“I’ll just take you down to seven,” Bogdan said. And he did, almost lifting the old man in his haste. They crossed the Tobblers’ “tunnel” from the south to the north side of the building, where the disputed territory ended and they entered a wholly-Kodiak-owned stairwell. The steps here were piled high with cartons and crates of chemicals, seed mats, and hydroponics frames for the roof garden. Overhead, tiers of shelves held cases of ugoo for the Nanojiffy, spare parts for the wind rams and air miner, and a clutter of the charter’s odds and ends. A narrow trail next to the banister was all that remained clear in what was essentially a seven-story walkup closet.
Bogdan deposited Samson on a sack of garden lime. “Thank you, boy,” Samson said, catching his breath.
“I’ve got to go now,” Bogdan said.
“Then go; I’ll be fine.” When Bogdan turned, Samson added, “What happened to your hat?”
Bogdan winced. “It was—uh—I lost it.”
“Lost it? How is that possible? I thought it was stapled to your noggin’.”
“I gotta go,” Bogdan said and dashed down to the next landing.
Samson watched him disappear around a spare gray-water detoxifier unit. “I’m going to rest here a little while, Henry,” he said. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”
BOGDAN REACHED THE tiny foyer and hurried out the front door. The street was full of Tobblers putting away their breakfast picnic tables. Charter Tobbler closed Howe Street to traffic three times a day in order to eat outdoors. Bogdan jumped down the steps to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of the CPT station when he remembered that he’d forgotten to call ahead, and so he didn’t know where the office was located today.
Damn! He’d have to use the Nanojiffy phone, but when he looked at the store entrance, he saw that it was blocked by a gaunt man holding the end of a couch. The line of customers waiting to get in was backed up to the end of the block. Feck! He’d have to go in through the charterhouse, but when he returned to the front door, it didn’t open.
“Open up!” he said hopefully.
The door remained shut and replied, “Only Kodiak housemeets and their guests are allowed entry.”
“But I am Kodiak. I’m Bogdan Kodiak. Don’t you recognize me?”
“Bogdan Kodiak is already at home. Please leave the vicinity of the door, or the police will be summoned.”
Bogdan wanted to scream. Life wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. Why, oh, why did it happen? Why did someone steal Lisa?
Lisa was his cap valet, and despite what he’d told Samson, she had been stolen, not lost. She was his prized possession, a gazillion-terahertz processor with anti-scanning mirrorshades and holocam studs in the sweatband. She interfaced with his brain through a half-SQUID EM I/O, and she had cricket bone surround sound and holoemitters in the bill. And though it was true that Lisa was only a lo-index sub-subem—basically a souped-up grade-school slate—Bogdan had spent years customizing her. He had taught her so many tricks that sometimes he could fool people into believing that she was a subem. And one of the most important tricks he had taught her was to phone E-Pluribus each morning to find out where the fecking office was going to be located that day. And another trick was how to circumvent the charter’s aging houseputer in order to open the fecking front door. And the only reason he’d told Samson that he’d lost her was because he didn’t want to admit that someone had stolen her right off his head without him even knowing it. Lisa, the heart and engine of Lisa, was a ten-centimeter strip of processor felt, which was loosely stitched into the cap’s lining. Yesterday it was gone. He still had the cap, but without the processor felt, it was only just a cap.
The thing was, he never took it off, day or night. How could someone steal the felt without his noticing? It was a complete mystery. Moreover, although the processor felt was outdated, the charter was too impoverished to replace it. Houseer Kale would crap his togs at the mere suggestion.
To hell with it. Bogdan headed for the Nanojiffy entrance. He’d have to buy a cheap phone during his lunch break, but for now the public phone in the store would do. The customer with the couch was still blocking the way, so Bogdan took advantage of his small size and crawled under the couch into the store. Once inside, he squeezed himself between the couch and the wall and stood up. Their Nanojiffy was so small that the couch nearly filled it. The other end of the couch was slowly emerging from the delivery maw of the extruder. April Kodiak stood in a small space across the couch from him and smiled. “Morning, Boggy. Forget something?”
“No. Just gotta use the phone.” He pointed with his thumb outside the shop and said, “Why’d you let that nodder buy a couch in the morning?”
April shushed him with a look and said, “Why don’t you use your cap? Is it broken? Where is it?”
“Yeah, it’s broken,” he said and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that explanation. “We’ll have to buy me a new one.”
April frowned and shook her head. “I think we should try to have it repaired first.”
Bogdan worked his way to the phone board. “You can’t fix stuff like that.” When he reached the phone, he boosted himself up and sat on the still warm couch. The man in the doorway oofed, but said nothing. Bogdan swiped his hand in front of the phone and was baffled by the long list of calls that appeared on the board. Most of them were over thirty-six hours old. He didn’t understand. He’d checked his messages last night on the Kodiak houseputer, and none of these had shown up. “Why don’t we get the freaking houseputer fixed instead.”
There was no time to review all his calls. He touched the E-Pluribus icon and learned that the office had been moved to Elmhurst, a good multi-zone commute away. He loaded his hand with route, fares, and rtps in order to save time at the station. Then he crawled back under the couch and out of the Nanojiffy, and April called after him, “Don’t forget you have an Allowance Committee meeting tonight. You can bring up your valet then.”
On the sidewalk, the man holding the end of the couch said, “Didya happen to look at the extruder readout, sonny?”
“No, I didn’t,” Bogdan said.
“Didya happen to notice if the legs were out yet?”
“Sorry.”
The man seemed awfully pale, and he was sweating despite the cool morning air. Bogdan wondered how he planned to carry the couch to wherever it was he lived.
The man shifted the weight of the couch to free one hand. “I bought it for me birthday,” he said and reached out to try to rub Bogdan’s head.
“Happy birthday,” Bogdan said and ducked out of reach. He jogged down the sidewalk to the end of the block. The Kodiak Nanojiffy was the only convenience store in the neighborhood to boast both an extruder and a digester, and most of the people waiting in line carried little sacks of yesterday’s garbage to apply toward today’s purchases.
A media bee keeping tabs on the scene followed Bogdan several blocks on his way to the CPT station, but it must have figured out that he wasn’t a real boy, because it lost interest and flew away.
“SAM,” HUBERT SAID. “Sam, wake up. It’s getting late.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“You were in stage one sleep.”
“I was praying. It produces similar brain-wave patterns.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. I was praying to Saint Wanda to help me get through this day.” Samson grasped the banister and hoisted himself to his feet. Saint Wanda had, in fact, been on his mind lately.
Wanda was Wanda Wieczorek and not a real saint, except in the hearts of stinkers everywhere. Wanda was one of the first of the seared to go mad in a spectacular and public way. She caused her seared body to burst into flame while she sat on a sofa valued at ten thousand old euros on the fifth floor of Daud’s in London. Her personal ground zero took out the silk-covered sofa and its matching armchair and ottoman. Combined value—thirteen thousand old euros. Smoke and water damage ruined much of the rest of the furniture on the floor as well.
>
Not only did Wanda point the way for effective—if suicidal—protest by the seared, but she demonstrated the ease with which it could be accomplished. While sitting on the display furniture, she reprogrammed a pocket simcaster—the type used by busy people to cast proxies of themselves—to scan her DNA markers. Consumer electronics weren’t actually capable of unraveling a person’s genetic code, but even reading markers was enough to trigger the tiny booby traps guarding her cells.
Before long, the fifth-floor manager approached Wanda, wearing nose plugs, and said, “I really must insist that you leave.” Behind him stood three uniformed jerrys. “These gents will see you to the door.”
“Fine,” Wanda said, “I was just leaving.” She touched the simcaster to her forehead and squeezed the scan button. The moment its field penetrated her skull and combed through the tangled skein of neurons within, her cellular wardens went critical. Smoke seeped from her nose and ears, and she fell back into the silky embrace of the sofa. Her skull split open with several resounding cracks, and gouts of cooking brains spewed forth. Then she burst into flame.
It was a bonfire seen around the world.
Samson eased his grip on the banister and continued down to the sixth-floor landing. Hubert said, “Your blood sugar is low, Sam, and you are dehydrated. You should drink something and have a bite of Gooeyduk.”
But Samson had built up an impressive momentum, his old knees click-clacking like a metronome down the steps, and he didn’t stop until the fifth-floor landing where Hubert warned him that two housemeets—Francis and Barry—were on their way up. So Samson ducked into the hallway to wait for them to go by. He was standing across from Kitty’s bedroom, and when he looked at her door, he remembered that he’d intended to come here all along.
“Are Kitty and Denny at the park yet?”
“Yes, Sam. She’s into her second set.”
Samson entered Kitty’s room. It was in shambles, as usual. Her busking outfits were piled on the floor and bed and draped over the room’s two chairs. A tower of soiled house togs and dirty dishes leaned against the wall behind the door. Dust, spills, clutter—Kitty worked hard at her twelve-year-old persona. The tiers of shelves covering all four walls were lined with dolls and plush animals. Some of them, those he’d bought for her as gifts, peeped greetings to him.
Yet, no matter how hard Kitty pursued her childishness, she couldn’t hide all the evidence of her underlying maturity: the carousels of shoes under the bed; the carefully pruned allfruit tree under a light hood, its branches heavy with tiny assorted fruit; the workstation and its datapin collection on such practical topics as micromine waste sites and chartist torts; and an extensive library on microhab landscape engineering. Kitty Kodiak had pursued several careers in her long life before discovering her true vocation as a child.
Samson opened the wardrobe and shifted a stack of linen to reveal a squat, ceramic, four-liter canister. “Hello, guy,” he said.
“It’s almost noon,” Hubert replied through the canister speaker. “What are we doing still in the house?”
Samson pulled a chair to the wardrobe and sat. “There are things to discuss.”
“Can’t we discuss them en route?”
“Better face-to-face.”
“In that case,” Hubert said, “let me summarize what I already know in order to save us time.
“First, your body is no longer viable. When it dies, so does your personality.
“Second, all of your worldly goods pass to Charter Kodiak, including your sponsorship of me—if I agree.
“Third, if I don’t agree, I am free to seek another sponsor on my own.
“What else do you wish to say, Sam?”
Samson cleared his throat. Now that the time for this little chat had come, he found it much more difficult than he had imagined. “That’s good, Hubert. I don’t know if I told you those things, or if you puzzled them out by yourself, but I’m glad you’ve been thinking about them.”
“Really, Sam, they are self-evident.”
“Yes, I suppose they are. And there are two more points we must consider. First, although you’ve assured me otherwise, today’s action might lead the HomCom to you. If that happens, I want you to surrender yourself peacefully. Understood?”
“Yes, Sam, though your fears are unfounded. I’ve hired a very reliable wedge. All will go as planned.”
Samson shook his head. Hubert was young and should probably be forgiven his overconfidence. “Second,” he continued, “let’s assume you are not arrested, and you choose to stay with the Kodiaks. The truth of the matter is that they can’t afford to keep you.”
“What’s to afford?” said Hubert. “There are no liens against my medium; I’ll sail through probate free and clear.”
“That’s not the point, little friend. Haven’t you noticed all the large house expenses lately? Denny’s treatment, the wind ram replacement, the court costs. Kitty’s and Bogdan’s rejuvenation. Where did the credit for all that come from?”
“I don’t know, Sam. The houseputer doesn’t list any loans or asset sales. Are you saying the charter has some off-the-books source of income?”
Samson fished a towelette from a pocket and tore it open. He draped it over his steamy bald head. “I’m saying it must have come from somewhere. I’ve been carrying this house for years, but my private resources—as you keep telling me—have all but dried up. When I go—the charter won’t inherit enough from my estate to pay its property taxes, let alone their deferred body maintenance. No, I’d say Kale and Gerald have embarked on some foolish course to dig the charter out of its financial hole, something that even April is too ashamed to tell me about.”
“I fail to see how that relates to keeping me.”
Samson leaned toward the wardrobe to lay his hand on Hubert’s ceramic canister. “I bought only the finest paste for you, back when I still had gobs of credit, didn’t I, Skippy?”
Hubert was perplexed by the use of his valet name. “Yes, Grade A virgin General Genius Neuro-chemical Triencephalin. But I’m a mentar now, with sentient rights. Under UD law, my paste belongs to me, not to you or the charter.”
“A total of four liters, if I recall,” Samson continued.
“Forty-three deciliters.”
“And how much would forty-three deciliters of GG paste bring on the recycling market?”
At last Hubert was able to connect the dots. “You think our family is capable of senticide?”
“Desperate times, desperate solutions.”
“I see. What do you suggest I do, Sam?”
Samson sat up straight and searched his many pockets for a bar of Gooeyduk. “I suggest you try to make yourself indispensable to the house, Hubert. Why, for instance, haven’t you repaired the houseputer yet?”
“Because it’s beyond repair, Sam. It needs total replacement.”
“In that case, stand in for it.”
“You want me to become a houseputer?”
“Yes, if that’s what it takes. And why aren’t you out there selling your excess capacity on the distributive market? Why aren’t you bringing in more income?”
“But I am. I earn more for this house than the rest of them combined.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s never enough for you, Sam. I’m not Henry, therefore, I will never be enough for you.”
Samson opened the Gooeyduk and bit off a corner. He chewed slowly before continuing. “I also suggest you redouble your efforts to find a new sponsor for yourself. Start immediately, and don’t be so goddam picky.” He leaned forward and began searching his pockets again. Where was it? Did he leave it in the garden shed? He didn’t think he had the strength to climb back up for it. But no, here it was—his pocket simcaster. He relaxed and leaned back in the chair. “Sorry for the hard words, Hubert, but they needed saying.”
“I understand.”
“So, now, tell me how my Kitty’s doing?”
“Millennium Park is busy today be
cause of the canopy holiday,” Hubert said. “That and the fine weather. But despite the foot traffic, her morning’s proceeds are under par. At her current rate, she will not recoup expenses.”
“Show me.”
An income projection graph appeared before Samson, but he said, “No, show me Kitty.”
“You want me to hire a bee?”
“Yes.”
“Bee engaged,” said Hubert. The room’s emitters projected a scene overlooking the park’s second-tier free speech reserve. Millennium Park was indeed busy today, a milling menagerie of transhumanity.
“Where is she?” Samson said. “I don’t see her.” A circle appeared in the crowded scape, highlighting a tiny figure in blue and white. Samson said, “And where is Denny?” Another circle marked a man eating ice cream on a nearby bench. “So far away? He couldn’t stay closer?”
“Shall we fly down and tell him so?”
“Later. I want to get the lay of the land first. Drop down some.”
The ground zoomed up before Samson could shut his eyes. “Easy! Easy!” he said. They hovered at treetop level and now he could make out the tiny impromptu stages. Some of the performers he recognized. On one side of Kitty’s space were the “Modular Sisters,” who were in the process of plugging themselves into each other’s large intestines.
Across from Kitty’s spot was the battle mat of the “Machete Death Grudge” where six beautiful, oiled athletes of indeterminate sex struck erotic poses and flexed obscenely supple muscles. They made halfhearted thrusts at one another with their deadly ceramic-edged blades. They were waiting for the purse icons on their pay-posts to reach mortality levels before doing any harm to each other. Their body tenders paced the edge of the mat, trying to incite blood lust among the prelunchtime crowd. Portable trauma and cryonics units hummed under tarps.
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