36 Green Unicorn

I'm pretty sure that Hector ran off and informed on us to Sergeant Alvarez on the same night I killed Psi, just as soon as he was out of my sight. He didn't tell the man about Jaida or there would have been more problems on that front, but he must have told him everything else.

The sergeant was usually in the yard once a day, long enough to check on his liaisons and find out if there had been any problems. Suddenly, he was spending half his time there. He lingered in the common rooms and in the cafeteria, watching the place and listening in on conversations. Like everyone else, he chose to be complicit rather than look too closely. My guess was that, as long as I had some deniability and we kept doing our jobs, he was willing to leave the entire matter to me.

Inspectors came and went, a different greenie every week, and not a single one of them asked where Psi had gone. I gave them summaries of our progress in three sentences or less, handed over a report, and they wandered around the area for a bit. Then, they left. The greenies weren't even giving us their usual brand of random trouble any more, and that was the oddest change of all.

I didn't have a real conversation with anyone from outside the Yard for some weeks. Finally, Green Unicorn showed up one inspection day, his white Accountability Officer helmet and white gloves marking the occasion as a special visit. We sat in the director's office, just the two of us, and he took off his helmet. Underneath the leering unicorn was a head of brown and gray hair, and a thin face with a fussy mustache sporting waxed tips. He looked more like a card shark out of a western movie than a trusted operative of a king.

"It's impossible to have a proper conversation through that thing," he told me, accepting a glass of ice water. We produced surplus electricity at that point, as we whittled down the Denver zombie population to test our gas plants and generators. So, ice was a thing again, at least in our compound. Air conditioning was limited to the infirmaries, because New Kingdom had so many other places to spend its power budget. But once a day you could have ice in your drink, and it felt like you had won a prize.

"Do you know the west plains mega-shamble?" he asked me.

"I know what I've read. It's supposed to be two million strong."

"This year it's going to pass through Strasburg."

I had never heard of the town. "Where is Strasburg?"

"Nowhere," quipped Green Unicorn, "but nowhere is about twenty-five miles or so east of our fair metropolis."

"How soon?" I asked, a little nervously, because I knew where the conversation was going.

"Should arrive in three weeks. That's your demonstration."

"Shit." Two million zombies, on a wide open plain.

"Your reports say the machine works," Green Unicorn reminded me, "so what's the problem?"

"The problem is traffic control. I usually set up in natural chokepoints where mobs are easy to control, but you're putting me on the plains. I have to get out there and survey the area, figure out where to set up. We need water, flat land, and we have to mount a lot of antennas. It would be great if we had a spur line, too. Three weeks isn't enough time!"

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"You're not going anywhere, E. I've already misplaced one director on this project, and I can't lose another. You stay here until demo day." He handed me a cardboard tube, the kind architects use to transport drawings. "The army is already on it. Here's a detailed site map, with proposed layouts. They've gotten pretty good at containing and directing zombies. If you want changes, you have to tell me by tomorrow at noon. Otherwise, they're going to pour the footings in all the wrong places."

"Thanks for the advance warning." I couldn't help but grimace. Maybe that's why he took off his helmet: to get more honest reactions out of me. "We'll go over it tonight."

"And don't forget the special observation car for Father and his entourage."

"The car looks great. We're adding some extra defensive measures, so he can ride around wherever he wants and not have to worry about zombies. Is that what we're calling him this week? Father?"

"That's what Father says, so that's what we're doing. Speaking of which, Father asked me why Psi would run off like he did. I didn't have a solid answer for him."

I pulled Psi's ledger of bribes from my desk. "Do you remember all the inventory we discovered was missing? Apparently he was paying it all in bribes to ministers and army officers. I don't know if you want to do anything with that information or not, but if he thought he was about to be found out then it would explain why he bolted the way he did."

Green Unicorn, who had yet to give me any other name, spared a couple of minutes to browse the ledger. I watched the pointed ends of his mustache twitch as he recognized names. I knew a few of them were ministers, but I didn't know most of them. From Green Unicorn's reactions, I guess they had significance to him.

"And you had nothing to do with Psi's disappearance?"

"No. I didn't even know he was gone," I lied, "until I read his letter."

I can hide amid a passing horde, with only a space blanket to protect me. If I can do that, then lying to a man who can end me on a whim isn't as hard as you might think.

"He was no great loss, actually." I waved at the door, indicating the anteroom where Tamala did the real work of running the compound. "Tamala's been doing his work since they got here. I kept her on, because I don't waste talent."

"She's late for her motherhood knot," he warned.

"Because Psi was selfish and impotent. I'm neither. She's had her pick of men since he left, and she has not been shy about taking the ones she wants. She's at it three times a day. Murati thinks she'll test positive in a few more days."

Green Unicorn looked at me, suspiciously. Like something was out of place.

"What is it?"

"You're not performing that duty yourself? No offense to Sandy, she's adorable, but Tamala is a true beauty. Yet you farm her out to other men to impregnate."

"I don't farm her out," I objected, "I allow her to choose."

"But you could do it yourself if you wanted. You don't, because you're besotted with your girl."

"I think besotted is a little unfair," I protested, joking, "I'm old fashioned."

"You care about her, Psi interfered with her, and suddenly he's gone."

"The yard is better off without him, whatever the cause," I insisted, waving the map tube around. "We're on the verge of deploying the first stack, the culmination of months of hard work by dozens of people. He's not here to mess it up, and that's a good thing."

Green Unicorn rose, donning his gloves and helmet. "Ensure the VIP car is as impressive as the demo," he said in his hollow greenie voice, "and there won't be any problems."

The design crew were up all night, reviewing the Strasburg layout and working the math behind it all. Would the water system provide enough for two stacks? How much room did we need for traffic control? How many people were required to run the system? Did the army allocate enough space for the gas storage? Were the footings thick enough as planned? The questions seemed endless, but by morning we had annotated the plans with our concerns, and drawn up alternate ones. Since I was forbidden from leaving Imperial Yard until demo day, I assigned Helen to supervise the installation. Out of all of us, she had the most experience with such things. The rest of us just had to keep modding shipping containers, be ready in time.