Mind Over Ship

“Why does Andrea want Heliostream?” Nicholas said.

Eleanor smiled. “That’ll have to wait for a later discussion.”

“That’s not fair,” Zoranna said. “How do we know that you’re really Eleanor Starke, that this isn’t some sort of trick?”

Eleanor replied, “You and I are old friends and rivals, Zoe, yet in all that time we never established a means of verifying each other’s identity. I regret that now because I can’t easily prove to you that it’s really me. Instead I will need to rely on my persuasive abilities to convince you. Consider this, I believe Andrea Tiekel has made you a generous offer for Applied People.”

“What makes you believe that?”

“I know what her and E-P’s larger goals are, and that they’ll need a first-rate cloning facility, such as yours, to accomplish them. So she offered to buy you out. You, of course, refused.”

“I’ll never sell.”

“Not willingly at least; they know that. Don’t forget who we’re dealing with. No doubt they are able to model our behavior with a high degree of accuracy. So they needed to soften you up. I don’t know if Andrea colluded with Jaspersen and Singh, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.”

Nicholas said, “You say she wants our cloning facilities for some larger goals. What goals?”

Eleanor shook her head and smiled. “Sorry, that’ll have to wait for that later discussion I mentioned, which I promise you we’ll have.”

“Promises! Promises!” Zoranna said. “You expect to persuade me with promises?”

“Maybe not, but maybe a prediction will do. I am sorry to say this, but we believe that another, more grievous attack against Applied People will soon take place.”

Zoranna recoiled in dismay, and Nicholas said, “What hit? Tell us what you know.”

Cabinet replied, “We don’t know anything concrete; our predictive abilities fall far short of E-Pluribus’s. But whatever it is, it’ll be big enough to force you to sell. However, it would do Andrea no good to bring Applied People to its knees only to have you sell it to someone else. Therefore, whatever it is, it’ll be something that hurts Applied People in such a way that no one else will want it, and Andrea will seem to be doing you a favor by buying you out.”

Eleanor added, “And when that happens, I’d like you to remember our little talk today. You can decide then whether or not you believe me and want to join us in fighting back.”

“This is monstrous!” Zoranna said. “I can’t believe you came in here to manipulate me like this.”

“This is not manipulation.”

Zoranna seemed to withdraw within herself, and Nicholas said, “How will you fight back?”

Cabinet said, “With a poison pill.”

“Explain.”

“We will send you another datapin. Don’t play it. When you’re ready to act, publicly announce your intention to sell Applied People. Request offers from interested buyers. Then forward our pin to Saul Jaspersen.”

“I thought you said this was an attack against Andrea,” Zoranna said.

“It is, but we can hardly deliver a poison pill to her directly. She has nothing to fear from Jaspersen. Send him the datapin and include a personal message. Strike a conciliatory note. Suggest that you’d entertain a buyout offer from him.”

“Make nice with Jaspersen?” Zoranna rose from her seat. “I’ll do nothing of the sort. I would rather die first.”

Eleanor raised a bushy eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but is there something between the two of you I should know about? Something more than his collusion with Singh?”

Nicholas related Zoranna’s recent brush with death and her lingering suspicions of Jaspersen. He left out the part about his own near meltdown.

“That makes no sense,” Eleanor said. “You know Jaspersen better than any of us, Zoe. You worked for him when he was vice president all those years ago. He gave you your first real job. I remember the falling out you had with him, and I agree that he’s a Luddite, a blowhard, and a jerk. But a murderer? I don’t think so. Besides, if he did want to do you harm, why use his own product line? Why point the finger at himself? No, this sounds like Andrea’s handiwork.

“And it only confirms my hunch that you’re the right person, probably the only person, capable of setting the trap. Send him my datapin and a pleasant note, and at the same time remain noncommittal to any offer Andrea puts forward. Make her think you’re entertaining more interesting offers. If she was responsible for attacking you and framing Jaspersen, she’ll see the datapin going to him and wonder what went wrong. Their E-Pluribus model of you would predict him to be the last person in the world you’d cooperate with. The longer you shut her out, the more curious she’ll become.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Nicholas said. “You say that if we send your datapin to Jaspersen, they’ll see it. How? How does that work? We would naturally use a secure courier.”

“As you should. Have one of your own people hand deliver it. Wait until your courier is present and sees you put the datapin in the pouch before sealing it.”

Zoranna reacted as though insulted. “How dare you! How dare you come here and accuse my people of corruption! All of my iterants have sworn an oath of client confidentiality. My business depends on it, and we police them constantly. If any of my people leaked client information, let alone my information, Nick would know about it at once, and we would deal with the matter most severely.”

“Easy, old friend,” Eleanor said. “No one’s accusing your iterants of anything. But I think you’re underestimating E-P again. Your people do participate in E-Pluribus preffing sessions, don’t they? They don’t need to open their mouths there to divulge all sorts of things. Most human knowledge is unconscious anyway, and E-P reads it through the scenarios it constructs. Your people need only watch a scenario, and E-P can read them through their attraction, repulsion, anticipation, stress levels, and what have you. I, myself, have been using your people to spread disinformation about myself for years.”

Zoranna seemed more lost than ever, and Nicholas made summing-up gestures to bring the meeting to a close. “Thank you for that bit of news. Any other revelations?”

Eleanor shook her head. “No, except to assure you that no matter how all this shakes out, I won’t let Applied People fail.” She glanced at Cabinet, and added, “During my absence, my own company has suffered through poor management, but we’ve got things back on track, and whatever resources you need to weather the storm, just ask.”

NIGHT FELL OUTSIDE the windows, but Zoranna remained in her office alone, watching Uncle Homer suffer on a rug in the corner. The door opened, and Nicholas entered, followed by an arbeitor bearing a light supper, a glass of wine, and a glass of grayish liquid. Zoranna gazed at him silently for a long time, and without the aid of implants, he had only her facial cues to read her by. Their recent visitors had done nothing to lift her mood. Finally, she sighed and removed her feet from the desk. She used a fork to pick at her salad.

Unasked, Nicholas sat in a chair opposite her and said, “You realize, of course, that it might have just been Andrea in disguise. This unspecified disaster looming over us sounds eerily like her earlier prediction.”

“I know.”

“Everyone wants us to roll over and play dead.”

“That might be the best thing to do.”

Even without implants, Nicholas knew she didn’t mean that. In the silence that ensued, he could hear the crunch of carrots between her teeth, but he could not taste them. He heard the panting breath of Uncle Homer in the corner, but chose not to feel it. What a mistake that had been, to create a construct that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods.

Zoranna tapped the glass of grayish liquid with her fork and looked at him quizzically.

“Standard, FDA-approved biometry implants,” he said. “Nothing more.”

She did not touch the glass. She turned in her chair and looked at the nighttime city outside the window. Nicholas had known this woman since he was a brand-new belt valet system seventy years ago. He knew her inside and out, front to back, top to bottom, but she was ever a mystery to him.