The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [107]
I glance at Ramona as I step towards the table, and we make eye contact briefly. Someone’s raided her hotel room for her luggage—she’s swapped last night’s gown for casuals and a freshly scrubbed girl-next-door look. “Is that coffee?” I ask, nodding towards the pot.
“Jamaican Blue Mountain.” Billington smiles thinly. “And yes, you may have some. I prefer not to conduct interviews while the subjects are comatose.”
The steward pours me a cup of coffee as I sit down, and I try hard not to be obvious about how desperate I am for the stuff. (Another couple of hours without it and the merciless headache would be setting in, visited on me by my caffiend in retaliation for withdrawal of his drug.) As I take the first mouthful something brushes up against my ankle. I manage to control my knee-jerk reflex; it must be the cat, right?
The coffee is as good as you’d expect from a billionaire’s buffet. “I needed that,” I admit. “But I’m still somewhat perplexed as to why you want me here at all.” (Although it beats the hell out of the alternatives, I don’t say.)
“I’d have thought that was perfectly obvious.” Billington grins, with the boyish charm of a boardroom bandit whose charisma is his most potent weapon. “You’re here because you’re both young, intelligent, active professionals with good prospects. It’s so hard to get the help these days—” he nods at Eileen, who is sitting at the opposite end of the table, ignoring us by staring into inner space “—and I’ve found that interviewing candidates in person is a remarkably good way of avoiding subsequent disappointments. Human resources will only get you so far, after all.”
I notice that Ramona is watching Eileen. “What’s up with her?” I ask.
“Oh, her mind wanders.” Billington picks up his knife and fork and slices into a sausage. “Mostly all over her manufacturing sites; remote viewing is a marvelous management tool, don’t you think?” The sausage bleeds juice across his plate. I suddenly realize there are no hash browns or tomatoes or mushrooms or anything like that in front of him—it’s wall-to-wall dead animal flesh. “You should try it sometime.”
Ramona looks me in the eye. “He told me what he wants me to do, Bob.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What, ride the grab down to the abyssal plain . . . ?”
“With you providing a running commentary,” Billington slides in unctuously. “After all, your current unfortunate state has certain transient advantages, does it not?” He smiles.
“He also told me what he was offering.” She looks away, distraught. “I’m sorry, Bob. You were right.”
“You—” I stop. ★★You’re going to trust him?★★ I ask via our private channel.
★★It’s not just the, the binding to my aspect,★★ she says, tongue-tied as she hunts for words. ★★If I do this for him, he makes McMurray set me free. What alternative do I have?★★
Billington’s been watching us in silence for the past short while. Now he interrupts, in my direction: “If I may explain?” He nods at Ramona. “You have a simple choice. Cooperate, and I will have one of my associates perform the rite of disentanglement. You two will be free of each other forever if you so choose, and free of Ms. Random’s daemon. You’ll both live happily ever after, aside for a period of a few weeks during which you will be guests with limited freedom of movement, while I complete my current project. After it is finished, I can promise you there will be no reprisals from your employers. Nothing can possibly go wrong. You see, I don’t need to be nasty: it’s a win-win situation all round.”
I lick my dry lips. “What if I don’t want to cooperate?” Billington shrugs. “Then you don’t run my errand, and I don’t pay you for it.” He spears a strip of bacon, saws it in half, and raises it to his teeth. “Business is business, Mr. Howard.”
I flinch as if someone’s walked over my grave. He’s making me an offer I can’t refuse, disguising a threat