job.'
There was silence again except for clicking of keys.
'Tell Tricker,' Warren said. 'Let him sort it out.'
One of them inhaled deeply, then exhaled sharply.
After a moment Roger said thoughtfully, 'I'm not sure I want to go that far.'
'
'Okay, let's just look at this calmly for a minute,' the CEO said. 'She's young—
much younger than the other candidates. Maybe she just got carried away.'
'Boy, I'll say.' Paul sneered.
'I find myself wondering how I would be reacting to this if it had been, say, Bob Cho.'
Cho was another candidate for the security-chief position; he was forty-five, about five-eight, slender, but very fit. He'd gotten his start in the CIA.
'Ye-ah,' Warren said slowly. 'I guess I see what you mean. But would he do something like that?'
'If he had an ace like this to play, yes, I think he might. And if she'd called up and asked for a private meeting, would you have given her one?'
Warren laughed at that, sharply but just once. 'Hell, no!'
'Me neither. All because she's an attractive young blonde. So what I ask myself is, what choice did she have? Really?'
There was another long pause.
'Okay,' Warren said reluctantly. 'You've made a good enough case that I'm willing to hold off sicking Tricker on her until after she's hired. I mean, sooner or later we're going to have to come clean about where this new stuff came from.
Right?'
'Why don't we seek out the advice of our new security director on that one?'
Colvin answered.
Time to go home and process the information she'd gathered.
Would tomorrow be too soon to apologize, or should she wait until she'd been working with them a few days? She could attribute the delay to embarrassment.
They would probably find that rather appropriate.
She pushed in a CD titled
Few of the songs made sense, but that was humans for you. Most of these sounds tickled the pleasure center of the brain to a slight degree, which was undoubtedly the point. So, like a human, she decided to just sit back, relax, and let the sensation roll over her.
Soon she could move into phase two.
ECOLOGY EXPO, NEW YORK: PRESENT DAY
'This is boring,' Peter Ziedman said. He frowned and shifted the heavy camera on his shoulder.
'No kidding,' his soundman and college bud Tony Roth agreed. 'It's nothing like what I expected.'
They glared at the neatly set-up booths and the casually well-dressed people around them. Even the loopier outfits had cost real money, you could see that.
They'd been expecting a lot more over-the-rainbow stuff from the New York Ecology Fair.
Ziedman had been pinning his hopes on it, in fact. He'd graduated from Chapman University only two month ago, with honors, and already his dad was asking, 'So what did I spend my money for?'
Like you could get a full-fledged movie together over the weekend. Well, okay, some people had done that, but not lately, and probably not while sober.
So Peter had decided to do a documentary on an inspired madman. They'd find their guy at a place like this and then follow him around while he tried to convert the world. It would be hilarious.
But what he'd found instead was a slew of start-up businesses looking for venture capitalists. And while he knew there was a story worth telling in that, at the moment he needed something fast, easy, and moderately entertaining from the first shot. The story of water-purification devices just wasn't going to do that.
'Where are the nuts?' he shouted.
A young woman beside a solar-energy display turned to look at him. 'The Rain Forest Products booth is giving away Brazil nuts in aisle four.' She pointed vaguely in that direction.
Ziedman looked at her; she was attractive in a washed-out, WASPY kind of way.
He walked over to her and said, 'I'm making a documentary and I was hoping for some more colorful characters to spice up the narrative.' He shrugged and then shifted the camera. 'It can't all be facts and figures.'
She nodded, looking vaguely disapproving. That was when he noticed that her badge said she was the fair's co-chair.
'So what exactly
Peter thought that he was probably very lucky that she wasn't asking him to leave, as he hadn't received permission from the fair to film here. She looked capable of kicking him out. He decided to be honest.
'I'm looking for someone with a message,' he said. 'Someone who can't get anyone to listen but who thinks he, or she, can save the world. You know anybody like that?'
She laughed, and it changed her whole face. She really was attractive. 'Oohhh yes,' she said. 'I know tons of people like that. But they tend to avoid places like this. To them we're all sellouts.' She looked around and seemed to spot someone. Pointing to a tired-looking man on a folding chair near the door, she said, 'Try him. That's Ron Labane. He used to be a pretty good guy, associated with a small, fairly successful organic farm in Washington state.' She shook her head. 'Now… it's kinda sad really. He's got a book he's trying to get published.
He's kind of into a lone-wolf thing right now.'
Ziedman looked at the man. He was wearing tan chinos and a sport jacket over a sweater vest and an open- collared blue shirt. Though he was clean-shaven and his hair was neat, there was something a little shopworn about him. His whole body spoke: of discouragement and exhaustion.
Peter turned on the camera and zoomed in on him. As if by instinct, like the lone
wolf the woman had named him, Labane turned to look directly into the lens. He raised one brow and with a lopsided smile raised his hand and gestured Peter over.
'Thanks,' Ziedman said to the woman. He and Tony hustled over.
Sarah felt horribly conspicuous—which was understandable, since she was outrageously overdressed. Everyone around her was wearing casual clothes and sandals; some were even in shorts. She was dressed in Scarlett O'Hara's garden-party dress, with an oversized sun-bonnet, little gloves, puffy sleeves, low bodice, crinolines, and an enormous hoopskirt. Except that hers was in black and red.
People were grinning at her. The smiles were not very friendly; in fact, there was a distinctly predatory edge to them, as if the guests were really a pack of socially superior wolves. She smiled back, trying desperately to carry it off.
Victor Salcido—her host—approached carrying an enormous rack of barbecued ribs, dripping with sauce, on a very small paper plate. Sarah tried to refuse it, but he forced it on her. The plate buckled and the ribs and sauce poured over her.
Suddenly her dress was white and the sauce looked like thick blood as it ran down her front. She dropped the plate and looked at her gloved hands. It was blood.
