As the mind cavern filled with attendants and the familiar buzz of activity, anticipation, and anxiety that always preceded action, Thuk’s mind wandered to another expression. A human expression he’d heard as a part of a joke once.
“Don’t poke the bear.”
He’d never seen a bear. But he had an awful feeling he and the rest of his harmony had already met one and were gearing up to poke it again.
NINE
“Thanks for joining us on the show this evening, Mr. Abington.”
“It’s my pleasure, Ji-eun,” Tyson said to the hostess of Methuselah After the Bell. After his rushed lunch meeting with Sokolov, he’d had half a mind to cancel the appearance, or at least move it to a call-in from his penthouse. He still felt off-balance from not only the conversation, but the discovery of the spy posing as their server, whom Paris had yet to ID or reacquire on the city’s security net.
Tyson was the unchallenged master of his domain. He wasn’t used to playing catch-up, or feeling like some nebulous, unseen force had gotten something over on him. It left him feeling anxious, a little paranoid, and more than a little vulnerable. None of which were the sorts of things he should be feeling under the hot lights of the local INN studio, especially when sitting across from an interviewer like Ji-eun Park.
But neither could he afford the questions a last-minute cancellation would raise. So, here he was, caked in stage makeup and trying to game out where the conversation was going to go so he could avoid the more devious booby traps. All while practically willing himself not to sweat in the heat.
The sensation was oddly invigorating.
“I know we’re cutting into your busy schedule, Mr. Abington, so—”
“Please.” Tyson waved a hand as it rested on his knee. “Tyson will do.”
“Of course. I know you’re busy, Tyson, so let’s dive right into today’s action, shall we?”
“By all means.”
Ji-eun shifted ever-so-slightly in her chair, angling her shoulders toward the main camera to give her viewers a better look at her without breaking eye contact with him. “Ageless has had a rough couple of weeks in the markets, down over a hundred nudollars a share, another fifteen just today. What do you think is driving this sudden crisis in investor confidence, Tyson?”
So, it was going to be one of those interviews, Tyson thought as he mounted a smile. Don’t forget the eyes, he reminded himself.
“Well, for starters, I think calling it a ‘crisis’ is a bit hyperbolic. The fact is, Ageless has been on quite a tear over the last three quarters, returning nearly seventeen percent over that period.”
“Excluding your stock’s stumble over the last two weeks, you mean,” Ji-eun jumped in. “You’re talking about your market high point, which came on the seventh.”
Tyson opened his palms, conceding the point. “Yes, of course. But since then, we’ve only given back five percent of our high. There had been talk on this very program three days earlier of a two-to-three split if we’d gone much higher. Although I will admit speculation about that possibility has cooled slightly.” He gave her a sly smile, as if he was letting her in on a private joke.
“So you’re saying the recent contraction is the result of overvaluation?”
“Not at all, and again I think you’re being a trifle contrarian. With the Grendel partnership between our friends at NeoSun and Praxis spooling up, there was quite a bit of investor enthusiasm for all three companies. Some market adjustment when excitement runs high is perfectly normal, even healthy.”
“But NeoSun, and even Praxis, haven’t experienced the drop Ageless has. NeoSun has actually gained a couple of points.”
Tyson waved away the objection. “We share a partnership on one project. We’re hardly conjoined triplets. Each company must be judged on its own merits and business concerns.”
The word tumbled out before Tyson could catch it. The slight uptick of Ji-eun’s left eyebrow confirmed that it hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Let’s talk about one of those concerns, if I may. Two weeks ago, a bulk cargo carrier inbound from Ageless’s mining operation in Teegarden arrived in orbit with word of an outbreak. We tried to get a statement from you personally at the time, but…”
She held a hand up to a nearby holoscreen. A perfect 3D-UHD of Tyson standing at the window of his penthouse office looking out into the city at sunset appeared, hands held behind his back. It hovered there for a moment as he mouthed some words blurred out in the window itself by automated security features designed to prevent eavesdropping. An instant later, the image shook violently as if struck by an earthquake, then tumbled toward the ground before cutting out entirely.
“… our camera-drone was shot down by some sort of missile. That seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it?”
Tyson’s teeth clenched so hard that he had to take a moment to force his jaw muscles to relax. He distracted from his fury at the ambush by switching the cross of his legs, but the moment of silence dragged on awkwardly.
“That was an unfortunate incident, to be sure. But you must understand, Ji-eun, information security is critically important to any transtellar. We have automated systems in place to preserve the integrity of our airspace, especially around the Immortal Tower where even a brief glance could compromise the private information of any of our tens of thousands of employees.” Tyson smiled warmly. The defense even had the benefit of being true, theoretically. “I didn’t realize at the time it was an INN drone, but even if I had, I doubt I could have intervened quickly enough to stop the peregrine array on the roof from reacting to the perceived breach.”
“You mean to tell me you have AI operating on shoot-to-kill orders on your own office building?” she said with mock indignation.
“Now, Ji-eun, you’re being hyperbolic again,” he said, trying to thread the needle between confronting her incendiary accusation without coming off as condescending or sexist. “Their automated protocols only apply to unmanned drones.
