When the priest finished his final benediction, they began lowering the coffin into the ground. Laura wailed, and her body slumped. The men behind her held her up as best they could.
“Ashes to ashes.” The priest bent to pick up a handful of dirt. He tossed it onto the lowering casket. The sons cried.
Silas moved away, pushing past Ben. He could bear it no more. Stepping through the crowd and into the open field of gravestones, he turned his head up to the sky and let the rain cool his hot face. He understood the kind of hole a father can leave behind. He’d spent his life trying to fill it.
“Silas.”
Silas kept walking.
“Silas.”
He stopped. He turned toward the voice. Vidonia moved toward him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“My project. Everything that happens is my responsibility.”
She reached a hand out and placed it on his arm. “Your responsibility but not your fault. There’s a difference.”
“There’s no difference to Tay.”
“He knew the kind of job he had. He knew the danger. You couldn’t have done anything.”
“There are a hundred things I could have done.”
“And a dozen Tay could have done.”
“But here we are. Spare me your consolation; the widow needs it more than I do.”
“Silas—”
“Really,” he said, turning his back on her.
“Silas,” she called after him.
He walked away through the stones, trying not to read the engraved names as the thunder rolled.
The rain kept coming.
A limousine was pulling up the slope, and he recognized the front plate as the vehicle spilled along the narrow roadway. Moving to intercept, he stepped onto the glossy pavement in its path. The sleek black shape rolled to a stop a dozen feet before him. A door opened.
He didn’t bother to shake his slicker free of excess water before ducking inside. He closed the door behind him.
“We have to talk,” he said.
“I’m sorry about your loss,” Baskov said. He was opposite Silas, lounging back in the broad leather seats. An illegal cigar protruded from the thin, wet crease of his mouth. “I understand you two had been friends.”
“He was a colleague, but I liked him, yes. Everybody liked him.”
“Is this going to set back your training preparation?”
“He
was
our training preparation. What do you think?”
“I think maybe this gladiator doesn’t need much in the way of coaching.”
Silas felt his face flush. A man had died, and all Baskov cared about was the project schedule. “I think we may want to rethink the whole competition,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why?” Silas struggled to keep his tone civil. “A person has died.”
Baskov nodded. “Because of inadequate planning. We can’t just withdraw from the event. There is a lot riding on this. Had there been more effort put into securing the observation loft, then this unfortunate
tragedy never would have happened. I’ve read the report. It was a preventable accident.”
“It was more than that. I saw it.”
“Which is why you feel so strongly. Seeing something like that would traumatize anyone.”
“I’m not traumatized,” Silas said, being careful to keep his voice low and steady. He felt his patience slipping away, but getting angry wouldn’t help the situation. “I can separate my emotions from my professional obligations. As head of Helix, I’m telling you that I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”
“As head of Helix, a bad feeling?” Baskov gave an indulgent smile. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“What about public sentiment?” Silas asked. “Have you read what the papers are saying about this?”
“Oh, yes. Have you?” Baskov countered. “This is front-page news. Below the fold, but still, it’s the front page. There is no such thing as bad publicity in this business.”
“I’m not worried about publicity.”
“Well, perhaps you should be. This is the gladiator event, after all. The thing is supposed to be a killer.”
“It’s not supposed to kill its handlers.”
“Then its handlers should have taken better precautions.”
Silas glanced away, making a final effort to keep his temper in check. The crowd had begun to disperse now. Tay’s family would be going home. That empty house, he knew, would be one of the hardest parts for them.
“Look,” Baskov said. “This isn’t as bad as it seems. Things are under control.”
“We never had control!” Silas slammed his fist against the window.
The limo pulled to a stop, and the driver turned around, elbowing an enormous arm up across the top of the seat. “I think it would be best,” Baskov said, “if you stepped out of the car now, Silas. Before this conversation takes a turn that both you and I might regret.”
Silas considered the old man. The blue eyes bore into him, a challenge.
The head of the commission had grown too comfortable with his power. He was drunk with it; he’d allowed it to change him, to make him irresponsible. Baskov no longer cared what enemies he made. Silas decided to choose his battles. He reached for the handle.
“Mind you,” Baskov said softly, “we will be competing in three months. With you, or without. I’d hate to have to shift gears in management this late in the game; but if you force me, I will.”
Silas slammed the door behind him, and the limo pulled away.
The last of the crowd was draining into cars and trams, but Silas found Benjamin and Vidonia waiting for him.
They walked, side by side.
Placing a hand on each of their shoulders, Silas said, “Let’s get drunk.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
V
idonia had never been to the Stratus, but after shooting down Ben’s initial suggestion of a place called Scantily’s, she knew she could do much worse for a night out with the boys. Besides, after a quick look around, she decided the place had atmosphere. It was dark where it was supposed to be dark, and bright where it was supposed to be bright, and the smell of food was almost intoxicating in and of itself. Alcohol was good for many things; the first of these was forgetting. They could all do with a bit of that.
They were shown to a table on the central level, well above the gyrating throngs of twentysomethings in the dance pits below. From where she sat, Vidonia could feel the subtle thrum of techno-bump in her stool but couldn’t make out the words. Perfect.
When the waiter came, they were each required to hand in their credit cards for attachment authorization. Any lawsuits rendered against the bar for their behavior after being served alcohol could now be directly attached to their personal lines of credit. The policy tended to keep the number of drunken shenanigans to a minimum. Nothing helped people second-guess their behavior like the cold hand of the establishment in their back pocket.
Silas ordered the first round. Vidonia took a sip. The drink was sweet and syrupy, and laced with enough alcohol to stagger a horse. She tipped it back, feeling the beat of the music coming off her chair,
watching the people laughing at the next table. Waiters and waitresses in bright suspenders and ever-changing flat-screen buttons snaked sideways down the narrow aisles between the tables, carrying round trays of drinks above their heads. Somewhere in the distance, “Happy Birthday” was being sung, while across from her, Ben had already half killed his drink. Despite his earlier enthusiasm, like her, Silas seemed to be taking it a little slower.
“You want to eat?” Silas asked.
She shook her head.
“Yeah, me, either.” Silas turned his attention to Ben. “You really look like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean the burn. You’re peeling,” Silas said.
Ben nodded with the music. He’d been out in the sun again earlier this week, and now the alcohol had brightened his red skin another shade. He smiled. “The Karmic result of the sins of colonialism,” he said, in his best English accent. “What can you do?” He held his arms up in mock resignation. “My ancestors should have paid closer attention to local lighting conditions before disseminating themselves throughout the world. I hear it’s cloudy in northwestern Europe today. Oh, wait, that’s every day.”
“Ever hear of sunscreen?” Vidonia offered.
“What kind of a man wears sunscreen?”
“Pale men,” she said.
“Would Eric the Red have worn sunscreen?”
“Why do you think they called him Eric the Red? And he never ventured farther south than Greenland. Imagine how he would have handled a Southern Cali summer? They may have called him Eric the Peeler.”
“Good point,” Ben said.
“Or Eric the Melanoma,” Silas added.
Another round of drinks came, and this time Ben paid. “To SPF three-fifty,” he said, offering a toast.
“Here, here,” Silas said.
Vidonia hadn’t yet finished her first drink, so she clinked glasses and took a long last swallow. The warmth spread outward from her stomach almost instantly, seeping along her arms to her fingertips. She wasn’t usually a drinker, but when she did, this was the tightrope she liked to walk, with the buzz knocking just at the edge of her perception. She smiled, and it must have been too large, because Silas smiled back, giving his head a little shake.
“Feeling okay?” he said.
“Great. It’s been a while.”
“Did you hear about the Brannin?” Ben asked Silas.
“What about it?”
“So then you didn’t hear.”
“Hear what?” Silas asked.
“It’s going back online again.”
“What? When?” Silas almost choked on his drink.
“Next week.”
“I just talked to Baskov today. He didn’t say anything about it.”
“I’m not surprised. He doesn’t have anything to do with it this time. From what I hear, he’s washed his hands of Chandler altogether. An economics group is funding the run.”
“Jesus, what the hell for?”
“Not sure exactly. Something about logarithms and stock-market research. They’re looking for an investment edge.”
“Well, the Brannin gave us an edge. A sharp one, right in the back,” Silas said.
“Here, here,” Ben offered another toast.
Vidonia clinked glasses again and started on her next drink, sipping deeply. Silas slew his in long gulps and didn’t place the glass back down on the table until it was empty. The glass looked like a thimble in his hand, and she was amazed again at the size of him. God, he was big—so different from John. Normal-size John. Familiar John. Back-home John.
Vidonia tried not to think about the large man to her left, and she decided instead to veer the conversation into less risky territory. For a while, she had some success with both.
She brought up Olympics past, and for a while they laughed about the scandals that lived there. The Y-chromosome women, the Chinese swimmers with their paddle feet—an abnormality the Chinese had tried to pass off as natural birth defects, in all four swimmers. Looking back, it was all so funny now. Just as the gladiator event disallowed any human DNA, the rest of the Olympic events disallowed any manipulation of the contestants at all. With the level of sophistication achieved in the tests today, it was simply impossible to get away with stuff like that, so nobody tried anymore. Instead, they channeled all their energies of manipulation into the one event where it was legally sanctioned.
When the waiter came with the next round of drinks, he set a fourth, smaller shot of cloudy liquid on the table. “Who’s driving tonight, folks?”
Ben and Silas looked at each other, nodded.
“One,” Silas said.
“Two,” Ben said.
“Three.” Silas threw rock. Ben, paper. “I guess I am,” Silas said grudgingly, looking over at the waiter.
“Then this is for you,” the waiter said, and slid the small, milky glass of D-hy toward Silas. “After you drink it, give yourself five minutes before you drive.”
“Yeah, I know the drill.”
Vidonia hated the taste of D-hy, but she had to admit that it had cut down on the number of drunk driving accidents in the three years or so that it had been out. Bars were required to give it out free to at least one member of a drinking party, unless the people could prove they didn’t intend to drive home.
When the waiter walked away, Ben jerked the discussion back around. “So what did Baskov have to say in the limo?”
“Nothing interesting,” Silas said. His eyes turned to a young woman walking purposefully toward them.
The woman stopped at their table and looked between Silas and Ben. She had a clip screen in her hand and appeared somewhat out of
place in her blue-and-brown business uniform. “Is one of you Ben Wells?”
Ben’s back straightened, and he suddenly sat four inches higher. “That’s me.”
“Great.” The woman’s expression loosened in relief, and she slapped an envelope down on the table in front of him. “I’ve been trying to track you for the last three weeks, but you never used your card.”
“What’s this about?”
“Sir, if you’ll just sign here”—she held the clip screen out to him, indicating with a finger where to scratch his name—“I’ll leave the package with you and be on my way.”
He ignored her and reached for the yellow envelope.
“Sir.”
Ben tore the end off.
“Sir, you’ll need to sign this first.”
He slid the contents of the envelope onto the table. “Ninety-eight thousand,” he said, holding up the check. “It’s a start. A good start.”
“Sir, you need to sign for that.” She pushed the clip screen on him.
“No.”
The young woman looked confused. “You must—”
“Must what?” His voice raised. “If I sign that, then I give up rights to go after her for the other part she owes me, right? I know how she’s trying to work this. This was my money to begin with, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her keep the other half just because she’s paying this back.”
The young woman glanced around nervously at the people who were beginning to stare. “Sir, you can take that up with a lawyer. This isn’t the place. I’m just supposed to get you to sign receivership, that’s all.”
“Receivership of payment, right? But this isn’t payment. This is just her returning what she owes. She’s trying to pass this off as payment for a car, right? But it’s my car and my money. No.”