In return for Zeb’s coding and hacking secrets, Glenn shared a few secrets of his own. For instance, he’d bugged his mother’s room with an audio earlet concealed in her bedside lamp, by which means it became known to Zeb that Rhoda was having it off with an upper-middle-management type called Pete, usually right before lunchtime.
“My dad doesn’t know,” said Glenn. He considered for a moment, fixing Zeb with his uncanny green eyes. “Think I should tell him?”
“Maybe you shoudn’t listen in on that shit,” said Zeb.
Glenn gave him a cool stare. “Why not?”
“Because those things are for grown-ups,” Zeb said, sounding prissy even to himself.
“You would, when you were my age,” Glenn said, and Zeb couldn’t deny that it was a thing he’d have done in a millisecond, given the opportunity and the tech. Avidly, gloatingly, without thinking twice.
On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t have done it if it involved his own parents. Even now he can’t think about the Rev making umphing sounds while bobbing up and down on top of Trudy — who’d be slippery with perfumed lotion and lubricant, and would resemble an overstuffed pink satin pillow — without feeling queasy.
Grob’s Attack
“Here comes the part where I meet Pilar,” says Zeb.
“What on earth was Pilar doing at HelthWyzer West?” says Toby. “Working for a Corp, inside a Compound?”
But she knew the answer. A lot of the Gardeners had started out inside a Corp Compound, and a lot of the MaddAddamites had as well. Where else was a bioscience-trained person to work? If you wanted a job in research, you had to work for a Corp because that was where the money was. But you’d naturally be focused on projects that interested them, not on ones that interested you. And the ones that interested them had to have a profitable commercial application.
Zeb first met Pilar at one of the Thursday barbecues. He hadn’t seen her there before. Some of the more senior people didn’t attend the weekly ribfests: they were for younger people who might or might not be angling for a casual pickup or looking to exchange gossip and glean info, and Pilar was beyond that stage. As Zeb learned later, she was well up the seniority ladder.
But she was there that Thursday. All Zeb saw at first was a small, black-and-grey-haired older woman playing chess with Glenn, over on the sidelines. It was an odd combo — almost-old lady, uppity young kid — and odd combos intrigued him.
He sauntered up casually and loomed over Glenn’s shoulder. He watched the game for a while, trying not to kibbitz. Neither side had an obvious advantage. The old dame played relatively quickly, though without fluster, while Glenn pondered. She was making him work.
“Queen to h5,” Zeb said at last. Glenn was playing Black this time. Zeb wondered if he’d chosen it out of bravado or whether they’d flipped for White.
“Don’t think so,” said Glenn without looking up while moving his knight to block — Zeb now saw — a possible check. The older woman smiled at Zeb, one of those wrinkly-eyed brown-skinned gnome-in-the-woods smiles that could mean anything from I like you to Watch out.
“Who is your friend?” she said to Glenn.
Glenn frowned at Zeb, which meant he felt insecure about the game. “This is Seth,” he said. “This is Pilar. Your move.”
“Hey,” said Zeb, nodding.
“A pleasure,” said Pilar. “Good save,” she said to Glenn.
“Catch you later,” Zeb said to Glenn. He wandered off to eat some NevRBled Shish-K-Buddies — he was getting fond of them, despite their ersatz texture — topped off with a SoYummie cone, quasiraspberry flavour.
He sucked on the cone while looking over the field and ranking all the women he could see. It was a harmless pastime. The scale was one to ten. There were no tens (In a Minute!), a couple of eights (With Mild Reservations), a clutch of fives (If Nothing Else Available), some definite threes (You’d Have to Pay Me), and an unfortunate two (Pay Me a Lot!) — when he felt a touch on his arm.
“Don’t act surprised, Seth,” said a low voice. He looked down: it was tiny, walnut-faced Pilar. Was she making a move on him? Surely not, but if so it could be a delicate moment, politeness-wise: how to say no in an acceptable manner?
“Your shoelaces are untied,” she said.
Zeb stared at her. His shoes didn’t have laces. They were slip-ons.
“Welcome to MaddAddam, Zeb,” she said, smiling.
Zeb coughed out a chunk of SoYummie cone. “Fuck!” he said, but he had the presence of mind to say it softly. Adam and his idiot shoelaces password. Who could have remembered?
“It’s all right,” said Pilar. “I know your brother. I helped bring you here. Look bored, as if we’re making small talk.” She smiled at him again. “I’ll see you at the next Thursday barbecue. We should arrange to play a game of chess.” Then she wafted serenely away towards the croquet game. She had excellent posture: Zeb sensed a yoga aficionado. Posture like that made him feel personally sloppy.
He longed to go online, zigzag into the Extinctathon MaddAddam chatroom, and ask Adam about this woman, but he knew that wouldn’t be prudent. The least said the better online, even if you thought your space was secure. The net had always been just that — a net, full of holes, all the better to trap you with; and it still was, despite the fixes they claimed to be adding constantly, with the impenetrable algorithms and the passwords and thumb scans.
But what else did they expect? With code serfs like him in charge of the security keys, of course the thing was going to leak. The pay was too low, so the temptation to pilfer, snoop, snitch, and sell for high rewards was great. But the penalties were getting more extreme, which was a counterbalance of sorts. Online thieves were increasingly professional, like the outfits he’d worked with in Rio. Few were hacking for the pure lulz of it any more, or even to register protests, as they had in the golden years of legend that middle-aged guys wearing retro Anonymous masks got all nostalgic about in the dim, cobwebby, irrelevant corners of the web.
What good would registering a protest do you any more? The Corps were moving to set up their own private secret-service outfits and seize control of the artillery; not a month passed without the arrival of some new weapons law pretending to safeguard the public. Old-style demonstration politics were dead. You could get back at individual targets such as the Rev using underhanded means, but any kind of public action involving crowds and sign-waving and then storefront smashing would be shot off at the knees. Increasingly, everyone knew that.
He finished his SoYummie cone, fended off snub-nosed Marjorie, who wanted him to join a game of croquet and acted hurt when he said he was awkward with wooden balls, then meandered over to where Glenn was still sitting, staring at the chessboard. He’d set it up again and was playing against himself. “Who won?” Zeb asked.
“I almost did,” said Glenn. “She pulled a Grob’s Attack on me. It caught me off-guard.”
“What exactly does she do here?” Zeb asked. “Is she in charge of something?”
Glenn smiled. He liked knowing things Zeb didn’t know. “Mushrooms. Funguses. Mould. Want to play me?”
“Tomorrow,” said Zeb. “Ate too much, it’s dulling my brain.”
Glenn grinned up at him. “Chickenshit,” he said.