Counting Heads (7 page)

Returning to the living room, I sat in the armchair facing Cabinet’s couch. “All right. What do you want?”

“That’s more like it,” said the chief of staff. She leaned back in the couch and relaxed as Eleanor would. “First, let’s get you caught up on what’s happened so far.”

“By all means. Catch me up on what’s happened so far.”

The chief of staff gave the floor to the attorney general who said, “Yesterday morning, Thursday, 3 April, at precisely 10:47:39 EST, while loitering at the New Foursquare Café in downtown Bloomington, Indiana, you, Samson P. Harger, were routinely analyzed by a Homeland Command Random Testing Device, Metro Population Model 8903AL. You were found to be in noncompliance with the Homeland Acts of 2014, 2064, and 2087. As per procedures set forth in—”

“Please,” I said, “in humanese.”

The security chief took over and said in his gravelly voice, “You were tasted by a slug, Myr Harger, and found to be bad. So they bagged you.”

“Why? What was wrong with me?”

“Name it. You went off the scale. First, the DNA sequence in a sample of ten of your skin cells didn’t match each other. Also, a known NASTIE was identified in your bloodstream. Your marker genes didn’t match your record in the National Registry. You
did
match the record of a known terrorist with an outstanding arrest warrant. You also matched the record of someone who died twenty-three years ago.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “How could the slug read all those things at once?”

“That’s what the HomCom wanted to know. So they disassembled you.”

“They! What?”

“Any one of those conditions gave them the authority they needed. They didn’t have the patience to read you slow and gentlelike, so they pumped you so full of smart agents you could have filled a swimming pool.”

“They—completely?”

“All your biological functions were interrupted. You were legally dead for three minutes.”

It took me a moment to grasp what he was saying. “So what did they discover?”

“Nothing,” said the security chief, “zip, nada. Your cell survey came up normal. They couldn’t even get the arresting slug, or any other slug, to duplicate the initial readings.”

“So the arresting slug was defective?”

The attorney general said, “We forced them to concede that the arresting slug
might
have been defective.”

“So they reassembled me and let me go, and everything is good?”

“Not quite,” continued the security chief. “That particular model slug has never been implicated in a false reading. This would be the first time, according to the HomCom, and naturally they’re not too eager to admit that. Besides, they still had you on another serious charge.”

“Which is?”

The attorney general said, “That your initial reading constituted an unexplained anomaly.”

“An unexplained anomaly? This is a crime?”

I excused myself for another visit to the bathroom. The urgency increased when I stood up from the armchair and was painful by the time I reached the toilet. This time the stream didn’t burn me, but hissed and gave off some sort of vapor, like steam. I watched in horror.

When I finished, I marched back to the living room, stood in front of the three holos, and screamed at them, “
What have they done to me?
”

“You’ve been seared, Myr Harger,” said the chief of staff.

“Seared? What is seared?”

“It’s a fail-safe procedure. Tiny wardens have been installed into each of your body’s cells. Any attempt to hijack your cellular function or alter your genetic makeup will cause that cell to self-immolate. Roll up your sleeve and scratch your arm.”

I did as she said. I raked my skin with my fingernails. Flakes of skin cascaded to the floor, popping and flashing like a miniature fireworks display.

The chief of staff continued. “Likewise, any cell that expires through natural causes and becomes separated from your body self-immolates. When you die, your body will cook at a low heat.”

I was stunned.

“Unfortunately, there’s more,” she said. “Please sit down.”

I sat down, still holding my arm out. Beads of sweat dropped from my chin and boiled away on the robe in little puffs of steam.

“Eleanor feels it best to tell you everything now,” said the chief of staff. “It’s not pretty, so sit back and prepare yourself for more bad news.”

I did as she suggested.

“They weren’t about to let you go, you know. You had forfeited all of your civil rights. If you weren’t the spouse of a Tri-Discipline Governor, you’d have simply disappeared. As it was, they proceeded to eradicate all traces of your DNA from the environment. They confiscated all records of your genome from the National Registry, clinics, rejuvenation spas, etc. They flooded this apartment, removed every microscopic bit of hair, phlegm, mucus, skin, fingernail, toenail, blood, smegma—you name it—every breath you took since you moved in. They sent probes down the plumbing for trapped hair. They even invaded Eleanor’s body to retrieve your semen. They scoured the halls, elevators, lobby, dining room, linen stores, laundry. They were most thorough. They have likewise visited the National Orphanage, your townhouse in Connecticut, the bungalow in Cozumel, the juve clinic, your hotel room on the Moon, the shuttle, and all your and Eleanor’s domiciles all over the USNA. They are systematically following your trail backward for a period of thirty years.”

“My Chicago studio?”

“Of course.”

“Henry?”

“Gone.”

“You mean in isolation, right? They’re interrogating him, right?”

The security chief said, “No, eradicated. He resisted. Gave ’em quite a fight too. But no civilian job can withstand the weight of the Command. Not even us.”

I didn’t believe Henry was gone. He had so many secret backups. At this moment he was probably lying low in a half-dozen parking loops all over the solar system.

But another thought occurred to me. “Our son!”

The chief of staff said, “When your accident occurred, the chassis had not yet been infected with your and Eleanor’s recombinant. Had it been, the HomCom would have disassembled it too. Eleanor prevented the procedure at the last moment and turned over all genetic records and material.”

I tried sifting through this. My son was dead, or rather never started. But at least Eleanor had saved the chassis. We could always try—or could we?
I was seared!
My cells were locked, and the HomCom had confiscated all records of my genome.

The attorney general said, “The chassis, however, had already been brought out of stasis and was considered viable. To allow it to develop with its original genetic complement, or to place it back into stasis, would have exposed it to legal claims by its progenitors—its original parents. So Eleanor had it infected. It’s undergoing conversion at this time.”

“Infected? Infected with what? Did she clone herself?”

The chief of staff shook her head. “Heavens, no. She had it infected with the recombination of her genes and those of a simulated partner—a composite of several of her past partners.”

“Without my agreement?”

“You were deceased at the time. She was your surviving spouse.”

“I was deceased for only three minutes! I was retrievably dead. Obviously, retrievable!”

“Alive you would have been a terrorist, and the fertility permit would have been annulled.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the chair. “Right,” I said, “what else?” When no one answered, I said, “To sum up, then, I have been seared, which means my cells are booby-trapped. Which means I’m incapable of reproducing? or even of being rejuvenated?” They said nothing. “So my life expectancy has been reduced to—what?—another forty years or so? Right. My son is dead. Pulled apart before he was even started. Henry is gone, probably forever. My wife—no, my widow—is having a child by another man—men.”

“Men and women actually,” said the chief of staff.

“Whatever. Not by me. How long did all of this take?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“A hell of a busy twenty minutes.”

“To our way of thinking,” said the attorney general, “a protracted interval of time. The important negotiation in your case occurred within the first five seconds of your demise.”

“You’re telling me that Eleanor was able to figure everything out and cook up her simulated partner in five seconds?”

“Eleanor has in readiness at all times a full set of contingency plans to cover every conceivable threat we can imagine. It pays, Myr Harger, to plan for the worst.”

I was speechless. The idea that all during our time together, El was busy making these plans was too monstrous to believe.

“Let me impress upon you,” said the chief of staff, “the fact that Eleanor stood by you. I doubt that many people would take such risks to fight for a spouse. Also, only someone in her position could have successfully prosecuted your case. The HomCom doesn’t have to answer phone calls, you know.

“As to the details of your release, the attorney general can fill you in later, but here’s the agreement in a nutshell. Given the wild diagnosis of the arresting slug and the subsequent lack of substantiating evidence, we calculated the most probable cause to be a defect in the slug, not some as yet unheard of NASTIE in your body. Further, as a perfect system of any sort has never been demonstrated, we predicted there to be records of other failures buried deep in HomCom archives. Eleanor threatened to air these files publicly in a civil suit. To do so would have cost her a lifetime of political capital, her career, and possibly her life. But as she was able to convince the HomCom she was willing to proceed, they backed down. They agreed to revive you and place you on probation, the terms of which are stored in your belt system, which we see you have not yet reviewed. The major term is your searing. Searing effectively neutralizes any threat in case you were indeed the victim of a new NASTIE. Let me emphasize that even this was a concession on their part. As far as public records show, you are the first seared individual allowed to leave the Utah quarantine center.

“Also, as a sign of good faith, we disclosed the locations of all of Henry’s hidey-holes.”

“What?” I rose from my seat. “You gave them Henry?”

“Sit down, Myr Harger,” said the security chief.

But I didn’t sit down. I began to pace. So this is how it works, I thought. This is the world I live in.

“Please realize, Sam,” said the chief of staff, “that they would have found him out anyway. No matter how clever you think you are, given time, all veils can be pierced.”

I turned around to answer her, but she and her two colleagues were gone. I was alone in the room with the russ, Fred, who stood sheepishly next to the hall corridor. He cleared his throat and said, “Governor Starke will see you now.”

It’s been eight long months since my surprise visit to the cop shop. I’ve had plenty of time to sit and reflect on what’s happened to me, to meditate on my victimhood.

Shortly after my accident, Eleanor and I moved into our new home, a sprawling old farmstead on the outskirts of Bloomington. We have more than enough room here, with barns and stables, a large garden, pear orchard, tennis courts, swimming pool, and a dozen iterants, including Fred, to run everything. It’s really very beautiful, and the whole eighty acres is covered with its own canopy, inside and independent of the Bloomington canopy, a bubble within a bubble. Just the place to raise the child of a Tri-Discipline Governor.

The main house, built of blocks of local limestone, dates back to the last century. It’s the home that Eleanor and I dreamed of owning. But now that we’re here, I spend most of my time in the basement, for sunlight is hard on my seared skin. For that matter, rich food is hard on my gut, I bruise easily inside and out, I can’t sleep a whole night through, all my joints ache for an hour or so when I rise, I have lost my sense of smell, and I’ve become a little hard of hearing. There is a constant taste of brass in my mouth and a dull throbbing in my skull. I go to bed nauseated and wake up nauseated. The doctor says my condition will improve in time as my body adjusts, but that my health is up to me now. No longer do I have resident molecular homeostats to constantly screen, flush, and scrub my cells, nor muscle toners or fat inhibitors. No longer can I go periodically to a juve clinic to correct the cellular errors of aging. Now I can and certainly will grow stouter, slower, weaker, balder—and older. Now the date of my death is decades, not millennia, away. This should come as no great shock, for this was the human condition when I was born. Yet, since my birth, the whole human race, it seems, has boarded a giant ocean liner and set course for the shores of immortality. I, however, have been unceremoniously tossed overboard.

So I spend my days sitting in the dim dampness of my basement corner, growing pasty white and fat (twenty pounds already), and plucking my eyebrows to watch them sizzle like fuses.

I am not pouting, and I am certainly not indulging in self-pity, as Eleanor accuses me. In fact, I am brooding. It’s what artists do, we brood. To other, more active people, we appear selfish, obsessive, even narcissistic, which is why we prefer to brood in private.

But I’m not brooding about art or package design. I have quit that for good. I will never design again. That much I know. I’m not sure what I
will
do, but at least I know I’ve finished that part of my life. It was good; I enjoyed it. I climbed to the top of my field. But it’s over.

I’m brooding about my victimhood. My intuition tells me that if I understand it, I will know what to do with myself. So I pluck another eyebrow. The tiny bulb of flesh at the root ignites like an old-fashioned match, a tiny point of light in my dark cave, and as though making a wish, I whisper, “Henry.” The hair sizzles along its length until it burns my fingers, and I have to drop it. My fingertips are already charred from this game.

I miss Henry terribly. It’s as though a whole chunk of my mind were missing. I never knew how deeply integrated I had woven him into my psyche, or where my thoughts stopped and his began. When I ask myself a question these days, no one answers.

I wonder why he did it, what made him think he could resist the Homeland Command. Can machine intelligence become cocky? Or did he knowingly sacrifice himself for me? Did he think he could help me escape? Or did he protect our privacy in the only way open to him, by destroying himself? The living archive of my life is gone, but at least it’s not in the loving hands of the HomCom.

My little death has caused other headaches. My marriage ended. My estate went into receivership. My memberships, accounts, and privileges in hundreds of services and organizations were closed. News of my death spread around the globe at the speed of fiber, causing tens of thousands of data banks to toggle my status to “deceased,” a position not designed to toggle back. Autobituaries, complete with footage of my mulching at the Foursquare Café, appeared on all the nets the same day. Databases list both my dates of birth and death. (Interestingly, none of my obits or bios mention the fact that I was seared.) Whenever I use my voice or retinal prints, I set off alarms. El’s attorney general has managed to reinstate most of my major accounts, but my demise is too firmly entrenched in the world’s web to ever be fully corrected. The attorney general has, in fact, offered me a routine for my new valet system to pursue these corrections on a continuous basis. She, as well as the rest of El’s Cabinet, has volunteered to educate my belt for me as soon as I install a personality bud in it. It will need a bud if I ever intend to leave the security of my crypt. But I’m not ready for a new belt buddy.

I PLUCK ANOTHER eyebrow, and by its tiny light I say, “Ellen.”

We are living in an armed fortress. Eleanor says we can survive any form of attack here: nano, bio, chemical, conventional, or nuclear. She feels completely at ease here. This is where she comes to rest at the end of a long day, to glory in her patch of Earth, to adore her baby, Ellen. Even without the help of Mother’s Medley, Eleanor’s maternal instincts have all kicked in. She is mad with motherhood. Ellen is ever in her thoughts. If she could, El would spend all of her time in the nursery in realbody, but the duties of a junior Tri-D Governor call her away. So she has programmed a realtime holo of Ellen to be visible continuously in the periphery of her vision, a private scene only she can see. No longer do the endless meetings and unavoidable luncheons capture her full attention. No longer is time spent in a tube car flitting from one city to another a total waste. Now she secretly watches the jennys feed the baby, bathe the baby, perambulate the baby around the fish pond. And she is always interfering with the jennys, correcting them, undercutting whatever place they may have won in the baby’s affection. There are four jennys. Without the name badges on their identical uniforms, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. They have overlapping twelve-hour shifts, and they hand the baby off like a baton in a relay race.

I seem to have my own retinue, a contingent of four russes: Fred Londenstane, the one who showed up on the day of my little death, and three more. I am not a prisoner here, and their mission is to protect the compound, Governor Starke, and her infant daughter, not to watch over me, but I have noticed that there is always one within striking distance, especially when I go anywhere near the nursery. Which I don’t do very often. Ellen is a beautiful baby, but I have no desire to spend time with her, and the whole house seems to breathe easier when I stay down in my tomb.

Yesterday evening a jenny came down to announce dinner. I threw on some clothes and joined El in the solarium off the kitchen where lately she prefers to take her meals. Outside the window wall, heavy snowflakes fell silently in the blue-gray dusk. El was watching Ellen explore a new toy on the carpet. When El turned to me, her face was radiant, but I had no radiance to return. Nevertheless, she took my hand and drew me to sit next to her.

“Here’s Daddy,” she cooed, and Ellen warbled a happy greeting. I knew what was expected of me. I was supposed to adore the baby, gaze upon her plenitude, and thus be filled with grace. I tried. I tried because I truly want everything to work out, because I love Eleanor and wish to be her partner in parenthood. So I watched Ellen and meditated on the marvel and mystery of life. El and I are no longer at the tail end of the long chain of humanity—I told myself—flapping in the cold winds of evolution. Now we are grounded. We have forged a new link. We are no longer grasped only by the past, but we grasp the future. We have created the future in flesh.

When El turned again to me, I was ready, or thought I was. But she saw right through me to my stubborn core of indifference. Nevertheless, she encouraged me, prompted me with, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied.

“And smart.”

“The smartest.”

Later that evening, when the brilliant monstrance of her new religion was safely tucked away in the nursery under the sleepless eyes of the night jennys, Eleanor rebuked me. “Are you so selfish that you can’t accept Ellen as your daughter? Does it have to be your seed or nothing? I know what happened to you was shitty and unfair, and I’m sorry. I really am. I wish to hell they got me instead of you. Maybe the next one will be more accurate. Will that make you happy?”

We both knew she was mistaken. The assault was never aimed at her. If Ellen was the carrot, then I was the stick. The conditions of her coronation could not be clearer—step out of line and risk everything. My pathetic presence would only serve as a constant reminder of this fact.

“No, El, don’t talk like that,” I said. “I can’t help it. Give me time.”

That night Eleanor invited herself to my bed. We used to have an exceptional sex life. Sex for us was a form of play, competition, and truth-telling. It used to be fun. Now it’s a job. The shaft of my penis is bruised by the normal bend and torque of even moderate lovemaking. My urethra is raw from jets of scalding semen when I come. Of course I use special condoms and lubricants, without which I would blister both El’s and my own private parts. Still, it’s just not comfortable for either of us. El tries to downplay it by saying things like, “You’re hot, baby,” but she fools no one.

We made love that night, but I pulled out before I came. El tried to draw me back, but I refused. She took my sheathed penis in her hands, but I told her not to bother. I told her it just wasn’t worth the misery anymore.

In the middle of the night, when I rose to return to my dungeon, Eleanor stirred from sleep and hissed, “Hate me if you must, Sam, but please don’t blame the baby.”

I ASK MY new belt how many eyebrow hairs an average person of my race, sex, and age has. The belt can access numerous encyclopedias to do simple research like this. “Five hundred fifty in each eyebrow,” it replies in its neuter voice. That’s a sum of eleven hundred, plenty of fuel to light my investigation. I pluck another and say, “Blame.”

For someone must be blamed. Someone must be held accountable. Someone must pay. But who?

Eleanor blames her “Unknown Benefactor,” the person or persons behind her sudden ascendancy. She’s launched a private project with Cabinet they call Target UKB. Basically, the project is a mosaic analysis to identify the telltale signature of this mysterious entity. It emulates the massive data-sifting techniques long practiced by the HomCom, but her subjects are the ruling elite, not terrorists or protesters. She’s spent a fortune on liters of new neuro-chemical paste to boost Cabinet’s already gargantuan mentality. (Henry would never have stood a chance against Cabinet now.)

From the small amount of information that Eleanor has shared with me, I gather that Target UKB works by recording and parsing the moment-by-moment activities of the five thousand most prominent people on the planet. Being familiar with the degree of security we endure around here at the manse, and assuming that other affluent godlings maintain comparable privacy, such surveillance can’t be easy. Nevertheless, El assures me that when her model is in place, she’ll be able to trace the chain in intention of any event back to its source. She says she should have done something like this years ago. In my opinion, it’s paranoia writ large.

Eleanor blames her UKB. But who do
I
blame?

That’s a good question, one for which I don’t yet have an answer. If there is a UKB pulling El’s strings, at least it gave us fair warning. We walked into this high stakes game of empire with our eyes open. In the end, in the hallowed tradition of victims everywhere, I suppose I blame myself.

I PLUCK ONE more eyebrow, and as it sizzles, I say, “Fred.”

For this russ, Fred Londenstane, is a complete surprise to me. I had never formed a relationship with a clone before. They are service people, after all. They are interchangeable. They wait on us in stores and restaurants. They clip our hair. They perform the menialities we cannot, or prefer not to assign to machines. How can you tell one joan or jerome from another anyway? And what could you possibly talk about? Nice watering can you have there, kelly. What’s the weather like up there, steve?

But Fred the russ is different. From the start he’s brought me fruit and cakes reputed to fortify tender digestive tracts, sunglasses, soothing skin creams, and a hat with a duckbill visor. He seems genuinely interested in me, even comes down to chat after his shift. I don’t know why he’s so attentive. Perhaps he never recovered from the shock of first meeting me, freshly seared and suffering. Perhaps he recognizes that I’m the one around here most in need of his protection.

When I was ready to try having sex with Eleanor again and I needed some of those special insulated condoms, my new valet couldn’t locate them on any of the shoppers, not even on the medical supply ones, so I asked Fred. He said he knew of a place and would bring me some. He returned the next day with a whole shopping bag full of special pharmaceuticals for the cellular challenged: vitamin supplements, suppositories, plaque-fighting tooth soap, and knee and elbow braces. He brought twenty dozen packages of condoms, and he winked as he set them on the table. He brought more stuff that he discreetly left in the bag.

I reached into the bag. There were bottles of cologne and perfume, sticks of waxy deodorant, air fresheners and odor eaters. “Do I stink?” I said.

“Like a roomful of cat’s piss, myr. No offense.”

I lifted my hand to my nose, but I couldn’t smell anything. If I stank so bad, how could Eleanor have lived with me all those months, eaten with me, slept with me, and never mentioned it once?

There was more in the bag: mouthwash and chewing gum. “My breath stinks too?”

In reply, Fred crossed his eyes and inflated his cheeks.

I thanked him for shopping for me, and especially for his frankness.