The Global Marketing Division underwhelmed Kara from the first day of her internship. These people were automatons, spinning the same generic promotional campaigns for the IntraNex and Global Wave as their predecessors had for generations. They fashioned the company’s public communiques with heavy doses of euphemisms and time-tested brand slogans familiar to Hokkis from early childhood. They showed no interest toward innovation or discovery. These Kohlna had no teeth.
“Kara, you’re telling me you want to make the move at Nantou’s biggest formal gala?”
“There’s no better time. Anyone who matters will be there. The entire Nantou hierarchy, the Governor’s Council, even the Circle of Mothers. Especially them. No tongues wag louder than theirs. Once it’s done, there will be no takebacks.”
“There might also be no forgiveness.”
“I know, Chi. I’ve thought about it. If I play this right, there won’t be a public spectacle. If the announcement is made by Lord Taron himself, no one will question it.”
Chi-Qua choked on her wine. “Taron? You’re talking about Lord Ban-Ho Taron? The wealthiest Hokki in The Lagos. Some say the world. Why would he announce your move to BRED? For that matter, why would he care?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t, but his great grandson does.”
“Wait. What?”
“Ya-Li. You’ve met him. I introduced you a few weeks back.”
“I remember. Tall, thin, shy. About our age but looks like he’s twelve. Oh, Kara. Don’t say it. You caught his heart and now you’re playing him.”
“I promised him nothing, and he’s too shy to say how he feels. Besides, he knows he won’t be allowed to choose his wife. It’s no accident the Taron line has officers in every seamaster corporate.”
Two red-breasted swans zeroed in on the remains of their lunch. Chi-Qua grabbed a roll and tore it into little pieces.
“OK, so you’ve got inside help. How exactly? Ya-Li can’t just ask his great grandfather to make the announcement.”
“No. Every year, twenty minutes before the arrival of the Sanhae, Lord Taron offers a series of toasts. He’s been doing this for sixty years. It’s all scripted and timed. About forty toasts. Continues up to the instant of Sanhae. He praises everything. Corporate profits, top executives, individual achievements, technological breakthroughs. Name it. He used to spend half his time praising the Chancellors, back before all that ended. But he has a small section reserved for rising stars. That’s where I come in. Ya-Li is on the family committee to script his toasts.”
“So, he’s just going to slip it in there? Won’t someone vet it?”
“There won’t be time. He’s going to submit a last-minute revision to Lord Taron right before the toasts begin. Apparently, Ya-Li is a favorite of his great grand. He’ll be trusted.”
“You’re mad, Kara. You won’t win this for free.”
“No. But I’ll win. It’s what I deserve. Are you going to support me?”
“On what? This loony plan you never told me about?”
There she was, the old Chi-Qua, hopping aboard for the ride.
“Thanks, Chi. This is just the beginning, for both of us. Before long, I’ll have the leverage to push for the Baek name to be rehabilitated.”
Two weeks later, the Syung family arrived together at the Nantou Global Entertainment Tower adjacent to the corporation’s curvaceous glass skyscrapers. It was the event of the Pinchon social calendar, one of elegance and excess, where The Lagos Unified Symphony entertained the elite who paraded in formal gowns and suits made in the colors of their households. It was a time to display family jewels, to clink deep-fluted glasses, to devour Kohlna as only its top chefs could prepare it, and to celebrate the good fortune Hokkaido’s seas would always provide.
Kara’s flowing red gown and white gloves seemed an afterthought against the ten-ounce acenomite diamond hanging at the end of her necklace. Legend said it was first given to the Syung-Low matriarch seven generations back. Kara’s mother, conscious not to wear the same jewelry at these events more than once every three years, took her daughter by surprise minutes before they left Haansu.
“You have wanted attention all your life,” she said, clasping the necklace onto Kara. “You will not have this problem tonight.”
She was right. Kara’s peers from the great families and those who worked with and above her at Nantou, offered compliments. Sometimes for the diamond, but more often for Kara.
“They never realized you were so beautiful,” Chi-Qua whispered in her ear, the voice coming from across the plaza, where support staff were required to congregate for their own modest revelry.
Kara kept her promise to bring Chi-Qua inside the festivities, to be there when Kara “springs from the closet.” She placed a shell in each ear, matching frequency with Chi-Qua’s devices. She camouflaged them behind the large pearls pierced to her earlobes.
“Some of them are leering,” Kara told her best friend. “And I thought my brothers were pathetic.”
The guests mingled before the requisite Sanhae dinner. At first, they drifted in packs as unified households; small cells of different colors and shades navigated around and through each other. More than two hundred variants were represented. The only shade not of the elite? The dull gray of the wait staff, which circulated with trays of full wine glasses, fresh pipes full of poltash, and an array of cream covered F’heldabeast roe (the kind that went for eighty Dims each on the open market).
In time, the houses blended into a frenzied kaleidoscope. Kara enjoyed this part away from parents and brothers. Though the fleeting conversations were vacuous, and the gossip anything but shocking, she enjoyed passing along her observations to Chi-Qua, usually tinged with the snark only her best friend might appreciate.
“You’d never know the Chancellors only left four years ago,” she said. “I haven’t heard one word about the ‘glory days.’ Funny. Most of these
