Puzzled, Pancho saw a blur of color reflected off the blanked screen. Turning slightly in the desk chair, she saw that what had appeared to be a cylindrical glass objet d’art had metamorphosed into a hologram, a full-color three-dimensional moving picture of Humphries naked in bed with some woman.
Son of a bitch, Pancho said to herself. He vids his own sex life. She watched for a few moments. They weren’t doing anything that unusual, or thrilling, for that matter, so Pancho touched the fast-forward button on the screen.
It was downright funny watching Humphries and his women in fast-forward. He’s a Humper, all right, Pancho thought as she watched a succession of beautiful naked women performing arduously with him. She recognized the redhead from her first visit to the house. I wonder if they know they’re being videoed, she asked herself.
After a half-dozen of Humphries’s home videos, Pancho got a little bored. She cut the program and returned to the screen’s menu of options, but she had new respect for the program labelled VR — PERSONAL. She looked into just one of its files for a few minutes, then angrily clicked it off, revolted.
The nasty S. O. B. uses his bedmates as models for his virtual reality fantasies, she realized. What he can’t get them to do in real life he has them doing in his VR wet dreams. Creep!
With a disgusted shake of her head she decided to leave Humphries’s sex life alone and started hacking into the other files.
When she glanced at the digital clock in the corner of the screen, Pancho was shocked to realize that nearly two hours had elapsed. It had been a fruitful time, though. The Humphries Trust was now paying the rent on Susan Lane’s cryonic storage unit, a big burden off Pancho’s shoulders and a picayune pinprick in the Trust’s multibillion funds.
Most of the files were incomprehensible to Pancho; some were technobabble and equations, lots of them were stock manipulations and business deals encoded in so much jargon and legalese that it would take a team of lawyers to decipher them. But now they all contained a new subroutine that allowed Pancho to tap into the files from a remote site. Codeword: Hackensack. Which was just what Pancho was preparing to do.
Got to be careful, though, she warned herself. Don’t get greedy enough for him to recognize he’s being hacked. A man like Humphries’ll have you slapped into the slammer so fast it’ll break the sound barrier. Or he’ll just have somebody pay you a visit and rip out your arms.
Satisfied with her work, Pancho closed down the computer and left Humphries’s office, careful to leave the door ajar just the way she’d found it. As she made her way downstairs, she wondered if Mandy and Humphries were still at dinner, after all this time.
They were. Peeking in on the dining room, Pancho saw the remains of some fancy dessert melting in their dishes, and half-empty flutes of champagne sparkling in the subdued light from the crystal chandelier above the table.
Mandy was saying, “… it’s certainly beautiful, Martin, and I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I can’t accept it. Really, I can’t.”
Pancho crept closer, staring. Humphries held an open jewelry case in one hand. It contained a stunning sapphire necklace.
“I got it specially for you,” he was saying, his voice almost pleading. “Martin, you’re a dear man, but I can’t get myself involved in a relationship now. You of all people should understand that.”
“But I don’t understand,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I’ll be heading off on the mission in a few months. I might never come back.”
“All the more reason to grab whatever happiness we can now, while we can.”
Amanda looked genuinely distressed. Shaking her head, she said, “I simply can’t, Martin. I can’t.”
In a gentle whisper he said, “I could have you removed from the mission. I could see to it that you stay here, with me.” “No. Please…”
“I could,” he repeated, stronger. “By god, that’s what I’ll do.”
“But I don’t want you to,” Amanda said, alarmed. “You don’t have to go through with it,” Humphries insisted. “I know it’s dangerous. I had no idea that you’re afraid of-”