A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

an old hand, my dear. Who knows? Perhaps I might improve upon it. With that—good night.”

And we hung up.

I lit a cigarette, and stared out at the city for a very long time. Then I crushed it out and made my way through the maze of orchids toward the bedroom. The emotions I was wrestling with were completely unfamiliar to me—I couldn’t have even named them.

But I would go to New York that weekend. Of that, I was certain.

THE MOTIVE

It is a matter of indifference to the man of large affairs whether the disturbances which his transactions set up in the industrial system help or hinder the system at large, except in so far as he has ulterior ends to serve. But most of the captains of modern industry have such ulterior ends.

—Thorstein Veblen,

THE MACHINE AGE

I never desired wealth for its own account, but for the accomplishment of some ulterior purpose.

—Thomas Mellon

I never wondered what the outcome might have been had Tor not phoned that night. From the moment he’d entered my life, I’d felt myself losing control. He wanted it to seem that I was the one who’d brought about those changes—that he was a mere observer—but I knew computers weren’t enough for him; he wanted to change reality. My reality. That’s what bothered me.

The first change had taken place by the very next morning, when I stood in the steamy bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I always squeezed fresh juice and ground some coffee beans so I could have a strong citrus-java infusion before facing myself in the mirror. The older you get, the wiser it is to take such precautions. But this morning, the face that looked back at me from the clear space I’d wiped in the mirror told me what a liar I’d been. It was the face of a born adventuress.

How cleverly I’d concealed this from myself. After ten years of frustration and bitterness—of battling with the System until I was blue in the face, just to do a decent day’s job—I suddenly looked forward to going to work! I felt cheerful, and ten years younger, and I knew why: if Tor would really help me, as last night he’d said he would, I could pull off this setup of my hypocritical fellow bankers in style. I whistled a few bars of the “Ride of the Valkyries,” threw on my clothes, and headed for the office.

I must confess that although my boss, Kiwi, had a reputation for cheerful treachery and obdurate ladder climbing, my own reputation in some circles was worse. The rumor that I ran my department like a galley ship was a great exaggeration; it was only that I knew what motivated computer people. And what happened that morning proved my point.

Individuals who work with computers are not ordinary human beings. Psychologists haven’t scratched the surface of the breed—nor could they—because they start from the premise that everyone has basic primal needs like sleep, food, and human warmth. The sort of individual I’m describing does not have such needs. He’s known within the industry as a teckie.

The teckie relates to computers more closely than to people. He does his best work at night, when all but nocturnal beasts of prey have gone to sleep. He eats little, subsisting essentially on junk food. He never sees daylight or breathes air, flourishing instead in artificial lighting and climate control. Should he marry and breed—which is rare—he classifies his children by whether they are analog or digital. He can be arrogant, unruly, ungovernable, and antisocial. I knew all about teckies, because I was one myself. And I considered teckie traits—from the evolutionary standpoint—to be assets, rather than liabilities.

Every teckie at the bank knew of my reputation; they came to me from far and wide, because they knew I’d pay them fairly and work them to death. They hankered after tight schedules, long hours, and problems so tough they’d make Einstein grow pale and God scratch his head. Since I always tried to deliver this sort of environment to them, it was rumored that I had balls—a colloquial teckie expression signifying moxie.

That morning, my reputation paid off: I arrived to find a large packet on my desk from the personnel director. The packet was full of résumés from technicians throughout the bank, with a cheerful little note from the director himself:

Dear Verity—I hadn’t realized you were recruiting. The personnel director is always the last to know.

The personnel director might be the last to know, but the grapevine was always the first. I hadn’t posted any open positions—my proposal had only been printed and mailed last night—and there were résumés in this packet from some of the most heavy-duty teckies at the bank, all applying for my new project: the quality circle to implement Theory Z. This meant, of course, that the grapevine knew something I didn’t—until just now: that the Managing Committee had read my proposal, and they’d liked it. They were going to bite.

Someone else was on the verge of biting: Kiwi had been frothing at the mouth outside my office as Pavel held him at bay. I’d been locked up all day, interviewing applicants for the quality circle as soon as I got my official approval, and I’d already hired Tavish—one of the top technicians at the bank—over his boss’s heated objections. But before I confronted Kiwi on the subject of going over his head, there was something else I needed to deal with: my forthcoming trip to New York.

First thing that morning, I’d sent Kiwi the papers he had to sign, hoping that without noticing, he’d approve my travel plans. I had my own budget for such trips, and it was usually just a formality for him to initial one. Ordinarily, Kiwi loved nothing better than to pack me off so he could run around supervising my staff. He had few “direct reports” of his own—just