‘I’m sure I’m very flattered.’
‘Don’t try to be clever, Rimmer. I don’t keep you for my amusement. I keep you to bite the people I want bitten, and bitten hard.’
Rimmer was silent for a moment. Then his gap-toothed smile widened, his mouth taking on a rodentlike aspect.
‘Now I understand,’ he said. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? Dallas is what this is all about. You’ve had him checked out, and you’ve discovered the truth of what I was saying.’
Rimmer nodded with quiet satisfaction, his ugly smile sustained by an enormous sense of personal vindication. He had been right. And what was more, he had been right about Dallas, someone who treated him with even more contempt than King. Rimmer had been waiting for an opportunity to hurt Dallas. Spying on him at every available opportunity. The computer search of his daughter’s hospital records had been an inspired bit of thinking.
‘Your favorite boy,’ he chuckled. ‘Dallas. That’s what you find so offensive about me. Because I’ve been proved right about Dallas.’
‘Don’t assume you can ever know the limits of how offensive I find you, Rimmer,’ hissed King.
Rimmer shrugged silently and, still smiling, started to clean his fingernails with a toothpick.
‘I asked him about his daughter,’ growled King. ‘And he said that she was going to be fine.’
Rimmer didn’t look up. Just kept on cleaning his nails and flicking the debris onto the thick Persian silk rug.
‘Wishful bloody thinking, if you ask me,’ he finally said.
‘If you’re right and the child really is ill, I can’t understand why he didn’t talk to me about it,’ said King. ‘Why he didn’t throw himself on the company’s mercy and ask for help.’
‘Because he’s not stupid,’ snorted Rimmer. ‘Because he knew what the answer would be. He knows the company policy on blood loans.’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ King said, almost defensively.
‘That’s right, director. You just carry them out. Of course. Well, take my word for it, Dallas knows the score. That’s why he didn’t throw himself on your so-called mercy. In any case, my investigations show he’s already put his weekend house up for sale, so he can get his hands on some of the blood he’s got on deposit.’ Rimmer laughed. ‘Not that it’s going to keep him going for very long. The doctor I spoke to about his freaky daughter estimates that he’ll be cleaned out within a couple of years. The sooner that happens, the greater the potential security implications for this company. Wouldn’t you agree, director?’
King stared gloomily at the floor, hating himself for having to listen to Rimmer’s poison.
‘I mean, what would our beloved clients say if they discovered Dallas had an unfortunate situation at home, one involving his own life’s blood? I think they might justifiably worry that he could at some stage be compromised, that he might even contemplate selling information on our Rational Environments to the highest bidder.’
‘I don’t believe Dallas would ever betray this company or its clients,’ insisted King.
‘Maybe not now. But in a year’s time? Who knows what someone in his shoes might do? In his circumstances, I’d probably do the same thing myself.’
‘That I don’t doubt,’ King said bitterly.
‘But there’s another problem you may not yet have considered, director. As his supplies of big red run out, his financial position is going to become seriously eroded. Dallas has speculated quite a bit on the blood futures market. He’s already selling one home to cover himself. Chances are, eventually he’ll have to sell another — his main home, here in the city. Maybe move to a poor area, outside the Zone. And that might expose him to the risk of viral infections. I don’t think our employees would care for that any more than our clients, do you?’
‘Damn your questions, Rimmer.’
‘Easily said, but the question is, what’s to be done about it, eh? What’s to be done about your favorite boy? Your little protégé?’
‘Shut up and let me think.’
‘Nothing to think about,’ insisted Rimmer, looking over his fingernails. ‘You know as well as I what the proper course of action needs to be.’ Rimmer fed the toothpick between his thin lips and started to massage the gaps between his teeth. When he inspected the toothpick once more there was blood on the point. It was as if, he thought, someone was trying to tell him something.
‘Blood for blood’s sake. I’ve heard you say it often enough,’ said Rimmer. ‘To protect blood, you shouldn’t be afraid of spilling it now and then. An interesting paradox, that. One of many that’s inherent in this noble business.’ Rimmer pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A developed sense of irony is essential to our work, don’t you think, director?’
‘We’re not the same, Rimmer.’
‘No, that’s true. Thank goodness, I’m just the errand boy. You’re the one who has to make all the difficult decisions. Me, I couldn’t live with that responsibility. I couldn’t look myself in the eye.’
King had had enough. ‘Kill him,’ he said firmly. ‘Kill Dallas. And kill his family — if it weren’t for them, we’d still have our best designer.’
Rimmer inhaled sharply. ‘You see what I mean?’ he said. ‘I’d never have thought of killing his family as well. That’s what makes you the director and me just the employee. You have a commendably Machiavellian sense of neatness, if you don’t mind me saying so. That’s what makes you such a prince among men, director.’
‘Shut up, Rimmer.’
‘And when would you like this little contract carried out?’
‘Immediately.’
‘Right.’
‘Only make sure that it’s done well away from these offices. And another thing. Be discreet. If there’s any hint of our involvement, you’ll be the next one dead. Do you understand?’
‘It’s as clear as blue eyes on a bright day, sir.’ Rimmer pocketed the bloodstained toothpick and rubbed his hands with enthusiasm. It had been a while since he’d been ordered to kill anyone. The last time, it was a girl from the Accounts Department who’d managed to get herself infected with P2. If it hadn’t been for that he might have raped her as well. Of course, there was nothing to stop him raping Dallas’s wife. After all, it was the child who was sick, not the mother. And rape was one of the real perks of the job. Nothing to do with sex. Everything to do with the exercise of power. That was what the job was all about. Maybe he’d vamp her blood, too, and sell it on the black market. Make it look like that was the motive for killing her.
‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, already smiling in anticipation of a job well done.
‘Leave the door open behind you,’ ordered King. ‘Let some fresh air in. While you’ve been in here, the smell’s gotten worse.’
‘That’s not me. That’s just your conscience. You’ll get used to it. I know I did.’
‘Get out,’ ordered King.
4
Sometimes at night, Rimmer liked to get in his car and let it drive him out of the Zone and into one of the city’s more insalubrious quarters, which were mostly inhabited by people with the disease. It gave him a pleasurable feeling of hope to be around the hopeless. He particularly liked to visit the clubs and the bars that were patronized by the city’s pariah class, those whose P2 status had criminalized. He told himself that this was the romantic bohemian in him, that like some crappy old poet or painter, he was merely seeking out the more authentically existential life experience. But the truth was more ordinary. Rimmer just felt more comfortable mixing with the city’s lowlife. And undeniably, being in this world gave him a feeling of power, for Rimmer preferred to recruit those who carried the virus in the felonious aspects of his work. People who were immunologically compromised were usually less principled about what they were prepared to do for a few cash credits. Morality had meaning only for the rich and the healthy, who were, of course, coterminous. In Rimmer’s experience, P2 made potential murderers of almost everyone.