Ryan got three. They were about the size of his palm and warm to the touch. When he opened the one labeled Beefie Cheesie, a puff of steam came out. Even in the ammonia-laced air, the aroma was noticeably sharp and bitter. Inside the foil, a pair of spongy white layers bracketed a densely compacted brown layer. Ryan lifted the edge of the white and discovered a thin coating of orange goo on top of the brown.
“This is supposed to be food?” he said in disbelief. He and Nara were the only ones not eating.
“It’s what passes for it nowadays,” Damm said as he chewed the round, pale sandwich, “unless you’re a CEO.”
Nara took the packets away from Ryan and put them on the floor. “If this is what you’ve been living on, Damm, it explains a lot,” she said. “You’ve got to know better than this.”
“A few beefies won’t kill us.”
“Damm, do you realize you’re starting to quote their fucking tell-yous?”
“What is that shit?” Ryan said.
“Stone burger with cheese,” Damm said, smacking his lips as he opened a second packet.
“After the collapse of global agriculture,” Nara told Ryan, “as a stopgap measure, FIVE tailored bacteria that could turn an inorganic material, in this case rock flour, into a product with some nutritional value. They then reprocessed it to look and taste like familiar foods. It’s possible for a person to live on beefie cheesies, but it’s not recommended unless you have access to a complete arterial flush. After three days the side effects of some of the component minerals, primarily peridotite and olivine, cause violent mental aberrations and hallucinations.”
Damm tossed a small, black plastic object into the woman’s lap. “Just make the fucking call, Jurascik,” he said, “and don’t worry about our state of mind.”
Nara stood and walked a few yards away. She pushed a series of illuminated circles on the front of the unit, held it to the side of her face and began to talk in low tones.
Damm said to her back, “Remember, Nara, if we don’t get out of here, you don’t get out of here.”
The blonde moved farther away, so she could speak in privacy.
This is tough duty for Juracsik,” he said to Ryan. “She and Mitsuki had worked out this scheme to steal you away from the other Globals. Now she’s got to explain how she royally fucked up.”
As Ryan sat there, waiting for a deal to be cut that would either kill him or move him to a different prison, many of the things that he had seen and heard over the past few hours were starting to come together in his head, and the considerable load of bullshit had begun to fall out.
“My value to these Globals of yours is precisely what?” he asked Damm. “Do they really expect me to help them colonize my world?”
“You win the prize!” the mercie said. “Hand our Mr. Wonderful another Tater Cheesie.”
Ryan wasn’t amused. “I asked you a question. I need a better answer than that.”
“Okay, listen close,” Damm said, “because I’m only going to run this down once. Ever since the Big Shakedowns, there’s been low-level conflict between members of the FIVE. They should never have privatized the fucking military, because all that accomplished in the end was to militarize the entire private sector. Every Global’s got its own standing army to police and enforce economic operations. Even though the FIVE divided up the planet between them, made it all nice and legal with treaties, the sparks still fly when they get into each other’s business. Bottom line, despite the truce, the agreements, each of the FIVE is fighting like hell to increase its market share. Mitsuki, being low Global on the totem pole, is extra-eager to move up.
“Problem for all of them is, there’s nothing left here to divvy. Nothing but people and bacteria. We’ve poisoned or eaten everything else. Oh, we’ve still got plenty of rock, but like Jurascik says, you can’t live on it for very long without going apeshit. The writing is on the wall for everyone to see pretty soon the one-celled fuckers are going to win. And one hundred billion humans are going to lose.” It was a number too large for Ryan to comprehend. “The CEOs on top of the heap spend all their time shuffling data,” Damm went on, “trading the last few million containers of product back and forth, moving their cargo ships around the world, trying to make it look like business as usual. Nobody’s buying it, though. What they are buying is you. The Globals have been planting the seeds for months on the tell-yous. In the past few weeks, they’ve been promoting the possibility of a mass exodus to a new and virgin world. Today, they stuck that knife-cut, one-eyed mug of yours on the sales package.” The mercie grinned wolfishly at him. “Hope Lives, motherfucker.”