An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (4 page)

Unrolling back to her full height, her gaunt form rose over
180
centimeters
.
Only
the barest crest in the upper part of her smock
gave any
indication of sex
.
The black runes covered every visible
centimeter
of her skin below her neckline
.
She walked with a gliding grace toward a small mechanism in the far corner
.
A
spring
-
wound conveyor lifted
a trail of
sand
,
pouring it
over a series of wooden and metal plates
.
Turning off the motion, she silenced the ocean's simple cadence
.
Opening the door, she repatriated the sounds of
Portland
's bustling city into her sanctuary.

"Good morning, Plutonia," Sonya said in a soft soprano to the tiniest wisp of gray fur
that
wound around her ankles
.
A large orange and white tom
cat
joined Plutonia in praising their human companion
.
The mewing chorus of seventeen other felines
,
plus
the shrill barks of one small
Pomeranian
,
joined the admiration
.
Live pets, banned everywhere on Earth for the last fifty years, were her only roommates.

Sonya
started a pot of boiling water over a simple gas grill, yet another of her illegal activities
.
As she waited, she spread five kilos of homemade pet food into a wooden trough on the floor
.
Plucking three broad leaves from a mint plant in a window
box
, she laid them into the top of a tall wooden drying box and took a similar number of dried leaves from a slit in the bottom
.
Between her palms she ground the brittle leaves
to a
near powder into a
tiny metal
bulb
.
The old
-
fashioned teapot worked hard to develop its shrill, piercing cry after starting from a low, lonely note.

As Sonya dipped the tea bulb into a
petite
porcelain cup, Plutonia jumped up
to
the beaten and scratched white
polymer
table
top
.
The cat stepped over and around bags of nitrogen compounds
and
detonators
,
and a stack of incomplete pipe bombs to sit
unconcerned
amongst the potential destruction and clean her fur
.

Sonya pushed aside a plastic bag of gunpowder
, set
down her teacup
, and
eased
herself in
to
a patio chair whose green color clashed
with
just about everything
nearby
. Sonya took a moment to stroke her tiny friend and croon encouragingly at her in a low
,
raspy voice
.
She
knew a customer waited in her living room
.
She sensed him arrive during her meditations
, but h
er morning tea took precedence
.
Her customers often suffered much longer waits than this man would endure
,
especially as his tabby only had a minor chest cold.

She sipped her hot tea with both hands firmly around her cup
.
It brought back fond recollections of her mother
.
Sonya
could see her sitting in the kitchen brewing some potion or another
—
this one for wart remover, that one as an AIDS cure, the other one as a love potion
.
Her mother, an aging woman even in Sonya’s earliest memories
,
lived in a one-bedroom slum apartment
.
T
he reek of cooked cabbage and
raw
salmon pervaded all of
Sonya’s
recollections
.
They were the smells of home
,
however revolting to most
.
She could
remember helping her
mother simmer sauerkraut
for use
as a poultice against baldness
.
The day before the Metros murdered her
,
she said to
her daughter
, "Girl, you are equal parts empathy, knowledge
,
and magic
.
You
’ll
be a formidable witch one day."

* * *
 

The dreary little
man swayed back and forth from one foot to another in front of the big obsidian desk
.
He held his hands together so tightly that
his
skin
broke into
a pattern of blanched white and angry red
.

“So we discovered the books didn’t balance if we did them on independent machines
.
They
did
balance when we did it on the network
,” he said
,
trying hard not to back away.

Nanogate
sneered
.
A small bit of his mind enjoyed
his subordinate’s
discomfort
.
The staff psychologist designed his office for the purpose of intimidation
.
The slanted floor and huge desk made people feel small
.
The
slate
-
gr
a
y walls chilled the entire room with an untouchable distance
.
Even the faux waterfall in the corner added an icy mist
reaching far
across the visitor’s area
.

“How much?”

“Fourteen point six million over the last two years.”
The little man couldn’t help it this time
,
and back
ed
up
almost ten centimeters as he reported
.

“These books include our combined conglomerate dealings?”

“Yes, sir.” The accountant’s shoulders slumped
.
Nanogate
could read his
vassal’s
eyes
.
His employee felt two pieces of bad news might finish him
.
“Without it you get an incomplete picture
.”

“Who could be responsible?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but for that breadth
and the areas it doesn’t touch
it can only be Kensington, VP of accounting.”

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,
u
h…”

“Rupert Wingley
.
Accounting grade four
.”

Nanogate
didn’t feel like shooting the messenger today
—
but only today
.
“You are promoted to grade six, Rupert
.
I thank you for your diligence.”

“Thank you
.
Thank you, sir
!
” 

Nanogate
nodded and waved his hand in dismissal
.
The accountant beat speed records out the
massive
granite doors
in spite of his great fortune
.
Nanogate
pushed a hidden button under the surface of his black stone desk
.

The
rush
of the waterfall provided the only sound as
a
slight man
glided in. He stood
barely
140
centimeters tall
,
with Nordic features of blonde hair and blue, s
leepy eyes
.
His muscles always drew attention.
They didn’t bulge on his body
,
but
protruded unexpectedly,
because places where fat should
pad the flesh to fill
the hollows, it didn’t
.
He looked like an old
-
fashioned medical dummy with only bones, muscles and a coating of skin
.

He wore a pair of
body tights
so formfitting they looked more like toe-socks poured from yellow vinyl
up to the waist
, with
nothing
covering
his hairless chest
.
Everything about the man screamed
KILLER
,
even without a visible weapon or body modification
.

“Mr. Marks, I have a job for you,”
Nanogate
said from behind
the
darkness of his
desk.

“Of course, sir,”
h
is visitor
offered in a
quiet, calm voice.

* * *
 

From a distance, Tony’s condominium looked i
ndistinguishable from the seven thousand other upper-middle-class dwellings in his building
.
Against the condo’s covenants, a small metal plaque
, “
Valhalla
,
”
forced his door to stand out amongst the
multitudes
that appeared otherwise
identical
,
save
the oversized silver numbers on each.

Tony entered and tossed the large box
onto his
dining room table
.
“I really feel great about saving that old crone,
” he remarked to himself,
“
but what if she sues me? What if I lose everything? I’d hate to have to move
.
”

He needed something to sooth
e
his mind
and murmered,
“Music
—  mellow c
la
ssic r
ock
.”
Strains of
“
Hotel California
”
by the Eagles filled his tastefully decorated home
.
Tony flopped down on one of his imitation black vinyl sofas and kicked at what appeared to be a white bearskin rug.

“
Percomm
Carmine at work
.”
The solido of a flowing brook filled the middle of the room
,
until a few moments later the face of a beautiful Pacific Islander replaced it
.
Her dark skin contrasted the white brilliance of her long hair and white lace bodice
.
“Nice lightning bolts,” Tony
playfully commented
about the pattern of blue over each of her
just barely hidden
areolas.

“Hi, baby
!
What are you doing at home
?
Playing sick
?
I can’t come and play nurse today
.”
Her tone implied that her nursing
would have very
little to do with the medical profession.

“I wish
.
No, I had some trouble on the TriMet
.
I helped
an old woman
survive
a coronary
.”

Her smiling face
transformed
into a frown that showed a harsher side of her beauty.
“Why did you do that
?
She might sleaze you and I don’t scope having a
blue
coat bibling me to rodent your mental state
.
If they spent the dime and didn’t just Nil you
.”
Anger brought out the gutter in her speech
.
Carmine, despite her limited intelligence,
had
pulled herself up from the st
r
eets from a Nil
—
a person outside of the databases who could be killed by anyone just for fun
—
to a respectable member of society
.

Tony
smiled to put her off guard.
“You mean you wouldn’t lie for me, Mink
?
Nah, don’t worry
.
You know I can always land on my feet
.”