Black Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

pressed a stud on the side, and a SmokeSucker appeared, standing at his side. The SmokeSucker image was in the form of a life-sized, transparent, attractive, skimpily dressed Latino-Asian woman, smiling sweetly, her shape conforming to the magnetic field projected by the cigarette case. The SmokeSucker bent over, opened her mouth suggestively, and sucked the smoke from his cigarette and his exhalation, drawing it into a single stream, and then into her body. The smoke swirled inside the field-hologram, bottled like a soul in a body; when he was done smoking the image would blow the particulates into the compression chamber in the back of the cigarette case. Bulwer stared at the SmokeSucker, licking his lips, his eyes glazing.
    Grist shook his head and sighed, but let it stand, though he found the shapely SmokeSucker distracting.
    “That smoke sucker thing is really tacky,” Claire said, looking more disgusted than offended.
    Hoffman’s smart-chair changed shape as he leaned back into it. “So. Let’s get on with it. A few observations ... One : You, Grist, introduced us to the semblant process–”
    “To the great profit of our shareholders,” Grist interrupted complacently. “And Slakon thrives on pleasing its shareholders.”
    “ Two : Some of our semblant programs have been compromised, quite probably copied,” Hoffman went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “They copied Yatsumi’s semblant program, so I understand—Claire’s, Alvarez’s, Bulwer’s—someone’s copied their semblants out of me-trix databases ... Three : You have the only ‘ware that could make use of these encoded me-trixes–”
    “That’s a naive assumption,” said Grist. “Someone’s always a step ahead of us, somewhere. Some hacker, some roaming coffee shop Bedouin.” ‘Coffee-shop Bedouin’ was an outmoded term but Grist had always liked the sound of it. “Obviously someone else wanted your semblants. And, humiliating and embarrassing as it is for me to even have to say this: I really don’t have the faintest possible motive–”
    “Yes, truly, my friends,” Alvarez said, his voice a little muffled by the cigarette—Alvarez was one of those annoying people, Grist noticed, who liked to talk without taking their smokes out of their mouth. Possibly it was Old Time Movie damage. “This is not appropriate, to make accusations based on ... on supposition.”
    “I must agree, it is inappropriate,” Yatsumi said, in his clipped intonation.
    “I’ve been in this business too long,” Hoffman said, “to kiss anyone’s hind-parts. You two may do it for me, if you like.”
    Yatsumi stiffened; Alvarez coughed.
    “As to motive,” Hoffman continued, “if you have our semblants, Grist, you have us, in a way. Which might eliminate, well, so many inconveniences—like opinions which diverge from your own.”
    “Oh, for—this really is outrageous, Hoffman,” Claire PointOne said, looking wistfully at Alvarez’s cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in years, but one never entirely lost the craving. “Unless ... in the unlikely event you have some definite evidence ...”
    “Perhaps I do,” Hoffman said. “Perhaps I’m going to play the proverbial cards close to the proverbial vest.”
    Grist shook his head, chuckling. “You’re suggesting I’ve stolen your semblants and I’m going to use them for some shady purpose? We haven’t always been simpatico, Hoffman, but—that’s sort of pitiful, really. Even ... diagnosably paranoid.”
    “Paranoia is a skill,” Hoffman said firmly, unruffled. “Since I led the vote to have your finances frozen during the multioptions audit—well, we’ve had to resort to mediators three times, you and I, on three separate issues. And I suspect you’re through mediating.” He stood. “If the rest of you wish to be used in this way—that is your own affair. Up to a point.”
    He walked out of the boardroom, followed by Grist’s snort of derision, ten voices of objection, and one muffled