The Immaculate Conception

by Aubrey Parker

  But that was a mistake. If you got complacent, then you deserved to go blind. You could only see what was right in front of you, not what might be outside the proverbial box. Out of the Six today, Alexa would have trusted only herself to create O all over again. The others had become soft. The others had lost their edge — the spark that had gotten them all here in the first place.

  Alexa held a small slip drive in her lap — a Xenia model, keyed to a new genetic identifier recently installed in her body that Quark called a Beam ID. In contrast to a Crossbrace ID (which really wasn’t too different from the RFID chips people had been embedding since the 20s), Beam IDs were supposedly impossible to clone or change. It was a sure way of identifying you as you — and making certain no one else could pretend.

  One day, Beam IDs would be the norm, but today they were scant. Alexa had one; the others in the Six had one; members of Panel all had one. Alexa had gone in willingly, but couldn’t help her doubts now, in retrospect — especially after Sarah’s strange behavior and even stranger report.

  The Beam really did seem to know everything. And maybe that meant Noah West knew everything, too.

  Alexa looked down. The drive in her lap would erase if it moved more than three meters from her Beam ID’s signal for longer than 15 seconds. When Clive showed up, she’d port the drive to his ID. He’d have to take it home to view its contents … and Alexa needed him to view the contents so she could eviscerate him.

  “You know the rules,” said a seductive, English-accented voice to her side. “No meetings without us all in attendance.”

  Alexa gave him a sideways smile. “We’re meeting as old friends, not as Panel.”

  “Really.”

  “Really,” Alexa said after a moment.

  Clive was still standing. Alexa glanced up at him, waiting. He still looked exactly as he had when they’d been a couple, even though that had been long ago. Soon, you’d be able to tell the world’s rich from the poor just by their apparent age. Most of the rich would look thirty and younger, while the unaugmented rabble would appear old, sagging, and slow.

  She looked toward the jungle gym, the slip drive held tight in her fist. “Clive, do you remember how it used to be with us?”

  He watched her for a long moment, sizing her up. She hadn’t told him why she wanted to meet — just that she needed to. “Sure.”

  “Back when I was still struggling and you were already rich. People everywhere knew my name, but had no idea how deep in hock I was with all my … investing. Everything I made, I put into pushing forward. Here I was, making a fortune on one end and spending it right out the other for the long term. I had to live with friends because I couldn’t always afford my own place. I had to find men who wanted lady friends, so they’d buy me food.”

  Alexa was speaking more to the air than Clive. She watched the children play on the jungle gym, knowing they were far enough back that no one could hear them. Surveillance wasn’t a problem. Any nanos or drones circulating nearby would glitch out and conveniently find themselves unable to record or broadcast, as they would near The Beam IDs of anyone on Panel.

  In Alexa’s peripheral vision, Clive looked forward, his handsome features outlined like a statue, his carefree light brown hair riffling in the breeze.

  “I remember,” he said. “What is this about, Alexa?”

  “I was trying to find partners back then, to get enough resources in one place to form our collective. At that point, I had Parker and Olivia, both of whom had baggage. Parker had a strategic mind like mine, but had always been an insufferable asshole. Olivia brought nothing to the table but assets. Her spas were all she had. Then we had a chance to join with Houston, but he had to come with the company — and you know how he is. Big and slow and powerful, like a tanker. Houston had the toy market more or less cornered, and didn’t see why he should invest in some writer’s oversized dreams.”

  “You were always a visionary.”

  “And do you remember who else, during that time, showed up to help me?”

  Clive turned his head to look at Alexa. She kept looking forward.

  “Is that what this is about?” he asked. “You need another investor?”

  Alexa laughed, then finally turned to look directly at him. Old switches clicked within her, and she almost felt herself responding. Even looking confused, even with all she knew and loathed about him, Clive Spooner still had the ability to turn her on.

  “I have more money than I’ll ever be able to spend, Clive. I don’t need your money.” Then, suddenly annoyed, she added: “Just like I didn’t need it back then.”

  They traded stares for a while. Finally, Alexa returned her eyes to the playground.

  Beside her, Clive’s mild manner departed, leaving his voice like ice. He wasn’t a cold man by nature, but the time for feigning niceties had passed. “Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind, Alexa?”

  “You have no idea how tempting it was to take you on as an investor back then. But you made the mistake of sleeping with me first. For me, that’s you laying open like a blueprint.”

  “Is that so?”

  She turned again to face him. “I invented sex as it exists today, Clive. You think I don’t know what your turn-ons say about you? You think I couldn’t already see the machinations in your head, after seeing how you navigated my body, not even recognizing your own pleasures for what they were or could be? Sex is primal. Fucking shows us who we are. You saw the potential in O and what we’d one day do. And I was right about you, wasn’t I? What you did to the Velex and Symbiont companies? You could’ve done the same with O.” She chuckled. “The only playmate you were mostly fair with was Quark, but that was because you knew Noah could crush you … or maybe because you thought you could pretend some of his innovations were yours without anyone knowing.”

  Clive’s eyes opened wider and Alexa knew she’d scored a hit. But what did he think, that she’d missed the way he’d introduced her to those learning bots, making a pitch and trying to pass it off as sex play? Was she really supposed to forget the fact that he’d tried to sell her Quark technology for her own company to use? The nanobots’ uses in adaptive pleasure were obvious even then. If her company’s pockets had been deeper before the product line had been abandoned, she’d have bought the division — lock, stock, and barrel.

  “I never asked for a majority stake in O,” he said.

  “Oh, and you didn’t have any plans to take the company public? To use thousands of dummy entities to buy it up, then force me out?”

  “No.”

  Alexa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I won. I saw through you. You may have fooled everyone with your good guy act, but you’ve always looked out for yourself first. I always wondered why you took my rejection of your offer so well. I even thought you’d let it go. You wanted to grab a company poised to take over the NAU while it was small and its owner was vulnerable, but when the scrappy little girl turned you down, you didn’t fight. We kept going out, even after I found the capital I needed. I thought that would enrage you — I denied your takeover bid, then took on a deal that looked exactly the same but was offered by someone less intelligent — but it didn’t seem to bother you. We stayed together, always on and off, but more on than off. There was even a time I thought you loved me.” Alexa laughed. “Such as I understood it at the time.”

  Clive’s sigh was somewhere between exasperated and resigned. “So … what? You’re lovelorn? After all this time, you came here to chastise me for my lack of affection? Did I not try to stay friends — especially after Panel, when it was obvious we were stuck with each other?”

  “Did you have it planned from the beginning? Did you know what you would do, all that time, and just string me along until you found the right pawn for your plan? Or did you wait and hope … trusting on faith that fortune would always favor Clive Spooner?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Alexa?”

  Alexa reached over and slapped the drive
into his palm.

  “What is this?”

  “Proof,” Alexa spat. “I know you too well to think you impregnating one of my girls was an accident, Clive. Parker found the trail, and I played like I didn’t know you. I let him think you’d just had a slip, that it was nothing more than a bizarre accident. But given that Nicole was totally barren—”

  “Nicole who?”

  “I’ll get you kicked out of Panel for this,” Alexa said, her anger returning. “You know the rules about fucking with other members. We’re untouchable, all of us. You don’t go off-Panel, and you don’t go after the livelihood of another member — those are the rules. O is mine, Clive. Mine. Regardless of what history says, I built that company with my own hands, through my own sweat and fear. There are six people on the board, but this was a stab at me. And now you’re going to burn for it.”

  Alexa’s lips had peeled into a snarl. She forced them to relax, then gave Clive a neutral, patient expression. In the seconds that followed, she returned her attention to the playground, looking for calm. She was even more furious now than she’d been after Sarah’s report, when she’d begun to extrapolate and assemble the pieces.

  And the worst of it all? The very worst of this current fury? Maddeningly, beneath it all, Alexa even now felt like the young girl she’d once been, sitting beside a man she’d had affection for. The sense of repressed betrayal almost made her want to sob with rage.

  “Relax, Alexa,” said Clive, his voice regaining its velvety timbre. “I just need to understand, and then you can be as mad at me as you want. So please. Tell me what you mean. Nicole who?”

  “Nicole Shaw. Of Voyos.”

  Recognition entered his voice. “Oh.”

  “How did you even do it, Clive? Nobody else could have. It’s next-level, getting a girl pregnant in quite that way. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

  “Nicole couldn’t get pregnant. She had a hysterectomy, for fuck’s sake. She told me all about it.”

  “Yet you managed it.”

  She dared a look at Clive, then found herself wanting to punch the confused look right off his face. He wasn’t even bothering to deny her accusation. He’d gone five steps deeper, pretending he didn’t even know she’d been knocked up — because of course she’d had no uterus, because of course she couldn’t be pregnant, as far as the wily Clive Spooner officially knew.

  “You motherfucker,” Alexa said, watching him. It offended her deeply, how stupid he seemed to think she was.

  “What?”

  “You’re really going to sit there and act like you didn’t even know she got pregnant?”

  Clive shook his head. His eyes were pained, his act almost convincing. “Jesus, Alexa. It broke Nicole’s heart that she couldn’t have kids! She’d had a radical hysterectomy. She couldn’t afford a replacement. I offered to pay for one, but she had a complex about doctors and—”

  “You’re such a sweetheart,” Alexa snapped.

  “And she said she wouldn’t want a replacement anyway. She thought what had happened was God’s will or something. But she talked about it all the time. She wanted a child more than anyone I’ve ever met. She cried each time it came up, as if she kept forgetting she couldn’t actually have one. You know how I can be, Alexa. I’ll admit I’m a bastard. But the way Nicole was about it? It broke even my heart.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Check your records. You’d be able to see if she had a procedure.”

  Alexa had already done that. Parker had found the records muddled, but he couldn’t see what Sarah and The Beam’s pollinated network could. The evidence was incontrovertible. Nicole had never had any sort of treatments, and certainly not an organ replacement.

  “What are you, Clive? A magician? Just tell me how you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Got her pregnant!”

  “She couldn’t get pregnant!” Clive blurted. Then, seeming to remember himself, he looked around and resumed more quietly. “Look. I don’t want kids. Why would I want kids? Why would I go to such lengths to have kids? And even if I did want kids for some bloody reason, why would I do it with a … no offense, Alexa, but why would I do it with an escort?”

  “How long did you date her?”

  “As long as I needed.”

  It was the most chauvinistic, misogynistic answer Clive could have given. But that was Clive for you.

  Alexa kept her gaze forward. It would have been a bad idea to meet his eyes. Clive was charming — and Alexa, against her will, was still somewhat smitten. He’d be nearly impossible to disbelieve if she looked at him now, and Alexa wanted zero doubt. The pieces fit so neatly right now.

  “Who — or what — is Chloe?”

  “You tell me. Who is Chloe?”

  “Nicole’s daughter. Your daughter.” She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye.

  He shrugged, looking genuinely confused. “Nicole has a daughter? So she finally got over herself and adopted?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Clive. She’s half Nicole Shaw and half someone else.” She finally met his eyes, her voice like ice. “A father with a lock The Beam refuses to penetrate.”

  “And you think it’s me — that I’m somehow the father.”

  “I’ve done my searches. You’re the only member of Panel who dipped his wick into her.”

  “You’re mistaken. Nicole can’t have a biological daughter. The girl must have been adopted.”

  Alexa shook her head. “Half Nicole. Half you. Check the drive if you don’t believe me.”

  Clive’s eyes flicked toward the slip drive, then back to Alexa. “Then she’s a clone. A tube baby.”

  “Nicole grew the girl inside her, Clive. I even dug up video evidence of the birth, from house cameras. It’s all on the drive.”

  “Hell,” he said, making a face.

  “So who is she?”

  “Apparently, she’s Nicole’s daughter.”

  “What else?”

  “What the hell do you mean, what else?”

  “Is she carrying some sort of organic memory archive? Did you find a way to program your spawn to worm her way into my company, then announce you as her father once she’d earned enough fame, hence claiming her place as social royalty and forcing my hand with O?”

  A bitter laugh. “Is that how corporate takeovers are done these days? It seems so needlessly complex, and … spermy.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Clive. I’m hardly in the mood.”

  “Will you listen to yourself? I don’t know where to start with this story of yours. Should I repeat the fact that Nicole was physically unable to carry a child? Or should I head straight to your idea about my takeover plan that required a decades-long break while I waited for my spy to be born and grow up?”

  She’d forgotten how convincing Clive could be. He did seem shocked. It was hard, hearing him read the litany back, to feel like she was the reasonable one.

  “I know how it sounds, but I have proof you were behind this.”

  Clive shook his head. “Rubbish.”

  “Or were you ever planning to come out as the puppeteer?”

  “How the hell would that even work?”

  “Embedded triggers? Repressed memory?”

  “How, Alexa? That’s pseudoscience bullshit! I haven’t been near Voyos in twenty years — and if you’d like, I can unlock the Panel restrictions on my Beam ID so you can see for yourself. You tell me: in your fantasy world, how did I manage this spectacular coup, two decades in the making, hatched back when we were together — with a woman who couldn’t have children.”

  Alexa could hear a familiar inflection in his voice: condescension. Clive had found Alexa’s beliefs (particularly the more spiritual ones) cute when they’d been together. Thereafter, like the rest of Panel, he’d only found them annoying.

  “What else did you have access to? What other gadgets did you keep hidden from me?”

  Clive shook his head. “You know we can’t keep new tec
hnologies from the group.”

  “Just like how we can’t move against their assets?”

  “I never went after O, Alexa!” Now he sounded genuinely angry.

  Doubt crept in. Was she being a fool?

  No. Of course not.

  “Look, here’s the truth,” Clive said, making a clear effort to calm himself. “I saw Nicole for a few years. You might say we had a relationship, but it was the same sort of ‘relationship’ as any client has with any of your girls. I went through proper — albeit freelance — channels. It was right there all along, free for you to see if you just asked Nicole for access to whatever she has out on your island — or sneaked it when she wasn’t looking. I never tried to hide.”

  “You didn’t have to. You know Crossbrace hides all our data even if we don’t do it consciously.”

  Clive shrugged. “That’s not something I can control.”

  “You know I wouldn’t want you in my spas! Given the things you insist on doing to women—”

  “Once I’ve paid, I can do what I want!” The force of the exclamation shook Clive’s hair onto his forehead. He brushed it back into place. “You have nothing on me, Alexa. I was above-board.”

  Alexa drew a deep breath. Don’t let him bluster. Don’t let him do that thing he always does. You have truth on your side. “She’s your daughter. Born January 3, 2040, not too long after we have record of you seeing Nicole. So, aren’t you a proud papa?”

  This time, Clive’s insulting laugh was more robust. “Alexa, let me ask you something. It may sound off-topic, but hang in there with me, will you?”

  Alexa crossed her arms.

  “In the spirit of a grand murder mystery novel: where were you from February to June of 2039 — when, by my math, this girl Chloe was busy being conceived?”

  Alexa kept her arms crossed, but something in his question tickled the back of her brain. He was trying to deflect, but somehow he also wasn’t. There was an assumption in his question, but she didn’t want to consider it.