Forty-One #2
“I can handle Isako.” Martim put Uchi’s staunch finality into his own words. “When she comes here to meet with me, I’ll convince her there’s nothing more to find. That’ll put an end to this. Don’t worry, I’ve got this under control.”
How had things gotten out of control so quickly?
Not even a week had passed since he agreed to meet with Isako, and everything was coming apart, cracks spreading like fingers of frost across the foundation of his false existence.
“What have you done?” he demanded, aghast. Towering over Thea, voice raised, face contorted, he seemed every bit of Sandbar Uchi at the height of his righteous temper, though inside, Martim struggled to contain despair. “How could you do this without telling me?”
Thea flinched, but she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin resolutely. “I knew you wouldn’t agree. You’re a good person at heart, Martim. You wouldn’t betray your own mentor, no matter how much of a danger she posed. So I had to make the call.”
How little she really knew him, Martim thought bitterly, even after seeing him nearly every day for three years.
“The meeting went fine ,” he seethed, feeling phantom pangs in his chest, the ghostly sensation of a nonexistent pulse racing out of control.
“I had Isako and Kob believing that I offed myself after being fired and that there was nothing more to the whole sad thing than an administrative delay.”
He thought he’d done a pretty convincing job, even if it had been humiliating beyond words to sell the story that Dragonfly Martim had been a careless, underperforming, and ultimately suicidal drug addict.
His own name and reputation were trash. But falling on the proverbial sword had always been the contractor’s role.
He had no choice, not if he wanted to keep living out the only life he had left.
“They weren’t buying it,” Thea argued. “Couldn’t you tell they were still suspicious?”
“Even if they were, they had nothing more to go on. I kicked them out of SoCon GasPro. If you’d just left them alone, they would’ve been forced to give up, or at least focus on something else.”
Thea shook her head vehemently. “They wouldn’t, not those two. Safer to eliminate the threat.”
“Shadowcons, though?!” Martim heard his dismay exploding as Uchi’s bellow of rage, and it nearly made him jump inside his own skin.
“How did you even… Never mind, it doesn’t matter how you hired them; the fact is that they fucked up.
Isako and Kob are still alive, and now they know there’s something going on worth covering up.
And they’re going to be angry enough to keep coming after me. ”
“I was trying to protect you.” Thea’s voice quieted. “If they find out the truth, we’re both dead. I don’t want to die.”
“Did you think a few washed-up assassins could take out Quickblade and Strikebreaker together? If you were going to do it right, you’d have hired twice as many shadowcons. Now we’re just fucked.”
Martim fell into Uchi’s favorite chair and wished he could still cry.
Thea stood as unmoving and expressionless as if her neural connections had stalled out. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded as mechanical as synthtech three generations older. “I figured that after it was done, you’d be relieved. And we’d be safe.”
“Safe?” He almost wanted to laugh. “We’re a couple of black badges running an elaborate con game against the rest of the world.
If the truth comes out, we’ll both be termed.
We need to be up-front with each other if we’re going to work together and survive.
You didn’t think I’d notice the unusually large cost coming out of the division’s security budget? ”
Thea looked away, embarrassed. “The director wouldn’t have noticed. He always paid close attention to gas production, but the administrative stuff didn’t matter much to him.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Martim replied shortly. “Who do you think he relied on for that?”
“Sometimes I forget you’re not him,” she mumbled guiltily. “I know that’s strange, coming from me. But you’re doing such a good job of fooling everyone else, sometimes even I forget.”
Martim put his face in his hands, but the size and shape of Uchi’s fingers made him cringe away from his own touch. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”
“Don’t say that,” she insisted. “You’re doing fine. You just have to keep it up.”
It was different for her. She didn’t have to step into someone else’s life.
The original Fern Madison was still alive, so despite Thea’s unusual situation, her second-stage identity was her own, mostly.
Not so for Martim. Amassing power for SoCon GasPro, wielding influence over the Board of Directors, and the relentless pursuit of the terraforming agenda…
as important of a role as he’d played in the division, those objectives were Uchi’s, not his own.
He could look and act the part of his client, but he didn’t have Uchi’s experience, he wasn’t a seasoned expert in field tech or gas production or Company politics, and he didn’t actually want to be the director.
Sooner or later, he would fail. The harsh realization made him feel sick.
Thea crouched down next to him. “Just two and a half more weeks before the confirmation hearing,” she reminded him. “Once you’re on the Board, it’s bound to get easier. Uchi’s enemies won’t have any ground to stand on. The scrutiny will die down.”
“And then what?” She was deluded if she imagined the pressure and danger would lessen once he was on the Board with a council of other jarbrains jostling for influence ahead of the most important AGM of the century.
“Even if I make it through this month, or this year, then what? Second-stage life is a long fucking time to be someone else. I can’t do this for decades .
I thought maybe it was possible, but it’s not. ”
The bodyguard smoothed her hair over one ear and stood back up. “There’s no use in thinking that far ahead,” she asserted. “Let’s just focus on handling one step at a time.”
One day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time.
His old mantra. It had helped him along all right. Step by step, away from himself.
Yet something about the slowing of Thea’s speech and the way she’d nervously fiddled with her hair began to ring alarm bells. Uchi’s unwelcome voice came into his head again. Most people have unconscious habits that reveal what they’d rather not share.
“What is it?” Slowly, he rose to his feet, until he was looking down on her. “Thea, what haven’t you told me?”
In the bodyguard’s long, guilty hesitation, he figured it out.
“Where is he?” When she didn’t answer, he seized her hard by the shoulders, but she remained silent and unresisting. “Where’s Director Uchi? He planned to walk into the Vastness after I was recorped. But he didn’t go through with it, did he? He’s still alive . ”
The stricken expression on the bodyguard’s face was a testament to 8G synthtech. “I’m sorry.” She aimed her words at the ground. “I know it’s fucked up, but he ordered us not to tell you. He said it might interfere with your ability to concentrate on the mission.”
“Where is he?” A savage hurt was growing in Martim, a raw abrasion on his soul.
“In cryostasis. At the synthtech clinic.”
Of course. Gray’s Waste wouldn’t continue to progress so long as the director’s brain was kept in hibernation.
Sandbar Uchi was buying himself time. They’re close to a cure , he’d said.
But not close enough. Not yet. Once doctors discovered a way to cure Gray’s Waste, or to put it into remission so that recorporalization was possible, the director could step back into the second-stage life he was supposed to have.
Martim’s arms fell weakly to his sides. He was no replacement, simply a temporary placeholder.
He’d imagined he’d have to play the part of his client for decades, but he didn’t have decades.
Uchi never meant for his atier to take over as director of SoCon GasPro permanently .
Sooner or later, Martim’s brain would have to be removed and Uchi reinstated with none the wiser, but that could be arranged.
“Are you supposed to do it?” he asked Thea numbly. “To kill me when the time comes? You’re in the best position to make something go wrong with the oxygen exchanger or the nutrient gels.”
She didn’t answer.
“He didn’t give you a choice, did he? I’m guessing he promised to transfer you full ownership of your synthbody once he was recorporalized. Knowing him, he’s drawn up a legal agreement that’ll only go into effect with an authorization code that he has in his head.”
“You always were too damned smart,” Thea whispered.
“I’m an atier, remember? Strategic assessment is my goddamn job .
It’s what I would advise him to do. Got to serve our fucking client, don’t we?
” He spun and staggered away from her, wanting to put his head through a wall, but it wouldn’t even hurt him, merely raise more questions about his mental stability.
Why was he surprised? Why was he angry? His assignment had been specific.
Pose as Sandbar Uchi in his second stage, get onto the Board of Directors, ensure communication from Earth was suppressed so that terraforming could progress unhindered.
But after that was accomplished, as long as Martim lived illegally in second stage, he was a constant liability.
There was always the danger someone would uncover the truth.
It made sense for Uchi to have safeguards in place and to reclaim his synthbody as soon as possible.