The Archimage's Fourth Daughter Page 16

  “He did this, my father?”

  “Well yes. He took care of everything. The removal of all of your possessions. The cleaning. You will have to go now.” He hesitated for a moment. “And if I were you, I would be quick about it. I think a few of your ‘friends’ might still be lurking about, waiting for your return. That Tesla really shouts ‘Look, here I am.’ And, oh, I am to tell you to leave it in your parking spot. The repossessors will be here for it tomorrow.”

  For a moment, Jake said nothing. Then, like a discarded marionette, he sagged to his knees. Suddenly, everything was fading away — his cool apartment with the ocean view, surfboards, money for his next meal. They all were vanishing.

  Like a hollow egg, the shell he had built to shield himself from the meaningless of it all cracked into a thousand pieces. There were no longer going to be diversions to distract him. His very soul felt naked.

  “Fine,” Jake managed to say. “Just fine.” The words came with difficulty, one by one. “I will show him he can’t do this. Yeah, we’ll get a motel somewhere nearby for tonight, and tomorrow…”

  The words trickled away from him. Tomorrow… what?

  “Not my business of course,” the property rep said, “but your father did mention he had cancelled your credit cards as well.” He shook his head and marveled. “Your dad must be a real mover to pull all of this off.”

  “I know a place where we can hide,” Briana said. “It means sleeping on open ground, but spring is starting, and we will be warm enough there.” She slapped at her backpack. “As for me, everything I need is in here.”

  Jake tried to shake off the weight of what was happening to him. He looked at Briana, frowning at how unfazed she seemed. So confident, so… so bold.

  “What’s going on?” he swept his arm around the emptiness. “Is all of this a bad dream, an illusion?”

  “To paraphrase Buddha slightly,” Maurice said, “All the world is an illusion.”

  “Don’t start me on that crap,” Jake could no longer contain himself. His thoughts raged out of control. He turned and threw an angry stare at Briana. “The next thing you’ll be telling me is now we have to travel to Switzerland because reality is a bunch of Higgs… Higgs — ”

  “Higgs bosons,” Briana said. “I read about them on the internet when I was researching. At CERN, they — ”

  “We need cash in order to eat!” Jake snapped as he tried to recover himself.

  “I know a place where you can work for meals,” Briana said. “Probably bussing and helping in the kitchen, but at least it is something.”

  Jake looked around the empty apartment one more time. But that was all he could manage. He could barely think anymore. It was better not to. Just retreat. Retreat like a wounded turtle into its shell and hope this will all go away.

  He grasped at one last straw “The bastard’s not taking my Tesla,” he growled.

  “Right,” Briana said. “We will need the car to take us to meet Ashley Anderfield.”

  Part Three

  An Expanded Reality

  The Staff Meeting

  ASHLEY ANDERFIELD froze her face into a pleasant mask. She looked at the other department managers one at a time. The last three months gone without even one contract win. This was going to be painful to Robert sitting on her left, but she had to look after her own. More than that. Ultimately, the job of everyone in the room was as stake as well.

  She wanted to fan her face to make up for the overtaxed air-conditioning unit, but she didn’t dare. That would be a sign of weakness. The entire spring had been mild, but Mother Nature was making up for it as summer approached.

  Ashley was quite striking. A woman in her mid-forties, hair dark as a moonless night, high cheeks with only a hint of blush, and lips saying come-hither and kiss me. It gave her no advantage, she reminded herself time after time. These engineers were left-brain. True, probably every woman in the division was ranked on a tradeoff matrix somewhere. But here in the conference room, what was between the ears counted the most.

  The room was small, only large enough to seat six at most at the long table in its center. The walls were unadorned except for a single whiteboard, the tables and chairs no-nonsense metal and cheap plastic. It had to be that way throughout every one of the engineering buildings. Ashley remember the explosion that had happened when she had ushered the Marine Brigadier General into the Division Manager’s office, and he saw the walnut paneling, plush seats, and expansive desk.

  “I know you think a lot of Sheila.” Ashley focused on Robert. “But remember what happened on the Southrim Project. Alan, in my shop, had to come and fix her work. He should be the last one above the line.”

  Robert gestured at the list of names on the whiteboard. He straightened his posture as he always did before speaking. “You’re getting greedy, Ash. All of us think our own troops are the best, but we all have to share the pain.”

  Ashley smiled inwardly. Good. He did not come back with anything of substance. Only the same, old ‘pity me, the poor baby,’ approach.

  “Keep it quantitative, Bob. Stick to the facts.” the laboratory manager, Douglas, said. He looked around the room wearing one of his condescending smiles he thought made him appear friendly and likable. “Our goal is to rank everyone across the entire lab in one list. Then we draw the line underneath the last name above the eighty percent mark. The twenty percent below will be laid off. Doesn’t matter what department they’re in.”

  “Then how come miss pretty face here has the most above the line?” Robert’s voice hardened. He stretched his back even straighter.

  “Maybe because she recruited well.” Douglas grimaced in distaste. “She looked a little more closely at the applicants than only to see if they passed the mirror test.”

  “The mirror test?” Dave asked. Unconsciously, he wrung one hand in the other. “Excuse me. I know I am the newest one here, but I haven’t heard of that.”

  “If the applicant breathed on a mirror and it fogged up, it meant he was not dead,” Tom said, mimicking Douglas’s tone as best he could. “All it took to get an offer from Robert.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen…” Douglas hesitated. He smiled even more patronizingly at Ashley. “And lady,” he said. “We do not have all day to do this. I have to take the list to HR at eleven, so they can start the paperwork. We need to get this done fast, so rumors of more layoffs to come do not start.”

  “Right,” Tom said. “But that’ll be true only until the next round does come.”

  That was unexpected, Ashley thought. Usually, Tom followed Douglas’ lead closely. Maybe now was the time to add something to the discussion. She knew better than only to remain quiet unless spoken to.

  “Perhaps, we should be paying more attention to the cold RFPs,” she said. “Or maybe do something bold to improve the performance on the projects we have… something to attract more warm ones.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We know what a hot-shot project manager you were before the promotion to the line,” Robert said. His back could not possibly be even more straight. If you stood him against a wall, not one photon would be able to wiggle behind him from one side to the other. “Change control boards, preliminary design language, earned value spending forecasts, and so on, and so on…”

  Ashley felt her stomach lurch. Don’t be drawn down that path, she told herself. Personal attacks are what the others would look for. Just like a woman, unable to control her emotions. Instead, stay focused on the goal. Save as many of her department as she could. The words spoken here would fade. She glanced at the board.

  “I received a cold RFP a while back,” Ashley ignored the barb. “Some company in Hawaii — Kahuna Enterprises.”

  “Right,” Robert continued his attack. “A little outfit in the islands is going to fix the shortfall when our work for the Fort and the Company dry up. The big overruns this past year did not help one bit.”

  The loss of budget control was the cause of their problems, true. But t
alking about them led the conversation away from where she wanted it to go. A non-sequitur. Expected. Now to get Robert to dig his hole even deeper.

  “What they want seems fairly simple,” Ashley said. “The tanks we use for exotic gas transport. Wants on-call remote technical support. Be able to answer the phone and speak English rather than gobbledygook.”

  “Sounds like you need an English major for something like that. Your department is supposed to concentrate on operations research,” Tom said. He pulled on his coat sleeves so that the shirt cuffs showed exactly the same amount as did Douglas’. “Or are you going to claim Alan was actually an English double major in college?”

  Tom was butting in. She hadn’t expected that. She wanted him also to kick Robert when he was going down.

  “No.” Ashley kept her voice calm. “I have also received a resumé from a grad student working on his PhD at Wagonbrook, you know, the online university.”

  “How can you think of hiring somebody when we are in the middle of deciding who to lay off?” Tom tugged at his coat again. He was not going to make it this time. He needed to have used Douglas’ tailor when he bought the thing.

  “I think I have figured out a way,” Ashley said. “A way not detracting from anything already budgeted.”

  Her administrative assistant was due for maternity leave soon, and the money for that was an overhead allocation no one questioned. That would provide the resources she needed to respond to this blue bird. The color of money problem this created she would have to work out later. For now, the task was saving bodies. And if Tom was not going to join in, it was time to make the stroke.

  “Look, let’s put Alan in place of Sheila as the last name on the list,” she said. “That’s our eighty percent, and we are done. You are right, Douglas. It is getting close to eleven. No use in haggling over someone who may or may not be in the bottom twenty percent. The others remaining, we do not have to rank — only give them the bad news.”

  “Damn it!” Robert said. “You always find some way to wiggle out of the sack, down to the very last. Gimme a break here. We are only talking about one last name. I have bled enough already.”

  No one else spoke for a moment, as Douglas put on his pondering face. “Ash is right, Robert,” he said at last. “We could haggle forever and never get it one hundred percent perfect. Go back to your own departments. Betty will come in here, transcribe the names, and give each of you a list of which ones of yours are safe. And, oh, Ash, come into my office for a minute, before I have to rush off to HR.”

  The other department managers left, all of them with shoulders slumped and heads down. When she finally faced up to it, Ashley knew hers would sag, too. A line manager’s greatest failure was having to let one of his own go. USX was a matrix organization. Each department was like a small company within the larger one. Project managers came to the line with job assignments and the line manager assigned the engineers to do the work.

  Yes, she had done well, Ashley thought, better than the others… but not perfectly. She, too, had bad news to tell.

  Heat

  DINTON SQUINTED his eyes nearly shut, crossed his legs and settled himself in his own chamber. He felt a numbness starting to creep even up to his thighs. Except for the Clue game box and a stack of newspapers, the cavern was completely bare. Only a glimmer of light filtered in from the rocky passageway. It was quiet. He liked it that way.

  “I shall practice no craft,” he whispered to himself as the urge began to return. It always returned. But how could he demand it of his brothers if he did not abstain as well? No, after the last time there were to be no more. This time he would have the strength, the strength to resist.

  He closed his eyes to push the temptation away, but as usual, that was a mistake. Cut off from other senses, the desire washed over him like gentle surf climbing a beach. It felt so good when his mind went racing, out of the caverns, out over the oceans, even to lands more distant than a bird could fly.

  He breathed in the relaxing rhythm — breath in through the nose for a count of seven, hold for four more, then exhale through the mouth for a final five. With each repetition, his body calmed.

  As he had done many times before, Dinton imagined his thoughts appearing on a chalkboard before his inner eye. Soon as one appeared, he quickly erased it away. Finally, he was at peace and ready to begin the charm.

  The spell was a long one. Enunciating each word correctly three times through was difficult, but was the way it always had to be. Only the most accomplished would succeed. A smile formed on Dinton’s lips as he thought about how skilled he was, but he gently pushed the pleasure aside, waiting for the first glimmer of contact with the natives who roamed the world above at will.

  There was more than a single spell of far-seeing. Many charms of enchantment existed as well. But this one was different. It incorporated elements of both. He felt like a sturdy watercraft from his home world skimming over the sea. Fish glimmered beneath the surface, some tiny as minnows, others as large as leviathan whales. Each was the mind of a native, barely out of reach, tantalizingly near, begging to be swooped up and caught.

  Who was it to be this time? One the natives called a ‘political analyst,’ or even better, one who actually ruled? No matter, the strategy was not one of bold strokes. Instead, it consisted of undetectable gentle nudges, feathers of persuasion tipping decisions in the way he wanted them to go.

  There were always many choices from which to choose. The movie star activist espousing famine relief in a continent far away. He could be distracted by the demands of his craft and become silent. The naysayer who screeched that global warming was merely weather variation, or if true, not the work of men. He could be emboldened to seek wider platforms for his views. After a single year of conservation, a governor could rescind water restrictions while still in the middle of drought.

  Whale harvesting quotas? The glimmer of consciousness caught Dinton’s attention. Excellent. One of the newspapers had mentioned something about that. There had been some animosity at the last meeting of what the natives called nations. Many wanted the yearly total revised still further downward, but a minority resisted with vigor.

  Dinton tested the tendrils of thought of those sitting around the large ornate conference table until he recognized the resolve of one of the resistors. He cast a second charm, this one much shorter than the first, and in a few heartbeats, a part of the human’s subconscious was no longer totally his own.

  The suggestion was a simple one, a slight increase in emphasis competing with arguments that rebutted. Despite the compromise offered, the delegate would not yield. For another year, the harvest quotas would remain the same.

  Dinton pulled his own thoughts out of the meditation. He let his smile complete. Keeping the quota the same, by itself, probably did nothing of course. But it was another example of agreement not reached, of resources continuing to be squandered away, of opportunities not acted upon until it was too late. And these little things would add up, piling on one another until the meetings became so hostile they would be abandoned. The base instincts of the natives were not so very different from his own.

  Yes, all these little things would contribute. He recalled his experiment of a few years before. Never again had he been able to find the mind of the little shop owner to see how his idea fared. Had the gnome of a man managed to stumble onto the workings of true alchemy? Had he managed to concoct a potion that turned the most mild-mannered native into a savage blood-lusting beast? Would the patrons who consumed the philter also contribute to the downfall of human kind?

  No matter. With enough paths being trod, eventually, resources would dwindle and be hoarded by those with wealth. And after that, wars would blossom between those who had them and those who did not. Blossom like weeds in a garden that once swayed in a gentle wind with so much beauty.

  As he kept telling his brothers, patience was all they needed. Trust in the eldest. He alone saw the path leading to freedom. He alo
ne was gently manipulating the affairs of men so there would be no doubt of their extinction.

  It would be better, of course, if the mental connection were firmer — strong enough so total enchantment could be achieved, total control of another’s will to act as commanded. But the charm he was casting now did not work that way. The distances were too far, the connections too weak. It was only by his skill any small changes could be made at all.

  He glanced at the pile of newspapers, the older ones yellow and brittle from the heat. At first, he had ignored them, unintelligible symbols on flimsy parchment serving no purpose. But Angus had insisted they had value. Patiently, his brother had instructed him in the written language, as he had learned it from the recluse on the surface.

  And the more examples Angus obtained, the more Dinton learned. Without that knowledge, what he sensed in the enchantments would be only useless babble. But there was risk in what Angus was doing. He had to be handled carefully. Repeated scoldings about his traffic with the native. Not so much that his sibling would stop all together, but enough to keep his indiscretions in bounds.

  “I am in heat,” a voice broke through Dinton’s reverie.

  The exile turned toward the passageway, and his smile broadened. “My love,” he said. “As usual, your visits to my own lair are always a surprise, but nevertheless most welcome.”

  “I am in heat,” Dinton’s mate repeated. “We can even do it here. My need is great, and I do not care. When the child comes, we can give him one of the rings abandoned by the others.”

  Dinton sighed. “We are closer, Fretha, but the time is still not here.”

  “Why must we wait until the natives are gone?” Fretha said. “You explain it every time that I have need, but I am never convinced.”

  “We have responsibilities that go beyond our lusts,” Dinton said. “Can you not imagine how horrible it would be for a little one to endure the emptiness we have now? No, let us continue to wait until the entire orb is ours to use as we wish.”