The bartender didn't seem to know if he believed Ralph or not. "Dying?"
"Just passing away."
"I never heard about that."
"Of course you didn't. It's a very closely guarded secret."
"Why are they dying?"
"Nobody knows. It might be a glitch in the equipment, although those Germans don't usually screw up, or it could be that, after a couple of years in a feelie, they just give up and die. It may be that human beings just ain't designed to live like a cactus."
The bartender was shaking his head. "That's pretty freaky. How many have died so far?"
"Not many yet, but I'm afraid it's only the start."
The bartender poured Ralph a shot on the house. "It's one time that I'm glad I'm poor."
Ralph drained the free drink. "Amen to that."
"What are they going to do about it? They can't just let people die."
"Can't they? So far, all they've been doing is keeping it quiet."
"That's terrible."
Ralph sipped his beer. "That's big corporations for you. They just don't give a damn."
"THERE HAVE BEEN, FOR WANT OF A better word, rumors."
Kingsley Deutsch stood at the end of the absurdly long conference table. His stance was dramatic, as was the pause that he left for his opening statement to sink in.
"In fact, the rumors that are circulating in this corporation have reached totally unacceptable levels, levels that can only indicate that morale is approaching a state of instability. Instability at any time is something, gentlemen, that we simply cannot afford. We cannot afford it at any time, but we particularly cannot afford it right now."
The special emergency meeting was being held in the penthouse boardroom, the highest pinnacle of power in Combined Media. The boardroom itself was designed to embody, reflect, and amplify that power. The vast panoramic window behind Deutsch looked out over an expanse of city that stretched out almost to the horizon. The sky was a deep blue with streaks of wispy, pale clouds, planes came and went, and the light of the towers and streets were just starting to come alive.
Outside, everything seemed so normal. In the boardroom, there was a feeling of isolation, almost a sense of impending doom. The pair of huge marble neo-Assyrian godheads that flanked the window and supported the vaulted cathedral ceiling glared angrily down from behind Deutsch at the men and women assembled there as though silently demanding explanations. Deutsch himself looked as though he was also about to demand explanations. Kingsley Deutsch wasn't a tall man, but he made up for what he lacked in stature by unrelenting energy. More than once he had been described in the media as Napoleonic. Like Bonaparte, his dress was deliberately understated. His black conservative suit may have been infinitely forgettable, even if it had cost more than three thousand dollars, but there was no forgetting his face. He was not a handsome man, but there were few faces outside of a handful of mass murderers and psychopaths that showed such will and determination. His chin jutted in permanent belligerence; his small blue eyes, beneath knitted, almost invisible brows, were penetrating to the point of being scary. The only touch of vanity was the way in which he compensated for his thinning gray hair with a deep, even tan that seemed to be the main reason behind weekends spent at his tax haven, a Haitian chateau just outside Port au Prince.
"I have called this special meeting because I have an announcement to make that I believe may be of historic proportions."
Kingsley Deutsch didn't mince words. He was a megalomaniac, certainly, but he was an absolutely successful megalomaniac, and if he said historic proportions, he meant historic proportions. Historic as in history, not historic as in a fifteen-second sound bite on the next day's news shows. The men and women who had been summoned to the penthouse stood transfixed, and the pause before he continued was a form of torture. The torture, however, wasn't about to stop.
"Before the announcement, though, I think we have to spend a little time taking stock of the situation that currently exists within this enterprise of ours. There is little point attempting to advance into history if we cannot summon even the confidence to face tomorrow. I said that this corporation was beset by rumor. Your comments please."
The frightening blue eyes scanned the assembled men and women. There were just ten of them, so small an assembly that they were dwarfed by the overwhelming conference table that was almost thirty feet of dark mahogany polished to the finish of glass. For ten people, however, they wielded a great deal of power. They were the ten department heads, the ten top people in the whole of Combined Media. Between then, they commanded almost, although not quite, as much power as Deutsch himself. And yet, they said nothing. The meeting itself already had them off balance. It had been the end of the working day when they had been summoned without warning to Deutsch's presence: "The penthouse. Immediately."
Deutsch looked around once more and half smiled. Behind him, hanging over the city, a skyboard advertising Pepsi Cola had lit up. He focused on Madison Renfield.
"What about you, Madison? You're our hero of the glib."
Renfield raised his hands in a somewhat helpless gesture. "There are always rumors, Kingsley. It'd be unhealthy for a corporation to be without rumors in this day and age. Let's face it, the ways of the modern corporation are a little Byzantine."
Deutsch raised his eyebrow. "Byzantine, Madison?"
Renfield had the expression of a man who had very little left to lose. "Byzantine, Kingsley."
Deutsch smiled. "So, Madison, do you see me as a Byzantine emperor?"
"I wouldn't volunteer the analogy."
Deutsch looked at the other nine. "Madison may, in fact, be right, but let us remember one thing. The Byzantine emperor could rule only according to the information that he received. He was frequently only as good as his intelligence, and that was only if his intelligence was untainted. One of Adolf Hitler's greatest problems was that he surrounded himself with individuals who told him only what he wanted to hear. That's not only bad intelligence but criminally unintelligent. I have, throughout my long career, taken great care to see that my own intelligence sources were as direct and pure as I could make them."
That, also, was no exaggeration. Deutsch was famous for his elaborate spy system, which seemed to extend to every level of the corporation despite all the efforts of the individual departments to suppress, filter, and regulate stories that went up to the penthouse.
"During the last few days, these sources have been telling me a great many things. So many things, in fact, that the sheer volume of information that I have been receiving recently would be enough on its own to cause me a measure of alarm. Let me enumerate some of the things I've been hearing."
The ten heads of department were no longer transfixed. They were now preparing to squirm in their leather chairs with the CM logo embossed in gold on the backs. No one could remember when Kingsley Deutsch had called a meeting that promised so much discomfort. It was quite usual for him to call individual department heads onto the carpet, but to summon them en masse for a dressing down was quite unprecedented.
"Now, where shall I start? Perhaps with the phenomenon of client death that, although substantively a closely guarded corporation secret, seems to have become widely talked about."
Gorges Gomez of Client Services and Renfield of PR exchanged worried glances. Deutsch caught the exchange.
"You have something to say? Something to add to the discussion?"
Gomez cleared his throat nervously. "There are a lot of rank and file workers who know about this. Many of them are employed only because of the concessions that were made to the union in the original charter. It is virtually impossible to silence so many people whose company loyalty may at best be tenuous."