Part 28 (2/2)
”Hah!” the Chief said. ”You see that!” He pointed at the vid on the wall opposite his desk. ”We're on the news!”
Hap glanced up from his work. Some well-dressed woman was ranting. ”We've got to do something about the disgusting situation! The sc.u.m inhabiting our lower levels...”
The scene changed to a view of Belowstairs. Hap recognized it as stock footage. That's all Upstairs had. They might control the government, the media and the supply line, but their influence stopped at the dividing deck. The last time that they'd tried to send a cameraman down to get some fresh footage, he'd been swarmed the second his lift hit bottom. Hap and his mates had stolen everything he had brought with him, leaving him naked in the elevator except for his ID. Yeah, same old vid, he reflected, seeing a mutant shuffle from one side of the screen to the other. Poor Domble, with no more brain than a drinks dispenser, looked fearsome and disgusting with his shrunken skin and gigantic teeth. He'd been dead about five years now.
Belowstairs was useful for diverting attention. Hap and his mates noticed that whenever one politician attacked another for some legal lapse, the next thing you knew, the opponent would be on yacking off at Belowstairs.
”...damaging precious systems vital to human existence...”
”Who do you think keeps this place running, you stupid time-waster?” the Chief yelled, throwing an empty beer bulb at the screen.
Upstairs didn't like to think about that truth. But short of 1) giving everyone Belowstairs official jobs (and, hence, IDs), 2) eradicating them all (which would create opprobrium for Upstairs all over the human-settled galaxy and in alien systems with beings rights), or 3) collecting everyone Below and sending them all somewhere else, Upstairs had to acknowledge it had an ugly boil on its backside. As much as possible it pretended the problem of homelessness did not exist. To tell the truth, that suited everyone Below just fine. But Hap wanted to see Upstairs. He dreamed of having a job and living in the upper levels. He'd been watching station vids all his life. He knew just how wonderful it must be, to be clean all the time and to eat something before anybody else had.
”Dammit,” Merg said, sticking his arm down the disposer chute. ”I dropped my spanner.” Hap leaped to help him. They leaned the synthesizer over on its side. Hap upended it and shook it until Merg could reach his tool.
”Quiet!” bellowed the Chief. ”I'm listening!”
An announcer had replaced the politician on the screen. ”...reports from Earth of a breakthrough technology: organic circuitry. Based upon theories of human brain development, scientists have at last come up with a means of growing functional systems that can learn emgrams. It will revolutionize all electronic system, agglomerating all components flawlessly...”
”What's agglom... ?” Hap began to ask.
”Bunching them all in a ma.s.s,” the Chief said. ”Shut up.”
”So far, however, the process has been slow. Only one small sample of the finished product has been successfully produced. Scientists will be meeting with manufacturers later this week on Delta Station to talk about means of growing more, quickly but accurately. The demand is expected to be worth over eight billion credits the first year alone.”
”Whew,” the Chief said, flicking the audio down with a gesture. ”Wish I had some of that. Don't you?”
”You bet I do,” Merg said.
”Yeh,” Hap said, thinking what he could do with eight billion credits, or even eighty credits. He'd have orange silk cus.h.i.+ons in his crate-no, he'd build a hotel, with rooms as big as the Chief's and all of them full of silk cus.h.i.+ons. And real food from Earth, lots of it, in storage compartments everywhere, so all he'd have to do was reach out any time he wanted.
The Chief saw the dreamy look on his face and laughed. ”Go on, get out of here, boy!” he roared.
”I'm so excited to meet you,” Perry Antonio, president of Techgen said, shaking hands with Min Haseen. Tall and broad-shouldered with a born executive's thick head of red-brown hair just beginning to silver at the temples, he towered over his guest. The slim, dark-haired woman slid into the seat he indicated for her at the big oval table in the executive suite of Techgen headquarters on Deck J. ”Thank you for coming all the way out here to the Station.”
”It's a pleasure,” she said, nodding to the others. She had soft, dark eyes and a little pointed chin that made her look delicately elfin and childlike. ”I've never been on a s.p.a.ce station before. It's been an experience. Fun, in fact.”
Antonio smiled at her naivete. He went around the table, introducing the rest of the men and women at the table. The skinny, gum-chewing boy with big ears and a crest of carmine hair was Bill Imbrie, Techgen's chief programmer. Darkskinned Lu Obama was head of biochemistry. The troubled black-haired woman in the blue-white uniform was the station commander, Penelope Chinn. The rest were various technology wonks, bean-counters and government officials. Chinn, he knew, was keen to become the liaison for trans.h.i.+pment of the new products. Techgen needed Delta's good will, at least for the time being. They would have a very private conversation later to see if Chinn could bribe him well enough to obtain an exclusive right-of-way.
He glanced at the slender girl in a blue-white s.h.i.+psuit and cap standing at the far end of the room next to an open door. No expense had been spared to impress Haseen. The finest melons, pate and caviar had been brought up from Earth, and had been arranged on platters with the best fruits and vegetables from Delta's hydroponic gardens. She stood by, ready to serve the refreshments. At his signal she came forward with a tray to begin taking drink orders.
Haseen noticed the direction of his gaze. ”Is it all right if I left my things in there?” she asked, nodding toward the other room. ”My transport only arrived an hour ago. I didn't have time to check into my quarters.”
”No problem,” he said, smoothly. ”Welcome, everyone. You've all had a chance to thumbprint your nondisclosure contracts, so let's get this meeting under way.”
With his back to the rest of his guests, Antonio gulped down a stimdrink at the wet bar at the side of the room. Haseen wasn't the soft touch she looked like. In fact, she was as sharp as that chin of hers. In a moment he would be giving up a substantial share of Techgen's stock in order to obtain manufacturing rights to Opalite.
”Where is it?” Haseen cried.
Antonio turned, putting the little bottle out of sight behind his back. ”Where is what, ma'am?” he asked.
”The Opalite,” she said, her hands shaking. She pointed at a small white plate on a small mahogany occasional table near the entrance to the hospitality room. ”It was right there a moment ago. Where is it?”
”How big is it? Is it a sample?” Antonio asked. He scanned the tables for a strange container, but saw nothing but the depleted bowls of caviar and the fruit platters, nearly picked clean by the browsing conferees.
”No! It's the whole thing,” Haseen replied, her eyes huge with dismay. ”Three cubic centimeters, worth a hundred million credits!”
Chinn's eyebrows went up, and the two of them began to search the room.
”What's the problem?” Imbrie asked.
”The Opalite is missing,” Antonio said, in a low voice.
”h.e.l.l!” the boy said, snapping his gum.
”Don't tell anyone,” Antonio ordered. ”Just help me look. It's an irregular lump, white embedded with sparkling colors, about this big,” he held two fingers apart. Imbrie began to push plates and carafes around, looking frantically.
But the Opalite was not to be found. Tactfully, Antonio began to ask the other attendees if they had seen an object of its description, not alluding to the fact that it was valuable, nor that he and his guest were frantic to find it because it represented their two companies' financial future, only that he wanted to know what had become of it.
”A multi-colored lump?” the server asked, when Antonio finally got around to her. ”Yes. I thought it was one of Mr. Imbrie's wads of gum. I thought it was kind of disgusting, sitting there on a clean plate in the middle of all this food.”
”What,” Antonio asked tightly, moving closer so that he was towering over the girl, ”did you do with it?”
”Why,” the girl said, her eyes big with fear, ”I threw it in the disposer.”
Antonio turned to Chinn, whose mouth had dropped open in disbelief. ”Call security. Now!” He turned to the girl, plucked the ID clip from her collar, and snapped it in two. ”You're out of here. Send her Below,” he growled at the two armed guards who appeared at the door of the hospitality room.
”What? Why?” the girl wailed. But she was marched away. Antonio closed the pa.s.sage door and returned to the party. No one could have missed the excitement, ending in the expulsion of the food service worker. He straightened his tunic and strode forward, wearing a polite but grave expression.
”I'm so sorry,” Antonio said. ”There's been a misunderstanding. Shall we get on with our meeting?”
”I thought we were going to see this Opalite,” said Barbara Skyler, Secretary of Technology for Earth-Gov.
”That will have to wait,” Antonio said, in what he hoped would be a final tone, but Skyler, a politician, had fried bigger fish than he.
”I don't want to go back and tell the Secretary General that this was all a waste of time, or a fraud...” she began.
”No! I a.s.sure you, Madam Secretary, I hope we'll have a full demonstration soon.”
”Where is my Opalite?” Haseen demanded.
<script>