Horatio stood dead still as the hall added, “Override possible by password. Implement override?”
Horatio said nothing. Hamlet returned. “Will it help?”
“No.” Horatio was angry and frightened. He had never seen a system refuse a medical emergency. “How is she?” Hamlet put an arm on him; he shrugged it off. “How is she?”
When Hamlet still didn’t answer, Horatio clutched his head with his own hands. “Oh, Jesus. Please, no.” He ran.
The autodoor was shut. He pounded, forgetting that a wave would open it, and stared at the empty floor.
Hamlet said quietly, “I’m sorry—”
“Where is she?” He grabbed Hamlet’s doublet, throwing him against the wall. “What are you doing?”
Hamlet stared. Horatio let him go. Hamlet looked in at the walls, the drawerless tables, the complete lack of any large hiding space. “Someone took her.”
“There wasn’t time.” He looked about wildly. “Where?”
“God knows.” Hamlet looked down the hall. “No. I do. You hide a tree in a forest, but you hide dead trees in a woodpile. The dematrix lab has pools for corpses. Come.”
Horatio barely caught up with Hamlet by the elevator, and together they stormed into it.
Between levels Hamlet suddenly said, “Stop.” The elevator did. “This is the only elevator?”
He had to repeat it. Horatio said, “I think so.”
“Are there stairs?”
“Next to the elevator.”
“Unless there’s a hidden elevator, the body is in a neighboring room.”
“They’re all locked.”
“Goode would have the code—no, that’s foolish. He barely had time to punch a code. She’s still in your room.”
Horatio said, “But we checked. It’s empty.”
“We also didn’t see a second elevator.” Hamlet shook him. “Do you still believe your eyes?”
Horatio thought about the stage set, the ghost of old Hamlet, and the production of Rite of Spring. “Portajets! We’ve been tricked.” He shouted, “Elevator. Up.”
Nothing happened.
He repeated himself. Hamlet broke in, “Theater Access?”
A voice said immediately, “System override is in effect.”
A second voice, the elevator’s, said, “Accepted.”
Horatio beat at the door. “Let us out, damn you.”
Access said, “System override is in effect. Should you experience claustrophobia, I can simulate open spaces.”
Horatio pounded the undentable walls. Hamlet caught his arms. “Don’t hurt yourself. You can’t help her.”
“But she’ll be killed.”
“She’s already dead,” Hamlet said quietly. “Do you think I’d trust an image of someone you loved? I touched her. She had no breath, no pulse.” He added awkwardly, “I’m sorry she never had the chance to act.”
Horatio stood trembling. “Why are we trapped here?”
“We’re being held while the murderer moves the body.” Hamlet put a hand under his chin. “There’s a hidden room, down the hall from your quarters; he took it there perhaps.”
Horatio paced angrily. The cubicle suddenly flooded with sunlight; he had set off the claustrophobia detector. They were in the prairie; meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds sang. Hamlet stood, a mock-wind from the ventilator ruffling his hair. Horatio sank into the grass he could not feel.
* * * * *
When the elevator let them go, Horatio’s room looked the same except for a small gas jet with a grid on it and a chip attached to its side.
“The portajet.” Horatio reached for it.
Hamlet grabbed his arm and pointed to the moist jet surface. “It’s no use touching it,” Hamlet said loudly, “and poor Paulette is gone.”
Horatio whispered as they left, “Why?”
“A better question: why not kill us in the elevator instead of here?” Hamlet answered his own question. “You were supposed to find the portajet, touch it, and die—a murderer who died of the poison he’d used on his lover. She was the sacrificial lamb, you the sacrificial wolf. One murder is unexplainable, two self-explanatory. Every death must be accounted for.”
Horatio startled himself by yawning. He felt drained, in shock. “Don’t you ever get tired of thinking like that?”
Hamlet put an arm around him. “I always think like that. I’m always tired of it.” Hamlet took Horatio back to his quarters, leaving him there.
Back at Horatio’s quarters, the portajet was gone. Hamlet stopped backstage and retrieved a sharpened sword.
At his quarters, Hamlet found Horatio deep in sleep. He felt Horatio’s forehead, pulled the covers around him, then sat, sword in hand, guarding him for the rest of the night.
29
Horatio slept while Hamlet watched, but in the morning Horatio was haggard and strained. He asked Hamlet, “Do I have to go to breakfast?”
Hamlet said gently, “Worse.”
Horatio balked at the elevator. They took the stairs. Hamlet looked back at the corridor; he was sure now where the other elevator was, though he didn’t know its combination.
The lab door said flatly, “Dematrix & Discorpus Lab,” and projected a solidsign of a featureless body melting in a clear tub. Hamlet reached out, almost stroking it. “Strange,” he said lovingly. “Death has no features, and only darkness moves on the face of the waters. Your people soften even death until it’s shy and private.”
Horatio said, “How can you joke?” He was shaking. “It shows a lack of feeling, my lord.”
“Not a lack,” Hamlet said absently. “Some strong feeling, some kinship, I can’t tell—” He added kindly, “If it bothers you, stay outside.”
Unlike the simula labs, this one had no visible neurobanks, and it had permanent signs urging Teks to shout for emergency showers in the event of a spill. Moreover, even the simula labs held some odors: sweat, cloth, colognes, and the antiseptic smell of neuroputty casings. This lab, with nonorganic breathing pores evenly spaced on walls and ceiling, had no odor at all.
In the center was a massive vat with a clearplex lid. Goode, Mulvaney, and a third whom Hamlet didn’t know stood around it, wearing lab coats. Goode looked tired, but so did the others.
Hamlet nodded amiably. “You need more people for prayer or for a Sabbat. Do you pray spinning or prance widdershins?”
Another figure came from behind the vat. “We’ll have to prance. We’d never agree on a religion.”
Horatio said, “Good morning, Doctor Chandra.”
Chandra smiled at his use of the title. “How formal. I’ve never thought of Horatio as Hamlet’s diplomat.”
Hamlet stood by Horatio. “Do you think I need one?”
“We all need at least one. If you followed world politics, you would know that.”
Steps around the vat led to a platform. It seemed a parody of the on-stage throne set. Hamlet slowly walked up the stairs and dipped his hands toward the water.
At Horatio’s horrified look, Hamlet pulled his hands from the vat, but stared down. “This is Lethe, the Water of Memory, Horatio. One drink creates the innocent dead.”
Chandra said, “Two nice phrases, both false. These are the waters of forgetfulness, and the dead are not innocent.”
“Oh, but they are.” Hamlet regarded Chandra solemnly. “Who is more innocent, a living saint or your dead sinner?”
“I’d rather be the live saint,” Horatio said firmly.
“I envy the dead.” Hamlet stared into the tank. “They’re heartless without hearts and mindless without minds. Aren’t they also careless without cares?” He returned to Horatio’s side.
Horatio said in his ear, “Is this what ‘Thanatos’ means?”
Hamlet hissed back at him, “I choose to look.”
Doctor Chandra stepped into the awkward silence. “Why don’t I introduce you to some living non-saints? This is Doctor Simon Esterhazy.”
Esterhazy was a small man with
a nervous giggle. “Hello, hello,” he said lightly, staring up at Hamlet as though he were looking down on a small child. “So you’re Hamlet? Your play is too long. What brings you to my lab?”
At the “my,” Doctor Chandra raised an eyebrow. Esterhazy was that ultimate in human idiots, a man too focused on his own work to notice others.
Hamlet patiently explained his plans for a production based in a lab, and Esterhazy shook his head. “I can’t help you. You play tragedy and comedy, and there’s nothing sad or funny about this lab. Why, almost nothing happens here.” He took the tone of a lecturer. “It’s a dematrix lab—”
“We saw your sign,” Hamlet said loftily. “You think of death as nothing: no features, pain, or hardship. But death is something, without which this lab is nothing.”
Horatio recognized the exit cue and spun with Hamlet. Goode said, “Fortunately, this lab has something today.”
Without planning it, Hamlet and Horatio said in unison, “You do?”
Doctor Esterhazy clapped his hands and laughed. “Wonderful. I must go see you. You really are funny.”
Hamlet said, “Whose body?”
“The name?” Esterhazy looked helplessly at the others. Goode sighed. “You ought to make more of an effort, Simon.” He said to Hamlet, “I’m sorry. It was Barnardo.”
Horatio said blankly, from the play, “‘Barnardo?’”
Hamlet, staring, spoke Barnardo’s line. “‘He.’”
A body rolled in unattended. Its cart, a harness on wheels, telescoped up as it approached the dematrix vat.
Horatio noted that the Teks were backing hastily away from the tank. He pulled Hamlet back quickly.
Barnardo’s body slid without a splash head-first into the vat, barely parting the liquid. Esterhazy said to the cart, “You may go now.” It rolled out.
Barnardo, his arms wrapped around his stomach, stared at them through the newly sealed lid. A deep, thumb-sized hole angled into his throat.
Hamlet stared, enthralled. “Did that hole kill him?”
“Good heavens, no,” Esterhazy said—and double-checked. “That’s where the autopsy scarab crawled in.”
“Not a real beetle,” Goode said in response to Horatio’s expression. “A sterile plastic and gold machine the size of your thumb. Burrows into the body and transmits data. They’re very beautiful.”
“Scarabs,” Hamlet said softly. “A sabbath, the Waters of Memory, and now scarabs. You’ve traded labyrinth for lab, but need less science and more myth. You white-dressed Teks, negatives of mourning, admit that.” His eyes never left Barnardo’s body.
Horatio asked, “What killed him?”
Esterhazy said, “I could check for you.”
“No.”
Esterhazy froze. Goode went on quietly, “It would disturb them.” He looked at Horatio curiously. “Horatio looks as though he’s lost a friend.” He stepped forward.
Hamlet stepped between Horatio and Goode. “Horatio is fairly new. Our deaths disturb him.” He pointed at the tank. “The door sign was accurate, after all.”
Horatio looked in and got a nasty shock: the body’s hair was gone, its eye cavities empty (though the lids were closed); the fingers had shrunk under the fingernails. Like the body on the sign, the features were gone.
Horatio gasped as the head sagged, melting, and the first metal tendon showed in the jaw musculature.
Esterhazy shoved in beside Horatio. “It’s important to be sure,” he bubbled happily. “A skeleton taken out too late can suffer discoloration or staining, but the hollows must be completely clean—” He went on, gesturing freely; Horatio realized disgustedly that this man loved his work.
“‘Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness,’” Hamlet began, and stopped. “I hate that quote,” he said in Horatio’s ear. “Custom makes men easy and living hard.”
Horatio caught Doctor Mulvaney’s glance. “What would happen to a human body in that tank?”
She clutched at her lab coat involuntarily. “It would disappear completely in a few moments.”
Goode said smoothly, “But the system would record the body’s chemical compounds, however broken down. The surplus biochems would require quite a bit of explaining.”
The mechanisms beneath the man appeared: wire tendons, pliant joint plastic, osteobones. It shone too much, like a showroom display model. Worst of all was the skull—plateless and faceted, cast for grown-ups and never allowed to grow. It rolled back and stared emptily at them.
Esterhazy said sadly, “We still can’t synthesize bone. We could use clonework, but that destroys the goal of an all-synthetic organism. For now—” He gestured at the shining wire and plastic, all that remained of the cynical palace guard who swore at Hamlet’s production notes. “Think of it as a hermit crab, leaving behind its stolen shell.”
Hamlet didn’t answer. Horatio patted Hamlet’s arm and stared at the mechanism in the tank. Horatio couldn’t imagine that same lifeless machinery below Hamlet’s skin.
When all flesh was gone, the vat extruded humaniform arms, turned the skeleton over, and ran lights over the bare metal and plastic. Esterhazy’s inspection was useless. Satisfied, the vat absorbed the body. Esterhazy sighed.
“No ashes and no dust,” Hamlet said. “If death is a sleep, this is a daydream.”
Goode frowned and repeated, “You and Horatio should not have come.” He gestured around them, casually pointing at Esterhazy. “You can see that this is no place for tragedy.”
Hamlet smiled. “Depending on who samples your vintage.”
Esterhazy giggled again. Goode said evenly, “That reference to Doctor Capek’s death is not funny or tasteful.”
Hamlet still smiled, “Capek’s death was never funny.”
Goode walked out, saying without looking at Hamlet and Horatio, “See that you don’t touch the dematrix.”
Esterhazy followed Goode out with a quivering smirk. The others followed. Horatio turned to Hamlet. “I didn’t learn a thing here.” He was tired and jittery.
“I learned quite a bit,” Hamlet said. “First, that a stray body in this system could not be hidden—unless someone had already made an extra android and someone else decided to hide the manufacture.”
Horatio said, startled, “I didn’t think of—that.” Paulette was almost Mary’s size, and would balance out any chemical debits from Mary’s assembly. Whether it had been planned in advance or not, Paulette’s death would be hard to prove. “What else did you learn?”
Hamlet glowered at the door. “That I absolutely hate it when someone else makes the dramatic exit.”
He beat Horatio to the door, but only just. The dematrix lab made Horatio nervous.
* * * * *
Hamlet and Horatio were back at the terminal—without ideas or plans, wondering what to do next. Claudius, looking haggard, stepped out. “A moment, Hamlet.” The king was not surprised by the terminal.
Hamlet bowed. “You may take all moments, Your Majesty.”
Claudius said diffidently, “In this case, no—and I don’t want to be honored by you. I’ve wronged you.”
Hamlet suddenly looked as though he might cry. “You?”
Claudius stood stiffly, regally. “Why not? The play is yours, but I’m its king. I have my rank—” He crumbled. “‘My offense is rank,’” he whispered. “‘It smells to heaven. It hath the primal curse —’”
“Don’t recite the play,” Hamlet said.
Claudius, unhearing, cried, “‘Forgive my foul murder.’”
“Murder?” Hamlet grabbed his shoulders. “Whose?”
Claudius nodded to Horatio. “His, though I failed. I reported both your actions—”
“And you brought some orange juice to the stage.”
“I did. I feared he might not take the right cup—”
“So both were poisoned.”
“You would rise again, my lord. I was promised.”
“No promise for Horatio? You nearly killed him—”<
br />
Claudius trembled. “And this was not the worst.”
“Tell what’s worse.” Hamlet did not let go of him.
“A woman and Horatio read on-stage, then left. I told—” His tongue twisted in his mouth. “I can’t say who anymore.”
“He altered you and killed her,” Horatio said. He stared at the king.
“I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.” His face twisted with shame. “But I guessed and still told him.”
“You were right.” Hamlet held him. “This is worse.”
Claudius shook his head. “And this was not the worst.”
Hamlet gripped him tighter. “Speak. Break my heart.”
“Hamlet—my son—nightly, you and Horatio spoke when the play was over.” Claudius fell into verse. “And nightly when Horatio left, my son, you stayed, and wrote Ophelia messages; she answered nightly, and I nightly saw.”
“She went unharmed—”
“I argued so with him!” the king burst out. “I said her mind was big enough to hold love but not hate, to carry goodness but not revenge. And for some time—” Claudius’s voice cracked. “He believed me.”
Hamlet closed his eyes. “Until one night I asked her to check the hall for hidden rooms. And she met Goode—” He shot a glance at Claudius, who did not deny it. “And he no longer believed you. ‘Doubt truth to be a liar,’” he said, his eyes still closed, “‘but never doubt I love.’” He opened his eyes. “I’m gripping you tightly, Uncle. Does it hurt?”
The king said, “Let it.” Tears coursed down his cheeks. “Ophelia, pretty child, I used to tease you so!”
Claudius fell into Hamlet’s arms and hid his face. “And now her mind is quiet emptiness. Her only wit is laughter, and her soul the stuff for building angels.”
Hamlet held Claudius tighter. “Now I, who cannot age, am old. That was your gift to me.”
“I gave you evil,” Claudius said into Hamlet’s shoulder. “I was death’s spy. What will you do with me?”
“Do?” He pushed the king back. “Oh, you’ll live.” Hamlet grinned sourly. “Night after night, longer than you ever thought you could. Sweet dreams.”
He released Claudius and said in a natural voice, “Tell the others that rehearsal is canceled, but I’d like to see them. We’re changing the blocking for tonight’s play.”
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