The Unincorporated Man (17 page)

You really are an arrogant slug,
she thought. “Paul, I didn’t steal a thing. My source is a little better than yours.” She looked to Warburton. “Go on, tell him.”

“Paul, she got The Chairman—I mean, The Chairman himself—to tell me the figure with the stock statements verified. He gave me the exact number. If it means anything, you were only off by .297. That’s well under 1 percent. But Irma got it on the nose.”

Paul remained speechless.

Warburton turned once more to Irma. “I’m curious, dear. How did you get him to tell you?”

But Irma was not listening to Professor Warburton. She was watching her ex. She waited until she saw the look on his face. The look that told her he’d figured out exactly how she’d gotten The Chairman to provide the information. She leaned close. “Paul. I will admit that most of the time you are smarter than me. It’s just that I’m smarter when it counts. If it’s any consolation,” she said, getting up to excuse herself, “I still only have one share of Chairman stock. But then again, I only ever needed one.”

She walked out of the privacy room and never saw her ex-husband again.

Even before the bet had been made, it never once struck Irma as odd that a man as rich and powerful as The Chairman would—in fact,
could
—never own 100 percent of himself. Maybe, she figured, between 60 percent and 70 percent but certainly not much more. For, even if in theory he or any man could succeed in buying back 95 percent of himself, the incorporation movement demanded that 5 percent automatically be given over to the government. The government was responsible for a minimal amount of caretaking, and that caretaking had to be paid for somehow. Article five, section three of the Constitution was very clear: “All persons born in the Terran Confederation will be incorporated with a stock listing of 100,000 shares, 20,000 shares to go the person/persons holding loco parentis (parents or guardians), and 5,000 shares going to the government. The government may neither increase nor decrease the amount controlled in any of its citizens for any reason.” The reason for the last part of the proclamation, recalled Irma, was obvious. Any loss or increase in control of those stocks by the government could, on one hand, lead to tyranny, on the other, to bankruptcy. She remembered her professor’s comment on the whole issue of the Incorporation Proclamation.

“Remember, Irma,” he’d said, “if there’s one thing the Grand Collapse taught us, it’s that the only thing more dangerous than a government that’s too strong is a government that’s too weak.” She loved that old man, and still used him as a paid source whenever she could for any stories needing an expert account.

The stock she’d won had also played another important role in her life—it paid out like crazy. The past year’s dividend alone had paid for a lunar vacation. Plus, she’d been contacted many times over by perkers wanting to buy that share at well above the market price—a pretty amazing offer considering that the stock price of The Chairman was the highest of any individual in the whole of the Terran Confederation. But Irma would never sell. Not for any price. She’d worked too hard for it—both professionally and emotionally—for monetary gain to ever enter the picture. However, pride was another matter entirely, and at this moment she was willing to bet the one share she did own that a small story coming from, of all places, tiny Boulder, Colorado, was a whole lot bigger than the local media were making it out to be.

“Michael, Enrique, Saundra, get your asses in here!” Irma’s voice carried from her private chambers into the outer office where her staff was busy working. Like most modern information organizations
The Terran Daily News
used the mentor/apprentice group system. That meant one mentor would combine the job of journalist
and
editor with a staff of apprentices. Each group shared bylines, depending on the contributions made to the story. Then, after ten or so years, the apprentice would either become a mentor journalist himself or move on in search of greener pastures. Irma was unique in having cultivated a group of lifers—in essence, a staff that was content to stay apprentices in name, even if not in actual experience. She was able to pull this off by always managing to dig up good content, being fair about sharing the byline, and keeping the working environment interesting and fun. It might mean less pay, but the prestige associated with working for a mentor of Irma’s caliber made it well worth the sacrifice.

“Yes, mistress,” came the by now standard chorus from her outer office. Moments later the troupe piled in.

Michael Veritas, tall, blond, and sporting two days’ worth of facial hair, took his usual position leaning against the south wall, “accidentally” covering her prized print of the first issue of
The Terran Daily News,
though back then it was called
The Alaskan Daily.
Irma put up with his quirks, since he could find dirt at the bottom of a barrel filled with bleach. Saundra Morrie came in next. She was a little over six feet, with long red hair, freckles, and a lithe quality that allowed her body to drape itself over almost anything it could find. She chose the couch. Enrique Lopez followed. Of Filipino descent, he was a squat, muscular man who was more comfortable with numbers than with people. He sat down in his usual spot right in front of Irma’s desk, and took out his DijAssist. Irma never knew why he took the damned thing out. In her fifteen years of working with him she’d rarely seen him use it. But this team had won three system Pulitzers, and if their individual idiosyncrasies were par for the course, then that was a course she was happy to take.

“What do you think of the story out of Boulder?” Irma asked no one in particular. Saundra answered first. For a woman who looked like a redheaded Amazon her voice sounded more like that of an assertive eight-year-old. “What story?”

“No, wait, let me guess,” quipped Enrique. “Boulder’s finally exploded and the world’s missing a whole bunch of useless rich folk?”

“There’s no such thing as ‘useless rich,’ ” snapped Irma, “and for your information we’d lose two-thirds of our stories without those bastards.”
Present company included,
she thought, managing to suppress a wry grin.

“Try again.”

Michael spoke next. “I think it’s a potentially important story, and we’d better move on it quickly before someone else does.”

Irma looked at Michael with suspicion. He almost never agreed with her this easily. “Why do you say that, Michael?”

“Because,” he answered, with a charm born of certainty, “you wouldn’t have dragged our asses in here if it wasn’t. And if you did I’ll never let you live it down.”

Irma grinned.

“This is what I know so far,” she replied. “A man was awakened from cryogenic suspension in Boulder.”

“Stop the presses!” squeaked Saundra.

“Well, that
is
news,” chimed in Michael.

“How could you have kept this to yourself?” Enrique asked, with a pained expression. “I… I thought we were friends.”

“Ha-ha, laugh all you want, guys,” challenged Irma, “after you do one simple thing.”

“Name it,” said Michael.

“Don’t be so quick, Michael. I’m not sure even you could dig up what I need to find.”

“You willing to bet on it?” he challenged.

“Absolutely.”

Enrique straightened up, Michael stopped leaning against the picture, and Saundra got up from the couch.

Irma smiled.
Well, that worked
. “Ten shares of stock each in the pot. The pot goes to whoever can get this unfrozen guy’s name in…” Irma paused to look at her watch. “. . . one hour starting… now.”

“Your stock has split twice,” challenged Saundra. “Shouldn’t you put in forty?”

“Have you seen my worth lately?” responded Irma. “I’m being generous, and you all know it. Of course, if you want a different bet…” Her question was answered by the team’s mad rush to the exit. Irma knew that they’d all probably cheat and work together to arrive at an answer. It made sense, because they could then split her ten shares, which would be more valuable than all of theirs combined.
All the better,
she thought. The only reason she’d issued the challenge was because she had just spent the better part of the day in a failing effort to get the name she was now asking them to find.

Irma had an hour to kill, so she went back to the other mundane tasks she’d ignored—paying bills, making investments, and researching new stories. Of course, as soon as she was beginning to make some headway, Saundra popped her head into the office, clearing her throat to get Irma’s attention.

“Yes?” asked Irma.

“Hour’s up.”

“Well, then, whatcha got?”

Before Saundra could answer the rest of the team piled in behind her. No one was smiling.

“All right, smarty-pants,” Enrique said. “Who is he?”

Irma’s response was honest and forthright. “I don’t know.”

Her team threw groans and expletives in her direction. “Oh,” said Saundra. “We thought maybe it was some kind of test.”

“Nope. I really don’t know. And believe me,” Irma went on, “I really want—no,
need
—to know.”

The team’s blank stares made her realize it was time for a little coaching.

“All right, guys, let’s do this a little differently. What
don’t
we know about this guy, and how don’t we know it?”

Saundra, as usual, spoke up first. She couldn’t help herself. It was almost as if the information would spoil if she didn’t share it immediately. “We don’t know who he’s insured with. I checked with all the major companies and most of the minor ones. There have been four reanimations in Boulder in the past week, three of them were paid via insurance and one of them paid with cold, hard credits.”

“Is this just a famous guy trying to hide out?” asked Irma.

“I don’t think so,” answered Michael. “The list of who could pay credits outright is rather small. If something happened to one of them we would have heard at least the
shade
of a rumor. Plus, someone wanting to hide out would have used insurance, not credits.”

“So we follow the money,” said Irma.

“Fine. But there’s no trail of where it’s coming from. The security on the hospital’s database is as tough to crack as an American Express account.”

“Strange,” interrupted Irma. “If I’m not mistaken it’s a backwater hospital. The kind of security you’re talking about doesn’t make any sense.”

“Correctomongo,”
continued Michael. “I can hack through pretty much anything. So imagine my surprise. It’s almost like finding the door to the local candy store guarded by ten marines.”

“Not as strange as you might think, Mike,” offered Enrique. “If I’m not mistaken, the director is a former heavy player named Mosh McKenzie.”

“As in former member of the board of GCI Mosh McKenzie?” asked Saundra.

Irma nodded. “The one and only.”
I knew that name sounded familiar.
“Didn’t we run a piece on him, like, fifteen years ago?”

“Yea,” answered Saundra, scanning her DijAssist. “ ‘Exile or Retirement: The Perils of Life at the Top.’ ”

Irma waited while her team called up the data on their DijAssists.

“I see that we leaned toward exile in the story,” said Michael. “Still think so?”

“I think we leaned wrong on that one,” answered Irma. “My miss. We were just starting out, and I rushed it.” Irma was startled by the dead silence her answer had elicited.

“I see our names on the byline,” Michael said. “We got paid for the story. That makes the mistake, and I’m not saying there was one,
all
of ours. Pulitzer or piss, we don’t duck out on what we write.”

“I take it back,” Irma added. “If I’m right, and I suspect I am, it’s the type of crap only a team effort could have produced.”

“That’s better,” answered Saundra.

“Wait a minute.” It was Michael. “Why are we all so quick to call it crap? It could still be an exile piece. I don’t see any proof to dispel that notion.”

“I don’t think so,” offered Irma. “Think about it. He’s been in the same job for three accounting cycles. If it
was
an exile he would have either been forced all the way out, as in in-the-asteroid-belt out, or he would have made his way back to the board. I also did some checking. Out of all of his requests for funding over the last fifteen years not a single one has been turned down or even delayed. He hasn’t been asking for anything outrageous, mind you, but still…”

“If it was an exile,” continued Saundra, “he should have faced at least one review, one audit, one refusal.”

Irma folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “All indicators then point to our director being handled with kid gloves. He’s never been turned down, I suspect, because the rest of the board is probably content to let the sleeping dog lie.”

“OK,” admitted Michael. “
For now,
I stand corrected. While the evidence isn’t what I call solid, it certainly is tantalizing.”

“I agree with Irma,” offered Enrique. “They’re scared of him, and probably don’t want him angry. Nothing else makes sense. We should try for an interview. That alone would make a great story.”

“I agree,” said Michael, taking a stab at the headline: “ ‘Chairman’s Dreaded Foe Bides His Time: Boulder Hospital Actually Corporate Fortress in GCI Power Struggle.’ ”

That got a few giggles from the group.

“Don’t laugh,” warned Irma. “Stranger stories have made it to the front page.”

“Like anyone would believe that The Chairman could be threatened,” said Saundra. “You may as well tell our readers that death and taxes are coming back.”

“Saundra,” said Michael, warming up to what was obviously an old argument for them. “People don’t need to know that The Chairman is vulnerable, only that the possibility exists. It’s that possibility that makes the story interesting.”

“Facts make the story interesting,” she countered.

“People read newspapers to be entertained
and
informed,” he responded. “If they want facts they can download an almanac.” Before Saundra and Michael could begin laying into each other, Enrique silenced the room.

“I think I know how the reanimation was paid for.”