"Never had the time."
"Unfortunate." He pursed his lips momentarily. "But you do like to travel, I trust?"
"Only if I get to keep any frequent flier points they give me," I said dryly. "Look, Mr. Barnard, despite appearances, I'm assuming that this isn't a social call."
He blinked, and his expression changed. For an instant, I could have almost believed that there was disappointment in his eyes. It was gone in a microsecond, and his face became the cool mask of the seasoned negotiator. "As you wish, Mr. Montgomery." He paused, as if to order his thoughts. "As you might have guessed, there is a… a matter, one might say… on which you can help me. Do you have a passport? Not in your own name, of course"-he chuckled softly- "considering that Derek Montgomery officially thed in twenty fifty-two. But one that will pass muster?"
I nodded.
"Good. Then I have a request for you. I have a message that I need delivered to a… a colleague of mine. I would like you to deliver it for me, Mr. Montgomery."
I snorted. "You want me to be a delivery boy?"
"I wouldn't put it quite like that," Barnard hedged.
"But it's accurate."
He shrugged. "If you wish."
"Why can't you do it electronically?" I asked. "Or virtually, over the Matrix?"
Barnard's dark eyes hardened, and I felt my internal temperature drop a couple of degrees. "I have my reasons, I assure you," he said coldly. But then his mien softened an iota. "Personal contact is required in this situation, Mr. Montgomery. Circumstances are such that nothing else would be acceptable."
He was trying to win me over by being reasonable, by actually explaining-to some degree, at least. But I wasn't going to get sucked in that easily. "So why not send one of your flunkies from Kyoto?" I shot back. "There's got to be hundreds of keeners just dying to"-to kiss hoop, is what I started to say, but at the last moment I reconsidered-"to do the executive veep a personal favor. Neh?"
Barnard frowned. "Perhaps. But that would be… inappropriate… in this case."
"Why?"
"Because the contact must be untraceable, Mr. Montgomery. I need a deniable asset."
"You mean an expendable asset, don't you?"
Barnard sighed in mild frustration. "Not in this case, Mr. Montgomery." He gave a wry half smile. "Under other circumstances"-he shrugged-"who knows? But not in this case, I assure you."
"Why not?" I asked sarcastically. "You'd hang someone else out to dry, but not me. Because of my winning personality, no doubt?" I snorted again. "Look, Mr. Barnard, I'm willing to go along with you because I owe you for the arm, and I'd rather pay off my marker than be hunted down by Yamatetsu hard-men. But please don't insult what I like to consider my intelligence, so ka?"
For a moment I thought I'd gone that one step too far. For nearly ten seconds Barnard just stared at me out of the screen, his eyes like targeting lasers. Then he leaned forward, and again the vid pickup adjusted, putting the statues out of focus. "Listen," he said, "I'll tell you this once, and only because I want you to understand. I'm not calling in a marker, Mr. Montgomery. You've already paid back for the arm, and more." He smiled faintly and gestured around him. "Do you think I'd be sitting in this office if Adrian Skyhill was still undercutting me with the Board of Directors at every turn?" The smile faded, and for a moment the executive looked even older man he had before. "And there's more to the debt, of course, but I'd rather not discuss it, even via a cold relay."
I nodded slowly. He meant the insect spirits, of course.
"The way I view the matter, Mr. Montgomery," Barnard continued smoothly, "Yamatetsu owes you for your services." He spread his hands in a disarming gesture. "This is part of the payback. I understand you need the work, and the credit."
I forced a laugh. "Mr. Barnard, you'd better give your information conduits a swift kick. I've got contracts out the hoop; I don't have the time to be your glorified messenger boy and-"
His voice was no louder, but the edge to it cut me off as short as a gunshot. "No, Mr. Montgomery, you haven't got contracts, as you say, 'out the hoop.' The one matter you have to concern you at the moment-since you so smoothly discharged the matter with The Avalon for one Jennifer Aniequist-is a minor contract with Sharon Young." He smiled-he was enjoying this, the slot. "And, as a matter of fact, the business for which Ms. Young has contracted you is directly connected with my request, so there's not even any conflict there."
1 sighed. Corporators. I should have known better than to try and run a bluff. I raised my hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, you've got me."
Barnard paused. Then he said quietly, "You know, 1 would rather you take this matter on voluntarily."
"Why?"
He paused again-longer, this time. "Do you want the truth, Mr. Montgomery?"
"If it wouldn't strain you too much."
His expression changed. Not quite a smile, but something very close. "Because I respect you, Mr. Montgomery. And further, I like you."
He waited, as if he expected me to come back with some hard-hooped rejoinder. I always like being unpredictable, so I kept my trap zipped. Eventually, he smiled, his "business" smile again. "You know, Mr. Montgomery, you haven't asked the major question yet."
He was enjoying this. "Okay, Barnard," I said wearily. "Where am I going?"
He chuckled. "Have you ever been to me Kingdom of Hawai'i, Mr. Montgomery?"
I must be losing my fragging mind…
I sat back, staring at the telecom screen. The vidphone pane had cleared and vanished, but me data display still burned with its plasma glow. According to the data onscreen, I had an open ticket on the Global Airways suborbital hop from Casper to beautiful downtown Honolulu about twelve hours from right men. A corp ticket, no name on the manifest, and enough "don't-worry" flags that ticket agents, customs officers, and the like wouldn't dig too deep into my supposed identity. According to the datawork, which I could download onto my own credstick whenever I felt like it, I'd be traveling under the auspices of some outfit called Nebula Enterprises. A minor subsidiary of Yamatetsu, no doubt… or maybe not, come to think of it, if Barnard was so hinky about this whole thing getting traced back to him. Maybe Nebula was some independent that owed Yamatetsu as a whole, or Barnard individually, a Big One, or that chummer Jacques had under his corporate thumb.
In addition to the ticket itself, the flatscreen display showed me that my account at the Sioux I-face Bank had just more than quintupled, with an infusion of 22-Kay nuyen "contingency funds."
Finally-also for download onto my credstick-was an "electronic password," I guess that's the best way of describing it. The message I had to deliver to Barnard's "colleague" in Hawai'i wasn't something I could memorize and recite verbatim-of course not, that would mean I'd know what the message was. Instead, it would be delivered to me on optical chip-no doubt encrypted and loaded with enough ice to chill a good-sized lake of synth-scotch-when I arrived at the Casper International Airport for my boost to the islands. The electronic password would identify me to the appropriate gofer at the airport for the handover.
I stared at the data displayed on the screen, and I fretted. Not because my comfortable little life was getting turned upside down and shaken out like a garbage can-well, not only because of that, at least. No, what worried me the most were my own reactions. Just a few hours before, I'd been thinking I didn't have the instincts to survive in the shadows anymore (if I'd ever had them…), and now I had proof.
Proof? Yeah.
I found myself wanting to trust Jacques Barnard, wanting to believe he was telling me the chip-truth about the trip to Hawai'i. About the fact that he didn't consider me in hock to the corp. That he'd picked me for the messenger job because he respected and-maybe-liked me. Worse, I found myself wanting to like him.
Trust him? Like him? Get fragging real. Barnard was the Johnson to end all Johnsons-I'd had enough personal proof of that four years before, hadn't I? If I thought he would-or could-feel any genuine human emotion for a convenient tool like me, I was naive at best, schizophrenic at worst. And the fact that I felt an urge to reciprocate those nonexistent feelings… well, maybe it was time to hang up the old trenchcoat and hip flask and carve out a nice, safe career selling greeting cards or some drek.