Thirty-Five #2
“I’m sorry.”
Thea stiffened; she didn’t seem practiced or comfortable with receiving sympathy, even though she glanced up at Martim sideways with something approaching gratitude. “Don’t be. I know I’m lucky. I’m alive and I still have my badge. I’ll still get to do some of the things I want to do in life.”
“I bet it’s easier to climb Mount Hanji if you don’t need to breathe.”
A hint of a real smile climbed Thea’s face—not the coy look Fern Madison wore in photographs, but her own wry expression. “That’s true. I have to make the most of this second chance I’ve been given. And I am slowly starting to feel like I’m still myself, even if this was never my choice.”
“You could make adjustments, if you wanted to,” Martim suggested.
It wasn’t uncommon for second stagers to make policy-compliant modifications to their bodies over time: adding or subtracting a few years off their face, adding muscle or inches to their frame, changing their hair or adding a beard.
“That might make the synthbody feel more like your own.”
Thea averted her eyes. “The director won’t allow it.”
“What do you mean?”
“According to him, it’s important to preserve the integrity of the original design. He thinks it would be disrespectful to alter it.”
Martim frowned. “Not even something minor? Like changing your hair?”
“Not even that.” She said it matter-of-factly, voice flat.
“I guess I can understand his argument,” Martim said slowly. The synthbody was technically Uchi’s property, and maybe it was inappropriate to change the appearance of Fern Madison’s face or body. “But that seems kind of unfair.”
Unfair to Thea, as well as deliciously cruel to Fern Madison, who would have to see her unchanging younger doppelganger always standing loyally in her ex-husband’s shadow. The Companynet tabloids are going to have a field day with this , Martim thought.
“Well, he says it’s not up for discussion,” Thea said briskly, as if it made no difference to her, even though it obviously did. “You know how he is once his mind is made up.”
“Yeah, I do,” Martim said apologetically.
“On the plus side,” she said, with quick, forced levity, “not needing to eat or shit anymore does free up time.”
Martim barked an uncomfortable laugh. “You don’t need food?” He honestly didn’t know; he’d never bothered to learn exactly how synthbodies worked. He hadn’t especially wanted to know.
“I still need food, sort of,” she said, “but the specialized nutrient gels all have the same texture. The stuff doesn’t actually taste bad; in fact, it can taste like whatever you want—steak, chocolate, coffee—but I miss being able to bite into a piece of fresh bread or take a sip from a warm mug of cider. ”
“What about sleep? Do you not need that anymore either?” That might be the one thing that would make being a jarbrain worth it, in Martim’s book. Not being tired would be a glorious luxury.
“No luck there. The brain still needs to rest every night or you go insane.”
The door to the hospital room opened and Uchi’s doctors walked out, scowling and tapping at their screens with worried, dissatisfied expressions. Martim imagined that his client was not the easiest patient to deal with. He waited a beat, then entered the room.
Uchi was sitting up in bed, looking uncomfortably frumpy in a hospital gown.
Martim had expected to find him with a blue data visor already jammed onto his face, eyes darting rapidly back and forth, but for once, the director wasn’t engrossed in some immediate task.
His ordinarily sharp gaze was off focus and unmoving, staring at nothing in particular.
A preoccupied, belligerent frown creased his long face from his furrowed brow to the downturned corners of his thin lips. He looked uncharacteristically… old.
“Sir?” Martim asked, tentative.
Uchi roused his attention irritably, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of solving a thorny business problem. “Ah, there you are,” he said, with some of his usual brisk energy.
“How’re you feeling?” Martim placed the director’s screen and clothes on the table.
“Fine. The doctors don’t know what they’re talking about.” When Martim gave his client a skeptical look, Uchi said, “Really, they’re being overcautious. It’s nothing serious.”
“You should listen to them,” Martim insisted.
“Apparently, concussion risk is higher when you’re over sixty-five, and symptoms can last for months.
You want to make a full recovery so there aren’t any risk factors when you go through recorp.
At least take a few days off. There’s nothing in your schedule before the production meeting that can’t be delayed. ”
“How was your meeting with Sullivan’s atier?”
Martim blew out a breath but let his client change the subject.
“Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.
” He described his meeting with Condor Anand, relaying precisely what the older atier had told him.
“I hate to say it, but I’m not sure we can count on NorCon’s unconditional support going forward.
It sounds to me like Sullivan’s hedging his bets. ”
Color came into Uchi’s face and an angry light appeared in his eyes. Storm warning. Nothing could rouse his temper more than people letting him down. The oddly unfocused moment, the agedness that Martim had glimpsed, was gone in an instant.
“Cagey bastard,” Uchi exclaimed. “Always playing politics for his own gain. He didn’t used to be like that, you know.
I used to think of Sullivan as a true friend.
When I became director of SoCon GasPro, he was incredibly generous with his time and support.
Said he wanted to help me grow the division to its full potential.
Now I think he wanted me to strengthen the terraformist bloc only so long as my division stayed second to his.
Now that SoCon’s pulled ahead, he’s feeling jealous and threatened. ”
Martim thought of Anand’s vexation over the futsal game. We’re going to show you why the North is still the king of GasPro. “Do you think he’s petty enough to try to deny you a Board nomination?”
“I wouldn’t have said so before, but now anything seems possible.
” Uchi looked around the hospital room with dismay and disgust, as if he couldn’t believe he was trapped in here while his rivals and enemies outside schemed around him.
“The reality is that we can’t trust NorCon to give us accurate information about what’s going on with the Board.
Which means we don’t truly know where we stand. ”
Sitting in the VIP box with Anand, Martim had felt keenly his youth and inexperience, the unmistakable sense that he was being condescendingly schooled by a veteran playmaker.
Thinking about it made his blood simmer, stoked the hunger inside him like kindling dropped on coals.
Against Anand, he was an upstart underdog, just as Uchi was against Sullivan.
Yet another thing that he and his client had in common.
Tide Sullivan and his cunning atier might seem secure in their place, but SoCon GasPro was the future. For it to keep rising, Uchi would have to achieve Sullivan’s status. Which meant Martim would have to outsmart the Puppetmaster. Beat him at his own game.
“I think you’re right, sir, about what you said earlier,” Martim said. “If Sullivan’s changed his tune, it means the political situation’s shifted with the Board.”
Uchi scowled as he swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and stood with no apparent difficulty.
“We need to know what’s really going on.
Find out everything you can, Martim. I don’t care who you have to go through, or what you have to do; this is important.
” He grabbed the screen and the clothes Martim had brought him.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to step outside so I can get dressed.
I’m not staying in here a minute longer. ”