Counting Heads (8 page)

“Don’t mention it, myr,” he said. “I’m just glad to see you getting better.”

I wondered if all russes were so compassionate. The other three assigned to the household didn’t seem so. Competent, dutiful, fearless—yes, but compassionate? I didn’t feel comfortable asking Fred about the qualities of his type, so I kept quiet and accepted his kindness with all the aplomb of a drowning man.

Two days ago was Ellen’s first birthday. Unfortunately, Eleanor had to be away in Europe. Still, she arranged a little holo birthday party with her friends. Thirty-some people sat around, totally mesmerized by the baby, who had recently begun to walk. Only four of us, baby Ellen, a jenny, a russ, and I, were there in realbody. When I arrived and sat down, Ellen made a beeline for my lap. People chuckled and said, “Daddy’s girl.”

I had the tundra dream again last night. I walked through the canopy lock right out into the white, frozen, endless tundra. The feeling was one of escape.

My doctor gave me a complete physical last week. She said I had reached equilibrium with my condition. This was as good as it would get. Lately, I have been exercising. I have lost a little weight and feel somewhat stronger. But my joints ache sometimes, and my doctor says they’ll only get worse. She prescribed an old-time remedy—aspirin.

Fred left us two months ago. He and his wife succeeded in obtaining berths on a new station orbiting Mars. Their contracts are for five years with renewal options. Since arriving there, he’s visited me in holo a couple of times, says their best jump pilot is a stinker. That’s what people are calling the seared—stinkers. I may have been the first one the HomCom released from quarantine, but now a steady stream of stinkers are being surrendered to an unsuspecting public.

Last week I finally purchased a personality bud for my valet system. It’s having a rough time with me because I refuse to interact with it. I haven’t even given it a name yet. I can’t think of any suitable one. I call it “Hey, you,” or “Yo, belt.” Eleanor’s chief of staff has repeated her offer to educate it for me, but I declined. In fact, I told her that if any of them breach its shell even once, I will abort it and start over with a new one.

Today after dinner, we had a family crisis. The jenny on duty suffered a nosebleed while her backup was off running an errand. I was in the kitchen when I heard Ellen crying. In the nursery I found a hapless russ—Fred’s replacement—holding the kicking and screaming baby. The jenny called from the open bathroom door, “I’m coming. One minute, Ellie, I’m coming.” When Ellen saw me she reached for me with her fat little arms and howled.

“Give her to me,” I ordered the russ. His face reflected his hesitation. “It’s all right,” I said.

“One moment, myr,” he said and asked silently for orders. “Okay, here,” he said after a moment. He gave me Ellen who wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’ll just go and help Marilee,” he said, crossing to the bathroom. I sat down and put Ellen on my lap. She looked around, caught her breath, and resumed crying; only this time it was an easy, mournful wail.

“What is it?” I asked her. “What does Ellen want?” I reviewed what little I knew about babies. I felt her forehead, though I knew babies don’t catch sick anymore. And with evercleans, they don’t require constant changing. The remains of dinner lay on the tray, so she’d just eaten. A bellyache? Sleepy? Teething pains? Early on, Ellen was frequently feverish and irritable as her converted body sloughed off the remnants of the little boy chassis she’d overwritten. I thought about the son we almost had, and I wondered why during my year of brooding I never grieved for him. Was it because he never had a soul? Because he had never got beyond the purely data stage of recombination? Because he never owned a body? And what about Ellen? Did she have her own soul, or did the original boy’s soul stay through the conversion? And if it did, would it hate us for what we’ve done to its body? I was in no sense a religious man, but these questions troubled me.

Ellen cried, and the russ stuck his head out of the bathroom every few moments to check on us. This angered me. What did they think I was going to do? Drop her? Strangle her? I knew they were watching me, all of them: the chief of staff, the security chief. They might even have awakened Eleanor in Hamburg or Paris where it was almost midnight. No doubt they had a contingency plan for anything I might do.

“Don’t worry, Ellie,” I crooned, swallowing my anger. “Mama will be here in just a minute.”

“Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Eleanor’s sleep-hoarse voice.

Ellen startled and looked about, and when she didn’t see her mother, bawled more insistently. The jenny, holding a blood-soaked towel to her nose, peeked out of the bathroom.

I bounced Ellen on my knee. “Mama’s coming, Mama’s coming, but in the meantime, Sam’s going to show you a trick. Wanna see a trick? Watch this.” I pulled a strand of hair from my head. The bulb popped as it ignited, and the strand sizzled along its length. Ellen quieted in mid-fuss, and her eyes went wide. The russ burst out of the bathroom and sprinted toward us, but stopped and stared when he saw what I was doing. His nose wrinkled in revulsion. “Get out of here,” I said to him, “and take the jenny.” It was all I could do not to shout.

“Sorry, myr, but my orders—” The russ paused, then cleared his throat. “Yes, myr, right away.” He escorted the jenny, her head tilted back, from the nursery.

“Thank you,” I said to Eleanor.

“I’m here.” We turned and found Eleanor seated next to us in an ornately carved, wooden chair. Ellen squealed with delight, but did not reach for her mother. Already by six months she had been able to distinguish between a holobody and a real one. Eleanor’s eyes were heavy, and her hair mussed. She wore a long silk robe, one I’d never seen before, and her feet were bare. A sliver of jealousy pricked me when I realized she had probably been in bed with a lover. But what of it?

In a sweet voice, filled with the promise of soft hugs, Eleanor told us a story about a kooky caterpillar she’d seen that very day in a park in Paris. She used her hands on her lap to show us how it walked. Baby Ellen leaned back into my lap as she watched, and I found myself gently rocking her. There was a squirrel with a bushy gray tail involved in the story, and a lot of grown-up feet wearing very fashionable shoes, but I lost the gist of the story, so caught up was I in the voice that was telling it. El’s words spoke of an acorn that lost its cap and ladybugs coming to tea, but what her voice said was, I made you from the finest stuff. You are perfect. I will never let anyone hurt you. I love you always.

The voice shifted incrementally, took an edge, and caused me the greatest sense of loss. El said, “And what about my big baby?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “What about you?”

El told me about her day. Her voice spoke of schedules and meetings, a leader who lost his head, and diplomats coming to tea, but what it said was, You’re a grown man who is capable of coping. Nothing is perfect, but we try. I will never hurt you. I love you always. Please come back to me.

I opened my eyes. Ellen was a warm lump asleep on my lap, fist against cheek, lips slightly parted. I brushed her hair from her forehead with my sausagelike fingers and traced the round curve of her cheek and chin. I must have caressed her for quite a while, because when I looked up, Eleanor was waiting to catch my expression.

I said, “She has your eyebrows.”

Eleanor laughed. “Yes, poor baby.”

“No, they’re her nicest feature.”

“Yes, well, and what’s happened to yours?”

“Nervous habit,” I said. “I’m working on my head now.”

She glanced up at my thinning pate. “In any case, you seem better.”

“Yes, I believe I’ve turned the corner.”

“That’s good to hear; I’ve been so worried.”

“In fact, I have just now thought of a name for my belt valet.”

“You have? What is it?”

“Skippy.”

She laughed a big belly laugh. “Skippy? Skippy?”

“Well, he’s young,” I explained.

“
Very
young, apparently.”

Our conversation was starting to feel like old times, but these weren’t the old times, and I said, “Tomorrow I’m going to teach Skippy how to hold a press conference.”

“I see,” Eleanor said uncertainly. “Thank you for telling me. What will it be about?”

I could see the storm of calculation in her eyes as her Cabinet whispered to her. Had I thrown them all a curve? Come up with something unexpected? I perversely hoped so.

“About my arrest, I suppose. About my searing.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Sam. You don’t owe anyone an explanation about that.”

“I know. Yet, I feel I must bear witness. I think people will want to know what happened to me. That’s all I’m saying. I’m a public figure, after all. Or at least I was once.”

“No offense, Sam, but stinkers are all over the news lately. Your case won’t stand out, except as you’re related to me. Is your purpose to harm me and Ellen?”

That was not my purpose.

“And besides,” she continued, “talking publicly about your searing would violate the terms of your release. You know that.”

I did. I stood up and offered her the sleeping baby. “Here, take her.” El reached for Ellen before we both remembered we weren’t in the same room. A moment later, a jenny came in, wordlessly took the baby from me, and withdrew, closing the door behind her.

I turned to Eleanor and flung my arms out from my sides. “Look at me, El. Look at what they’ve done to me.”

“I know, Sam. I know,” she said and tried to touch my chest with her ghostly fingers. “I’m working on it, believe me. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will track those people down. You can count on it. And when I do, I will destroy them for what they’ve done to us. That’s my promise to you.”

It was a promise for revenge that I wasn’t prepared to turn down at the time, though I knew it was beside the point. It would do nothing to set things right.

I looked around at the limestone walls surrounding us, at the oak tree outside the window, at the fish pond beyond, and I said, “I don’t think I can live here.”

“But it’s our
home
, Sam.”

“No, it’s
your
home.”

She had the good grace not to argue the point. Instead she said, “Where will you go?”

I didn’t know. Till that moment, I didn’t even know I was leaving. “Good question,” I said. “Where do damaged people go?”

That morning at the charterhouse, Samson P. Kodiak pled exhaustion. Claimed he was beat. Had a bad night of it. More tired now than when he went to bed in the first place. Wouldn’t Kitty consider going to the park without him just this once? She could ask Denny or Francis or Barry to escort her.

“Dearest,” Kitty replied, “stay put. I’ll be right up.” Kitty was already dressed and waiting for him in her fifth-floor room. She had been expecting his knock on her door at any moment, and here it turned out that he wasn’t even out of bed yet. Kitty was more than a tiny bit peeved—today was supposed to be the big day. She was wearing her brand-new blue and white sailor outfit with the sparkly tap shoes. Her hair was a helmet of corkscrew curls that bobbled like springs whenever she waggled her head. And the old fart wanted to miss it?

Kitty Kodiak slammed her door, skipped along the hall, tap-danced up a flight of steps, paused to reconsider, turned around, and danced down five floors to the NanoJiffy instead. There she ordered his habitual breakfast: corn mush and jam, juice and coffeesh. Balancing the tray in her small hands, Kitty carried it up ten floors to the roof where Samson used the garden shed for his bedroom. Halfway across the roof, already she could smell him. Samson Kodiak had a serious personal odor issue. The fragrance that came off him was so strong it could make your eyes water. And his mouth was an open grave. Sam’s odor drove house flies outdoors. Once, it set off a smoke alarm. But it wasn’t his fault that he stank so bad, and Kitty loved him anyway.

“Morning, dahling,” she drawled, nudging the screen door open with her little rump and maneuvering the tray into the cramped space. If Samson heard her, he pretended not to. He lay on his cot, flat on his back, eyes shut, hands crisscrossed over his chest like a pharaoh. When Kitty saw him like this, she jumped, spilling his coffeesh.

Samson opened his eyes and ratcheted his skullish head on the pillow to see her. “Ah,” he said in a rusty voice, “the Good Ship
Lollipop
. Wanted to be there.”

At this, Kitty came unstuck, skipped across the cluttered floor, and tapped a flourish with her shoes, careful not to spill any more coffeesh. “You can, Sam! I’ll stay home today! We’ll go tomorrow.” She searched for somewhere to set the tray and ended up using his disgusting old elephant foot footstool next to the cot. “Look, I brought you breakfast.”

“Thank you, dearest,” he said, his eyelids drooping. “While you were on your way up, I asked Denny, and he says he’ll escort you. He’s waiting for you down in the NanoJiffy. I’m buying him a Danish. Use my allowance account to pay his fares. Buy him lunch too.”

“No, Sam. I’m going to stay here and nurse you back to health.”

“I don’t need a nurse, sweetheart. I just need peace and quiet. Now go to the park and leave me be.” As though to close the matter, Samson resumed his mummylike pose. Indeed, the flesh covering his throat was as dark and stiff as jerked meat, and his nose and lips had shrunken, making it difficult to completely close his mouth. His fetid breath whistled through the gaps, and in a little while he began to snore.

Kitty let herself out as quietly as possible. Samson, who only pretended to sleep, realized she hadn’t kissed him good-bye. He almost called her back. He almost told his mentar, Hubert, to stop her. But he didn’t because then he’d just have to part with her all over again, and he knew he hadn’t the heart.

“Good-bye, sweetness,” he whispered after her. “Have a good long life.”

In a little while, another Kodiak housemeet came up to the roof, as Samson expected he might. It was the Kodiak houseer, Kale, who no doubt had bumped into Kitty on her way downstairs. Kale bustled into the shed and said, “So what does the autodoc say?”

Samson chuckled; Kale was refreshingly direct, as usual. Without waiting for an answer, the houseer fussed about the tiny space, rearranging garden tools on pegs and collecting Samson’s soiled things into a bag for the digester. He glanced at the untouched breakfast tray. So busy and efficient, Samson thought, as though he was tapped for time or—as we used to say—double-parked. Pretty impressive for a middle-aged man with no income, no prospects, and no drive.

Samson said, “Autodoc advises us to plan the funeral, old friend.”

Kale stood still at last and said, “Surely there must be something someone can do. I mean, it can’t be as bad as all that. What if we take you to—what if we take you to a clinic?”

Samson shook his head. “No, no clinic for me,” he said. “That would be a useless waste of credits.”

Kale seemed relieved. “A hospice then,” he said, breathing through his mouth.

“I’ve thought about that. I’d rather die here, at home, surrounded by my’ meets.”

“Uh-huh,” Kale said, absentmindedly looking at the ceiling of the shed where they’d jury-rigged fire sprinklers.

Samson noticed and said, “Not to worry. I won’t burn down the shed. Hubert will keep you informed of my condition. When the time comes, you can carry my cot out to the garden. Then everyone can sit around me and toast marshmallows.”

Kale was shocked. “Don’t be hurtful,” he said.

“What hurtful? To me it’s a comforting image.”

“In that case,” Kale sniffed, “I’ll see to the marshmallows myself.” He took a last look around. “Are you going to eat your breakfast? Is there anything else I should send up?”

“I can’t think of a thing,” Samson said, willing him on his way. The sooner Kale retreated to his office on the third floor the better. Kale, bless his frugal heart, was such a lightweight, such a marshmallow. He reminded Samson of the maître d’ at Greenalls all those years ago who refused him a table. Samson was there with his seared friend Renee, who giggled in the man’s face and said it was fine with her. She walked to the center of the foyer and announced,
Right here—right now
.

“And she weighed 150 kilos at the time,” Samson said with awe.

“You don’t say,” Kale said, unsure of where the conversation had drifted.

“Yes, and all of it in
fat!
What a bonfire she would have made. Needless to say, we got the table.”

“I see,” Kale said. “Well, I’ll be going now. Call if you need anything.” Kale withdrew from the shed, but didn’t leave the roof at once. He uncoiled the garden hose and gave his precious vegetables a good gray-water soak. The vegetables and soybimi were mostly in shade at this hour; the sun was blocked by the giant gigatowers that dominated the skyline. When Kale finished, he coiled the hose next to Samson’s shed so that it would be handy—just in case.

Two down, one to go, Samson rested his eyes and drifted down a lazy river until he heard the clang of the roof door. The screen door to his shed squeaked open, and April came in. She sat next to him on the cot and placed her cool hand on his forehead. But the seared always ran hotter than normal people, and she couldn’t tell if he had a fever.

Samson reached up and took her hand and pressed it against his cheek. “April Kodiak,” he said, “you are my favorite person in the whole solar system.”

She smiled and squeezed his twig-like fingers. “I mean it,” he continued. “I’ve always had a
thing
for you.”

April brushed her gray hair from her face. “I have to admit, Sam, I’ve always had a
thing
for you too.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, then she said, “That almost sounded like a good-bye.”

Samson chuckled. “It was, dear. I won’t last out the week.”

“Oh, Sam, are you sure?” she said. “A week? How do you know? What does the autodoc say? Oh, Sam.” Tears began to slide down her cheeks. “Let me just go and find someone to mind the shop, and then I’ll come back up and stay with you.”

She started to get up, but he held on to her hand. “No, you
won’t
,” he said. “I insist you don’t. I don’t want company.”

“Nonsense. We’ll take shifts. From now on, one of us will be with you every moment. There’s no reason for you to go through this alone. We’re
family
after all.” April pulled the elephant footstool closer. “And the first thing we’re going to do is get some of this breakfast down you before it’s completely cold.”

Samson had a sinking feeling. April was capable of derailing his plans with her kindness, and he was powerless before her. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes and tried the same trick he’d used on Kitty. But though he snored, she remained.

“House,” she whispered, “I want to create a vigil schedule. Draw me up a flowchart of all Kodiak housemeets’ free time over the next week—no, I mean month—year. House?” The houseputer didn’t respond. “Hubert, are you here?”

“I’m on the potting bench,” Hubert said, speaking through the ancient valet belt Samson still used. It lay on the bench next to his special brushes and lotions.

“That old houseputer is getting worse every day,” April said. “Can you access it for me?”

“I’d be happy to,” Hubert said, and in a moment he continued. “The house says the Nanojiffy is requesting your immediate attention.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s something wrong with the door, or the frisker in the door—or something having to do with the door. Customers are being inconvenienced—or assaulted.”

“I should have never let that man buy that couch,” she said. “Let me speak directly to the Nanojiffy.”

After a moment Hubert said, “I’m sorry. I can’t get through.”

“Oh, hell!” April said and rose to go.

Samson opened his eyes and said, “Draw up your schedule, dear, but have it start
tomorrow
. I
insist
. Today I need my privacy. I want to—to put my thoughts in order.
Alone
.”

“Eat your breakfast, you stubborn old man,” she said and left the shed. She stood outside the door and spoke through the screen. “We’ll start tonight. We’re all going to be up here to watch the canopy ceremony. It’ll be the perfect time to break the news to everyone.”

“Fine, agreed, tonight,” said Samson, “and not a moment sooner.” When she had left he said, “That was close. I was a goner. Lucky for me the houseputer chose to act up just then.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said Hubert. “You told me to arrange a diversion.”

“I told you to arrange a diversion?”

“Yes, Sam, yesterday. You predicted that April would interfere with your plans and that I should engineer a little problem for her in the shop.”

“No kidding, I said that? I must have been having a lucid interval.”

Samson was tired. All this personal interaction had taken its toll. He wasn’t even out of the shed yet, and already he needed a nap. But there was no time. So he grunted and swung his legs to the floor. “I don’t suppose I predicted anybody else coming up to pester me?” He paused to muster his strength. Bouncing a little to gain momentum, he pushed himself to his feet and leaned against the potting bench until his head cleared. “By the way, Henry, what time is it?”

“Ten oh five.”

“Have I told you what I should wear today?”

“Yes, it’s on top of the trunk.”

On the packing trunk lay a tiny, vacuum-packed cube labeled “Sam.” When he pulled the string, the tough, brown etherwrap melted away, and the contents decompressed. Samson held up the newly revealed clothing, a long-sleeved, blue jumpsuit with attached foot treads. “I don’t understand. This is the same as I wear every day. I was thinking of wearing something special today. Trousers, a shirt, something from the old days.”

“Yes, including a necktie,” said Hubert, “but you decided it would be impractical.”

Samson was suspicious. He rarely factored practicality into his plans, especially when planning something so grand as today. He wondered if his little chum was perhaps taking advantage of him. It was too late to argue, though, and he retrieved his pumice wands and mastic lotion from the potting bench and began a quick morning exfoliation. He sat on a stool in the middle of the room, away from anything flammable, and tugged at his nightshirt. It fell away from him in ragged strips; it had been thoroughly cooked in places where he had sweated. All of the house’s everyday clothes came from the Nanojiffy, but his own were of a special fireproof fabric capable of wicking away his sweat. It could get hot, though, especially on muggy nights. Sometimes he thought he could steam rice in his armpits.

Naked, he began to methodically scrub himself from the bald crown of his head to the flat soles of his feet.

“Sam,” said Hubert, “a little while ago you addressed me as Henry. I only mention this because you requested I inform you each time it occurred.”

“Umm,” said Samson, flinging motes of dead skin from his shoulders with the wand. They burst into tiny puffs of flame and drifted to the plank floor. “You’re Hubert, not Henry. I know. Thank you, Hubert.” Samson didn’t have much hair left anywhere on his body, but an odd strand of it came dislodged and sizzled away, spinning like a Chinese pinwheel. He was some piece of work, no doubt about it, more mineral than animal. All tendons and bones. He could plainly see each rib beneath his brittle skin. He could count the eight jigsaw bones of his wrists. He recalled again his old fat friend Renee and had a panicky thought that maybe he’d waited too long, lost too much volatile mass.

“Hubert, how much do I weigh?”

“When I weighed you yesterday, you weighed 34.2 kilograms.”

“And how much of that is flesh?”

“Sam, you’ve instructed me to alert you whenever you ask me the same question five times in a twenty-four-hour period.”

“Well, that was certainly wise of me.”

“And you told me that if you asked about your tissue ratio again to remind you that bones contain marrow, and while they don’t burst into flame like muscle tissue or generate billowing black smoke like adipose tissue, bones do nevertheless burn with intense heat from the inside out, and that long bones, especially the femur and humerus, can build up enough pressure to explode like pipe bombs. And that even at your present weight you’ll produce a spectacle quite breathtaking in its own way.”

“Yes, of course, pipe bombs. I remember now. Thank you, Hubert.”

After finishing the scrape down, Samson soothed his raw flesh with a binding mastic and got dressed. He put the valet belt on first, for contact with his skin, and then the jumpsuit. He noticed it had extra pockets today.