Counting Heads

by David Marusek

  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.

  “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.

  1.3

  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 w
ith 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 th
ey’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?”

  2.1

  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.