Free Wetware by Craig Nova Page B

been telling her a secret, the kind of thing no one wanted to admit, at least not out loud. Chaos has its own charms. It grows, it advances, it seeks out weakness, it lives for revenge. Then she thought that Blaine was really at the center of her grief. How in God’s name could he have come into her life, changed her, and then discarded her in such a manner and still think that he was immune?
    And what did darkness have to offer? As she considered this, she remembered with a thrill her father’s wink of understanding. She felt the attraction of the darkness through the seductiveness of it, as though she were looking at a woman in black, shiny underwear, who put out her hands to be tied, her eyes filled with an expression of subdued, even languid, but still definite pleasure. Carr considered this not with understanding, but with a delicious impulsiveness about the shadows’ possibilities. Now she saw darkness, like malice, as a stain on the light, its promise so perfect and so much more reliable than innocent delusion. And Blaine, of course, loved the light, the force of reason, the power of music, the beauty of discipline. All she wanted, in the moment, was to be close to her father. After she had stood at the window, imagining the winking out of each light, she went to a market and bought a can of sardines and ate them with her fingers, picking the silvery fish out of the olive oil they came in and sprinkling them with hot sauce, just like her father. It burned her mouth. The heat felt like happiness.
    The next morning she went to work, and she tried to go through a new section that Briggs had done, but just the sight of the blue case it came in left her feeling seasick. It was like seeing stains on the sheets on the bed in Blaine’s apartment, or some other evidence of what a fool she had made of herself. It reminded her of finding a book of poetry that had made sense at one time, but was now just another incomprehensible book. She found herself dialing the number of a headhunter who often called her, and she agreed to accept what he had to offer, the phone call made with the air of floating, of just surrendering to an impulse she had tried to deny, but which had finally taken over. She went down the hall, turned in her resignation, and cleaned out her desk, although, as she picked the papers up, she decided she couldn’t bear to look at them, either, since they were just reminders of what she had lost. She slammed a drawer shut, but it didn’t close, and she slammed it again and again. As she walked out, one of her assistants said to the other, “Well, whatever she was smoking, she isn’t smoking it anymore.”
    IN THREE days the markets were just as Blaine had guessed, within a half-percent. He sat in his office and thought about the meeting of the board of overseers. The first order of business was to get rid of Warren, which, he guessed, wasn’t going to be much of a problem. McCourt sent him a book, a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s
Meditations,
with a card that said, “Funds for my retirement have been established. Never been happier. Retiring soon. McCourt.”

CHAPTER 7
    2027—project continuing
    BRIGGS THOUGHT the entire thing had probably gotten too hot for Carr to handle; at least it had gotten that way when she recognized part of what he had been doing. Briggs was inclined to think that she hadn’t turned him in; her quitting was a way for her to resolve the difference between what she knew she should do and what she wanted to do. Get out before the project corrupted her. It was better to be far away when things went south. Anyway, he guessed that was what had happened. She had been smart enough to get out.
    He was still thinking about this in the evening, when Mashita came in to see him and said, “You know, you take someone from nothing and build them up to something in this business, and what do they do? They up and quit on you.”
    Briggs shrugged. “What can I say?”
    Mashita stood in the door of