Counting Heads (51 page)

Quickly, to relieve her strain, Fred swiped her pay post, not a millionth, but a ten-thousandth, and the post immediately resumed playing some piece of classical music in midmeasure. The ballerina statue came magically to life. She completed a pirouette, and then a leap, and half a plié when, just as jarringly as it had started, the music cut out, and the dancer froze.

Fred blushed. A ten-thousandth didn’t buy much on the fourth tier of Millennium Park. He swiped her post again, upping his donation to a tenth.

The reanimated dancer completed her plié as though never interrupted. With a sleight-of-foot, she seemed to command a theater-sized stage, instead of her meager porta-platform. She ran across it and leaped open-legged as though across an abyss. She seemed to defy gravity. She moved with fluid ease. A gathering audience watched with appreciation and swiped her post regularly each time the music faltered.

Fred was mesmerized. This was clearly no child. She was a mature performer and athlete in a girl’s small body. Something wet hit him on the cheek, and he wiped it off with a finger. It was her sweat, proof of her exertion, and like everything else about her, it was milky white. Without thinking, he brought it to his lips to taste.

The compacted ballet continued without pause for an enchanted time. Then, suddenly, there was a piercing sound on the other path. Everyone in Kitty’s small audience looked, including Fred. A full-throated cry of misery and outrage came from a pram that was steered by a jenny in a nanny uniform. The jenny was accompanied by two unsmiling russes and a huge black-and-white dog. The jenny told the pram to stop, and she popped open its lid, revealing a bawling, beet-red
baby
within.

“She needs her nappies changed,” the jenny announced to no one in particular.

The ballerina’s audience abandoned her for the real child, all except Fred. He swiped her pay post another couple tenths when he feared the music would stop. He was about to again when the music simply faded away. The ballerina didn’t freeze but instead took a bow. Fred, an audience of one, clapped. The pay post threw a holo curtain around the dancer and stage, and Fred was left standing in front of a sign that read, “Intermezzo.” For a full minute he stood there, unsure of what was happening to him.

The nanny’s dog approached the pay post and sniffed it with interest. Fred snapped, “You! Outta here!” The dog regarded him with a placid expression. It had one blue eye and one brown.

“Trapper. Here, boy,” called a russ. Fred turned to see one of the baby’s bodyguards holding a soiled diaper. “You see a trash chute around here?” he asked Fred.

Fred fought to keep a smirk off his face, but failed. All the years of training to bring this man into an elite corps of personal security providers—for what? a fistful of dirty diaper? “Such a deal,” Fred said. The russ just wagged his head in agreement.

“Leave it here,” said a girl’s voice from behind the holo curtain.

“Come again, myr,” the bodyguard said, trying to discern the source of the voice. “You want the little one’s mess?”

An open kit bag was pushed from behind the curtain. “Yes, the mess,” the girl said. “You thought I meant the dog?”

The russ wrapped up the diaper into a neat little leakproof package and dropped it into the kit bag. He winked at Fred and said, “Such a deal,” before returning to his own client.

Fred wanted to tell him he had the wrong idea, that Fred wasn’t working for this girl, but the opportunity had passed. The kit bag was pulled back through the curtain, and again Fred was alone, confused, and tongue-tied.

Myr Londenstane?
a voice said. It was Marcus.

Fred took several steps away from the curtain and said, “Yes, Marcus.”

I’m afraid I have some troubling news. Your test results rule out HALVENE poisoning
.

Fred knew it had been too easy to be true.

Your health signs are nominal
, the mentar continued.
We’ll have to explore other avenues for the source of your recent behavior. May I schedule a psychological evaluation for you?

Fred sighed. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Mary and the chair approached, and Mary said, “Fred, what’s wrong?” Kitty stepped out through the curtain, a towel draped over her sharp shoulders, and the chair introduced her to Mary. Mary grasped the girl’s small hand, and there followed an awkward moment when no one knew what to say. Samson had fallen asleep.

Mary broke the silence. “I was watching you from over there,” she said to Kitty. “You are a marvel.”

“Thank you, I’m sure,” the girl said and curtsied. She pointedly avoided looking at Fred, and Fred pointedly avoided looking at her.

Mary said, “Well, it’s been a lovely time. We should visit the park more often.”

On the way back to the APRT, Fred said, “Did you get what you came for?”

“Time will tell.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“That goes for you too, Fred.”

Before dawn, with four hours yet to go before the attempt to spring Ellen from the clinic, Meewee sat on a mat on the floor of his shelter bedroom with the lights dimmed, practicing tantric stretch and breath exercises to try to quiet his nerves. He had been up half the night visiting the toilet to excrete all the dead machinery his cells had flushed into his bloodstream. Ordinarily, he would have waited a few days before starting the process of reestablishing his implant ecology, but with the impending rescue, he felt he could not wait. So he had swallowed a comm package at midnight, and now his brain was full of buzzes and flashes as the tiny radio sets unpacked and calibrated themselves.

A diorama of the clinic cottage ran in the corner of his room with its audio muted. All therapy on Ellen had been suspended, and the night evangelines were keeping what was by all appearances a death vigil. Then, out of the blue, Wee Hunk showed up in the cottage and told them to go home.

Meewee jumped to his feet. “Wee Hunk,” he said. “I need to speak to you.”

The mentar appeared at once. Over the last few days, Meewee had noticed Wee Hunk’s habit of frequently changing the appearance of its persona. Sometimes it was life-size, sometimes a Tom Thumb, sometimes realistic, sometimes cartoonish. This morning it appeared in super-realistic detail. Every pore on its broad nose stood out sharply.

Meewee said, “Is that you at the clinic?”

“Yes.”

“You’re discharging the ’leens?”

“That’s right.”

“But why? That wasn’t part of your plan.”

“What plan?” the Neanderthal said.

Meewee began to reply, but changed his mind and returned his attention to the diorama. The two evangelines took their dismissal with equanimity, but did not leave the cottage. They had learned the night before not to trust mentars in the cottage. “Did you dismiss all the other shifts as well, all the young evangeline women?” he said, slipping in a challenge in Starkese.

“Don’t worry, I will, at a more decent hour. There’s no point in attending to Ellen any longer. Don’t you agree?”

Meewee listened hard, but heard no response to his challenge.
Arrow
, he glotted,
challenge Wee Hunk’s integrity
.

A moment later, his mentar responded,
Identification failure
.

It was what Meewee expected, but still the fact of it shocked him.

“Was there anything else?” Wee Hunk said. “I have funeral arrangements to attend to.”

MARY ROSE EARLY to download the odor specimen she had captured in the park. She was in the shower when the houseputer informed her of an urgent call from Wee Hunk. She left the stall and wrapped herself in a robe. Fred seemed asleep as she hurried through the bedroom. She was closing the door when she stopped and whispered, “Are you awake?”

“Yes, I am,” he whispered back. “Good morning, darling.”

“Good morning to you too, Fred. I have a call. Shall I close the door?”

“Yes, please,” he said.

Standing in the living room, Mary composed herself and said, “Use my business persona and put the call through.”

Wee Hunk appeared as a full-sized man wearing an anorak made of blond fur. The fine detail of his projection, the crisp treatment of every strand of fur, struck Mary as unusual. His smallish, thick face was impassive, and he said, “Mary Skarland, it is my unpleasant task to terminate your services at this time, since they are no longer required. Thank you for your conscientious work. Do not report to Roosevelt Clinic today.”

The Neanderthal was swiping off when Mary said, “
Wait!
” She startled herself. “I mean, is she irretrievable, then?”

“Myr Starke’s condition is no longer your concern,” the mentar said and dissolved.

MARY CREPT BACK into bed. She was crying. Fred gathered her into his arms and said, “DCO?” She nodded her head. “Oh, well,” he went on consolingly, “it couldn’t last forever. You got a good run out of it, nearly a week. And there’s probably severance pay in it too.”

“Please shut up, Fred.”

“At once.”

When she seemed all cried out, Fred ventured, “Feel like talking about it?” She shook her head against his chest. “Feel like breakfast?” She nodded. “Good, so do I.” He struggled to hide his glee at her bad news. “I’m going down to the market for real blueberries for my special blueberry pancake recipe.” He got out of bed and grabbed a package of tower togs off the shelf. “Don’t get up; it’ll be breakfast in bed.”

In the foyer, Fred asked for his tower shoes, and the slipper puppy retrieved them from the far reaches of the closet. As he stood there putting them on, balancing on one leg and then the other, he caught a whiff of Samson Harger. His nose led him to Mary’s tote bag leaning against the closet door, all ready to go. Hating himself, Fred rummaged through it and found a paper napkin that was double-sealed in kitchen pouches. Two layers of hermetically sealed film were not enough to contain the old man’s indomitable essence. So that was what she had been up to. He had wondered about their trip to the park. Still, he wasn’t sure why she’d want a sample of Harger’s stench, but with the phone call, it was no longer an issue. Thank goodness.

Fred slipped the smelly package back into the tote and left the apartment feeling a lot better than he had for days. He mentally crossed off one item on his trouble list.

A CRASHING SOUND woke him. Bogdan squinted against the morning light and saw that he was still in the garden shed, but on a cot, not on the floor. On Sam’s cot. There was an odd thumping sound outside, but he wasn’t ready to wake up yet. He had been performing wonderful things for appreciative strangers in a dream.

Sometime later, another crash made him sit up and look out the shed window. Francis and Barry were carrying armloads of junk and dropping them on a large pile next to the shed.

The thumping sound was coming from the other side of the roof, where the soybimi racks were supposed to be. In their place sat a large tanker van with a CarboFlexion logo painted on its side. Several hoses ran from the tanker, and on the other end of the hoses were Tobblers.

Rusty’s face appeared at the screen door, and he said, “Looky who’s surfaced.”

“What’s going on?”

Rusty opened the squeaky door and came in. He pulled Samson’s elephant footstool next to the cot and sat down. “On this side, ladies and gentlemen,” Rusty said, gesturing toward the roof door, “we are currently inventorying our stairwell shelves while at the same time clearing a path for Samson’s lifechair. We’ve reached the seventh floor.”

“Sam’s still—?”

“Still hanging on. He’s bunking in Kitty’s room till we clear the stairs. Now, on this side,” he said, gesturing toward the van, “our good neighbors are busy injecting carbon resin down all the hollow spaces made by the material pirates. It’s a big project, and they’ve agreed to front us the cost and donate the labor in exchange for the use of roof space. We keep the shed and vegetable garden. They get everything else.”

Troy Tobbler was out there helping his ’meets. His arm was in a sling. Bogdan tentatively pressed his own nose and cheek. They were no longer tender, so he peeled the moleskin off.

Rusty examined his face and said, “Looks all healed up to me.”

“How long have I been down anyway?”

“Not quite a day and a half. We were worried when we found you up here and couldn’t wake you, but the autodoc said you were all right and just to let you sleep. Yesterday we called E-Pluribus to claim a sick day for you. Imagine our surprise.”

Bogdan hung his head. “I was going to announce it at the next Soup Pot.”

“I know it.”

“At least I get a separation bonus.”

“That’s important, and anyway, you’d have to give up that job when you moved out to Wyoming.”

Bogdan’s mouth fell open. Rusty smiled and looked out the window at the Tobblers. “They’re fixin’ the building because they figure it’ll all be theirs one way or another.”

“Are we—? Did we—?”

“Nothing’s official yet,” Rusty went on, “but it looks like we’re still in the running. The Beadlemyren are afraid of losing their own charter identity if they got folded into a big charter, like the Tobbs. So they decided instead to pick two little houses, and mash the three of ’em into a whole new one. We’re on their short list because of Hubert. The micromine project needs a mentar, and not a lot of little houses have one of their own like us.”

“You mean we’re not going to recycle him?”

“No, that was never the plan. Kale says they just wanted to shake him up a bit, make him think we would. You gotta admit, Hubert’s a lazy mentar. Sam’s spoiled him rotten.”

Bogdan looked out the window at Troy again. “You mean nobody told them about Hubert’s arrest?”

“Oh, they got told all right, more than once. They say they’re going to feed us some slack about it, though, and give us some time to straighten things out with the law. The Beadlemyren aren’t bad people, Boggy, once you get to know them. They also don’t mind a barroom brawl now and again and said someone oughtta show you how to duck.”

Bogdan got off the cot. There was a package of togs on the potting bench that April must have left for him. “But how can we get Hubert back if the hommers won’t even let us talk to him?”

“We’ll just have to figure that out. Kale’s talking to an autocounsel.”

When Bogdan was ready to leave the shed, he thought of something else to ask. “So, how’d your dates go at Rondy?”

Rusty pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Sorry.”

“But April got some good news. A matchmaker hit her up, and apparently there’s a big fish on the line.”

“April?” Bogdan vaguely remembered the Saurus woman in the ballroom. “That’s great!”

THE FASTEST WAY to pass a message into the null suite was through the radiation tunnel, a trip no living tissue or paste-based or mechanical mind or electronic device could survive. Meewee wrote a short note in Starkese on a scrap of paper and sent it through, hoping that by the time it arrived, its meaning in the metalanguage would still make sense to Wee Hunk’s backup. Then he went to the galley for breakfast.

Nearly an hour later Arrow said <
Dr. Rouselle awaits you in the garage
.>

Meewee hurried to the lifts and arrived in the garage just as Dr. Rouselle and a medbeitor from the null suite were lowering a hernandez jr. tank into the cargo well of a sedan. The portable tank consisted of a simple controller, a pump for recirculating amnio-foam, and a chrome chamber just large enough to accommodate a human head. Meewee looked around for the backup paste canister, but didn’t see it.

“Forgive me, please,” the doctor said in a lilting voice. “This—ah—biellette is loose?” She gave Meewee a meaningful glance and reached down to quickly open and shut the tank’s chamber door, just long enough to reveal Wee Hunk’s canister inside. Meewee reached down and pretended to check a coupling on the side of the tank.

“Looks tight to me,” he said and closed the cargo well. “Shall we go?”

Meewee and the doctor got into the car, and the fans revved up. <
Arrow
> he said <
challenge the Wee Hunk in the tank
.>

A moment later Arrow replied <
Identity confirmed. The Wee Hunk in the tank says that the changing situation calls for a new Plan
B
for which we must make a detour to the federal building before proceeding to the clinic
.>

<
In that case, tell him to rehire the ’leens
.>

FRED WAS CLEARING the breakfast table when the phone chimed. “It’s for you,” he called to Mary in the bedroom who was preparing for a day at the lake. Fred stayed in the kitchen nook and tossed breakfast scraps into the open mouth of the kitchen scupper and eavesdropped.

“You again,” she said.

“Good morning, Myr Skarland,” said a voice Fred did not recognize, not Cabinet’s. “Please check your DCO board.”

A moment later Mary said, “Why fire me just to rehire me?”

“An unfortunate mistake was made. Please note the bonus offered to smooth over the inconvenience. Your shift has already started, and if you accept our offer, you must leave for the clinic immediately. Will you come?”

Mary hesitated. “Is Myr Starke still alive?”

“She needs you now more than ever.”

Fred didn’t hear a reply from Mary, but the call ended, and she returned to the bedroom. He followed and stood in the doorway. She was dumping the beach blanket from her tote and repacking her work things, including the weird hat and the odor sample.

“I don’t appreciate you spying on my DCO business,” she said without looking at him, “and I’d bet that Nicholas wouldn’t like it either.” She quickly changed into a work ensemble.

“Your client,” Fred said, “is the eye of the storm. When you are with this client you are surrounded by danger. Danger you are not trained for. We have lost 10 of my brothers, 13 jerrys, 26 belindas, and 780 pikes—irretrievably—since this aff Market Correction started. And you want to add evangelines to the list? You had a good idea. Let’s call Nicholas. We’ll get its opinion on the whole thing. What do you say?”

“So, call Nick,” Mary said, gathering her things and coming to the door. “Any
normal
russ would.” Fred winced but continued to block her way, and she said, “I’m sorry to hear about your brothers and the rest. I really am, Fred. Now, move aside.”

Standing up straight, with his hands on his hips, Fred filled the door frame. He said, “You asked your caller if she was alive, but I didn’t hear the answer. Is Ellen alive?”

Mary was startled by the question.

“Oh, yes, I know your client, Mary. In fact, I once worked for the Starke family, so I should know what I’m talking about. That mentar who’s behind all of this does not have your best interest at heart, believe me.”

He reached into her tote and lifted the saucer hat. “You are just another tool for it to get what it wants. In this case, it wants the daughter.” He dropped the hat back into the tote and continued. “I assume that if she’s alive, she’s still unconscious. Don’t you find that a little bit suspicious? What does she need with companions right now? No offense to you and your sisters, but you’re no jennys.” Mary frowned, and Fred added, “I mean that in a nice way.”