Heads (Jerry eBooks) by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2016-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

The offices of the council president were located in the council annex to Port Yin’s western domicile district; in the suburbs, as it were, and away from the centre of BM activity, as befitted a political institution. The offices were numerous but not sumptuous; the syndics of many small BMs could have displayed more opulence.

I entered the reception area, a cubicle barely four metres square, with a man behind a desk to supplement an automated appointments system.

‘Good day,’ the man said. He was perhaps fifty, greyhaired, blunt-nosed, with a pleasant but discriminating expression.

‘Mickey Sandoval.’ I said. ‘I have an invitation from the president.’

‘Indeed you do, Mr Sandoval. You’re about three minutes early, but I believe the president is free now.’ The automated appointments clerk produced a screenful of information. ‘Yes, Mr Sandoval. Please go in.’ He gestured towards a double door on his left, which opened to a long hallway. ‘At the end. Ignore the mess, please; the administration is still moving in.’

Boxes of information cubes and other files lined the hallway in neat stacks. Several young women in Port Yin drabs—a style I did not find attractive—were moving files into an office along the hallway by electric cart. They smiled at me as I passed. I returned their smiles.

I was full of confidence, walking into the attractive, the seductive and yet trivial inner sanctum. These were all doubtless Logologists. The council presidents could choose all staff members from their own BM if they so desired. There would never be any accusations of nepotism or favouritism in a political climate where such was the expected, the norm.

Fiona Task-Felder’s office was at the end of the hall. Wide lunar oak doors opened automatically as I approached, and the president herself stepped forward to shake my hand.

‘Thanks for shuttling in.’ she said. ‘Mr Sandoval—’

‘Mickey, please,’ I said.

‘Fiona to you, as well. We’re just getting settled here. Come sit; let’s talk and see if some sort of accommodation can be reached between the council and Sandoval.’

Subtly, she had just informed me that Sandoval was on the outs, that we somehow stood apart from our fellow BMs. I did not bristle at the suggestion. I noted it, but assumed it was unintentional. Lunar politics was almost unfailingly polite, and this seemed too abrupt.

‘Fruit juice? That’s all we’re serving here,’ Fiona said with a smile. She was even more fit-looking in person, solid and square-shouldered, hair strong and stiff and cut short, eyes clear blue and surrounded by fine wrinkles, what my mother had once called ‘time’s dividends’. I took a glass of apple juice and sat at one end of the broad curved desk, where two screens and two keyboards waited.

‘I understand the installation is already made, and that Cailetet is beginning its work now,’ the president said.

I nodded.

‘How far along?’ she asked.

‘Not very,’ I said.

‘Have you revived any heads?’

That set me aback; she knew as well as I, she had to know, that it was not our plan to revive any heads, that nobody had the means to do so.

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