I don’t think there’s any danger of a breakout of cross-party friendship circles in the time left before Shift, and that’s all that matters to me. You know I’m nonpartisan. So, you want my blessing? Tell me: How does sabotaging Natasha’s little benefit help the NAU’s larger aims?”
“Your aims, you mean?” It was starting to sound like Purcell was going to deny Isaac’s request, and the renewed sense of indignation was causing Isaac to say things he shouldn’t. He didn’t mean to step over the line but found himself doing it anyway. But again, Purcell smiled.
“You aren’t proposing a back-and-forth.” Purcell looked up at Isaac. “You are proposing spite.”
“Spite is a back-and-forth.”
“I want ‘resentment.’ ‘Stirring the pot.’ Maybe ‘malcontent.’ Once we reach ‘strife,’ though, problems surface. The thing with those kids is a powder keg. It could go either way. Maybe everyone will settle down. Or on the other hand, they may just keep blaming each other, using the children as weapons.”
“You can’t control that?”
Purcell shrugged. “Not my department.”
Realizing how it looked, Isaac pulled an end table forward and sat on its top. It was a calculated gamble. He was going to look like a pathetic idiot, perched atop that table, but he already looked like a pathetic idiot. Maybe he’d look so pathetic that Purcell would see his point: that Isaac and the Directorate, as little as he wanted to admit it, needed some mercy.
“Please,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s necessary. And it could be excessively disruptive.”
“It will only disrupt her.”
“Then what’s the point? It’s not my job to handle your wife for you.”
“I meant as a symbol. She’s making a stand for the righteousness of her own petty little ass as Directorate then hopping to Enterprise. She wants to have her cake and eat it too. The first plan was to humiliate Directorate by giving us the finger, but then she must have realized how much it would make her look like a sellout. She wants to sell out, but doesn’t want anyone to notice. This little, loud event is the answer. But the other thing it’s going to do — what Natasha intends it to do; it’s the whole reason she’s doing it — is to make it obvious that the parties aren’t really that different. Her argument is that she can span the two. Because she wants the Enterprise to see that although she’s been on the other side for years, she’s really one of them at heart. And she wants her Directorate fans to feel that she’s not abandoning them then proving how ‘Directorate’ and ‘all for one, regardless of individual benefit’ she is by holding this first concert now, before Shift, when it can’t benefit her financially. She wants it to look like the only reason she’d ever do it — from both parties’ sides — is because she’s basically walking the line down the middle. Because that’s how Natasha is. She wants everyone to love her. Everyone. She won’t pick one party or the other, don’t you see?”
Purcell’s arrogant eyes softened then ticked down. His mouth made a partial frown, and then he looked back up at Isaac.
“Okay. I do see.” He sighed and shook his head. “But it’s still a risk.” Then, more firmly as he seemed to decide something, “And it won’t matter anyway.”
“How can you allow one of the world’s biggest stars to just sashay back and forth across party lines? She wants to show people that affiliation doesn’t matter.”
“At the top. But not further down.”
Feeling his edge slipping, Isaac repeated that cursed word: “Please.”
“There’s no point, Isaac. After this Shift, the first phase will be complete, regardless of who ‘wins’ it.”
“Everything is against me. Against Directorate. There’s supposed to be balance, but I look like a fool.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” said Isaac.
Purcell looked at him for a long moment. Isaac saw many things in that look, but the most obvious was a sense of pity. It was the pathetic look he’d have given a drunk in a gutter, begging for a few credits to buy a bottle to temporarily banish his shakes.
“Fine,” Purcell finally said. “But even if you use our resources, the job is yours. As will be the blame if things go wrong.”
Isaac sighed. He started to say, “Thank you,” but before the first syllable could pass his lips, Purcell’s avatar was gone.
Chapter 9
According to Jimmy, Omar was across town handling something “very important” while he spied on Kate and Jimmy’s contentious meeting. Still, despite the situation’s gravity, Kate asked and prodded and joked about Omar and his “very important stuff” to Jimmy because that was what Kate did even when she was nervous. Especially when she was nervous.
She was in some serious shit, and there was no kidding herself about it. She was a smuggler, always undercover by design, with a set of identifiers that, while valid, could be made to vanish. Omar could kill her or turn her in. He had been known to use both avenues in the past, when his colleagues’ aims stepped out of alignment with his.
Jimmy ordered Kate to walk through the restaurant door first. He’d used a swab to apply a wide swatch of pheromone to the back of her neck. Jimmy was carrying a weapon loaded with projectiles that matched the pheromone (and liked it so much, they’d home in on it when fired), but before they left the restaurant, he said almost apologetically, “This is just in case, so don’t make me blow your head from your neck for no reason, okay?”
Despite his former outburst and the hair-pulling episode, it seemed like Jimmy wanted to smooth things over during their walk to the bank of hoverskippers then even more so during their hoverskipper ride across town. He let Kate walk without restraints; he let her fly her own skipper; he kept the weapon that would kill her stowed in his pocket. Kate surmised it was because there were a few ways the meeting with Omar could work out. One way (the one everyone wanted, if the situation could be salvaged) would keep Kate and Jimmy in a close working relationship. If that happened, Kate would retain a position of trust. They’d be closer to partners than employer and employee, and partners couldn’t have poison between them. The other outcome
had Jimmy killing her, in which case acrimony wouldn’t matter. She chose to take Jimmy’s manner now as an encouraging sign.
After Jimmy had told Kate that Omar wanted to talk to her, he’d proposed (not insisted) that they meet somewhere public. There was no reason not to, right? After all, there was a fair chance that what was to come would end up being nothing more than a mutually beneficial business meeting between equals. And perhaps most encouragingly, Omar had agreed to let Kate decide where they’d end up. As a show of trust, which right now was sorely needed.
Jimmy pulled his skipper beside Kate’s as they stopped at a traffic light. Again, he said, “Where are we going?”
“I’m still thinking,” said Kate.
“I have to tell Omar where to meet us.”
“Where is Omar now?”
“He’s nearby.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
It did. If Kate decided to run, she had to know she was running away from Omar. Not that it mattered. Jimmy had painted her neck with pheromone anyway — because this was a business meeting among partners.
“Not at all,” said Kate.
“So where are we going?”
Kate sighed. She’d pushed this far enough. She’d hoped that as they crossed the city, something would occur to her, but nothing was coming. She didn’t want to run, even if she could. As much as she hated to admit it, the best scenario would be to keep working for Jimmy, which meant working for Omar. Omar was a known quantity. Thanks to years working with him as Doc, Kate knew exactly how Omar thought, what he was likely to do, and just how little others mattered relative to his own goals and bottom line. It was a case of the devil he knew, and Micah Ryan was a devil he didn’t know at all. If she blew this with Omar, the man would smear his new face across The Beam. If the right people asked the right questions, Kate’s history — and the validity of her Beam ID — might come into question. She couldn’t have a second powerful enemy chasing her. Even if she wanted to go through another refurb (she very much didn’t), she couldn’t afford it.
