The traffic came on thick and they ended up bumper to bumper with a gothic limo shrouded in heaps of dust and congealed shadow. As they inched slowly ahead, Amon related all the events that had occurred after they’d spoken on the phone, from the meeting and his ensuing flight to everything he’d been able to guess about the situation. Mayuko accessed his LifeStream through his inner profile and watched it all unfold as he talked, nodding her head periodically to show she was listening.
When Amon got to the part where Mayuko had arrived and his tale was done, silence followed. Frowning, Mayuko kept her eyes on the road, see-sawing her hand and tapping for gas, signal, brake. She seemed to be going over everything in her head, and Amon watched the headlights whip past as he waited for her conclusion, remembering how careful and thoughtful she had always been. After a minute, she said, “I was thinking about the strange similarity between the two headhunters.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, what if you’re caught up in some kind of sibling rivalry?”
“How do you mean? Ohhh, I see. Like they’re related?”
“Not just that. I mean, you saw the recent news about the Birla fortune, right?”
“Yeah,” said Amon, “I watched a report when I was with Rick in Self Serve a couple days ago.”
“So you probably haven’t heard the latest developments then?” Amon shook his head. “The details of the late Birlas’ will were released at a press conference last night. Most of the experts were expecting them to go with tradition and give the biggest portion of their assets to their eldest daughter, but Rashana only got forty-nine percent. Full executive control of Fertilex went to Anisha, along with the monopoly on sex, reproduction, cloning, and everything.”
Mayuko paused and looked at him.
“Wow. Okay. The younger sister got majority share. That’s a big story. So what’s the connection?”
“Well it wasn’t like Rashana got totally ripped off. Becoming the second richest person on earth isn’t such a bad deal, right? But by giving her the short end of the stick, the Birla parents are basically declaring to the world and all of posterity that they trust Anisha more. The variety show pundits are all talking about how Rashana is probably feeling about this, you know, humiliated, envious. Anyways, I couldn’t help thinking that it kind of reminds me of your two rich look-alikes. Maybe their relationship is something like that.”
“Right!” Amon jumped in astonishment, but felt the seatbelt on his gut keep him in his seat. “Maybe they are the Birla sisters?” Amon looked at Mayuko and shook his head in exasperation. She just smiled knowingly, as though perhaps it had been obvious to her from the start.
The Birlas were a notoriously reclusive family, carefully protecting all audiovisual aspects of their identities. The wizened faces of the parents and founders of the MegaGlom had become iconic representations of the true entrepreneur, but no pictures of their daughters had ever appeared in popular media, not even of their digiguises, and it was anyone’s guess what they looked like. Yet presumably since they were siblings, they shared a naked resemblance, which explained how the headhunters could look so similar without any image rights violations.Both sisters, it seemed, were using the sex change function on digimake and, given similar input, it had rendered them as men who were nearly identical.
“It makes so many things clearer,” said Amon. “All the connections to Fertilex and like, why they were both Indian. Also their conflicting attitudes and all the cash they’re throwing around. But some of it still doesn’t make sense. Like I know the Birla sisters are super rich now, but when I think about all the people involved and add up all the expenses, it’s got to be some percentage of the world economy invested in this. One percent? Five percent? Ten percent? I can’t guess at precise figures, but I doubt even the Birla’s can afford this. Fertilex would go bankrupt.”
“Maybe they have partners.”
“Maybe. But who?”
Suddenly the traffic opened up and Mayuko blasted ahead into an open stretch.
A bit dryer now and sheltered within the glass and metal shell, Amon felt his stress and anxious jitters gradually settle down. In their place came a kind of calm—a dull, restless, empty kind of calm with a tingle of fear lurking in the background, but a calm nonetheless. “It’s so much better to be here in this car than out there in the rain,” he said. “You know the urban legend about the application installed in every BodyBank that boils down your whole LifeStream and flashes it before your eyes just as you go bankrupt?”
Mayuko nodded.
“Well, I was starting to wonder whether that thing would go off.”
“I’m happy you’re safe,” she said, smiling weakly but with a kind of raw melancholy in her eyes that aroused Amon’s pity.
“Why did you come find me?” he asked.
After a moment’s pause, Mayuko said: “Well, after you called, I watched the segs you gave me and was feeling really sad and confused about Rick. I could accept that he was gone, but no matter how many times I turned everything over in my mind, I couldn’t believe he’d killed himself. Bankruptcy I could see. Rick was a clever man in many ways, but he was never particularly careful with money. Like this year, he told me his bonus was lower but he kept renting out that huge apartment and taking me out to nice restaurants and hotel lounges. I tried to refuse, but… Anyways, if anything he seemed happier these days than I could ever remember when we were growing up. Suicide just seemed impossible. Then I thought about his special mission and that you hadn’t heard anything about it. How could that be if you were partners working in the same office? It was just too strange and I started wondering how this mission might have been connected to his end… Then I thought about Sekido. He’s the one who assigns your missions, and I didn’t really know what was going on, but you said you were going to have a meeting with him and I started to get worried that… well…”
Amon clicked his tongue and shook his head ruefully. “It’s my life and I didn’t realize it was that bastard Sekido ruining it. But you saw through him just like that. I’m such an idiot.”
“Amon,” she said, turning to look straight at him again. The conscious and unconscious layers of his whole mind seemed to separate in her eyes like water fissuring into hydrogen and oxygen. “Don’t beat yourself up like that. You’re not an idiot. You’re just in denial.”
“Denial? About what?”
“About GATA, about the AT market, about bankruptcy, about the camps, about our society, and about yourself. It’s okay. To be a Liquidator you’ve got to tell yourself the Free World is fine and dandy. Otherwise the guilt would drive you nuts. Rick did the same thing to an extent. Everyone has to find ways of coping with their job.” Mayuko’s face contorted into a grimace for a moment, as though some deep-sunken pain had bobbed up to the surface. “But if you forget that everything you tell yourself about the industry you serve is just a fairy tale to get you through the work week without having a breakdown, then you lose your hold on the truth about yourself and the world. When that happens, people who are better able to stomach what’s really going on can take advantage of you. So you might have been a victim of your own ambition, but you’re not stupid, Amon. Even smart people have blind spots.”
Amon felt anger rise up in him and gave Mayuko an intense stare. Denial? How dare you? he thought, but found the words refusing to go to his lips. The next moment something inside him shifted, releasing a pulse of overwhelming shame that impelled him to lower his head. Then he knew that she was right. There had been so many chances for him to see that the minister was stringing him along with the false promise of promotion, but each time he’d been blinded by his hopes for career advancement, by yearning for realization of his dream and by faith in the AT system. As a result he had crashed Barrow, an innocent man, a hero. Admittedly a nostie too, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Now that it was clear Barrow had been telling the truth about his readout, maybe he had been telling the truth about nosties too. Sure, Amon had always been taught they were perverse rejects, only a notch above the bankdead. But had he not lived in the same building with them for years? And was his desire to meet the forest in the flesh not somewhat like what Barrow had called “the primary act?” Perhaps he had more in common with them than he cared to admit. And if nosties could be forgiven their quirks, then there wasn’t the slightest excuse for Barrow’s assassination. How could I have let myself be tricked into doing that? Amidst his self-loathing, Amon felt Mayuko’s eyes on the back of his bowed head.