Counting Heads (36 page)

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 turned 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.”

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.

A half dozen of the armchairs had taken hits too. Their innards were spilling out. There were shards of broken glass on the carpet. Yet, oddly, there were no scuppers scurrying about trying to set things right. In fact, there were no machine sounds at all in the room, except for the ticking of an antique mantel clock. Ticking, like they did in old movies, wheels and cogs powered by springs.

You have it, Commander
.

Fred shook off his thoughts and swiped the cart’s panel again. Costa came over to watch as he scrolled open the metal door. Inside was a small hernandez tank and portable controller. The glass tank was filled with bubbly green amnio syrup. Floating on top was a brunette head, still frozen. Its expression was frozen too, flash-frozen to her face at the height of her passion: at the moment the helmet flange clenched her head from her body.

Still, to Fred it
wasn’t
an uncommon expression. He’d seen it a number of times over the years: the gaping eyes, the twisted mouth.

Costa took a good look at the girl, seemed satisfied, and went to wander among the armchairs. Fred glanced at the tank controller to see if the machinery was working.

Everything’s nominal, Commander
, Libby said. Fred took that to mean he could close the cart locker, which he did.

But Costa seemed to take offense at the mentar’s remark and marched back to the cart. “Libby—” she said and paused. “Libby—” she said again, as though unsure how to phrase what she wanted to ask. “Libby, why weren’t we informed of this?” she said at last, gesturing at the cart.

Our apologies, Inspector, but we were as surprised as you by this turn of events. Obviously, we are researching it. In the meantime, please stay with Myr Starke until Roosevelt Clinic comes to collect her
.

Costa opened her mouth but closed it without another word and went to pace among the armchairs again. While they waited, Fred consulted his theater map. It had assigned the warbeitor a green triangle, which was still firmly planted on the porch. Fred opened a window on the scout network and toured the upstairs rooms and storage spaces. All was quiet.

Suddenly Lieutenant Michaelmas in the GOV jarred them with a shout,
Take cover! Take cover!

Fred and Costa looked quickly about the parlor for something solid to jump behind, and finding nothing, they dropped to the floor just as a brilliant flash outlined the window blinds and lit up all the laser holes in the walls. Before it faded completely, there was a second flash and a ground shock that rattled the whole house.

“Michaelmas,” Fred said, “come in.”

We have lost contact with the GOV
, Libby said. In the map, it was covered with a kill flag.

Still lying on the floor, Fred steered the scout view to the porch and got a look at the warbeitor, half exposed in molten packing foam, its powerful legs still encased, still hog-tied. It was no longer slumped, however, no longer in lockdown mode. It appeared to be ejecting things from three ports along its arched spine. Just what kind of things was hard to tell. They appeared to be smoke rings, and the warbeitor was blowing dozens of them into the air—like some kind of bizarre smoke signal.

Fred stood up and moved cautiously to the hall. “Libby, Nick, anyone, report.”

We have been attacked by a suborbital drone, Commander
, Libby said.
You and Costa should lead the cart out the rear entrance
. Fred’s map drew a path from his hallway location.

But before Fred could react, Veronica Tug broke in—
Incoming! At twelve o’clock!

A piece of ceiling dropped on Fred, and he jumped aside in time to watch a smoke ring drift slowly to the floor. It wasn’t smoke but some sort of vapor. The ring was a half meter wide and seemed to vibrate with inner force. When the ring touched the hallway floor, it kept going as though the floor weren’t even there. After it had passed into the basement, a perfectly oval hardwood disk of flooring gave way and dropped after it.

The edge of the new hole was clean, with no sign of scorching. A plasma weapon? Coreware? Whatever the ring was, there were a dozen more just like it dropping from the ceiling. Costa sprang to her feet, and Fred shouted “Heads up,” but his warning was too late, and he watched helplessly as a vapor ring pegged her like a ring toss at the arcade. She raised her arm to fend it off, and her hand went flying across the room. Her blacksuit immediately snapped battlewrap over the stump. The vapor ring sliced Costa diagonally from her right shoulder to her left hip. Costa’s awareness was struggling to catch up with her situation, and as Fred rushed to help, she had that same stupefied expression as the girl in the tank. Her blacksuit was snapping wildly, trying to stanch her trauma. Fred grabbed her arm, but it peeled off her shoulder, and her top half tumbled forward. Fred dropped his carbine and caught her. Her bottom half fell against his shins.

“I’m—” she tried to tell him. “I’m—”

Clutching her chest to him and dragging her by her leg, Fred dodged the falling rings. The battlewrap seals over her gaping slices were taut and transparent, like packaged meat at the market: ribs and roast. While watching the ceiling, Fred stepped into a hole in the floor and tripped. A ring passed through Costa’s right leg, and her booted foot tumbled into the basement, where vapor rings hissed like snakes as they sank into the concrete pad of the foundation.

Veronica Tug broke in again,
We see no clear path, Commander, and suggest you seek cover. You have ten seconds. I repeat, harden your suits and seek cover—ten seconds!

Fred was about to inform her that hardened suits were useless against the rings, but then he realized she meant to seek cover from her. He looked all around. The rings were coming down like a springtime shower, and the floor was eroding away. Lamps and armchairs, their innards sprung and convulsing, were toppling into the basement. Then Fred noticed two relatively untouched lines across the floor, and he realized that the warbeitor was aiming its ring toss away from the floor joists that supported the floor under the procedure cart. It wouldn’t do to send its prize crashing to the basement. For that matter, Fred noticed there were no ring strikes closer to the cart than about a meter.

Hoisting Costa’s top half, he leaped on a joist line and sprinted for the cart. He set her down next to it and returned for the rest of her.

Five seconds, Commander
, Veronica said. In the background, Fred could hear the screaming turbine of her van’s dynamo.

Costa’s lower half lay like discarded trousers. He turned her hips over and scooped them into his arms and carried her to the cart where he set her next to her top half. That seemed wrong somehow, and he moved her pieces to align them, top and bottom, then threw himself down with an awesome thud.

SOMETHING COLD LIKE an icy finger touched the back of Fred’s neck. He jerked and opened his eyes. He was lying in total darkness. “Lights!” he said, and his immediate vicinity lit up. He lay on concrete, under a metal cabinet.

“Hello?” he said.

This is Marcus
, said a familiar voice.
You’re on duty, Fred. You’re in the basement of a residence at 2131 Line Drive in Decatur. You passed out for a few minutes. Your suit says you’re uninjured. Orient yourself with your theater map
.

Without trying to move, he did so and saw kill flags splashed across his visor frame. He tried to read the icons but couldn’t focus his eyes. His scalp itched maddeningly, but when he tried to scratch, he discovered he was wearing a blacksuit. Things started to trickle back. He crawled from under the metal cabinet. It was a cart. He stood up, and his suit illuminated a debris-filled cell. He had a sudden, panicky impulse to look up. When he did, he saw a peaceful view of the night sky through a ruined roof.

Fred tried the map again, and now he could read it. There was a vehicle flagged killed that had a friendly jerry inside it, also flagged killed.

“Medic!” he cried.

Three minutes out
, another mentar said.

The jerry’s flatline timer said he was already five minutes dead. Three more minutes was pushing the odds of retrieval, even for a jerry.

There was a triangle icon of a dead mech on the porch—Fred was in the basement of a residential house. He was here with an inspector named Costa. On his map there were
five
icons labeled Costa in the basement, and four of them were flagged killed.

Fred rooted in the wreckage of what had been furniture and found her lower half. The blacksuit had already begun to chill it. Nearby he found her upper body. She was unconscious, and his map listed her condition as critical. Fred returned to her lower torso, tore open the first aid pocket on her thigh, and slipped the cryosac out of its tube. He unrolled and armed it and pulled it over her head, service cap and all, and cinched it snug against her throat. But she jerked, and the stub of her left arm flailed at it with missing fingers. Fred said, “Easy there, Inspector. It’s me, Commander Londenstane. You’re hurt, and I have to sac you.”

But she didn’t settle down until he loosened the cryosac and pulled it off her. Her eyes were darting all over the place.

“I have to leave you to help Michaelmas,” he told her. “I’m going to tie the sac into your suit. It’ll only deploy if it has to.” He sacced her head again and left her struggling to get it off with her stump. Fred clambered across the basement and climbed up to the front lawn. Whatever illegal-as-hell weapon the tuggers had used had shorn away a whole corner of the house. On the porch, the warbeitor was a puddle of slag. A knot in Fred’s gut that he didn’t know he had—loosened.

The tuggers’ van was gone. Fred sprinted down the street to the GOV and searched the wreckage for Michaelmas. Found him in the mostly intact cab. He seemed to be in one piece, but flattened inside the blacksuit, and trapped by twisted steel. Someone had already reached him, however. There was an inflated cryosac covering his head. It was frosty white. It would hold him till help arrived. Fred stepped back and looked at the wreckage. There was a burn mark around the GOV; it had indeed been hit from above.

“Veronica Tug,” he said.

She responded immediately, in no apparent distress.
Glad you’re all right, Commander
.

Cars were landing all around him on the lawn and street, and a horde of media bees had broken through the cordon. Carts rolled off tenders to extinguish fires. Others climbed into the building.

“I guess I owe you one,” Fred said.

Only one? I count three
.

“Three then,” Fred said and jogged back to the house. In the basement, a crash cart had lifted Costa’s two main pieces into its saddlebag hoppers where its dozens of busy little hands were cutting away her blacksuit and ministering to her wounds. The cryosac still covered her head, but it hadn’t been deployed.

Fred swiped the cart, and it said, “Yes, Commander?”

“What is her condition?”

“Fair,” said the cart, or whoever was waldoing the cart. “Clean cuts, well-stabilized organs, full brain function. I’d say we’ll have her glued back together in no time.” The cart lowered its hopper lids, blocking Fred’s view of her, and added, “I must go now, Commander.”

Fred said, “Copy me updates.”

“Acknowledged.” The cart picked its way through the debris. “Oh, and Commander, see if you can find her three missing appendages. It would save her considerable tank time.”

Fred turned to the procedure cart, where a russ and a free-ranger were working. They dug the cart out and set it on its wheels. Except for dents and broken arms, the cart seemed undamaged. “Open it up,” said the free-ranger, but Fred came over before they could unscroll the door.

“Step away from the cart and ID yourselves,” Fred said, swiping them his own badge. They did as ordered, and they checked out as a guard and a medical technician from the Roosevelt Clinic. A frame opened beside the cart, and a tall, gaunt man in a white coat joined them.

“Good evening, Commander Londenstane,” he said. “I am the mentar Concierge of the Roosevelt Clinic, and these are my employees. Please allow them to complete their work. A life is at stake.”

“Yes, yes, proceed,” Fred said and waved them back to the cart. He stood next to them as they opened the locker. The controller, the tank, and the girl inside all appeared undamaged. The girl was still stuck in her own private moment, and Fred wished, for her sake, that they’d defrost her soon.

The medtech shut the locker, and mentar Concierge said, “You and your team will receive commendations for your work here tonight, Commander. Now, if you would kindly release her to me, we have much to do in very little time.”

Fred raised his hand and said,
Well? Anyone?

Libby said,
You may proceed, Commander
.

But he waited a little longer, giving anyone out there with objections the opportunity to speak up or forever hold their peace. No one did, so he swiped the cart. The mentar vanished and the two clinic staffers lifted the cart and carried it to the stairs.