Kale consulted an appointment book, a well-thumbed, spiral-bound paper book. “How does six weeks from tomorrow sound?”
“Like crap,” Bogdan said and stepped into the office, slamming the door behind him. “What thing with Sam?”
“He’s dying, Boggy,” April said. “He’s only got a very short time left. We’re not going to leave him alone. From now on, we’ll take turns so there’ll be at least one of us with him at all times.”
“So, who’s up with him right now?”
“No one. He didn’t want us to start till tonight.”
Bogdan chewed this over. He could tell them now or let them find out for themselves later.
Meanwhile, Gerald handed him a sheet of paper, a spreadsheet full of handwritten numbers. Bogdan dropped it on the floor and said, “Let’s skip the bookkeeping portion of this meeting and cut to the part where you approve my two requests. One, make me an appointment for this weekend at the Longyear Center to retro eleven months. They’ll throw in an extra bonus month if you call by Wednesday. And two, buy me a Rhodes Scholar valet to replace Lisa.” Finished, he crossed his arms and glowered at them.
“Fine,” said Gerald, retrieving the sheet of paper from the floor, “we’ll skip the bookkeeping part and cut right to the part where we deny your requests.”
“What? You can’t.”
Kale said, “Bogdan, there’s not enough credit for everything.”
April said, “Bogdan, look at this. Look!” She held up a stack of paper notes from the table. “We’re forced to work with paper and pencil. If we can’t afford to replace the houseputer, how can we justify buying you a new valet, especially after you broke the one you had?”
Bogdan began to shout, “Lisa was twenty years old! It’s high time I got a new one!”
“Please don’t raise your voice.”
“Besides, the new ones are powerful enough so I can have mine temporarily take over the houseputer’s functions. Keeping paper records is crazy. For that matter, why aren’t you using Hubert for that? He’s got enough juice to run the Moon. Surely, he could run this house and keep its accounts.”
Gerald and Kale looked away, and April wouldn’t meet his gaze. “What?” he said, but no one answered him, so he charged ahead, “And as for my juve treatments, that’s nonnegotiable.”
April said, “Oh, Boggy, if you could for once stop thinking only about yourself and look around you. Look at the rest of us. Look at me.”
He looked at her and was disturbed to notice that she, like the rest of the housemeets, was way behind in her body maintenance. It seemed as if someone had dialed down her color saturation levels—her hair and skin were ashen.
April said, “We understand you like to remain a boy, and we’ve managed to grant you this for a lot of years, but now we can’t afford it. Surely you can wait a little while until we’re back on our feet.”
“How long?”
Gerald consulted his spreadsheet. “Eight to twelve months.”
“Eight to twelve months? No way! People, don’t you hear what I’m telling you. I’m pubing out! I’ll lose my job! It’s right in my E-Pluribus contract—I must remain prepubescent. I’m a demographics control. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ll point it out to you—it’s my payfer that’s carrying this whole sorry house. Mine and Sam’s. At the rate I’m going, in eight months I’ll be adolescent. Hell, I’m already sprouting hair in places you don’t want to know.”
Gerald waved the spreadsheet at Bogdan and said, “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t spin yoodies from thin air. You’ll just have to hang on. We’ll boost your hormonal supplements. That’ll slow it down. In a month, who knows, maybe our financial picture will improve.”
As Gerald spoke, Bogdan noticed that April was looking guiltier and guiltier. Something was definitely up. The paper records, the furtive glances. Then he recalled how pleased Kitty had seemed in the hall a few minutes ago, not at all like a retrogirl told she’d have to wait eight to twelve months for her next juve.
“Why does Kitty get rejuvenation, and I don’t?”
His question surprised them, and Kale said, “Bogdan, you know we can’t discuss another ’meet’s account with you.”
“It’s not fair!” Bogdan said. “She brings in ten thousandths and yet she gets her way, while you deny me the treatments I need to keep my job. It’s stupid.”
Gerald dropped his papers on the table and went to sit down. Kale shook his head. They both gave April a look. April sighed and said, “Charter Kodiak is in the middle of very sensitive negotiations, Boggy. It’s not something we’re ready to bring to the full charter yet. Kitty is acting as the charter’s agent in this matter, but even her juve has been postponed—a little.”
“What negotiations? I have a right to know.”
“We’ll bring it up for general discussion in another—I don’t know—next week?”
Bogdan had never been very good at putting two and two together, but from the tension in the room, he knew he had stumbled across something major, and he wasn’t about to let it go. He assumed his most obstinate little boy pose and said, “Why? Because you don’t want Samson to know about it? Is that it? And those paper records are not because of the houseputer but to keep Hubert out of the loop, right?”
“Damn it,” Gerald said. He got up and pulled a chair to the wall, climbed on it, and poked at two exposed wires below a wall-mounted cam. “Not that it matters,” he grumbled and climbed down. “The houseputer lost contact with this room ages ago.”
Kale steepled his hands on the tabletop and spoke in portentous tones. “Bogdan, what we tell you goes no farther than this room, understood?” Bogdan nodded, and Kale continued. “You ever hear of a place called Rosewood Acres?”
Bogdan shook his head.
“It’s a superfund site in Wyoming since the last century. Highly polluted. Highly toxic. There are more rare elements and radioactive isotopes buried there than the next five dumps combined. Which means it’s one of the richest micromines in the UD with the potential for a steady income for decades. And the mining rights have recently been acquired by Charter Beadlemyren.”
“Never heard of them.”
Gerald said, “The Beadlemyren, like us and thousands of other charters, are suffering a decline in their membership. When Sam dies—well, we’ll be hurting. But the Beadlemyren are in worse shape. The state has already started decertification procedures against them. Unless something’s done, they’ll lose their charter, and with it their assets, including the mining rights. We’ve been talking to them about the possibility of our two charters merging. The benefits for both of us would be substantial. But the Beadlemyren have offers from other charters also eager to merge or absorb them, including, we suspect, the Tobblers. That means we have to bring more to the table than our competitors can.”
“Such as?”
April said, “Well, an appearance of youthful enthusiasm, for one. That’s why it’s Kitty who’s representing us. And capital. Lots of capital. It’ll mean selling off the rest of this building—which is why there’s no point in investing in a new houseputer just now—and selling, uh, well, everything.”
Bogdan was stunned. “We’re going to move out of Chicago?”
“It looks that way,” said Kale, “which is why your position at E-Pluribus is of secondary importance.”
With this news, Bogdan turned and drifted to the door.
“Bogdan!” April said sharply. “This is all under wraps. Understand?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A big feckin’ secret.” Then he remembered something, and he asked Kale, “You said this toxic dump is called Rosewood Acres. How many acres?”
“Two thousand.”
2.22
After their meal, Fred and Mary’s crowd in the Zinc Room had a round of evening visola, and coffee. Dessert was custard fyllo pie, followed by more rounds of drink.
Occasional outbursts came from the Stardeck, and the lulus Abbie and Mariola went out to i
nvestigate. When they returned, Abbie carried a little black homcom slug by its tail between her thumb and index finger.
“They’re smashing them,” she said. “I can’t hardly believe it.” She dropped the biomech strip on the table and, before it could crawl away, trapped it under an overturned daiquiri glass.
“Don’t do that,” said Reilly.
“Don’t tell my sister what to do,” said Mariola.
“I mean, you could get into trouble, get us all into trouble.”
Mary said, “I blocked up our apartment slugway all day, and nothing happened.”
“That’s nothing,” said Gwyn, the jenny. “On the WAD, I saw free-range people ‘harvesting’ them by the hundreds for recycling credits.”
They watched the slug explore its prison, and when its pinhead noetics concluded it was trapped, it simply idled in place. No threats, no sirens, no explosion of pseudopods.
Wes, the jerry, scanned it. “It’s not transmitting to base.”
“What’s it doing?” said Reilly.
“Nothing that I can tell.”
“That just doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure, it does,” said Abbie. “Somebody, gimme a hammer.”
Mariola said, “How many material credits do you suppose one of these would bring?”
“Let’s see,” said the second jerry, Bill. “At least a milliliter of paste, supporting circuitry, several grams of titanium, selenium, platinum, ah, maybe iridium—”
“Not to mention the self-healing tissue and foil extruders,” said Wes.
“And the minicams and emitters and various RF gear,” said Ross, the third jerry.
“Ten or twelve yoodies maybe?” said Bill, and the other two jerrys nodded in agreement.
“Ten or twelve each?” said Abbie, astonished.
“Give or take.”
The group of friends mulled this over.
“Where’s that hammer?” said Abbie.
“Feck the hammer,” Mariola said and took off her shoe.
“Wait, Abbie,” said Fred. “Trapping it is one thing, but whacking it is a felony. You could pull hard time for that.”
Abbie raised the shoe but hesitated. “That’s not what the people on the Stardeck say. They say the slugs are finished. They’ve been decommissioned. Everyone’s pulling them off the side of the building and smashing them. And do you see the HomCom up here arresting anyone?”
Fred said, “Can someone please check the Evernet for an official announcement.”
Wes said, “There’s all sorts of contradictory statements, but nothing I’d call official.”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Abbie. But still she hesitated with the shoe.
Alice, the joan, said, “Imagine—no more slugs sneaking up on you when you least expect it.”
“No more slugs swimming in your bath,” said Sofi, the helena.
“Or biting you in your sleep,” said Gwyn.
“Or having the power to decide if you’re friend or foe,” said Wes.
“People,” Alice said, tears rolling down her cheeks, “we are privileged to witness the end of a dark era.”
Fred waited for her to append some typically joan bit of sarcasm, but she didn’t.
“On the other hand,” said Peter, making good jerome sense, “if they are worth ten or twelve UDC each, and if they are being destroyed and recycled by free-range trash without criminal consequences, then it constitutes a new form of dole and an unfair tax burden on the rest of us.”
“Unless the rest of us get in on it,” said Mariola.
“Okay, okay. Here goes,” Abbie said and again raised the shoe.
“Please don’t,” Fred said. “You risk so much.”
“Right,” said Reilly. “You know who they’ll send to arrest you—Fred!”
A constant roar of excitement now came from the Stardeck, and the Zinc Room was quickly emptying, diners hurrying out to join in the slaughter. Abbie said, “At least I’ll have a lot of company in jail.” She removed the glass and brought the heel of the shoe squarely down on the slug. They all held their breath. The little black ribbon of biotech lay still. But when Abbie tried to pick it up, it began to creep again toward the edge of the table.
Bill said, “Not much of a blow there, lulu.”
Wes said, “They self-repair pretty quick.”
“Here, give me that,” Mariola said and took her shoe back. “You should pretend it’s you-know-who and hit it like this.” She raised the shoe high overhead and brought it crashing down on the slug. The blow sounded like a cannon shot. Now the slug lay flat. Thick, black pseudoplasm oozed like tar from a split along its side.
Wes said, “That maybe oughtta hold it till you get it to a digester.”
Ross said, “Use a public one at a convenience store. And ask for payment in tokens—not on your personal account.”
But the lulus didn’t move. They held each other in their arms and stared at the ruined biomech. Suddenly they began to cry.
“Now what?” Fred said.
Alice said, “Oh, Fred. For once, everything is right. Come on, guys. Let’s go join the fun.” She led the others to the Stardeck. Everyone followed, except Peter, the russes, and the jerrys. Mary and Shelley held back only long enough to see how strenuously their russes might object. Fred scowled, and Reilly frowned, but this wasn’t enough to hold the evangelines, and they hurried to catch up with their friends.
Peter said, “Just think of the billions of credits our society has spent building and maintaining the whole slug-based nanocyst detection infrastructure. And for that matter, the canopies.” He rose from his chair. “Don’t worry, gentlemen, I don’t intend to join in the crime spree, but I am curious to watch history in the making.”
Then it was just the russes and jerrys sitting across the table from each other.
“Don’t look at us,” Wes said. “We’re sworn to uphold the law, not break it.”
“That’s good,” said Reilly. “Otherwise, Fred would be required to bust you too.”
“Not if you’re on sick leave,” said Wes. “I’d imagine that after your swim today, you guys get a week or so off.”
Fred and Reilly exchanged glances. It was apparent the jerrys knew something of their day’s adventure.
Reilly said, “Actually, I have some R & R coming to me. How about you, Fred?”
Fred shook his head. His injuries weren’t considered serious enough. “I have tonight off and a day of comp time.” Reilly signaled to Fred to look toward the door, and Fred turned to see dozens of jerrys and russes leaving the Zinc Room. At the same time, Wes pulled a package of Suddenly Sober out of his pocket and offered pills to Bill and Ross. He took one himself and washed it down with a final swig of whiskey.
“On duty?” said Fred.
“Yeah, it just came through,” Wes said. “They’re scrambling the troops.”
“About the slugs?” Fred said, suddenly anxious for Mary and their friends.
“No, not slugs. There’s a rush on personal security. Seems that the affs are killing each other all over the UD, and they’re doubling and tripling their security teams.”
Fred said, “A round of score settling?”
“Yeah,” said Wes, “sparked by Starke’s assassination.”
Ross said, “They’re calling it a ‘market correction.’” He and the other jerrys har-harred at that as they left the table, leaving Fred and Reilly alone.
“I read this article,” Reilly said, pouring himself a glass of ginger ale, “that compares the affs of today to princes in the Middle Ages. No strong kingdoms or national governments to cramp their style. All these little principalities, sovereign unto themselves, competing for land and resources. All their little wars and mercenary armies. That’s what we are, you know, mercs.”
Fred shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said, “and I disagree with you. The pikes are the mercenaries, the jerrys and belindas are the cops, and we russes are the palace gu
ard.”
Reilly thought about that. “You’re right. I like that better. Yeah, the palace guard. I wonder if Thomas A.’s ancestors were in that line of work. We’ve saved more than a few royal heads in our time.” Reilly rose on his mechanical braces and tried to stretch. “Well, it’s been a long day,” he said. He saluted Fred and left the table. Fred was all alone.
To my cloned brothers, he mused, to remain free men, we must resist the temptation to swear allegiance to any family but our own.
BECAUSE OF HER duty with the death artist, Shelley was a minor celebrity at APRT 7. Admirers on the Stardeck stopped her every few meters to offer comments about her client, Judith Hsu. After a year of remission, Hsu’s condition had recently taken an aggressive turn, and her viewership had increased accordingly. Hsu’s skin had become hidebound with scar tissue, and she could barely move at all. Her skin was so fragile at her elbows that bending her arms could potentially split it and expose her joints. And the poor woman’s pruritus was unbearable. She couldn’t stop clawing at herself. The jenny nurses had to tie her hands in soft restraints to keep her from scratching herself to shreds.
Shelley acknowledged her fans’ attention, but it was clear to Mary that she did not relish it.
The Stardeck was a killing field. People wielded shoes, pocket billies, and wine bottles in their slaughter of the small, black defenders of cellular integrity. Foolish revelers climbed on the balcony railing to reach them, unmindful of the three-kilometer drop. Steves took advantage of their extraordinary height to fling slugs off the walls with spoons into the waiting clutches of tipsy, oxygen-deprived berserkers. “Heave ho!” the steves cried each time they flung one. “Heave ho!”
Incongruously, other people stood patiently in an orderly queue beneath a slugway and waited for unsuspecting slugs to exit the building. After a quick look around, Mary and Shelley joined the end of the line.
Shelley seemed to walk with a limp, but Mary didn’t mention it. Instead, she said, I’m thinking of retraining.
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