I don’t know of any studies of the type you’re mentioning, my charge said stiffly.
A murmur of discontent ran through the crowd.
There was also a memo, the kid said. You oil pigs got together and planned the whole thing out, didn’t you? Deny, delay, obfuscate. You were all in on it. But you—you led it. You were the leader of the liars.
Well, the kid hadn’t saidthatin Chicago.
I’m saying itnow,the kid said. I know about itnow.In my current state, I know alot.I knowexactlywho you are, andeverythingyou did.
My charge felt the urge to shut it down. By walking off in the abrupt, purposely dismissive way he’d developed over many years of telegraphing displeasure to absolute nobodies.
But couldn’t move. The kid just stood there, glaring.
He had to fight.
Fight this crap.
Look, first off, he said. Nobody’d told him a thing about any studies.
The crowd erupted in laughter.
No, come on, think about it: Was he, as CEO, supposed to know every single detail about every minor bit of research ever done, at even the lowest levels of the company, one of thelargest companies in the world, by the way, if notthelargest, as well as (thank you very much) consistently the most profitable? Or did he, perhaps, have a good number of other, more important things to worry about?
Therefore, he’d had no idea—zero—about those studies. Zilch. About which so many were now blabbing such absolute crap.
The silence of the kid and the hundreds of thousands of gathered dead made the falseness of this statement uncomfortable even to him.
Well, okay, yes, fine. What did they think he was, an idiot? The kind of dillweed whose underlings would dare fail to brief him on studies that had a direct bearing on his business? The kind of manager who’d tolerate being left in the dark? Jesus, yes, of course he’d known about those studies, he’d read them cover to cover, as was his responsibility, but he’d been under no fiduciary obligation whatsoever to disclose/publicize such studies, if, in fact, such studies even—
Oh, he knew how it looked.
It looked like he’d known.
Known all along.
Lied about it publicly while privately taking such actions as necessary to protect the firm’s—
Well, Jesus Christ, it hadn’t been just him. Had it? Hell, no. What about Sawyer, what about Edwards and Chen and Archbold and Keaton? What about R. D. Smitts, Velasco, Purdy, Diamond, Trencher, Filipi? What about Wendell Boot, Tammy Whitman? What about that crowd? What about the guys/gals from the other big operations? Malcolm Handy at Centoil, Brian Haster at Globaco/Bexi? They knew, they all knew, theyhad research departments of their own, their names were all on that goddamn API memo.
A gust of something like panic swept over my charge.
Had he?
“Lied”?
Lied, then?
In a sense?
If viewed from a certain—
Ah, fuck it, what did it matter now, what a former waitress and a punk with a bad suit and a bunch of sprites or ghosts or whatnot thought of him? He’d be dead soon. And free. Free of this body. As he’d been when young. When young you were free of your body because it only brought you pleasure. He remembered clearing a chain-link fence in one go; swimming from dusk to dawn, breaking only for lunch; racing up a flight of stairs at Yost Field House, back down, up again, just because he could; diving into Crow Creek, zero fear; helping Denise and Rick Whoever move into their place on Wanamaker: crossing the lawn singing “Que Sera, Sera” at the top of his lungs, a box of records on his head, bottle of beer in one hand, window shade in the other.
Soon he’d be powerful like that again.
He just had to get out of this body.
—
