Read Online Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: The Author's Cut by Diane Duane - Free Book Online
Authors: Diane Duane
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exactly a job that makes people want to kill you, most of the time , Lee thought. At least you wouldn’t think so.
She read down the list of projects dil’Sorden was involved in, one after another, and found herself shaking her head. When did he sleep? Lee thought. The terminology was bewildering: when she ran into a description of a “packet shunt-squirt pipeline array,” she stopped, able to get no impression of anything but some kind of giant lawn sprinkler. Whatever the technical details of the systems he was designing, Omren dil’Sorden was plainly a busy guy.
Lee flipped forward through the profile to the personal evaluation pages. There were a lot of them. There was no way to work for a big company these days without having their psych and sentient-dynamics people all over you, monitoring your personality and mental health and assessing how they stacked up in relation to the corporate persona. Lee had never particularly liked the idea of this, which was one reason why she had originally risked low pay and an uncertain lifestyle to go into business “on the small” with Gelert. However, at times like this, the psych profiles and all the rest of the bean-counting had their uses, if only to give you a place to start asking your own questions. Intelligence levels border-high/high , Lee read in one of the summaries. Good cooperation coefficient. Good intuition/data ratio. Good initiative/teamwork-integration compromises. Acceptable attendance and tardiness record. No visible or expressed bigotries. Negative vice/antisocial coefficient. Coworker attitudes toward subject generally good, with the usual offset.
“Now what does that mean?” she said softly.
“What?” Gelert looked over her shoulder.
Lee pointed to the phrase on the page. Gelert looked, then snorted down his nose. “It’s corporate code for the fact that he’s Alfen, and they know that most people hate Alfen.”
“Oh, come on. ‘Hate’ is kind of a strong word, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, maybe it is. After all, the Elves are all spiffy dressers, they all drive Porsches or better, their parties never run out of ice; when not merely rich, they’re fabulously wealthy, and they’re all stunningly beautiful, immortal, and eternally young: what’s not to like?”
Lee gave him an ironic look, dropping the report in her lap as they merged off the Wilshire onramp onto the Hollywood Slideway, and the Skoda locked itself into the traffic flow at 100 kph. “Seriously, Gel,” she said. “Why would anybody come after this poor guy with a shotgun? He was just some kind of hardware maven. No family in this universe, as far as I can tell from this—there are holes in it.”
“I know. I’ll go digging and add in some background when we get back to the office.”
“No relationships—that, if anything, would have turned up in a corporate detailing.”
“Assuming it had been kept updated in a timely manner.”
“I bet this one is as updated as it can be. We’ll find out. But if it is, then that means there goes your crime passionelle . Your broker buddies are going to have to make do with something else: dil’Sorden wasn’t even dating.” Lee looked out the window for a moment, watching the green, dusty, upsloping ground cover beside the slideway rush by. “Unless this guy stole someone else’s project and made them mad enough to kill him because of it. Work is all he seems to have had time for, to judge by this.”
“Could have been. Don’t worry…motivation will out,” Gelert looked grim. “Just give it time. No murder is motiveless, any more than anything else in sentient behavior is.”
“Just sometimes the motive is buried deeper than usual,” Lee said. “Not too deep for us to dig up, I hope…”
The hov progressed as far as Fourth and took itself off the slideway: Gel took over the driving again and ran the hov down through the traffic toward Parker Center. The parking lots for the
She read down the list of projects dil’Sorden was involved in, one after another, and found herself shaking her head. When did he sleep? Lee thought. The terminology was bewildering: when she ran into a description of a “packet shunt-squirt pipeline array,” she stopped, able to get no impression of anything but some kind of giant lawn sprinkler. Whatever the technical details of the systems he was designing, Omren dil’Sorden was plainly a busy guy.
Lee flipped forward through the profile to the personal evaluation pages. There were a lot of them. There was no way to work for a big company these days without having their psych and sentient-dynamics people all over you, monitoring your personality and mental health and assessing how they stacked up in relation to the corporate persona. Lee had never particularly liked the idea of this, which was one reason why she had originally risked low pay and an uncertain lifestyle to go into business “on the small” with Gelert. However, at times like this, the psych profiles and all the rest of the bean-counting had their uses, if only to give you a place to start asking your own questions. Intelligence levels border-high/high , Lee read in one of the summaries. Good cooperation coefficient. Good intuition/data ratio. Good initiative/teamwork-integration compromises. Acceptable attendance and tardiness record. No visible or expressed bigotries. Negative vice/antisocial coefficient. Coworker attitudes toward subject generally good, with the usual offset.
“Now what does that mean?” she said softly.
“What?” Gelert looked over her shoulder.
Lee pointed to the phrase on the page. Gelert looked, then snorted down his nose. “It’s corporate code for the fact that he’s Alfen, and they know that most people hate Alfen.”
“Oh, come on. ‘Hate’ is kind of a strong word, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, maybe it is. After all, the Elves are all spiffy dressers, they all drive Porsches or better, their parties never run out of ice; when not merely rich, they’re fabulously wealthy, and they’re all stunningly beautiful, immortal, and eternally young: what’s not to like?”
Lee gave him an ironic look, dropping the report in her lap as they merged off the Wilshire onramp onto the Hollywood Slideway, and the Skoda locked itself into the traffic flow at 100 kph. “Seriously, Gel,” she said. “Why would anybody come after this poor guy with a shotgun? He was just some kind of hardware maven. No family in this universe, as far as I can tell from this—there are holes in it.”
“I know. I’ll go digging and add in some background when we get back to the office.”
“No relationships—that, if anything, would have turned up in a corporate detailing.”
“Assuming it had been kept updated in a timely manner.”
“I bet this one is as updated as it can be. We’ll find out. But if it is, then that means there goes your crime passionelle . Your broker buddies are going to have to make do with something else: dil’Sorden wasn’t even dating.” Lee looked out the window for a moment, watching the green, dusty, upsloping ground cover beside the slideway rush by. “Unless this guy stole someone else’s project and made them mad enough to kill him because of it. Work is all he seems to have had time for, to judge by this.”
“Could have been. Don’t worry…motivation will out,” Gelert looked grim. “Just give it time. No murder is motiveless, any more than anything else in sentient behavior is.”
“Just sometimes the motive is buried deeper than usual,” Lee said. “Not too deep for us to dig up, I hope…”
The hov progressed as far as Fourth and took itself off the slideway: Gel took over the driving again and ran the hov down through the traffic toward Parker Center. The parking lots for the
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