Counting Heads (55 page)

Seeing this, the evangelines set to work collecting and filling vases, a teapot, a fruit bowl, waste bins—anything that might hold liquid. Mary filled her large tote bag too.

“Don’t let the syrup stay in contact with your skin for too long,” Hattie warned them as she climbed to the top of the tank, where she unscrewed the skull from its chrome halo.

“Too late,” Renata said. “My feet are soaked.”

Mary’s were too. The amnio concentrate felt ice cold but burned at the same time.

“And check the containers,” Hattie went on. “Amnio eats through most everything. Cyndee, fill the foil gloves.”

Indeed, the dresser drawers and waste bins were leaking, and even the glass vases were sweating syrup. But not Mary’s tote bag. “Think it’ll hold?” Hattie said, holding the glistening skull and its gauzy stump over it.

Mary said, “I think so. The lining folds out into an emergency hazmat suit.”

“It’ll hold then,” the nurse said and lowered the head into Mary’s tote. Then she looked around, wiping her arms on her uniform. The fruit bowl, the only other container large enough to hold the head, was sagging like warm wax, syrup spilling over its brim. Only the tote bag and foil gloves were still intact. The nurse held up a glove, which contained about two liters of syrup, and said, “We need more like this.” She unlocked the drawers of the supply carts for them to search. “Tie ’em off like this,” she said, demonstrating with her own. They found three more gloves and filled and tied them.

“FOG,” SAID THE belinda marshal in charge, “military grade.”

“Can’t you penetrate it?” Meewee said, handing off the portable tank to the medbeitor. “The clinic is obstructing justice!”

“Not anymore it’s not,” the belinda said. She made a mount-up signal to her deputies. “Your writ has just been rescinded in Superior Court.”

“You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you?” he yelled at the officer’s back. She boarded the GOV and didn’t even bother to reply. The doors shut, and off it flew—Wee Hunk’s Plan B.

Dr. Rouselle came over to Meewee and patted his shoulder. “It’s too bad that she died,” she said.

He brushed her hand away. “Save your condolences, Doctor.” He turned to the medbeitor and rotated the hernandez jr. tank in its outstretched arms until he could open the chamber door.

<
Wee Hunk, are you in there?
>

No reply.

Meewee reached in and removed the paste canister. It was very warm, and when he jiggled it, it sloshed. He closed the chamber door and tossed the canister of ruined paste into the backseat of the Starke sedan. “You, machine,” he said to the medbeitor, “follow me.” He led the medbeitor and portable tank across the parking zone to the brick drive, where he stopped to look at the clinic wall and pressure gate. There appeared to be two children and a lifechair waiting there. The greensmoat was aswarm with hundreds of bees charging about in every direction. More victims of the military fog.

Meewee turned to Dr. Rouselle, who had followed him. “I’m going in,” he said. “I’ll leave the tank at the gate if I have to and bring her head out in my arms. Before you decide to accompany me or not, you should keep in mind that the Wee Hunk who promised you a field hospital is kaput, and the new Wee Hunk will probably renege on the deal.”

He turned while she was still translating his words and started walking. <
Arrow, is it true that you know kill codes?
>

THE RETROKIDS AND chair made it to the gatehouse, but their cloud of witnesses got no closer than the greensmoat. A sentry window cleared in the gate, and a jerry guard looked out at the bees and then at them and said, “Swipe the post.”

“Belt Hubert,” Kitty said, “swipe for Samson.”

The jerry consulted something in his visor and looked down through the window at Samson’s bald head poking out from the lifechair blanket. “Good afternoon, Myr Kodiak,” he said. “You do not appear on any of our guests’ FDO, so I can’t let you in.”

“Did you hear that?” Bogdan shouted toward the street. The bees had all regrouped on the street and were hovering in neat rows over the clinic shrubbery. “They won’t let him in!” he shouted. “Belt, relay our discussion to the media bees.”

The guard said, “Please turn your scooter around, myren, and leave the premises.”

“Did you hear that?” Bogdan shouted. “They want we should leave.”

“I’ve already relayed that information as you requested,” Belt Hubert said. “I’ve patched them into our discussion.”

Samson raised his hand over the basket rim and said, “My daughter!” in a chair-amplified whisper.

“Oh, for crissake, stinker,” the guard said, “go home.” The window closed and the guard’s figure receded behind the translucent gate.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Samson whispered. “It’s not smart to piss me off.” But the guard kept going, and in a moment the chair started backing up. The retrokids followed, but after a dozen meters the chair stopped.

Kitty said, “Keep going, Belt. What’s holding you?”

“I can’t go any farther,” the chair replied, “or I won’t be able to find the gate again.”

“So what? We’re going home,” Kitty said. “Aren’t we?”

No one replied, and in a moment, she looked from the chair to the pressure gate and said, “No, Sam, don’t do it.” She climbed up and leaned over the basket. “No, Sam, not this way.”

Samson’s stiff old face crinkled into a smile, and he brushed the girl’s cheeks with his finger. “Kitty, I loved you all these years.” The girl began to cry, and he added, “I hate to leave you now.”

“And I you, Sam.”

“Give us a kiss.”

Kitty leaned in to kiss him. Bogdan climbed up on the other side.

“Hello, boy.”

“Hello, Sam. Are you going all the way this time?”

“Unless they let me see her.”

“Do you think you’re far enough away to get up any speed?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Samson said. “Give me a kiss and then take Kitty and go wait in the street.”

“We want to wait here.”

“Don’t argue. Give me a kiss and go.”

The boy kissed him.

Samson said, “I love you, Boggy. Do yourself a favor and grow up.”

“Like I have a choice.”

With a last farewell, Bogdan and Kitty hopped off the lifechair. Kitty took Bogdan by the arm and said, “Come on. I can’t watch.” The two retrokids left the chair and Samson and walked up the drive.

“I MEAN, REALLY,” Reilly said from his post next to the gate. “It’s uncanny how much you resemble him.” Reilly’s uniform was as relaxed as the russ, himself, seemed to be, and his hands were free of weapons.

Fred paced inside the WAIT HERE box. The chronometer in the corner of his visor was counting down the short shelf life of his disguise. “Will you please let it drop, Officer Dell?” he pleaded. “Of course I look like your friend. We all look like your friend. We’re
clones
, for crying out loud!”

“Fred always likes to point out the obvious too.”

Fred turned his back on his friend and continued calibrating his cap and visor system, which he had started while still up in the container van. The system he’d obtained from the TUGs was a reliable law-enforcement model, but it was designed to be controlled by an onboard subem or valet, neither of which Fred had. Its manual controls were cumbersome, to say the least, and not always intuitive. Fred instructed his cap to query the clinic’s system for station reports, but he had no access privileges. He did get the visitor kiosk to open, and he selected a campus map. It was a tourist aid, highlighting only the major buildings and landmarks and not drawn to scale. But it was all he had, so he pasted it into his Theater Map to serve as a base layer. In his visor, he appeared on it as a steady blue dot in a square symbol labeled “South Gate Entrance.” No other personnel showed up, not even Reilly standing behind him.

Reilly began talking to someone on his comlink. He mumbled his part of the conversation. On his belt were a sidearm and a standstill wand, both of which would be coded to his ID and useless to anyone else. The only weapon Reilly had that Fred could use was his baton. His uniform seemed to be lightly armored, as was Myr Planc’s own, but his cap seemed to be of a much higher quality. And of course Reilly had all of the clinic’s systems at his disposal, including backup.

Fred cursed when he realized he was sizing up his friend as though he were the enemy. Why couldn’t he have been another jerry? He continued to watch his oldest friend and batchmate in the rear view of his visor. Suddenly Reilly’s suit armor stiffened, and the WAIT HERE box on the floor turned into a
FOLLOW ME
usher line. It led back the way Fred had come, back to the middle block.

“What gives?” Fred said.

“The clinic has just gone to Orange,” Reilly said matter-of-factly, as though it happened all the time. “As a precaution, we ask all civvies to follow the usher lines to more secure locations. That means you, Myr Planc.”

“Orange Alert? Is there trouble?”

Reilly smiled disarmingly. “Let’s just move it along, myr. I have to lock down this section.”

Fred could not afford to lose ground now, and he said, “Let me stay here, brother. I’ll be quiet.”

It was the wrong kind of request for a russ to make of another russ on duty. Reilly read it for the stalling tactic it was, and his whole demeanor changed. He came fully alert, and his body assumed a ready stance. “Do as I instruct, Myr Planc,” Reilly said in a mild voice. “Turn around and follow the usher line. Do it now.”

BLUE TEAM WASP had successfully reached the outer block of the gatehouse without detection and there identified the probable intruder as the hankie and two children, backed up by about a thousand bees. None of them had managed to penetrate gatehouse security. The wasp reported this to Blue Team Bee, who recalled it to the cottage, but the clinic went Orange before it could return, and it became trapped in the middle block.

WHEN MEEWEE AND the doctor were halfway down the brick drive, Wee Hunk appeared before them and said, “Ah, Merrill, and Dr. Rouselle, you’re still here.”

“Don’t waste our time,” Meewee said and attempted to walk through the holo, but the mentar held up his hands and said, “Please hear me out.”

Meewee stopped. “Make it brief,” he said and added a challenge in Starkese, “Every second is precious, and too many have been squandered already.”

“I disagree, old friend,” the caveman replied. “We gave it our best, but we failed. Ellen is lost, and no amount of grandstanding on your part can bring her back.”

None of what the mentar said answered the ID challenge, and Meewee said, “Don’t call me your friend. You are not Wee Hunk, or at least not the Wee Hunk who was my friend. I suggest you stay out of my way, or I’ll have Arrow deal with you. He can do it, you know. You were right about that.”

“Have Arrow deal with me? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you wish to be confrontational, I am more than your match.” The caveman shook his head when he heard what he was saying. “Merrill, Merrill, listen to us. I told you on Monday—did I not?—that I don’t care about your damn Oships. All I care about is the well-being of my sponsor—my former sponsor—and out of respect for her memory, I cannot have you charging about demanding her head.”

“If Ellen is really irretrievable, then let us see her—
in person
— and I’ll quit.”

“There, see? You can’t help yourself.”

“Enough of this,” Meewee said and went around the mentar.

“You force my hand, your grace,” Wee Hunk said. “I’ve just removed your name from Ellen’s FDO. The guards won’t let you through the gate.”

Meewee stopped and glanced at the pressure gate at the bottom of the drive. The lifechair he’d noticed earlier had left the gate and parked a few meters away, along with the two children. Meewee’s shoulder ached fiercely. He had pulled a muscle hauling the portable tank around like a young fool, and he massaged his neck as he tried to figure out what to do next. Something the mentar had just said reminded him of Cabinet—the fact that Ellen was his
former
sponsor.

“Good grief,” he said. “You’ve already passed through probate, haven’t you?”

“Yes, actually, this morning when Ellen was declared irretrievable.”

Like Cabinet after Eleanor’s death, Wee Hunk had returned from probate compromised, and probably not even aware of it. Something in the probate process had breached the shell to their personality buds. He had no idea if the breach was intentional or not, but it didn’t necessarily mean they were contaminated, did it? Cabinet was continuing to run Starke Enterprises as it always had; Wee Hunk had said so himself. And if Ellen were, in fact, irretrievable, then Wee Hunk’s behavior was perfectly correct, while he, himself, was acting like a callous fool. Meewee had to admit, it was never about the girl’s well-being for him, but only about the project. He was obsessed with the damn Garden Earth.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll leave, but at least show us Ellen’s death certificate.”

“That I can do,” the mentar said and opened a frame of the document, with verified sigs of clinic doctors.