Free The Egg Code by Mike Heppner Page B

open. “We’re moving. And tomorrow morning I’m going to call those people up at the Gloria Corporation, and I’m going to take that contract.”
    Finished with his dinner, Bartholomew folded his napkin and left it on the table. This kind of nasty chatter had been going on for months now. There was no point in talking anymore. He’d already made his decision. The Hasses were a family of craftsmen. They’d built their legacy out of print and paper, going all the way back to the time of Gutenberg—five centuries’ worth of profit and protest and inky hands. That line would not be sold out to an invisible organization bent on dismantling the great tradition with their elusive grid of fiber optics and subterranean pipelines. Nothing would change. Information would remain something physical, something you could
touch
. Bartholomew would see to it.

IV
Another Not-Very-Good Marriage

The Tree with Four Trunks
    1998
    When the folks from Gloria presented Derek with the pin back in 1989, his first thought was, Hmmm, well, attractive, but what is it? He could never understand the logic behind these corporate logos. He remembered the Lake Charles Human Resources Center from whatever year it was, seventy-something. Those were the folks who’d tried to make a fortune renting out physical-fitness trainers to oil companies and the like. Modeled after the old Japanese business notion—you know, the company that works out together works well together. Didn’t fly in America. Anyway, Derek got some good money out of them for a few years; in fact, they were his first really big contract, not counting the few local engagements he’d managed to book through his father-in-law. He could still remember their logo, a massive torso bench-pressing a skyscraper with each hand. What was their slogan?
Get a lift out of your
business? Move your butt, not your bottom line?
No, it was the whole
We
Can Work It Out
concept, with the Beatles tune as the tie-in. Not a bad idea—would’ve worked if they’d spent a little more time shoring up their resources, then waited another year to go public. But the Gloria insignia was different. It wasn’t abstract. It was too intricate, too strange for symbolism. This object existed somewhere in the world.
    A tree, that’s what it was. The fella from Gloria told him it was an elm and Derek took his word for it. Fan-shaped leaves grew together in a bunch: could’ve been anything—a maple, an oak . . . hell, even a cactus. What Derek noticed—what he was
meant
to notice, clearly—was the trunk. Trunks. Four of ’em. Almost like a Masonic emblem. Staring at the pin on this September afternoon in Big Dipper Township, he wondered if he’d joined a business or a brotherhood.
    Come to think of it, those endless battalions of Gloria liaisons
had
been rather persistent about persuading him to honor his final commitments. He’d been firm about saying no, but they’d been equally firm about sending progressively higher-placed representatives south from Ann Arbor to convince him not to quit the gig so thoughtlessly. Derek was a legend in the business. No one liked to see him go. Still, no amount of money was worth the pain he felt every time he hosted an employee retreat or kicked off another three-day motivational weekend. All those faces looking up at him, their mouths forming desperate phrases, Heal us, Make us whole. The freaks of the world would just have to understand. Having left his wife, Derek now imagined long trips, sudden disappearances. So typical, the wayward husband who heads north to the Yukon, never to be heard from again.
    This was probably the best solution overall, this tiny flat, still within screaming distance of his old house. The smallness of the place appealed to him. The spartan environment would help him to focus on the new book. He would keep the walls bare as well; the diplomas and honorary degrees would stay in their boxes. The books, too—thirty-eight of them, ranging from the