“What a stupid fucking name,” Pann said to the Z-5. “When did not knowing what words mean become a badge of honor?”
“It’s not a decision I made.”
“I know it’s not your fault, Fred—”
“I’m Frank.”
“And I appreciate that. These people aren’t frank, they don’t realize words have meanings. A fiduciary is someone you trust to manage assets. This is a financial address. It has nothing to do with fiduciaries! Who would Hampus Bell’s fiduciary even be? It’s like these people who treat ‘utilize’ as an upscale version of ‘use.’ The words have different meanings! If I pick my nose with a pencil, I am utilizing it by creating a new use for it, but if I write with it, I am merely using it. Does no one read the Global Company Stylebook?”
“Some people don’t,” Z-5 Floyd admitted.
“The anti-prescriptive nonsense has gone too far.” Pann exhaled. “In any case, thank you for reminding me that the Address—the financial address that we are cursed to call the Fiduciary Address—is tomorrow.”
“Today, to be precise.”
“Today?” Pann scratched his nose. Time had flown; all darkness looked the same, and his window showed just night, but the clock on his desk said it was one o’clock in the morning. “So it is, and so it must be, for if it must be, it is. Today, then.”
“Would you be able to get me an invite? To the Address?”
“The word is ‘invitation.’ ”
“Of course, Hiero Grackenheit. Could you get me an invitation?”
“I’ll think about it,” Pann said, which meant, Fuck, no.
Since time immemorial, Z-5s and Z-6s had been asking their bosses for seats in the auditorium during the Fiduciary Address, as if merely breathing the same air as the world’s most important people would somehow have them included among the elite. Not only did such a request show personal careerism, it also conveyed incompetence, because one who truly was executive material would win an invitation the old fashioned way: through hard work—also known as: stealing it off someone else’s desk.
“Can I—”
“We’re done here,” said Pann.
The messenger left, and Pann walked out and looked across the open floor. As Executives had arrived from all over the world, no one was willing to risk being the first to leave, so the place was nearly full.
He returned to his office, closed his door, sat down, and pressed his hands together between his knees. Triumphant hatred, more than coffee, kept him giddy. His plans were coming together in a most lovely way—in the morning meeting that would take place in six hours, Kayla would do what no woman in a serious place ever should: Speak. She had agreed to take full responsibility for the search for Farisa; she would even admit to having hired—though it had all been Pann’s work—the capable but despised bounty hunter, Kanos “Wet Man” Evergarde. The Patriarch, furious, would have no choice but fire Kayla immediately, and his day would only get worse when an unexpected guest—his own estranged son—arrived in the midst of the Address.
Pann opened his office window. September 4, ’94 would be a day when the world changed forever, but its dark early hours were deceptively calm. The birds and insects did not know what a heroic battle would soon be fought in these concrete hills. Pann was glad to have his own office; he closed his eyes to catch sleep, as there were two hours between now and the contest.
The eating contest was, even though he would not be the one eating, one of his favorite parts of Global Company Day. Young workers, unable to garner invitations to the Address in other ways, would compete for the last few seats. Whoever ate the most canned dog food, if he could keep it down for thirty minutes, would be invited to attend. Of course, the ultimate joke was on the contest’s winner. Not only was the speech itself dreadfully boring, often word-for-word identical to last year’s with a few numbers changed, but seats were allocated strictly by rank. If you were a Z-5 nobody, you wouldn’t sit next to a Z-2 who might “mentor” you into a better job—instead, you’d be stuck in the back with the other losers, probably between two white-bearded scientists going on about “electromagnetic waves” or “mechanical calculation” or “where the clitoris is.”
Pann had only intended a light doze, but he ended up sleeping through the contest wholly—to his chagrin, he’d have to wait a year to watch a grown man eat dog food, or pay a homeless person to do it—and woke up to morning light and a knock on his door.
Through the peephole, he saw Hampus Bell. The man looked awful, with five days of stubble and in wrinkled clothing.
“Pann, can I talk to you in my office?”
Pann followed his boss into Room 2-13, next door. “Open or closed?”
“Close it.”
Pann did so. He rolled up his sleeves. It didn’t actually prevent his palms from sweating, but it gave his fidgety hands something to do.
“Of all the days for this....” The Patriarch shook his head. “I know you found my son.”
Pann swallowed a bolus of phlegm. “Someone found—is his name Rychard?”
“Don’t be coy. It was excellent work.”
Pann’s breathing sped. Someone had given him up. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“You sent the Dry Man. I didn’t ask you to do it, but you did. That shows initiative. You might get your promotion.”
Pann’s shoulders relaxed. “A promotion?”
“I have been looking for him for years. Problem is, I have to give that sort of assignment to the highest-ranking people, because it’s protocol, and most of our Z-2s are incompetents who should have been ‘invited to succeed elsewhere’ fifteen years ago. Papa didn’t like dissenting voices, so he filled the rank under him with useless yes-men, but I can’t rid us of them all at once. You went outside the store to get the job done, and it worked out brilliantly.”
Pann worried that this might be a setup to get him to admit something, so he gave a noncommittal response. “I thought you never wanted Rychard found.”
“Oh, I said that. I never liked him, and even his own mother couldn't stand him. So, if it were my personal feelings in charge, I’d happily leave him to die in a Terosha sandstorm. However, public reconciliation would, at this time, be good for the family’s image—don’t you think? Rychard will never be my heir, but for today, it is expedient for the public to think I have one. To forgive shows strength, don’t you agree? This shall give me peace—and time—to conceive a new one.”
“A new heir?” Pann shuddered as he pictured Hampus Bell driving his geriatric beef spike into a body.
“Lysita has been gone a long time. I must free myself of grief one day. Why not begin the process? I only have to find the right woman.”
“She’s out there,” Pann said, stretching his arm to indicate a place as far from Headquarters as possible. “Just turned eighteen, blue eyes, sandy hair—but not blonde, definitely not blonde. Nothing like K—careerists. Nothing like any of the careerists we have here.”
“I have invited Rychard to share the stage with me. We’ll make a public show of reconciliation.”
“Your idea is most excellent,” Pann said, concealing joyful laughter. “A show of magnanimity, it will be. It shall play impeccably.”
“Again, I thank you for your great work. There is one thing I don’t yet know. How, given the special occasion, should I dress for the Address? What colors would you recommend?”
“Brown blazer, purple shirt. White pants. It’ll show that you’re serious... but amicable.”
“That’s perfect. You’ve earned your salary today, Pann.”
Pann walked back to his office, struggling to conceal glee. Once alone, he broke into laughter so raucous it produced standing waves in his adipose flesh. Had the Company even needed Pann to conspire against Hampus Bell? The man seemed inclined to work against himself. Though Hampus had never been the sort of man who inspires strong opinions either way, Rychard had killed a Moyenni woman’s dog in broad daylight, and no one had forgotten. This “reconciliation” Hampus had in mind would not be a small error; it would be a lose-the-Company mistake.
Pann predicted—correctly, it turned out—that, in less than a month, he would be answering to someone other than Hampus Bell.
#
Seven hours before the Fiduciary Address, the executive meeting began in Hampus Bell’s office. The men sat around a long blackwood table; one of the Z-2’s picked a crouton out of his beard and, while trying to hide this action behind a folded hand, ate it.
“Keep your updates short,” Hampus said. “I’ve got a big speech to prepare. You may have heard of it.”
Silence followed. None of these men could speak briefly, so they did an uncharacteristic thing and did not speak at all.
“If you haven’t heard of it, it’s called the Fiduciary Address.” The Patriarch chuckled.
“I will go first,” Pann said. “For the G-Fund, the 9995 budget’s in good shape. Should be ready by EOM.”
Hampus clicked with his mouth. “Could I have it by the fifteenth?”
Pann said, “I’ll see what the boys can do.”
“See what you can do.”
Pann’s fists tightened and he drew a deep breath; he would enjoy this man’s defeat. “Yes, Hiero.”
“What’s the status of the Hegemon?”
“She’s off the western coast of Bezelia, not far from Switch Cave. Provisioned to stay there till October 15. Meteorology’s telling us the monsoon’s delayed this year, so it can probably hold out that long if needed.”
A Z-2, one who had been attending this meeting since Cyril’s days, raised his hand. “Excuse me.”
Pann suppressed a groan of contempt. “Yes, Hiero Blumkanerge.”
“Why should we care what the Department of Metallurgy has to say about the weather?”
“Meteorology,” Pann said.
“Meat what?”
“Me-te-or-ology.”
“I still don’t see what meteors have to do with the weather.”
“I don’t name things, Hiero Blumkanerge.”
Hampus Bell, who also did not want Egbelth Blumkanerge to submerge the entire room in a silver muck of tedium, interjected. “Thank you. Thank you both. Anyone else?”
No one responded.
“Short meeting, then. Go us.”
Pann cleared his throat. “Kayla has something to say.”
Hampus leaned forward. “Oh?”
“I do.” In this room, the blonde woman looked as out of place as a cat in a dog show. “I’d to present some work I’ve been doing, with Pann’s help—”
“Oh, stop,” Pann said. “It was all her. I didn’t even know about it till this morning.”
Hampus flexed his wrist. “If you didn’t know about it till now, can’t it wait?”
Pann shifted in his seat. “I think you’ll be thrilled to know what she has discovered.”
“Very well. If Panniculus Grackenheit says it’s important, it must be so. Kayla, let’s hear ya tickle some ivories.”
The woman’s eyes shifted. “What?”
“Sorry. An expression.” The Patriarch rolled his eyes. “Young people. Please, present.”
Pann had expected Kayla to flub this presentation, but she had come shockingly prepared. A green chalkboard had been leaning all morning against the office wall; she turned it over, revealing a map she must have drawn overnight. Her handwriting was impeccable, and the shaded regions of the diagram were stippled rather than side-chalked, so as to prevent smudges. It looked nothing like Kayla-work.
“This,” she said, “pertains to Farisa.”
Hampus Bell’s eyebrows did not move, but his eyes shifted. On the scale of Hampus anger, this was only a seven or eight; Pann trusted he would hit ten when it was revealed how much money the failed mission had cost—and that kind of anger would sit with him all day, destroying the man’s performance at the Fiduciary Address. Pann couldn’t wait to see this happen.
Kayla wrote Farisa La’ewind on the board. “How is her last name pronounced, by the way?”
“La’e-vind,” Pann said. “The W is a V.”
“Lake-vind,” Hampus said. “If I can’t take a letter out of my last name, no one else can either.”
“You could be Hampus B’ll,” said one of the Z-4s, diminishing the vowel to make a word halfway between “ball” and “bowl.”
Hampus pointed to the door. “Out.”
The Z-4 sunk into his seat. “I’m sorry. Bad joke.”
“It was very bad, but I am not joking. Get out.”
“I won’t do it again.”
Hampus Bell, nostrils flaring, stood.
The Z-4, head down in despair, left the office.
Pann said, “Continue, Kayla.”
“Here’s what we know.” She lifted the board so everyone could see it. “Farisa was in Muster on the tenth of June. She came on a fishing vessel with Claes Bergryn and Mazie—is this pronounced ‘nuln’?”
“NLN,” said a Z-2. “No last name. A pessima probably.”
“I know Claes,” Hampus said. “I’ve met him. I’m not surprised he’s caught up in this, but how are the pessimou involved?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out.” Kayla smiled. “All of this comes from our orcish scouts, who wouldn’t be able to recognize a pessimo, because they don’t understand our social distinctions.” There was a nervous chuckle from one of the Z-2s. “On the twenty-ninth of June, they spotted a larger group—eight or nine people—here.”
She drew a chalk notch on the map she had made, and annotated it, 6/29. She placed other dates on the Mountain Road: 7/9, 7/14, 7/28, 8/11. To Pann’s surprise, the path she had given was not only realistic, but concordant with what he knew to be true.
“They’re moving fast away from us, but there’s good news. Kanos Evergarde is traveling with them.”
“Kanos Evergarde,” Hampus Bell said. “The Wet Man?”
“His unsavory reputation aside,” said a Z-2, “I have no doubt he’s the best man in the world for this sort of mission. If he says he’ll come back with Farisa, you better believe he will.”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Pann hid his smile; these people failed to understand that Hampus Bell did not want to find Farisa. All of them, not just Kayla, were immolating their own careers by showing implicit support, rather than Pann’s rehearsed skepticism, toward the young woman’s insubordination.
Hampus, hiding his fury—indeed, continuing the charade of acceptance like a sadistic cat—steepled his hands and looked at Kayla. “So, what’s your POA?”
Kayla seemed confused. “What’s a POA?”
“I would call you a POA,” said one of the Z-2s.
“Plan of action,” Pann explained. One who worked for Hampus Bell gained an intuition for those novel acronyms—hamponyms—that one was just expected to know, as if by telepathy. Oddly, Kayla had usually been good at that game, and for her to require clarification was unusual.
“Of course.” Kayla circled the end of the Mountain Road in chalk and wrote 9/24. “About twenty days from now, at their current pace, they’ll reach the Ivory Ashes.”
“There’s nothing there,” said the Patriarch. “We’ve known that since the Seventies.”
“Of course. They’ll be trapped, and Hiero Evergarde—”
“Mister Evergarde,” said Pann. “You’re not Hiero anything until you’re a Z-5, and he’s a private gun.”
“—will convince them there is no option but to surrender. He’ll lead them to the Hegemon. We’ll have Farisa by FWO November.”
Pann said, “FWO?”
“First week of,” Hiero Bell and Kayla said at the same time.
“Of course.” Pann was about to lay a very clever trap. Women should never be left alone with numbers or logic; they weren’t built for it. “I worked on the Hegemon. Early November seems awfully optimistic.”
“It does. Here’s what we know about ocean currents.” She drew some arrows on her map. “These are the winds we can expect in October.” Pann waited; there would be a mistake in her calculation, he was sure of it. “It’s a steamship, but they can turn their engines off and use sail here and here, which leaves them more coal to get through the horse latitudes. Up here, this long way actually saves us ten days over a straight-line path. From Grunwind, we send out a clipper and meet them halfway—that’s here—and—”
“That’s very thorough,” Pann said. “Thank you, Kayla. That said, Hiero Bell is a very important man whose time is quite valuable, and I think he would appreciate it if you did not come to him with such a volume of detail.”
The Patriarch pressed his palms against the table and stood up. “I do have to get back to work on the Address.”
Pann stepped on his own foot; the pain helped hide his glee. The Patriarch was furious; so many careers would be destroyed in the next twelve hours, leaving the Z-3 to climb the rubble.
“One more question,” Pann said. “Kayla, how much did this project cost?”
This, he expected, would add several minutes to an already tedious meeting—it was an invitation to the Z-2s and Z-3s to argue over the opportunity costs of scrap metal and rivets, another distracting diversion that would waste Hampus’s time and for which Kayla would be at fault.
She said, “Seven million, nine hundred twenty-four thousand, three hundred, and sixteen grot, forty-five cents. I have an itemized list if you’d like to—”
“Please don’t,” said the Patriarch. “Eight million is a small price for a lead on Farisa. Excellent work, Kayla. On that topic of work, I must return to mine. Whoever leaves last, shut the door.”
Pann left the Patriarch’s office. He smiled at Kayla—the poor woman didn’t even know that she had ended her own career. He fantasized about taking her into his Perf Room and rendering the news. Although Pann would be unlikely to be permitted to inflict the punishments of the great old days—Smitz Bell had once made a man lick a charged capacitor for arriving late to a meeting—Pann would nevertheless make the woman cry, and it would be gratifying to hear her sobs. There was a way to lock 4-04 from the inside, so he might trap her and force her to watch as he enjoyed himself.
Sooner than that, probably, Hampus Bell’s public reconciliation with a maimed dog killer would destroy the man’s credibility for good. His recent betrayal by Kayla had ensured that he would be in the wrong emotional state for the Fiduciary Address. He was about to make a mistake that even a Bell couldn’t fix.
It all seemed too good to be true.
#
Every year, the Fiduciary Address’s details were the same.
Title: “The Great Global Company.”
Time: September 4, 2:00 pm.
Location: Cyril Bell Auditorium, at the southern end of the Headquarters complex.
Topic: An hour and a half of this-number-is-now-that-number. It was always tedious stuff that anyone who mattered already knew.
Pann took a seat in the fourth row. He had made sure to be at the auditorium at one o’clock when it opened, because it was good for his career to have his face seen at the front. The band, forty minutes after the hour, began to play “Work Makes Us Great.” Pann chuckled as a few senescent Z-2s—the sorts of people who would have used wheelchairs, were those not banned from the office—struggled to meet the basic requirement to stand, instead relying on support from their slightly less frail neighbors.
The song’s vocals came in right on time—1:47:15. Pann winced. The singer was always a slender female, but this close up, he could see the workings of her neck—cords, veins, pistons—as she battled the harsh song, and it made her considerably less attractive.
The last chorus ended, and the band quit, at 1:58 and nine seconds. The auditorium fell into sepulchral quietude. The space went dark. The stage-front limelight came on, and Hampus Bell walked out to raucous, obligatory applause.
The Patriarch had ignored Pann’s sartorial suggestions, preferring a black turtleneck, khaki pants, and simple leather shoes. Hampus Bell extended his arms as if embracing the audience, every man all at once. The crowd’s cheers grew louder and louder, then ceased on sight of the man’s outstretched hand.
“Today, I would like to talk to you about family.”
The crowd murmured. No Fiduciary Address had ever begun on such a topic.
“The young may not remember this, but I was married once to a woman named Lysita Bell, born Lysita Kurtz on the nineteenth of August, ’37. She was beautiful, she was intelligent, and she was kind. She was taken away from me too soon—and the true cause of her death has not, until today, been revealed to the public.”
The speaker paused and did his Hampus trick of making promiscuous eye contact so everyone felt directly addressed.
“This Company.” Half a minute of applause followed. “This Great Global Company is, however, my first bride. My best bride? Hard to say. My mood on that one changes by the minute.” The Patriarch paused; the crowd laughed. “I was born in her bosom, and she is my only living bride.” He paced across the stage. “She was my father’s only love. She was my grandfather’s, before that. She has been good to the Bell family.” He paused and smiled. “I can say this: we’ve never been poor.”
The crowd snickered. Ten-grot notes, hand-folded into tiny missiles, soared over the stage and glided to his feet.
The Patriarch drew a deep breath. “No, poor we have never been. My family owns seventy-three percent of this Company. I, personally, own forty-seven. I don’t even know what the thing is worth. Could I sell forty-seven percent of the Global Company? Who would be the buyer?” Laughter came from the seats behind Pann. “You there, how much would you pay for my forty-seven percent of the Global Company? I’ll sell it at half price. What, you can’t afford it? Too bad. See, this is why I’m the Patriarch and you’re you.”
Laughter continued. One of the Z-5s in the back shouted out, “You’re the boss, Hiero Bell!”
“Who has a trillion grot to buy this thing, if that’s even the right number? We can say we’re worth whatever we want—a trillion, a quadrillion, a flumptillion. We own the world. No, that’s not right. We are the world. If stock exchanges still exist, we run them. And the only person in the world who could afford this Great Global Company is…” He pointed his thumbs at his chest. “Me. This guy. Hampus S. Bell. And I have it. Or, I should say, us. We have it. We would be the ones to buy it. Because you are Her. You are the Company. She is mine and I am Her and you are all me.”
“We’re you!” shouted a Z-6 in the back, maybe twenty years old, whose shoulder-padded suit failed to conceal that he was too skinny to be alive. The back rows chanted, “You! You! You!”
“That’s right,” Hampus said. “Believe it, live it, love it.”
Cheers rose. A piece of women’s underwear, tied around a protractor, sailed over Pann’s head, landing on the stage with a clatter.
“Before I was born, I was betrothed to this Great Company, and She to me.”
Pann looked around for others’ reactions. Did they not remember that Hampus had been the least favorite of Smitz’s three sons? No one would say it, of course, but was there not a fellow whose facial expression, at least, confirmed the knowledge?
“Let no man doubt my love for Her, my bride, the Great Global Company!”
Claps and shouts and cheers and stomps rose from the audience. A few shouts of “H’vast Hampus!” came from the crowd.
Hampus Bell continued to speak, but Pann’s eyes drifted to focus on the hooded man pushing an X-shaped crucifix, mounted on a low-wheeled platform, to center stage. Rychard Bell, emaciated and clad in a loincloth, had been bound by wrists and ankles to each of the cross’s limbs. Terror flushed across the son’s face as he realized where had been brought, and recognized the man speaking as his father.
Pann sat up straight; for the first time in decades, there would be a Fiduciary Address worth his attention.
Hampus continued. “My bride, She is sick. This Company is sick! I told you that my wife—my son’s mother—died young. Does anyone care to hazard a guess at the true cause of Lysita’s death?”
The auditorium fell silent. No one stirred.
The Patriarch looked around. “Come on! Guess!”
Pann looked around. No one was dumb enough to respond.
Hampus Bell took out a handkerchief. “My sweet wife, my doting wife...” He patted his eyes. “She died at forty-one of the Company’s mediocrity.” He began to sob. “There’s your answer. I would say, ‘Stop the presses,’ but we own those, and I don’t want that to be taken as an actual order.” He chuckled. “It would cost a lot of money.”
The Patriarch continued; his voice boomed now. “She killed herself, the doctor said. They were focused on mere mechanisms, which led them to miss true causes. She did take her own life, but why? One cause of her death was this Company’s mediocrity, yes.”
He spun the wheeled crucifix around; the stage had been lubricated, so Rychard and it completed six or seven revolutions before coming to a stop.
“The other one is this man, right in front of you—my son, Rychard Bell. I blamed myself for his antics for years. I blamed that I worked too much. I missed signs of Lysita’s nervous distress. I blamed myself for everything, everything, everything! Some of the rumors are true. Lysita did go mad, toward the end. The thought of this worthless boy”—the Patriarch rattled the crucifix, causing Rychard to scream—“being the Fourth Patriarch, well... it sickened her with worry.”
Pann’s quick calculations proved Hampus Bell mendacious—Lysita had died long before he had become Patriarch, so Rychard would have been heir to nothing at the time. Reminding the crowd of the woman’s birthday and age at death hadn’t helped. The Patriarch could be so inconsiderate sometimes—it would take Pann months to re-truth this.
“When Lysita passed, I drove Rychard from our house. I told him that if he ever tried to work for the Company, I’d kill him. I would have done it. Still, I have always blamed myself.” Hampus Bell sobbed. Pann could see by reflected limelight that the tears were real—he regretted teaching his boss the red garlic trick. “I’m so sorry, Lysita, my beautiful wife. I’ll see you on the other—”
Wisely, the Patriarch stopped. The Company still tolerated private belief, if the proper forms were filled out, but public religion was a felony. The official position was that no realm could exist beyond money’s control.
“Must I continue? Must I go on?” With rehearsed vulnerability, the Patriarch looked around. “For the good of the Company, I shall. What ruined my son, Rychard Bell, whom you see before you? What turned my baby boy into a man unfit to inherit this Great Global Company? What caused him to become a dog-killing monster?
“I blame the culture! I blame the world! Most of all, I blame us, and that means I blame myself, for failing to shape a world that, in light of our resources, ought to be so easily cast into whatever form we feel it should take. We have the power to burn every building we haven’t built, and create new ones to replace them, but have we done so? We have not. The world is chaos, my dearest employees, pure chaos. It is a place where men sleep with men and where women sleep with women. It is a place where women work and men dote on children. I can’t even tell the sexes apart anymore!
“The Vehu”—Hampus paused, so the crowd could boo—“the Vehu have this word, ‘vurkt.’ Yvec, my bagel is vurkt and now my son will never be a doctor. What does it mean? Broken. Utterly broken. You might deign to say, seriously fucked.”
The crowd fell silent. It was a historic moment, to hear the Patriarch use profanity.
“That’s right, fucked. Cunted. Shitted. Slut-banged in our gaping-gash lung-holes. Vurkt, vurkt, vurkt. Vurkt by the Vehu! Vurkt by the womanists! Vurkt by the doriyats and the anarchists! Vurkt from within and from without! Vurkt by nyrrits in the jungles of Terosha! Vurkt by witches and mages like this Fay-rissa, and don’t you fucking worry, I’ll talk about her. Vurkt by every corner of the world we don’t own. Vurkt and vurkt again vurkt again by our own mediocrity, of which my rotten son Rychard is an emblem.” He spun the crucifix; it made eleven full circles and then wobbled, nearly falling face forward. Rychard’s face turned green with nausea. Pann had to admit that it was fun to watch the man get sicker and sicker.
“We used to break labor protests. We were so good at that, no one alive remembers workers once had rights. We used to hunt witches to the edge of the world. We used to burn cities of half a million, just to test a new weapon. We did all this, in the good name of Work. What in the name of my son’s cunt do we do now? We sit in our offices and debate whether a ship shall carry two hundred tons of opium and three hundred tons of firearms, or whether it shall carry two hundred and fifty tons of each. What kind of work is that for the best men in the world? What are we, again? We are the…”
A tense minute passed before someone in the back shouted, “The Great Global Company!”
“That’s right. We are the Great fucking Global Company. It’s time we act like it.” Hampus cleared his throat. “Come up here, Kayla.”
Pann recognized the blonde woman’s outfit as a twigging dress. He was glad those were back in fashion; the long stripes lengthened the torso, and the bright colors suggested eagerness for male attention.
Hampus shouted. “This boy, this disappointment, is Lysita Bell’s murderer. Do you dispute this, Rychard?”
“Father, I beg you to stop this.”
“It’s far too late for that. You were ill-made when born, and you’ve worsened each year. You have burn scars on your face.” Hampus poked at the boy’s face, which looked like a block of wax that had been once or twice melted down. “Other places too.” He removed the loincloth. Rychard’s genitals had been so damaged by the fire, one could not tell which sex they belonged to. The crowd exploded in raucous, rolling laughter. Rychard begged for rescue from everyone—from his father, from Kayla, from the audience.
Hampus pointed. “Who set this fire? Who did this?”
One of the Z-4s called out, “Farisa!”
“That’s right! Farisa Lakewind, a dark-skinned witch who didn’t just ruin my son’s body—she ruined his mind too.”
The auditorium fell so silent one could hear Hampus Bell’s footfalls as he paced.
“Where do you think this Fay-rissa is now?”
One of the Z-5s yelled out, “Farisa’s dead, Hiero Bell!”
“She is not!” Hampus punched his own palm, inches from Rychard’s face. The boy screamed. “She’s not dead. This Farisa, who burnt and vurkt my son, got away. She is alive right now. Do you know what she represents, with her dark skin and her magic? Subversion. Chaos. She is not just one damn mage. There are Farisas everywhere.”
By this point, Rychard’s frantic struggles against his shackles had become loud, as if he pester the audience, by noisy clanks, into saving him. The crucifix, still atop a wheeled dolly, swayed a little bit as he did so, but did not fall. The boy’s tied limbs flung themselves about, achieving no freedom. He kept begging, and he seemed to be aging in reverse: his sentences were less structured, his words less differentiated, as the pleading went on, until they were an infantile babble.
Hampus stepped to the stage’s edge. “I speak to the young. We have failed you. The Global Company has left parts of the world unconquered. Not merely unconquered—unmanaged. I promise you, you will be the generation to fix this. We will build ships that float in the air! We will train metal rods to talk to each other, even when miles apart! We will make bombs as powerful as Alma’s eruptions!”
Cheers rose from the audience, back to front, young to old. “The Great Global Company! The Great Global Company!”
Hampus looked at Kayla. “Give me that knife.”
Kayla, after wheeling the crucifix to sit beside the Patriarch, handed him an eight-inch dagger that gleamed in the stagelight.
“There are times to honor the past.” The Patriarch stabbed Rychard in the chest. “There are times to move beyond it.” The boy looked at his wound and shrieked. "We must let go of what has failed!” Blood spurted from the wound as Hampus used his hand to tear it further open. “We must cut away what has proven itself weak!” He stabbed his son again, right under the collarbone, then walked to the edge of the stage and swung the knife overhead, flinging blood into the front rows.
“We will be greater than we were under Smitz!” He stepped back and stabbed Rychard again. “Greater than we were under Cyril!” A fourth stab. “The Great Global Company must be great and we will bring it to its greatest greatness and it will be great indeed!” A fifth stab. “Greatness!” A sixth. “Great fucking greatness!” A seventh. “I love you, Great Global Company!”
Cheers and shouts thundered; Pann lost count of the stabs. Rychard was still able to plead for his life, but mostly through gestures, because his punctured lungs could not produce sound. The boy’s body was now producing so much sweat it glistened even brighter than the knife that had cut it apart, forming a puddle beneath him that did not mix with the blood.
“I belong to the Great Global Company.” Hampus Bell struck a match. “And She belongs to me.”
Pann realized—as the match fell in the puddle beneath Rychard—that it had not been the son’s sweat that was glistening, but condensate flashfire. The world turned orange. Pann’s face stung of heat; he checked the back of his head to be sure no hair had been lost. Rychard convulsed, twisting his body to get every inch of distance he could from the three-story tower of roiling bright death, but it did no good. The boy’s skin blackened and peeled off. His spilling blood was burning, too; Pann could smell the iron.
Shouting and stomping and applause shook the floor. “The Great Global Company! The Great Global Company!”
After a minute of this, Hampus motioned the crowd to be quiet. Kayla doused Rychard’s flaming body with water and checked his charred wrist for a pulse.
“Is he...?”
Kayla said, “He’s gone.”
“Good,” Hampus said. “I finished what Farisa started.”
Silence fell. Pann looked at his neighbors, who kept their gazes forward.
“We’ve been a joke for too long. We paid the mayor of Exmore—his own people used to call him Mayor Munt—fifty stacks for Farisa’s capture. He never delivered. Do you know what it feels like to be taken for fifty thousand grot by a man called Munt? I will not stand for this, and neither should you.
“You have seen me kill my son, Great Global Company. Tell the world that I did this! Say I have become extreme with age. Say that I mean to spend my final decades at the fullest extent of power, because it is true.”
From the crowd: “You’ll never die, Hampus!”
“We are the Great Global Company. What we have, we consume. What we cannot consume, we take. What we cannot take, we destroy. We are the fire that brightens the firmament!”
He paced three rehearsed circles around his freshly deceased son before stopping center stage.
“I now address the matter of Farisa,” he said, with a calm voice, as he faced the audience.
“Since she was born, her existence has been a mockery of me, and of my family, and of this Great Global Company—therefore, a mockery of you, as well. I shall deliver you from bondage. The woman who vurkt my son cannot be suffered to live. Mark these words, Great Global Company. Before the year ‘94 is over, I will have Farisa on this very stage. I will, with fork and knife, tear her delicious brown skin asunder. I will suck the fat and muscle from every part of her body. I will chew the last savory strands of gristle from her bones, which I will then crack to suck out the marrow! I will drink the dread witch’s blood!
“I know where she is. The Far South, the Mountain Road, the edge of the universe. I’ll send my best men. They’ll bring her to me and, on this stage, I will devour her. I will consume her. You, as you are me and I am you, will consume her!”
The auditorium shook, chairs and pillars; Pann worried that this resonance might cause a structural failure. “The Great Global Company! The Great Global Company!”
The sound only rose; it was giving him vertigo, causing his three o’clock nausea to come ahead of schedule.
Hampus returned to a quiet voice. “This is a hard thing for a man to admit. This time a year ago, I was mulling the making of my own quietus. I considered my life’s work complete. Nothing left to do, nothing left to see... a mediocre Patriarch in a mediocre time, whose best gift to the world would be his own exit, done quietly so as to upset the fewest people, though I doubted many would miss me. I had chosen a method, a time, and a date. That, my friends, is the state I was in.”
He extended a hand, palm visible and fingers toward Kayla. “This beautiful angel—this flaxen-haired muse—brought me back from the edge of self-extinction. She said, ‘Hampus Scopotor Bell, you still have a purpose. You have important work to do.’ Kayla, you saved my life. I cannot thank you enough. I love you, Kayla. It’s like you’ve put a new person inside me.”
He removed his black turtleneck, exposing a buttoned white shirt, which he tried to rip open as well, but two of the buttons held fast, lessening the effect, so he just let the torn shirt hang.
“I owe it all to you, Kayla. I feel more alive than ever! I, Hampus Bell, will never die! I am you and you are me and you is us and us are we! We are the Great Global Company! We do not die! We are the clock of the world, and we do not make time to die! The Great Global Company shall last a thousand years!”
The cheering reached a volume that hurt Pann’s ears. Hampus Bell, dagger still in hand, severed a strip of still-red meat from the least-burnt flank of his son’s smoldering corpse and threw it into the crowd before he walked offstage.