Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [103]
Raven waved agreement.
Miles went on, "The rest was pretty much cryocorps sales pitches. So I went looking on my own."
"For troubles? Well, you've found mine."
"Indeed, and instructive they are."
Leiber hunched, looking offended.
"So far, I've discovered that Kibou's scheme of proxy votes for the frozen, originally devised on the assumption that people would be revived sooner and in greater numbers, has proved a fascinating demographic trap. Still thinking about that one. Also, that a certain brand of cryo-preservative from about a generation ago turned out not to be good for more than about thirty years, and that NewEgypt and presumably all the other corps are sitting on a financial time-bomb of unrevivable corpses, for which, sooner or later, someone is going to have to pony up. And NewEgypt has gone to great lengths to insure that the someone won't be them."
Leiber went rigid. "How-!"
He'd doubtless twig to how Miles knew in a bit; Miles had no intention of hurrying his thought processes. "I know that you figured this out, that you went to Lisa Sato's political action group for help, and that the result was a riot at their rally that ended with three of her people frozen and two murdered. Did you set them up at NewEgypt's behest?"
"No!" cried Leiber indignantly. But then, deflating, "Not on purpose."
"Betray them for money?"
"No! The bribe came later, just to make it look that way."
Miles hadn't even gone looking for evidence of bribes, yet. Ah, yes, deliver yourself into my hands, Doctor. You know you want to. "Then what did happen? In your own words."
Leiber clasped his hands and stared at his feet for so long that Miles began to fancy fast-penta, with or without his subject's permission, but at last began, "It all started about two years ago. I was assigned the problem of figuring out the unusual number of bad revivals we were getting from that era. When I'd narrowed it down to the decomposing cryo-fluid, I went to my boss, who went to his bosses to report. I thought they'd do something about it, I mean, right away, but weeks went by and nothing happened."
"Who were these bosses? Which men were told about this?"
"The Gang of Four? There was my R & D supervisor, Roger Napak. And Ran Choi, the chief operating officer, and Anish Akabane, he's chief of finance, and Shirou Kim, the NewEgypt president. They clamped down and kept the information tight right away.
"They promised me something was going to be done about the problem. I began to figure out they didn't mean the same problem I did when Akabane unveiled his commodified contracts scheme. They weren't trying to do anything about the bad preps, just about NewEgypt's financial liabilities! When I complained to Rog, he told me to pipe down or I'd be fired, and I pointed out that if I were fired, I'd have no reason to pipe down, and he went real quiet, and then he promised me he'd do something. By that time, I didn't trust their ideas about problem-solving one bit.
"I'd been following Lisa Sato on the news for a year or two by then. She seemed to me one of the few people on Kibou who wasn't just arguing about the money. I mean, moral arguments, you know?"
Her detractors had certainly been arguing about the money, though, from the bits Miles had seen. The corps claimed her schemes would just set up a rival corp run by the government for the poor, for which everyone would pay. Illogically, they also claimed her scheme would damage their business, but if they weren't taking in those poor patrons anyway, Miles didn't see