Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) (33 page)

“Yes,” Rayna said, “what is
it?”

“There’s an urgent message for you,
Miss Kingman. From a Mr. Carlson at the Brandemar Learning Center.
He said to tell you he’s very sorry. He said he tried everything he
could think of, but no one would listen. He said you’d know what he
meant.”

Milgrom looked inquiringly at Rayna,
who was shaking her head in confusion.

“Oh, and there’s another message, too,
Miss Kingman. A visi-gram. Came in about an hour ago. It’s from the
Board of Education. You have quite a few get-well messages, too. Do
you want them now?”

Rayna waved her right hand in a
gesture of dismissal. “No, thanks,” she said, an emptiness gripping
her chest, “but I’d better take a look at that visi-gram
now.”

“Certainly, Miss Kingman. Activating
transmission.”

Milgrom and Rayna watched in silence
as the volunteer’s image blinked off the screen, to be replaced by
the likeness of Elinor Sinclair, president of the Los Angeles Board
of Education.

“My dear Miss Kingman,” Sinclair
began, a carefully drawn look of concern on her face, “the members
of the Los Angeles Board of Education have asked me to convey their
sincerest regrets over your injuries and their best wishes for your
speedy recovery.” 

Rayna examined the impeccably groomed,
golden-haired woman behind the antique wood desk and wondered what
it was about the school-board president’s manner that seemed to add
an unspoken “but” to the end of the get-well message.

“Under the circumstances, of course,
we don’t want to risk your health by a premature return to the
classroom. We urge you to take as much time as may be necessary for
a full and complete recovery.”

Rayna’s heartbeat grew louder with
each word.

“In fact,” Sinclair said, her
expression calculated to convey just the right note of
friendliness, “we think you might be well-advised to take the
remainder of the school year off.”

As Rayna watched, her fingers tensed
and curled and pulled themselves into fists.

“We have decided,” Sinclair continued,
“that no formal disciplinary action will be instituted for the poor
judgment you displayed by taking students to the scene of a
potential riot. However, we trust you understand that we think it
unwise for you to return to your duties at the Brandemar Learning
Center until further notice.”

Anger clamped Rayna’s jaws together,
stoking the pain in her head. Sinclair inhaled deeply and affected
an insincere smile.

“Once again, Miss Kingman, we wish you
a speedy recovery. On behalf of the students, parents and staff of
the Brandemar Learning Center and the entire Los Angeles Schools
Consortium, we thank you for your past services, and we wish you
well in your future endeavors.”

Rayna’s nails were digging into her
palms by the time Sinclair disappeared from the screen. Suddenly,
she began to laugh. It began as a simple chuckle, but it gathered
momentum, like a snowball rolling down a mountain slope, until it
became a nearly hysterical shriek. Then, as quickly as it started,
the laughter died.

“They did it,” Rayna said to no one in
particular. “Elinor Sinclair can dress it up in fancy clothes and
put on a show, but the simple truth is, the Board of Education just
told me I’m an irresponsible and unfit teacher.”  Her temples
pulsed in fury as a single tear escaped the corner of her
eye.

She turned to Milgrom and smiled
bitterly:  “They just fired me.”

 “
To the future!” a beaming
Tauber toasted.

Keith quickly downed his glass of
whiskey, but his mood remained sour. He drank not in celebration
but in a desperate hope that the liquor’s fire could blot out the
chill that ran through him whenever he thought about his last
meeting with Rayna. Picturing her lying in that hospital bed, he
raged first at the monster who put her there and then at
himself.

It should have been me,
he
thought.
I’m supposed to be the one taking the
risks.

“How about another one?” Tauber
suggested, holding out the Spacefarer’s bottle. “Things are looking
good....  Oh, I see how it is. You’re still worried about your
girlfriend.”

Keith looked at Tauber, then slid his
glass across the table for a refill. With a curt nod, he gulped the
second drink as quickly as he had the first.

“She’ll be all right, Daniels. Didn’t
the doctors tell you that?”

Keith stared into his empty glass.
“That’s what they said,” he agreed.

“Well, then....  Help me
celebrate!  I don’t know how that rumor about the Nitinol
being destroyed got started, but I wish I could claim the credit.
I’ve never seen people so mad!”

Keith glared. “You mean like the creep
who went after Althea Milgrom and tried to clobber
Rayna?”

 “
Oh, come on, Daniels!  You
know I didn’t want that to happen. Hell, if anything happened to
Milgrom now, we’d have to find a new goat. We need her as a
lightning rod—at least for a while.”  Keith’s stomach rose as
he recognized the sinister glint in Tauber’s eye. Just what was he
up to now?  “But thanks to your girlfriend, nothing did
happen. So stop worrying!” 

Keith took a deep breath. Maybe Tauber
was right. Maybe Tauber was right about a lot of things.
Maybe.... 

He shook his head suddenly.

“What’s the matter?  Let’s have
it, Daniels. I feel too good right now to let you—or anybody
else—spoil things.”

“What’s there to feel good
about?”

Tauber grinned. “Just about
everything, I’d say. It’s all going just the way I planned. Except
for this rumor about blowing up the Nitinol.”  A shadow of
concern darkened the ex-merchanter’s face but disappeared almost as
soon as Keith noticed it.

“I have to admit, things sure have
changed over the past few months.”

“Damn right,” said Tauber , “and
they’ll change a lot more before I’m through!”

Keith shook his head doubtfully.
“Listen, Hank, I know you’re a bright guy. But it takes more than
one man with brains to pull off what you say you’ve pulled off.
You’d need an awful lot of people on your side—people in important
places.”

 
Tauber’s smug laugh took Keith
by surprise, and he shifted about uneasily under the long, silent
gaze that followed.

“You mean you—”

“I mean we have allies, Daniels—lots
of them. People in positions you’d never guess. Did you think all I
had to work with was the likes of Wraggon and Barnard?”

“Well....”

Tauber grunted derisively. “Listen,
pal, I’m not the only guy the Merchant Fleet screwed. There’s a
whole lot of us who worked the Asteroid Belt and got kicked in the
ass for our troubles.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I—we—have friends out there
who think like we do. Friends with power. Friends who have
important jobs outside the Fleet but who remember enough about what
it was like to want a change. And to know what it takes to make
that change happen.”  Tauber rested a friendly hand on Keith’s
shoulder. “Hell, Daniels, you’re one of our allies yourself. Not a
merchanter with a grudge, of course, but something just as good.
You’re a lawyer representing merchanters with a grudge. You have
any idea what those lawsuits you set in motion are doing to the
court system?”

Keith smiled uncomfortably. In the
past two months, he’d initiated legal actions on behalf of five
merchanters, in addition to laying the groundwork for a massive
class-action suit against the Merchant Fleet and the colonies.
These would be precedent-setting cases—cases that would encourage
additional suits and burden the Fleet and the legal system with
enormous paperwork, even if the cases all were ultimately
dismissed. He wasn’t proud of himself. Although one or two of the
individual cases had some merit, most were merely nuisances. But
Tauber loved it all.

“We’ll string ’em up by their
bureaucratic peckers,” he told Keith happily. “They’ll be so busy
in court they won’t even notice what else is going on.”  He
gave Keith’s shoulder a friendly pat, letting his hand linger for a
moment. As Keith’s eyes met his, Tauber’s face grew pale, and he
snatched his hand away as if he’d been scorched.

For all practical purposes, Keith was
now the legal adviser to Operation Strong Man. More than that,
Tauber seemed to regard the attorney as his personal
confidant.

Rayna knew little of this. Keith had
told her only about gaining Tauber’s confidence. The lawsuits
hadn’t progressed far enough to be reported by any of the news
watch services yet, though it was just a matter of time before that
happened. Keith’s throat grew dry as he thought again about Rayna.
Sitting here in Tauber’s apartment, toasting the success of
Tauber’s plans with Tauber’s whiskey, Keith felt acutely disloyal
to the woman in that hospital bed. Yet, when he was with Rayna, he
couldn’t help feeling a pang of disloyalty to Tauber. He clenched
his jaw and rubbed the back of his neck.

 
This isn’t the way
it was supposed to be. I was just going to get friendly with
Tauber, and....  And what?  And expose the wrongdoers,
just like the heroes in those old holotapes I used to watch when I
was a kid?  Well, I guess it’s about time I learned that real
life isn’t a holotape. In the holotapes, the heroes never got
confused about which side they were on.

“You have any cherry licorice?” he
asked.

Tauber laughed. “When you gonna give
up that stuff?” he responded. “You know, you’re a big boy now,
and—”

Tauber’s discourse was cut off by the
doorbell. He rose grudgingly and cued the viewer to reveal his
guest, then stared at the image as the bell rang again, a sense of
urgency somehow coming through in the measured, computer-simulated
tones.

“Jesus, Ethan, what are you doing
here?” Tauber finally said as he opened the door and pulled a
wary-looking Ethan Rensselaer into the apartment. Dressed in
nondescript civilian clothes, the Merchant Fleet admiral obviously
didn’t want to be recognized.

“What am I doing here?” Rensselaer
repeated, looking like a bomb about to explode. “What are
you
doing here, Hank?  I thought you had things under
control!”

“What are you talking
about?”

Rensselaer lit an Astobac cigarette
and began pacing the room, his limp more pronounced than Keith had
ever observed in the admiral’s HV appearances.
Rensselaer! 
I suspected something, but I never figured Tauber’s connections
went this far!

“I’m talking about the fact that one
of your people tried to attack Althea Milgrom right in front of
me,” the admiral growled.

“Wait a minute, Ethan. That
wasn’t—”

“I’m talking about the fact that I had
to use my security cuff to restrain the guy or else he would have
brained her. He would have turned the most beatable Senate opponent
I could possibly have into some kind of martyr!”

Tauber began to object, but Rensselaer
didn’t even slow down.

“I’m talking about the
fact that he was so out of control, he might have brained me by
accident. But mostly, Hank, I’m talking about the fact that the
Nitinol shipment was destroyed!  It’s one thing to tell the
masses that, but to really—”

“Hold it,” Tauber commanded. “What’s
that about the Nitinol?”

“You heard me. Look Tauber, it’s one
thing to
say
the Nitinol’s been destroyed, to start a rumor,
but it’s something else again to really do it!  You know we’re
going to need that stuff ourselves!”

Keith could feel the pulse throbbing
in his own throat as he watched the other two men. Tauber’s face
was a pasty white, and his narrowed eyes dared Rensselaer to
challenge his authority.

“What makes you think the Nitinol’s
really gone?” Tauber wanted to know.

The admiral reached into his tunic and
withdrew some folded papers from an inside pocket. “Take a look at
these.”  He handed the papers to Tauber. “Printouts from the
environmental control system your people set up to monitor the
storage facility on that asteroid in Z-7.”

As Tauber studied the papers, the
veins in his temples began to throb.

“After the debate, I got worried,”
Rensselaer said. “I decided to check on the Nitinol, just in case.
So I used our special security codes to get a readout.”  He
jerked his head in the direction of the papers.
That’s
 
what I found!”

“Damn!” Tauber erupted. “It’s that
rustbrain Wraggon!  I’m sure of it!”

Tauber handed the papers back to
Rensselaer, spun around and crossed the room, his every move
followed in silence by two pairs of eyes. When at last he turned to
face the others, he was once more the composed, unflappable Tauber
that Keith had come to know and—despite himself—respect.

The former Fleet lieutenant smiled
bitterly. “Wraggon hinted that he did something extra to the robots
he sent back to R-4 Sector.”

“I don’t care an Astie’s tit what he
did to the robots,” said Rensselaer. “I want to know what happened
to the Nitinol!”