Mary broke the impasse. “Renata,” she said, “why don’t you leave the clinic and call Wee Hunk from the outside. Tell it to send a medevac to South Gate. Then call Nick. Then call the police and anyone else you can think of.”
“Yes, well,” Renata said, wiping amnio-stained hands on her clothes. “Yes, that sounds practical. I’ll do it, Mary, and then I’ll come back here.”
“No, don’t. Leave by East Gate. Once out, stay out. Walk around to South Gate and wait for us on the street.”
Renata hugged Mary and hurried down the garden path. Hattie pressed a glove bladder into Mary’s hands. Alex and Cyndee each had two of them. “No,” Mary said, “I’ll carry the tote.”
“It’s heavy,” Hattie said.
“It’s mine.” Mary lifted the tote and looped the strap over her shoulder. It was heavy. Floating on the surface of the syrup was a scum of melting flotsam: a pen, a candy bar, the remains of her double kitchen pouches. The tissue sample of Samson’s odor was completely dissolved, and the syrup was tainted with his oder. She closed the tote lid and said, “Ready.” Cyndee and Alex stood on either side of her, their clothes bulging with glove bladders.
Hattie paused to admire them all, shaking her head. “You ’leens,” she said. “I love you guys.”
The rescue party didn’t get far. They were stopped by a construction curtain blocking the garden path. It was too high to look over, and it cut the garden in half. On its bright yellow surface, Uglyphs were repeated every meter: “Caution! Utility Work in Progress. Please pass in this direction.” Hattie led the evangelines around it in the suggested direction. This meant trampling flower beds and pressing themselves through a lilac hedge. They held open the branches for Mary and her gravid tote to pass through.
The safety curtain continued around their cottage. They followed it for a dozen more meters when Mary stopped abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” Hattie said.
Wordlessly, Mary unfastened her valet broach and dropped it on the ground. “We’re not going around the cordon,” she said. “We’re inside it.”
It was true. The only way out of the garden was through the construction curtain. Since it was only a holo projection, they could walk through it. But that would surely trip an alarm. Following Mary’s example, the evangelines and Hattie removed jewelry, panic buttons, ear pips, and anything else on their person likely to contain a transponder. The ’leens hesitated but removed their saucer caps as well and tossed them on the pile.
“Which way?” Hattie said.
“South Gate’s that way,” Cyndee said, pointing the direction.
“That way it is,” Hattie said and marched forward. But she stopped and said, “Coburn?”
The medtech was crouching in a lilac bush. He had his medkit open and was injecting a handful of drug patches with a hypospray.
Hattie picked up a discarded vial and read its label. “What are you doing,” she said, “loading for bear?”
“There’s security out there,” he said, “and listen—they’re pikes!”
“You are mistaken,” Hattie said. “Roosevelt Clinic doesn’t employ pikes.”
“I’m telling you, they were pikes. In clinic uniforms. Carrying over-and-under carbines.”
The evangelines shivered.
“Well, then,” Hattie said. “Anyone want to stay here?” No one did. It was the quarter hour of cherry pipe tobacco when Hattie led the evangelines and medtech through the holo curtain. On the other side, a man in a groundskeeper uniform was trimming shrubbery with a brush-cutter crop. A utility cart trailed him, raking up the cuttings with a mechanical arm and depositing them in its brush hamper. The man looked up when Hattie and the others came through the curtain. He was not a john or juan, as they would have expected. He was a pike.
The pike signaled for the utility cart to follow him, and he approached the safety curtain and small group of clinic staff huddling next to it. He gestured in a friendly manner, urging them to go back through the cordon. His peaceable demeanor was hard to resist. Mary looked to Hattie, who seemed as indecisive as she.
“After you,” the pike said mildly, and the group turned around and went back through the curtain. The pike escorted them to the center of the flower garden where benches formed a circle around a little fountain. “Please take a seat. We’d like to have a word with you.”
They didn’t sit. The evangelines stood between the pike and Mary. Coburn clutched his medkit and said, “Whatever this is about, it doesn’t concern me.” He attempted to leave, but the pike touched the tip of his brush-cutter to Coburn’s chest and said, “Please sit. Everyone, please sit and swipe me.”
His voice oozed civility, which in a pike was frightening enough, and the five of them sat and swiped him. Coburn clutched his medkit to his chest.
“I’m afraid you’re wrong, Matt Coburn,” the groundskeeper told him. “You are, indeed, part of our mission.”
The cottage door opened, and two more pikes emerged, these in security uniforms and carrying rail/laser carbines. They came over to the group, and one of them said, “Where is it?”
When no one answered, the pike stood in front of Coburn and said, “Concierge told you to DC it, so where is it?”
“Where do you think? In the morgue.”
The pike snorted. “You’re saying you took it to the morgue?”
Coburn swallowed and nodded his head.
“Then how come the morgue says it’s not there?”
Coburn shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
Hattie said, “It must still be in transit. A couple of medtechs took it about a quarter hour ago.”
“Is that so?” said the pike in the groundskeeper uniform. “My grid doesn’t show any medtech between here and the morgue in the last half hour. For that matter, my grid shows you ladies over there.” He pointed beyond the lilac hedge where they had dropped their hats. “Anyone want to explain?”
No one did. “Shiny,” the pike concluded. He motioned for the utility cart to park itself in front of them and open the lid to its brush hamper. “Maybe this’ll ring a bell. Is this the medtech you had in mind?”
There, on a bed of clippings, lay Renata. Her throat had been slashed, as with a sword—or brush-cutter—and it hung by a flap of skin.
Hattie sprang to her feet, but a pike roughly shoved her back down. “What have you done?” Hattie cried, straining toward the cart. “Call a crash cart. Let me stabilize her at least. She doesn’t have to die.”
The pike turned to his mates and said, “Of all the places to die—inside a freakin’ revivification clinic. Is that ironic or what?” To Hattie he said, “Tell you what, Nurse Beckeridge. You tell us where the head is, and I’ll call a crash cart.”
Hattie turned away, which made the pikes laugh. Mary removed the tote strap from her shoulder and set the bag on the ground. She tried to think of what Fred would do in this situation, and not a thought came to her, except that the pikes were toying with them, as any ’leen could plainly see. They had no intention of calling a crash cart. Renata was as good as dead (as Ellen, herself, must be by now). Also, the pikes knew exactly where the head was; they could probably image it inside her tote with their visors.
“Christ, I love my job,” said the pike in the groundskeeper uniform.
“Screw you, brother,” said one of the others. “It’s my turn.”
“No need to be pushy,” the first one replied. “There’s two each.”
“Sez who?” The pike strolled back and forth in front of the prisoners and appraised each of them with a calculating squint. He stopped in front of Mary and said, “What’s that smell, sister?” He wasn’t referring to the scent clock. The odor of amnio syrup distillates, mixed with a trace of Samson, was streaming from her tote.
Mary said, “I don’t smell anything.”
The pikes guffawed, and the interrogation moved to Coburn. “Where’s the head, Matt?”
“I told you,” he said. “I DC’d it and sent it to
the morgue. Check the controller log. Ask Concierge.” His eyes rose to the heavens. “Concierge! I need you.”
The pikes howled with laughter, and one had to raise his visor to wipe away a tear. He motioned for the cart to close its hamper and to turn around. He opened the opposite hamper. Except for a sprinkling of grass clippings, it was empty. “Stand up here,” he commanded Coburn.
Coburn was frozen to his seat, and the pike grabbed his arm and hauled him to the cart. “Tell me where it is, or you’ll get a chance to ride in the cart.”
Coburn’s eyes shivered in their sockets. “There!” he said, pointing to Mary’s tote. The pikes groaned. Coburn’s tormentor said, “Why’d you have to go and tell us like that? What kind of a man are you?”
“It’s your own fault,” said another pike. “You should’ve done a ’leen first. They’d never tell.”
“I thought we should do the ’leens last. There’s three of ’em, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re running out of time anyway. Let’s do this.”
“All right, brother. Loan me the crop.”
The groundskeeper pike handed his brother the brush-cutter. “Here, but it’s not as easy as it looks. You have to swing it really hard.”
“Says you,” the pike said and gave the bench next to Hattie a couple of test lashes. Sparks flew, and deep grooves scarred the stone. He turned to Coburn and said, “Stand up straight, you wanker.”
Coburn’s knees buckled, and he sank to the ground.
“I said stand up,” the pike growled and jerked the medtech to his feet. “The feck,” he said and looked at his wrist. His skin was covered with five drug patches. He tried to peel them off but grew faint. As he stumbled, Coburn wrenched the brush-cutter from his hand.
“Run, run, run!” Hattie urged the evangelines. She, herself, bent over the fallen pike and tried to tear his standstill wand from its holster.
Mary grabbed up the tote and ran with the other evangelines to the lilac hedge, while Coburn savagely whipped the two remaining pikes with the brush crop. His blows bounced harmlessly off their armor. One of the pikes sliced Coburn in two with his carbine. While Coburn bled out in a rose bed, the pike continued firing razor fléchettes through his eye sockets and skull, to mince the gray matter inside.
Cyndee was first through the hedge. She helped Mary with the tote, and together they helped Alex. But Alex’s clothes became caught in the branches, and she was stuck. She urged them to go without her, but her sisters continued pulling at her arms and legs. Behind her in the garden, one of the pikes attended to his fallen brother, while the other hacked at Hattie with the crop.
“I’m going to back out and come around,” Alex said. “You guys—” Suddenly the hedge around her erupted in exploding leaves and twigs, and Mary and Cyndee dropped to the ground. Alex’s own body shielded them from the fléchettes, but she was being ground up before their eyes. They crawled for cover. Mary was hit, the tote was hit, but the two evangelines found a forest path and ran. The path meandered between cottages and seemed to double back on itself. Cyndee pulled Mary into a copse of maples and elms. They ran between paths. Mary was completely disoriented, but Cyndee seemed to have her bearings. They had to stop eventually when they ran out of breath. They fell to their knees in the lush undergrowth.
There was a burning pain in Mary’s arm where a fléchette had passed through without striking bone. Her sleeve was bright with blood, but the wound seemed minor, and she paid it no attention. It was the tote she was afraid for. A fléchette had entered but not exited, and syrup seeped down its side. One of Cyndee’s bladders was also leaking. “Here,” Cyndee said, thrusting it at Mary, “put this one in the bag and this one in your togs. The clinic wall”—pointing in the direction with a stick—“is over there. Not far, maybe a quarter klick. When you reach it, turn right.”
“What about you?”
Cyndee probed the ground with the stick and pried up a large rock. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’re crazy,” Mary said.
“So are you, Mary Skarland. When you get out, send crash carts.” Cyndee kissed her sister, gathered up her rock, kissed her sister again, and headed back the way they had come.
THE LIFECHAIR IDLED twenty meters from the pressure gate.
“What about the distance?” Samson said. “Will we get up enough speed? I don’t want to die of a broken ankle.”
Belt Hubert said, “I’m releasing your lap belt and uncoupling your Foley. That way you’ll fly off and hit head first.”
“You’re a good helper.”
“Thank you. Ready?”
“Tell them this is for Ellen Henry Starke.”
“The media is still patched in.”
“She needs me, and I’m coming.”
The chair’s micro-turbines revved up, and the chair thrummed with energy.
“Ready?” Belt Hubert repeated.
“Is Kitty clear yet?”
WHEN MARY REACHED the imposing clinic wall with her leaking tote, she was beyond exhaustion. She slumped in a near faint behind a large oak. Her breath whipsawed through her open mouth. The tote bag lay next to her feet, its side wet with syrup and blood. She wrenched it open and looked in at her passenger, afraid to see a ruined mockery of their sacrifice.
The skull lay in the corner of the tote, in a puddle of syrup, its crown completely exposed to the air. The bone was pockmarked with holes where wires and tubes had run. Scraps of raw skin hung from it.
Mary reached her bare arm into the syrup and hunted for the fetus. She thought she felt its heartbeat but couldn’t be sure. The skull’s eyes, in their lidless sockets, seemed to follow her.
Mary tried to untie the knot in the foil glove bladder, her last one, but it was too tight. She searched her pockets for something sharp. She tried to bite through it. Then she heard a buzzing sound next to her ear and was startled by a mech hovering there. It had a jeweled head of blue, and Mary thought it must be a clinic bee.
The bee alighted on the foil glove for a moment, and when it lifted off, there was a thumb-sized hole in the glove. Mary poured the syrup over the head, meanwhile keeping an eye on the bee. It seemed docile enough, but when she tried to stand up, it opened a tiny frame with a Uglyph that meant Keeping Still. Immediately, she heard footfalls crashing through the undergrowth. She huddled against the tree trunk and held her breath, wondering if the pikes’ visors could image through solid oak.
The footfalls grew nearer. Mary looked all around. She was trapped. Suddenly she was staring into a mirror. Her own grimy face startled her. But it wasn’t a mirror. It was a holofied sim of herself, complete down to the bloody uniform and tote. Her mirror image showed her a “You Are Here” map of the clinic grounds, with a pulsing arrow pointing the way to South Gate. Mary was closer to the gatehouse than she had thought. Then her sim double got up and ran in the opposite direction.
Mary heard a grunt of surprise on the other side of the tree, followed by the swoosh of fléchettes. The pike swore under his breath when he missed the decoy, but he did not pursue her at once. Instead he called in. He spoke in low tones, but Mary heard his half of the exchange.
“Repeat that,” he said. “Negative, she’s heading east toward A-three-six.” His tone sounded more inconvenienced than concerned. There was a mechanical click as he reloaded his weapon. “How’s Reggi doing? Say again. No, deploy the battle lid and clean up the mess. That’s an order.” The sound of his voice trailed off in the direction the bee had lured him.
Mary waited until the pike had disappeared into the trees before rolling the tote around Ellen’s head, tucking it under her arm, and dashing to South Gate Plaza. She didn’t slow down until she reached the pressure gate. It was shut solid. There were two shapes on the other side. “Reilly?” she cried. “It’s me, Mary.”
Reilly’s reply came through a speaker over her head. “Mary? What’s happened to you? Are you hurt?”
Mary looked down at herself and felt he
r arm with her fingers. “No, Reilly, but they’re killing my sisters. Please let me in.”
“No can do, Mary. We’re in Orange. We’re locked down. But I’m ordering a crash cart for you. Hang in there; help is coming.”
As though from a distance, Mary heard the voice of another russ in Reilly’s intercom. He was shouting at Reilly to drop the gate.
“Reilly,” Mary said, “I don’t need a crash cart, but send carts to Feldspar Cottage. There’s three—four dead there. And one more behind me in the woods.” She waved her arm behind her where she and Cyndee had parted. “But, Reilly, please, bend the rules for once, can’t you, and let me in.”
Inside the gatehouse, Reilly unhooked his baton and pointed it at Fred as he replied to Mary, “I would do anything in the world for you, Mary. You know I would, but you ask the impossible. I’m forbidden to open the gate while we’re in Orange.”
“At least take this through,” Mary said and held out the rolled-up tote. Fred approached the gate, but Reilly jabbed him with the baton. “I won’t tell you again, Planc. Leave this block at once.”
A shower of fléchettes bounced against the gate above Mary’s head. She ducked low to the ground and ran along the gate to the end of the plaza where, with a parting look, she disappeared down a path. Reilly watched her go, and Fred used the distraction to wrench the baton from his hands. A man in a groundskeeper uniform approached the gate and watched them struggling for a moment before crossing the plaza and taking the same path as Mary.
Fred slipped behind Reilly and caught him in a choke hold with the baton. He pressed him against the hot pressurized air. “Open the gate!” He screamed.
WHEN MEEWEE, THE doctor, and the medbeitor passed the lifechair, Meewee saw that there was an emaciated passenger inside. “What do you suppose?” he said.
“I’ll look,” the doctor replied and stayed back, but before Meewee advanced much farther, the chair tooted its horn and shot past him, accelerating at a frightful speed directly at the pressure gate.
Counting Heads Page 55