He blinked and glanced at the door.
I said, “You got your wish. Plenty of news coverage.”
His eyes went sideways to the phone this time. Probably a better bet than trying to get past me. “You know, in the long run, Mitchell’s death might turn out to be a good thing for you.”
“Are you insinuating I killed my best friend, Peter? Because I think we both know that’s not true.”
“You couldn’t have,” he said calmly. “You were on stage in front of ten thousand people.” The consummate press agent, stilclass="underline" always rounding up the numbers. “And you were wearing the Clownfish. Your alibi is airtight. If I do say so myself.”
My lip curled. I felt like Grace Jones for a moment. Billy Idol. It was probably a better look on them.
“How’s your alibi, Peter?”
He tapped the thin plastic oblong in his shirt pocket. “I’ve been on the phone all night, except when the police were talking to me.”
God. I wondered if he could manage to carry on an upbeat conversation with some fluff page reporter while simultaneously shooting Mitch three times in the chest. The headset was a noise-canceling model.
It was actually plausible. He would only have felt fear, remorse, emotional connection if he chose to, after alclass="underline" He’d elected to turn all that off by default. Otherwise, assuming he got the drop on Mitch—which whoever killed him patently had—it would have been as complicated for him to kill somebody while carrying on a conversation as it was for most of us to talk on the phone while rummaging in the fridge.
Yes, he was capable of planning a murder, carrying it off, and never getting caught. And it’s not like I had any proof. I just…knew Peter.
“Put the tiara on.”
I must have gotten the sneer right that time, because he reached out gently and picked the thing up, then set it on his head. I’d cued it up to autoplay at the moment when I’d turned the knob and opened the door.
I watched him with a lover’s interest.
His face pinched. He winced.
And then he shut off—touched his bangle and calmed himself, tuned out, edited whatever empathic function he’d been feeling. Back to his baseline sociopathy.
It probably was a good thing I didn’t have a gun.
“Of course it’s a miserable thing to have happened, sweetheart. And of course you’re upset. But think of how advantageously we can cast this. It’s romantic. It’s tragic.”
“Mitch and I weren’t romantically involved, as you know perfectly well.”
He shrugged.
I said, “You killed him.”
“What possible benefit to me could there be in such an action?”
Media interest. Buzz. Drama. Gossip. The top of the news cycle, baby.
But I didn’t actually have to say that. Instead I dropped my voice and said, “Promise me you did not kill him.”
Peter smiled sadly. “I promise you, Neon. I did not kill your friend. But I don’t expect that to change your mind.”
He was lying. Was he lying? He must have known that I would never allow him to pressure me into using Mitch’s death to my advantage. Mustn’t he? Had he turned off those parts of his brain as well?
Could I avoid Mitch’s death serving my career? Actually, I couldn’t see how, when, as Peter said, my alibi was bulletproof. Hell, I’d been wearing the Clownfish. It wouldn’t even hold water that I might have hired someone to do away with him.
“A virtual poker face isn’t going to cut it anymore,” Peter said. “The fans want to feel you have skin in the game. Real loss. This will help you. You’ll see. Everybody loves a little tragedy.”
“Murder,” I said. “But deniable.”
He smiled. Yes, I was sure he’d done it. And I was sure that no one would ever prove it. Peter was a very, very plausible man: an asset in his profession.
Even if I went to the police with my suspicions, Peter would somehow use our history to suggest that I was a jilted girlfriend out for revenge. Even if I hadn’t killed anybody, that was going to look great in the tabloids. If I thought I could convict him, I’d go for it. But no. Not for nothing, not to make him look like a martyr. No.
“And we have the Clownfish recording.” He tapped his ugly plastic tiara. “That’s unbelievable, what that’s going to be worth. The artist who is willing to exploit this medium is an artist who is going to the top.”
“You’re fired,” I told him.
“I work for the label, Neon, not for you.”
“The label’s fired. You’re all fired. I’ll walk away right now.”
“Neon.” He shook his head soothingly. “I know you’re upset and confused. But what are you going to do without Mitch and without me? Nobody can handle that kind of isolation in a high-stress career, sweetheart.”
I closed my eyes. Nausea clotted at the back of my tongue. “You’re probably right.”
He smiled.
“You’re still fired.” My Reasonable Voice was coming out as more of a snarl. “Have Clarice write up some sort of buyout agreement for the rest of the tour. You can tell her I’ll pay anything reasonable to settle. Unless you really want to fight out a long, expensive breach of contract suit.”
The smile sagged into a gape. I wished I were still wearing the Clownfish. I would have liked these emotions on tape.
“And I’m releasing that Clownfish tape,” I said. “You’re not going to make a penny selling it.”
His stricken look—so much more pained than when he’d watched Mitch die through my eyes—told me I’d struck pay dirt. Filthy, stinking pay dirt.
Well, there would certainly be buzz all right.
“You can’t release it,” he said. “It’s our intellectual property. Ours and Clownfish’s.”
“Is it?” I smiled, though it felt like plastic pinned across my lips. “What a pity it’s already been pirated, then.”
I turned away. It took a lot of will not to slam the door behind me, but it was so much more satisfying to let it drift slowly, aimlessly closed between us.
I glanced back over my shoulder once as I walked away down the hall. Peter was standing there. He’d opened the door and stood framed in the doorway, waiting for me to come back to him, the ridiculous tiara crooked on his head.
Peter waited. And I walked away.
A prolific, award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, Elizabeth Bear won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, then went on to win the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2006 for Hammered. She followed it up with two sequels to form the Jenny Casey trilogy, just one of her many series, including the Eternal Sky trilogy (which Tor.com called “the most significant epic fantasy published in the last decade”), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy, the New Amsterdam series, the Promethean Age series, and others. Equally recognized for her short work, Bear won a Hugo Award in 2008 for her short story “Tideline” and another for her novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom” in 2009. Bear’s activity in science fiction and fantasy fan communities has garnered her a loyal online following, as well as two Hugo Awards for Best Fancast for SF Squeecast, for which she is a regular contributor (along with fellow author Seanan McGuire).
Nancy Kress
Machine Learning
Ethan slipped into the back of the conference room in Building 5 without being noticed. Fifty researchers and administrators, jammed into the room lab-coat-to-suit, all faced the projection stage. Today, of course, it would be set for maximum display. The CEO of the company was here, his six-foot-three frame looming over the crowd. Beside him, invisible to Ethan in the crush, would be tiny Anne Gonzalez, R&D chief. For five years a huge proportion of the Biological Division’s resources—computational, experimental, human—had been directed toward this moment.