Counting Heads

by David Marusek

  The revelation that the HomCom had been searing people for years while more humane methods were available was too much to bear, and the remaining seared redoubled their demonstrations. Even Melina Post was angry, if only for the suffering of her dear Darwin. Alone in her cot, she drew up a list of all the people who deserved to broil by her hand. At the top of her list was Mr. Sonnet, if only she could locate him. Trailing close behind was that damned hotel manager in St. Croix. She thought she would tube down there and sit in one of his big rattan chairs in the lobby until he strolled by. But the winner of Melina’s vengeance lottery turned out to be her wealth managers, the Reed Sisters.

  The Reed Sisters in whose trust she had placed her fortune. Their offices were only a pedway away.

  Melina tried to contact a number of the seared who had recently contacted her, but they were all already toasted, except for one woman. Melina met her in a coffee shop and the woman confided that she planned to take her life on a shopping arcade over Broadway and asked Melina to join her. Melina told her she had a better idea. She had made an appointment with her former broker on the 350th level of the OXO Tower.

  The following day, the two women prepared themselves in the dormitory bathroom. They applied three coats of skin mastic, donned business clothes, and soaked themselves with cologne.

  Because of newly minted accommodation laws, and because Melina had an appointment, the OXO Tower security admitted them. Since they couldn’t go through the scanway, they were thoroughly frisked and sniffed. The search turned up a laser penknife and pocket simcaster, but since citizens had a constitutional right to such items, they were not confiscated. However, security did inform the Reed Sisters office of their arrival, and when the two coconspirators got off on the 350th level, the brokerage doors were locked against them, and two uniformed jerrys were waiting to escort them back down to the lobby.

  Frustrated, the two women rode down in the elevator, bracketed by the jerrys. Melina was trying to take their failure in stride, but her friend wasn’t handling it so well. The woman was rabid. She huffed and puffed. To make matters worse, the jerrys failed to convert the elevator to express status, so it stopped every few floors to take on or let off passengers. At one stop, two brash young men got on, and one of them pinched his nose and said to the other, “Pee-yoo!”

  It was a costly remark, for it caused Melina’s friend to snap. She straightened up and, staring Melina in the eye, bellowed, “Right here! Right now!” Melina swallowed hard. In her mind she was already booking fare to the Five Palms in St. Croix. So she was relieved when she reached into her handbag for the simcaster, and found a jerry hand in there already confiscating it.

  Her friend was a little quicker on the draw. She had her laser penknife out and lit. She tried cutting her own throat with it, but the other jerry grabbed her arm. She kicked and clawed like a madwoman. She lashed out with her tiny weapon and would have cut the jerry but for his armored suit. She turned it on herself, but only managed to burn superficial gashes in her arm before he removed it from her.

  This didn’t stop the woman. By now the other passengers were pressed against the door. The woman swung her cut arm at them, attempting to anoint them with her sizzling blood. Melina’s own jerry cuffed Melina’s hands behind her with plastic shackles. She was too intimidated even to think of resisting. Finally, the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and the passengers piled out. In a sudden move, Melina’s friend squirmed out of her captor’s hold and tried to flee the elevator. In trying to catch her, the jerry clumsily shoved her against the elevator wall where she struck her forehead.

  The blow was enough to stun her. She stood quietly while the jerry cuffed her, but when he turned her around, it was apparent to Melina that mortal damage had been done. The woman’s forehead was swollen with a thick, steamy bulge the size of an egg. The jerry, calling for medical assistance, carried her from the elevator. She fought all the way, viciously banging her own head against the wall, against the door frame, against the jerry’s armored chest. The lump grew to the size of an orange. Still she struggled, and the other jerry let go of Melina in order to help.

  Melina stood alone, numb, in the elevator, not sure what to do. The circulation in her wrists was cut off. When she noticed her simcaster on the floor next to her feet, she knelt down to retrieve it. She managed to get ahold of the simcaster, but there was no way she could raise it to her head. So she pressed it against her buttocks and said—without much conviction—“Right here, right now.”

  Her finger resting lightly on the button, she watched her friend’s lingering suicide in the corridor. The lump had swollen until the skin could no longer contain it, and it burst in a gout of flames. The fire foggers went off, filling the corridor with a cloud of fire suppressant. But suppressant couldn’t quench seared flesh, and Melina heard the woman’s skin crackling as the fire spread across her scalp and down her throat. It was the worst kind of self-immolation. The seared always tried to kill themselves quickly, as Saint Wanda had, from the brain outward. But this poor soul was burning from the outside in, as her incendiary cells killed those underlying them in a chain reaction from skin to muscle to viscera.

  Melina lowered her simcaster. Irradiating her own buttocks would have a similar effect, killing her from the bottom up and providing her plenty of time to regret what she had done. So, she left the car and tried to help her friend. She found her in the fog propped up against the wall. The jerrys had foolishly wrapped the woman in a fire blanket, which only increased her core temperature like an oven. It should have killed her, but only stoked her agony.

  With her cuffed hands, Melina angled herself to press the simcaster against the charred head. She had never taken a life before, and she steeled herself and pressed the button. But a hand reached from out of the fog and pulled her away.

  The hand belonged to a man who was not a jerry. He was a man who liked halibut, cod, or shark. He was a man who worked in an office on that floor. He tipped Melina over his shoulder and carried her to his private office under the cover of fire suppressant and shut and locked the door. The first thing he said to her was, “You don’t want to do that,” and he held out his hand for the simcaster.

  She pressed it against her buttocks again and cried oh, yes, she did, but she was no more able to harm herself than before.

  They hid in his office, barely speaking, until the commotion had ended and the scuppers had cleaned up the mess. Melina knew that the tower security was looking for her, and the man was unable to cut the tough plastic of the handcuffs. He accompanied her when she turned herself in.

  FOR LACK OF evidence or institutional will, Melina Post was not charged with a crime. She was free to return to her supply closet, but the man (she never told me his name) wouldn’t let her go there. He gathered her up into his own home, a modest efficiency in an RT, and took care of her. He rented great lungplants in huge pots to purify the air. He wore nose filters at first but gradually went without them.

  By coincidence, the man also worked as a wealth manager. He was an officer for a firm in competition with the Reed Sisters. He was successful in business, but like his apartment and his clothes, he was rather bland. He’d never been married and was, in fact, quite shy. He eagerly volunteered to help Melina Post try to recover her stolen property. He had a friend who had a talented mentar (mentars had recently begun to appear). Melina turned the broken pieces of her valet over to this mentar, and it was able to trace some of her former assets. Out of his own pocket, Mr. Bland hired a specialist in financial forensics, and before long they had uncovered enough evidence to implicate the Reed Sisters. There was a big scandal, more victims were identified, and the Reed Sisters offices were sealed pending investigation. Some of Melina’s assets were eventually recovered, with the prospect of more turning up and the promise of compensatory damages from the Reeds.

  Melina Post, with a new lease on life, moved to Chicago and, unbeknownst to me, became my downstairs neighbor.

  “HE’S GOING
TO ask me to marry him.”

  We had been talking for over an hour with no word from the tardy Mr. Bland, when Melina made this bold pronouncement.

  To me it was a bucket of ice water.

  “Yes,” she continued. “Oh, I don’t know that for sure, but I know it in my bones. We’ve been growing close these last few months. Call it an intuition.”

  I had an intuition of my own, only mine was more like a bad feeling.

  “He’s very tender,” she continued, “and spends all his free time doting on me or working on my case. I know he loves me, and I’ve grown to love him too. This morning he said that this was going to be a very special evening. It must be some extraordinary circumstance that’s keeping him. He’s taking care of my business now.”

  I was almost too afraid to ask, “What do you mean taking care of your business?”

  “He’s investing for me. And this morning I signed over power of attorney.”

  TO TRAVEL IN spirit with her through her whole desperate odyssey, only to watch her wash up twice on the same rocks, was more than I could bear. I made a perfect ass of myself then. I told her that no matter what happened that evening, no matter how bad and senseless things seemed, she could always come back to me. That I would take care of her. That I would dote on her and never swindle her. And that I needed no lungplant or nose filters to be close to her.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” she said, a little frightened by my earnestness.

  I told her that her hero was not simply late, but that he had skipped town, just like the Sonnet Man at the hotel. I told her she’d been robbed again, but that I would take care of her.

  “I have to go now,” she said abruptly. “Thank you again, Myr Harger, for the fish and for listening to my story.”

  “We both know he’s not coming,” I said as gently as I could. “We’re both stinkers, dear Mel, and stinkers shouldn’t try to deceive one other.”

  She said good-bye and left.

  When she was gone, Skippy closed my door, and I returned to my suite. It seemed unusually cold, but Skippy said the temperature was fine. I told him to dispatch some bees to keep an eye on Melina’s floor.

  To my great surprise, in about ten minutes, all the elevators on her floor arrived at the same time and opened their doors. Out came a procession of arbeitors, each of them burdened with bouquets and wreaths and sprays of fresh flowers. The arbeitors looked like floats in a parade to her door. The elevators departed but soon returned with another wave of floral arrangements. Finally, after a third sortie of flower-bearing arbeitors, the man, himself, appeared with a final bundle of red roses in his arms. He was fashionably young but otherwise short on looks. He wore evening clothes and a foolish grin. I followed his progress at the tail of the parade and saw him disappear across Melina’s threshold.

  As per my orders, my bees kept vigil throughout the night. Flower Man didn’t reemerge until morning, with Melina on his arm. She was radiant. She wore a gaudy new ring. And that, my dear new friends, was that.

  JUSTINE, UNCOMFORTABLY AWARE that Samson’s story lacked a proper ending, prompted him. “Did Melina Post replace your shark with a comparable one?”

  “Oh, yes, she did,” Samson said, “the very next day, in fact, and of the same vintage. Skippy learned later that the remains of their dinner, including the fin soup, was enjoyed at shelters across Chicago the following evening.”

  Samson was sagging in his seat, but still owl-eyed from the Alert! and any form of interrogation might be too much of a strain on him. Nevertheless, Justine went on to say, “This hero of Myr Post’s. What happened to him?”

  “I never saw her or him again,” Samson said, “but I followed them on the Evernet. Together, they founded an association dedicated to forcing the UD Parliament to pay restitution to the survivors of the seared. You may have heard about that. From what I could tell, they lived harmoniously until her death from more-or-less natural causes a few years ago.”

  “And what of you, Myr Harger Kodiak? Did you return to your interrupted loneliness?”

  “No. That was the unintentional gift Melina left me. In the fleeting minutes she spent in my hermitage, she poisoned it. She succeeded in provoking me to imagine my own smelly self out there in the greater world once more. Even to imagine myself together with a lover again. And once that bug bit me, I could never return to my solitude. The next day I had Skippy unopaque my window walls and I saw my city for the first time in a long time. Soon after that I met my Kitty and her charter. They eventually invited me to join their house, and I can honestly say that at no time in the twenty-seven years since have I ever been lonely. Cranky, perhaps, and obstinate—but never lonely.”

  The Skytel overhead was well into the canopy celebration show. Samson and his hosts watched it for a few minutes, comparing the hoopla on the boards above with the emptiness on the field below.

  “What about Jean?” Justine said. “Where is Her Secret Wound now? And does it still suffer?”

  “If Mr. Flowers still lives, he must have it. I left it unsigned and sent it to them as an anonymous wedding gift, though it couldn’t be anonymous to her. If Mr. Flowers has followed Melina in death, I have no idea where it would be. It hasn’t surfaced at auction. But wherever it is, rest assured that it’s suffering. And it will suffer always.”

  Justine said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Myr Kodiak Harger. You should have destroyed it.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” Samson agreed. From the expression on Justine’s face, he could tell she was holding something back. “Go ahead,” he said, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Justine collected the cat into her arms and fixed Samson with a look of motherly disapproval. “I agree with my husband,” she said. “At a time like this, you belong at home with your family, not here making a spectacle of yourself.”

  “You’re probably right, Myr Vole, but I’m a seared, probably the last of the seared, and we must never let society forget the cruelty done to us in its name. I missed too many opportunities in the past, out of deference to my ex-wife and out of personal weakness, but what could be a better occasion to remind the public than the retirement of this canopy?”

  Justine seemed unconvinced. “That’s not what I see,” she said. “Please excuse my bluntness, Myr Kodiak Harger, but what I see is far worse than personal weakness. Terrible, unfair things happened to you, there’s no denying it, but bad things happen to everyone. And though your long period of loneliness is as sad as anything I’ve ever heard, you found your way out before it was too late. You should be grateful, Myr Harger Kodiak, but instead you seek to punish the very people who have sustained you. If you truly love your charter and truly appreciate all they’ve done for you, then you’ll give them the gift of your final moments. Otherwise, you are nothing more than an emotional coward.”

  With that, Justine took the cat’s leash from Victor and added, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can’t watch.”

  “Why not?” Samson snapped. “Already had your fill of suicides for one day?”

  Justine unhitched her chair and returned inside without answering. Victor winked and said, “Best of luck, Myr Kodiak,” and followed her in.

  Samson fiddled with the controls of his simcaster for a while. “Right here,” he mumbled, “in about forty-five minutes.”

  TWO DOZEN TOBBLERS filed through the roof door. They wore identical jumpsuits of a heavy green fabric. April and Kale greeted them, and Francis and Barry ushered them to benches that Bogdan, Rusty, Megan, and Denny were arranging in the vegetable garden.

  The Skytel show had begun, but Bogdan found it dull. The Tobbs seemed to like it, though, and they began to sway on the benches and tap their toes.

  Bogdan tried to escape through the roof door, but April caught his sleeve and gave him a look that said, We have guests.

  “I’ll be right back, I promise,” he told her. “I have to program my phone.”

  “Now?”

  Bogdan skipped down the stairs and turne
d the corner to his room. He strode in and looked around to see if anyone had intruded recently. Satisfied, he riffled through his piles of stuff until he found his editor, the same one he had used to program Lisa. He sat down on his mattress and spread the editor across his lap. When he opened his phone log, the queue of waiting calls had grown to 750 million. He dragged his phone icon over his latest uprefs icon, and the gargantuan queue shrank to a more manageable two calls, one of which was flagged urgent.

  It was from Hubert. He opened it.

  About time you answered, Hubert said.

  “Does he need me?”

  Not yet, but I felt it prudent to call so that you may prepare yourself to come at a moment’s notice. In fact, I’m sending a taxi to pick you up.

  Bogdan stood and tossed the editor aside. “I’ll wait down in the street.”

  2.28

  They moved quickly through the front rooms, Fred pausing only to glance through the laser holes in the walls, which all seemed to angle back to the main parlor. A few hundred scouts remained strung out on the ceilings to provide comlink. Forensics had reported no bloodstains, and except for the zoo flakes, this had been a strictly machine-on-machine skirmish thus far.

  In the parlor, the procedure cart scanned free of booby traps, but it was locked. Fred swiped its panel and said, “Libby, pass this to Nameless One.”

  Behind him, Costa said, “Nice.” She was taking in the room decor, which was not only aff but elegant, and the space, itself—grand. But it seemed cluttered to Fred with dozens of armchairs, lamps, and little tables. A clubhouse?

  There was a large framed painting covering the better part of one wall. It had acquired holes and scorch marks in the firefight. As had the deeply dyed Persian carpet on the polished hardwood floor. The carpet was as vast as his and Mary’s whole living room, and it was still smoldering around the edges of three melon-sized holes. The warbeitor had fired into the basement from here, the basement where the broadcast had originated.