The assistant finally gone, Control sat down opposite Grace while she held the printout of his initial list of recommendations at arm’s length, not so much because it smelled or was otherwise offensive but because she refused to get progressive lenses.
Would she take the recommendations as a challenge? They were deliberately premature, but he hoped so. Although it certainly didn’t bode well that a mini tape recorder lay whirring in front of him, her response to his presence in her space. But he had practiced his mannerisms in the mirror that morning, just to see how nonverbal he could be.
In truth, most of his admin and managerial recommendations could apply to any organization that had been rudderless—or to be generous, operating with half a rudder—for a few years. The rest were stabs in the dark, but whatever they cut was as likely to flense lard as hamstring anyone. He wanted the flow of information to go in multiple directions, so that, for example, Hsyu the linguist had access to classified information from other agency departments. He also wanted to approve long-forbidden overtime and nighttime working hours, since the electricity in the building had to stay on twenty-four hours a day anyway. He had noticed most of the staff left early.
Some other things were unnecessary, but with any luck Grace would waste time and energy fighting him on them.
“That was fast,” she said finally, tossing the paper-clipped pages of his list back across the desk at him. The pages slid into his lap before he could catch them.
“I did my homework,” Control said. Whatever that meant.
“A conscientious schoolboy. A star pupil.”
“The first part.” Control half agreed, not sure he liked the way she said it.
Grace didn’t bother wasting even an insincere smile in response. “Let me get to the point. Someone has been interfering with my access to Central this week—making inquiries, poking around. But whoever is doing you this favor has no tact—or whatever faction is behind it doesn’t have quite enough pull.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Control said, his nonverbal mannerisms sagging in surprise along with the rest of him, despite his best efforts.
Faction. Despite his daydream about the Voice having a black-ops identity, it had not occurred to him that his mother might be heading up a faction, which led him automatically to the idea of true shadow ops—along with an opposition. It threw him, a little, that Central might be that fragmented. Just how elephantine, how rhinoceroscrutian, had the Voice’s efforts been in following up on Control’s request? And: What did Grace use her contacts for when she wasn’t turning them against him?
Grace’s look of disgust told him what she thought about his answer. “Then, in that case, John Rodriguez, I have no comment on your recommendations, except to say that I will begin to implement them in as excruciatingly slow a fashion as possible. You should begin to see a few of them—like, ‘buy new floor cleaner,’ in place by next quarter. Possibly. Maybe.”
He had a vision, again, of Grace spiriting away the biologist, of multiple mutual attempted destructions, until somewhere up in the clouds, atop two vast and blood-drenched escalators, they continued to do battle years from now.
Control’s stiff nod—gruffly acknowledging defeat—wasn’t the mannerism he’d been hoping to use.
But she wasn’t done. Her eyes glittered as she opened a drawer and pulled out a mother-of-pearl jewelry box.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked him.
“A jewelry box?” he replied, confused, definitely back on his heels now.
“This is a box full of accusations,” Grace said, holding it toward him like an offering. With this jewelry box, I thee despise.
“What is a box of accusations?” Although he didn’t want to know.
With a clink-and-tinkle, the yawning velvet mouth sent a handful of bugs Control recognized all too well rolling and skittering across her blotter at him. Most of them came to a stop before the edge, but a couple followed the list onto his lap. The rotting honey smell had intensified again.
“That is a box of accusations.”
Attempting a comeback, aware it was feeble: “I see only one accusation there, made multiple times.”
“I haven’t emptied it yet.”
“Would you like to empty it now?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. But I will if you continue to interfere with Central. And you can take your spies with you.”
Should he lie? That would defeat the purpose of sending the message.
“Why would I bug you?” With a look that he knew undercut his innocence, even as indignation rose in him as ardently as if he were innocent. Because in a way he thought he was innocent: Action bred reaction. Lose a few expedition members, gain a few bugs. She might even recognize some of them.