Chapter Six

The radio clicked on on schedule the next morning; Casper lay, still half-asleep, as the regular list of catastrophes was recited. The Russian civil war was still raging, more complicated than ever, and the Fringers were still causing trouble out-system, claiming they could use non-Consortium contractors and install non-Party officials.

Then he snapped awake.

“Four youths were killed late last night in the tunnels near the City Hall subway station,” the announcer said. “The youths, whose names have not been released by the police, were walking along the tracks between City Hall and Race/Vine Station when they were struck and killed by a train as it returned to the yard for the night. A corporate spokesperson for the Philadelphia police said…”

Casper rolled away from the radio and blocked out the sound with a pillow over his ears. The last thing he needed was a reminder of the previous night’s events. He remembered them all too clearly.

Except, that is, exactly how he had knocked those two hoods down. His body had acted on its own, and he had somehow caught two alert young men off-guard.

He didn’t understand that at all. He had never done anything like that before. And it had happened before he watched the self-defense video. Watching the file hadn’t been like learning something new, it had been like re-learning a beloved childhood ritual.

That made no sense at all. He hadn’t known anything about self-defense as a child. His parents hadn’t even let him watch the Power Rangers or other popular shows.

When the radio’s drone of speech was replaced by music Casper uncovered his head. Hoping this start was not an omen of how the rest of the day would go, he rolled out of bed and prepared for work—not that he thought he would be able to accomplish anything on three hours sleep and with the imprint not working.

The subway station showed no evidence of what had occurred the night before. Casper glanced around, looking for signs, and saw none. Later, when the train passed through the City Hall station, he didn’t even think to look out the window.

He left the subway and climbed the stairs to the street.

At the top he stopped, blinked in the sunlight, and without knowing why he quickly scanned the neighborhood, noting rooftops, obstructions, and who was where. The morning commuters were marching to their duties; a leftover drunk from the night before lay against a building.

He took a step back down, unsure just why. Something had sparkled somewhere, but he had no idea why that should mean anything.

Still, it bothered him. He turned and trotted back down the steps, and went out the opposite entrance. Then he detoured around the block.

Just for variety, he tried to tell himself. He was taking a new, longer route just to be different.

In the elevator he found himself thinking that he would have to buy a gun, or at any rate acquire one somehow. It would be expected, and he might need it.

He blinked. Expected by whom? Needed for what?

At his desk he looked at the job list and first despaired, then grew defiant.

What kind of a man did they think he was, giving him all this shitwork to do?

Mirim stepped up behind him and said, “Boo!”

He didn’t react immediately; then his lips pulled back and his teeth showed in an expression that was only technically a smile. He turned.

“Do you respect yourself?” he demanded.

“What?”

“I said, do you respect yourself?”

Mirim blinked, puzzled. “Of course I do,” she said. “Is this a gag, Casper?”

“A joke?” He waved an arm at his computer screen. “No, Mirim,” he said, “that’s a joke! Expecting a human being to waste his time on this nonsense! It’s fit only for lawyers and computers, not a so-called free man!”

She laughed. “You got that right!” she said. “But hey, it’s a steady paycheck, right?”

“Not any more!” Casper cleared the screen. “Not for me, it isn’t!”

Her smile vanished. “Cas, do you feel all right?”

“I feel fine, Mirim. I feel better than I have in years. I’m setting myself free, and it feels good!”

“Cas…”

“You think I’m being a reckless fool, don’t you?”

“If you’re serious, yeah, I do, Cas. Are you…”

Casper laughed, not his usual high-pitched, nervous giggle, but a solid, powerful laugh. “Mirim,” he said, “we were meant for better things than this. We’ve had our birthright stolen, and I mean to…”

“What’s this, Beech?” a new voice demanded. Quinones appeared at Mirim’s shoulder.

Casper looked at his boss’s broad, hostile face, and the feeling of power and certainty suddenly faded. There were times to retreat and regroup, and this was one of them.

“Nothing, sir,” he said.

“Then let’s get back to work, shall we? You and Ms. Anspack both. I must say, that imprinting you took doesn’t seem to have kicked in yet, from what you’ve done so far.”

“I’d have to agree, sir,” Casper said boldly. “I think NeuroTalents screwed it up somehow, and you should have someone look into the matter.”

Startled, Quinones stared at Beech. The man was a doormat, and could always be relied on to accept blame for anything—since when would he suggest that somebody else might be at fault?

Since when would he suggest anything?

“I think you’re right,” Quinones said slowly. “I think I might just give NeuroTalents a call myself.”

“You do that, sir,” Casper said. “Thank you.”

“Right. Well, Beech, you’d better get some work done, imprinted or not.”

Quinones turned and marched away. Mirim watched him go, throwing quick little glances at Casper and trying to suppress the urge to giggle. The whole exchange had been bizarre. Casper talking to Quinones that way? Sweet little Casper?

“Casper, what’s happened to you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really do think the imprint must have been screwed up somehow. I can’t do a damn thing with this new software, but I’m getting all these other weird reactions. And you know, Mirim, they might be just what I’ve needed to jar me out of my rut.”

Mirim nodded, eyeing Casper. For the past year, maybe longer, she had been watching Casper, joking with him, watching how Quinones and the other people around the office treated him, watching how he treated Cecelia and how Celia bossed him around, and thinking what a fine man he could be if he had a little more backbone, if he weren’t afraid to step out of his timid little groove—but that had been daydreaming. If it was really going to happen, she wasn’t sure how to handle it. “I think I better get back to work myself,” she said, and she turned away.

From the door of his office Quinones watched her emerge from behind Casper’s partition and go back toward her own desk; he was just stepping inside when his phone rang.

Annoyed, he glanced back out the door; yes, his secretary was working the phone. Why hadn’t she just called to him? He picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”

“Arturo Quinones?” a cold voice asked.

“This is Quinones.”

“Are you private?”

Puzzled, Quinones leaned over and closed the door. “Yes,” he said.

“You have a man named Casper Beech there? Recently received an imprint at NeuroTalents?”

“He works here, yes. Who is this?”

“My name is Smith,” the voice replied. “I’m with the government. Is Beech there now?”

“Yes, I just spoke to him. What’s this about?”

“Don’t worry about it. What we want you to do is tell us the minute Beech leaves the office, for any reason. Just call this number, 445-304-0011—did you get that?”

“No,” Quinones said, groping for a pen—most people would have used a PDA or keyboard, but Quinones was proud of his old-fashioned insistence on hardcopy. “Hold on a minute.” He found a pen, fished an old envelope from the trash, and said, “Ready.”

The number was repeated.

“Call that number,” Smith told him. “You don’t need to wait for an answer, but let it ring at least twice, to make sure Caller ID gets your number. Don’t call until Beech leaves. You understand?”

“I understand, but what…”

Smith hung up.

Quinones stared at the phone for a minute, then muttered, “Shit. Crazy feds,” and dropped the receiver on the cradle.

He supposed, though, that he had better do what he was told.

He opened the door and tried to peer through or over the maze of partitions, but there was simply no way to see Beech from where he stood. He returned to his desk, sat, and grabbed the phone.

Mirim’s cubby was in a corner where she could see the office entry, and if she turned the other way she could see Casper. She was sitting there, marveling at the sight of Casper Beech leaning back with his hands behind his head, not even pretending to work, when her phone beeped for attention.

She snatched up the headset and plugged it into her ear. “Anspack,” she said into the mike.

“Mirim, this is Mr. Quinones,” she heard. “I’ve got something I’d like you to do for me.”

“Yes, sir?” she replied, puzzled.

“I want you to tell me when Casper Beech leaves the office—even if it’s just to use the men’s room. Just give me a buzz.”

Mirim hesitated. “Uh…yes, sir,” she said at last. She fought down the impulse to ask why; she knew that Quinones didn’t take kindly to questions from his subordinates.

“Good. You just call the minute he sets foot out the door, then.”

He hung up.

He hadn’t even said thank you, Mirim thought, pulling off the headset and glaring at it. He hadn’t given any reason.

He was probably mad at Casper about some stupid little infraction that poor Cas didn’t even know he’d committed. Maybe he’d heard Cas’s stillborn speech about self-respect.

But why would he want to know when Cas was out of the office?

So he could search his cubby, of course. He probably thought Cas was on uppers or something—a man like Quinones would never believe one of his underlings might simply be fed up, he’d insist there was some other factor, something affecting the man’s thinking.

Mirim’s mouth set in an angry frown.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, a guilty little thought appeared—was Casper on something? Drugs or wire?

Even if he was, though, what business was it of Quinones’? Or of hers? She hadn’t been hired to spy on her co-workers. Quinones had a lot of nerve, involving her in his nasty little search-and-seizure—if that’s what it was.

He hadn’t bothered to explain; he had treated her as if she were a slave, or a robot, with no choice but to carry out his every order.

She was no robot.

Casper’s question came back to her. Did she respect herself?

Yes, she did. She stood up and marched back to Casper’s cubby.

Casper looked up at her approach, and quickly blanked his screen. He had given up on doing the job he was supposed to be doing, tracing through the mazes of interlocking directorates, shared subsidiaries, and stock options to determine just who owned what, so that companies would not unwittingly sue their own managers or stockholders in the ongoing torrent of liability litigation; instead, he had been doing some very simple, basic searches, seeing just what in the company network he could access easily and what was relatively secure.

Mirim probably wouldn’t have noticed, but why risk it?

“Come to torment me further, wench?” he asked, smiling.

“Sort of,” Mirim said, not smiling back. “I wanted to warn you.”

His own expression collapsed into mild wariness. “Warn me of what?” he asked.

Mirim hesitated. It wasn’t too late to throw it off with a joke, to keep from offending Quinones, to avoid risking her job.

Then she got a look at Casper’s face—thin, long-jawed, pale, framed by brown hair in need of trimming, and watching her intently from deep-set brown eyes.

He didn’t look drugged or wired. He looked sincere, attentive, and almost…almost noble.

“I think Quinones is on your case,” she said. “He wanted me to tell him the minute you stepped out of the office.”

Casper blinked once, slowly, coolly. Then he turned and looked over his cubby.

There was no way of knowing just what Quinones actually wanted. Perhaps he intended to check Casper’s files—though he should be able to access those from his own computer. Perhaps he wanted to set up some little surprise.

Or…?

“I think he’s decided you’re a vicious drug fiend, and he wants to ferret out your stash before you can pollute the rest of us,” Mirim said, perching herself on the edge of Casper’s desk.

Or that, Casper thought.

There weren’t any drugs to find, of course, nor anything else suspicious; Casper’s life was dreary and utterly innocent of any wrongdoing. Even his debts weren’t his own, but inherited.

However, sooner or later, Quinones would discover that Casper wasn’t working. Maybe he already had discovered it, and wanted to see if he could discover the reason. Quinones wouldn’t believe that the imprinting had screwed up, and that instead of adding to Casper’s liability-tracing skills it had apparently wiped them out.

Even if he did believe, it wouldn’t do any good. Casper had signed that stupid waiver at NeuroTalents, and Data Tracers, Inc. wasn’t about to waste their time and money fighting NeuroTalents on his behalf. A second imprint might not do any better; Casper’s brain might have indetectable quirks. Much easier to just throw him out and find a replacement whose brain was still virgin and imprintable.

He was going to lose his job.

Well, screw that. He didn’t want the lousy job anyway. He was sick of kowtowing to that fat fool, Quinones. A person had to stand on his own two feet.

Better to go out now, rather than waiting to be fired.

And there was no reason to go quietly.

While he ran through all this he had been gazing mildly up at Mirim. Now he smiled broadly, reached over and took her hand and squeezed it gently. He did this without knowing why; it went against all the habits he had always had, but it felt right. He had never touched Mirim before, and he felt her start slightly at the first contact.

“Thanks for telling me, Mirim,” he said. Then, to Mirim’s utter astonishment, he stood, climbed up onto his desk, and shouted, “Listen, everybody!”

The normal hum of the office faded slightly as faces turned toward him. Most of the workers couldn’t see him, because of the partitions, but they could hear him.

He looked across the partitions and saw that the door to Quinones’ office was closed. He wouldn’t hear anything.

“Some of you know me, some of you don’t,” Casper called out. “I’m Casper Beech; I’ve worked here for nine years now. Nine lousy, boring, painful years!”

A few voices tittered nervously.

“Well, that nine years is ending; I’m about to leave here for good. You know why?” He paused dramatically. No one replied; the decrease in office noise deepened as a genuine hush fell.

“Because last week they sent me for a neural imprint—they were too cheap to train me properly, or buy software a normal human being can run. They sent me for a neural imprint—they ordered me, a free-born American, to take it. They sent me to have my brain rewired. They sent me to be force-fed skills I’ll never be able to use anywhere else. They sent me to be programmed like one of their infernal machines!”

Casper could feel the people listening. He heard a chair scrape as someone stood up for a better view.

“Well, I’m not a machine to be programmed. I’ve been living like one for nine years, but I’m not a machine! I’ve been taking their orders for nine years, but I’m not a machine! But I didn’t rebel—after nine years, I think even I thought I was a machine! I did what they wanted, I took the imprint—but my brain rebelled! The imprint didn’t take. I was sick as a dog for a week, my memory’s fouled up, I can’t work—but I didn’t rebel. I came in here and tried to work anyway, like a good little machine…” He paused again, and then bellowed out, “And they fired me! Because their imprint screwed up, they fired me!”

A murmur of sympathy—probably more feigned than genuine—ran through the room.

It wasn’t sympathy Casper wanted, though. It struck him suddenly that he had no idea what he did want, or why he was doing any of this, but he knew he had to do it, he knew he had to carry on, he knew what to say next.

“And you know what, folks? I’m glad. Because at least I’m out of here, and the rest of you aren’t. But I won’t be the last to go—no, I’m just the first! Because do you know what our dear Mr. Quinones told me, when he sent me to have my brain reprogrammed, my mind tampered with? I’ll tell you what he told me. It seems software that runs in people is cheaper than software that runs in computers, because we can do our own debugging. It seems that dear old Data Tracers intends to do a lot of imprinting from now on—I was just the first! And do you know what the failure rate for neural imprinting is? Do you?”

He waited, but nobody replied.

“Neither do I,” he announced. “Because I’m damn sure it’s not what they’ve published. Most of you work with data all the time, bend it around to suit management, to suit the customers’ whims. You think any of the data we get hasn’t been tampered with? Ha!”

He waved in dismissal, and his tone changed from anger to false joviality.

“Well, boys and girls, I’m out of here, and glad to be free. I’ll leave you all to enjoy your imprints—or if they don’t take, I’ll see you on the streets, with the other unemployables. Stop by and say hello, and remember—my name’s Casper Beech.”

Then he jumped down, grabbed Mirim by the hand, and said, “Come on.”

“Come where?” she said, startled.

He stopped in mid-stride, turned, and smiled at her. “Wherever you like,” he said, “but back to your desk for a start. You don’t want anyone to tell Quinones it was you who warned me, do you?”

The room was buzzing; several people had emerged from their cubbies and were approaching Casper uncertainly.

Mirim hesitated.

Casper abruptly leaned forward and kissed her, taking her head between his hands—and as he did, he whispered, “I need to leave now, or it’ll ruin my exit.” Then he released her and strode toward the door.

Mirim blinked, then ran after him. She detoured just far enough to grab her purse.

Together, they marched out the door. A crowd gathered in the doorway, watching them go.

When Mirim and Casper had vanished into an elevator, the crowd gradually dispersed. It wasn’t until almost five minutes later that somebody thought to tell Quinones that two of his subordinates had just walked off the job.