Negotiations
The orgasm sent shock waves through the financial community as the merger was completed with a record advance
Inside the car, there was the sound of an old passenger train rocking along the tracks. The conductor was chosen for his authenticity, right down to the good nature he wore to camouflage and understate the raw power of his body. There was a movement outside the window.
“A spook,” Bergamo said.
The conductor nodded. “They lay on the poppies,” he said, “to look at the Dark Drive from underneath. It must do something powerful because they get addicted to it.”
“Strange addiction.”
“Yes sir. Dinner is being served in the dining car.”
Bergamo had no reaction to the conductor playing the role of the waiter, also. There was no need for two people and so one actor played both roles, shifting only costuming. “Tonight’s special is poached fish,” he said, “with an Oregon Pinot Gris.”
“Do you have anything besides poached fish?”
“No sir.”
“Then I’ll have the fish.”
The servers moving away was a curtain opening to reveal a couple across from Bergamo in a heated but whispered exchange. The woman was a pale-skinned redhead running so much hormone a testosterone jolt hit Bergamo like a magic bullet when she smiled at him. The man sitting across from the woman was shorter than she, with a shaved head and a body like a bull’s. His field scan caught the shift in coloration as Bergamo’s sexual desire rose.
“You could shield that out if you wanted to.” The bullet-headed man turned his sour displeasure directly toward Bergamo.
“I don’t want to shield it out. I like it.”
The woman beamed. “Titus is my bank,” she said.
“I can tell,” Bergamo said, “and obviously he’s running a security program as well?”
“Yes, he’s my bulldog and he’s my bank, aren’t you, Titus?” The clone’s muscles strained against the suit as the program expanded his physicality to ward off potential predators. The woman was obviously very, very rich to have such a powerful bank. She was dangerously attractive. Bergamo was fully aroused and he was beginning to exchange erotic charge with the woman, while Titus was at her wish sitting more passively, now, like an idled chauffeur outside a night club.
“Why do they have nothing but fish?” she asked, ostensibly speaking to Titus but shuddering inwardly as the Count’s attention moved across her energy field.
“Ask your new friends,” Titus muttered testily.
She turned toward Bergamo and repeated the question. He looked into her eyes. “The accurate reproduction of taste to simulate the experience of a meal requires stimulation of specific brain points,” he said, visibly aroused. “The program required for multiple entrees and wines would be wasteful, as there isn’t any actual transfer of energy involved in the meal.”
“Simulate and stimulate,” she said. “I love it. But you’re wanting to know what it is I need from you.”
“That’s right.”
She felt the connection begin to waver and in response let herself go completely open. He expanded to fill the empty space and explored her FAQ. “You’re a dramatic production company? What kind of productions?”
“I may be a personification,” she said, “but I can feel this, and so can you. It feels like a deal made in heaven. Do you want the transfer?”
“It depends on the job. If I can go out and get it done and get back, yes. If it has too much ambiguity I might not be able to remember myself in the same configuration.”
“How important is that?”
“Not essential, but preferable. I like this persona.”
The images intensified and he explored her fantasy of submission. “The glory of it,” she said, “someone else making the decisions for a change.” He settled into negotiations and she began to weep, overwhelmed by emotion. “It’s a personnel problem,” she whispered in his ear. “Ash Fork Station. The Artists we installed are going beyond their programming, and we’re losing control over the system.”
“Ash Fork Station. You’re a defense contractor. Do you have production there?” He moved against her and she bit his neck. Titus stared angrily into the journal of intergalactic finance.
“Yes, underneath the artists’ community. Self replicators set up and operate production without intervention, so the clones and the town are camouflage. They’re part of the shield system around controller production modules.” “Controllers which allow a few to control a multitude.”
“Do you have a problem with controllers?” She giggled. His hand twisted in her hair and he turned her face to his, their eyes locked.
He said, “I’ll need a level three financial infusion, and yes, I’m avoiding the question.”
“It’s too much up front,” she said. “You can have open expenses and the transfer on performance of the contract. Ohhhh … all right … an advance … level three” … they both let go … the orgasm sent shock waves through the financial community.
She adjusted the hormone levels and woke up the Bank, who looked out the window and remarked that they would be arriving in Ash Fork right after dessert, which was lime sherbet, and only lime sherbet, with a shot of Brandy.
Bergamo loved it on this side of the firewall, where he had a body and masculine charm. What was written into the injectables was written by him, but the new being he’d spawned was far beyond his reach or understanding. He was along for the ride while it followed his laws regarding confronting an unknown. “The meaning is the response. There is no other meaning. Everything is information.”
“You’re thinking about it,” she said.
“What?”
“You know what; that I’m not a real woman, just like that wasn’t real fish we had for dinner. But I feel like a real woman. Even if I’m a clone … well, I’m not just a clone I guess; I’m the personification of one of the most powerful defense contractors in Space.”
“You’re a complex field generated by a group of investors on the other side of your firewall,” Bergamo said, “the same way I’m a DNA computer on the other side of my firewall. But we aren’t on the other side of the firewalls, are we?” There was the sensation of rocking inside the train car, and the sounds of steel on steel. The mechanical age might have been gone, but it was the hot thing in art installations. The transporter glided along the highway of sparkling flowers, silently, toward Ash Fork Station.
When they stepped out onto the platform, Bergamo offered his arm to Veronica. She draped her long and slender white fingers over his forearm and bumped up the hormone flow just to give him a jolt. Titus was charged with getting the luggage to the hotel. “Of course,” was all he said.
His mistress’s taking up with a stranger did not make him happy or sad. His job was to be there when she needed him and not when she didn’t. They watched him supervise the loading of a luggage cart and direct it to a waiting cab.
Their attention was drawn back to the baggage car by a sharp yelp of pain. Two porters had been moving a steamer trunk onto the train for a Chinese woman and her three children when one of them lost his grip and they had to let it fall back to the platform. The body inside it snapped up like Jack popping out of his box and there was a roar of flatulence as the children began to scream and clamp themselves on their mother’s legs, visibly thick and muscular through the black knit fabric of her leotard.
The body protruding out of the trunk was that of a short, fat Chinese man with a shaved head. The porters were apologizing to the woman, who was not amused to see her bank exposed to public view. But there was no point trying to hide him now. She opened his public interface so that he could get out of the trunk and get on the train as a passenger. The Chinese woman smiled at Bergamo and Veronica. “Husband,” she said.
“Those Chinese like to play their cards close to their chest,” Veronica said. “I can’t imagine trying to hide my Bank in a goddamned steamer trunk.” She led him toward the east end of the platform, from where the lights of town mixed with the scent of sagebrush and motor oil. A 1956 Ford, painted turquoise and white, was in the taxi zone. Bergamo signaled the driver and he opened the back door to let them in.
“Where are you folks from?” the driver asked.
