Eastern Standard Tribe Read online

very short step from interning your frat buddy tointerning your Tribesman.

  "That's it? A meeting? Jesus, it's just a meeting. He probably wants you toreassure him before he presents to the CEO, is all."

  "No, I'm sure that's not it. He's got us sniffed -- both of us. He's been goingthrough the product-design stuff, too, which is totally outside of hisbailiwick. I tried to call him yesterday and his voicemail rolled over to aboardroom in O'Malley House." O'Malley House was the usability lab, a nice oldrow of connected Victorian townhouses just off Picadilly. It was where Artconsulted out of. Also, two-hundred-odd usability specialists, productdesigners, experience engineers, cog-psych cranks and other tinkerers with themind. They were the hairface hackers of Art's generation, unmanageable creativedarlings -- no surprise that the VP of HR would have cause to spend a littleface-time with someone there. Try telling Fede that, though.

  "All right, Fede, what do you want me to do?"

  "Just -- Just be careful. Sanitize your storage. I'm pushing a new personal keyto you now, too. Here, I'll read you the fingerprint." The key would be anunimaginably long string of crypto-gibberish, and just to make sure that itwasn't intercepted and changed en route, Fede wanted to read him a slightly lesslong mathematical fingerprint hashed out of it. Once it arrived, Art wassupposed to generate a fingerprint from Fede's new key and compare it to the onethat Fede wanted him to jot down.

  Art closed his eyes and reclined. "All right, I've got a pen," he said, thoughhe had no such thing.

  Fede read him the long, long string of digits and characters and he repeatedthem back, pretending to be noting them down. Paranoid bastard.

  "OK, I got it. I'll get you a new key later today, all right?"

  "Do it quick, man."

  "Whatever, Fede. Back off, OK?"

  "Sorry, sorry. Oh, and feel better, all right?"

  "Bye, Fede."

  "What was *that*?" Linda had her neck craned around to watch him.

  He slipped into his cover story with a conscious effort. "I'm a user-experienceconsultant. My coworkers are all paranoid about a deadline."

  She rolled her eyes. "Not another one. God. Look, we go out for dinner, don'tsay a word about the kerb design or the waiter or the menu or the presentation,OK? OK? I'm serious."

  Art solemnly crossed his heart. "Who else do you know in the biz?"

  "My ex. He wouldn't or couldn't shut up about how much everything sucked. He wasright, but so what? I wanted to enjoy it, suckitude and all."

  "OK, I promise. We're going out for dinner, then?"

  "The minute I can walk, you're taking me out for as much flesh and entrails as Ican eat."

  "It's a deal."

  And then they both slept again.

  7.

  Met cute, huh? Linda was short and curvy, dark eyes and pursed lips and anhourglass figure that she thought made her look topheavy and big-assed, but Ithought she was fabulous and soft and bouncy. She tasted like pepper, and herhair smelled of the abstruse polymers that kept it hanging in a brusque bob thatbrushed her firm, long jawline.

  I'm getting a sunburn, and the pebbles on the roof are digging into my ass. Idon't know if I'm going to push the pencil or not, but if I do, it's going to besomewhere more comfortable than this roof.

  Except that the roof door, which I had wedged open before I snuck away from myattendants and slunk up the firecode-mandated stairwell, is locked. The smallcairn of pebbles that I created in front of it has been strewn apart. It islocked tight. And me without my comm. Ah, me. I take an inventory of my person:a pencil, a hospital gown, a pair of boxer shorts and a head full of bad cess. Iam 450' above the summery, muggy, verdant Massachusetts countryside. It is veryhot, and I am turning the color of the Barbie aisle at FAO Schwartz, a kind oflabial pink that is both painful and perversely cheerful.

  I've spent my life going in the back door and coming out the side door. That'sthe way it is now. When it only takes two years for your job to morph intosomething that would have been unimaginable twenty-four months before, it's notreally practical to go in through the front door. Not really practical to getthe degree, the certification, the appropriate experience. I mean, even if youwent back to university, the major you'd need by the time you graduated would bein a subject that hadn't been invented when you enrolled. So I'm good at backdoors and side doors. It's what the Tribe does for me -- provides me withentries into places where I technically don't belong. And thank God for them,anyway. Without the Tribes, *no one* would be qualified to do *anything* worthdoing.

  Going out the side door has backfired on me today, though.

  Oh. Shit. I peer over the building's edge, down into the parking lot. The carsare thinly spread, the weather too fine for anyone out there in the real worldto be visiting with their crazy relatives. Half a dozen beaters are parked downthere, methane-breathers that the ESTalists call fartmobiles. I'd been drivingsomething much the same on that fateful Leap Forward day in London. I leftsomething out of my inventory: pebbles. The roof is littered, covered with alayer of gray, round riverstones, about the size of wasabi chickpeas. No onedown there is going to notice me all the way up here. Not without that I givethem a sign. A cracked windshield or two ought to do it.

  I gather a small pile of rocks by the roof's edge and carefully take aim. I haveto be cautious. Careful. A pebble dropped from this height -- I remember thestories about the penny dropped from the top of the CN Tower that sunk sixinches into the concrete below.

  I select a small piece of gravel and carefully aim for the windshield of alittle blue Sony Veddic and it's bombs away. I can only follow the stone'sprogress for a few seconds before my eyes can no longer disambiguate it from thesurrounding countryside. What little I do see of its trajectory isdisheartening, though: the wind whips it away on an almost horizontal parabola,off towards Boston. Forgetting all about Newton, I try lobbing and then hurlingthe gravel downward, but it gets taken away, off to neverneverland, and thewindscreens remain whole.

  I go off to prospect for bigger rocks.

  You know the sort of horror movie where the suspense builds and builds andbuilds, partially collapsed at regular intervals by something jumping out andyelling "Boo!" whereupon the heroes have to flee, deeper into danger, and thetension rises and rises? You know how sometimes the director just doesn't knowwhen to quit, and the bogeymen keep jumping out and yelling boo, the wobblybridges keep on collapsing, the small arms fire keeps blowing out more windowsin the office tower?

  It's not like the tension goes away -- it just get boring. Boring tension. Youknow that the climax is coming soon, that any minute now Our Hero will face downthe archvillain and either kick his ass or have his ass kicked, the whole worldriding on the outcome. You know that it will be satisfying, with much explosionsand partial nudity. You know that afterward, Our Hero will retire to thespace-bar and chill out and collect kisses from the love interest and that we'llall have a moment to get our adrenals back under control before the hand popsout of the grave and we all give a nervous jump and start eagerly anticipatingthe sequel.

  You just wish it would *happen* already. You just wish that the little climacescould be taken as read, that the director would trust the audience to know thatOur Hero really does wade through an entire ocean of shit en route to the finalshowdown.

  I'm bored with being excited. I've been betrayed, shot at, institutionalized andstranded on the roof of a nuthouse, and I just want the fucking climax to comeby and happen to me, so that I can know: smart or happy.

  I've found a half-brick that was being used to hold down the tar paper around anexhaust-chimney. I should've used that to hold the door open, but it's way thehell the other side of the roof, and I'd been really pleased with my littlepebbly doorstop. Besides, I'm starting to suspect that the doorjamb didn't fail,that it was sabotaged by some malevolently playful goon from the sanatorium. Anobject lesson or something.

  I heft the brick. I release the brick. It falls, and falls, and falls, and hitsthe little blue fartmobile square on the trunk,
punching a hole through thecheap aluminum lid.

  And the fartmobile explodes. First there is a geyser of blue flame as the tank'spuncture wound jets a stream of ignited assoline skyward, and then it blows backinto the tank and *boom*, the fartmobile is in one billion shards, rising like aparachute in an updraft. I can feel the heat on my bare, sun-tender skin, evenfrom this distance.

  Explosions. Partial nudity. Somehow, though, I know that this isn't the climax.

  8.

  Linda didn't like to argue -- fight: yes, argue: no. That was going to be aproblem, Art knew, but when you're falling in love, you're able to rationalizeall kinds of things.

  The yobs who cornered them on the