Counting Heads

by David Marusek

  “It’s a warbeitor,” Fred told the TUGs.

  “No kidding,” Veronica replied. “We thought it was a house pet.” She caught Fred’s eye, reached into the diorama, and touched a rectangular object, much less dense, in the same room. “And this might be its bone.”

  Fred studied her expressionless face. Why was she being so helpful? Part of her campaign to heal the rift between her people and his? He doubted it. She was here on a job, a big job from the look of it. The TUGs were risking this whole expensive field unit. There was too much at stake to waste time as a goodwill ambassador.

  More than likely, Cabinet had recruited both him and the TUGs to accomplish the same goal. Why else would she tell him about the girl’s head, if that was what the warbeitor’s prize was? Double teaming made sense. She’d let him and the inspector do the heavy lifting and be in position to pick up the pieces in case they fumbled.

  Fred nodded to Veronica and said, “Inspector, inform Nameless One that I’m officially confiscating this van for an ongoing police action.”

  “Hey, feck you, man!” Miguel Tug said, springing from his stool.

  “Sit down, scrub,” Veronica ordered, “and shut the feck up.”

  The tugger sat down and glowered at Fred. Fred said, “Just keep the pictures coming, sonny.” Turning to leave, he said to Veronica, “You say I hired five hundred just like him?”

  As Fred walked back to the aft hatch, he could feel the rippling of magnetic fields against his suit. He stooped to retrieve a homcom bee that had fallen from the beevine. “Saddle up,” he ordered the others.

  As he returned to the GOV, the scout tender arrived and set down alongside them. When Fred reclaimed his cab seat from the jerry, Costa said, “Nice of you to return.” The densiscanner diorama was superimposed over their own in the HUD. The warbeitor had not moved in the house.

  “Are we ready with the scouts?” Fred said.

  “Just waiting on you, Commander.”

  Fred glanced at the inspector. Despite her tone, she seemed to be enjoying herself. He cleared his throat and said, “House at 2131 Line Drive, this is Commander Londenstane of the Homeland Command.” He swiped his hand at the house through the windshield. “And these are Justice Department Inspector Costa and HomCom Lieutenant Michaelmas.” The other two swiped their hands.

  When the house remained unresponsive, Fred continued. “We’re here to serve you this warrant—he swiped again—allowing us to frisk you.”

  It was a federal warrant, one that superseded the SFR’s surveillance variance, and after a few moments, the house said, Proceed.

  Across the street from them, the house’s heavy front door unfolded. The scout cart rolled around the van and up the drive and climbed up the stone steps to the porch. It lowered its shovel chute through the open doorway and opened its tank. Thousands of scouts rolled into the front foyer, unwrapping themselves and fanning out.

  “House, is there anyone at home?”

  No, there isn’t, officer.

  “Who resides there?”

  “No one.”

  The scouts, meanwhile, linked up to create a forensics carpet that skittered across the floor and wall surfaces, testing, tasting, sounding, collecting. Pictures and data began streaming to the GOV as the scouts methodically mapped and inspected each room, crawling into cupboards and drawers, behind and under furniture. Tagged samples of fibers, soil, and other debris were relayed back to the cart for detailed analysis.

  The scouts found incinerated bits of flying mechs that drew the officers’ attention, as did ample confirmation of a recent firefight. The unknown warbeitor in the main room had the good sense to remain perfectly still during the bug frisk. Fred studied the mech from all scout angles. It was a piece of work: four multijointed legs—like wide-diameter intake hose—attached to a powerful-looking trunk. About the size of a Great Dane dog, but without a head or tail. Its trunk and legs were covered with laser-absorbing velvet.

  Costa studied it over Fred’s shoulder. “None of the other Cabinets was so well guarded,” she said.

  The rectangular object near the warbeitor turned out to be a procedure cart of the sort used in laboratories and medical facilities. It was locked, and the scouts couldn’t look inside.

  Fred said, “SFR 2131 Line Drive, I am placing you under arrest.”

  Acknowledged, said the house. On what charge?

  “A weapon zone violation. You will immediately send the weapon that’s in your main ground-floor room outside to stand on the porch.”

  To Fred’s surprise, the warbeitor ambled out of the parlor and through the hall to the front door. It was more cat than doglike in its movements. The forensics carpet opened a path for it. It stepped around the scout cart and stopped on the porch.

  “Unidentified mech on the SFR 2131 Line Drive porch,” Fred said, “ID yourself.”

  Libby said, It’s talking directly to Nameless One. It says it recognizes our authority over its actions.

  “Good,” Fred said. “Order it to stand down.”

  The quadrupedal thing on the porch seemed to slump. Fred and Costa exchanged a glance. That easy? Fred said, “Now order it to lock itself down, and forward me the only reactivation key.”

  This took longer to accomplish. While they waited, Costa studied the forensics summaries coming from the scout cart. But Fred looked at news digests about the Starke assassination until Marcus asked him if he needed a confidential huddle.

  No, Marcus, thank you, he said.

  “Hello?” Costa said, pointing to a line of text on an inventory report. The scouts had found a taggant in the digester dross. “And look here,” she said to Fred, “zoo flakes.”

  “Zoo flakes?”

  “Well, kinda like zoo flakes. We’re not sure what they are yet, but they have DNA sequencers for a human genome. What do you suppose they do at this Sitrun Foundation?”

  Libby said, Commander, you may accept the key. Fred swiped the console, and Libby continued. Subject warbeitor is verified in lockdown mode. You possess the only reactivation key.

  Fred scrutinized his open palm dubiously and then the motionless mech on the porch.

  “Well, Londenstane,” Costa said, “shall we pick up our rogue?”

  Fred shook his head and signaled for a private suit-to-suit link. Costa gave him a doubtful look but swiveled a little in her seat to touch his leg with her knee. Yes? Something on your mind?

  I thought you’d want to know there’s no Cabinet rogue in there.

  She pressed his leg a little harder. Say again?

  We were brought here under false pretenses, Inspector. Your zoo flakes will most likely check out as containing sequencers for Starke’s DNA. It’s meant to be a big red “X marks the spot.”

  I don’t understand, Londenstane. Explain.

  Cabinet, or someone, has lured us here to retrieve the Starke daughter’s head.

  Costa’s knee broke contact for a moment, then returned. How do you know this?

  Two and two, he replied.

  You’re joking, right? Russes have a sense of humor. When he didn’t say anything, she asked, Why are you telling me all this in private?

  Because there’s a rat in the game somewhere. A big rat.

  She gave him a big, mystified look.

  Nicholas, the Applied People mentar, who had managed to keep its peace throughout the operation thus far, finally spoke up, Commander, is there a problem?

  Fred and Costa broke contact. “No, Nick, no problem,” Fred said. “Libby, call back your scouts except for eyes and ears. And Michaelmas,” he said, craning around to see the jerry, “I want you to wrap that scary fecker on the porch with packing foam. The sooner it’s crated and on its way to the barn, the better.”

  “Yessir,” the jerry said. He was standing at the carbine cabinet and handing Costa a Messers 25/750 over-and-under assault weapon.

  Fred accepted one from him as well, though after weighing it in his hand, he said, “You know what, Michaelmas? I
changed my mind. I want you to stay here and cover us with the megawatter. If that thing on the porch so much as shivers, you blast it. Understood?”

  “Yessir,” the jerry said and took Fred’s place at the controls. The car’s large forward cannon started to hum, and Fred turned to Costa. She seemed preoccupied, for once unsure of herself.

  “Coming or staying?” he asked her matter-of-factly. She gave him a pained look, then made up her mind. She grabbed an extra canister of packing foam and her carbine and exited the GOV with Fred.

  Up close, the scary fecker on the porch was even scarier. It was a leggy thing, almost to Fred’s chest. Even motionless, it seemed to bristle with bad intent. There were weapons ports all up and down its outer legs. Otherwise, its appendages and ports were concealed by its shaggy coat of plasfoil velvet. To my brothers cloned, he told himself, when mentars and mechs get married, they make baby warbeitors.

  While Michaelmas covered him with the GOV’s big gun, Fred and Costa sprayed the warbeitor with the foam. It went on like green whipped cream and set up fast. When it cured, it would have a tensile strength of many tons, and the warbeitor would be completely immobilized, even if it decided it wasn’t locked down after all.

  The cart, meanwhile, finished reloading the scouts, and Costa sent it back to its tender. She followed Fred to the door. “Hey, Tuggers,” Fred said, “how do things look to you guys?”

  Nothing moving in there, Commander, Veronica replied from the van.

  Fred and Costa raised their carbines and braced themselves to go in. From her expression it was clear that the inspector had a lot on her mind. She frowned at Fred and said, “A day’s payfer says you’re wrong.”

  2.27

  Alert! was the perfect drug. It was fast-acting and brought one to a peak of total mental acuity without side effects like tremors or logorrhea. It came in precise doses, from four to twelve hours, and when it wore off, it did so all at once, without a hangover.

  Samson washed down the Alert! with a sip of ’Lyte and continued his tale.

  MELINA POST’S “ACCIDENT” occurred during an Around the Coyote theater performance that she attended with her husband, Darwin. Midway through delivering a comic soliloquy, one of the actors stopped and clutched his stomach. His waistline swelled ominously, but the audience took it as part of the act, at least until the actor shrieked. Then his bulging abdomen ruptured, and there was a mad rush for the exits. Too late, the building was already surrounded by bloomjumpers.

  The Posts, along with audience, cast, and crew, were hauled off to Provo, Utah, and interred in the quarantine block of the Homeland Command holding facility, the same place I had visited several years earlier. Most guests never left quarantine alive, but since my own release, new detainees were given an option. You could stay and live a relatively comfortable life of protective quarantine, or you could leave—after being seared.

  Melina and Darwin were permitted to occupy the same cell suite, and it looked as though they were settling in for the long haul—or until their sleepers woke up and expressed themselves. But after a few months of confinement, Melina lapsed into a state of profound depression, and after much brooding and prayer, she opted to be seared and released. Darwin chose to remain. They parted amicably.

  Melina’s first couple of years adjusting to the life of a stinker were typically wretched. But then, three years into her new life, she met a dashing man who professed to love her so much he didn’t care about her infelicitous fetor. Naturally, she didn’t believe him because he was poor. But that wasn’t going to prevent her from having a good time. So they traveled together and stayed at posh hotels and tony resorts and took in shows and tours and the whole nine yards. She paid for everything, plus the surcharge stinkers always paid. She didn’t care. She had a beautiful man on her arm who composed sonnets to her.

  She awoke one morning, and Mr. Sonnet was gone. She had known his departure was inevitable, but she’d thought he’d make a classier getaway. None of his things seemed to be missing from their St. Croix hotel room, but she could tell he’d flown. All in all, it had been an enjoyable fling.

  Next to the bathroom sink he had left the tiny, perfect, scalloped, pink shell she had found on the beach and given to him to remember her by. The fact that he hadn’t taken it upset her more than his departure.

  A little while later, when she ordered down for breakfast, the hotel manager asked if he could come up. There were urgent matters to discuss. As though reading from a bad script, he told her that her account was overdrawn. She knew that that wasn’t possible, and while he waited in her room, she called her broker at the Reed Sisters Wealth Management Services in New York, who handled the lion’s share of her and Darwin’s assets. Her broker hemmed and hawed but finally admitted that Melina’s many accounts had been tampered with the day before. Upset but not yet panicked, Melina placed calls to her other banks and brokerages. Little by little, the picture became clear. Mr. Sonnet had taken advantage of his physical proximity to her valet. He’d been very thorough; she was cleaned out. She and Darwin were broke.

  Upon hearing this, the manager of the Five Palms Hotel let her know that he’d only tolerated her in his establishment because of his generous nature. He loudly bemoaned his suite, which was ruined by her unchristian odor, and he threatened to call the police.

  Melina had to borrow credit from friends to tube back home. The Homeland Command confiscated her valet to assess its role in the theft. What small assets she still had were tied up in the investigation. She had to borrow in order to live modestly for a while in a rented apartment in an unfashionable RT. She started a number of lawsuits against the Reed Sisters and her other financial managers, but the courts ruled that the financial institutions be held harmless. The generosity of her friends had limits and strings. The authorities turned up no leads on Mr. Sonnet or her former wealth. They returned her valet in a hundred pieces. She considered selling it for recycling credits, but some intuition told her to hang on to it.

  Melina’s slide into poverty took only weeks. She lost her apartment and was forced to move into a city-subsidized women’s dormitory.

  In the three years since her and Darwin’s accident, she had fallen from a penthouse to a barracks, where she could claim only a cot, a chair, and a locker. When she thought she could fall no further, she learned otherwise. The other women in the dormitory reviled her for her odor and petitioned the management to evict her. In an uneasy compromise, management moved her into a supply closet and ruled that her door must be kept shut.

  YOU ARE RIGHT, Justine. This is far more than Melina Post could have told me in five minutes. We had more time than that, for her gentleman caller was late in arriving. As we stood at my door, we made way for the arbeitors to ferry the baked shark past us, its mouth agape with butter squash, to her apartment. And we made way again when my arbeitors returned with empty servos. But as the minutes accumulated, and her special guest still hadn’t come or called, she was sure it was business that kept him. She didn’t call him, she said, because she didn’t want to bother him. She tried to mask her growing anxiety by continuing her story. I invited her back in, to sit down and have something to drink, but she was content to stand outside my door. I must say, her story was stirring my own pot of memories. The way she was treated enraged me, and I wished I could have been present to help her in her time of need. If only she had knocked on my door back then instead of waiting so many years.

  So, there she was, my mistreated friend, lying on her dormitory cot next to shelves of cleaning solvents, drifting into the type of despair I knew only too well, when an extraordinary event occurred.

  Across the Atlantic, Wanda Wieczorek, our Saint Wanda, who you may have heard of, had her little run-in with the furniture floor manager at Daud’s in London. She’d only wanted for her mum to sit on the silk couch; she didn’t intend to sit on it herself, until the floor manager showed up with his attitude and his troop of uniformed jerrys. She sent her mum down to the food court to wai
t for her, then drew her simcaster from her purse. This is a ten-thousand-euro item of furniture, the manager told her. We simply cannot permit you to ruin it with your unfortunate malodorous condition.

  Fine, Wanda said, I’ll take it with me.

  She took the whole floor, actually, if you include the smoke and water damage. Her suicide made international headlines. Suddenly, hundreds of seared men and women were bursting into flame everywhere. On buses, in theaters, on rush-hour pedways, in offices of big transnationals—wherever they could scare up a crowd. The greasy, roasted-pork smell of charred human flesh pervaded our cities and awoke the public conscience to our plight.

  The Homeland Command had performed searing in the name of public security, and the public had condoned its policy in silence. Now the public started asking questions. Why were we punishing the victims of NASTIE attacks? Why did we have to mutilate them? The civil authorities, meanwhile, were wondering what could have possessed the HomCom to create so many walking firebombs.

  Melina Post started receiving a procession of smelly visitors to her supply closet. She was known as a former aff who still owned memberships at exclusive spas and clubs and other places where the seared dearly wanted to stage their wiener roasts. But Melina, always the good citizen, refused to participate (though she admitted to entertaining some middle-of-the-night fantasies of incinerating the bitches in her dormitory while they slept).

  The protests went on without her and eventually shamed the UD Parliament to declare a ban on human searing. New, nonmutilating methods of cell-sifting were introduced. The doors to the isolation cells in Utah and elsewhere were flung open, and the quarantined were safely douched and released to rejoin society (alas, too late for Darwin Post who had recently expressed into a cloud of monarch butterflies).

  With the searing ban in force, the protests abruptly ceased. But soon a startling fact was uncovered. There was solid evidence that the HomCom’s “new” nonmutilating cell-sifting methods were not so new after all. They had been available to the Command for years, even in 2092 when I made my own excursion to the Utah cop shop.