Sometimes she thought her whole life had been an obstacle course of people thrown in her way to stop her being what she was and getting where she wanted to go. The world operated to a double standard. She imposed no restrictions, made no demands, held nobody back from actualizing whatever potential lay within them to be expressed. The powerful would take unless the weak could organize to stop them, in which case they became the powerful—and then, as far as she was concerned, the laws that governed the play were the same. Meeting hard opposition to curb what others saw as “excesses,” she could understand, even respect; but please, not some appeal to “right,” “goodwill,” or any of the other forms of guilt-based moral socialism in which the weak and the inept laid claim to a share in the winnings they could never earn for themselves.
And when, in a genuine effort to spare otherwise inevitable ugliness, you contrived to have somebody who had become a liability moved far away and set up comfortably for the rest of what could have been a much more protracted lifetime, what did he do but come back again, insisting on making more trouble! It was a different league now, with different stakes, from the one that Jack had played in three years ago. Jack had never risen beyond the class of specialist hired hand—looked after well enough and paraded in all the right places, there when Microbotics needed that awkward legal corner smoothed over a little; but one of the outside flunkies just the same.
Eric had been a passport to the inside—stimulating intellectually too, which was a relief. And for a while it had seemed they were bound for the inside summit, which lay in the global stratosphere—until he turned out to have scruples where men worthy of the name had balls. Typical of scientists: eager to dispense wisdom on the running of the world, but only from the safety behind someone else’s throne; posturing verbally to compensate for what they lacked the nerve to risk physically. Or they ran away to build their haven beyond the empire’s borders—which would last until the first legion of reality caught up.
Vanessa could have done without the complication of Kevin’s being in the picture. But, materially he would still be better off than most—and perhaps even more so than otherwise, since this way the patents would be used more aggressively and effectively. He could even come out of it better in the long run—made of sterner stuff. It was hardly as if tragedy didn’t happen every day, in any case. Sometimes it was just somebody’s misfortune to be in the way. She could hardly rewrite the script of the world back to Day One.
As Payne’s wife, she would come into joint control of a sizable portion of Microbotics, which, boosted by ownership of the by-then-reprieved technology and the deal that Ohira was talking about, would have appreciated to an impressive sum, indeed. Then, life would have acquired some truly interesting dimensions of possibility, cosmopolitan in scope and properly suited to her tastes. The only proviso was that in the meantime her spouse would need to overcome his narcissism and learn that there were greater things to aspire to in life than sailing his floating playpen and entertaining starlets with more boobs than IQ points. Otherwise, sad though it would be in some ways, one day, she might have to get rid of Martin. . . .
“Homicide Division.”
“Hello, my name is Michelle Lang. I’m an attorney with the Prettis and Lang law offices in Seattle. I understand that one of your investigating officers was called to the scene of an incident that happened about two months ago. Could I speak to him, please?”
“What incident was this?”
“The deceased’s name was Anastole, John Anastole. He was found dead in a room at the Northgate Way Ramada Inn on March third last.”
“Anastole? Spelt O-L-E?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll check. . . . Here we are—Jonathan Charles Anastole?”
“That’s right.”
“That would be Officer Kollet. . . . Yes, he is in. Putting you through.”
“Dave Kollet.”
“Oh, hello. My name is Michelle Lang, with the Prettis and Lang law offices in Seattle. I wonder if you could help me with some background details of a case that you were called out to at the Northgate Way Ramada Inn about two months ago. A man by the name of John Anastole was discovered dead in one of the rooms.”