Counting Heads
Page 37
Well, I just wanted to say good-bye because I don’t think we’ll ever meet again. And Ellie sends her love too. She’s always been proud of her father and tells everyone she meets that she gets her sense of panache from your side of the family.
So good-bye, my love. You live in my heart always. Farewell! I love you!
The bee closed its frame and flew away.
“I love you too!” Samson shouted after it. “Good-bye! Good-bye! I love you still!” His voice was swallowed up in the huge space. Below him the stadium was dark, all the placeholder crowds were put away. Above him the Skytel boards were dark too. He leaned back in his seat and said, “That was awfully nice of her. Good-bye. Good-bye.”
After a while, he said, “Hubert?”
Yes, Sam.
“Be sure to tell them how much I love them.”
Yes, Sam, I will. Who?
“April and Kitty, Boggy, Rusty, Kale, hell—all of them. And you too. You’re not so bad, you know.”
Thank you, Sam. Shall I call a taxi now?
“A taxi? What for?”
Samson raised the simcaster one last time. He couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to say to anyone, but before he could order his thumb to finally press the button, the blue-headed bee returned and opened another frame, and Eleanor, as young and beautiful as the day he first met her at his friend’s party, was beaming pure happiness at him.
Great news, Sam! she said. Ellie has survived! Cabinet just learned that she’s arrived at Roosevelt Clinic. You remember the place. Please, dear, be a love and go see her. Your daughter needs you.
“WELL, IT LOOKS like we—or Arrow—hired a russ for you after all,” Wee Hunk said. The mentar had shut down all the frames and scapes in the living room, including the nust globe. The two arbeitors helped Meewee back to bed. “Tomorrow,” the apeman went on, “we should see about setting you up in the Starke Manse.”
“Really?” Meewee said.
“Why not? There’s plenty of room, and frankly, I want to keep tabs on you.”
Meewee lay back on his pillows. He felt a long night’s sleep was due him, but he was too keyed up to close his eyes yet. “Answer me something, Hunk,” he said. “You don’t trust me, or russes, or the GEP board, and yet the owner of the clinic, Byron Fagan, sits on the board.”
“I don’t trust him either,” Wee Hunk replied, “but Eleanor apparently did. Besides, Fagan seems to have a monopoly on regenerative technologies. I haven’t been able to find a suitable alternative facility for her yet.” He continued subvocally. But you make a good point. Let’s get some of our own people in there. Problem is, the clinic maintains its own security and nursing staffs; they won’t let us insert our own russes or jennys. Who else can we send?
MARY SAID, “IT’S beginning!” and she joined the others at the balcony. A white star burst overhead. It was followed by electric red chrysanthemums and blue rocket trails. “What is it? What is it?” she cried, unsure whether to be thrilled or frightened.
“It’s fireworks!” the others shouted. Sizzling sparkles, cannon shot, marching bears that melted like wax. The first fireworks since the canopies went up, the first in Mary’s lifetime.
The lulus cried, “Chicago, give yourself a hug!”
BOGDAN’S TAXI LANDED on the transit parapet of the great stadium and rolled to a parking zone. Bogdan leaped out and was startled by a brilliant burst of light overhead. The sky crackled like ice in a glass. With no time for watching, Bogdan ran through caroming shadows to the ticket gates, but there were HomCom GOVs parked everywhere.
Boggy, Hubert said, come back to the taxi at once.
Bogdan scurried back across the parking zone. Suddenly a large man appeared from the shadows several slots away and jogged toward him, carrying something in his arms. He looked old but was still strong because he was carrying Samson and wasn’t even winded.
“You must be Bogdan Kodiak,” the man said. The sky cracked and crazed behind his head. “Get in the car, son, and help me lift him in.”
Bogdan jumped into the taxi and helped lift Samson. Samson weighed almost nothing. He was deathly still, but his eyes were wide open.
In getting Samson situated, Bogdan ruffled his jumpsuit collar and exposed a glittering mech that was hiding there. He recoiled in surprise, but the man helping him said, “That’s his, I think. At least he spent a lot of time talking to it.” He straightened Samson’s lapel and said, “Good-bye, Myr Harger Kodiak. It was an honor to meet you. The best of luck to you.”
Samson looked at him blankly, and the man swung the gull door down and latched it. He patted the roof twice and stepped away from the car.
The taxi was halfway home when Samson tried to sit up. “Relax, Sam,” Bogdan said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Bogdan was on the phone to April.
“Boggy?” Samson said.
“Yes, Sam, it’s me. I’m taking you home.”
“Not home, not yet. Take me to Roosevelt Clinic.”
Over the phone, April said, “Don’t listen to him. Bring him straight home.”
“AMAZING,” FRED SAID. The great city was spread out before him like a glittering island. He watched from the car he had borrowed to get home. Access to the city’s grids had been suspended until after the grand finale, and he had jumped to a high parking loop to get a front-row seat. “Oh, look at that one.”
“Which one? Which one?” Mary said. They had opened a frame between them, and he could see most of the gang at the Stardeck rail. Champagne corks were flying, and faces were damp with tears. A whole generation’s long march was coming to an end, and Fred was exhausted himself.
But Mary was lit up, if anything, brighter than the fireworks. Fred could tell she had news, but he waited for her to tell it, and finally she did.
“Fred, the DCO called me ten minutes ago,” she said, stretching out the suspense, “and I have a job!”
“That’s wonderful!” Fred said.
“A real job—a companion job!” Once started, it all came out in a rush. “I begin tomorrow, in just a few hours, downstate from here, companioning someone at a clinic. At Roosevelt Clinic. It’s for two weeks at full evangeline rate, with a renewal option.”
Fred didn’t interrupt. It sank in as she talked. “That’s wonderful,” he repeated when she paused for breath.
“Fred, is something wrong?”
The edges of the canopy suddenly flared with a magnesium fire, and they both turned to watch it, letting her question linger. He watched from his high car as intersecting vaults of the once invisible canopy were suddenly revealed. As though Chicagoland were covered by a ghostly cathedral. A cathedral built of many overlapping layers of large flattish hexagonal cells. As Fred watched, a white-hot light raced up through their interstitial spaces.
Mary watched from high in a gigatower inside the largest vault. The sizzling light seemed to blaze right overhead, and she shivered when the walls collapsed and the span toppled and ashes fell like snowflakes.
Tuesday
3.1
April Kodiak got her vigil for Samson after all. Bogdan called her from the taxi, and she ran up the stairs with the news. Several of her housemeets were still sitting in the rooftop garden looking up. With the Skytel dark and the protective canopy burnt to ashes, the Moon alone ruled the sky. “Boggy’s got him,” April exclaimed. “He’s bringing him back! He’s all right!”
The ’meets stirred as though from a dream. “I’ll get his cot,” Kale said and, rising from a chaise lounge, lumbered to the garden shed.
“Good, and let’s bring some blankets up here,” April said, “and make some mush and juice.” She sent Megan and BJ down to roust ’meets already in bed. She sent Denny down to wait in the street for the taxi.
In the shed, Kale gathered up the paper envelopes, each bearing a housemeet’s name in Samson’s handwriting, and stacked them on the potting bench. He carried the cot out to the garden where April rearranged benches and chairs around it. All was ready when Denny ret
urned, climbing ten flights of stairs bearing Samson’s emaciated body. They entombed the old man in pillows and comforters and slipped an autodoc probe into his ear. They barely got any lifelike readings from him at all.
“It won’t be long now,” April whispered.
“But why are his eyes wide open?” Kitty said.
“It’s all the Alert! he took,” Bogdan said.
At the autodoc’s suggestion, they placed a Sooothe patch on Samson’s throat, and in a little while his eyelids fluttered shut, and in a little while more he was snoring comfortably. The ’meets, themselves, battled sleep on chairs and benches. Finally, Kale returned to the shed to retrieve the envelopes. He passed them out, and the ’meets took turns reading Samson’s personal farewells to them by flashlight. They held hands and sang several charter hymns. They traded anecdotes about first meetings with Samson, about living with him through the years. They approached the cot one by one to kiss his burning cheek and to whisper in his ear.
When it was his turn, Bogdan sat on the cot and didn’t know what to say. He had been a toddler when Samson joined the charter, and therefore none of Samson’s troubled DNA had gone into his own patchwork genome. Not that they could, what with the searing and all. But even though Bogdan had no blood tie to Samson, he still felt closer to him than any other ’meet. He lay down on the cot next to the old man and listened to his breath whistling through the gaps in his teeth.
In a little while, April tugged Bogdan’s sleeve and told him to go to bed. She sent everyone to bed. “Check your vigil schedule on the houseputer,” she told them. “We’ll call you if anything develops.” But most of the ’meets decided to stay, and since he had to be up in a few hours anyway to get ready for work, Bogdan stayed too.
Kale and Gerald, meanwhile, left the garden to huddle near a cam/emitter mounted on the side of the building. “Hubert, can you hear me?” Kale said.
“Loud and clear.”
“How could you let him do that? How could you let him do something so stupid?”
“I don’t see how I could have dissuaded him,” the mentar replied.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Kale snapped.
“What tone? This is my standard conversational tone.”
“What he means,” Gerald said, “is why did you help him? You took an active role in this stunt.”
“Well, yes, I did. I am his mentar.”
“There’s that tone again,” Kale said, and Gerald added, “What you did to the Skytel was highly illegal, Hubert. Surely, even a mentar can see that. You have jeopardized this charter’s integrity and endangered your own freedom.”
“Don’t worry about my freedom,” Hubert said. “They’ll never be able to trace that hack to me.”
Suddenly floodlights hit the rooftop from all directions, and a voice said, “That’ll do nicely, folks.” It was a jerry’s voice, and behind the lights, dark shapes could be glimpsed rappelling from cars that hung silently above them. “This is the Homeland Command,” the voice continued. “Don’t nobody move.”
Sleepy Kodiaks awoke with a start to find themselves surrounded by a squad of blacksuited officers. Rusty and Louis jumped to their feet, but the hommers motioned them back down with standstill wands.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kale bellowed.
The jerry commander strode over and said, “I am Lieutenant Grieb of the Northeast Region Homeland Command, myr, and I’m here to serve this warrant.” The commander held up his open palm, but Kale didn’t swipe it. “I said I’m serving a warrant, myr.”
“Then serve away, officer,” Kale replied, “but I don’t have a palm array.”
The jerry said, “Amazing.” A moment later a homcom bee flew down from a hovering GOV and opened a frame in front of Kale that contained a warrant for the arrest of Samson P. Harger Kodiak. The commander then nodded to another officer who approached Samson’s cot. But Kitty flung herself in the way.
“Step aside, myr retrogirl,” the officer said.
Kitty refused to give way, and April joined her and said, “Can’t you see he’s dying?”
“Step aside!” the officer snapped. But the women held their ground, and the officer simply strode between them, sweeping them aside with his sheer bulk. When he reached the cot he recoiled. “My God, but he stinks!” he exclaimed. “This guy is already dead.”
The commander said, “He’s a seared. He’s supposed to stink.”
“He’s dead, I tell you.”
The commander joined his officer next to the cot and opened an autodoc probe. He stuck it into Samson’s ear, next to the first probe, and a moment later he turned to the Kodiaks and said, “I have new orders. We are placing this man under house arrest. He is not to leave these premises without prior authorization. Is that clear?”
“Yes, officer,” April said.
“To assure your compliance,” the commander continued, “I will leave this bee here as an official monitor. Now, to our second item of business.”
The homcom bee opened a new page—a warrant to frisk the house and arrest the mentar known as Hubert. The ring of officers in the garden broke formation and headed for the roof door.
“No!” Kale cried. “You can’t do that!” The houseer ran to the door and blocked the way. “Hubert is the most valuable asset we have left,” he pleaded.
The commander spat on the ground. “We only have so much patience, myr,” he said, and when Kale continued to protest, two officers flipped him around, cuffed him, and shoved him through the door ahead of themselves. “Anyone else have a hankering to spend the night in jail?” the commander asked. “If you folks are smart, you’ll stay up here out of the way.”
For a while, the ’meets waited obediently in the garden. But then Kitty said, “The bastards are in my room.” She strode to the door and down the steps. A moment later April got up to join her. Bogdan looked at Rusty, and Rusty shrugged his shoulders. They, too, went down the stairs but got no farther than the corridor outside Bogdan’s room. There, two officers were trying to peer through the brick walls with their visors.
“Hey, kid,” one of them said, “what do you keep in here?”
“Nothing,” Bogdan said. “That’s the elevator machine room.”
“Oh, yeah? With a barricade door like this?” He rapped his knuckles on the massive door.
Bogdan beamed with pride. “That’s right,” he said. “But you’ll just have to take my word for it since you’ll never get in there on account of the door.”
But the officer had stopped listening to him. “Confirm receipt,” he said and swiped the door’s control panel with his palm.
“Welcome, officers,” the door said as it noisily retracted its bolts.
“Son of a bitch,” Bogdan said.
“Tough luck,” Rusty said.
The two officers swung the heavy door open and entered Bogdan’s bedroom. When Bogdan tried to go in, they ordered him back. He and Rusty watched from the corridor as the officers swept the room with sniffers.
“There ain’t nothing in there but machinery,” one of the officers complained as they came out.
“What did I tell you?” Bogdan said, but Rusty nudged him to be quiet. The officers went by them and continued down the corridor, scanning and sniffing as they went.
When Bogdan turned to shut his door, he was confronted by four Tobblers who had come up from behind. “Good morning, Myr Bogdan. Good morning, Myr Rusty,” said one of them. It was Houseer Dieter.
Bogdan sprang forward, dodged between the Tobbs, and tried to push the heavy door shut, but one of the Tobbs easily held it open while the others pulled wrenches from their pockets and began to disassemble the hinges.
“Stop that! Don’t do that!” Bogdan shouted. “You have no right!”
Houseer Dieter only snorted. “No right? You have the arrogance to say this to me after two years you occupy our room? I’ll show you no right.” He went into the room and started hauling Bogdan’s bedding and dirty clothes out
and tossing them in the hallway.
Bogdan turned to Rusty. “Can’t you stop them?”
Rusty calmly appraised the situation and said, “I suppose I could take all four of them with my bare hands. Do you want me to try?”
Bogdan’s worldly possessions made an unimpressive pile on the floor. He leaned over and picked through it for anything worth salvaging.
“We can’t seem to catch a break tonight,” Rusty said and took ahold of a corner of Bogdan’s mattress. “Let’s haul this to my room. You can bunk with me for a while.”
DESPITE THE EXCITEMENT, Bogdan was very sleepy by the time he and Rusty had moved his stuff. He went down to the NanoJiffy to buy a package of eight-hour Alert! tablets and watched the HomCom officers carry a box containing Hubert’s canister down the steps. They loaded it into a GOV parked on the street. They loaded Kale into another, and Rusty and Louis followed by taxi to post his bail. Though it was only 3:00 AM, Bogdan thought he might as well head out to work. But first he wanted to say good-bye to Samson in case the old man didn’t survive the day. So he climbed up to the roof again. After all the drama, the house was eerily quiet.
When he passed his former bedroom, his beloved door was completely off its hinges and lying flat in the middle of the corridor. He was forced to walk over it to get by. He stopped in front of the doorway and looked in. Two large young Tobbler men were sitting at a folding table next to the cable drum, playing a drowsy game of cards. They glanced at him, stifling yawns.
Up on the roof, only a few Kodiaks were keeping vigil. Samson, in fact, was awake, and Megan and Kitty were feeding him.
“We were washing him,” Kitty told Bogdan. “Changing his clothes and stripping off the old mastic, and it woke him up.”
“’Lo, Sam,” Bogdan said. The old man, mouth full of mush, didn’t seem to hear, so Bogdan went to sit with Denny.
Denny said, “It was scary to see him up in the Skytel.”