“I get the first year for free.”
“That is absurd!” shouted R.J. the Third, his eyes bulging dangerously. “Outrageous! Comically naïve.” He guffawed thrice to illustrate his point. Architect, delighted, rolled on its back and pawed the air. “No lawsuit would yield thirty-six thousand globals, or even half that amount. I already have a lawyer in my employ—my cousin (who provided the voice of Fighter Jet Number Two in The First and Final Rocket)—and I am certain—quite certain!—that he would limit my liability to proven medical costs and thereafter delay the payment of those for three years, at which point you would get the first of ten small annual installments.”
Champ dropped the litigious posturing (largely because his adversary was far more knowledgeable on the subject than was he) and said simply, “I’m the injured party here, aren’t I?”
“You are—and I’d rather not have hostility between us—but I will not allow myself to be gouged. Other than your magnificently idiotic comment about The First and Final Rocket, you seem like the best candidate for the room.”
“How about you cover my medical costs and give me three months for free?”
“That sounds fair,” acceded R.J. the Third. “I’ll have my cousin draft the contract by tomorrow.”
Champ appraised his spherical and recumbent attacker and asked of its master, “Is Architect an altered cat?”
“No, but he’s empathically conditioned to my moods. The Global Senate shut down altering a few years before he was born.”
“How’d he get so big?”
“I was depressed for a while after my mom died. I slept a lot, but he binged.” Architect stood up, waddled on bowed legs and affectionately rubbed his nose against R.J. the Third’s left knee. “He’s slimming down.”
Champ surveyed the common area. “Where’s the room?”
“You didn’t look at it when you were in there?”
The garbage man was confused by the question. “In where?”
“In the bathroom. I thought I heard you open the trapdoor.”
Champ hoped that he had misheard the man. “The room you’re renting is accessed by a trapdoor in the bathroom?”
“It’s quite novel, I assure you.”
“Maybe I’m missing something here…but wouldn’t a trapdoor from there just lead to the fifth floor?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“That’s already pretty complicated,” said Champ, frowning.
“The ad described the room as eclectic,” defended R.J. the Third, who then looked at Architect and said, “Stay.” There was a minute shifting within the aggregation of fur, fat and overtaxed bones that signified a redistribution of weight to the beast’s hindquarters. “Let me show you to your dwelling,” the popinjay said to his guest.
The duo walked toward the toilet icon; the fleximetal door retracted into the floor, and they then entered the rose-hued bathroom.
R.J. the Third kicked aside a sponge-wool bathmat, revealing a hinged trapdoor.
“Great,” said Champ. His spirits sank to new depths as he contemplated the idea of living beneath a bathroom.
R.J. the Third yanked the burlap twine that functioned as the trapdoor’s handle, and the flap yawned wide upon creaking hinges.
Champ peered inside. “Is that a rope ladder?”
“An excellent one. Go down and take a look.” R.J. the Third ostentatiously motioned for his guest to descend the ladder.
Champ was mortified by the fact that he was not too mortified to examine the room.
He descended into darkness. The moment that his feet hit the floor, an amber light illuminated, and he saw that the room was a kitchen. Beside an empty spice rack lay a new mutable mattress that looked rather comfortable. A mote aquarium sat atop an ancient gas stove, and a refrigerator with no door was filled with sweaters, mittens and corduroy pants.
“That’s my winter clothing in the icebox,” R.J. the Third remarked from the bathroom above, his voice huge and reverberant. “I shall remove my belongings prior to your residency. You may use my old m.a. if you wish—it still works.”
The room was saturated with the smells of grandfathers, yet it was larger and cleaner than Champ had expected it to be. One small window faced an alleyway, and on the opposite wall stood an old hinge door, which had been welded shut and also barricaded with mismatched (and sloppily affixed) wooden planks.
R.J. the Third climbed down the rope ladder, wiped dust from the soles of his bare feet and looked at Champ. “Do you like it?”
“It’s fine. But how is this not the fifth floor? You live on six, and this is down one flight.”
“Physically, this is the fifth floor. Technically, this is the sixth floor. We acquired it in fifty-three.”
“What are you talking about?” said Champ, utterly perplexed. He pointed to the sealed-off door and asked with rising perturbation, “And what the hell is that barricade for?”
“There is a war between the fifth and sixth floors of this building.”
“War?”
Chapter VII
Lanced
A private air shuttle owned by Steinberg, Goldman, Taliq, Shabiza and O’Brien, LWC floated over a landing ground in northern Florida. From the aircraft’s undercarriage, a foam-rubber car dropped like an egg from a hastily snatched hen. Magnetic repellers hummed, ensuring that the vehicle’s twenty-meter fall was neither faster nor more impacting than that of a parachutist. Within the descending vehicle sat Alicia Martinez, a sheaf-filled attaché case on her lap.
She ruminated.
The air shuttle flung back whence it came the moment the wheels of the foam-rubber car touched the pavement.
“Mrs. Alicia Martinez has landed,” Isaac said into his lily as he sped the vehicle toward a multi-tiered causeway. The young man, an efficient driver and clerk (and Morton Goldman’s nephew), glanced at the sheer face of his passenger in the bottom corner of the windshield and asked, “Mrs. Martinez, would you like to eat something prior to your meeting? I have a list of highly rated restaurants that feature your favorite foods and also guaranteed service times.”
“It’s too early. I’d rather eat after the meeting.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, like a soldier. “I shall drive to the mansion directly.”
“Danke.”
Alicia ruminated.
Mrs. Dulande had almost died last night. Prior to the episode, the wealthy widow’s doctors had estimated that she had three or four months to live; now they spoke of her life in terms of days.
Every person at Steinberg, Goldman, Taliq, Shabiza and O’Brien, LWC was very, very, very aware that had the woman died, their client, Corpus Chrome, Incorporated, would have lost nearly twenty-five billion globals. Alicia had volunteered to fly out to Florida the next morning, review the document with Dulande’s legal team, and, once it was approved, witness the fingerprinting.
Looking through the window at the sunlit city flitting past, she ruminated.
In her attaché case, Alicia Martinez carried two versions of the contract.
The contents of both voluminous sheaves were identical and letter-perfect, but for one discrepancy—a small-print clause created by Mrs. Dulande’s rather mediocre legal team (Wittigan, Nyung-Jones and Hostler) that did not allow Corpus Chrome, Incorporated to seize any portion of the Dulande estate until after the re-bodied murderer had been declared mentally capable. Two weeks ago (when Mrs. Dulande was far healthier), the old woman’s attorneys had inserted the clause to hasten the resurrection; but if Mrs. Dulande died prior to her son being declared capable, the clause would inadvertently create a window during which the Dulande estate would have no legal claimant. In this period of limbo, the notoriously aggressive Florida State inheritance attorneys could
seize the unclaimed billions with talons outstretched, happy to redistribute the hoarded old money into their myriad social programs (minus the twelve percent the Global Senate claimed from all transactions).
In the first contract, the Dulande attorneys’ error remained uncorrected, and because the small-print clause was not an actual change, it was not highlighted for review and would likely be overlooked by its authors. In the second contract, Alicia had deleted the faulty clause and in its place detailed a secure escrow account in which the money would be held until Derrick W.R. Dulande was declared mentally capable (a relative thing, in his case).
Houses and buildings swept past; a ladybug and a box truck nudged each other in and out of the right lane as the conflicted woman ruminated.
If she killed this deal, there was a very good chance that CCI would terminate its relationship with the firm and sue them for negligence. A lot of decent people with whom she worked would suffer, and several lives might be ruined.
Alicia had discussed her dilemma for three ulcerative nights with Sammy, her thoroughly wonderful husband. He said that he would support her decision either way, but he did not offer any advice. There was pain for her in either choice, and he did not have the stomach to guide her toward one agony or the other.
The righteous decision would throw her life, Sammy’s life and Alicia Jr.’s life into upheaval, and hurt many other people for whom she cared. But the alternative, allowing CCI to re-body this loathsome man, was an injection of poison directly into the veins of her soul, and an act that rendered any claim that she had ever made about bettering the world a risible and empty vocalization.
Buildings sped past, and she ruminated.
The conflicted attorney imagined her four-year-old daughter seated in front of a mote aquarium, watching a news broadcast of the historic case—the one in which her mommy gave an executed rapist and murderer a second life.
Alicia made her terrible choice.
“Fuck them.”
“Pardon me…?” inquired Isaac.
“I was just talking to myself.”
The driver steered onto an off-ramp, guided the car to an intersection and thumbed the brakes. A stopwall lurched up from the ground; opposing traffic sped past, right to left. Alicia felt disembodied…as if she were watching someone else—a strange but familiar woman—throw her entire life onto the altar of her beliefs. She was scared for this woman, but she cheered for her.
“You’ll show those assholes.”
Isaac pretended not to hear her.
* * *
The road ahead led to a ten-meter-high granite wall that stretched beyond seeing in either direction, and in the exact middle of the forbidding barbican roared a waterfall. Alicia recognized the famous entrance to the Dulande estate, and felt a mixture of contempt and awe regarding the ostentatious display of wealth. When the car was less than half a kilometer away, she descried two occupied nests of bald eagles atop the wall; the birds’ white heads and hooked beaks were unmistakable even from a distance.
The car sped toward the waterfall, and the thunderous cascade grew, filled the windshield and parted.
Beyond the barbican, Isaac navigated a driveway that wended through orange groves, an avocado orchard, a deciduous forest and a coniferous forest. The road became a marble bridge that leapt over a pit occupied by skulking white lions.
“This is obscene,” remarked Alicia.
The car sped past ninety crescent-shaped ponds filled with fish that sparkled like costume jewelry.
Then the vehicle wended its way through a grove of golden weeping willows within which scores of white deer flitted.
Alicia found the grounds stunning and appalling—and wholly divorced from mankind. It was easy for her to imagine how Derrick W.R. Dulande—genetically imbalanced and raised as a god by holiday parents—had become something inhuman.
The mountainous blue-gray Dulande mansion filled the windshield. Upon its marble façade sat three hundred prismatic windows; their etched panes cast shaped rainbows into the air.
“What assholes,” opined Alicia.
Double doors, seven meters tall and made from burnished redwood, opened on automated hinges, and a buoyed skiff with a gold balustrade emerged from the mansion, driven by a man in a blue-gray suit. The standing pilot flew the vehicle towards Alicia (apparently the Dulandes had an ultramagnetic network buried beneath the tuffgrass) and extended his right arm in salutation.
Alicia decided to hate him.
Isaac thumbed the brakes, and the vehicle halted. “Have a good meeting, Mrs. Martinez.”
“Danke.”
Alicia pressed the release button, and the pseudopodia retracted from her waist and shoulders. Isaac opened the door remotely.
The attorney stepped outside and was struck by moist Florida sunlight.
“Konnichiwa,” said the handsome skiff pilot. The craft, suspended half a meter above the tuffgrass, glided toward the attorney.
“Konnichiwa,” replied Alicia.
“My name’s Olaf Jarle. I am the senior executive vice president of the mansion’s interior staff.”
“That’s more like a butler or a maid?”
The man forced a smile and replied, “I oversee all duties that affect the interior. How much do you weigh?”
“Fifty-three kilos.”
“Are you wearing any free metal?”
“No. And the contents in my case are shielded.”
Olaf twisted the lift dial counter-clockwise; the platform sank and settled upon the ground. The handsome man motioned for her to stand beside him.
Alicia stepped onto the skiff, where she gripped the gold balustrade with her right hand and held her attaché case with her left. Olaf twisted the dial clockwise; the tuffgrass dropped away.
The craft wobbled.
With a look of consternation upon his face, Olaf inquired, “Are you certain that you weigh only fifty-three kilos?”
“Yes.” Alicia was positive.
“Well, this is odd. Perhaps the skiff needs to be recalibrated?” The handsome man tweaked the dial another notch in a showy manner, unnecessarily furrowing his brow in feigned befuddlement. Soon, the platform levitated to the proper flying height—half a meter above the ground—and stabilized. “Please mind your balance,” he said as he tapped the top of the guidescreen. The fans embedded in the back of the platform whirred, and the craft surged forward.
Wind chilled the sweat upon Alicia’s face as she glided toward the burnished redwood doors.
“Cutthroat Cheung awaits you in the parlor.”
The attorney did not like any of the information contained in that sentence. Soon, the redwood doors swung wide, and the skiff glided from the sunshine into the comparatively dark entrance hall.
“Why is Cutthroat Cheung here?” Alicia asked, as her pupils tried to arrange and identify the dim shapes that sped past.
“He is the head of Mrs. Dulande’s legal team.”
Apprehension prickled the attorney’s nape. “What happened to Wittigan, Nyung-Jones and Hostler?”
“They were fired this morning,” said Olaf, as if the news were of trifling interest.
Alicia’s stomach sank, and she squeezed the balustrade to steady herself.
Wittigan, Nyung-Jones and Hostler had handled all of the Dulandes’ contracts for the past three decades, and—more importantly—they had authored the flaw in the document that was its undoing. A pair of fresh eyes—especially the evil onyx slits of Cutthroat Cheung—would have a far, far greater chance of noticing the faulty clause. The abrupt termination of Wittigan, Nyung-Jones and Hostler indicated that their error had been descried—very likely by the loathsome lawyer who had replaced them.
For the second time that day,
Alicia Martinez made a terrible decision: She would facilitate the deal.
The skiff glided past one hundred and twenty marble pillars, each wound with a spiral of gold. For some reason, the vast enclosure smelled like rose water.
“Is this not a marvelous home?” asked Olaf.
Discomfited and preoccupied, Alicia nodded.
“You look pale. Are you feeling ill?”
“I’m just awestruck.”
The skiff glided through a room with green parrots, a room with red parrots, a room with blue parrots, and then five galleries, the walls of which were covered with Renaissance artwork. Alicia imagined Derrick W.R. Dulande in a model 8M chromium mannequin, walking these halls, admiring oil paintings and listening to talking birds, while the bodies of the women he had raped and killed rotted in their graves.
“The parlor is northeast of here,” Olaf informed his passenger (who was annoyed that he used a compass direction inside of a house). He then tapped the top right side of the guidescreen, and the skiff veered in that direction. Oriental rugs scrolled underneath the craft as it flew toward an open entranceway.
The room beyond was awash with bright sunlight that rippled weirdly.
Olaf tapped the center of the guidescreen thrice and twisted the dial counterclockwise; the skiff slowed, sank to the rug and landed.
Alicia stepped out of the craft and strode into the parlor. The burnished-wood walls of the room were covered with landscape paintings that featured boats and lighthouses and waterside tableaux. Reclining upon a satin divan on the far side of the room was a man who wore a dark green suit and glossy shoes.
“Seize it,” rasped Cutthroat Cheung.
Corpus Chrome, Inc. Page 6
