Thirty-Nine #3
He spun on her. “It was different for you! You would’ve died otherwise.
I’m not even thirty yet, I’m not supposed to be…
” He was having a hard time breathing. The edges of his vision seemed to be closing in, and he imagined this was what it felt like, to be trapped in the surgical capsule already, with his client’s unyielding face the only thing he could see. “You can’t make me do this.”
“I can,” Uchi said, matter-of-factly. “I’d rather not, but I will if I have to.
Can’t you see, Martim? I know you understand.
” Uchi’s voice took on a note of pleading that Martim had never heard from him before.
“Everything we’ve worked for together, all that we’ve accomplished…
we can’t let one stupid little fucking thing like Gray’s Waste ruin our plans.
You promised me, from the start, that you would give me all you had.
You told me you were with me all the way. ”
Martim collapsed into the chair at last, and braced his head between his arms as if to protect it from a blow. “I’m not ready to give up my life.”
Thea spoke up, a touch reproachfully. “We’re longknivesfolk.
We swore to abide by the Code, to give our lives in client service.
” She’d already done that; she’d put herself in the path of a bomb meant for the director.
She hadn’t even been brought into an office and given the forewarning Martim was receiving.
“You’re not going to die. It’s not even going to hurt.
And if you don’t do it, we’re both going to end up as ronin anyway. ”
“There has to be another way,” Martim moaned, voice muffled between his elbows. “Or someone else who could do this.”
“There isn’t.” An edge of impatience was creeping into Uchi’s voice, as if Martim was taking too long to come around to an obvious conclusion.
“I’ve thought about this for months. No one else at a high level in the division can conveniently disappear unquestioned.
We’d file an extension of your Principal contract with the Agency so they don’t get suspicious about the timing; everyone else will assume you were dismissed at the end of your term.
After some time has passed, your documented history of drug use, ironically, will be the perfect way for us to quietly explain away your death. ”
In other words: You have no family or friends. No one cares about you enough to notice you’re gone.
It was awful and hurtful, but true. The division was his home, the job was his life.
At times, during the past three years, he’d questioned if a lifetime client commitment was truly what he wanted and if he could handle it, but when it came down to it, he knew that if given the chance, he would accept.
He’d given too much of himself already, worn away his soul, grown too invested in the payoff.
Even if the job killed him, he was too good at it to refuse.
“If we didn’t know the truth about the Great Silence, I’d do as you suggested: decline the Board nomination and use my remaining time to prepare an orderly transition plan for the division.
But that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
I don’t have confidence that the Board of Directors will hold true to the Founders’ Vision.
” Uchi closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them again.
“I’ve said it before, Martim: You’re the only one I can trust.”
“What would happen to you?” Martim whispered.
Uchi gave him a sorrowful smile. “I’m dying anyway, remember?
What does it matter whether it’s on the operating table this week, or from Gray’s Waste in a few years?
” The director refilled his water glass and raised it, as if in a toast, toward the bleak painting over his desk.
Wistfully, he said, “I don’t want to die in a bed, Martim.
I want to meet my end out there. I’ve spent so much of my life staring at the surface of the planet that resigning would be like going out to meet an old friend.
I’ll leave quietly in the night, with no witnesses.
No one will know I’m gone. I’ll never get the nameplace I dreamed of under the open sky, but that is”—Uchi’s voice wavered—“as you black badges always call it: the way of the Vastness.”
Martim wanted to say something else. He wanted to remain defiant and fight for his life, but his throat closed up and starved him of more words.
Rain Kob had confessed that after a while, doing someone else’s dirty work made you hate them, deep down.
Martim finally understood Strikebreaker’s insight; he hated his client, hated him as much as he sometimes hated himself.
But he also understood that Sandbar Uchi, deep in his soul, was inextricably connected to him in a way that could not be explained or justified.
Uchi filled his atier’s empty water glass as if they were enjoying tea before the arrival of a scouring drystorm.
Slowly, he unwound the irreplaceable Moray Xi 459 scarf from around his neck and fingered the signature embroidery.
“I’m glad,” said the dying king of Southern Continent Gas Production, “that at least this is going to the one person who will appreciate it most.” He held it out like an offering, a new life, an Exclusive contract.
With dread, Martim took it.