Chapter 19
Corey Wilkes.
He and Sam had been friends and business partners once. Together, they had founded TATOO, the Transcolonial Association of Truck Owner-Operators. Years later, shortly after I started driving, Corey engineered a power grab that installed him as president more or less for life. Sam resigned from the board of directors and eventually from the organization itself. I followed suit. Sam wanted to retire to the farm, but I persuaded him to help me start the Starriggers' Guild, which he did. And that was the start of our troubles with Corey Wilkes. Wilkes harassed us, off and on, for the next ten years. Guild drivers kept disappearing. There were numerous suspicious mishaps, hijackings, and the like. It got so that some manufacturers refused to contract with Guild drivers, and most, while they would hire an occasional Guild member during peak periods, would not become signatories to the Guild's Basic Agreement, which had been the organization's raison d' etre in the first place. TATOO had become a combination private trucking company and labor union, run for the express purpose of lining the pockets of Wilkes and his friends in the Authority bureaucracy. Five years ago, Sam had died in an apparently unrelated Skyway accident. A few weeks ago I had learned from Wilkes himself that he had hired stunt drivers to stage the incident. I may have been the intended victim. Sam had been on his way to see a grain futures broker on Einstein, a meeting I had arranged and had intended to keep, but a job I couldn't refuse?times being what they were?had come up and Sam had gone instead.
'I thought you were dead, Corey,' I said.
A faint chuckle came from the speaker on the instrument panel. 'You know, Jake, I don't believe I'll tell you one way or the other. Right now I can't think of a good reason not to level with you, but you never know when a little datum like that could come in handy if held in reserve.'
'I'd say you were dead. You took that.44 slug in the chest, as I recall. Looked like it hit near the heart if it didn't hit dead center.'
'That very well may be. But let me preface this whole conversation by saying that you aren't talking to Corey Wilkes. I am an Artificial Intelligence program imbued with the personality and some, but not all, of the accumulated life memories of Corey Wilkes'. I have been updated on recent events, but not in detail. I have also been programmed with instructions.'
'Which are…?'
'You'll forgive me if I'm not too specific, but generally I have been charged with the task of keeping an eye on you.'
'And with leaving a trail of radioactive wastes,' I added, 'so we could be easily tracked.'
Again, a chuckle. 'Hard to put anything over on you, Jake. I don't know why I try.'
I exhaled noisily and crossed my arms. 'Cut the merte. What do you want?'
A sound like a sigh came from the speaker. 'Yes, what in the world do I want? A very good question. Unfortunately, as a mere Personality Analog I lack the psychic underpinnings to answer that with any depth?I don't have the complete backlog of memory, the Freudian substrata, if you will. Something drives me; I don't know quite what.'
I scowled. 'The question wasn't philosophical. What do you want specifically? Now.'
'Oh, of course. Sorry. Well, what with the facts that have recently come to light, I suppose I want the Cube.'
'You can have it.'
A short silence. Then, 'That was easy.'
'I mean it. Take the punking thing. It's yours.'
'Well, that's settled.' Another pause. Then the voice said cautiously and a little wonderingly, 'You'd really hand it over with no fuss?'
'Absolutely. It's worth nothing to me. In fact, it's been nothing but a liability. Besides, no one has any idea what the thing is. Odds are it's not a Roadmap.'
'Yes, there's no telling what it is. But it's worth a great deal. To me, anyway.'
'Why?'
'Well, my original deal with the Colonial Authority still stands, I suppose, which is that I deliver you or the Roadmap or both to them in exchange for immunity from unpersonhood. But seeing as how the Authority wasn't entirely straight with me, I don't feel entirely obliged to hold up my end of the bargain.'
'How did they doublecross you?'
'It wasn't a doublecross per se. More a matter of withholding pertinent information. They didn't tell me anything about the Black Cube.'
'Maybe they didn't know about it,' I suggested.
'I'm pretty sure they did. If Darla's story about getting the Cube through the dissident network is true, and if key people within the network have been subjected to Delphi scans, they'd have to know about it. Mind you, I've pieced this together from snippets of conversation I've overhead since I came on board. I'm fairly sure you think they know about it.'
I saw no use in denying it. 'You're right.'
'And when the deal was struck, it was emphasized that they wanted you alive. And they wanted your truck, too. That tells me they were very interested in searching for something hidden on board or on your person. What I don't understand is why they didn't tell me about the Cube. I was ready to hand Winnie over to them, which of course would have elicited gales of laughter.'
'It might be a question of timing, Corey,' I said. 'When did you cut your deal with the CA?'
'Several months ago. Two or three. There was a prolonged period of negotiation.'
'Uh-huh. Well, according to Darla's timetable, they ran the Delphi on Assemblywoman Marcia Miller only a month or so ago. They could have found out about the Cube then.'
'Yes, there is a time element to be considered here. Hmm.' A long pause. 'I think you may be right; Jake. When I bargained with them, they may only have had rumors to go on. Rumor had it that you were in possession of a Roadbuilder artifact, a Roadmap. They knew it wasn't Winnie?of course they neglected to tell me?'
'No one knew or could have predicted that Winnie would come along on this trip. Our picking her up was a total fluke.'
'So I gather. As I was saying, at the time the deal was cut, the Authority may only have known that you had a Roadmap, nature unspecified. A few months later, they find out about the Cube.'
'And naturally enough,' I said, 'they thought the Cube was the map.'
'Naturally enough. But they should have told me, dammit.' He sounded hurt.
I laughed. 'And have you wind up with it? Tell me you wouldn't have demanded that your deal be renegotiated just a tad.
'I'm truly embarrassed: You're right, of course.'
'You should be, you sneaky son of a bitch. When you had us aboard the Laputa, even I didn't know that Darla had the Cube. She seemed to have thrown in with you guys then.'
'Yes, the cunt. I'd be wary of her, Jake.'
'I am.'
'But…' The voice did an imitation of a weary sigh. 'But wouldn't I have wound up with the Cube anyway?' A thoughtful interlude. 'No, I guess not. I never suspected for a moment that Darla had it.'
'No, you didn't, and you wouldn't have as long as you had to string Darla's father along in believing that all the brouhaha was for the purpose of protecting your little drug-running scheme.'
'I see your point. Talk about not being in the know. That fool… that contemptible idiot. And then he goes and shoots me, for Christ's sake.'
'His finest moment.'
'Really, Jake. But it still seems to me I would have found out about the Cube eventually. Wasn't the Authority taking an awful risk? After all, they didn't know Darla was carrying the Cube. Did they?'
'I'm not sure,' I said. 'Maybe they did. If not, though, I'll bet that when Miller spilled her brains they got really worried. That was probably when they dispatched Petrovsky to get the Cube. Your deal was rendered null and
