Eastern Standard Tribe Read online

/private Junta Agreed. Thanks.

  ##Junta (private) (file transfer)

  ##Received smartcontract from Junta. Verifying. Smartcontract "Representationagreement" verified.

  Trepan: /join #autocounsel

  counselbot: Welcome, Trepan! How can I help you?

  ##Transferring smartcontract "Representation agreement" to counselbot. Receiptconfirmed.

  Trepan: /private counselbot What is the legal standing of this contract?

  ##counselbot (private): Smartcontract "Representation agreement" is an ISOstandard representation agreement between a client and a solicitor for purposesof litigation in the UK.

  ##autocounsel (private) (file transfer)

  ##Received "representation agreement faq uk 2.3.2 2JAN22" from autocounsel.

  Trepan: /join #EST.chatter

  Trepan: /private Junta It's a deal

  ##Transferring key-signed smartcontract "Representation agreement" to Junta.Receipt confirmed.

  Trepan: /quit Gotta go, thanks!

  ##Trepan has left channel #EST.chatter "Gotta go, thanks!"

  5.

  Once the messy business of negotiating EU healthcare for foreign nationals hadbeen sorted out with the EMTs and the Casualty Intake triage, once they'd bothbeen digested and shat out by a dozen diagnostic devices from X-rays to MRIs,once the harried house officers had impersonally prodded them and presented themboth with hardcopy FAQs for their various injuries (second-degree burns, mildshock for Art; pelvic dislocation, minor kidney bruising, broken femur,whiplash, concussion and mandible trauma for Linda), they found themselves inadjacent beds in the recovery room, which bustled as though it, too, wereworking on GMT-5, busy as a 9PM restaurant on a Saturday night.

  Art had an IV taped to the inside of his left arm, dripping saline and tranqs,making him logy and challenging his circadians. Still, he was the more mobile ofthe two, as Linda was swaddled in smartcasts that both immobilized her andmassaged her, all the while osmosing transdermal antiinflammatories andpainkillers. He tottered the two steps to the chair at her bedside and shook herhand again.

  "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like hell," he said.

  She smiled. Her jaw made an audible pop. "Get a picture, will you? It'll be goodin court."

  He chuckled.

  "No, seriously. Get a picture."

  So he took out his comm and snapped a couple pix, including one with nightvisionfilters on to compensate for the dimmed recovery room lighting. "You're a coolcustomer, you know that?" he said, as he tucked his camera away.

  "Not so cool. This is all a coping strategy. I'm pretty shook up, you want toknow the truth. I could have died."

  "What were you doing on the street at three AM anyway?"

  "I was upset, so I took a walk, thought I'd get something to eat or a beer orsomething."

  "You haven't been here long, huh?"

  She laughed, and it turned into a groan. "What the hell is wrong with theEnglish, anyway? The sun sets and the city rolls up its streets. It's not likethey've got this great tradition of staying home and surfing cable or anything."

  "They're all snug in their beds, farting away their lentil roasts."

  "That's it! You can't get a steak here to save your life. Mad cows, all of 'em.If I see one more gray soy sausage, I'm going to kill the waitress and eat*her*."

  "You just need to get hooked up," he said. "Once we're out of here, I'll takeyou out for a genuine blood pudding, roast beef and oily chips. I know a place."

  "I'm drooling. Can I borrow your phone again? Uh, I think you're going to haveto dial for me."

  "That's OK. Give me the number."

  She did, and he cradled his comm to her head. He was close enough to her that hecould hear the tinny, distinctive ringing of a namerican circuit at the otherend. He heard her shallow breathing, heard her jaw creak. He smelled hershampoo, a free-polymer new-car smell, smelled a hint of her sweat. A cord stoodout on her neck, merging in an elegant vee with her collarbone, an arrowpointing at the swell of her breast under her paper gown.

  "Toby, it's Linda."

  A munchkin voice chittered down the line.

  "Shut up, OK. Shut up. Shut. I'm in the hospital." More chipmunk. "Got hit by acar. I'll be OK. No. Shut up. I'll be fine. I'll send you the FAQs. I justwanted to say. . ." She heaved a sigh, closed her eyes. "You know what I wantedto say. Sorry, all right? Sorry it came to this. You'll be OK. I'll be OK. Ijust didn't want to leave you hanging." She sounded groggy, but there was a sobthere, too. "I can't talk long. I'm on a shitload of dope. Yes, it's good dope.I'll call you later. I don't know when I'm coming back, but we'll sort it outthere, all right? OK. Shut up. OK. You too."

  She looked up at Art. "My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Not sure who's leaving who atthis point. Thanks." She closed her eyes. Her eyelids were mauve, a tracery ofpink veins. She snored softly.

  Art set an alarm that would wake him up in time to meet his lawyer, folded uphis comm and crawled back into bed. His circadians swelled and crashed againstthe sides of his skull, and before he knew it, he was out.

  6.

  Hospitals operate around the clock, but they still have their own circadians.The noontime staff were still overworked and harried but chipper and efficient,too, without the raccoon-eyed jitters of the night before. Art and Linda wereefficiently fed, watered and evacuated, then left to their own devices, blinkingin the weak English sunlight that streamed through the windows.

  "The lawyers've worked it out, I think," Art said.

  "Good. Good news." She was dopamine-heavy, her words lizard-slow. Art figuredher temper was drugged senseless, and it gave him the courage to ask her thequestion that'd been on his mind since they'd met.

  "Can I ask you something? It may be offensive."

  "G'head. I may be offended."

  "Do you do. . .this. . .a lot? I mean, the insurance thing?"

  She snorted, then moaned. "It's the Los Angeles Lottery, dude. I haven't done itbefore, but I was starting to feel a little left out, to tell the truth."

  "I thought screenplays were the LA Lotto."

  "Naw. A good lotto is one you can win."

  She favored him with half a smile and he saw that she had a lopsided, left-handdimple.

  "You're from LA, then?"

  "Got it in one. Orange County. I'm a third-generation failed actor. Grandpa oncehad a line in a Hitchcock film. Mom was the ditzy neighbor on a three-episodeFox sitcom in the 90s. I'm still waiting for my moment in the sun. You livehere?"

  "For now. Since September. I'm from Toronto."

  "Canadia! Goddamn snowbacks. What are you doing in London?"

  His comm rang, giving him a moment to gather his cover story. "Hello?"

  "Art! It's Fede!" Federico was another provocateur in GMT. He wasn't exactlyArt's superior -- the tribes didn't work like that -- but he had seniority.

  "Fede -- can I call you back?"

  "Look, I heard about your accident, and I wouldn't have called, but it'surgent."

  Art groaned and rolled his eyes in Linda's direction to let her know that he,too, was exasperated by the call, then retreated to the other side of his bedand hunched over.

  "What is it?"

  "We've been sniffed. I'm four-fifths positive."

  Art groaned again. Fede lived in perennial terror of being found out and exposedas an ESTribesman, fired, deported, humiliated. He was always at leastthree-fifths positive, and the extra fifth was hardly an anomaly. "What's upnow?"

  "It's the VP of HR at Virgin/Deutsche Telekom. He's called me in for a meetingthis afternoon. Wants to go over the core hours recommendation." Fede was aMcKinsey consultant offline, producing inflammatory recommendation packages forFortune 100 companies. He was working the lazy-Euro angle, pushing for extradaycare, time off for sick relatives and spouses. The last policy binder he'ddumped on V/DT had contained enough obscure leave-granting clauses that anemployee who was sufficiently lawyer-minded could conceivably claim 450 days ofpaid leave a year. Now he was pushing for th
e abolishment of "core hours,"Corporate Eurospeak for the time after lunch but before afternoon naps wheneveryone showed up at the office, so that they could get some face-time. Enoughof this, and GMT would be the laughingstock of the world, and so caught up ininternecine struggles that the clear superiority of the stress-feeding EST ethoswould sweep them away. That was the theory, anyway. Of course, there were rivalTribalists in every single management consulting firm in the world workingagainst us. Management consultants have always worked on old-boys' networks,after all -- it was a