Counting Heads (30 page)

Bogdan was stunned. “We’re going to move out of Chicago?”

“It looks that way,” said Kale, “which is why your position at E-Pluribus is of secondary importance.”

With this news, Bogdan turned and drifted to the door.

“Bogdan!” April said sharply. “This is all under wraps. Understand?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A big feckin’ secret.” Then he remembered something, and he asked Kale, “You said this toxic dump is called Rosewood
Acres
. How many acres?”

“Two thousand.”

After their meal, Fred and Mary’s crowd in the Zinc Room had a round of evening visola, and coffee. Dessert was custard fyllo pie, followed by more rounds of drink.

Occasional outbursts came from the Stardeck, and the lulus Abbie and Mariola went out to investigate. When they returned, Abbie carried a little black homcom slug by its tail between her thumb and index finger.

“They’re smashing them,” she said. “I can’t hardly believe it.” She dropped the biomech strip on the table and, before it could crawl away, trapped it under an overturned daiquiri glass.

“Don’t do that,” said Reilly.

“Don’t tell my sister what to do,” said Mariola.

“I mean, you could get into trouble, get us
all
into trouble.”

Mary said, “I blocked up our apartment slugway all day, and nothing happened.”

“That’s nothing,” said Gwyn, the jenny. “On the WAD, I saw free-range people ‘harvesting’ them by the hundreds for recycling credits.”

They watched the slug explore its prison, and when its pinhead noetics concluded it was trapped, it simply idled in place. No threats, no sirens, no explosion of pseudopods.

Wes, the jerry, scanned it. “It’s not transmitting to base.”

“What’s it doing?” said Reilly.

“Nothing that I can tell.”

“That just doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure, it does,” said Abbie. “Somebody, gimme a hammer.”

Mariola said, “How many material credits do you suppose one of these would bring?”

“Let’s see,” said the second jerry, Bill. “At least a milliliter of paste, supporting circuitry, several grams of titanium, selenium, platinum, ah, maybe iridium—”

“Not to mention the self-healing tissue and foil extruders,” said Wes.

“And the minicams and emitters and various RF gear,” said Ross, the third jerry.

“Ten or twelve yoodies maybe?” said Bill, and the other two jerrys nodded in agreement.

“Ten or twelve
each?
” said Abbie, astonished.

“Give or take.”

The group of friends mulled this over.

“Where’s that hammer?” said Abbie.

“Feck the hammer,” Mariola said and took off her shoe.

“Wait, Abbie,” said Fred. “Trapping it is one thing, but whacking it is a felony. You could pull hard time for that.”

Abbie raised the shoe but hesitated. “That’s not what the people on the Stardeck say. They say the slugs are finished. They’ve been decommissioned. Everyone’s pulling them off the side of the building and smashing them. And do you see the HomCom up here arresting anyone?”

Fred said, “Can someone please check the Evernet for an official announcement.”

Wes said, “There’s all sorts of contradictory statements, but nothing I’d call official.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said Abbie. But still she hesitated with the shoe.

Alice, the joan, said, “Imagine—no more slugs sneaking up on you when you least expect it.”

“No more slugs swimming in your bath,” said Sofi, the helena.

“Or biting you in your sleep,” said Gwyn.

“Or having the power to decide if you’re friend or foe,” said Wes.

“People,” Alice said, tears rolling down her cheeks, “we are privileged to witness the end of a dark era.”

Fred waited for her to append some typically joan bit of sarcasm, but she didn’t.

“On the other hand,” said Peter, making good jerome sense, “if they
are
worth ten or twelve UDC each, and if they
are
being destroyed and recycled by free-range trash without criminal consequences, then it constitutes a new form of dole and an unfair tax burden on the rest of us.”

“Unless the rest of us get
in
on it,” said Mariola.

“Okay, okay. Here goes,” Abbie said and again raised the shoe.

“Please don’t,” Fred said. “You risk
so much
.”

“Right,” said Reilly. “You know who they’ll send to arrest you—Fred!”

A constant roar of excitement now came from the Stardeck, and the Zinc Room was quickly emptying, diners hurrying out to join in the slaughter. Abbie said, “At least I’ll have a lot of company in jail.” She removed the glass and brought the heel of the shoe squarely down on the slug. They all held their breath. The little black ribbon of biotech lay still. But when Abbie tried to pick it up, it began to creep again toward the edge of the table.

Bill said, “Not much of a blow there, lulu.”

Wes said, “They self-repair pretty quick.”

“Here, give me that,” Mariola said and took her shoe back. “You should pretend it’s you-know-who and hit it like
this
.” She raised the shoe high overhead and brought it crashing down on the slug. The blow sounded like a cannon shot. Now the slug lay flat. Thick, black pseudoplasm oozed like tar from a split along its side.

Wes said, “That maybe oughtta hold it till you get it to a digester.”

Ross said, “Use a public one at a convenience store. And ask for payment in tokens—
not
on your personal account.”

But the lulus didn’t move. They held each other in their arms and stared at the ruined biomech. Suddenly they began to cry.

“Now what?” Fred said.

Alice said, “Oh, Fred. For once, everything is right. Come on, guys. Let’s go join the fun.” She led the others to the Stardeck. Everyone followed, except Peter, the russes, and the jerrys. Mary and Shelley held back only long enough to see how strenuously their russes might object. Fred scowled, and Reilly frowned, but this wasn’t enough to hold the evangelines, and they hurried to catch up with their friends.

Peter said, “Just think of the billions of credits our society has spent building and maintaining the whole slug-based nanocyst detection infrastructure. And for that matter, the canopies.” He rose from his chair. “Don’t worry, gentlemen, I don’t intend to join in the crime spree, but I am curious to watch history in the making.”

Then it was just the russes and jerrys sitting across the table from each other.

“Don’t look at us,” Wes said. “We’re sworn to uphold the law, not break it.”

“That’s good,” said Reilly. “Otherwise, Fred would be required to bust you too.”

“Not if you’re on sick leave,” said Wes. “I’d imagine that after your swim today, you guys get a week or so off.”

Fred and Reilly exchanged glances. It was apparent the jerrys knew something of their day’s adventure.

Reilly said, “Actually, I have some R & R coming to me. How about you, Fred?”

Fred shook his head. His injuries weren’t considered serious enough. “I have tonight off and a day of comp time.” Reilly signaled to Fred to look toward the door, and Fred turned to see dozens of jerrys and russes leaving the Zinc Room. At the same time, Wes pulled a package of Suddenly Sober out of his pocket and offered pills to Bill and Ross. He took one himself and washed it down with a final swig of whiskey.

“On duty?” said Fred.

“Yeah, it just came through,” Wes said. “They’re scrambling the troops.”

“About the slugs?” Fred said, suddenly anxious for Mary and their friends.

“No, not slugs. There’s a rush on personal security. Seems that the affs are killing each other all over the UD, and they’re doubling and tripling their security teams.”

Fred said, “A round of score settling?”

“Yeah,” said Wes, “sparked by Starke’s assassination.”

Ross said, “They’re calling it a ‘market correction.’” He and the other jerrys har-harred at that as they left the table, leaving Fred and Reilly alone.

“I read this article,” Reilly said, pouring himself a glass of ginger ale, “that compares the affs of today to princes in the Middle Ages. No strong kingdoms or national governments to cramp their style. All these little principalities, sovereign unto themselves, competing for land and resources. All their little wars and mercenary armies. That’s what we are, you know, mercs.”

Fred shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said, “and I disagree with you. The pikes are the mercenaries, the jerrys and belindas are the cops, and we russes are the palace guard.”

Reilly thought about that. “You’re right. I like that better. Yeah, the palace guard. I wonder if Thomas A.’s ancestors were in that line of work. We’ve saved more than a few royal heads in our time.” Reilly rose on his mechanical braces and tried to stretch. “Well, it’s been a long day,” he said. He saluted Fred and left the table. Fred was all alone.

To my cloned brothers
, he mused,
to remain free men, we must resist the temptation to swear allegiance to any family but our own
.

BECAUSE OF HER duty with the death artist, Shelley was a minor celebrity at APRT 7. Admirers on the Stardeck stopped her every few meters to offer comments about her client, Judith Hsu. After a year of remission, Hsu’s condition had recently taken an aggressive turn, and her viewership had increased accordingly. Hsu’s skin had become hidebound with scar tissue, and she could barely move at all. Her skin was so fragile at her elbows that bending her arms could potentially split it and expose her joints. And the poor woman’s pruritus was unbearable. She couldn’t stop clawing at herself. The jenny nurses had to tie her hands in soft restraints to keep her from scratching herself to shreds.

Shelley acknowledged her fans’ attention, but it was clear to Mary that she did not relish it.

The Stardeck was a killing field. People wielded shoes, pocket billies, and wine bottles in their slaughter of the small, black defenders of cellular integrity. Foolish revelers climbed on the balcony railing to reach them, unmindful of the three-kilometer drop. Steves took advantage of their extraordinary height to fling slugs off the walls with spoons into the waiting clutches of tipsy, oxygen-deprived berserkers. “Heave ho!” the steves cried each time they flung one. “Heave ho!”

Incongruously, other people stood patiently in an orderly queue beneath a slugway and waited for unsuspecting slugs to exit the building. After a quick look around, Mary and Shelley joined the end of the line.

Shelley seemed to walk with a limp, but Mary didn’t mention it. Instead, she said,
I’m thinking of retraining
.

Oh?
Shelley said.
In what area?

I looked up the stats to find which female type has the widest duty opportunities. You know which it is?

Shelley scratched her throat and said,
The jennys I would suppose
.

Close; they’re second. It’s actually the juanita/janes. There will always be houses to tidy, you know, and drinks to fetch, and pillows to fluff. The best employment security and the lowest pay scale
.

Little by little, the two evangelines advanced to the head of the line. When it was their turn, and a slug came through the slugway, Mary and Shelley just stood watching it slither up the wall, neither of them making a move.

“It’s getting away,” said someone from behind.

“Catch it!” Mary said.

“You!” said Shelley.

Soon the slug was out of reach. The evangelines laughed and left the queue. They went to sit at a table in a quiet corner, away from the bedlam.

Shelley eased herself carefully into a chair. “So, you’re thinking of taking up Domestic Science?”

“Right.” Mary laughed. “Even better—this morning I took an intro course in Cake Design.”

“You’re kidding.”

Mary shook her head. “But seriously, don’t you think we should be qualified for
something?
”

Shelley scratched her arm thoughtfully. “I hope so. I’m thinking of retraining, myself.”

“You? You’ve got it made!”

Shelley sighed. “I don’t know how many more of these deaths I can take. Remember the last one when my hair fell out? Well, look at this.” She unfastened her sleeve and exposed her arm for a moment. Her skin was inflamed and swollen, an early sign of scleroderma, Judith Hsu’s current terminal disease.

Shelley didn’t have scleroderma; the symptoms were false, psychosymptomatic, all in her head. Her rash was an occupational hazard of the evangelines’ high degree of empathy.

“The breast cancer was bad enough,” Shelley continued, refastening her sleeve, “but this one is killing me. I have this stuff all over my body. Reilly hasn’t been able to touch me for weeks!”

Mary scratched her throat and said, “I’m so sorry, Shell,” but she wasn’t sure she meant it. Not that she’d enjoy feeling sick, but at least Shelley was working. At least she was a companion. Mary leaned over to scratch her leg, just as a slug that had somehow eluded the massacre crawled up her shoe and fastened to her ankle.

“Damn!” she said.

“What is it?”

“Alice is right. It’s high time we were rid of these monsters. Here, give me that cup.”

Shelley handed her a heavy china coffee mug, and when the slug dropped off, she hit it. The slug didn’t even slow down.

“Hit it harder,” Shelley encouraged her. “Hit it in the middle; that’s where the brain is.”

Mary hit the slug again, to no avail. “It’s tougher than it looks,” she said and raised the mug over her head. This time she swung so hard the mug shattered. “I dinged my hand,” she said.

“But you killed it.” The slug lay still, its side split open.

“You can have it,” Mary said, lifting the slug by its tail and offering it to Shelley. “Thanks, Mare, but you whacked it.”

“Fred would kill me.”

“Same with Reilly.”

“Anyway, whacking it felt good.” Mary stood up and flung the mech over the banister to fall five hundred stories.

WHEN FRED CAME out to the deck, the Skytel billboards were announcing ten minutes to showtime. He sat with Mary and Shelley, and what was left of the gang reassembled around them. There were plenty of free chairs now that so many people had left to cash in their kill or to report for duty. Already a fresh wave of slugs was descending from the side of the tower to begin evening rounds. An army of them entered the building via the Stardeck slugways, and some detoured to roam the deck and test random ankles. Few people objected, their fury spent for the day.

Fred said, “Our jerrys got scrambled for special duty.”