"A spokesman for Joseph Gray says that the Gray Corporation plans to hire over one hundred thousand workers in the Far East, North America, and Europe in the first quarter, and perhaps as many as one million new employees by year-end. The competition for the high-paying, high-tech factory jobs is also a high-stakes game, but one that dozens of countries began in earnest immediately after the stunningly successful asteroid retrieval. National and local governments from all across the industrialized world are preparing packages of incentives to lure the new jobs to their economies, where the benefits will include not only the huge influx of high salaries, but also spin-off industries which supply the materials and training needed by the cutting-edge…"
Laura shut the television off. She wandered across the silent bedroom to the window. Gray, the billionaire industrialist, had won again.
Trillionaire, she corrected herself, opening the window to stand before the tide of cool air. All the mystery was gone for her now. All her hopes — secretly harbored had been extinguished like a light whose switch Gray himself had thrown. She now saw him for what he was, and not for what she wished him to be. A roar in the distance drew her attention. The sound was from a jumbo jet landing at the airport. It was filled, Laura imagined, with starry-eyed members of the now-worldwide Gray cult. She decided to try to catch the plane. Hoblenz's men had found her bag by the wreckage of the Model Three, and it sat by the door, still packed. She had always been a visitor there, an outsider, an intruder. She would say good-bye to Janet. She could write to the others.
Laura looked down at the island. Things seemed different now.
Something was missing. It was the computer, she knew. The nosy, rule-breaking, moody, quirky computer who spied on her and loved and hated and did all the things that had, in just a few days, made her Laura's friend. A friend she had lost… tragically.
But it was just business to him, Laura thought. Gray's "I made her; she's mine" attitude toward Gina entirely befitted the child genius. His moral and emotional development had been stunted by years of living outside the norms.
She frowned at her continued obsession with the man. It'll fade over time, she told herself, trying not to give in to the ache that spread outward from her chest. It threatened to consume her completely, to leave her immobilized under its weight.
Laura kept herself busy as she got cleaned up to leave. Finally, she went over to grab her bag. With her hand on the knob she noticed that an envelope lay half visible under the door. She picked it up.
The paper was rich and luxurious. She ran her thumb underneath the flap and found a note inside written in bold and sweeping strokes: "I thought I would take a long run down to the Village at around eight in the morning. If you feel up to it, I'd love for you to join me. Joseph."
She looked at her watch. It was ten till eight. Laura walked over to her desk and tossed the invitation in the trash. It landed facedown at the bottom of the wastebasket, and she saw something written on the back.
Laura would not allow him to manipulate her, she decided, and with the greatest of effort she headed for the door. She would find Janet, say good-bye, catch a ride to the airport, and get on a plane.
And she would always wonder. Laura felt her strength and her resolve drain away.
Don't go back, called a voice from some corner of her mind, but it was no use.
Every step she took toward the desk was a betrayal. She fished the invitation out of the trash and read the back.
"You're still not ready yet, but I'll tell you anyway."
52
"'Morning," Gray said to Laura at the bottom of the stairs.
"You'd better stretch. It's chilly out."
"I'm not going," Laura said, and felt her face instantly redden.
She was wearing shorts and her muddy running shoes. "Why not?" he asked, smiling.
He seemed to be in a great mood. And why not? Laura thought. He's the richest man in the history of the earth. "I'm leaving. Thank you for the job. Good-bye."
Laura got all the way to the stairs before she heard, "What is it?" She stopped, but didn't turn. "What did I do now?" Gray asked.
"How dare you even ask that?" she wheeled on him, shouting. "You killed Gina last night! Or don't you remember?"
"Come here," Gray said. He turned and headed for his study.
Laura hesitated, then followed him only because she had more to say. Plastic sheeting hung over the hole where the window had been.
Gray was tapping away at the computer on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
He said nothing.
"What?" Laura snapped, then took a deep breath. "If you've got something to say," she continued in a calmer voice, "just say it!"
"Look at the screen."
"I'm sick and tired of these games that you play and—!"
"Will you shut up," he interrupted, "and read the screen… please."
She rounded the desk and looked at the monitor.
<Surprise-surprise-surprise-surprise!>
"Are you ready?" Gray asked.
Laura swallowed the constriction in her throat and nodded. They jogged up the drive, remaining silent as they headed for the gate.
"You feel well enough for a pretty long run?" he asked. Laura nodded again. "It's about seven miles if we take [garbled] down some steep footpaths, but it's all downhill."
"That's fine," she said in a flat tone.
When they got to the gate, Gray turned left toward the Village. By the time they reached the tunnel, the silence had grown awkward. "Nice weather this morning," Laura said just as they ran into the darkness of the tunnel.
"Yep," Gray replied. All was quiet again save the sound of their footfalls. Laura was surprised to find she'd lost all her fear of the tunnel. Gray was in control again. All was right with the world.
They emerged from the tunnel to find a Model Six on the side of the road picking up trash. Not just trash, Laura noticed as she slowed, but shell casings from the firefight the night before. It even ran a vacuum over the road to clean up the broken glass.
The robot had deep scratches and dents along its side.
Gray said nothing. He didn't even look the robot's way.
A short distance later they turned onto a steep footpath. It obviously took a more direct route down the mountainside than the road, and the effort of running was mainly spent on slowing down.
"When I got back to the house last night," Gray said without warning, "there was no light under your door."
"I was pretty tired," Laura mumbled. In fact, she was curled up in bed crying half the night. Crying over her twin losses — the death of her friend Gina and the death of her image of Joseph Gray.
"Aren't you going to ask what happened?"
"Okay," Laura said, "what happened?"
The roar from the engines of another jet caused Gray to delay his reply.
"Did you really think I 'pulled the plug' on the computer?" he asked.
"You were doing all those things! You removed the 'locks'—the copy protection — so the phase-three could take over all of Gina's connections. And you opened those big… 'data bus' things, whatever they are."
"That was all so Gina could copy her connections to the annex. The program that made up Gina's personality — her self — was resident entirely in the main pool. I copied Gina's connections lock, stock, and barrel over to the virus-free side of the partition. The trick was to do that without taking all the ordinary viruses across with her and without crashing the Other. It took several hours, and it was touch-and-go for a while, but Gina was a real trouper — brave as she could be. When we were done, the antiviral programs were deactivated, the partition was removed, and she was healthier than she's ever been."