Текст книги "Accidental Creatures"

Автор книги: Anne Harris

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

She came to a stop roughly ten feet in front of them, and directly across from Vonda, who stood in the middle of the throng.

Helix stared at her because it was easier than staring at all of them. Vonda stared back. Presumably they all did, though she was beginning to wonder how the ones in the back row were getting their view. Probably risers. Finally she got tired of waiting for somebody to blink. “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” she said, and dodged forward, aiming her shoulder between Vonda’s and the diver next to her. Vonda caught her neatly, and shoved her back into the street. Behind her and to the side stood April, her arms folded across her broad chest. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of town, and stay there,” she said, almost gently.

Helix shook her head. “Nope,” she nodded at the vat houses beyond the gate, “this is what I call home.”

The crowd was grumbling now. “Why don’t you go jerk off? You got plenty of hands for it!” somebody shouted to general laughter.

“What are you so afraid of?” she cried out, “I’m not going to hurt anybody.”

“No shit you’re not. You’re not getting in there, that’s why,” said Val, “We can’t let GeneSys make all our decisions for us. We’ve made our own decision about you.”

“Yeah, you’re fired, freak, so fuck off!” screamed someone in the back.

“You just don’t want me here because you’re afraid of me. You don’t know what I am!” Helix shouted.

“What are you?” answered several people at once, and then the words were taken up by the rest of the crowd. “What are you? What are you? What are you?” they chanted as they advanced on her, circling around until she was surrounded by them; their faces, their taunting voices.

“I don’t know!” she screamed back at them, raising her arms around her to ward them off, “I don’t know!” Her mouth open wide, she flashed her teeth, and her fingers stiffened to claws. “You want a freak? You’ve got a freak!”

Someone darted in to make a grab at one of her arms and she leapt on him, wrapping her arms around him and biting him on the shoulder. Her teeth slid against the rubber of his vat suit and he shoved her into the arms of three vatdivers. They grabbed her arms and she kicked wildly, twisting around until she could reach somebody’s hand, and she sank her teeth into it, feeling the flesh break. She tasted blood and heard a scream above the general clamoring. There were still five hands on her. “Fucking bitch,”

someone said, and slugged her in the side of the head. Her head snapped to the side and the scene swam before her eyes. People were advancing, closing the very small gap that had existed in the center of the crowd. Someone kicked her in the stomach and she would have fallen forward except for the hands, eight of them now, holding her by her arms. She got her feet under her again and kicked backwards indiscriminately. Her captors retaliated by pulling her arms back farther against the joints and kicking the backs of her knees until she sank to the ground. She looked up, blinking. In the distance she could hear the clank and roar of Hyper’s machines moving down the street. The cavalry was coming, but not soon enough. Someone loomed in front of her, a tall, heavyset man with a round face and hard eyes. She didn’t know him; she’d never even met him. He held an air tank cradled in his arms, “You’re going to wish you’d left while you still could,” he said, and he lifted the air tank up above his head. She saw it silhouetted against the sun, and then there was a sudden blur of motion from her right, and Vonda was there, somehow, with the tank in her hands. “That’s enough!” she screamed,

“This is a strike, not a lynching!”

“Says who?” The man advanced on her. Vonda twisted the nozzle on the tank and released a blast of frozen air in his face. He backed up, his hands over his eyes, and she turned around and threw the heavy tank directly over Helix’s head. The people holding her had to make a decision, let go or get hit with it. They let go. Helix dove forward and Vonda grabbed her hand, using the momentary confusion to plunge through the crowd.

By now Hyper’s machines had made it to the gate. The Augmented Hoomdorm jumped spasmodically on its pneumatic legs, scattering vatdivers in its path. As Vonda dragged her through the confused mob, Helix caught a glimpse of Robo-Mime, tenaciously circling a vatdiver wielding an air tank, confronting him with his own angry image. He swung the tank, and the video tube exploded, showering glass on himself and surrounding vatdivers.

Helix and Vonda dodged around a group of divers busy battling with Close Enough for Jazz. One of them had wrested the saxophone from its grip and was jamming it in the tractor treads. “Hey, there they are!” someone shouted, and the group abandoned the robot to head off Helix and Vonda just as they were about to break free from the rioting mob. “Traitor!” screamed a woman, rushing towards them with a decanting pole in her hands. But before she could reach them she was intercepted by Attack of the Sneetches. She tripped on the round little automatons, her pole clattering to the ground as she fell.

“This way,” hissed Vonda, veering around the stumbling divers and away from the thick of the mob. They ran full tilt down the street as police sirens wailed and three squad cars swerved around the corner ahead of them. Vonda ducked down an alley between a row of storage tanks and a warehouse, and Helix followed her. Behind her she heard the popping of gas grenade launchers, and up ahead there was a car horn honking. It was Chango in her beat-up Chevy. They put on an extra burst of speed and leapt into the car, Helix in front, Vonda in the back seat.

Vonda slapped the front seat with her hand. “Let’s get the hell out of Vattown for now, okay?”

Chango looked at Helix, “What’s she doing here? Why isn’t she back with her mob?”

Helix shook her head. “She saved my life for some reason, and she’s right, we have to get out of here.”

Chango frowned and pulled away down the street. As they drove, the sounds of the rioting died down behind them.

“Where will we go?” asked Helix.

“To Orielle’s,” said Vonda.

“What? Are you crazy?” said Chango.

“No. She likes Helix, she’ll protect her, and she’s got the firepower to do it should that mob back there reassemble itself and come looking for her.”

Chango swallowed and nodded her head, turning the car towards the Eastern Market. oOo

Benny was in the middle of a crushing mob of vatdivers, surging towards the line of police up the street.

“Fan out!” he screamed, “Fan out onto the side streets! We can still catch her!” He spotted Val only three feet away, “Val!” he shouted, trying in vain to press through the mob towards him. “Val! Go down Denton!” But he didn’t hear him, and then the crowd surged again, and Benny lost sight of him. He worked his way out of the riot and down an alley behind Compau Street. Vonda and Helix could have gone down any of the side streets around the vat yard. He really needed a team of ten or twenty to follow all their possible escape routes, but this was strictly a solo gig, now. He ran down Faber to Lumpkin and past a row of warehouses. At the far corner he saw a red and yellow chevy crossing Lumpkin, going down Holbrook. Chango’s car. He was too far away to see who was in it, but it was the only lead he had. He raced down Evaline now, heading for Conant. Hopefully she’d turn down Conant. As he passed a crumbling and vacant parking lot he bent down to scoop a rock up off the ground. Still running, he scraped it hard across his forehead over his right eye, and clenching it in his fist, struck himself on the cheek, hard enough, he hoped, to raise a bruise. But his cosmetic alterations were in vain. By the time he got to Conant he could just see the Chevy in the distance, heading south and east, towards the Market and Orielle’s.

He sat on the curb and leaned back on his hands, staring up at the sun blazing away in a cloudless sky. In the distance he could still hear the police sirens and angry screaming. This was the riot he’d tried to prevent back when Ada was organizing the vatdivers. Now it had happened. She was long dead, and it happened anyway.

If he had known, way back when Graham first contacted him, that it would all end up the same, no matter what, would he have turned him down? Probably not, and for the same reason that he was still here, all these years later. He should have left Vattown long ago, but the thought of leaving all his friends behind stopped him. Hugo, Val, Coral... it was because of them that he’d done what he did. And because of them he’d stayed here, huddling around the memories of what he now realized was the best time of his life; that summer before they started diving, when they had all seemed immortal and infallible, touched by the sun like gods.

But now Hugo was dead too, and Benny wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. When this was over he’d shake the dust of Vattown from his shoes, and take himself someplace that was not ripe with memories of corpses.

He sat up, took a long look up and down the empty street, and fished his holotransceiver from his pocket.

oOo

Hector clenched and unclenched his fists as he entered Graham’s office and took a seat before the vast grey cellite desk. Graham kept his desk empty of clutter, and the translucent smokey grey surface reflected the downtown skyline from the windows behind it. Outside the sun was shining, but in Graham’s desk, it was always a cloudy day. Hector’s eyes wandered to the multi-processor perched on one corner of the desk, a bobbing brain encased in clear cellite. He jumped as a side door opened and Graham entered the room.

He didn’t waste any time on niceties this time around. No offers of drinks or inquiries into his health. He just glared at Hector, and then stood looking out the window with his back to him. “They’re striking down there,” he pointed in the general direction of Vattown and turned to face Hector again, “and do you have any idea why?”

Hector shook his head, “Not really, no. Better wages?”

Graham bared his teeth and laughed savagely, “You really are a piece of work, Martin. How could I let myself be so thoroughly bamboozled by you? I bought your whole mild-mannered absent-minded genius shtick, retail. I was so busy feeling contempt for you that I never began to imagine how subversive you really are.”

Hector felt unexpected pride at being described as subversive. He’d never thought of himself that way, but considering the tetras and how far he’d gone to protect them, he supposed it was true. This knowledge gave him courage. “What’s this about, Graham?” he said.

“You know goddamn well what this is about! That little creature of yours has stirred up a hornet’s nest in production! Seems she went vatdiving without a suit, and somebody used my clearance code to make sure she didn’t get fired for it. But of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Fear gripped Hector’s intestines and squeezed. Graham could only be referring to Helix. When she left, Hector had hoped she’d get as far away from GeneSys as possible, but apparently that wasn’t the case. She’d gone only as far as Vattown and then taken the first opportunity available to gain access to the vats

– as a diver. “Actually no, I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

“Oh come on, she’s going by the name Helix Martin, and you’re telling me you don’t know anything?

Lilith kicked you out of the vat room because of her, didn’t she?”

Hector sighed. “Yes, she did.”

“Why? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“I – I found Helix outside the vat room. As near as I can tell the other tetras ganged up on her and drove her out. It has to do with their social structure. There can only be one queen to a hive.”

“So you helped her. Helped her get that job down in Vattown, but I have it on good authority that she’s only been working there for a few weeks. You had to do something with her in the meantime. Slatermeyer insists that he doesn’t know what happened to the egg. Yes, I know about the egg. You couldn’t have taken her to the lab. You had her living with you didn’t you? In your apartment. That’s sick Martin, really sick.”

Hector glared at him. “We weren’t lovers, Mr. Graham, if that’s what you’re implying. I couldn’t send her back to the vat room, they would have killed her.”

“But you could have housed her in the lab, only you didn’t because you knew it would attract attention and you couldn’t afford that.” Graham stepped around his desk and leaned towards Hector. “You see, Martin, I’ve been to see the queen.”

“What? You went there?”

“Yes. Your assistant Colin Slatermeyer took me. Pity about him.”

“What did you do to him?”

Graham shook his head. “Nothing. They took him away and I didn’t see him again after that.”

“Shit, Colin. Why did you make him take you there?”

“I wanted to see for myself, and I’m glad I did. Lilith calls herself the enemy of GeneSys. The tetras have no intention of cooperating with the goals of the project. Even before they drove you out of the vat room, you had to know that. Why did you continue? Why did you harbor that little queen? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

Hector glared at him and gripped the arms of his chair. “I didn’t tell you because you would have canceled the project. Do you have any idea what an accomplishment the tetras are? Higher intelligence functions, language ability, even social organization. And they’re self propagating. It’s a new species, one with features that I haven’t even discovered yet.

“I know what you think of me. That my peak is behind me, with the brains, but you’re wrong. This is it. This is what my life and my career have been for.”

“You’re mad. Take a look outside your tower, Doctor.” Graham gestured towards the window. “We don’t need more people. We don’t have work for the ones already out there. Those creatures of yours can talk and think and fondle each other till the day is night, but it doesn’t give them rights. It doesn’t make them anything but what they are; inconvenient.

“You made them too much like people, Martin. In order to make a place for themselves, they’ll have to displace human beings, and no one’s going to step aside voluntarily. Ever heard of the twentieth century?

Genocide is a very common human strategy. Some say it started all the way back with the sudden demise of the Neanderthals. Given that kind of track record, do you really think a new species with human traits has a chance?”

Hector smiled thinly and raised his shoulders. “Maybe they’re like weeds and not so easily wiped out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come here.” Graham gripped Hector by the shoulder and propelled him towards the windows. “Looky there,” he pointed towards Vattown. Hector could just make out the distant strobing of police flashers. “There’s your proof. That little queen of yours is down there, and they’re beating her to death.”

Hector shook. He pulled away from Graham’s grip and turned to face him. “How do you know that?”

Graham eyed him blandly. “Because I arranged it.”

“What? You can’t do that!”

Graham laughed. “You have no idea what I can do. They were going to strike anyway. It doesn’t take much to turn that crowd into a mob.”

“You’ve got to stop them.” Hector lunged forward, grabbed the transceiver from Graham’s belt loop and shoved it at him. “Now! Call them! Call it off!”

Graham’s response was preempted by the insistent bleeping of the transceiver signal. Without thinking Hector switched it to receive. “Yes?” he said, in his best imitation of Graham’s rough tenor. There was no holo. Only a voice. “It’s me. We lost her,” it said.

Hector stared at Graham with glee. “Forget it. There’s a change in plans.” he said.

“Give me that!” yelled Graham, body checking Hector and grabbing for the transceiver. They fell to the floor, Hector grunting as Graham rolled over him. The transceiver was wrested from his grasp and Graham stood up, brushing his suit. “I’ll call you back,” he muttered tersely at the transceiver and switched it off.

Hector stood and backed towards the door. Graham approached him with his right hand balled in a fist. Before he could close the distance and sock him, Hector turned and ran out the door. Breathing heavily, Hector made his way to the elevators. He had a rug burn on his cheek from wrestling with Graham. All to the good, he thought, as he entered the elevator and pressed the button for floor 29

– Anna’s office.

Chapter 16 – I Can Take You There

“I didn’t believe, still don’t believe, that you should be diving, but what happened down there today, that wasn’t what I wanted either. I wanted a real strike, with real demands, not just your dismissal but other, more important things like safety standards and better wages. Those fucking assholes, turning themselves into a mob. Don’t they realize that they’ve destroyed any chance for their demands to be taken seriously?

Why? Why must this movement always be dogged by shame?” Vonda put her head in her hands and shook it. She was sitting on Orielle’s couch.

At the far end of the room, Chango crossed and uncrossed her arms. Bitter words were collecting in her mouth. Sooner or later she was going to open it and they’d come out. “If you hadn’t all decided that Ada was blasted when she dove, there wouldn’t be any shame,” she finally blurted. Vonda looked at her wearily. “Oh God, Chango. You’re like a dog with a bone. Ada’s dead, it doesn’t matter why.”

“Doesn’t matter? You don’t think so? You just said it yourself, the shame. It doesn’t belong to her, it-”

“It doesn’t belong to me either!” Vonda suddenly stood upright and shouted. “I swear to you on the friendship we once had, I did not doctor her lab results. I did not! Except for you there probably wasn’t anyone more upset about those results than I was. How do you think I felt, being the messenger of that kind of news? Fucking-a, Chango, I knew Ada too...” Vonda paced the floor. “And to tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve never been able to believe it myself.”

Chango stared at her, “Really? Then who-”

“Nobody! I took the samples from her and ran the tests. No one else touched them. Chango, she was gassed when she dove, but-”

“Management would have done anything to get her out of their hair. Maybe someone tampered with her tanks.”

“That’s impossible. Benny filled and checked them, just like he always did. All I know is this ancient history shit isn’t going to get us anywhere now. You ought to be thinking about your friend,” she nodded at Helix, who was sitting in a chair, holding a bag of ice to the side of her face. “What are you going to do about her?”

“She needs a vat,” said Chango.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Helix, “but there it is. If I don’t find a vat soon, one I can stay in, I’m going to die.”

There was a long pause in the conversation, and then Vonda spoke, her voice a pitch higher, “You’re not human at all, are you?”

Helix shook her head, “I guess not.”

Vonda stood by the television set, a reefer cigarette in her mouth and a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Word was your father worked for GeneSys, a researcher. Never did get his name,” she said.

“H-Hector Martin,” said Helix.

“Hector Martin. Dr. Hector Martin. The inventor of the multi-processor brains. I always knew there was something weird about you.”

Helix stood up and walked towards her, her arms spread wide, “Oh really?”

Vonda squinted and exhaled a plume of smoke. “It makes sense now. That’s why they didn’t fire you. The test was a success.”

“Stop,” said Chango.

Vonda shook her head, still staring as Helix slowly approached her. “I was so busy hating you because you were Chango’s squeeze, I neglected the obvious. The rest of them out there today, they knew. Or at least as a mob they knew. They didn’t want you dead for being a sport, or even for taking your suit off in the vat and surviving. They wanted you dead because your very existence is a threat to them. To all of us.”

Helix stood inches from Vonda. She reached forward and braced her arms against the wall so that they surrounded Vonda like fleshly prison bars. “What then, are you going to do about it?” she asked in a low tone.

Vonda’s eyes were wide, and she shook a little. “Remember,” she muttered, “you’re dealing with an individual here, not the species.”

“Yeah? Well it sounds to me like you’re speaking for your species.”

Vonda stepped away from the wall, forcing Helix back with her body. “Human beings need those jobs, Helix. And if GeneSys is trying to create some kind of fabricated slave labor force, then is that really what you want?”

“I just want a vat.” Helix’s arms hung at her sides now, useless.

“Well you’re not going to get one in Vattown. You can forget it. Why don’t you go back to your maker?

Maybe he can help you.”

“Why don’t you go to hell?” Helix stepped towards Vonda again, baring her teeth.

“Fine, fuck you.” Vonda pushed Helix away from her with both hands. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You just want to make me disappear. Like the rest of them.”

“Oh you are so full of shit.”

“Oh yeah?” Helix pushed Vonda back into the wall again. “Then why are you afraid of me?”

Vonda stared at her stonily. “Back off, miss thing, I’m warning you.”

“No! What if I don’t want to back off?”

Helix reeled suddenly as Vonda’s right fist connected with her jaw. She shook her head, flexed her knees, and sprang on Vonda, knocking her to the floor. The two of them rolled over one another, kicking and scrabbling for handholds. Helix got hold of Vonda’s arms, pinning her to the floor.

“Stop it!” Chango hauled on Helix’s shoulder, tearing her away from Vonda by sheer force of will.

“What’s the matter with you?” she yelled. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already? She saved your life today! And what she says is true. You’ll never get back into the vats. They’ll never let you. All you’ll do is get killed like you almost were today.”

Helix turned her back and walked to the window. She looked out of it, out across the Eastern Market with its colorful stalls to the tower that stood in the distance. It was a faded green in the haze of the sky, like a towering ghost. She stared at it, and tried very hard not to think about anything Vonda had said. A wave of itching crept over her, her skin crawling at the thought of not having a vat. They thought they could stop her; the mob and Vonda, even Chango in her own way. They thought she could just get over it, or just go away, or just be beaten. They didn’t know. They didn’t know about the hand that pushed her, they didn’t know it was a thing greater than herself. They thought they knew what she was.

The time she had wasted, trying to be a human being, trying to get along with human beings. Madness. Madness born of memory, the terror of the playground and her determination to avoid it at any cost. But she could not. The community of humans was the playground. That was all it could ever be, not because of human nature, but because of her own.

Helix looked down at the street fronting Orielle’s loft. Someone was approaching. It was Benny.

“I believe we have a visitor,” said a silken voice behind her. Helix turned to see Orielle making an entrance from her gauze shrouded bed chamber at the back of the loft. “The security holo tells me your esteemed colleague, Benjamin, has chosen to grace us with his presence. I believe he’ll be ringing the bell right about-” She was interrupted by a soft chime. “Now.” She smiled. One of Orielle’s body guards emerged from the bed chamber and went downstairs to answer the door. Benny came up, looking like someone had smashed him in the face with a rock. “Thank God you’re alright,” he said, looking at Helix.

“What happened to you?” Chango asked.

He waved off her concern, shaking his head. “Pauly didn’t take kindly to my heading him off. After that, it turned into a police brawl.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested,” said Vonda, sitting stiffly on the couch. Her eyes kept flickering over to Helix, making sure she kept her distance.

Benny nodded, thoughtfully holding a hand to his bleeding lip. “I know.”

“However did you guess that your friends were here?” asked Orielle.

“I knew once they broke free of the mob they’d get out of Vattown. You like Helix, and you have the power to defend her.”

“Yes,” Orielle inclined her chin, and spread her arms. “But she cannot stay here forever.”

“I was just trying to tell her she should go back to GeneSys, but she jumped all over my case,” said Vonda. “Orielle’s right, sooner or later the divers will figure out that she’s here.”

“Nonsense,” said Orielle, “As long as she stays out of the picture, they’ll quickly forget about her. That’s not what I meant. That girl needs to be surrounded by a large quantity of growth medium. She needs a vat.”

Chango stared at her. “We can bring it here,” she said. We can make a tank for her.”

“What do you think this is, Sea World? No. Escorting her to safety at the bar was one thing, taking her in today was another, but installing her as a permanent member of my household, that’s one too many.”

Benny sank onto the couch. “There may be another way.” He looked at Chango. “Remember those courses Ada took? Over at Mercy College?”

“In the biopoly department. They had a research center there.”

“Yeah. The project was underwritten by GeneSys, and when the college folded, they kept it running for awhile.”

“Until they could hire everyone they wanted into their own research department,” said Chango. “They closed it a few years ago.”

“True. But the vats will still be there.”

oOo

Hector strode through the glass doors of Anna’s office and brushed past her secretary. “Excuse me!

Sir!” she cried in his wake, “Do you have an appointment?”

He glanced over his shoulder as he opened the door to Anna’s private office. “Now I do.”

Anna didn’t have a desk. She reclined on a black vat leather chaise, gazing up at a holographic stock analysis graph. She glanced over and sat up as he came in the door. “Dr. Martin!” Her fingers strayed to a small keypad on her wrist and the graph dissolved. She looked at him quizzically. This was it, time for his performance. “I can’t work under these conditions! You have no idea what it’s like. That – that man! He’s out of control. Look!” Hector pointed at his cheek, “He hit me!” his voice went up an octave in an appropriately whiny squeal.

Still staring at him, Anna crossed fluidly to a low matte black table covered with magazines and toys. “Sit down, Dr. Martin.” she gestured to a boxy black couch beside it. “Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” Hector sank onto the couch and relished the moment, as the CEO of GeneSys fetched him a glass of water. He should have done this a long time ago, he thought. Anna returned, holding out the glass of water in a perfectly manicured hand. She folded herself into a chair to his right and watched him drink. “Feel better?” she asked when he drained the glass and set it between his feet.

He nodded, and she smiled, a sweet smile so perfectly reassuring, so innocently happy at his well being, that he responded emotionally with trust before his brain ever had the chance to tell him that it couldn’t be real. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

“I was in Nathan Graham’s office. We were having an argument about the tetra project. He seems bound and determined to interfere with my work on it, and lately his distractions have ruined my concentration. I was trying to explain to him that I needed space for my work, mental space, when suddenly he started screaming at me and pushed me to the floor. I think it’s only fair to inform you that I thoroughly intend to press charges on the matter. The kind of support or resistance I receive from the company in the course of this legal proceeding will determine whether or not I remain an employee of GeneSys.”

Anna held up one hand. “Please understand that while I am forbidden by company charter to take a position in any litigation concerning a present employee, I will make it my personal responsibility to get to the bottom of this incident.”

That was what he was afraid of. Hector nodded mutely.

“I don’t have to tell you that you are a deeply valued member of my company. I very much appreciate your coming to me with this problem. Unfortunately my various responsibilities prevent me from keeping abreast with all the exciting developments in the research department. What is this tetra project that Graham’s been giving you so much trouble with?”

Hector licked his lips. “Its goal is to replace the paid labor force in vat maintenance and decanting with an engineered organism capable of performing those duties. It’s a difficult problem and Graham has been increasingly impatient with my progress. A month ago he called a meeting with me to ask when I would be ready with a prototype. In all honesty I couldn’t give him a definite answer, and that’s when he started questioning everything; demanding explanations for expenditures, dropping by the lab at all hours, and recruiting my assistants as spies.”

“I see. And what precipitated the confrontation between the two of you today?”

He didn’t dare mention anything of Helix’s plight, or the situation with the other tetras. It was probably only a matter of time before Anna learned what was really going on, but he had to use his momentary leverage to get Graham out of the picture. Even now he was probably laying a trap for Helix, down in Vattown. “I went to his office to tell him to back off. That I couldn’t get any work done under such constant scrutiny. That’s when he became abusive and struck me.”

Anna stood up suddenly, and paced the room in quick, black silk clad strides. “I can understand why you’re upset. Believe me when I tell you that I take this matter very seriously. Any employee striking another is intolerable, and in this case,” she looked at him, “In this case I stand to lose a very valuable mind because of it.” She fingered the keypad on her wrist. “I’m going to call security, and have them escort Mr. Graham here. You can be assured he won’t try any rough stuff. I’d like to talk to the two of you together.”