The screen went blank for a long moment. But the time elapsing didn't cost much. Prerecorded one-way calls were cheap. Emily's call had been compressed into a high-speed burst and sent from machine to machine overnight, at midnight rates.
Emily reappeared on the screen, this time in her bedroom.
She now wore a pink-and-white satin night-robe and her hair had been brushed out. She sat cross-legged in her wooden four-poster bed, a Victorian antique. Emily had refinished her ancient, creaking bed with modern hard-setting shellac. This transparent film was so mercilessly tough and rigid that it clamped the whole structure together like cast iron.
She had attached the phone camera to one. of the bedposts.
Business was over now. This was personal. The video eti- quette had changed along with Emily's expression. She had a hangdog look. A new camera angle, looking down into the bed from a somewhat superior angle, helped convey the mood. She looked pitiful.
Laura sighed, pausing the playback. She shifted Loretta in her lap and nuzzled her absently. She was used to hearing
Emily's problems, but it was hard to take before lunch.
Especially today. Weirdness beginning to mount. She lifted her finger again.
"Well, I'm back," Emily intoned. "I suppose you can guess what it is. It's Arthur again. We had another fight. A
brutal one. It started as one of those trivial things, about nothing really. Oh, about sex I guess, or at least that's what he said, but it came out of the blue for me. I thought he was being a bastard for no reason. He started sniping at me, using
That Tone of Voice, you know. And once he gets that way he's impossible.
"He started shouting, I started yelling, and things just went straight to hell. He almost hit me. He clenched his fist and everything." Emily paused dramatically. "I ran back in here and locked the door in his face. And he didn't say a damned thing. He just left me in here. When I came out he was gone.
And he took... " Her voice shook for a moment and she waited it out, pulling at a long strand of hair. "He took that photo he made of me, the black-and-white one in period dress, that I really liked. And that was two days ago and he doesn't answer his goddamn phone.
She looked close to tears. "I don't know, Laura. I've tried everything. I've tried men in the company, men outside, and it's just no luck at all. I mean, -either they want to own you and be the center of the universe, or they. want to treat you like some bed-and-breakfast service and expose you to Christ knows what kind of disease. And it's been worse since I've been on the Committee. Rizome men are a lost cause now.
They tiptoe around me like I was a goddamn land mine."
She looked off-camera. "C'mon, kitty." A Persian cat jumped onto the bed. "Maybe it's me, Laura. Other women come to decent terms with men. You certainly did. Maybe I need outside help." She hesitated. "Someone put an anony- mous post on the trade division board. About a psychiatric drug. Marriage counselors are using it. Romance, they call it.
You ever hear of it? I think it's illegal or something." She stroked her cat absently.
She sighed. "Well, this is nothing new. Emily's sob story, year thirty-two. I think it's through between me and Arthur now. He's an artistic type. A photographer. Not in business at all. I thought it might work out. But I was wrong as usual."
She shrugged. "I should look at the bright side, right? He didn't ask me- for money and he didn't give me a retrovirus.
And he wasn't married. A real prince."
She leaned back against the mahogany headboard, looking tired and defenseless. "I shouldn't tell you this, Laura, so be sure to erase it first thing. This Grenada Bank deal-that meeting you're about to hold is part of it. Rizome's sponsor- ing a meeting on data banking and data piracy. That doesn't sound like anything new, but listen: it's with actual live pirates. Sleazy offshore types from the data havens. Re- member the fight we put through to get your Lodge equipped for major meetings?"
Emily grimaced and spread her hands. "Well, the Europe- ans should be there already. They're the tamest of the bunch- the closest to legit. But you can expect some Grenadians in tomorrow, with one of our security people. The Committee's sent you the schedule already, but not the full details. As far as you know, they're all legitimate bankers. Be nice to them, all right? They may be the crooks to us, but what they do is completely legal in their little enclaves."
She frowned. The cat dropped to the floor with a thump off-camera. "They've been taking bites out of us for years, and we've got to talk some sense into them. It looks bad for
Rizome to cozy up to pirates, so keep it quiet, all right? I'm being stupid here, because I wanted to give you a break. If it comes out that I leaked this, the Committee will slap me down hard. So you'd better be a lot more discreet than I am.
Okay, end of message. Send me a tape of the baby, all right?
Say hi to David." The screen went blank.
Well, now she had it all. She erased the tape. Thanks, Em.
Pirate data bankers, no less. Creepy little hustlers from some offshore data haven-the kind of guys that chewed matchsticks and wore sharkskin suits. That explained the Europeans. Bank- ers my eye. They were all rip-off artists. Crooks.
They were nervous, that was it. Jumpy. And no wonder.
The general potential for embarrassment in this situation was vast. One phone call to the Galveston police and they could all be in machismo hot water.
She was a little mad at the Committee for being cagey about it. But she could see their reasons. And the more she thought about it, the more she recognized it as a gesture of trust. Her
Lodge was going to be right in the middle of some very delicate action. They could easily have taken it to another
Lodge-like the Warburtons in the Ozarks. This way they were going to have to level with her. And she was going to see it all.
After a late lunch, she took the Canadians into the confer- ence room in the tower. They logged in to Atlanta and picked up their last messages. They killed a couple of hours before departure, grinning into videophones and gossiping. One of the women had run out of video rouge and had to borrow Laura's.
At four, the fall Quarterly Report came on line, a little early. The printers chattered hard copy. The Kurosawas picked up their Portuguese translation and left.
David showed up at five o'clock, and he'd brought his wrecking crew. They stomped into the bar, raided the beer, and rushed upstairs to see the baby. Laura's mother arrived, sunburned from her boat trip to the OTEC. Galveston's Ocean
Thermal Energy Converter was a civic pride and joy, and one of David's crew had been on the project. Everyone seemed delighted to trade notes.
David was peppered head to foot with grime and sawdust.
So were his four wrecking buddies. In their work shirts, denim overalls, and heavy boots, they looked like Depression hoboes. Actually David's friends were a dentist, two marine engineers, and a biology professor, but appearances counted.
She tugged his shoulder strap. "Did the European bankers see you; coming in?"
David beamed paternally as his friends admired Loretta's amazing new skill at clenching her sweaty little fists. "Yeah, so?"
"David, you reek."
"A little honest sweat!" David said. "What are we, Marx- ists? Hell, they envy us! Those Luxembourg paper shufflers are dying for a day's honest work."
Supper with David's friends was a 'great success. David broke his principles and ate the shrimp, but refused to touch the -vegetables. "Vegetables are full of poisons!" he insisted loudly. "They're crammed with natural insecticides! Plants use chemical warfare. Ask any botanist!"
Luckily no one pursued the subject. The wrecking crew called vans and left for home. Laura locked up for the night while the staff loaded the dishes. David took a shower.