"If your judgement is suspect I need to find out fast and get someone else as quickly as possible."
"Look, I accept you need an explanation, but let's get the cash and the copy material and do the deed, and I'll explain my reasons after. You've got nothing to lose, unless you have other pressing business."
"Only a thousand Euros in cash." she said.
I dropped her arm, "Oh Jesus wept, I need the cash but I'll transfer a balance to your bank - what sort of a business do you think I run? Look, I may not be top of my heap like you are but I'm not a failure either. I do know what I'm doing. I am not buggering about, if you want a quarrel you can have one, but I'd rather we behaved like adults."
I realised I was close to aborting the birth of our relationship, for I had forgotten how mean truly rich people, even those as otherwise pure gold as Alicia, could become. But she would have to come to terms with me now, as I was. I could not go through the long genesis of making some sense of these artifacts, finding a method of commercial exploitation, editing, compiling, marketing and publishing, particularly when the original authors were dead, and also when my colleagues would need a hell of a lot of persuasion to see the logic of the exercise at all. I didn't need that sort of hassle.
I looked at her face, still classically beautiful but tense and with two horizontal frown lines above the glasses. The gestures I had made had shifted me out of her line of sight, so she swung her head to intercept me on the scanner. She picked my sleeve, "Charles - I'm sorry. Most people treat me with kid gloves all the time. You treat me as an equal, and I'm not accustomed to it. I don't see the problem but I will wait for the explanation. I want us to be friends."
For all that she was a mature woman she seemed a child at that instant, I didn't resist my instinct but put an arm round her, drew her to me and kissed her on the forehead. The muscular frame came affectionately close to me and I knew we could work well together from now on. We had had our trial of wills, and come out as equals, with our individuality intact.
"Come - " I said,"we have work to do. Are we nearer your flat or your Bank?"
We went to the Bank, and on my instruction she drew 800 Euros cash, and I electronically transferred the same sum from my Bank. Returning to her flat I made a selection of her software manuals to get to as near 535 pages as I could without cutting across chapters, and put plain dividers in to bring it up to the total.
We went back to the shop. The cash was shown. I watched the copies through the machine, received the remainder of the security copies of the manuscript, and handed over the cash. If the fair haired man didn't reset his machine that was his problem. The weak link was the youth, who had seen me ask the question that started it all, seen us in the office and watched the copy being made, but I could go on worrying all day about these things. I closed the incident in my mind with the door to the shop. It was three thirty.
"Lunch -" I demanded, "where to for lunch?"
"Will it stay fine for the next hour or two?" asked Alicia.
"I'm sure if you demand so, it will."
"Are you laughing at me?"
"No, but I'm teasing a bit," I admitted, "the weather looks set fair for the rest of the day to me, but I'm used to a more reliable climate. Isn't there a forecasting service?" I took out my 'phone, which beeped as I flipped open the mouthpiece.
"It's 231, that's if you're on Bluphone."
A strangled male voice told me the forecast for London and the South East was bright periods and showers, with longer periods of rain tonight.
YOU ARE READING
Before 24 Billion and Counting
Science FictionThe story of an obsessive search for a truth