Counting Heads (24 page)

“Nothing,” Bogdan said and glanced away.

“Ah, this is good,” said the houseer, following an invisible path with the spex. “Three meters deep. Maybe three and a half. We need specimens.” He took off the spex and said to Bogdan, “And so, young Kodiak, how is that room of yours that you share with our elevator? It gets warm up there in this weather, yes? Perhaps you should leave the door open.”

“Warm is good,” Bogdan said, avoiding the topic. They had found something under the charterhouse, and he wanted to know what it was. But he knew they wouldn’t tell him, especially Troy. And since he wasn’t going to beg them for information, he said, “G’night, Tobbs.”

“Good night, Kodiak.”

Bogdan passed the NanoJiffy entrance and climbed up the steps to the Kodiak’s door. This time he didn’t rely on voice recognition. “Here, read this,” he said and placed his open palm against the door plate.

“Hello, visitor,” said a familiar voice. Kitty’s voice.

“Kitty, is that you?” he said hopefully. “It’s me, Bogdan. Open the front door.”

But it was a recording of Kitty’s voice, and an old one at that. It said, “Because of the current state of martial law and ongoing civil unrest, Charter Kodiak has pneumatically sealed its building until further notice. We hope you’ll excuse the inconvenience.”

Martial law? thought Bogdan. That had been way before his time.

Kitty’s voice continued. “We apologize not being able to address you in realbody, but if your business is legitimate, the door will notify us. If not, please move away at once. And remember, this door is a Slage XP model, fully armed and licensed to defend itself against intrusion.”

“Door, tell someone I’m here,” Bogdan said. “Call April or Denny. Just call them.”

There was no reply, and Bogdan was about to give up and go in through the NanoJiffy when the door spoke in yet another voice—Rusty’s? “We’re all asleep at this hour, friend. Please come back in the morning.”

“You are
not
asleep!” Bogdan cried and kicked the door. There was a metallic click, and gas turrets swung out from the doorjamb and aimed at him. Bogdan kept kicking anyway; he knew that the gas reservoirs had been depleted long ago. The two Tobblers turned from their work to look at him, but he didn’t care, and he kicked until he could hear the intruder alarm go off inside.

At last the door slid open, and there was Houseer Kale. “Bogdan, why are you knocking?”

“Because the feckin’ door won’t open for me. Why can’t you get things fixed around here?” He pushed his way past Kale into the foyer. “Would it kill you to fix the feckin’ houseputer?”

“My, we’re in a testy mood today,” Kale said.

“Are we?” Bogdan said. “I wonder why. Did
we
have a bad day at
work?
Or did we sit at home all day wanking off?”

“It sounds like someone’s hungry,” Kale continued, nonplussed. “Go wash up; we’re holding dinner on you. Oh, and take a tray up to Sam. He’s not been feeling well. Tell him we’ll all be up after dinner.”

Too weary to argue, Bogdan trudged to the little room behind the NanoJiffy with its own extruder port that served as the house kitchen. “And don’t forget,” Kale called after him, “you have a meeting scheduled with the Allowance Committee at seven.”

HALFWAY ACROSS THE roof, Bogdan could hear the snoring. Deep, sonorous expressions of revitalizing slumber. He stopped at the screen door and looked in. There was a new hole in the screen, and he stuck his finger in it. Sam’s lumpy form lay on the cot, covered with an old blanket. Bogdan entered as quietly as possible. On the ratty, old footstool, there was another tray—lunch it looked like—untouched. He picked it up and replaced it with the dinner tray he’d brought. The bowl of lunchtime fruitish mash was already fermenting and had a cloying, sweet odor. He wasn’t sure whether to try to wake Sam while his dinner was still warm. He’d apparently returned to bed after Bogdan saw him on the stairs earlier that morning.

“Sam,” he said, not too loud.

“Shhhh,” replied Hubert. “Hello, Boggy. Please be quiet. Sam’s had a rough time of it and needs his rest.” The snoring continued uninterrupted.

“They said to tell him everyone’s coming up later.”

“I’ll relay that to him when he awakens.”

Bogdan turned to go, bearing the lunch tray. But he stopped and whispered, “Hubert, the Tobbs were pouring some kind of optical sapping agent into the ground in front of the building. Any idea what’s up with that?”

“Yes,” Hubert whispered back, “material pirates. It would appear that there are excavating mechs in the neighborhood, and these old brick buildings are being cannibalized. The Tobblers suspect that pirates are hollowing out our house walls.”

“But why would anyone want to steal old brick buildings?”

“Our charterhouse was built with Pullman bricks, bricks made during the nineteenth century from clay from Calumet Lake. This material is highly prized by builders.”

Bogdan was impressed by the quality of Hubert’s information. “They
told
you all of this?”

“No, I’ve recently learned how to tap their houseputer comm.”

“Great,” Bogdan said. “You can tap
their
houseputer, but you can’t do anything to fix ours.”

“Not so loud,” Hubert said. “Why don’t you go down to dinner. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

Bogdan opened the screen door, but again he hesitated. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t say just what. The whole time he’d been there, Sam’s snoring continued regularly, maybe too regularly. Then it occurred to him, the really strange thing—he could
smell
the overripe fruitish on the tray. With Sam in the room you shouldn’t be able to smell
anything
but him. Bogdan set the tray on the bench and went to the cot.

“What are you doing?” said Hubert. “You’ll wake him up.”

“I doubt that,” Bogdan said, throwing back the blanket. Pillows, no Sam. “What’s going on, Hubert?”

The snoring ceased, and a voice said, “What? What? Where am I, Henry?”

Bogdan went to the speaker on the potting bench. “That’s what I want to know, Sam. Where are you?”

“Bogdan, is that you? Are you in my bungalow?”

“Yeah, are you downstairs?”

“No, upstairs if anything.”

“But I’m on the roof. There’s no upstairs from here.”

“I’m not in the house. I had a little errand to run.”

Bogdan gestured at the rumpled cot. “And you had to sneak out to run it?”

Through the speaker, Bogdan heard Samson sigh. “If I told anyone,” he said, “then you or April or Kitty or someone would try to stop me, and I can’t allow that.”

“You’re scaring me, Sam.”

“Sorry, boy, but I can’t help it. Listen to me, a long time ago, before you were decanted, someone did something inhumanely cruel to me—”

“You’re talking about the searing,” Bogdan said, somewhat relieved, and went to sit on the cot, “and you’re going to torch yourself as a public protest.”

The speaker was silent for several moments, then Samson said, “I see I’ve mentioned this before.”

“Only a few hundred times.”

“Well then, it should come as no great shock, and I’m glad for that. I was a pawn in someone’s big game, Boggy, and though I may never know who was responsible, in the end it was an act that society condoned by its silence. So it’s up to me to show society its error in the only way I can.”

“But all that stuff happened ages ago, Sam, and no one even cares anymore.”

“Well, I’m going to remind them anyway.”

Bogdan discovered the paper envelopes under the pillow and sorted through them. Each was scrawled with a ’meet’s name, one with his own. He dropped the envelopes and jumped to his feet. “I’m telling Kale.”

“Go ahead. It won’t do any good. They can run all over town and still not find me. Best not even to mention it. Promise me you’ll keep this to yourself, Boggy.”

“No! Tell me where you are.”

“Oh, Boggy, this is hard enough to do as it is. Do you think I’ve made this decision lightly?”

“I don’t care.”

I’ll tell you what; if Hubert fucks things up and I need someone to bail me out, he’ll contact you. Agreed?”

“Where are you?”

WHEN SAMSON FINALLY hung up on Bogdan, he thought that Soldier Field must be filling with spectators, for his seat was surrounded by a dozen others. It didn’t take him long, though, to see that he and his immediate neighbors were the only ones there. They were a little island of interlocked seats, like the jammed keys of an antique typewriter, dangling over the chimney of the vacant stadium.

There was a man in the seat to his right—a tall, lean fellow with a bony old face and a neatly trimmed black mustache. “You’re awake, then!” the man boomed. “Splendid! Good evening to you, sir!” His voice had a nasal quality due to large purple plugs stuffed into his nose.

A woman sat in the seat to Samson’s left. She, too, wore nose filters, which gave her a piggy look. She, too, showed the signs of long-deferred body maintenance: papery skin and thin hair. In addition, she was plump. On her lap sat a gray and white cat, who eyed Samson warily.

All of the other seats were occupied by children, from toddlers to tweens. It occurred to Samson to wonder how there were so
many
children. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen so many, a whole school bus load of them. Then he noticed that unlike the two adults, none of the children were strapped into their seats. They must be commercial children, not real children at all. The cat, on the other hand, was tethered to the woman’s seat with a harness and leash, so it was real.

The man offered Samson his hand in greeting. “Victor Vole,” he said. “And this is my beloved, Justine. These,” he added with a wink and flourish of his hand, “are the brats. Brats, say hello to Monsieur Kodiak.”

“Hello. Monsieur. Kodiak!” chorused the children with startling verve.

“How did you know my name?” Samson said.

“Oh, we were having a fine chat with your valet while you were napping. Haven’t we, Justine?”

Justine nodded and smiled shyly, displaying brownish teeth.

Samson didn’t know what to say. He was quite overcome. The children were standing on their seats to see him better. Surely Hubert wouldn’t have spilled the beans to strangers.

“I hope we’re not disturbing you, Myr Kodiak,” Victor said. “It’s just that no one has bought a ticket to a seat this high up in years. This whole section is usually closed—at least to people. Justine noticed you up here, all by yourself, in the middle of the afternoon, on a day when there’s no game scheduled.”

“I’m here for the canopy ceremony.”

“Oh, that,” Justine said and waved her hand dismissively.

“What Justine means to say is that the ceremony will take place at the very bottom,” Victor said, pointing straight down. “Most likely, it won’t originate in Chicago. They just like to use the old place as a backdrop these days.”

Samson looked at him blankly.

“That’s all Soldier Field is ever used for anymore, as a backdrop—and for suicides.”

Samson flinched. “Suicides?”

“That’s Moseby’s Leap,” Justine said and pointed to a railed parapet on the other side of the stadium. “That’s where it all started.”

“Where all what started?”

“Moseby’s suicides, of course.”

Samson looked from one to the other without comprehension.

“Beer?” Victor said and handed him a cold pouch. It had been years since Samson had indulged in beer. Victor and Justine raised their own pouches in a toast, and Victor said, “To our unexpected guest. Welcome to our home.”

Samson raised his pouch and said, “To my unexpected hosts.” He took a sip. Naturally, he couldn’t taste the beer, hadn’t been able to taste anything for forty years. He noticed that all the children suddenly had ice cream sodas. “You say this is your home? You live here?”

Victor winked again. “Let’s just say we came to watch the track events of the ’28 Olympics, and we haven’t left yet.”

Samson was impressed. Hubert said to him,
Sam
,
they have a clever subem that hides them from security and has cracked concession kiosk codes. I’m studying it for pointers
.

“Dog?” Victor said and handed Samson another pouch, this one warm. Inside was a hot dog, heavy with green relish, chopped onions, and bright yellow mustard in a poppy seed bun. Steam assaulted Samson’s nostrils, and for a moment he imagined he could smell this delicious Chicagoland delicacy of his youth.

“Thank you, don’t mind if I do.”

After Cabinet’s visit to his office, Meewee packaged his few personal belongings in archival wrap. The wrap asked for forwarding and shipping addresses, and he had to admit to it that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Shortly after noon, when there was nothing more to do, he left for the last time, leaving behind Arrow’s small ceramic container of paste. Meewee didn’t even thank it for its service. At the first opportunity, he planned to undergo a terminus purge to eliminate his inbody connections to the aloof, unhelpful so-called mentar.

There was no one present in the Heliostream suite of offices to say good-bye to. The offices were usually bustling, even at night. But this afternoon the rooms were vacant, and the hallway checkpoints were staffed entirely by machines. Perhaps with the announcement of Eleanor’s tragedy, everyone was sent home early.

Meewee strolled to the dispatch bay, in no special hurry. From there it was a short ride by bead car to his apartment in Slab 44, but he took a lift up to the surface instead. It was Meewee’s habit to walk home from work each evening through the fields. The lift he boarded was a studio car, designed to carry three hundred, but it was also deserted.

On the ground floor, he passed the boardroom suite where they had met that morning and witnessed Eleanor’s undoing. With his position at Heliostream terminated and Eleanor’s daughter missing, there was little chance that he’d ever pass this way again.

When Meewee exited through the great crystal doors of the reception building and stepped outside, he savored delicious lungsful of soupy, tangy, pollen-soaked air. The ten-thousand-acre campus of Starke Enterprises stretched out before him, rolling Indiana hills planted in soybimi and troutcorn and dotted with fish ponds. Except for the reception building, there were no buildings in sight. Virtually all of the industrial complex and residential housing was buried in an underground arcology.

It was here, in front of the reception building, where his taxi had landed twelve years ago and he met Eleanor for the first time. She had invited him, the Birthplace bishop, to her “little shop” for lunch and a special proposal that she thought he might be interested in hearing about.

Meewee turned from the building and walked down the hill. For his last hike at Starke headquarters he chose a meandering path through the soybimi fields. Nearly five kilometers to his apartment, his evening walks usually took him an hour to complete. They had become his favorite part of the day and a priceless perk of his job (She couldn’t have foreseen that, could she?). For not only was the air alive with life, it was about the safest outdoor air on the planet that a person could breathe. The whole ranging campus was secure under its own canopy, which was in turn located under the Greater Bloomington canopy. A bubble within a bubble, it was a countryside free of fear of bandits large and small.

The soybimi fields weren’t exactly fields but rapid growth systems five tiers high, towering over his head. And the land had been cut into kilometer-wide slabs and the slabs tilted a few degrees north to allow for generous southern skylights for the arcology underneath. The tilted slabs of earth gave the horizon a weird sawtooth profile. He walked along the ridge of one of these slabs, protected from the sun by the wall of soybimi bushes. He paused more often than usual to savor the views and birdsong and chirpy crickets in this blessed refuge. He stopped to balance wobbily on one leg and pour powdery dirt, like diamonds, from his shoe. It was still early afternoon and warm, and his overalls kicked into cooling cycle. He wore no hat and let the sweat roll down his neck. When would he have access to a private reserve like this again?

At the end of one slab, Meewee reached a concrete promontory that overlooked a shallow valley beyond. This was the spot where she had brought him on that first day when he was so resistant to her and everything she stood for. She was, in his informed opinion, one of the chief architects of the slow corporate strangulation of Gaia, and he couldn’t fathom any proposal from her to have any possible merit. He prided himself in the righteousness of his cause and felt himself to be immune to her fresh-faced charisma.

She’d brought him here in a little cart and parked it overlooking the valley beyond. On the valley floor sat the Heliostream Target Array Facility, which was shaped like a three-kilometer-diameter trampoline. The plasfoil skin that was stretched across it was utterly black because, as Eleanor explained to him, it absorbed all EM frequencies. From where they sat, the black oval target looked to him like a giant hole punched into the planet, and the image had only increased his ire.

“Look up there,” she said and pointed to the sky. He saw a double halo, one above the other, of what looked like boiling air. “That’s where the microwave beam passes through the canopies,” she said. “Although the microbeam is nearly one terawatt in strength and the electricity it generates powers all the agriculture and cities from Terre Haute to Indianapolis, we can’t see it. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“I suppose,” he said.

“Well, let’s fix that,” she said and drew two pairs of spex from a seat pocket. “Put this on, your excellency.”

He put on a pair of spex and looked into the valley again. At first all appeared as before, but gradually the landscape darkened as though at sunset, and the huge array target in the valley below gave off a ghostly glow. No longer black, the oval target took on the appearance of a creamy disk, when, suddenly, it was stabbed from the sky by a shimmering shaft of the purest, whitest light Meewee had ever seen. “Ah!” he said.

“Ah, indeed.” Eleanor chuckled.

They sat for a while silently dazzled by the beam of raw energy, and then she said, “I’ve given a lot of thought to something you once said about your organization, your excellency.”

“Oh? And what was that?”

“About how Birthplace International’s mission covers only part of the job.”

“I don’t remember saying anything like that.”

“Mind if I quote you?” He shook his head, and Eleanor continued. “You said that the Birthplace organization was dedicated to ‘helping Gaia recover from a deadly infestation.’ The infestation you were referring to was the human race, I imagine. Then you said it was a pity that Gaia couldn’t infect all the other planets with the same blight, for then the disease might lose some of its virulence.”

Meewee was appalled. He remembered saying that, but it was an offhand remark made in confidence to several of his most trusted Birthplace colleagues. Furthermore, he’d expressed that opinion within the supposedly total security of a null room. How—?

“Did I misquote you, Bishop Meewee?”

“No,” he muttered, “but those words were not meant for public consumption.”

“Which is exactly why I trust their sincerity,” she said, “and why I believe my offer will be of interest to you. Care to take a little journey with me?”

“Journey? Where?”

“Up Jacob’s ladder,” she said with a laugh. “Up the beanstalk. Let’s climb the microbeam.”

She reached out her hand, which appeared as an icon in his spex, and pulled them right next to the pulsating shaft of pure energy. Meewee was so close to the microbeam, he could feel it buzzing. He knew it was all vurt, of course, but it was frightening nevertheless. Eleanor touched the beam with her hand, and they shot up along its length. Meewee’s perspective changed, and he saw their cart parked on the hilltop, with them inside, shrinking to a mere dot. The entire valley became one fold in a wrinkled green quilt. He saw the outline of the Eastern Seaboard, then the whole hemisphere and the rim of the planet.

They stopped ascending when they were in space and had reached the Heliostream Relay Station, which was an island of mirrors many square kilometers in area. From there, fourteen separate microbeams, including the one they rode up on, fanned out to hit ground targets across eastern North America. The beams looked like strings pinned to a globe.

“This relay is forty thousand kilometers up,” Eleanor said, “in geosynchronous orbit above the equator. From here we have a line of sight to our solar harvesters orbiting the sun ninety-nine percent of the time.” The sun was to their left, too bright to look at. “Each of those microbeams, when converted at their ground stations, provide between 985 and 1004 gigawatts of electricity for an average of twenty-three hours fifty-eight minutes a day, every day.”

Meewee knew he was safely seated in a cart in Indiana, but the view of Earth from this height was dizzying. Intoxicating. At his feet was the very orb he had dedicated his life to protecting. Eleanor drew his attention to fifteen more geosynchronous stations encircling the globe and binding the planet in a spiderweb of energy.

“Very impressive,” he said, “but what is your point?”

“I brought you up here, Bishop Meewee, to make a donation to your cause. Take a look around and choose one of these microbeams. Heliostream will donate to Birthplace International all of the proceeds earned by selling the electricity of that beam for a period of ten years. It’ll be your organization’s own private sunbeam.”

Meewee was incredulous. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“Several reasons. First, because I can. Second, to be a good corporate citizen. And third, to show you how serious I am. But mostly to pull those plugs from your ears so that you can really hear what I’m about to propose to you.”

Meewee removed the spex from his face, and his perspective returned to the cart. He turned to the girl sitting next to him and said, “I’m listening.”

She, too, removed her spex. “I’m offering you a part in a little project I call Garden Earth. It involves some heavy hitters in the business world, a fleet of starships, extra-system colonization, something I call a title engine, and a scheme to harness the most powerful force in Nature.”

“Which is?”

“Human greed, Bishop Meewee. Together we’ll harness the power of greed for the betterment of both the planet and humanity.”

MEEWEE TURNED FROM the promontory and continued his walk home. A fickle breeze rustled the purplish soybimi leaves overhead, shaking ripening beans from their stems and sending them clattering down collection chutes.

Despite all her persuasive power, it had taken Eleanor Starke several months to convince him to join her project. Still, after all these years he wasn’t sure what had motivated her to establish an organization dedicated to launching a thousand ships on thousand-year voyages to the stars. It was for more than mere profit, he was certain, but she was no Gaiaist or lover of humanity. He never managed to come right out and ask her, afraid of breaking the spell. And now it was too late.

Meewee was lost in his thoughts, tramping through the fruited fields when suddenly, out of nowhere, he was confronted by three miniature flying mechs blocking his path. Two of them were sleek and menacing, like assassins, while the third, hovering between them, looked like a larger version of a witness bee. All three of them had bright orange heads. Meewee remembered Zoranna’s parting warning and feared for his life.

“What do you want?” he demanded, but the mechs made no reply. Two of them, the assassins, flew about his head, buzzing him and grazing his scalp with their wings. “Help! Help!” he cried, flailing his arms over his head. Then there was a sharp pain in his armpit. While the assassins had distracted him, the bee stung him through his clothes. The pain quickly spread up his arm and neck.

“I’m dead,” he wailed. “You killed me.” But his assailants only regrouped and flew away. After a few minutes, when he didn’t grow weak or dizzy, he hurried the rest of the way home to his apartment in the executive housing. There he stripped off his overalls and examined the sting mark in the bathroom mirror. It was a swollen lump the size of a grape under the loose flesh of his underarm. It throbbed and was sensitive to touch.

Then he heard a buzzing sound and saw the orange bee behind him in the mirror. “Help! Help!” he cried again and hurled towels and a cologne bottle at it. It chased him into the living room where he picked up a chair to use as a shield.

“Relax, Meewee,” someone said. “You’ll injure yourself.” Meewee looked all about but didn’t see anyone. “I’m over here,” the voice said. It was Ellen Starke’s mentar, Wee Hunk, the size of a doll, sitting on the edge of the tea table. He was still wearing animal skins, but he was rendered more realistically, less like a cartoon.

“You!” Meewee said. “What’s the meaning of this?” As he spoke, he searched the room for the bee.

The meaning of this
, Wee Hunk replied in Meewee’s head,
is that I’ve got to find Ellen, and you’re going to help me
.

Meewee found the bee with its two mates on a high shelf. He set the chair down and jabbed a finger at them. “Those things attacked me!”

So I hear. I’ll explain why, but please glot to me instead of speaking out loud. We must assume there are eavesdroppers everywhere, even here in the bosom of Starke headquarters
. The little caveman crossed his brawny legs and leaned back against a flower vase.
And please sit down, Merrill. You make me nervous with all that charging about
.

“So, it’s Merrill now, is it?” Meewee said and went to the bedroom for his robe. “Like we’re old chums when only a couple of hours ago you dismissed me with a shrug of your ridiculous shoulders.”

Again, please glot. Don’t vocalize. I’m not kidding when I say we’re being monitored. And as to your clinic visit, you seemed to me to be more concerned with your own private agenda than Ellen’s welfare, so I tested you, and you failed
.

You tested me?

Yes, I challenged your integrity
.

Meewee searched his memory of their conversation in the clinic.
I don’t recall anything like that
.

Of course not
, the little Neanderthal said,
because I did so in Starkese
.

Starkese? What is that, a language?

Exactly, and it’s the reason you were stung
.

Meewee pulled the chair opposite the tea table where he could keep an eye on both the mentar and mechs. “Go on,” he said, sitting down.