hurry. He swallowed and headed to the right around the curve.
Halfway around the circle he met Jim’s executive secretary, Helga, a broad, brunette, smiling woman of the reassuringly motherly type, carrying a sheaf of folders. “Morning, Helga,” Dev said. “What mood’s the boss in today?”
She gave Dev a warning look. “Not the best, Dev,” she said. “Not the worst I’ve ever seen him—but the markets aren’t taking last night’s little escapade very well. He’s been on TV three times already this morning, so you can imagine . . .”
“Oh, God,” Dev said. It wasn’t just the television appearances; it was also the fact that Jim was allergic to pancake makeup. He would be stoking up on antihistamines even now. “Great, well, I’d better go get it over with . . .”
“For certain values of ‘over,’ ” Helga said. She continued on her way.
Dev kept on around the circle until he came to the open double doors. They were paired slabs of clear glass, rolled sideways for the moment over the electively frosted glass of the inner walls of Jim’s main office, which reached around a quarter of the circle on this level. Dev went in the front door, saw no one manning Helga’s desk for the moment, and went on to the left and around to the more private, completely frosted-glass area that screened Jim’s desk at the moment. That screening itself was not a great sign, as Jim normally left his glass clear when business was proceeding as usual: he didn’t blank it until he was feeling stressed. And there were bright lights in there. He actually let them into his office to shoot? Dev thought. That’s unusual. After all, there was a teleconferencing and video management suite a little farther around the Ring.
Dev sighed, knocked on the door. It slid open in front of him.
There was only one desk in Jim’s private office, unusual for a man who had about six of them in his virtual space, every one piled high with work and business from different parts of the Omnitopian economy. The real-world desk was ebony plate glass, with a four foot wide computer desktop embedded in it. Behind the desk sat Jim, leaning over the desktop on his elbows and glaring at it balefully. He had his jacket off, and there was a napkin stuck in his shirt collar to protect it from the pancake makeup.
“Late breakfast?” Dev said.
Jim glanced up at him, gestured at the chair beside him on his side of the desk. “Breakfast?” he said. “I’ll have that tomorrow.”
“Mirabel would lecture you about your blood sugar . . .” Dev said as he came around, and the door slid shut behind him. “What’s with the lights? Who was in here?”
“MSNBC,” Jim said. “Their morning lady.”
“Not a good interview, I take it,” Dev said. He looked at the desktop, which was covered with jittering graphs—the live goings-on of some ten or fifteen stock markets around the world, each window popping up to the fore as it saw some piece of action that Jim had wanted to be alerted about.
“Not the best, no,” Jim said, and sighed. “I wanted to catch you before your morning appointments kicked in. Especially the Time journalist.”
“Oh?”
Jim pushed back from the desk a little. “She’s been a busy little bee,” he said.
“Too many uncomfortable questions?”
“Not in so many words. But Tau’s people tell me that some of the questions she’s been asking staff have been interesting.”
“About the attack?”
“Yes, and other matters,” Jim said. “Security-based stuff. In particular, some people who were instructed to do so have fed her some disinformation so that we can see where it pops up. But it’s not material that would make good reading in Time, at least in terms of consumer interest.”
“Okay,” Dev said. “So I should do what about this?”
“Just know about it. She’s going to want to know what part you played in the response to the attack yesterday. Keep it general. In particular, she knows about your ‘rescue.’ She’s been told you were put in that particular virtual spot on purpose, to draw the attack that way.”
“She’ll be suspecting I wasn’t, though,” Dev said.
“I don’t see how she couldn’t be,” Jim said. “Anyway, Tau asked me to tell you please not to screw up the company backstory with one of your I-Cannot-Tell-A-Lie moments, as he has reasons for wanting to keep that story in place at the moment.”
“Where is he, anyway?”
“Asleep,” Jim said. “For a few hours, anyway. For a hacker, he’s