Like a Boss (5 page)

I did not smile. “Vikram, what is going on?”

“The end of days, that’s what.” He nodded and swigged from the bottle. “Oh, God, we’re done. We’re
so
done.” He swayed his way to his desk, knocking over papers as he flopped down on the top like it was a bed. “How could this happen? What are we gonna
do
?”

I had prepared myself for a confrontation filled with shouts and recriminations and me taking the wrench to some of Vikram’s furniture. But I had no idea how to deal with a blubbering man leaking orange snot all over his paperwork. I’ve had people fall apart on me before, that wasn’t new. But I hadn’t wanted to kick their asses beforehand.

I cleared my throat and crouched in front of the desk, keeping my head level with his. “Vikram? Are you there?”

He held up his left hand, the crumpled paper flapping like a flag of surrender. He didn’t say anything. He just waved his arm back and forth until I plucked the paper from his grip. I held it with two fingers, careful not to touch the orange spatters on both sides. It looked like Jackson Pollack had redacted it.

The paper was a summary of heirloom cane yields for the past month. The last time I had seen numbers this low was eighteen months ago, after we’d burned out the last of the crops infected with Vytai Bloombeck’s mutant black stripe. A quarter of the planet’s cane had to be burned to cinders, and it had set back the Co-Op for months. Everyone tied in with the cane industry (ninety-nine percent of the planet) had made sure to mention their losses whenever they talked to me. And while they never used words like, “And I blame
you
for bringing all this misery and strife on my head by blowing up the lifter and screwing me,” their tone and faces said plenty. I looked again and realized the yields were even lower. “Is this right?”

Vikram poured the rum into his upturned face, turning his desk into an orange toxic waste dump. “Paper doesn’t lie. Except when it does. But this doesn’t, because I have checked.” He slid off the desktop, his butt hitting the floor, until all I could see was his head. His beard and mustache were now black with flecks of gray. He looked like an ancient head on display in a museum, the kind left over from a civilization that committed suicide. “We are
fucked
.”

“Is there a new infection? Something screwing with the crops?”

“That.” He pointed at me. “Something is indeed screwing with our crops, our cane, our livelihoods. And it starts with Wal and ends in Wa.”

I forced my hands to relax. It was reflex to make fists when I heard the name of my former employer. “What do they have to do with us?”

“Everything,” said Vikram, the despair in his voice boiling into white-hot rage. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it also wasn’t enough to scare me. I had twenty centimeters and ten kilos on him, alcohol-fueled fury or no. My understanding of Vikram’s personal history was that he had come to drinking after a lifetime of abstention. Whether he was a teetotaler because of his beliefs (the orange beard being a mark of a Muslim who had done the hajj to any of the approved Meccalites) or because of his time at a starship’s helm, I didn’t know. We hadn’t talked much, which was partly my fault. I thought if I shared anything personal, it might lead him or anyone else in the Co-Op to understand the truth of why owning Old Windswept was so important to me. Now, however, was not the time to start sharing.

Vikram jabbed a finger toward the window. “Those goatfuckers in Thronehill have refused to re-certify our cane for export.”

“What, again?”

“Yes, again.” He turned back to his desk and leaned on it, knuckles down. “And not just the industrial muck we send up the cable. Now they’re not going to let us export our rum, even if it was bottled before the lifter blew up.”

“That’s bullshit!” I pounded his desk, the blood pounding in my head.

“Indeed it is!” he cried, pounding his desk, too. “Which is why you need to give us
your
cane.”

The blood stopped pounding. “Excuse me?”

He pointed at me. “Yes.
You
had to keep doing things the way Stella did. Making your own deals with your own producers, paying above the Co-Op’s rates, getting your
own
certification… what’s the point of being
in
the Co-Op if you’re not going to look out for its interests?” His face softened. “Why are
you
here?”

“You mean, right now, or in a general, existential sense?”

He shook his head, then slid out of sight. I heard more weeping.

I walked around the desk and dragged Vikram out. I turned him on his side and held him in place. He protested, but it was token resistance. The rum and his despair had done their work. “Vikram, did you try and push an Article Thirty-Three on my foreman?”

He laughed. “You would have been compensated. Two and a half million, easily, just from the cane alone. Throw in the actual product, and three is a fair offer.”

“Why would you try to buy my perfectly profitable distillery?”

He moaned. “Because we’re fucked.”

I flipped him on his back. “I think you need to explain that. Right now.”

He flailed his head from side to side. “I feel sick.”

“Vikram, I’m recording this. You can either explain it to me or in front of the entire Co-Op.”

“They won’t care,” said Vikram, turning his head away from me. “They want your cane because all of ours isn’t coming in.”

I grabbed his cheeks and squeezed his head into place. “You just said the problem is with WalWa.”

“It is,” he said through squished cheeks. “Part of it.”

“Tell me what’s going on. All of it. Right now.”

He laughed, the sound tight in his mouth. “No one wants to work for us anymore.”

I let go of his face. “What, at the distilleries?”

He shook his head. “In the fields. There’s no cane coming in because the farms are being abandoned. Haven’t you heard?”

I sat in his chair. “I spend ten hours a day in a hole in the ground, Vikram. I’m lucky to know what week it is. How long has this been going on?”

“Three months.” He curled up into a ball and rocked onto his side. “No one’s cutting cane. No one’s bringing it to cure. No one’s bringing it to the presses. Millions of hectares are just growing wild, and no one’s around to take care of them.”

“How do you know?”

Vikram rose to face me. “Because I’ve been out there! I spent the past week touring cane farms, and all of them are abandoned. And I’m not talking about the little ones. I mean outfits like Royo’s and Shar’s. Big producers.” He waved a hand in the air. “All empty. Like the people were plucked into the sky.”

“And you haven’t asked around?”

“Who?” He sank back to the carpet. “Who is there to ask? We went to the police, and they said there’s been no crime, no reports of missing persons, nothing they can do. It’s a big planet. People move around all the time.” He moaned. “I just wish they all hadn’t moved at once.”

“So you thought the best way to fix this was to scare my employees into leaving, all so my distillery could fall apart and you could snap it up?”

“It sounded better when we planned it out.” Vikram started to turn green. I nudged a waste basket near his face.

“You could have
asked
,” I said. “That’s what adults do when they’re in business together.”

Vikram pulled himself up the basket, clutching it like a life preserver. “And would you have given it all up? Because that’s what we need, Padma. If the Co-Op’s going to keep producing enough rum to meet our obligations, we need eight hundred thousand kilotons of certified cane by next month.”

I did some quick mental math. “Vikram, that’s more cane than I grow in a
year
. What the hell is going on?”

“We have obligations.”

“You said that. I have the feeling they’re not orders for rum.”

He made a face like he’d just swallowed a whole, live, and very pissed-off frog. “People want to start cashing in their Mutual certificates. We need to back them up. The only way to do that is to sell more rum, so we need more cane.”

I laughed. “Well, you’ll just have to tell them to wait, ’cause it’s not going to happen now.”

“See? See?” He sneered as he got to his swaying feet. “That’s the same kind of attitude Tonggow would have given us. She may have been a member, but it was more in name than in practice. She always kept to herself, always donated the minimum.”

“Some members haven’t ponied up at
all
,” I said, blinking up the Co-Op’s records. “You’ve got some who are years behind on dues.”

“And now they’ll be even farther because
you
won’t help them!” His sneer melted, and he leaned over the waste basket and started vomiting.

I wrinkled my nose and went to the window for air. “You know, Vikram, I get why the Co-Op exists. We do all need each other. But there are some people who seem to think that the members work to keep the Co-Op going, and not the other way around.”

He dry-heaved, then spat into the bin. “You don’t get to lecture me.”

“Oh, yes, I do, because I have video of you talking about a conspiracy to screw me out of my hard-won business. And it’s the kind of video that can knock this place to its foundation.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Vikram? Do you think I’m just going to roll over and show you my belly because you’ve got a nice office? Have you not heard my theme song?”

He gagged again. “I
hate
that song.”

“And I can have the entire Brushhead Memorial Band here in ten minutes to play it live if you don’t shape up.”

Vikram wiped his face. The orange transferred back to his lips and mustache. “What do you want?”

I patted his chair. “I want you to sit down, drink some water, and sober up. Then I want you to tell me every single producer that’s not producing anymore.”

“Why you?”

“Who else?” I laughed. “I can’t stand you assholes, but we’re still in the Co-Op together. That seal means I get a good price on my rum, and that means I can pay my people, so they’re happy to stick around and make more rum that I can sell with the Co-Op seal. That’s how business is supposed to work.”

He snorted. “You and I know that’s bullshit. Business is about grabbing as much as you can for yourself before the other guy can.”

I slapped him on the head. “Which of us went to b-school, and which of us piloted starship tugs?”

It took Vikram another half hour of retching and rehydrating until he started to feel better. He kept babbling the names of abandoned farms, and I kept blinking up the locations and marking them on the map. I had to give him credit: at least he’d schlepped out there for himself instead of getting an underling to go in his place. It all added up to a big, frightening picture: farm workers, whether they were Freeborn or Breaches, were disappearing, which left the Co-Op with a dwindling supply of crushable cane. And what little cane was left wasn’t going up the cable, thanks to WalWa’s dickishness.

I kept watching the time: Six O’Clock loomed closer. I held up my hands. “I think I have enough to go on.”

Vikram stopped in mid-heave. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m going to solve this problem for you. I’m going to get people back into the fields, get the cane harvest in, and this will all go away.”

“It will?”

I nodded. “Provided you do something for me.”

Vikram let go of the waste basket and clutched at my calves. “Anything, Padma. Oh, anything.”

I stepped out of his grip. “The first thing is that you’re going to round up everyone who tried to bully me into giving you my cane. And you will tell them that, when this is over, they are all paying my share into the Co-Op for the rest of my natural life.”

Vikram gawped. I took a step toward the door. Vikram leaped to his feet, then fell over. “All right! All right.” His lips were mooshed to the floor, so it sounded like a walrus barking instead of someone giving in.

“The second thing is that you’ll resign as Vice Chair.”

“But my pension!”

“Oh, intercourse your pension,” I said. “You wanted to play hardball, this is what happens when you lose.”

“No,” he said. “I refuse.”

“Then enjoy it when you’re impeached.” I didn’t bother to wait for his reply; I knew he’d give in after he’d had time to vomit some more. I gave the kid at the desk a nod as I strode for the door to find my driver and a quick bite.

The red tuk-tuk sat in front of Hareta Hi, the omusubi-ya I always went to after Co-Op meetings. It was a tiny shop, barely three meters wide and twice as deep, with most of the space taken up by the counter and the rice cooker. Keiko Nakashima, the owner, was working tonight, and her face brightened when I ducked in the door. “Your friend here has become a fan.”

Sirikit sat at the counter, leaving a sliver of room for me. She held a triangular rice ball wrapped in nori, her eyes closed, her mouth chewing away like a rock crusher during construction season. “These are so
good
,” she said. “How have I never had them before?”

“You got me,” I said, squeezing into a seat. “Didn’t you have rice on the kampong?”

“Yeah, but it got mixed with peas and goat and curry.” Sirikit’s eyes opened wide and locked on Keiko. “Please tell me you’ve got curry, because that would be the greatest thing ever.”

Keiko smiled and started rolling another omusubi. “I think I can make that happen. You want one, too, Padma?”

“Hell, yes. How’s business?”

Keiko held a wad of rice in her palm. She scooped a spoonful of orange-brown curry into the middle, then started pressing the rice with her hands. “Been busier. Just as well, seeing how Sammy quit.”

“Your niece?”

Keiko nodded, her face darkening. “Two weeks ago, she shows up late to her shift, announces she’s learned a better way to live her life, and that she needs her salary right then and there.”

I thought back to Sammy: a funny, bookish eighteen year-old who studied polymers. She was the picture definition of punctual, even for her seven a.m. classes at Santee Open School. “What did you do?”

Keiko snorted as she handed an omusubi to Sirikit. “I told her to get to work. She cleaned out the cashbox, called me a parasite enabler, and marched out.”