The Beam: Season Two (19 page)

“No, but I have decades of Isaac’s bitching behind me,” said Nicolai. “I’ve also been doing research. Seeing as we’re being honest with each other now, I have to know whether I can trust you. Or whether I should try my best, here and now, to kill you.”
 

Micah stood, nonplussed. It was hardly the first time he’d been threatened with death. “Of course you can trust me. Why wouldn’t you?”
 

“Because you’ve lied to me since I entered this country — since before I even knew who the hell you were. You had Isaac meet me at the border then snatched some of these bots that you wanted so badly without telling me about them.”
 

“It was a need-to-know situation.”
 

Nicolai stepped down from the sill along the window. “I needed to know.”
 

“I wouldn’t have known where to begin explaining it, how, or even why. You’re not a cyberneticist. You don’t care about how nanobots work.”
 

“I do when they belong to me.”
 

“At most, they
lived on
you.”
 

“And were engineered by my father.”
 

“Under a strict NDA. He was never to be credited. He was paid ridiculously well for the work that he did.”
 

“But not by you.”
 

Micah shook his head. “Water under the bridge. We did what we thought made sense. We paid you without telling you why or even that we were doing it. You were an asset; I’m not lying about that. I wanted you for Enterprise because these things run in the blood. I knew you’d turn out like him, and wasn’t wrong. But Isaac needed more help than I did, as has always been the case. So you went to Directorate. Got a big dole, and though he kept you at Presque Beau and not in Beau Monde, you’ve had a privileged life.”
 

Something in that statement seemed to rankle Nicolai. “I’ve
made
myself a privileged life.”

“Sure, sure. My point about Enterprise. Believe me. The idea of a dole is insulting. But now you have a chance to come to my side. To work with your father’s technology. To help it grow.”
 

“I think the cat is out of the bag on that front, wouldn’t you say?”
 

Micah forced himself to focus. With the canvas off, he would have to rely on his own mind, discipline, and persuasion if he wanted to get and hold the upper hand. It was no problem; persuasion and control were among two of his finest talents.
 

“What do you want from me, Nicolai?” he said.

“The truth.”
 

“I told you the truth.”
 

“You saw me from across the ocean, became interested and presumably recognized my father’s technology in the noise, then watched and followed my movements around the dead grid and across the sea. Then you stole my father’s nanobots when I got here. Are you saying that’s all there is to the story?”
 

“We also kept you in the dark, which I just told you I’ve long seen as a mistake. Yes, that’s all. But to be clear, by the time we took the bots off you, they were no longer ‘your father’s nanobots.’”

“If Salvatore Costa didn’t create them, then who the hell did?”
 

“They
did. The bots made themselves.”
 

Nicolai rolled his eyes. The fact that he thought Micah’s point was only semantics proved that he still didn’t understand. “Why did you
really
keep me around, Micah?” he said.

“Because your mind was an asset.”
 

“Mmm-hmm. And because you felt you owed me. For the theft.”

“Not in those terms. But yes, there was some of that.”

Nicolai met Micah’s eyes for another few beats then turned with a disappointed frown.
 

“If I may be blunt,” Micah said, speaking to Nicolai’s back as he looked out across District Zero, “I didn’t
have
to tell you any of this. And if I could be even more blunt, if we still operated the way my Pops ran things, it would have been simpler to get you out of the way. But I
did
tell you, and you were never in danger. The old ways died with Pops. The Fall years were tough. It was kill or be killed.”

“I remember your version of the Fall years,” Nicolai said. “Our opulent dinners in fancy restaurants were brutal.”
 

“I mean the years when you were still wandering the East. Things were tough here, too. Everyone had to fight or else be trampled. Our company chose to fight, same as we fight today. That’s how things are in Enterprise, and you know it. You make your fortune, but you’re always clawing and grasping along the way. For my party, it’s always been about doing what you could to survive and thrive. Today, surviving and thriving are done in offices, and nobody has to die.”
 

Micah paused. Well, except for people like Thomas Stahl. Not that Nicolai needed to know about that.
 

“I chose to tell you about your father and my family’s…
dealings
…with him on my own,” Micah continued. “Keep that in mind while you’re deciding, Nicolai. I’ve wanted you in Enterprise from the beginning, and now that you’re leaving Isaac and coming over, I wanted you to know who you really are. Who your
father
really was. What his inventions really became. People think that Noah West is the father of The Beam, but he was really just the architect who gave the workers a place to grow and play.”
 

Micah took a step forward then came up beside Nicolai.
 

“Now that you know, what are you going to do? It’s up to you, but I’ll tell you what I’d do.”
 

“I know what you’d do,” Nicolai answered, an edge in his voice.
 

“There’s a larger life ahead if you want it. You were a rich kid who somehow made your way through the East, Nicolai. Alone, if what you’ve suggested over the years is true. You must have had to do things you didn’t want to do. It had to change you. But something can’t be created from nothing, and that means that killer instinct was always inside you. You’re Enterprise, through and through. You
should
be working with us. You should be up with the…well, you should be higher than you are. This is your birthright, Nicolai. The question is, do you have the balls to claim it?”
 

Micah watched the crux of what he’d said to Nicolai settle onto his shoulders. Nicolai was proud, just as all good self-made people were. The trick was to know when to open a hole in that pride and allow something larger inside. He hoped Nicolai was smart enough to see past his own righteous indignation. Telling him so much had been a calculated risk. If Nicolai couldn’t be reined in now that he knew most of what there was to know, he’d be another loose end. Too much had occurred by happenstance and luck (though it was no surprise, in retrospect, that the bots had done what they could to survive and reach out), and too much had been left to chance. If Micah could entice Nicolai, then he could control him. Anything else made things too complicated.
 

“I’d have to work for you,” said Nicolai, not looking over. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Let’s say that we’d work together,” said Micah. “But it wouldn’t be ‘have to’ unless you insist on seeing it that way. This is all mutually beneficial. Always has been.”
 

“What would I do for you?”
 

Micah shook his head. “I’m not sure yet.”
 

“How would I get paid, if you don’t know what I’m doing?”
 

Micah laughed then answered in a tone that suggested amusement at Nicolai’s naiveté: “Extravagantly.”

“I have enough money.”
 

Micah chuckled again, this time like he was amused by something bigger. The whole world, perhaps.
 

“People like you and me are never really motivated by money. That’s the irony. Enterprise is always called greedy, but what drives us isn’t our credit balances. I’m offering you a chance to become who you were supposed to be, and a chance to be free. I know you want to play the piano.” He nodded toward the big black grand by the window. “I also know you haven’t learned because you’ve never found the time. Wouldn’t you like the freedom to finally do it?” He gave a little laugh, delightedly remembering that Nicolai didn’t know about the next-tier technology he’d have access to a second after agreeing. Nicolai could of course learn piano the old, time-consuming way — or he could plug in and download a virtuoso’s skill set.
 

“I’ll think about it.”

“Of course. That’s all I ask. You still have time until Shift. But if you make your decision earlier, we can…”

“I’ll think about it,” Nicolai repeated.

Micah looked over and saw that Nicolai’s eyes were still restless, still mostly watching the city. So he stepped back, slapped Nicolai on the back, and said, “Stay in touch.”
 

“I don’t really have a choice.”

“And stop being so fucking paranoid.” Micah gestured around the dead apartment. “It’s giving me the creeps that nothing in here is responding. Turn it back on. Have a little more self-respect than to live like this.”
 

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

Micah was halfway to the door when he turned, realizing something.
 

“I’m going to use your bathroom,” he said. Then he turned and began walking away toward the bedroom.
 

“Not the one in there!” Nicolai’s careful stony facade suddenly crumbled. “There’s one in the hall.”
 

Micah watched him for a moment and then smiled, finally turning in the direction of Nicolai’s finger.

Oh yes, Micah’s new protégée was definitely hiding something.

Chapter 3

Sam Dial entered his current kitchen, turned on his trusty convection hotplate, and set a copper-bottom pan he’d found in one of the cupboards on its top. He scavenged through drawers, not knowing what was where or what any of the cupboards held, and eventually found an ancient hand can opener. Of course it was right handed; he really needed to add “left-handed can opener” to his master inventory. The odds of finding a manual can opener (let alone one made for lefties) in a local store rather than a Beam antique shop were remote at best, but he could at least keep his eyes open.

Fighting his hands’ natural positions, Sam wrangled the machine enough to open the can of tomato soup he’d bought from the ShopMart on the corner. At the ShopMart, he’d paid cash (not Beam scan) for his purchase — something that had earned him a look, seeing as it was mostly Organas who used the increasingly rare coins. The chances that the small carry-out’s scanner would have been online in this neighborhood was unlikely, but it was always a good idea to assume everything with electrons and bits was being watched.

Sam plopped the congealed goo into the pan then added water. He stirred, praying the plate would work. It was temperamental, and one of these days he’d suddenly end up needing to eat everything cold. He could probably find a replacement (or get it repaired) in one of the ghetto scavenge shops, but who had money for that?

Blessedly, the plate did its job, and the soup slurry started to warm. It would take a while. One of the coils had already failed. Making soup on the old hotplate was only a few steps above making it atop a warm radiator.
 

He crossed the apartment, his eyes flicking as they always did to the door locks. Both were engaged, but checking, for Sam, was a compulsion. He’d made sure the thumb lock worked when he’d first looked at the apartment, and before his first night on the floor, he’d spent a few hours installing the deadbolt from his prior apartment. It was ironic. Sam was twenty-eight and had never had a long-term relationship owing to his nomadic lifestyle, but he and his Plasteel-core deadbolt had been together long enough to share a common-law marriage.
 

Of course, Sam wasn’t delusional; he knew what the locks could keep out and what they couldn’t. The thumb lock and deadbolt were a security blanket and a deterrent for thieving neighbors, nothing more. Anyone who truly wanted inside could get there easily enough…though to be fair, that was true even with a state-of-the-art canvas and multi-tiered security system, as was standard in the better spires. Whether the door was locked by the best Beam AI or a metal bolt, it didn’t make a bit of difference if the right people knocked. Sam had known that since his first days with the
DZ Sentinel,
on assignment for a Beam story that never got published.

The way Sam saw it, there were two ways for powerful groups to get into the restricted places they wanted to be. The first was brute force. The second (and better) way was to go out of their way to provide the
illusion
of bulletproof security to their inferiors while secretly making a key that would open all of those impregnable locks. What was true in apartments was doubly true on The Beam. If you wanted “true security” online, the only way to get it was to pull the plug.

As Sam always did when his eyes fell on the door, he walked over and tapped the lock. Maybe he was doing it for luck; he didn’t know. It couldn’t hurt. Sam figured he could use all the luck he could get.