An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (59 page)

Tony smiled as he pushed through the street level crowds.
“
You’re right, t
hat would be childish
.”

Christine
,
as always
,
said nothing.

* * *
 

Nanogate
sat quietly in his study in a 1960s leather wingback chair
.
No one kept him company
.
He clutched the report on the acquisition of Marineris Mining in his left hand
,
unread
.
H
is eyes track
ed only
the dance of lint specks in a shaft of sunlight through his skylight
.

Not a single GAM incident
had
marred his daily report
s
in over a week
.
His corporate espionage reports told him his competitors weren’t circling around the lamed
Nanogate
as he expected
.
He didn’t know which report worried him the most
.
The lull reminded him of the quiet of a six-year
-
old coloring on the walls, a teen with his first narcostick
,
or that calm just before a squall’s first gust
.

His sense of self
-
preservation, honed over many years in the cutthroat world of the corporations,
screamed at
him to do something
—
anything
.
He couldn’t think of a thing to do about either of the negative reports
.
Picking up the single malt scotch, he sipped it gently, brooding over his lack of choices
.

It was times like these he particularly missed Mr. Marks
.
Marks and
Nanogate
existed in symbiosis
,
where Mr. Mark
s’
s
advice often compl
e
mented his own
.
It was a rapport he didn’t share with his new bodyguard
.

Staring off into space, he noticed the sudden dimming of the light just before he
simultaneously
heard
and
felt a drop in air pressure signifying his floating home
was
no longer airtight
.

An impressive man, clad in canary yellow tights, dropped rapidly through the perfectly round hole in
the
skylight to
a rough
landing
three meters in front of him
.
The muscles bulg
ing
on muscles
,
so
typical
of
steroid replacements
,
made the bodyguard a
caricature of a human
. A tiny
Adonis
-
like face perched between massive shoulders
reaching all the way up to his ears
.
On top of all that, the intruder
wielded a wide
-
field gauss gun
with apparently expert skill
. Before he finished standing, he
leveled
it directly at Nanogate’s chest
.

“Ah, a visitor
,”
Nanogate said, not moving from his chair.
“
I do have a door and an appointment secretary, you know
.
”

“I’ve come to deliver a message,” the unknown bodyguard said in
a
tone intended to cow any victim
.

“Percomms work
, too
.”
Nanogate
nonchalantly took another sip of his scotch
.

“This one requires your death.”

“So melodramatic
.
So who wants me dead
?
No
,
wait
,
l
et me guess
.
I like guessing
.”

The bodyguard said nothing
.

“If it were the Greenies, they wouldn’t have bothered to talk
. They would’ve
just planted a bomb or shot me from some distant window.

“If it were one of my underlings
,
they
’d be
too terrified to confront me
,
and
even if they got the nerve, they
would
’
ve just shot first and asked questions later
.

“If it were one of my family
,
I
would’ve expected
poison, or perh
aps electrocution in the bath
—
I hear that
’
s very popular now
.

“Hmm
…
that only really leaves my contemporaries
.
As I’m guessing
,
I would say you represent that bitch,
Taste Dynamics
.”

The bodyguard inclined his
comicly
malproportioned head.
“Well, she did say
you’d
probably figure it out, so I’m not concerned
.
She offers you a bargain.”

“Oh, goodie,”
Nanogate
incongruously said, bouncing up and down like a kid who just got a surprise present.

“Tell her how you set up
Taste Dynamics
,
and
she’ll
leave your fortune to your family
.
If you don’t
,
she’ll
strip them to
Nil
s
.
You, of course, die either way.”

“Hmm
.
I’ll have to think about this one.”

“You have ten seconds.”

“Oh, I won’t need that long
.
It figures your oversexed boss would pick someone that looked like Adonis with the
subtlety
of a wounded buffalo
.
Tell your boss ‘
p
iss off.’” 

The gauss gun didn’t hesitate
.
It showered innumerable fragments of metal outward at just short of the speed
of
sound
.
Not fast enough.

Almost instantaneously,
a cylinder slammed down, ripping a hole in the ceiling plaster, crushing an antique end table and indelibly compressing the carpet in a circle less than a meter around
Nanogate
’s chair
.
The weapons fragments buried themselves in the ballistics barrier
’s impenetrable skin
.

The bodyguard looked stunned
.
Belatedly
,
he fingered his grav belt
,
but c
eramic composite shutters, stronger than any metal, slammed closed over the skylight.

A thick mist started to rain down into the room as trillions of nanites cascaded out of nearly invisible sprayers
.
The bodyguard writhed and wiped frantically as his skin took on a metallic sheen
.
He took another wild shot at his targe
t
,
with predictable results
.

“I’ll send your remains to
Taste Dynamics
,”
Nanogate
said
as the nanites
continued
to eat the intruder, from the neck down, one molecule at a time.

* * *
 

That one of the highest members of the
American
M
afia
chose such opulent surroundings still gave Tony pause
.
Knowing his host, t
he brilliant gold of the new wallpaper may have been just that
—true
gold
.
Priceless works of art replaced the previous priceless works of art like some sale gallery
’s
rotating stock
.
The previous Roman theme
had been
replaced with a Louis the
Fourteenth
sunburst in the carpet and
boulle woodworking in the walls
.
Even
the
chair bore fantastic marquetry within its simplistic
,
straight wooden lines of the period
.

“Welcome back, Tony,” Jamie said
, sliding onto a
lounge chair
wearing only a long
,
flowing dressing gown that left no illusion as to her natural red hair
.

“Ah, you learned my real name.”

“Not difficult with the newly elected leader of the GAM
.
Sonya was a naughty girl
.
She led me to believe you were
less
important
than
you are.”

“You knew Sonya’s real name also.”

“She knew
that I knew
.
It was a game we both played.”

“Hmm. In either case
,
my notoriety seems to be preceding me.”

“Fame, not notoriety.”

“Whichever
.
Both can be dangerous for a guerilla
.”

“I won’t debate that with you
.
The corporations already know your name
,
so what’s the harm?”

“Good point.”

“I
’
d offer you something for brunch
,
but I can tell
you’re
a man of action and not one to be put off by the civilities of life,” Jamie said, stretching
out
her long legs to be admired.

“Perhaps in the future we can investigate those civilities, if
you’re
so inclined
.
However
,
right now I beg your pardon in that
I’m
short of time
.”

Jamie sketched a Marilyn Monroe pout on her face
.
“Well, if we must
.
Pray
tell,
what business can be so pressing
?
”

“
I’d
like your organization to delay any of the Portland Metro responses to a specific area for a period of two hours
.”

She looked at him almost incredulously before she threw her whole body backward on the lounge and laughed in a deep
,
throaty way
.

“Have I said something funny?”
Tony inquired in all seriousness.

This seemed to only cause the young woman more mirth
.
The
new
bodyguards in the room even took notice of their employer’s antics.

“Yes, quite
.
I can see why Sonya kept you around
.
You’re
quite an amusing fellow.”

“I can assure you I’m quite serious.”

“Then in that case it would cost…say
,
twenty million,” Jamie said
,
throwing out a number in
such
a way
as
to make it obviously out of reach.

“
Let’s make it
twenty
-
five million instead to cement a new friendship
,
”
Tony said in a declarative tone
.
“Would you like cash or a cashier’s credit?”

The mirth
instantly
left Jamie’s face
.
“You
’
re serious
, aren’t you?
Where would you get that kind of credit
?
We used to have to discount to Sonya just to keep her armed.”

“We’ve come up in the world
.
Looks like your sources aren’t quite as
effective as you thought
.”

Jamie sat
looking
deeply into his eyes
, a
ll hints of the siren gone from hers
.
Her eyes now only held
hard
,
cold business
.