Counting Heads (39 page)

The path to Feldspar Cottage was lined on one side with rosebushes in full bloom. The concentrated perfume blended well with the scent clock’s new quarter-hour odor—freshly brewed coffee.

The cottage had stucco walls and a quaintly pitched roof. Its door was made of plain wood, painted bright yellow. Inside was a sparsely furnished single room, half of it raised up a step. There was an open ceiling, crossed by a roof beam of hand-hewn wood. All of the windows were open, and a breeze ruffled lace curtains. When Mary and Renata entered the cottage, they were greeted by two evangelines already there.

“I’ll leave you to your colleagues then,” Concierge said from the porch. “Don’t hesitate to call with questions or concerns. I’m always available.”

When they were alone, the new arrivals and the night shift introduced themselves to each other. Mary noticed that her sisters were not burdened with funny hats. One of them, Cyndee, said, “Well, come on and meet Myr Starke.”

Situated in the raised portion of the room was a tall columnar tank of clear glassine. It was filled with a thick amber liquid that was shot through with thousands of tiny bubbles. A chrome bar was suspended in the liquid, and from the bar hung a human skull.

“Careful of the step,” Cyndee said as she led the others to the tank. A metal band, like a halo, held the skull in a rigid grip with long screws sunk in bone. The skull had no skin, eyelids, or lips. Its bulging eyes lay lifeless in their sockets. Three of its—her—front teeth were missing, and tubes ran through the gaps they left. Many more tubes and wires entered the woman’s skull through natural foramina and machine-drilled holes.

Mary and Renata stood in front of the skull while Cyndee introduced them. “Myr Starke, these are Mary Skarland and Renata Carter. They’ll be relieving Ronnie and me in about an hour.”

Cyndee looked expectantly at Mary who said, “Good morning, Myr Starke.” She paused for a response, but the skull only stared straight ahead. She glanced at Cyndee and added, “Renata and I are here to keep you company when Cyndee and Ronnie have to leave.”

None of the evangelines seemed to know what else to say, so they pulled two more chairs next to the tank and sat down.

“Did you get a tour?” Renata asked.

“There was no time,” Ronnie replied. “We were rushed here in the middle of the night.” Which was probably why they had no hats yet.

“It’s a beautiful facility. So many jennys,” Renata said.

Ah, thought Mary, and so it begins, the talking between the lines. Of course there were a lot of jennys here. This was a medical facility. But it was also a place where bored affs had idle time on their hands. If there was ever a place where companions were needed, this was it.

Mary said, “Just wait till we get Myr Starke up and around in a lifechair.”

The others nodded in agreement. All it would take were two or three prominent clients here to get the ball rolling. And who could be more prominent than a Starke? But Myr Starke was a long way from riding in a lifechair. Nevertheless, it was frightfully clear to all of them that this assignment was an opportunity of tremendous importance, not only for them, but for their whole neglected sisterhood.

“Concierge loaned Cyndee and me a course in revivification science,” Ronnie said. “You want, I’ll copy you guys.” Mary and Renata raised their open palms for it.

Cyndee said, “It’s informative, but it would help to have some alphines.” This meant that they’d already looked at the material, and that it was way over their heads. But Mary resolved to give it a try, or to find other, simpler lessons on the WAD.

Mary said, “We’ll pass it along to our replacements on the swing shift,” which meant that if they were going to be successful in raising the evangeline profile at the clinic, they needed to establish some channel of communication with the others. The four new colleagues looked at one another and smiled. If they dug in and played smart, they might make a solid beachhead on the shores of the Fagan Health Group for hundreds, if not thousands, of their sisters.

Just then, a jenny in a nurse’s uniform bustled into the cottage, looked at the four of them, and said, “What’s this, a convention?”

The evangelines rose at once. “No, Myr Jenny,” Cyndee said. “Our shifts are supposed to overlap.”

The nurse watched them a moment and said, “Sit, sit. No one rises for jennys around here.” She went to the hernandez tank and rapped its side with her knuckles. “Hello in there. We’ve got a big day ahead of us, Myr Starke. My name is Hattie Beckeridge. I’m your head nurse.” She moved her hand left and right in front of the skull, but the eyes didn’t follow. “
Head
nurse, get it?”

Hattie went to the control unit at the side of the tank and paged through a blur of medical frames. As she did so, she said to the evangelines, “I don’t see the point in hiring companions at this stage of our guest’s recovery, especially so many of you. Be that as it may, since you’re here, you might as well be doing something useful. As you can see, our guest hasn’t awakened yet. That’s not surprising, considering the trauma she’s been through. Still, we’ve got her stabilized and she’s in fair shape, all things considered. We’ve got about a billion little buggies inside her skull doing DXR. She should begin to stir by the end of the day. Now come over here and take a look at this.”

When the evangelines joined her at the control unit she opened a larger-than-life model of the Starke woman’s brain. Sheets of blue light rippled slowly over different parts of the brain’s convoluted surface.

“This is a simple EEG reading of cortical activity,” Hattie said. “Notice how slow it is, about two hertz. That’s a typical delta wave frequency. Most people’s brains slow down this much during normal sleep. But in a healthy brain, the wave passes smoothly over the entire surface, not patchy like this. This ‘island’ effect is caused by uneven tissue thawing which causes a cryogenically frozen brain to awaken in a piecemeal fashion. In other words, some parts of the brain are working while others aren’t yet. That can be terrifying to a patient. Myr Starke may be having bizarre thoughts and memories in the form of a continuous nightmare that she can’t seem to awaken from.

“It won’t last long, Myr Starke,” Hattie added to the skull. “You’re thawing just fine.

“Anyway,” she continued, “we suppress the side effects as much as possible, and we’re quick to reestablish sensory pathways. That’s where you can help.”

“Tell us what to do,” Cyndee said.

“We shall begin by always assuming that our guest here can see, hear, and smell everything in this room. So, talk to her, show her things, sing to her, do whatever you can think of to engage her interest. I don’t think I need to tell evangelines how to be fascinating,” she added with a grin.

“Well, I must go now,” Hattie continued. “I’ll leave the EEG display up for you. There’ll be a medtech in soon to work on her. Good-bye for now, Myr Starke. I’m leaving you in the hands of your ’leen companions.”

THE QUARTER HOURS of pine sap, cranberry, popcorn, and ripe banana passed quickly, and the evangelines took turns standing directly in front of Starke’s tank and telling her in detail who they were and where they were from, whether they were espoused and to whom, what their apartments looked like, and anything else that came to mind. By the time Cyndee and Ronnie went off shift, the four women felt they had always known each other. Ronnie and Renata, in fact, said they remembered each other from way back in evangeline school.

Then Mary and Renata were alone with their client. They struggled to come up with new conversational topics. Renata wasn’t from Chicago, so Mary told her and the skull about last night’s canopy ceremony, the slaughter of slugs, the crazy man in the Skytel, and especially the fireworks. As a rule, evangelines didn’t sing, so they didn’t try that, but Mary taught Renata and the skull how to shimmy. Fortunately, before they ran completely out of ideas, a medtech came in, pushing a supply cart.

He went directly to the controller, ignoring the two women, and shut off the EEG. He removed a couple of packages from his cart, opened them, and carried them to a stepladder built into the back of the tank. Inside the packages were spools. One spool was wound with silvery thread and the other with a narrow, whitish ribbon. He slotted these into an armature at the top of the tank, all without uttering a word. He wore a clinic uniform like Hattie’s, but with a tan jacket. His name badge read, “Matt.”

Matt wasn’t any iterant type Mary knew, which meant he was of wild stock, a free-ranger. He seemed unfriendly enough to be a chartist.

Matt returned to the control unit and began to dictate instructions. As he spoke, the armature with the spools lowered itself into the yellowish liquid of the tank, and two delicate waldo fingers picked up the ends of the threads and began to stitch them to the top of the skull.

“What’s that?” Mary said when her curiosity became too great.

Matt gave her a brief, dismissive glance and returned to his task.

“That’s nerve and vein tissue,” said a pleasant voice. It was Concierge, at the door. The mentar entered and joined them at the tank. “And this is Matt Coburn, Medtech 3, and one of our finest people. Say hello to the ladies, Matt.”

“I prefer to be called Coburn,” the man said.

“Matt is attaching nerve and vein tissue from Myr Starke’s own tissue bank,” Concierge continued. “Tomorrow we’ll start layering muscles, and then wrap the whole skull in skin gauze.”

“Fascinating,” said Mary. “Are you going to—ah—reassemble her entire body with replacement parts?”

“We might have gone that route, if her body were mostly intact,” Concierge said, “but when you need a whole body, it’s best to grow it from scratch. It’s even faster, and you’ll be sure that all the pieces fit together. If you look at the base of Myr Starke’s skull; you’ll see we’ve already started a new body.”

All Mary saw was a wad of fine mesh netting.

“Come around to the back. You’ll see better.”

Mary and Renata followed Concierge to the back of the tank. Nestled in the netting and connected to the skull by a skein of threads was a tiny, curved creature. Mary squinted at it through the glassine tank and syrupy fluid. It was a headless human fetus. Or rather a fetus with a giant head. A tiny knot of red, visible through translucent skin, was furiously beating and driving a trickle of blood throughout the tiny body.

“Oh,” Renata said, “it looks like a prawn.”

“I suppose it does,” Concierge said. “It’ll be a while yet before the prawn will be able to support the head.” Subvocally, the mentar added,
Unfortunately, she’s not thriving as well as she should be
.

Mary was startled by the aside. When she looked at Concierge, he smiled sadly and returned to the front of the tank. “We’ll have you up and out of here in no time, Myr Starke,” he said brightly.

Fred had comp time coming to him, and he could have slept in if he wanted to. But russes were constitutionally unable to oversleep, and he awoke, as usual, at six. Mary was gone, and he lay in bed for a while letting his mind wander through his mine field of newly acquired troubles. Finally, he ordered coffee, and when he could smell it brewing, he threw off the covers and padded to the kitchen. He took his coffee to the living room and watched the view outside someone else’s window for a while. But his troubles kept intruding, so he did what russes often did to take charge of their destiny—he made a list:

1. Mary/Cabinet
   
2. Rendezvous
   
3. Clone fatigue
   

Having itemized and prioritized his worries, Fred felt better. A good list, as every russ knew, was a mood elevator. A good list could cut through the fog of indecision and marshal the forces of reason and practically. Fortified, Fred plunged in:

1. Mary/Cabinet—If only he had spoken up immediately when Cabinet appealed for his help under the lake. Then he wouldn’t be here worrying whether or not Nick at Applied People or, worse, Nameless One at the Homeland Command had eavesdropped on their secret exchange. Merely by
not
informing his superiors of Cabinet’s appeal, he was culpable of aiding and abetting it. And now that Cabinet was through probate, the imperious mentar had leverage over him. By involving Mary in its schemes, it only increased this leverage.

For crying out loud, Fred thought, evangelines were neither trained nor compensated for hazardous duty, and being anywhere near that Starke woman was hazardous in the extreme.

What to do? He could go to Marcus and report the whole thing, take his lumps, which might be as mild as a negative report in his file, or as severe as a reduction in rank. Whichever the case, it was better than sitting and stewing about it. However, though he could face the mentars, he could never face Mary. She would kill him for lousing up her companion duty. She would never forgive him, even if he acted out of concern for her safety.

2. Rendezvous—The 57th World Charter Rendezvous, which would attract fifty thousand plus chartists, was taking place
tomorrow
. He’d had everything nailed down for its security until the head of the organizing committee, the free-range boob Myr Pacfin, had thrown his tantrum about the pikes.

What to do? Easy, go down to the BB of R and talk to the proxy he cast to deal with the situation.

3. Clone fatigue—There was no such thing. It was all a pile of psychobabble hooey invented by free-rangers to steal work from iterants. It claimed that over time even identical clones diverged from each other, losing germline integrity and acquiring new, less reliable traits. And since the whole market appeal of iterant labor was based on the uniformity of their core personalities, trait instability would diminish their market value. Iterant temp agencies like Applied People and McPeople would falter, and Fred and about a billion other clones would be out of work.

It was hogwash, of course. There was no such thing as
identical
clones in the first place. Though a germline may start with the same genome, maternal factors, such as mitochondrial DNA and exogenic womb environments and the scattering techniques of induced allele shifting, guaranteed that they were all slightly different from each other. Closer than siblings but more different than natural monozygotic twins tended to be. Even their personalities varied a little, though their core traits were true to type: jennys were nurturing, lulus were hot, and russes were loyal to a fault and addicted to lists.

And another thing, if there were such a thing as clone fatigue, it would only affect new batches, not individuals already almost a hundred years old.

Still, it was a touchy subject for Fred, and he didn’t know why. It seemed to him that he was behaving oddly lately. For all he knew, he was undergoing some normal life change that all russes experienced. Perhaps all russes, at some point or other, cherished a secret lust for hinks (Inspector Costa!) or questioned their own loyalty to their employer. And if they did, how would he ever know, since one of the cardinal core traits of russdom was the total inability to talk about their feelings, even to their brothers?

On the other hand, for all he knew, there was a secret volume hidden in the
Heads-Up Log
, one that no one talked about but which russes stumbled across in their time of need. A hidden brotherhood within the brotherhood. The fact that he, russlike to the bone, thought of this meant that other russes must also have thought of it. It only made sense.

What to do? Go to the BB of R and research the
Heads-Up Log
.

So Fred got up off the couch, put on some clothes, and dragged his bruised tired self to North Wabash.

FRED ARRIVED JUST as a wave of russes was leaving the headquarters for their split shifts. To Fred’s surprise, he was a celebrity. Word had leaked about his scuffle with the warbeitor last night. Because of the confidentiality rules, he was unable to set the record straight that he wasn’t the hero of the hour—but that the TUGs’ illegal particle weapon was. All he could do was accept the accolades of his brothers with typical russ humility. (Humility—Fred decided to keep a running list of russ traits that he shared or lacked.)

Fred clocked into a scape booth and asked Marcus to open his Rondy space.

“Certainly, Myr Londenstane,” the mentar said, “but there’s nothing there that can’t wait a few hours. Why don’t you take the morning off. You had a very stressful day yesterday.”

“Thank you for your concern, Marcus,” he said, “but I’d rather do it now.” (Obsessive attention to detail.)

“As you wish. But allow me to schedule you an autopsyche session when you’re done. After what you’ve been through, you may find it helpful.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” (Aversion to so-called mental hygiene.)

Marcus opened Fred’s Rendezvous workspace and left him to his chores. There were scores of details to resolve, but as Marcus had said, nothing urgent. Fred called up the proxy he had cast when he bailed from the Rondy meeting. The log said it had been in storage since the meeting adjourned.

A mirror image of Fred’s head and shoulders and a gloved right hand appeared before him. “About time you showed up,” it said. Fred’s proxy wore an expression of patient annoyance, which surprised and embarrassed him. Proxies tended to be locked in to one’s emotional state at the moment of casting. Had Fred’s annoyance with the organizing committee been so apparent? (Emotional transparency—
not
a russ trait.) If so, blame it on the utter stupidity of the committee chair, Myr Pacfin. (Inability to suffer fools.)

“So,” the proxy said, “how’d it go? Inspector Costa and the mentar hunt.”

“Fine,” Fred said.

“Fine? That’s it? That’s all I get? Fred, it’s me—
Fred
,” the proxy said. “I’m your proxy. The confidentiality ban doesn’t apply to us, remember? You’re going to delete me when you wrap things up.”

Fred sighed. “Sorry. Let’s see, we captured the last Cabinet backup in an Opticom hub and then cornered the Cabinet prime next to a city waterworks crib under the lake. Reilly Dell was riding shotgun, by the way, and we were glommed by a NASTIE and had to be dry-cleaned.”

“Whoa!” the proxy said. “Back up and slow down.”

But Fred had no intention of backing up or slowing down. “Veronica Tug tells me you hired five hundred TUGs to patrol Rondy.”

“You spoke to her again?”

“Yeah, she saved my bacon last night.”

“Say again?”

Fred rubbed his face. “Let’s just say,” he said, “that the TUGs were in the right place at the right time to do me a big favor.”

“Com’on, Fred. You can’t leave me just hanging like that.”

But he had to; otherwise he’d find himself giving a blow-by-blow of the raid on the mysterious house in Decatur, its warbeitor sentry, the deadly plasma rings, and all the rest. Then the proxy would ask about the canopy ceremony and Mary, and he’d have to tell it about her companion gig and Cabinet. He had to draw a line.

“About this TUG contingent you hired,” he said.

“All right, all right,” the proxy said. “I didn’t hire them, but I agreed to allow five hundred of them to wear armbands and to patrol the convention floor in exchange for keeping our forty pikes
off
the floor.”

“What? I’m supposed to tell our pikes to sit on their hands?”

“Exactly. The pikes won’t be allowed to show their weasely little faces. The TUGs will be under our command and will limit their actions to verbal persuasion.”

That actually wasn’t such a bad idea. The chartists at these affairs rarely got rowdy and would much rather be policed by fellow chartists anyway, and the TUGs could probably keep the peace with their looks alone. “I suppose MC and Nick are good with this arrangement?”

“Yeah, the mentars are all on board.”

Once nudged in the right direction, Proxy Fred continued his termination debriefing with typical russ efficiency. (Efficiency.) When it was finished, it sighed and said, “That’s it.”

“Nothing else?”

“There is one more thing I thought I’d tell you. I don’t know how much weight to put on it since I’m just a—you know—artificial construct of you, but I had a feeling about this Veronica Tug person.”

“What kind of a feeling?” Fred said.

“A hunch.”

“And?”

“I felt I could trust her. Which was why her helping you is so interesting.”

“I see. Thanks for telling me. And thank you for your service.”

“It was nothing.”

Fred and his proxy watched each other for a few moments in silence, and then the proxy said, “Will you just do it already?”

“Uh, sorry,” Fred said. “Marcus, delete proxy.”

The Fred proxy disappeared. Fred closed the Rondy space and logged into the Longyear Center to inquire about Inspector Costa’s status. She was still in critical condition.

Fred left the booth and went downstairs to the canteen for coffee and donuts. The place was nearly deserted, with so many russes mustered out on extra security details. And any russes not involved in trying to keep the affs from killing each other were no doubt working as bloomjumpers, now that Chicago had no canopy to protect it. (Brave.)

BACK IN THE scape booth, now that his work was finished, Fred asked Marcus for a datapin containing the complete BB of R
Heads-Up Log
. It was an unusual request—he usually let Marcus navigate the log for him. Marcus produced the pin, no questions asked, and Fred turned on the booth’s isolation field, excluding Marcus and any other snoops. The brotherhood’s booths provided pretty good privacy, not as tight as their null room, but much more convenient.

Fred pressed the pin into the reader, and a directory appeared on the workbench before him.

Fred knew more or less what was in the
HUL
. The log was a compendium of russ records and thoughts going back a hundred years to Thomas A. himself. Most of it was related to work issues, the how-tos and wherefores of security work. There was a Brag File describing especially harrowing missions, with confidential details excised. Marcus had already entered yesterday’s scuffle with the warbeitor, though without naming names. There was also a Wall of Honor for russes killed in the line of duty. And one of the most popular features on the HUL was the List of Lists. Altogether, there were over seven hundred thousand entries in the
HUL
, which, when Fred thought about it, didn’t amount to much considering that they represented about a half-billion russ/years of experience.

Proceeding on his theory that there was a secret log not listed in the directory, Fred browsed the
HUL
from front to back, looking for anything that might give him a glimpse into the mysterious russ heart. He supposed he could just ask Marcus if anything like that was recorded, but he assumed that if it was, it would be kept secret from Marcus as well. After three hours he gave up. Except for certain lists that scanned like poetry, his brothers seemed about as expressive as trees.

Fine, he would work on that. Fred opened a new volume in the
HUL
and entitled it the
Book of Russ
. He took a deep breath and began:

“To my brothers cloned: Contrary to all evidence, we, the sibs of Thomas A. Russ,
do
enjoy a rich inner life. Why we are so reluctant to share it with others, or even among ourselves, is anybody’s guess. Today I start what I hope will become a new tradition among us—the habit of brotherly openness.”

Fred paused and read what he’d dictated. Overall, it was good; it expressed what he wanted. But it sounded too stilted. Although russes were big on continuing education, they didn’t wear their erudition on their sleeve. He thought about it for a while, blanked the text, and began anew. This time he tried to speak as he would to Reilly. He did, however, keep the phrase “To my brothers cloned,” which he liked.

“To my brothers cloned: I’m fed up with the way we keep everything bottled inside us. It’s not healthy. So, I’m going to speak my mind here and see if any of you will do the same. I propose the
Book of Russ
to be a place where russes can speak openly to each other.”

Fred paused and read this. It might err in the opposite direction, but it was better. So he continued in the same vein.

“Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the so-called clone fatigue. Of course, there’s no such thing. It’s an urban myth. It’s an attempt by non-iterants to belittle us. But if it did exist, and if I caught it, how would I know?

“Let me put this another way. We all know that we, the brothers of Thomas A., prefer to wear heavy brown shoes. That’s so typical of us that it’s a timeworn cliche. How a preference for shoe color could be coded into our genes, I don’t have a clue. Whatever the mechanism, what would happen if tomorrow I woke up and decided, just for the hell of it, to wear a pair of black shoes. I suspect that everyone I ran into would comment on it. It would cause such a sensation that I probably wouldn’t wear them in public again. But what if the truth of the matter is that while we’re young, we prefer brown shoes but that russes of a certain age develop an appreciation for shoes of different colors? Are you following me? If we were all too reluctant to wear black shoes in public because of the reaction we would get from others, or even to discuss our shoe color preferences among ourselves, eventually we’d all be walking around secretly dissatisfied with our shoes.