“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.
“Sam, I detect that you need to urinate.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“Yes, and soon. Also, you are dehydrated and severely deficient in potassium. I suggest breakfast before we leave.”
“I’m not hungry,” Samson said and tapped the buckle beneath his jumpsuit. “You sure you loaded this thing up?”
“Yes, Sam, as much as its outdated tech allows.”
Samson grunted. “Speaking of outdated tech, I suppose that includes you. Are you sure you’re up to the task?”
“I have worked it out to the most minute detail, Sam. And I am not particularly obsolete. I spend most of my unstructured time self-reconfiguring. Of course I haven’t had an electro-neural gel upgrade in decades.”
Samson chuckled. “Are you sure you’re not Henry? That’s what Henry always used to say, ‘I need more paste, Sam. More paste.’ And like a fool, I bought it for him. I think you know where that got me.”
“Yes, I do, Sam, but Henry was a valet, not a true mentar.”
Samson put away his toiletries and kicked the nightshirt rags into the corner. Then he removed the breakfast tray from the footstool. The stool was made from the hollowed-out right rear foot of a wild, male African elephant. Its toenails alone were as large as Samson’s fists. He grasped the zebra-skin cushion and rotated it counterclockwise until it clicked and released. Samson used to hide his treasures here—when he still had treasures. At the bottom of the foot lay a packet of sealed paper envelopes. Each had the name of a housemeet scrawled across it in Samson’s tortured handwriting. He removed these, locked the zebra cushion, and replaced the breakfast tray. When he glanced at the bowl of corn mush, his belly gurgled—or maybe that was Hubert trying to trick him?
“Oh, all right,” he said and grabbed a spoon. He ate the mush and drank the juice without tasting either of them. The coffeesh he left because one’s last cup of coffeesh in this life should be hot. Then he fixed up the cot to look like he was still in it and tucked the packet of letters underneath the pillow. At the door he glanced around one last time at his room. A garden shed was not so bad a place to end up in.
Samson patted the empty pockets of his jumpsuit. “What am I forgetting?”
“The bag.”
“Where did I leave it?”
“It’s concealed behind the seed mats.”
Samson groped behind the rolls of troutcorn matting until he found a little yellow duffel bag. He transferred its contents to his pockets: half-liter flasks of electrolyte sports drink, high-energy Gooeyduk bars, his meds and special sunglasses, soothing towelettes, a hat, a handful of debit tokens, a ticket to the nosebleed section of Soldier Field, and the single most important item—a portable simcaster.
“Well then,” he said, “we’re off.”
HOLDING TIGHT TO the banister, Samson Kodiak descended the charterhouse stairs one monumental step at a time. He stopped often to catch his breath. The first door he passed was to the elevator machine room. It also served as Bogdan Kodiak’s bedroom. The diaron-plated, titanium-bolted, epoxy clinker core door was adorned with glowing, 3-D, international glyphs that proclaimed, “WARNING—LETHAL DOOR.” Samson was fairly
sure that this was just a bluff to keep the Tobblers from trying to break in and reclaim their elevator machinery. He touched the door as he went by and said, “Good-bye, my boy. Stay out of too much trouble.”
Halfway down the next flight of stairs, Samson’s legs ached so badly he needed to rest. It was simple ischemia, he knew, the weakness of old legs, but if he wasn’t careful, muscular hypoxia could lead to necrosis and set off a chain reaction of fiery apoptosis that would end his trip prematurely right here, between the eighth and ninth floors. And the last thing he wanted to do was to burn from the feet up.
“Not here. Not now,” he muttered, locking his knees as best he could and leaning on the banister. He forced himself to take deep breaths.
“Shall I call for assistance?” Hubert said from the belt buckle under his jumpsuit.
“No! Don’t!” Hooking an arm around the banister, Samson massaged his legs. A door slammed above him, and the sound of footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Young Bogdan flew around the corner, swinging on the banister, taking steps three at a time, and almost ran into Samson.
“Sam!” he said, stumbling to a halt. “I almost ran you over! Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”
“I’m late for work,” Bogdan said and continued down the stairs. But he paused at the landing to look up at Samson. He ran back up to him and said, “You don’t look so good to me, Sam.”
Samson smiled. The boy was almost as attentive as April, and the housemeets were entirely too hard on him, Kale especially. “It’s just these old gams of mine,” he said. “Pay no attention.” But the boy took his arm and tried to escort him. “No, Boggy,” Samson protested. “Leave me be. We don’t want you late for work.” It was, after all, the only paid employment, except for April’s Nanojiffy franchise, that anyone in Charter Kodiak was lucky enough to have.
Counting Heads Page 8