Kelley Eskridge Read Online Free

Lately, Jackal had begun
to see this as the place where the company lifted itself from the
ground like something protean raising a head full of teeth. Everything
was constructed and furnished with company-made materials, tools,
appliances, fixtures, textiles, electronics, entertainment equipment.
The company name was everywhere: KO, the O flattened at top and bottom
in the universal symbol for the map of the world. Everyone on the
island ate food grown with Ko hydroponics technology, and relied on the
Ko network to talk across the street or around the world. Jackal's
mother had been part of the team that developed the “Kommunications”
name and marketing campaign, and Jackal was certain that Donatella had
much to do with the success of the project. Her mother had the
temperament of a moray eel, which at first consideration did not seem a
good fit with her position as an Assistant Director of Corporate
Participation: but Jackal understood that biting down hard and fast was
Donatella's path to success. “I'm not there to get my own way,”
Donatella would say, “just to get results.” And recognition: Jackal
knew her mother loved her job and the corporate pin she wore every day
on her right shoulder. And her father loved her mother, and was made
proud by his Dona's pride. They had given themselves to Ko long ago.
And then they had given her. Riding between the apartment towers,
toward the glass canyon of skyscrapers, one hundred nineteen
subsidiaries' world headquarters and the twin executive towers of Ko
Prime, Jackal felt two million minds turn toward her, full of Hope.
    She still did not know what to do with her
tension and fear. They were growing; these days, any small friction
could make her cramp with anger. Carlos had called the day after the
party: “ Hija , your mother's very
upset about the argument you had. She won't tell me what happened, but
whatever it was, can't you forgive her? At least call her and tell her
things are all right?” But Jackal couldn't. She wasn't much good at
talking to anyone right now, not even Snow, who had been asking more
and more often what was wrong. Just tense about the investiture, Jackal
told her, and a fight with my mother. Nothing new. She was relieved
when Snow said, “I won't push, at least not right now.”
    She parked her bike and went on with her
busy morning of workshops and research. In the afternoon, she went to
Esperance Park for the web's monthly game day. She thought games were
stupid, mostly because she rarely won. But she knew that failing at
something unimportant made people more comfortable with her, so she
played. Games were an easy way to fail.
    But she should have known better today.
Losing wasn't so easy when a person was full to the back teeth with
rage, and what had she been thinking, agreeing to play machiavelli with
Tiger? In just an hour he had won three consecutive rounds with a speed
and a jolly, obvious contempt that humiliated her.
    She said as quietly as she could, “Tiger,
ease up, okay? You're really sharking me.”
    “Oh, please,” he said. “You're the Hope of
Ko and you can't even hold your temper over a game of machiavelli? Good
thing the fate of the world didn't depend on you today. You'd have lost
at least a couple of fourth-world countries.”
    He spoke in his smiling, public voice,
pitched with just the right tone to send the message we're only playing here to the people
watching in the small plaza. He made them his audience so easily: they
loved him, her web mates crowded around the table, the strangers at a
respectful distance enjoying one of the last warm days of the year
before the slide into January cold. Tiger was vibrant against the
brushed-steel buildings that towered over this end of the park, their
banks of mirrored windows washing the warm afternoon light back in
dapples over the tended, careful trees: he glowed like a candle, his
eyes black-bright against his golden skin. She had a moment of piercing
regret that things