Diplomatic Consanguinity

 “Fascism First,” murmured Manguy.  He turned a page of the dossier he’d been given when he walked into Meeting Room C and started reading from the top.  He was bland and uninteresting to look at, an appearance he cultivated carefully.  He had the faintest impression of a moustache that might, if you got closer than his bodyguards would allow, be drawn on with eyeliner.  His hair, too black for it to be a natural colour was slicked back with gel and his skin, a neutral olive shade that fitted his hair-colour just a little too perfectly for them both to be real, was clear and healthy.  He wore glasses, but they were delicate, platinum framed, oval-lensed things that looked like a strong breeze would blow them away and so made you wonder if they were actually necessary.  “What a concept.  That is has come to this….”

“It began with the Sweden problem,” said Demetrion who was sat against a wall. His copy of the dossier was set on the chair next to him and one long, bony leg was crossed over the other.  “Though I thought we resolved that one rather well, personally.”

“We did,” said Margoyle.  She was wearing her usual pearl choker and a tidy, pale rose fitted suit that contrasted pleasantly with the odd shade of grey that her makeup gave to her skin.  She looked a little bit like a statue that had inconveniently come to life before the sculptor was completely finished with it.  “We have that in writing.  In triplicate, in fact.”

“Then how did we get from there to Fascism First?” asked Manguy.  The other two carefully didn’t answer, spotting a trap when it was set in front of them.  “I suppose the exact route isn’t important—“

“It might be,” said Margoyle quickly.  “I have two interns on the problem.”

“We have interns again?” Demetrion sounded interested.  

“JDR has been… persuaded—“ there was a faint sigh from everyone in the room “— that he could play croquet with other… things,” said Margoyle.

“The exact route isn’t important,” said Manguy.  There was no hint of impatience in his tone, nor any note of censure, but nonetheless there was a subtle change in the atmosphere of the room.  “What is important is whether we are happy with the destination.   Surely we can all agree on that?”

This was a firm where agreement was so famously hard to come by that voting was done in absolutely secrecy with no way of determining who had cast what vote or even when they cast it, in order to actually achieve the occasional consensus.

“The GOO,” said Margoyle cautiously, using the acronym they had decided upon for the leader of Fascism First, “appears to have located a source of help.  Page seven,” she added as Manguy looked up from the dossier.  “Though it remains unclear who could be helping him.”

“Us,” said Manguy, turning the pages backwards to find page seven.  “We are the only agency with sufficient connections and knowledge to do this.  But we are not doing it, and we have no been contacted with regard to it.  Which should have been impossible.”

“I can put two interns on it,” said Demetrion.  His attempted joke fell as flat as a deep-ocean dwelling fish and as the silence lingered he started to wish that he’d thought a little harder before speaking.

“Unlikely to help,” said Manguy after the silence had stretched to breaking point.  “What we need to know now is what the agency is that’s helping the GOO.  Without some indication of who is behind this, we’re flying blind.  And JDR will not like that at all.”

“He doesn’t like it,” said a new voice.  Jeronica sat down on a chair next to Margoyle, who delicately edged away, one hand clutching her pearls.  Manguy pretended not to notice, but watched carefully out of the corner of his eye.  “But at the moment he is trying to ensure that he cannot be blamed for it.”

Manguy relaxed.  Jeronica was the person he considered his biggest rival and threat, but if she was reporting on JDR like this then this was probably one of their truce-zones.  He made a mental note to check where she’d been for the fifteen minutes prior to her arrival though.

“Naturally,” she continued, “he will determine that he cannot be blamed.”

She didn’t need to say the rest; as soon as JDR was satisfied there was no solid path that led to him he’d be looking for a scapegoat.

“Scaramantha,” said Margoyle as though coughing.  Absolutely nobody said anything for a few seconds.  Then Manguy carefully closed the dossier without ever finding page seven.

“Jeronica,” he said, and Demetrion noticeably tensed.  Manguy made a mental note of that; clearly Demetrion was more junior than he’d been led to believe.  “I think that you currently have Diplomatic Consanguinity in your remit?”

Jeronica nodded.  Manguy was well aware of that, just as she was acutely aware of all the areas that he was responsible for.  Bringing it up was just a formality, indicating obliquely that there was something here that might be held to fall into this category.

“If Non-local Genocides were to become unaffiliated,” said Demetrion looking at his fingernails and absolutely nowhere else, “then I could consider bringing them under Alpaca Issues and Isolation.”

“In that case,” said Margoyle, her voice distant as though she wasn’t aware she was speaking, “it would seem likely that Fruit Production and Distribution would need a new home as well.  In Orangeries, perhaps?”

Jeronica stood up without saying anything and left.

Manguy set the dossier down on the chair next to him.  That was that then; Scaramantha would be blamed for the emersion of Fascism First, Jeronica would reassign Scaramantha’s major tasks and then left… that left the problem of figuring out how to get a handle on the GOO and then using it to take control.  He sighed softly, knowing that Margoyle would understand and Demetrion would puzzle over it, and followed Jeronica out of Meeting Room C.

Personal shopper

 “Personal shoppers,” said the woman.  She was wearing a suit by Vivienne Westwood, something she wouldn’t have been seen dead in before the designer had died, and was struggling to carry it off well.  Her age, though well disguised by regular plastic surgeries, discrete supports, and the benefits of owning the majority share in several expensive cosmetics companies, contrasted with the heavy punk ethic that the suit conveyed: the large print over the jacket, the newspaper effect on the trousers, the brash colours that proclaimed that here was someone you couldn’t ignore.  She looked like a walking contradiction and Margoyle was having trouble deciding if she should be entertaining this relic’s proposal or throwing her out on the street.

The deciding vote in this case was that she had arrived at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations offices and been allowed in.  Getting the address to the office required a serious effort and, after a recent cyberattack, a good cryptanalyst and access to the more stable cryptocurrencies; being allowed in through the front doors was almost surely by invitation only.  So Margoyle listened, wondering where in her portfolio personal shopping was supposed to fit.

“We have about thirty-five thousand of them,” said the woman.  Margoyle controlled herself with well-practiced reflex and only a faint smile appeared on her lips; something that she’d learned from studying the Mona Lisa.  “They are effective enough, but we are, naturally, intending to automate the task entirely.”

Cogs turned in Margoyle’s head.  Personal shoppers twenty years ago were people who greeted you in expensive stores and then lead you around, commented on your personal style and taste and then improved it for you.  You left with a lighter wallet but your bags were heavy with the promise of societal approval and the respect of your peer group.  Now… well, euphemisms were the kind of thing that DAMN manipulated like puppets on strings.  A personal shopper must be a warehouse worker, surely.  And with that thought Margoyle’s smile stretched a little more across her face, though not so much as to indicate approval, and she understood the implicit reason for this elderly woman’s visit.

“We are looking for advice from your consultants,” said the woman, sounding a tiny bit lost for a moment.  Margoyle appreciated that: up until DAMN agreed to work with a client the whole office and set-up was designed to be confusing and nightmarish.  “Ideally, we’d like to retain some of the autonomy that the current personal shoppers have, without the issues that arise from having egos.”

Margoyle relaxed a fraction.  This was firmly in the remit of Soft Power and Furnishings which she had run with a titanium fist in an iron glove for nearly five years.

“I see,” she said, her voice smooth and low, almost like a cat purring.  “You have a number of, let’s call them human, workers, and you’d like to take advantage of their lower-level brain functions without the interference of higher-level, more evolved, effects?”

The woman stiffened a little and a faint dust of powder fell from her face onto her collar.  Margoyle felt it added to the punk effect and said nothing.

“Human is a very strong word,” she said, her voice sounding strained, perhaps as though she were holding her stomach in to impress a potential lover.  “Our lawyers have advised we avoid such terminology.  In their contracts they agree to be reclassified as nematodes.”

Margoyle nodded and leaned forward.  A recessed keyboard and screen in her desk, angled so that she could see them but her clients couldn’t, flickered dimly to life and she tapped a note out in proprietary shorthand that her interns should identify the firm of lawyers that had proposed this and research them.

“Nematodes,” she said thoughtfully.  “I imagine that the benefits package you offer is tailored specifically to that?  And thus a cost-saving rather than a cost-centre?”

The woman smiled beatifically and Margoyle considered immediately that that smile would look very good on the front of glossy magazines on newstands. Another note flickered from her fingers to the keyboard.

“Indeed,” she said.  “Last year we reduced emissions from our toilet facilites so much that we were able to obtain green funds for it!”

“A laudable achievement,” said Margoyle.  “So, am I right in assuming that the proposition that we are considering here is how to leverage current sentiments in specific law-focussed lobby groups to enable the transfer of consciousness from lower-level creatures such as nematodes into non-human bodies, perhaps primarily metallic, to facilitate the automation of personal shopping?”

There was a pause while the elderly woman eliminated paraphrases and circumlocutions and determined that what Margoyle was proposing was, in fact, what was being asked for.”

“Yes,” said the woman matter-of-factly.  “How much will it cost?”

Wool Factors

 The new brochures had been stacked neatly at one end of Jeronica’s desk where she could sweep them into the bin just by stretching out her hand.  That she hadn’t so far indicated that she hadn’t been in her office since they had been placed there by her Executive Assistant.  They were glossy, shiny, and featured an alligator holding a rifle on the front and an endorsement from one of the less intelligent politicians in the state where Guncare had launched.  The chosen slogan, which Jeronica found pithy but trite, was recuperate with a rifle!

The door of the office whooshed open with a breath of chill air from the corridor surging inside and shivering the leaves of an aspodistra in the corner.  Plants were generally deplored within the building as Jeremy Diseased-Rat claimed he was allergic to many of them but here and there a couple lurked and lingered subversively.  As a nod to the requirements of promotion this plant was carefully set behind an empty picture frame and a small plaque underneath read ‘Ceci n’est pas une plante’.  Jeronica strode in, her hair brushing the ceiling as she was wearing 25cm stiletto heels, which required special scaffolding hidden inside the shoe to support her feet.

She glanced at the pile of brochures and gestured to them as Margoyle stepped in behind, carefully checking for approved corporate booby traps.  Diseased-Rat’s opinion on them was they were a good way of backing up quarterly reviews and determining candidates for promotion, so exaggerated caution was required in all executive offices.

“Recuperate with a rifle?” said Margoyle picking one up delicately and making sure she had as little skin contact with it as possible.  Poisonous inks were déclassé this year but she had been at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisation for five years and had learned a trick or two herself.  “Guncare?  This has launched then?  I believe on the quarterly product plan this would be… early.”

There was a moment of tense silence.  While underpromising and overdelivering was praise-worthy there was the obverse of that coin as well: doing things without permission or adequate oversight could be very detrimental to one’s career.

“The pilot project has launched,” clarified Jeronica.  She stalked around the desk and sat down in her chair, slipping her shoes unobtrusively off and allowing her abused feet moments to ache in freedom.  “One hospital in one state; access to the ER is by NRA membership only and the proposals for a more-specific membership card will be presented at the next executive meeting.  Staffing levels are adequate for the care intended, and there are indications that this will have soft-power repercussions in the next elections.”

“Adequate for the care intended,” mused Margoyle.  Her skin was faintly grey and looked dusty but that was a side-effect of the cosmetics she used.  She had a pearl choker at her neck and was wearing a blue cashmere sweater and a very severe skirt.  “May I speak off the record?”

Jeronica tapped her desk and a panel in it revolved to reveal a keyboard and inset flat screen.  She identified herself to it by fingerprint scan and then tapped away for a few seconds.

“Yes,” she said.  “Privacy screen is enabled.  We have thirty-three seconds from… now.”

“This reads very much like the standard of care is being fed to an alligator,” said Margoyle flicking swiftly through the brochure.  “Although, at a guess, if you shoot the alligator successfully you might get seen by a nurse.  I can’t find any indication that there are any actual doctors in this — facility?”

“Pretty much,” said Jeronica.  “It is two steps up from the standard of care around the state though, and there are plans to have actual doctors there once enough poor people have signed up to pay the bills.”

Margoyle shook her head as though refusing to believe Jeronica.  “Remarkable,” she said softly.  “I thought Stephanotte’s Soft Power innovations would win the award for most profitable intervention this year, but I can see she has real competition.”

The keyboard in front of Jeronica beeped and both women fell silent for a moment.

“I would estimate that this has a ninety percent likelihood of continuing,” said Margoyle, sounding as though she’d been thinking things over.  “I think the expected lifetime of our input here should be in the two to five year range, so there should be opportunities here to push forward our agenda on Diplomatic Consanguinuity as well.”

Jeronica affected a grave tone.  “That is Manguy’s remit,” she said.  “I believe he’s currently involved in waterway issues.  He could hardly be expected to take on Guncare when he’s neck-deep in Reservoirity and Reservations.”

“Demetrion should have space,” said Margoyle, nodding sagely, “but it seems to be that the resalination project has hit some unfortunate difficulties that really should have been foreseen.”

“That would mean I would need to take on Diplomatic Consanguinuity,” said Jeronica as casually as someone inquiring about the weather.  “If that were to happen I might have to ask you to look after the Wool Factors for me.”

“Would you now?” said Margoyle with the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

Peace Dividend I

Villa St. Antoine was reached by a long, winding drive through trees, after a four-hour high-speed train-ride from Frankfurt Airport.  Jeronica sat in the back of a limousine wearing sunglasses as though worried that someone might somehow peer through the tinted windows and discern her there.  In fact the sunglasses were electronically tuned to the windows and allowed her to see through them as though they were plain glass.  She watched the landscaping go past and observed to herself that the winding route, the soft hills and the tall, ancient, thick-trunked trees were surely laid out like this to prevent any easy assault on the Villa.

Which made a certain kind of sense, as the head of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, Jeremy Diseased-Rat, had the kind of paranoia that made it very difficult to deal with him unless you were his favoured kind of prostitute or in a large venue with very many other people around at a sufficiently discrete distance.  Jeronica liked neither of these things, but was keenly aware of the need to socialise and network, and so forced herself to attend most functions that the company arranged.  Such as the Management Off-Site here at Villa St. Antoine.

The car pulled up in front of the doors of the Villa with a soft crunch of white gravel and she waited while a doorman dressed in burgundy and gold-braid sauntered from his post to open the door of her car.  She was pleased to note that though a second limousine came in behind her thirty seconds later the doorman didn’t even acknowledge, attending to her car first.  The door opened soundlessly and she stepped out.  She made sure she was stood firmly on the ground and then tilted her wrist slightly.  The mercury tilt-switch sewn into the sleeve responded, and the heels on her shoes smoothly elevated her by eleven inches.  The doorman barely flinched, though he did lean back very slightly to make eye contact with her.

“Guests are asked to report to the Viridian Drawing Room,” he said.  There was a touch of insolence to his tone, she thought.  “Please enter through the main door and turn left, then left again.  It may interest you to know that the Villa was built over one hundred years ago, and most of the doors are slightly lower than six feet high.”  Perhaps she’d mistaken warmth for insolence.  She was already on her guard against her colleagues and was probably looking for traps where there were none.  She smiled, about to thank him, and then realised that she had no way to verify his directions.  She smiled a little more broadly, and laid a hand on his his shoulder.

“Perhaps you could show me the way,” she said, squeezing a little.  The man had muscles.  “My sense of geography has always been poor.”

The car behind them crunched the gravel very gently as though the driver, getting impatient, had moved it an inch forwards.  The doorman looked slightly puzzled.

“One moment,” said Jeronica.  She crossed to the car behind, allowing her heels to slide down to only three inches high, and rapped imperiously on the driver’s window with a white-gloved hand.  The window slid down a quarter-inch.  “Tell your passenger that we’re meeting in the Drawing Room,” she said.  “I need the doorman.”  She walked off without waiting for an answer, hoping  and expecting that if there was a Viridian Drawing Room there would be others as well.

“You may bring my bags,” she said the doorman as she returned.  His face remained immobile, but she fancied that there was a hint of annoyance as he moved to collect them from where her driver had positioned them on the gravel next to the car.  “And lead on!”

The Villa St. Antoine had been built for use by gentlemen and then seized the by the Nazis during the war and used as a refuge for thugs and layabouts, which combination meant that the entire place was opulent like a harem and decadent like the court of the Sun King.  As she walked inside her heels sank into carpet with pile so deep that with just three inch heels she appeared to be walking smooth on its surface, while the doorman struggled slightly to keep up his pace.  There was a cloakroom to the right that appeared to have a four-person staff of its own, and there was the smell of freshly opened champagne in the air, bright and acidic.  Bowls of strawberries were set out on a counter, and smaller bowls of thick, clotted cream were set adjacent to them.  Silver spoons, hallmarked visibly, waited nearby for use as well.  Jeronica picked up three of each and followed the doorman.  She hated strawberries, but she knew how to act the part.

The Viridian Drawing room was left and left again as promised, and when she arrived she dismissed the doorman to take her bags to her room.  She looked around: Margoyle was already there and sitting in a high-backed chair near an empty fireplace, and Stephanotte was stood surrounded by three accountants that were her de-facto bodyguards.  None of them had strawberries.

“Not hungry?” asked Jeronica casually, allowing her heels to elevate her another two inches.

Manumission

“Manumission,” said Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations.  The various employees sat in the conference room with him all looked first at one another and then at him.

“Bless you?” suggested Margoyle, a slight smile tweaking her thin, blue lips.

“I think that might be the name of the new Head of Suffocating Relationships,” said Stephanotte, her eyes not quite meeting Margoyles.  “He’s arriving sometime this week with a mandate to look over out ex-Soviet portfolio.”

“Dimitrion has taken over Suffocating Relationships already,” said Margoyle, her eyes staring at the top of Stephanotte’s head as though wishing her gaze could trepan.  “That does leave some room in Textiles and Bad Potteries, though I would have expected anyone taking them to want to take Soft Furnishing and Pillow Politics too.  Which are your remit, are they not?”

“Manumission is the practice of freeing slaves,” said Jeronica.  Sitting down she wasn’t noticeably taller than the men around the table, though when she’d come in her eighteen inch designer stilettos had left her towering over everybody and left small holes in the carpet wherever she walked.  “It sounds like something many of our clients would be disinterested in.”

Jeremy Diseased-Rat, a fresh bruise on his left cheek-bone and a small cut weeping on his chin, nodded.  “Much of what you all say is true,” he said.  His voice was even and carefully modulated to get people to listen to him, and his voice coach was rumoured to spend hours teaching him to undo what alcohol and nicotine did in the first place.  “We were hiring someone called Manumission, but that has been indefinitely suspended thanks to the reshuffle.  There is an opening for Textiles and Bad Potteries, and…..”  He paused for a moment, steepling fat, coarse fingers in front of his face while he looked over at Stephanotte.  “And,” he concluded, leaving no-one around the table in any doubt that she was in trouble.  “But more importantly, it is the code name for a new project that we will be starting in 2014 that I have high hopes for.  As you are all undoubtedly aware, there is much political tension in the Americas at the moment, with the concepts of universal health-care being a rallying point for various factions.  We have been retained to conduct a study of such health-care initiatives and produce a report on how ineffective they are, and their contribution to overall economic decay.  We will be focusing on the private health-care sector and the efficiencies that a market economy brings, how it improves health-care in the long term, and how competitiveness can result in a patient not being tied into a single primary care-provider, but instead travelling the country and seeing new sights as they are shipped from one expert to another to resolve their issues.  Considering the blind solely as outliers in this scenario of course.”

“Do people actually use public health care?” asked Margoyle.  She made a face. “Can that really be sensible?  Or healthy?  You might have to sit in a waiting room with ill people, for goodness’ sake!”

“Poor people,” said Jeronica.  Her tone of voice suggested that she was speaking from theory rather than experience.  “I think my last cleaner might have seen a government-sponsored doctor about something.  Possibly when her leg fell off.”

“People do,” said Manguy.  He was near the end of the table and had been playing with his pen the whole time Jeremy had been speaking.  “And some of them feel that they have no choice about this either, that they cannot afford private health care or the insurance that would get them access to it.  Part of what we’ll be doing in this study is showing that their estimations of this are actually a false economy.  They would do better, for example, if they abandoned eating fresh vegetables and instead used their health-care insurance to book themselves into hospital twice a year for liposuction and a crash diet.  This, in turn, would then increase the amount of produce available to restaurateurs and stock farmers, which in turn brings down the cost of fast food production and so the consumer benefits all the more by being able to eat more burgers, fried chicken-like protein and faux-fish fillets.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” said Jeronica.  Her eyes fixed on Manguy, who squirmed a little.

“Manguy will be heading this up,” said Jeremy, ignoring the speed at which Jeronica’s head snapped round to look at him.  “He’ll be taking on the Lead Product Owner role initially until we hire someone suitable, and then they will report into him in his capacity as Product Director.  I’m very pleased that he’s been willing to step forward and pick this up, as I’m expecting it to be high profile for this year.”

The other employees, all very much aware of this, glared at Manguy, who smirked back.  He set the pen down, now perfectly at ease and comfortable with his victory.

Manguy

Manguy told his secretary that he was off to gym, left his office with his gym bag, but then doubled back when he was out of sight and told the receptionist at the entrance door that he was just coming back from the gym and asked her if he looked presentable for a meeting with Jeremy Diseased-Rat, head of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations.  The receptionist, who probably had a name but Manguy hadn’t bothered to ask for it, smiled and said that she thought he looked just fine.  Manguy smiled back and had to duck into the toilets to check exactly how he looked, but it gave him the opportunity to put his gym bag in one of the stalls, lock the door and climb over it, and then sidle out and down the fire-escape stairs to the canteen on the third floor.  There, sat alone at a table that looked out on the London street that their building kept in perpetual shadow, was Margoyle.  She didn’t stand as he approached, but she did push one of the cups in front of her forward an inch-and-a-half towards the chair she expected him to sit in, opposite her.

He sat next to her, and took her cup.  Then he put it back and took the cup she’d offered in the first place.  Then he put that down on the table again.

“It gets to you,” said Margoyle.  “I’ve seen it happen to people higher up the tree than you.  You’re now so paranoid that you think everything had to be at least a triple bluff.  I bet you can’t even hire your own prostitutes any more, can you?”

Manguy took a sip of the coffee from the cup she’d initially offered him, just to prove her wrong, but in the back of his mind a voice was screaming at him that she could have drugged it with anything.  He knew he’d have to go and see his doctor after this.

“Can you?” she pressed, smiling.  It was the smile of a preying mantis, and Manguy knew all about them.  Jeremy Diseased-Rat had a vivarium in his secondary office that contained them, and they’d all spent time watching them when meetings got especially tedious.  If you wanted paranoid, then the CEO of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations was the perfect place to start.

“No,” he admitted finally.  The coffee tasted pretty good, dark and bitter with a hint of stone-fruit.  Margoyle sipped her own coffee and smiled too.  “I get a girl to get her pimp to hire another girl.”  Margoyle arched an eyebrow, but Manguy wasn’t biting.  It wasn’t always girls, but he’d revealed enough to Margoyle as it was.  When he said nothing, she sipped her coffee again, studying his face.

“You’re worried about Jeronica,” she said finally.  “Well, that’s not news.  We’re all worried about Jeronica.  She’s climbing the ladder faster than we can explain, and I alone have six analysts working on this.  Stephenotte’s pulling her hair out over this one, and it’s costing her a fortune in wigs to cover it up.  She’s got some trick up her sleeve that none of us have fathomed.”

“Yes,” said Manguy.  “She was the same level as me six months ago, and she wasn’t steady.  I had plans, and they should have worked.  She should be no higher than me still, and I should be in a corner office already.”

Margoyle sniffed.  “Corner offices aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” she said.  “And I rather think I would get one ahead of you, if only because I’m more ruthless.”

Manguy said nothing, as Margoyle would have done if he’d made that claim.  All employees of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations were ruthless and psychopathic as it was the only way to progress in a company that made a habit of running the world for other people and not letting anyone else know about it.  He was aware that she’d asphyxiated her last intern when she’d found out that she’d been working for Jeronica on the side, but it hadn’t been enough to get her a promotion at the last meeting.  Of the two that had been promoted, Jeronica still seemed to be a star in the ascendant, and Hille, a small mexican man reputed to train alligators, was dead.  The police reports said that he’d committed suicide, but everyone thought that it had been assisted.  There was a book running on who’d assisted him, and whether they’d find out before the police did.

“So what do we do about Jeronica?”

“I’m waiting for her to fall,” said Margoyle.  “I can afford to play the waiting game.  I’ve got three years on you.”

Manguy cringed, he hated the fact that he was nearly 40.  That age was practically retirement age in a company this cut-throat.  “And me?” he said.  Then he answered his own question, but only to stop Margoyle from thinking that he really didn’t have any answers. “If I push Jeronica down, and I don’t immediately get on top of her, then I’ve just opened the way for the rest of you.  That doesn’t seem like a percentage play to me.  What will the rest of you do to support me here?”

“Nothing,” said Margoyle.  “There’s not enough to be gained, and Jeronica can’t go much higher without the Rat deciding she’s a threat.”

Manguy smiled suddenly and knocked his coffee back like a shot.  It burned the back of his throat, but he controlled his response and didn’t show it.

“That’s it,” he said.  “I shall give Jeronica all the help I can.  Let’s see her work this trick on the Rat himself.”

“By the way,” said Margoyle, casually changing the conversation.  “Did you hear that Stephenotte has taken control of Dentures and Fissure Politics?”

“No,” said Manguy, immediately assuming that Margoyle was lying.  “I did hear that Cathartic Coups might be coming up for grabs in the next two months.  Dimitrion doesn’t seem to know about certain photographs that might have there way to a newspaper.”

“Indiscreet,” said Margoyle.  “Very Dimitrion.”

Corisette and Margoyle

“My name’s Corisette,” said the pretty little woman.  She looked, to Margoyle’s eyes, as though she had Oriental ancestry: her skin was flawless, her nose was delicate and slightly pointed, her chin was elfin and her eyes would have put a Manga character to shame.  Her hair was neatly coiled into a bun that sat just above the nape of her neck, and was skunk-striped.

“Corisette?”  Margoyle’s tone was flat and cold like the wind in a Canadian winter.  Corisette actually shivered slightly when Margoyle had finished saying her name.

“Yes,” she said.  “Like Anisette, only more bitter and toxic to cattle.”  She smiled, and little dimples appeared in her cheeks and chin.

“You look like a bowling ball when you do that,” said Margoyle.  “I’m finding it hard to resist the temptation to come over there and hurl you along the corridor and see how many interns I can knock over.  Try not to tempt me again.”

“You can’t do that!” said Corisette, the pitch of her voice rising in indignation.  “I’ve dated an HR manager, and I know that that’s harassment, and possibly intimidation.”

“You should probably meet our HR director then,” said Margoyle.  “Or at least read the company handbook.  We have slightly different policies than those you may be used to.”

“I couldn’t read the handbook,” said Corisette.  She looked longing at the chair opposite Margoyle’s desk, but didn’t dare sit down.  Not until she was invited to.  “It was inside the shredder in my office, and I couldn’t find any way to turn the shredder off to get the book out.  The shredder appears to have its own internal power supply, and… well I pushed an intern’s hand into it and now… now they’re in hospital.”  Margoyle raised an eyebrow that had been plucked almost to extinction and then had a miniature weave sewn in place.  It waved gently as though it were alive.

“And you’re about to start complaining about harassment?” she asked.

“We don’t pay interns, do we?” asked Corisette, looking meaningfully at the chair.  Margoyle ignored her.  “So they’re not really like us, right?”

“Many people dehumanise them,” said Margoyle.  “Why do you poison cattle?”

“I’m sorry?” Corisette didn’t look sorry, she looked annoyed that Margoyle had changed the subject.  Her dimples had disappeared, and her face was notably angular now.  Tiny little red blood vessels crowded the corners of her eyes.

“You said you were bitter and poisoned cattle.”

“Oh.  No, I don’t poison cattle, but the plant I’m named after does.  Corisette.”  Margoyle said nothing and toyed with a pencil.  “My mother was a naturist and she liked to name her children after the things she studied.  My sister’s called Wedlock and my brother is called Ramp.”

Margoyle smiled thinly, her lips pressed so firmly together to prevent any laughter escaping that they were a white version of her eyebrows.  When she felt she had herself back under control again, she looked Corisette in the eye.  “I hope you mean that your mother was a naturalist,” she said.  “I suspect your sister is actually called Hemlock too.  And your brother… –“

“I don’t like him.”  Corisette sniffed.  “He smells like garlic all the time.”

“… might just be accurately named,” said Margoyle.  “Why are you in my office, Corisette?  I don’t care about your family, or you for that matter.  I don’t care that you can’t get through the shredder – which is a test, by the way, that you can still fail if you try – and I’m not seeing the report I asked you for, either in my Inbox or in my inbox.  So why are you here?”

“I’ve been promoted,” said Corisette.  “I was told to tell you.”

Margoyle shrieked like a banshee at karaoke.  “This is a stalling action!”  You’re a diversion, aren’t you?”  Corisette’s face was as blank as her mind for a moment.  “You stupid little cow-poisoner!  You’re not promoted at all, only I can promote you!  You’re keeping me occupied why Jeronica takes the corner office on the third floor!”

“But… but she said –“

“She’d say anything to get you to keep me occupied!  You stupid little plant, you idiotic child of sludge, you simple-minded slime mould!  How could I be so stupid as to let you in here!  Get out!  Get out now!”

Corisette fled the office, turning left instead of right, and Margoyle smiled tightly, her bad mood gone as quickly as it had appeared.  Corisette should have gone left, back to her own office, but right would take her to the stairwell and the third floor, presumably to meet up with Jeronica and receive her reward for her treachery.

There was a surprisingly loud click, which Margoyle knew was a solenoid engaging and preventing the doors to and from the stairwell from opening.  Corisette would have used her standard access pass-card, not realising that Margoyle would have tracking programmes in all of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations systems, and little contingency scripts for… eventualities.  Something whumphed inside the building, and the floor rocked.  Margoyle waited.  Two minutes later exactly, by her watch, an intern tapped on her open door, and peered cautiously in.

“Security warning,” she said, her voice trembling.  “Apparently there’s been some kind of air lock in the stairwell and everyone is to use the lifts for the rest of the day.  Until the pressures can be equalised.”

Margoyle smiled, and her eyebrows waved at the intern like a sea-creature in a warm-water current.