I knew.
You could have guessed that something of this sort might happen.
How could I? I retorted. I’m only a little guy. I’m only a pilot. How could I know the vultures would gather over me the moment I stepped out from under Charlot’s perch? Why shouldn’t they just let me fade away? What makes me so bloody popular?
You’re too modest, said the wind ominously. Far too modest.
“I don’t suppose,” I said to Soulier, “that it would do any good to tell you that I don’t know anything. Nothing worth your while. I don’t know about Charlot’s secrets, Charlot’s plans, Charlot’s methods. I’m not privy to his innermost thoughts and I never have been. I’m only the most minor of his pawns. I’m not a fool and I know what you’re asking for, but I couldn’t give it to you if I wanted to. You’re wasting your time. Now you got an explanation, which I didn’t owe you, so will you please go away.”
He had frozen up just a bit. I wasn’t trying to be nasty. I wasn’t being tough. I knew the score and I was outpointed every way. But he thought I was playing hero, and he was all ready to play by the roughest rules.
“Come on, Mr. Grainger,” he said gently. “You’ve been closer to Titus Charlot than anyone else these last few months. You’re a clever man, and you aren’t one of his disciples by any means. You’ve been around on New Alexandria, you’ve flown the Hooded Swan, and you’ve been at the very heart of several incidents which are pregnant with interest so far as our company is concerned. You’re a very valuable man, Mr. Grainger. You know that your dreams of avarice aren’t big enough to cut much of a hole in company assets. You interest us greatly, Mr. Grainger, and we can afford to indulge that interest. Think of me, if you like, as Caradoc’s opposite number to your last employer. A picker-up of loose ends, a dabbler in small projects, but a man with power nevertheless. A man with determination. You don’t have to take a job with us at all, if you don’t want to. But we want a few days—perhaps only a few hours—of your valuable time, and we’re willing to pay you a great deal for it. We just want your memoirs, that’s all.”
“I’ve got a very bad memory,” I told him.
“In this day and age,” he pointed out, “nobody has to rely on the infallibility of his memory.”
“You aren’t augMENTing me,” I said flatly.
“You make augMENTation sound like some kind of torture,” he said. “You know that isn’t so. It doesn’t hurt, and it leaves you just as it finds you, with your memory sharpened up a bit. It’s not like a mindpick, you know...not at all.
“I know you have secrets, Mr. Grainger—haven’t we all? But how much can those secrets really be worth? We’ll pay it, whatever it is. And your personal secrets mean little enough to us—it’s not your private life we’re interested in. You have no loyalty to Charlot—he used you. He may not have been responsible for your initial troubles but he certainly took the fullest advantage of them. You owe nothing to anyone save yourself. You have a perfect right to sell us all you know, moral and legal. I appreciate your resentment of the augMENTation procedures, but really...when you come down to it, is there anything you have to hide? We’ll deal honestly, Mr. Grainger—it’s not worth our while to be dishonest. Whatever safeguards you care to specify...all we want is information. We bear you no malice. None at all.”
“I don’t want to have my memory sharpened,” I said. “I’m very good at forgetting because I like forgetting. There are some things I don’t care to remember at any price.”
There was another pause. I finished my meal. Sam was already finished. I guess I’d been distracted somewhat.
“You don’t look to me like a man who doesn’t want to be rich,” said Soulier. “It’s just not your line. You don’t want to end your days dragging a heap like the Sandman around the radiant rim. You want a ship of your own. Maybe a world of your own. It can be arranged. You can’t afford to turn us down, Mr. Grainger. It wouldn’t be fair to yourself.” That was a threat if I ever heard one, though it lacked any kind of inflection.
The food was fine but I was feeling sick. My stomach was all churned up. I wanted this man off my back and I wanted him off fast, but I knew there was no way. If the company had made up its commercial collective mind—and it seemed that it had—there was simply no way to say no.
“Soulier,” I said, “I wouldn’t sell you my soul for the entire assets of your goddamned company and I don’t care if it does end up owning the universe. Don’t get me wrong...it isn’t loyalty or pride or even downright bloody-mindedness. It’s simple fear. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw a feather into a gale-force headwind, and I’d be every kind of fool if I did. You can’t have my mind, Soulier. Not for all your promises and not for any of your threats. No way. I’ve got legal rights, here and everywhere I mean to go, and I’ve got Titus Charlot on the end of a call for help. You can’t take my mind, Soulier, and I think that you can get that message into your skull if you work hard enough. No counterthreats I’m just telling you the plain truth. It’s not me that’ll stop you, it’s the bounds of possibility.”
Soulier rocked back in his chair, picking its back legs up off the floor. I hoped he’d fall over.
“I haven’t made any threats,” he said evenly—and it was the most threatening sound I’d ever heard. “I’m only interested in honest dealing. The company is only interested in honest dealing. We’re trying to establish contact with you, so that we can both get what we want.
“You know that you’re finished with Charlot and vice versa. You’re on your own. You know that. I think you should accept our offer. I think you will. It’s an honest offer, Mr. Grainger, and it will stay that way. We only want to make you a rich man. I want you to understand that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I understand.” One of us was lying and it wasn’t me.
“I’ll be in town for some days,” said Soulier. “At the organization’s hotel. Anyone will tell you which it is. Ask for Mr. Zacher. You can contact me through him, any time.”
“I’ll be gone in two days,” I told him.
“Will you, Mr. Grainger?” he said flatly.
I hate people who call me “mister.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Grainger,” he said, as he stood up and replaced the chair neatly. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
Then he left.
I felt Sam Parks’s eyes boring into the top of my head as I stared down at my empty plate and turned my fork over and over, clicking the tines against the plastic rim.
“You know,” he said, “ever since I was so high, I’ve had this thing about the romantic life of high crime. I guess I never had any real ambition.”
“Honestly,” I said, to no one in particularly, “I didn’t think I was worth it. I don’t think I’m worth it. Bloody hell, I’m not worth it. They steal my mind, they may get a lot of things they didn’t bargain for; but it really wouldn’t be worth it. It’s all just trash. Why can’t the bloody universe, just for a while, get off my back?”
“Take the money,” advised Sam.
“I can’t,” I said.
“They might just let you
