Read Online Acts of Conscience by William Barton - Free Book Online

she could look at my stock ticker.
    I’m not sure why I let her do it. A slim, pretty, blonde woman, quiet and serious, with pale blue eyes that didn’t seem to be seeing anything when they looked at me. A typical modern woman’s slim, trim figure outlined under a tan linen suit. Not as sturdy looking as a working girl, I guess.
    I was wondering what it might be like to be... involved with such a woman, wondering as well how much B-VEI was paying her... two, three, maybe four times my mechanic’s salary... she’d surfaced suddenly from the AI’s composition tables and, without preamble, offered to buy back all my options at the program’s estimated parity value.
    Cool, empty blue eyes, pale blue eyes, staring into mine.
    Well, Mr. du Cheyne?
    What I said then was the same thing I’d told the ERSIE guy. And got the same little speech in reply. Is this realistic? Is it? I don’t know. I’m not the only one holding a chunk of B-VEI stock, after all. There are dozens of Miss Tallentyres out tonight, visiting little shnooks around the solar system, making similar offers to... Why the hell would they do it, if they thought ERSIE was going to win?
    Because ERSIE’s made them a very nice offer for their stock holdings? Sure. If ERSIE wins, it gets everything. If it loses, maybe it will have bought up B-VEI at a steep discount. Just like that. And if the B-VEI people think ERSIE has a good chance of winning, it’s certainly to their advantage to sell.
    Shit. No matter what happens, somebody is going to have to continue working the B-VEI technology. If ERSIE wins its case before the board of Trade Regents, Doctors Berens and Vataro will probably be offered vice presidencies with ERSIE, maybe directoral seats, maybe...
    On the wall, the AIs had finally managed to overrule my will that the net link stay dark. Light and motion and a swirling depth of detail... A moment of confusion, followed by a moment of recognition. This was an old drama, made in the middle of the twenty-second century, just a generation or so after the first interstellar crossing, in the days when starships were new and wonderful and strange. Into the Stardust . About the development of the first faster-than-light vessel, about it’s voyage to the galactic core...
    They thought it would happen soon, didn’t they? Space travel begun in the middle of the twentieth century. Space colonization in the middle of the twenty-first. Interstellar expeditions opening up the twenty-second. All this wonderful new science, medicine, physics and engineering, starships , for God’s sake!
    All right, so it took five hundred years, but...
    Cold chill of realization.
    It’s happening now .
    o0o
    At lunch the next day, I sat with all my usual friends, Garstang and Phil sitting together, diagonal from me. Millie Ai-chang and Zell Benson with their heads pressed together, bent low over a placard display of travel brochures, bright pictures throwing moving blue shadows on their faces, travelogue an animated whisper I couldn’t quite make out. Rua Mater down the other end of the table, node clip hanging in her hair, eating with her eyes closed.
    Empty chair opposite me. Empty chair opposite her.
    An alternate history suggests itself. Passion rising in the night by the shores of Lake A71K, soft wind stirring across my back as I lay on her in the faux-wilderness of Manhattan Island. Rua Mater whispering under me. Oh, Gaetan. Oh, my God.
    The feel of her innards clutching my prick.
    The spasm of my orgasm. The clenching of hers.
    Lying together, pleasantly sweaty in the night, holding each other, satisfaction rather than desperation settling in, making itself at home. And so they lived happily ever after . But I was looking at an empty chair, not at her. And she was lost in whatever ersatz dream she’d provoked from the net.
    A shadow on the table then, falling over our food, Garstang looking up with a start, seeming to recoil against Phil Hendrickx’s side, surprise, fear,