Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III (26 page)

Just as he was about to explain his clone acceleration
process and take her on that lab tour, Leo’s bot-com chimed.

It was, once again,
that
bot-com.

“What do you want? I’m eating dinner, can you call back
later?”

It was Max. “Mr. Songtain, sir, did you forget The Board
meeting? We are all here waiting for you. The merger with Organ-Dreams Inc. is
on the table. The reps flew in from Korea today. You do remember that we were
planning the merger; it’s the brain cell regen thing. Should I cancel?” Max
spoke softly into his com, from an adjacent room. The group had gone to dinner
without Leo; Max made up some excuse. But now, Leo had to make an appearance,
for bushido sake, at least!

“Oh yes, I mean no, I didn’t forget. I’ll be there right
away.” Leo covered the bot-com with an abalone juiced hand and mumbled, “But
I’m not even dressed for it.” He tried to remember what suit he was supposed to
wear to The Board meeting.

After several seconds, he rang his personal clothing master
on his other com, and the assistant immediately appeared at the door, carrying
three suits. Leo pointed to the purple one, with the aqua shirt, and black tie.
Roxanne just looked on, finishing off her abalone, with some nice cold
chardonnay and fresh aqua-pod grown strawberries. It seemed like such a fuss;
she only just had her black leathers and orange Incs. And in her case, that was
a luxury. Most worker levels only had their uniforms.

Leo looked crestfallen at having to leave
his
Roxanne
on their first night together, but he excused himself and followed the
assistant to his changing room, bot-com still activated. Roxanne could hear him
discussing the meeting with Max, on his room speaker. While they were in the
next room, Dorian spoke to Roxanne on her own bot-com, told her to get to that
meeting. It may facilitate an easier escape...easier than from the Opus. He
said he’d send her the building layouts to guide her to a safe exit, once she
got to the Songtain Building.

“Your limo is already prepped and ready, sir. I took the
liberty; it’s your hover version so you should be here in ten minutes. I can
hold them off with shots of bourbon until you get here. But please make it
quick, sir.” Max Peabody chimed off and went back to The Board room.

He called the meeting early when he heard that Roxanne Smoot
had arrived at the Opus. He surmised that Leo would want to bring her to The
Board meeting to show her off to his fellow CEOs. Max figured it would be the easiest
way to give his hired guns clear access to their target, Roxanne Smoot. He
already arranged for them to gain access to the building, using the back
loading dock behind the labs. They would arrive in a van marked
Biohazards
,
park out back, and Max would let them in. It would be a quick assassination;
would look like Leo was the planned target, but Roxanne was collateral damage.
Max even arranged to jump in and push Leo to the ground, like the hero of the
day. Maybe he’d get a huge bonus and that early retirement.

He’d be more excited if only his stomach would stop hurting.

Meanwhile Leo executed a rapid costume and personality
change, and returned to the dining room of his penthouse. He was sorely
disappointed at having to leave Roxanne on their first night together. Plus
that slab of rather uncooked abalone had left him not feeling well. His stomach
churned in protest as his assistant tied his tie, and handed him his attaché
case, a fine black Moroccan leather folder type, stuffed with some hand written
bogus notes, for effect.

Max wasn’t feeling well either; his stomach ached nonstop.
He’d had his personal physician come over the previous night to see if he’d
contracted one of the thirty seven new versions of the flu virus, even though
he’d had shots for each and every one of them. The physician said that, other
than appearing tired, which would be normal for anyone serving as the chief
legal counsel for Leo Songtain, he could find nothing wrong for someone sixty
years old.

This was odd because Max Peabody was only forty-two. He
glanced in the mirror along the wall as he reentered The Board room. He did
look terrible, much older than he was. He thought it was just pre-murder stress;
he was thinking maybe he needed to drink more of that new CEO nutria-blend. After
this was over he knew he’d need a nice long vacation on Fiji.

 “Who was that, Leo?” Roxanne asked nonchalantly, from
behind the bar. She’d polished off the abalone, and sipped some champagne from
a long-stemmed crystal glass, while munching on toast slathered with black
caviar and sour cream. She figured she might as well try everything before she
escaped, even fish eggs. Roxanne was sure she’d never get abalone or fish eggs at
the local rig-ryder fast food joints.

She was finally feeling more confident, because until that
last bot-com from Dorian she’d been worried about her escape strategy. But with
Dorian’s aid, she now had an opportunity; she would escape from Leo Songtain’s
building at the harbor, during his board meeting. Plus, the harbor was much
closer to that rebel submersible, the one she planned to take to Tokyo.

“It was Max at The Board. I am so sorry, but it is something
I must attend. Please forgive me, Roxanne. I will return to you as soon as I’ve
executed my appropriate face time. In the meantime, I can arrange some
entertainment. Would you like me to have a musician booked? How do I look?” Leo
turned around in front of Roxanne, but with his eyes on the wall mirror, not
her. It was only one reason she thought he was the worst sort of dweeb. As he
closed the mirror and got ready to enter his lift, Roxanne said,

“You look wonderful, Leo. I’ll go with you. I’ve always
wanted to see you in action. You can give me a tour, after your meeting of
course. I’ll stay in the lobby so I won’t be a bother during your CEO face time.
I know I’m not dressed for one of your board meetings.” Roxanne got up from the
table and donned her leather jacket.

“What, you want to go with me?” Leo asked, with his eyes
still on himself, in the mirror.

“Yes, why am I over-dressed?” Roxanne asked with one of
those smiles that made those rig-ryders melt into their shark soup. She lowered
her dark glasses just for the right effect, and Leo could only gulp out, “Yes,
whatever you want, anything you want. Of course you should come with me.” They
were on their way to the meeting within two minutes, taking his black stretch
hover; the one with the full bar, wall vids, bubble-blowing hot tub, and bad 3D
lift music. It had just been redecorated in pink with black orchids, so it
still had that synthetic glob smell.

Back at the Aberdeen tunnel, Michael bent over Rose,
removing something from her teeth-grip. “Let me take that off your hands; I’ll
take it from here. You just relax and enjoy, I’ll be back in two days. I’ve
stocked the place. Don’t try to leave.” Michael took the paper with the formula
on it from Rose’s teeth, put it into his duffle bag, and then took Rose into a
large room, right off the Aberdeen tunnel. You could hear the hovers humming by
at three hundred miles per hour, just on the other side of the opaque, epon
wall.

“Just go get Roxanne out of that place, Michael and…oh my,
who is this?” Michael stopped packing his duffle, and loading his three guns;
for a minute, Rose thought he was going to kill her.

“I think you two have met. Well, perhaps not formally. Rose,
allow me to introduce you to
my
co-pilot. Darcy Segev, meet Rose Smoot.”
Michael bowed in lordly fashion, introducing his tall, dark, and handsome
German shepherd; the one Rose had
one-night-stood
back at the love
hotel.
Small world
!

“See you guys in two days Rose, and play nice.” Michael left
the room to return to the tunnel parking lot where he’d stored his hover bike
in one of those pay by the second slots. He set to full nitro and accelerated
into traffic level four, at two hundred miles per hour, heading to the hover
jet port. Rose was not sure what he’d meant by play nice.

But
ah, canine foreplay; shall I go into it
?

After the limo ride at breakneck speed, Leo took the express
lift to the 27
^th
floor and walked into The Board room of his Hong
Kong firm, Stem-Worm®, Inc., followed by Roxanne Smoot,
the Roxanne Smoot
;
the place was went zombie. The six Korean businessmen, from the lowly
bot-scriber to the emaciated, but overconfident CEO, all had boners, Leo’s team
almost slid off their chairs, and the door-holding guy just barely maintained
enough muscle control to hold the thing open for them.

Only Max seemed unaffected by the sudden appearance of
Roxanne Smoot in The Board room. He looked positively green, like nothing would
affect him. In fact, he looked like he’d been given a Fueblaster enema.

“Gentlemen, please excuse me for my late arrival. As you may
have guessed, I have been otherwise occupied,” Leo smiled and looked over at Roxanne,
who presented them with her best and most life-threatening smile. One of the
Korean CEOs fainted, an assistant fell over and knocked a tray of donuts off
the table, and the single female CEO just rolled her eyes in disgust.

Once the CEOs were all back in his chairs and conscious, Leo
proceeded, “Shall we begin negotiations, Max? Max, shall we begin?”

Max seemed to be thinking of something else. Leo wondered if
this was a new tactic. After all, Max had just taken the seven day counselor
only retreat on “
Killer Negotiation Tactics
” last month, in Tahiti.

“Max, shall we proceed?” Leo had to raise his decibel level
several notches, something really never done by a CEO, especially in a board
meeting with other CEOs. Luckily, the later were so involved in staring at
Roxanne that they did not seem to notice.  

“Max!” “Yes, oh so sorry, I was just… Yes, let’s begin shall
we. First for full disclosure…” Max continued to preside for the next thirty
minutes, completing the merger contractuals perfectly, by sheer will power.
After, in his private inner office, he collapsed, falling on the sofa and
sleeping for the rest of the evening. As he fell asleep he heard his assistant
out in the hall discussing the deal with Leo, telling Leo he’d be there
tomorrow to finish up the paperwork, and not to worry, because if Max was ill
he’d step right in and take over. The funny thing was Max didn’t even care that
his lizard assistant had just wormed his way into Max’s job. He just wanted to
sit and read a book, maybe
Jane Eyre
, or sleep for a long time.

It was almost sunrise by the time Michael Segev pulled his
hoverbike into the Tokyo rig dock. He made the last hoverjet out of Hong Kong
to Narita then he grabbed his rental bike from the garage and barreled across
town to the awaiting rig. Morton had almost taken off without him. Rig re-track
was to occur in 1 minute, and Michael barely had time to toss his bike to an amazed
tunnel welf as a gift, climb into the co-pilot seat, and buckle in; just as Morton
and he heard the tunnel com voice speak,
“Re-track in three…two…one.
Re-track on and complete, accelerate on my mark, full nitro. Have a nice day.”

“You’ll be wanting off at #5, I hear. I don’t usually stop
there, but I can drop you off at that turn-around. Make it quick; I got interns
in back and no log to stop there proper, just at the turn-off. You got to know
I’m only doing this as a favor for Dorian. He asked me to give you a lift.”

Morton was huffy and pissy and feeling very old. Those young
buck interns in his back cab were really getting on his nerves, using all those
fancy words for just plain old rig-ryding.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” was all Michael could muster. He
was still out of breath from the breakneck trip across Tokyo, out in the open,
on a fully depleted ozone kinda day.

“By the way, how do you know Roxanne Smoot? Are you a friend
from grad school?” Morton asked as he punched in the drive and reached full
speed. “I got to double check the tunnel control-tower now to be sure we can do
that turn-around at #5. It’s just in case there’s some crap on the track or a
wreck up ahead” Morton muttered to Michael. Morton commed the control and
received approval for a one minute turn into the #5 turn-off. They asked him to
repeat it three times; rig-ryders almost never requested a stop at #5,
especially to drop someone off. He had to make something up. He finally told
them it was an emergency health care worker checking on a polio outbreak at #5,
and did they want to send someone, too. That got them to shut up.

“Yes, we met in grad school. I was on her lacrosse team. Now
I am a flower broker; work out of Muncie, Indiana. Do you know Muncie; it’s
where Ball State University is. You know the place where those
Ball
jars
come from?”

Michael had about fifty different identifies he could slide
into at will. He had no idea why he’d pick the Hoosier flower broker identify
this time. Maybe it was because Morton seemed sort of mid-North American. It
seemed to work. Morton relaxed and spent the remainder of the short trip
regaling Michael of the times he’d driven his up top rig over Interstate 70
from Indianapolis to Denver and back, through hail the size of golf balls, back
when water still actually fell from the sky…not that weird purple stuff.

Michael answered with geographical and unusual correctness,
like he’d been born there. He regaled Morton about the time he’d gotten tickets
to the Indy 500 infield and partied all night, the last time it was outdoors,
and the time he’d actually seen water flowing in the
Wabash
. After two
hours they reached the bubble-stop #5 turnaround and Morton felt like Michael
was his new best friend.

“Well, it’s been real nice talking to you, Michael. I’ll
give Roxanne your regards when I see her next. We’ll be coming up on the #5
turnaround in 60 seconds. Get ready to unbuckle and roll out. Be careful; the
jump out can bite a bit.” Morton laughed, and punched the co-pilot buckle
release, coded in the side-door open code, and Michael rolled out the door on
his left shoulder, something he’d learned in training out in the desert, not in
North America.