Hardened Mossad operative or not, Avi Posner seemed near tears as he raised his glass and clinked it with hers in a toast.
“Here’s to you, Monique Calhoun,” he said. “Should you choose to change your citizen-shareholdership, there will always be a place for you in Mossad.”
Monique laughed softly. “Have I made it, then, Avi?” she said. “Have I finally gotten professional?”
“Oh no,” Posner told her with sincere but well-lubricated gravity. “That is something you’ve gone beyond.”
“And you’re another, Avi Posner,” she said.
It had been decided between Eduardo Ramirez and the Marenkos to hold this meeting on
La Reine de la Seine
, in the midafternoon, and Eduardo had told Eric not to have anything more than snacks prepared, though of course when inviting Stella and Ivan Marenko to anything, a liberal supply of vodka, wine, and champagne was de rigueur.
But as it turned out the Siberians were as abstemious as Eric had ever seen them, merely sipping at pepper vodka as they sat at a table out in the hot muggy open air on the fantail while Eduardo, with only an occasional word edgewise from Eric, brought them up to speed on what Bad Boys had learned about the Davinda climate model and the machinations of Big Blue.
They were not pleased.
“Why you keep us out of circuit so long?” Ivan demanded when Eduardo had finished.
“Is because they think we pay more for white tornado recordings if we know computer uses human brain, Ivan! Or maybe don’t buy at all if we know it doesn’t, da?”
“So if you find brain, you tell us, if you don’t, you shut up, hah, Ramirez?”
Eric had never seen Eduardo Ramirez so discomfited. He sat there stonily under the angry glares of the Siberians saying nothing, no doubt because he could think of nothing to say.
The staring contest was broken by Ivan Marenko’s laughter.
“Smart strategy!” he said. “No hard feelings.”
“As godfathers say in old gangster movies, ‘just business’!” said Stella, and she broke up too.
What people! thought Eric. What people to have on your side!
Whatever side that might turn out to be.
Eduardo having imparted his information, the Marenkos, as was their wont, took over.
“Okay,” said Stella, “so
is
brain . . .”
“But
live
brain, maybe inside volunteer,” said Ivan. “Not as bad as Frankenstein games . . .”
“I beg to differ,” Eric found himself saying. “Speaking as someone who’s been there—”
“Not the point, Eric,” Eduardo said, cutting him off sharply.
“Da,” said Stella Marenko. “Point is, does not
look
as bad as using cloned brain or brain ripped out of body. Much easier to . . . how would Calhoun say it . . . ?”
“Deep sell,” said Ivan.
“Spin,” said Eric simultaneously.
“Whatever,” said Eduardo. “The point is that you can’t
rely
on what happens when Davinda puts on that helmet and runs his climate model to discredit Condition Venus or anything else . . .”
“Your argument for buying the tornado recordings from you for a lot of money and using them, da, Ramirez?” said Ivan.
“Da,” said Eduardo.
“Is
good
argument,” said Stella Marenko.
“But asking price is too high.”
“Asking prices are
always
too high,” said Eduardo. “That’s why they’re asking prices.”
“You come down?”
“A little . . .”
“How much?”
“Wait,” said Eric, his mouth running away from his brain again. “We had better think carefully before we close the deal. Something here just doesn’t add up.”
Eduardo glowered at him. “If you don’t mind, Eric—”
“Let him talk!” said Ivan Marenko. It came perilously close to sounding like an order. And no one gave orders to Eduardo Ramirez. Eduardo was far too urbane to show it overtly but Eric could easily enough feel the heat of his ire.
And realize that he was perilously close to a brink whose full nature he did not care to contemplate. And it was too late to step back.
“What I mean to say, Eduardo,” he said soothingly, “is we’re forgetting I’ve got Big Blue convinced that the mysterious Lao is some operation
we’re
running against them. . . .”
“So . . . ?” said Eduardo.
“So that they’ve bought it means that Lao can’t be some operation of
theirs
. . . .”
“
So
?” said Eduardo in quite a different tone of voice, his anger forgotten, his curiosity piqued.
Eric’s train of logic was running out fast. “So . . . er . . . if it isn’t our operation . . . and it isn’t theirs. . . .”
“Third Force?” said Ivan Marenko.
“Does not exist,” said Stella. “Not exactly.”
“Does not
not
exist, Stella. Not exactly.”
“Da . . .”
Although any number of personages and organizations owned to a belief in the vague constellation of even more elusive concepts referred to as “Third Force,” no syndic, corporation, or religious hierarchy had ever emerged from the virtual woodwork to claim philosophical trademark or corporate copyright of the free-floating aphorisms that were about all that Eric knew about this non-existent non-organization.
As such common sayings as “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings” or “it’s déjà vu all over again” were attributed to a legendary yogi called Berra, so were these crypticisms attributed to “Third Force,” the self-defining central doctrine of which was “Whenever two forces oppose, the Third Force emerges.”
All sorts of obscure cults left over from the twentieth century—Scientology, Sufism, Marxism, Social Entropists, Zen Vegetarians, whatever—claimed to be the ancestral roots of Third Force, and there was no reason Eric could see that they couldn’t all be right, since the central doctrine thereof could be interpreted to imply anything from the mystic notion that the interaction between matter and energy produced a Third Force variously called “spirit,” “soul,” “god,” “chi,” “prana,” “tao,” or “chaos,” to the proven culinary principle that the oversweet and the oversour combined to make an excellent sauce for Chinese food.
Or that the Hot and Cold War between the Blues and the Greens produced an intermediate state, namely the current planetary condition.
Or that any conflict between two opposing players would somehow conjure up a third player out of the smoke and mirrors of contention.
Which Eric had to admit seemed to apply to the current situation.
“So what are you saying?” Eduardo scoffed to no one in particular and/or everyone in general. “That disinformation that Eric fed to Monique Calhoun has somehow manifested a real ‘Lao conspiracy’ out of nothingness?”
Ivan and Stella Marenko eyed each other nervously.
“Stranger things can happen,” said Ivan somberly.
“With enough good vodka and bad mushrooms!” said Stella.
“You’re forgetting the obvious,” said Eric.
“Oh are we?” snapped Eduardo.
“Something called Lao was out there all along to begin with,” Eric pointed out. “We never knew what it was, and we don’t know now. The other side didn’t know what it was, and only
thinks
it knows it’s us now.”
“Da . . .”
“Da!”
“So, Eric, what are you saying that implies?” Eduardo Ramirez asked. And when Eric hesitated, he smiled encouragingly. “Go ahead,” he said, “you’ve been doing well so far.”
“It means
we
don’t know what’s going to happen when they run Davinda’s model with him in the circuit, and now
they
don’t think they know either,” Eric said. “And . . .”
“And?”
Eric shrugged, his brilliant deductions having reached their end point.
“The operational implications of which are . . . ?”
Eric shrugged again.
“We had better be very, very careful.”
“About what?”
Eric thought he knew the answer, but this time he also knew he had better think very, very carefully himself before he dared to utter it.
He thought about Monique Calhoun telling him that even if the white tornadoes
were
fakes, even if there
was
a disembodied brain in the computer it could be a terminal mistake to destroy the Big Blue Machine, unprincipled capitalist liars though they were, if the Davinda climate model nevertheless
did
prove that Condition Venus was
inevitable without the swift application of their planet-cooling technology.
Or to do it without knowing one way or the other.
He thought about what he had felt when he had summoned up the manhood to make common cause with her in trying to find out. Which was not that unlike what he had felt when he had gained Eduardo’s admiration, had become a man of serious respect in the eyes of his syndic, by taking a grave personal risk to do the morally right thing.
And he remembered that, after all, it had been Eduardo himself who had told him that Bad Boys weren’t capitalists indifferent to all but the bottom line.
Of course Eduardo had also told him that if he guessed wrong and cost the syndic a large amount of money, moral righteousness would not allow him to escape the personal consequences.
“The buck stops with each and every citizen-shareholder,” Eduardo had told him.
Eric sighed, for in this moment he was all too keenly aware that it did.
“We had better be very, very careful about releasing the white tornado recordings to the media under
any
conditions,” he said.
“Oh had we?” Eduardo said darkly.
“Why?” said Stella Marenko.
“Because we might destroy the Big Blue Machine.”
“This is bad thing? To discredit capitalist liars who would turn Siberia back into winter wonderland to fill their own pockets?”
“It is if John Sri Davinda’s climate model really
does
prove the Earth and everything on it, us included, dies if we don’t let them get away with it.”
“Da!”
“Da!”
Eduardo Ramirez stared across the table at Eric, poker-faced, giving nothing away. “You
do
realize what you’ve just done, Eric?” he said evenly.
Eric met his gaze. “Yes, Eduardo,” he said.
“You have just given our Siberian friends here a most convincing argument for not buying the white tornado recordings. . . .”
“Da!”
“Thus costing Bad Boys a very large amount of money.”
Eduardo stared stonily at Eric. Eric gave it right back to him. What else was there for him to do now?
“I know, Eduardo,” he said.
“An argument so convincing that I believe it too,” said Eduardo Ramirez. “An argument I would hope I would have had the courage to make myself.”
Under the circumstances, it would have been asking far too much for him to crack a smile, but his glacial expression did melt, and that was enough to have Eric sighing in relief.
“And so,” Eduardo told the Marenkos, “I must withdraw our offer to sell you the recordings.”
“Oh no,” said Stella, “we buy!”
“But for reduced price,” said Ivan.
“I can’t let you—”
“What’s the matter, you don’t trust us?” said Ivan Marenko.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“Is good deal, Ramirez,” said Ivan. “We buy recordings now at big discount. Bad Boys gets a lot less money, but what did it cost you to make recordings, nothing, da, is still profit.”
“I don’t think I understand,” said Eduardo. “What do you intend to do with the recordings?”
“Depends,” said Ivan Marenko.
“On what?” asked Eduardo.
“If Davinda proves Condition Venus is real on Sunday, planet
must
be cooled, and we must shut up, hold noses, sit on recordings, pay lying unprincipled capitalist bastards to save collective planetary asses. But if is bullshit and he makes monkeys of Big Blue—”
“Ivan! If he makes monkeys of Big Blue Machine, is same thing as if we do! And if later, it turns out planet must be cooled anyway—”
“Stella!” shouted Ivan Marenko. “Shut up!”
Stella Marenko glared at her husband for a moment, as much in surprise as in anger, or so it seemed to Eric. But the desired effect
was
achieved. Stella
did
shut up.
“Now you will please let me finish?” Ivan Marenko said in as close
an approximation of a conciliatory tone as Eric had ever heard him use. He paused to take the largest swallow of vodka he had taken all afternoon.
“Okay,” he said, “if Davinda’s climate model proves Condition Venus, is not good, but
is
simple, no choice, we do nothing. But if not, we use recordings as blackmail threat to make Big Blue turn off white tornado machines and behave like good little capitalist bastards or else. But
not
to pound them into filling for pilmenyi!”
“Ah!” exclaimed Stella. “Because maybe next week or next year or next century maybe we find we need Big Blue climatech after all!”