The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [90]
I force myself to smile benevolently. “That’s okay, I don’t mind you not recognizing me.” I take a sip of the martini: it’s revolting but it’s got alcohol in it, so it can’t be all bad. “It’s rather refreshing, actually, being a nobody who people overlook all the time.” Kitty smiles uncertainly, as if she’s not sure whether I’m deploying irony or something equally exotic. “What brings you here, Kitty?” I ask, putting on my sincerest expression.
“I’m Busy Bee Number One for the Minnesota sales region! I mean, I have a really great team and they’re amazingly great workers but it’s such an honor, don’t you think? And only last year we were sixty-second out of seventy-four regional teams! But I figured my girls just needed something to shoot for so I gave them new targets and a new promotional pricing structure with discount incentivization and it worked like crazy!” She half-covers her mouth: “And the viral marketing thing, too, but that’s something else. But it was my worker bees who did it all, really! There are no drones in my hive!”
“That’s, uh, truly excellent,” I say, nodding. A thought strikes me: “What particular products are doing well at the moment? I mean, is there anything special that’s responsible for your sales growth?”
“Oh, well, you know we’ve tracked the vertical segmentation of our region and different hives have different merchandise footprints, but you know something? It’s the same everywhere, the Pale Grace™ Skin Hydromax® cream is, you know, walking off the shelves!”
“Hmm.” I try to look thoughtful, which isn’t difficult: How the hell do you package a glamour in an ointment pot? I shake my head in admiration and take another sip of drain cleaner. “That’s really good to know. Maybe I should use it myself?”
“Oh, of course you should! Here, take my card; I’d be happy to set you up with a range of free samples and an initial consultation.” Her card isn’t just a piece of cardboard, it’s a scratch ’n’ sniff sample as complex as a Swiss Card survival tool—I manage to slide it into my pocket without getting any of the stuff on my skin. Kitty gushes in my direction, her eyes lighting up as she moves into the standard sales script, her voice softening and lowering with a compelling sincerity that is at odds with her natural bubbly extroversion: “The ErythroComplex-V in the Pale Grace™ Skin Hydromax® range is clinically proven to reverse aging-induced cytoplasmic damage to the skin and nail cuticles. Just one application begins to undo the ravages of free radicals and enhance the body’s natural production of antioxidants and cytochrome polyesterase inhibitors. And it’s so creamy smooth! We make it with one hundred percent natural ingredients, unlike some of our competitors . . .”
I slip away while she’s reciting her programmed spiel, and she doesn’t even notice as I sidle up to a potted palm and take a last reflective mouthful of dry martini. My wards blipped slightly as her script kicked in, but that doesn’t have to mean she’s a robot, does it? We make it with one hundred percent natural ingredients, like the bottom tenth percentile of our sales force, the ones who don’t get invited to this end of the marketing conference by the Queen Bee. Maybe Kitty’s just a natural void, only too happy to be filled by the passing enthusiasm of the traveling salesman invocation, but somehow I doubt it: that kind of perfect vacuum doesn’t come cheap.
I scuff my left heel on the ground. If I switched it on, the Tillinghast resonator that Brains installed in my shoe would let me see the sales-daemon riding her spine like a grotesquely bloated digger wasp, but I’d just as soon keep my lunch—and anyway the first law of demonology is that if you can see it, it can see you. But the small of my back itches as I glance round at the overdressed hedonists and the scarily neat saleswomen because I’m putting together a picture here that I really don’t like: dinner jacket or no, I’m underdressed for the occasion, although