I don't know how long I stared at the blank screen. When I finally shook myself out of my self-absorbed funk, my eyes were so dry they felt gritty.
It's funny how things work out… or it might be funny, if those things don't involve you personally. From my side, I failed to see the humor. That faint musical tone had signified more than the end of Barnard's call, hadn't it? It had also sounded the death knell of the life I'd been living. One simple bink, and everything changes.
I shook my head and sighed. What were the odds of The Dream and Barnard's call coming together like that? Quite a coincidence.
Of course, some people wouldn't see it that way. That friend of Jocasta Yzerman's, for example, the one she'd taught with back in the sprawl. What was his name? Harold Move-in-Shadows, or something like that. Old Harold, he'd have told me in that sententious way of his that there's no such thing as coincidence, and that everything happens because it's the will of the Great Spirits. Yeah, right. If that's the case, then the Great Spirits have a pretty fragging twisted sense of humor.
The call… I sighed again, a deep, heartfelt sound. It had to happen-I'd known that from the outset. When things had gone to hell in a handcart that night underneath Fort Lewis-when Hawk and Rodney and the others had been slaughtered-it was Jacques Barnard's cred that had put things back together again. He'd paid off the "Wrecking Crew"-the shadow team I'd hired-including death bonuses for Toshi and Hawk. He'd arranged for me to "the," at least as far as the people at Lone Star who might want to track me down were concerned. And, most important, he'd paid for the cybernetic replacement of the arm that the Queen spirit had burned away.
He'd never even discussed the matter with me. When I'd woken up in the hospital-an exorbitantly expensive private room, again courtesy of Mr. Barnard-it had all been handled. He'd never put any strings on the payments, never demanded any concessions from me.
He hadn't needed to, of course. We both knew the way things work. Corps and corporators don't give gifts; they make investments. Barnard had invested in me, and we both understood that some time down the road he'd come looking for a return on that investment. Over the intervening four years, he'd never mentioned the matter; hell, I'd never had anything to do with Yamatetsu during that time, and that was just the way I liked it. But again, he hadn't needed to mention it, or remind me. Megacorporations the world over have integrated a lot of ideas from the old Japanese world-view. When someone is in your debt, it's his responsibility to remember the fact, not yours to remind him.
So now it was time to call in the marker. That's what the call meant. I owed him for my arm, and my livelihood- frag, for my life, if you got right down to it-and he was going to collect.
Dully, I walked over to the telecom and idly pressed a few keys, the smartframe had made it back, filling temporary files with a couple of megapulses of data on Jonathan Bridge. Those files probably contained what I needed to discharge my contract with Sharon Young, and net myself some much-needed cred.
Yet I couldn't work up the enthusiasm to open them. What did it matter anyway? I couldn't guess what Barnard would want from me. Similarly, though, I couldn't imagine that paying off my debt would leave my life unaffected.
I didn't call Barnard back right away.
I couldn't drag it out too long, though. He'd tracked down my LTG number in Cheyenne, so it was a safe bet he knew I was in town. If I didn't return his call within some reasonable span of time, he might start wondering whether I'd forgotten my obligation or-worse-that I was considering shirking it. How would a high muckamuck corporator like Barnard respond to that kind of irresponsibility on my part? I remembered the two business-suited knee-breakers who'd escorted me to Barnard's enclave in Madison Park four years ago, and I had no desire to meet them again on less genteel terms.
Still, I pushed it as long as I figured was politically wise… and then a bit longer. After all, up until the moment I actually placed that call, I could still lie to myself that I was a free agent.
I spent some of my time running a quick research scan on Jacques Barnard (know thine enemies in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards, and all that). I'd assumed that Barnard was still part of Yamatetsu's Seattle operations-the fact that the "cold relay" number he'd given me was a local node just reinforced the idea-but that turned out to be off the beam. Y-Seattle was now the purview of some slitch by the name of Mary Luce, while Barnard had been bumped upstairs to become executive vice president of Yamatetsu North America. With the promotion had come a transfer to the bright heart of the Yamatetsu world-the city of Kyoto, in Ninon.
So Jacques Barnard had shaken the mud and grime of the sprawl from his thousand-nuyen shoes, had he? What would that mean for me?
Putting off the inevitable is a mug's game. Finally I bit the bullet, and placed the calclass="underline" seventeen hundred hours my time, oh-nine-hundred in Kyoto. I watched the icons flicker and flash along the bottom of the screen as my telecom dialed the LTG number Barnard had given me, and made the connection. My system synched up and shook hands with the Seattle node, then the call was suspended-put on hold, basically-by the remote station. I watched as my screen echoed a call to Denver… and was put on hold again. The process happened three more times-when Barnard said a relay was cold, I decided, he meant you could use it for cryogenic research-before I finally saw the standard Ringing symbol blink.
I frowned as the telecom waited for an answer. What the frag was I going to get pulled into, here? If Barnard figured he needed a five-node relay to talk to me, I had me nasty feeling that we wouldn't be chatting about the weather…
The telecom whined for an instant, then an image of Barnard himself filled the screen. He was sitting at a desk, as I'd expected, but not in an office. Or, at least, not an office like any I'd ever seen before. The background was slightly out of focus, but I could still make out white marble walls, broad windows, and an open door leading out under a portico, and beyond into an ornamental garden. Life-sized, classical-style statues stood in uncomfortable-looking poses among me flowering shrubs.
Barnard looked up from what he was doing-something that was outside his telecom's field of view-and smiled when he saw my face. "Mr. Montgomery." There was real warmth-or an impressive simulation of it, at least-in his voice. "I'm glad I was able to reach you."
It was funny, but in that instant, I was glad, too. I hadn't known it until now, but this moment had been haunting me for four years. Just as you can get so used to pain like a toothache that you forget it's there, I'd become accustomed to the chrome, low-grade stress of wondering when the call would come, when the other shoe would drop. But that didn't mean the stress hadn't been there, hadn't been real. Now, as Barnard smiled at me out of the screen, I felt a strange, twisty sensation in my gut… and I realized, with a shock, mat it was four years' worth of tension finally being relieved.
"Mr. Barnard," I said noncommittally. "Long time."
His smile-more genuine than I'd have given his acting ability credit for-grew broader, and he leaned back in his chair. His telecom's video pickup adjusted focus, and I got a better view of the statues beyond the portico. "How are you enjoying the sunshine in Cheyenne, Mr. Montgomery?" he asked lightly. "A pleasant change from Seattle, I would imagine."
I shook my head, momentarily dumbstruck. He was talking about me fragging weather. With an effort, I brought my thoughts back under control. "A change is as good as a rest, that's what they say, at least." I glanced away from his face to the view behind him. "Wouldn't you agree?*'
He chuckled. 'There are some significant… perquisites… to corporate rank," he admitted. "I do rather like Kyoto. Have you ever visited the city?"