“Well, you know how to handle Titan, I’ll give you that,” said a voice behind her.
Sallie Mignon was small, compact, with warm brown skin and light-brown hair that surrounded her head in a halo. She didn’t look like one of the most ruthless businesswomen in the world, the one who’d single-handedly ruined AT&Veriz because her business rival, Ben Seims, was named CEO. Once they went bankrupt, she bought them out and fired him. The woman had made her billions in vertical real estate, financing hugely tall buildings and even, some said, part of the Luna dome. Rumors were rampant about her, behind closed doors and in the tabloids. She was one of the first clones, she was the first clone, she killed the first clone, she was going to influence a law change to let clones hold office again, she already ran the president like a puppet. She had a stable of spies entrenched in every competitor’s staff, at VP or higher. She made a small fortune just by selling short at the right time and was never caught insider trading. She had stopped a war brewing between Russia and Australia because her college buddy lived in Guam and didn’t want to be caught in the middle. She’d tried to get the war started because an ex-lover lived in Guam and she wanted him caught in the middle.
Rumors were everywhere, but everyone agreed that Sallie Mignon and Guam were somehow involved. And the war didn’t happen, to the world’s relief.
Currently she wore a stained sweatshirt and a pair of silk-denim-blend jeans.
She held out her hand to Maria, who shook it. She walked past her and gestured for her to follow, casually removing the yellow yarn that had been strung around a statue in the foyer.
“I need some programming done,” Sallie said as she led Maria into the kitchen. It was the kind of gleaming, state-of-the-art kitchen you found in home magazines, only it looked actually lived in, with dirty dishes in the sink, a linen grocery bag discarded in the corner, and a philodendron that needed watering.
“I, ah, ma’am, I am not a programmer,” Maria said out of habit.
Sallie looked over her shoulder, her eyes catching and holding Maria’s. “Yeah, I know the jargon. But you’re safe here. I even told my maid not to come today,” she said, pointing at the dirty dishes. “The nanny took the kids to floor forty-five to a movie. In short, cut the bullshit and don’t waste my time. You’re a programmer. I need programming done.”
“All right. Then what kind of programming do you need?” Maria said, the word feeling verboten in her mouth.
Even though the world summit to determine the rights of clones was a few months away, the United States and Cuba already had created local laws to control what in a clone’s mindmap could be edited. Everyone assumed the world would follow North America’s lead.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Maria was currently out of a job. Talented programmers were getting fired—and socially outcast—all over the place. Most went back to school to learn another trade, but some stubbornly kept doing it, only underground.
The hackers didn’t look good, admittedly, after the bathtub babies and other illegal and unethical actions. When those news stories broke, the riots against cloning started, and things got dangerous.
Maria had worked for years perfecting the art of mindmap manipulation. She’d never even shoplifted before. Now she was breaking much larger laws. And now the most powerful person in the country wanted her services.
“I don’t comply in the murder of innocents, I won’t be party to building a superman, and my fees are non-negotiable,” Maria said, sitting down at the kitchen table and crossing her legs. She felt more at home discussing her business instead of being intimidated by a powerful figure.
Sallie shook her head, sitting down across from Maria. “I’m not asking for any of that.” She jerked her head toward a closed door on the far wall. “I want to know if you’ll hack my partner, Jerome. It’s his first life. He’s going to be cloned, but he’s got MS. His brother, his father, and his grandmother all have it. He’s dying. If I clone him the way he is, he will have to look forward to pain and a slow roll downhill every life. And we don’t know how long he will live. He wants to kill himself now, and I can’t let him. I can’t.”
“Removing MS? Is that all? I can do that.” She had done worse, for less. The day after she had manipulated an infant’s DNA to make her have blue eyes and a prettier face, as well as remove the mutation that caused cerebral palsy, she had drunk herself into a stupor. She told herself she hadn’t had a part in the girl’s infanticide, that crime the parents had on their consciences, but her hands still felt dirty.
She dipped her hand into her jacket’s interior pocket to fetch her terms. She passed the tablet across the table, the file with her information open. “Price. What I will do and what I won’t do. Risks involved with messing with someone’s DNA matrix. And the legal ramifications if we get caught.”
Sallie’s eyes skimmed the screen with the practiced ease of someone looking for a “gotcha” in a contract. “I cover your legal fees if you’re caught. Nice touch.”
Maria shrugged. “Self-preservation is one of the signs of sentient life,” she said.
Sallie put her thumb on the tablet’s sensor, signing the document. Without looking up, she said, “If you’re doing something illegal, then isn’t this contract pointless?”
“I like to keep track of my clients and be able to remind them what we had agreed to,” Maria said. She handed Sallie an empty memory drive. “Put his mindmap on here. I’ll take him home and deal with it. You can have him back tomorrow.”
“You can do the programming here. Please,” Sallie said, the steel in her voice countering the politeness of the words. “I am not in the habit of letting my partner’s matrix out the door, much less out of the state.”
Maria sighed. “And I am not in the habit of using someone else’s network to do my type of work. Which is highly illegal, as you said. I know the security on my home system, but I don’t know yours.”
“Is this a dealbreaker?” she asked, eyes holding Maria’s. “You’d be throwing away millions of yuan.”
Maria’s investments hadn’t been the best in her first decades as a clone, and she wasn’t as wealthy as she would like to be. But too many traps, tracers, and spiders could trace her work if she wasn’t 100 percent secure, and it could hurt her legally and professionally if her proprietary code got out.
She bit her lip, and then nodded. “Yes. It’s far too risky.” She stood up. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Ms. Mignon. It’s a pleasure to have met you.” She held out her hand.
Sallie stared at the hand, and then laughed. “Finally, someone with a spine. Fine. You can use your home system.”
Maria let out a sigh, not expecting this to be a test of her mettle.
Sallie grabbed a drive off the kitchen counter. “But I’m going with you.”