Read The Unincorporated Man for Free Online Page B

Something he could only have hoped for in the course of ten more years of steady progress. If that didn’t call for an expensive cigar, then nothing in his immediate future would. And he wasn’t about to wait for the more traditional reason to light one up. Hell, you can always have kids, he thought.
    Hektor’s thumb started to vibrate.
    “What is it?” he asked, still smiling, cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth. His iris scan let him know that it was his intern. Good self-starter. Efficient problem solver.
    “Uh, sir, we have a problem.”
    “Handle it, Raga.”
    “I tried, sir, but the shippers aren’t willing to move the package without your assurance.”
    “What are you talking about, Rag? This is a company service, and they’re company employees. Come to think of it, they’re even getting bonuses.” He paused for a moment. “Or at least they were.”
    “It’s not about money, sir. They’re worried about liability.”
    “Liability? For what? The damn thing’s been sealed for over three hundred years. It was made to withstand a cave-in from a mountain made of solid rock.” In fact, it did, he mused. “I’m sure it can be safely loaded by a few grunts. It’s not as if it’s going to just pop open and say boo!”
    “Well, actually, sir…”
    The blood left Hektor’s face. He stubbed out the thousand-credit cigar less than two minutes into what should have been an hour of joy.
    “Don’t move or touch a thing. I’m on my way.”
     
    Hektor shoved his way into Mosh’s office.
    “Funny, your profile said nothing about suicide.” Every ounce of sarcasm he could muster was furled into the sentence.
    The crowd around Mosh’s desk backed away and gave Hektor his space.
    “Please excuse us,” the director said to the minions bustling about the room. With the last of them gone, Hektor sat down in front of Mosh’s desk and crossed his legs.
    “Please tell me you haven’t initiated the revive process.”
    “In fact, we have.”
    “Then I suppose you realize,” Hektor said, “that you’ve condemned us both.”
    “I can’t say your feared demise will cause me any great sorrow,” Mosh replied, “but I intend to be here for some time.”
    “That would be a neat trick,” sneered Hektor. “However, while I may not have the power to bring you down personally, there are those whose profits and reputations you’ve just cut into who will in fact take this badly. And if I’m not mining rocks on comets in the Oort Cloud, I’ll take great joy in watching that day arrive.”
    “So dramatic, Hektor, really. In fact, if you’d bothered to check, you would’ve seen that your one criteria for immediate revive—namely a ridiculous amount of money—had been met.”
    “You’re not that stupid, Director.”
    “On this we can both agree.” Mosh leaned back in his seat, putting his arms behind his head. “The money was paid into the hospital’s account by an anonymous sponsor.”
    “Anonymous, my ass,” scoffed Hektor. “That’s impossible. No one could have paid that much money in that short a period of time… unless it was you, and like I said…”
    “. . . I’m ‘not that stupid,’ ” Mosh continued. “Feel free to check my accounts; I’m sure everyone else will.”
    “Oh, you can bet your majority on that, Director.”
    “And by the way,” Mosh continued. “Someone, and I’m not naming names,” he said, looking directly at Hektor, “made it much easier to pay by making the invoice official in the hospital’s database.”
    “It was an invoice for ten million credits!” Hektor shouted. “No one has that kind of money. At least no one who’d want to revive a three-hundred-year-old corpse they had no stock in.”
    “Exorbitant yes, but certainly legal. There for all to access and, apparently, pay.”
    Hektor tried to gather his wits about him.
    “Even if you didn’t pay, why did I have to go down to the transport and find an empty suspension unit and twenty