When Good Plans Go Bad, page 8
part #2 of DimWorld Series
“What if we… recruited… more help?” Macalister tried to sound halting, but casual, as if he weren’t sure of himself or his idea. This was the dangerous bit, the part that could change the game. It was also the hardest part for Macalister to deliver, as making himself sound vulnerable went against every fiber of his being, and was something he had absolutely no experience with. Gage stopped and stared at him, and Macalister turned to face him.
“Are you- are you suggesting that we go capture some more slaves?”
Macalister looked down at his feet for a moment, then out at the cacao grove beside them. “I’m tossing ideas out there, and we’re discussing them,” he said carefully. “That’s all. I just want your opinion.”
He could feel Gage’s eyes on him, probing, and he was afraid he’d overplayed it. Collecting their own slaves was a serious violation of protocol, of course, and Gage would be naturally opposed to the idea of breaking major company rules. Maybe he should have mentioned the gold again, a little retirement reminder of why they were having this discussion. No, Gage was motivated by principles and ideas more than money. It made him much harder to manipulate. Macalister took a breath, ready to laugh off the idea as a ridiculous joke, when Gage finally spoke.
“We don’t have enough guards to do that.” Gage shook his head. “Nowhere near enough. I mean, we need twenty-five guys to keep things under control here, which would only give us thirteen to go do that. If somebody got hurt or killed in the process, we’d be in serious trouble.”
Macalister nodded thoughtfully, his face calm, while on the inside he was jumping for joy, fist pumping in celebration. The bait had been taken. Now he had to set the hook. Carefully, ever so carefully, as if he had just thought of the idea, he countered Gage’s point. “Maybe we could put all the slaves in the warehouse and keep them locked down with three or four guys.”
There was a moment of stillness as Gage absorbed the statement. Beyond the plantation wall in the jungle, a monkey screamed shrilly, startling a few birds into flight.
“Yeah, I didn’t think about that,” Gage admitted. He gave Macalister a sideways glance. “Have you thought about asking DimCorp for more help? I mean, hell, even if we were able to add more workers without losing anyone, we’d have too many to handle with the number of guards that we have now. They’ve already proved that once.”
Anger flashed through him like a bolt of lightning at the reminder of his failure, but he quashed it immediately. They had momentum going in this discussion, and he wasn’t about to lose it now. Success was only a hair’s breadth away. He needed Gage to trust him and feel like he was taking Gage into his confidence. Gage wasn’t stupid, and he would be quick to realize it if Macalister tried to fool him with bullshit. This was a critical response, the logic that would either convince Gage to abandon his commitment to DimCorp’s rulebook, or sound the alarm and bring in the DimCorp brass. Macalister was all in, and it was time to show his cards.
“Gage, I know you’ve got aspirations. Hell, I do too. It’s guys like us that make the world go around. So, I’m going to give you some insight on how to make it in this business.” He looked around, as if confirming that they had the grove to themselves.
“Here’s what they don’t teach you in the Academy. There’re two kinds of leaders. There’s guys like you that walk around with the rulebook, doing exactly what they’re told, and then there’s cowboys like me that find ways to innovate and get the most out of a situation. You follow me?”
“Yes, boss.”
“The Academy is a goddamn factory for rulebook guys. They need lots of them, because that’s who runs the show down on the lower levels. So, if that’s the kind of career aspirations you’ve got, then that’s fine. But if you want to climb the ladder, you’ve got to learn how to be a cowboy.”
Gage nodded. “I see what you’re saying, boss, but I didn’t think you wanted me to be a cowboy. You’re pretty critical of how I do things, as it is.”
Macalister knew he was edging out on thin ice, here. He’d been berating Gage for years about the way he did things, and it was a topic that got them both fired up. Right now, he needed to be calm and not attack, no matter how bad he wanted to pick Gage up and shake him and tell him all the things he was doing wrong. He pictured the golden goblet, the one thing that could bring him down when he needed it, and focused on the feeling it brought him.
“Under my command, I want you to be a rulebook guy, yes. But in the grand scheme of things, I want you to be on the cowboy team. Rulebook guys consult the book to know what to do. Cowboys make decisions. You see the difference?”
Gage’s eyes lifted, and Macalister knew he had gotten through. He kept the smile off his face, and let Gage commit himself to Team Macalister.
“I think I do,” Gage said. “We need to show the brass that we can exceed expectations without asking them for help; show them how independent and resourceful we are.”
“Exactly,” Macalister said, clapping him on the shoulder with a grin. “If you can take the project and the resources they assign you and double its output on your own, you show them you can handle bigger projects, more responsibility. That’s how you get noticed. We just have to figure out the smartest way to handle the situation.”
He watched Gage out of the corner of his eye as he pretended to look out across the cacao grove. Gage looked down. He was clearly thinking hard, and Macalister stood in silence, waiting. The worst of it was over, and somehow, he had pulled it off. He should have realized sooner that Gage would respond to career advancement more than retirement money. He was young, and retirement was too far away to be important. Either way, they had gotten there.
It felt like a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Now that Gage was on board, the gold was safe, and there would be more coming. He had time to breathe, and prepare for his exit, rather than rushing through it, trying to dodge a swinging axe.
“So, I think the best bet would be to try to recapture the rest of the Bribri, huh?” Gage swatted a fly away from his face as he looked up. “I mean, they already know the work, and they speak the language.”
“That’s the upside,” Macalister said. “The downside is that they got away with revolting once already. That might make them harder to force back into the system.” The breeze kicked up for a moment, whispering through the leaves and cooling the sweat on his neck.
“We might be able to get them to come back voluntarily,” Gage said. “If we give them the choice to avoid an armed invasion, they just might take it. I mean, we do have half their tribe as bargaining power.”
Macalister was rocked by the suggestion. His first impulse was to scoff at it, but he had to admit that it was worth looking at. They could undoubtedly break Viho by threatening to torture the slaves that were on the inside of the plantation. Viho was an old pussy, vulnerable because of his emotional attachment to everyone, and taking him a box with some child’s amputated ears in it would probably be enough for him to line up the whole village and march them through the front gate. A box of hands would be even more effective, but it would make the kid useless as a worker. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
Macalister took a few steps down the road, forcing Gage to follow. “You might just have something there, Gage, you just might.”
Gage smiled faintly, his hands clasped behind his back. “Is that the cowboy thinking you were looking for?”
Macalister laughed, surprised by the question. “It’s a good start.” He turned to face Gage. “I need you to be on board with me. I can’t do this without you. Are you with me?”
Gage looked him in the eye earnestly. “I’m with you, boss.”
Macalister clapped him on the shoulder again. “Let’s go eat some supper. We’ll sit down and figure out a plan in a few days, once the trade run gets back.”
Macalister felt good about the conversation. Putting Gage in charge of the slave-gathering project would give him a sense of ownership. Once he had spearheaded a slave capture, he would be invested in it, and there would be no turning back.
His spirits lifted as they walked back to camp, and he felt better than he had in weeks. DimCorp might think they were running this show again, but there was only one sheriff in this town, and his name was Vincent Motherfucking Macalister.
Chapter 8
Morgan Gage played the bizarre conversation over in his mind as they returned to camp. Macalister was clearly trying to coerce him, and it involved violating DimCorp rules in a big way. All the fatherly mentoring talk was so out of character that Macalister might as well have been holding a sign that said I’m trying to screw you over. Capturing slaves without corporate authorization was a huge no-no. There was no way to hide a doubled workforce from the corporate auditors. Even if this whole crazy scheme worked, it was a very short-term thing. They would get caught at some point, and it would end his career. Why would Macalister even consider it?
The most obvious thing that came to mind was that Macalister wasn’t playing a long-term game. He had to know he couldn’t get away with it for more than a year or two. That meant he was planning to get out before it blew up in his face. And since he hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving, he was probably hoping to leave Gage standing there holding the bag. Interesting. Was this about the gold, or was there something more that he was missing? He needed time to think it out.
“I’m going to stop off at the outhouse, boss. I’ll catch up with you later.” Gage tried to act nonchalant and gave Macalister a little wave as he turned off the road at the edge of camp.
“Alright.” Macalister walked on without even looking at him.
Everything was happening way too fast. Sure, he had been horrified at the way Macalister ran this camp from the day he got here, but as the new kid fresh out of college, it was hard to know whether it was just the difference between academia and the real world, or if Macalister was actually doing things that DimCorp wouldn’t approve of. He had learned a lot in his few years here, though, and he was confident that Macalister was wrong, but with the DimGate being out of service, he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. That was tough, and out of desperation in the last year, he had begun talking about it to Keme. He might be a slave, but Keme was still a strong leader, and he understood the dynamics of good communication. Still, there was a big difference between acknowledging a leadership problem, and going over your boss’s head to Corporate and accusing him of gross misconduct.
Up until this point, he really hadn’t even committed himself to reporting Macalister. He fantasized about it, and it had definitely been a mistake to share that dream with Keme, but now he found himself in the awkward position of either going through with it immediately, or violating his own code of ethics and the company code of conduct. All this in a matter a day.
He stood beside the outhouse until Macalister was out of sight, and then made his way to his quarters. He needed to formulate a plan, and he didn’t want any distractions while he was thinking. The weight of his future was crushing him, making him painfully aware of what was in the balance.
He slipped in the door of the barracks and walked to the far end. He had a private room away from the main floor, and while it didn’t afford him a lot of privacy, something was better than nothing. He closed the door and stretched out on his bunk, making sure that his boots were hanging off the end.
What would it mean if he went along with Macalister? Could he justify that to himself? After all, he would be following the orders of his superior officer. Would DimCorp buy that if they found out what was going on, or would he end up in jail along with Macalister? Assuming Macalister didn’t manage to execute his escape strategy, of course. There was still that angle to consider.
The idea of going to jail jolted him. Was that really a possibility? Gathering slaves was considered a high-risk operation, and DimCorp had specially-trained teams that did that. They also left a security detail in place for a few months after such an operation to protect the camp from a retaliation strike. If they tried to gather more slaves on their own and something went wrong, they would be buried under the company jail. Well, assuming they were still alive. Shit.
What was the worst-case scenario? If they did have to resort to violence to get the rest of the Bribri back in the plantation, and that was a reasonable assumption, then it was fair to assume that they would lose a few guards in the process. Say five, as a conservative estimate. If he woke up one day a year from now, and Macalister and his room full of gold were gone, he would have to explain everything to DimCorp when they showed up. How they had turned five hundred slaves into a thousand, why guards had died without being reported to headquarters, where Macalister had gone, why he hadn’t said anything to Corporate about it at any point. The very thought made him want to throw up.
If he were to try to turn Macalister in, how would that go? DimCorp was just as susceptible to politics as anyplace else. He really didn’t know Macalister’s supervisor, Ocklin, or what their relationship was like. Ocklin hadn’t shown up here since the Gate came back on, so there was that. Still, it was risky. If Ocklin sided with Macalister, which he might, considering he hadn’t actually done anything yet other than stockpile some gold and try to run his chocolate business on the sly, then Gage could kiss his career goodbye.
On the other hand, if Ocklin did see that Macalister had gone rogue, it would make sense for him to remove Macalister, and maybe even put Gage in charge. That would give him the power to make things better, and run the camp the way it should be run. In that scenario, Bader would be a problem. Bader would be liable to kill him in his sleep for turning Macalister in. He would have to be dealt with right away.
There were just too many unknowns, and not enough time to figure them out. The first problem of turning Macalister in would be the physical logistics of it. Macalister’s computer kept track of every user ID that was used to activate the DimGate. If he checked the log and saw that Gage had crossed to the Genesis Dimension without permission, how would he explain that?
Permission: that was the key. He needed a plausible excuse to go over there with Macalister’s knowledge. Could he put in for vacation? No, not with all the stuff that he was supposed to be getting done, that wouldn’t get approved. What if he feigned an illness and had to go to the medical treatment center? That might work. He sat up, swinging his feet off the side of the bed.
Once he got to DimCorp headquarters, he could go to the human resources department and talk to someone about the situation. That would be safer than going straight to Ocklin. Yes, that’s exactly what he would do.
He stretched his arms overhead with a smile. The weight of indecision was lifted from his shoulders, and he felt good about his plan. Now it would just be a matter of timing and putting it into action. He had until the next trade convoy to get sick enough to warrant a trip to the MTC. He’d better start putting on a show now. He stood up and headed for the mess hall.
Chapter 9
Quentin and Eissa sat on the front porch of Viho’s house, along with Viho and Tahki Ana. They were eating baked fish and roasted vegetables, which they had helped harvest from the community garden earlier that afternoon.
“This is amazing,” Eissa said around a mouthful of potatoes. “If I had paid $20 for this, I’d feel like I was robbing you.”
Tahki Ana smiled with a questioning look on her face. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Money isn’t really a thing around here,” Quentin said. “The reference doesn’t work in a moneyless society.”
He swallowed some water and tried to come up with a simple explanation of money. It was harder than he expected. Discussing the economy with Eissa proved to be challenging at times, and she knew all about money. Getting it down to a few sentences for someone who had no basis for comparison? It was far too complicated. While he was thinking, his attention was drawn to a figure running up the street on the far side of the square.
“I think that’s Mazik,” Viho said. “Why would he be back so soon, I wonder? And where are Bob and Tocho? He should not have left them out there alone.”
The runner stumbled as he entered the square, falling to the ground in a heap. He pushed himself up slowly, and every movement displayed a combination of exhaustion and determination. Quentin set his plate down and stood up, watching. A bad feeling crept into his gut, killing his appetite.
“It is Mazik,” Tahki Ana said, rising to stand beside him. “Something’s wrong.”
The four of them ran across the yard, and Viho caught Mazik as he stumbled again. He bent down and lifted Mazik onto his shoulder, and carried him back to the porch.
“Hold the curtain back,” he commanded. Eissa ran ahead and grabbed the curtain, and held it out of the way as he climbed the steps. Quentin put a hand on his back to support him, and they made their way inside. Viho carefully lowered Mazik to the floor.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, pushing the hair away from Mazik’s eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why have you come back alone? Where are Tocho and Bob?”
Mazik opened his eyes. His chest heaved, and his body was coated with sweat and grime.
“I’m not hurt,” he gasped. “Just- just give me- a minute. I gotta- catch my breath.”
He lay back on the floor, sucking in great gusts of air and blowing it out. He waved his hand, gesturing for a drink. Tahki caught Eissa’s eye and pointed to the bucket.
“I’ve got the water,” Eissa said, turning to the door. “Elevate his head a bit with a pillow or something.”
Viho grabbed one of the small pillows near the wall and jammed it under Mazik’s head. After a drink and a minute to breathe, Mazik looked considerably better. He sat up and leaned wearily against the wall.
“Tocho and Bob- got caught by DimCorp,” he said. “I ran. All the way back here. Many miles.” He drank some more water, as the news sank into the group.
