Counting Heads (44 page)

But Mary hated to be such a coward, and she said, “Never mind. I’ll do it later.”

Without discussion, Mary held back to let Georgine leave the clinic grounds first, so she wouldn’t be implicated by association in case something happened. When Mary judged that Georgine had had time to clear the clinic property, she held her breath and went through the gate.

Reilly was still on duty, and Mary scolded herself for involving him in this. But no one stopped her. Reilly said he’d see her and Fred at Rolfe’s later for their regular Wednesday get-together, but Mary told him Fred had some big job tonight.

And then she was out and up the hedge-lined drive, and Georgine was waiting for her, full of sisterly pride.

“RESULTS?” MEEWEE ASKED.

“Still analyzing it,” Wee Hunk said, “but the syrup’s oxygen, nutritional, hormonal, and pharmaceutical properties all fall within normal parameters.”

“Then why hasn’t Ellen waken up yet? What are they doing to her?”

“Perhaps it’s as the nurse said: perhaps she was injured too severely.”

Meewee weighed this possibility against what he knew of the girl. Ellen wasn’t as bullheaded as her mother (who Meewee half expected to return from the dead herself), but she was no quitter either.

“I must say,” Wee Hunk continued, “the evangelines baffle me. They seem to have a communication system as subtle and flexible as Starkese, and largely nonverbal. It’s completely opaque to me; I can see that information is being passed, but I can’t read it. Is there such a thing as cellular communication?

“Also, I would have thought that news of their colleague’s discharge would have instilled fear into the rest of them, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. I didn’t ask them to make another attempt to acquire an amnio sample.”

“I know what you mean,” Meewee said. “I’d never paid much attention to the type before. I always thought they were bred to be lapdogs.”

Bogdan arrived home from work two hours early. He stood in front of the door for a long time, staring at the control plate, not touching it, not saying anything. After a protracted standoff, the door surrendered to his will and slid open. Bogdan marched through the foyer and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, where it seemed the entire house was waiting for him in the corridor outside Green Hall. His first thought was, Who told them? But after watching his ’meets for a few moments he realized that not only were they
not
waiting for him, they didn’t even know he was home. It’s probably because I’m two hours early, he thought and joined them at the door to Green Hall. Inside the room, April was having some sort of unhappy encounter with Kale. Megan and BJ, standing next to the door, provided a running commentary.

“Samson rose from the dead this morning,” Megan said. “He sat up in his death-cot and croaked, ‘Mush, mush! And juice!’”

BJ said, “Now Denny and Rusty are in the john with him.”

“Assisting in a heroic bowel movement.”

“And he insists on coming to Rondy with us.”

“But Kale says that’s crazy talk. What about his odor? What if he dies in front of everybody?”

“But April is arguing his case. If Sam goes, that means she can go too.”

There was a sharp noise, like a slap, and all eyes snapped back to Green Hall. Kale lifted his paper notebook and slapped it on the tabletop again.

BJ said, “Kale’s been taking assertiveness pills all week.”

Megan said, “Yeah. Every little decision he makes he clings to like a life raft.”

Kitty came down the stairs and joined the ’meets at the door. “I’m going in,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” they all wished her.

Kitty glanced at Bogdan. “What’s wrong with you? Lose your job or something?”

Bogdan was too stunned to reply. Kitty entered the room and announced brightly, “It’s all arranged. I rented the lifechair. It’s on its way.”

“Lifechair?” Kale gasped. “I didn’t approve that. That’s not covered. How will we pay for it? It’s out of the question. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kitty went on merrily. “It’s coming out of Sam’s own pocket, not the house’s. That Hubert artifact in his belt arranged the whole thing. It’s all arranged and covered and on its way.”

“Cancel it!” Kale roared.

“I will not. He’s coming with us.”

“But, but—” Kale sputtered, “he’s under house arrest!”

“Quit shouting,” Kitty said. “I can hear you fine. I talked to that bee that’s watching him and cleared it with the hommers. They said he can go. They didn’t even seem all that concerned about him, actually.”

“But, but, but—”

“Look, Kale,” April said, rising from her bench seat, “it’s a badge of honor that our house cares enough about him to take him to his last Rendezvous. And it’s a badge of honor we should be proud to wear in front of your damn Beadlemyren. Believe me, none of them look too healthy themselves. We’ll be nursing them soon enough.”

The truth of her argument tipped Kale momentarily off balance, and the woman and girl used the reprieve to exit Green Hall. “I said I made up my mind,” Kale threw at their backs. “Did you hear me? My mind is made up.”

On her way out of the room, April paused to speak to Bogdan. “You’re home early,” she said. “Did you get that bonus?”

“Yes!” Bogdan roared. “I got the feckin’ bonus!”

But April didn’t stay around to hear about it. She sent all the loitering ’meets on last-minute errands. The bus was due to arrive in two hours. April dropped a package into Bogdan’s hands and said, “Wear this.” She wrinkled her nose and sniffed him. “Take a shower first.”

Her suggestion startled him. He lifted his arms to sniff his pits. Subject reeks of unholy fear, he reported to himself. He held the package of party togs before him like a bowl of water and gingerly carried it to the upper spheres of the house. Subject must be careful not to shut his eyes, or even to blink too slowly, for every time he does, a bloodred curtain drops, and he sees again with cornea-blistering clarity the unraveling of his day.

Which started soon after he arrived at work. The morning upreffing sessions had had nothing to do with Oships or Planet Lisa. They were less than memorable consensus exercises, and Bogdan forgot them even as they were playing. During a venue switch, he passed Annette Beijing in the corridor. They stopped to chat, and she said, “I just wanted to wish you luck at your HR meeting today at three.”

A good thing she mentioned, it, for though Bogdan hadn’t forgotten about the meeting, he had forgotten what day it was, which would have amounted to the same thing. She blew him a kiss and sashayed off. The kiss was aimed dead on, and Bogdan waited motionless for it to flutter over to him and press itself softly upon his cheek.

When his fourth Alert! ran out right before lunch, he was ready with his fifth. Hour 53 and all was well. The drug didn’t spoil his appetite. On the contrary, at lunch he returned for seconds of ice cream and fry. And he filled his pockets with snickerdoodles.

At 2:55
PM
, Bogdan followed an usher line down the Administrative Corridor. The AC was arranged the same no matter where they were camped, and he knew he would wind up in front of three black doors. He found the doors and the bench opposite them. There was always a bench. He sat on the bench to wait. The subject has to wait on the bench until one of the doors calls his name. They always make him wait. They, in this case, was E-P, the E-Pluribus mentar. Everyone at E-Pluribus was a construct of E-P: the Academy sims, the HR director, even Annette herself. There were no actual human resources at E-Pluribus to manage, except for the dem controls, like himself, and the daily holes. Since the HR department was not real, subject could see no practical reason it could have for making him wait.

However, with the glimmering rays of a promised bonus gilding everything in sight, Bogdan didn’t mind the wait. He had provisioned himself for just such an eventuality. That was what the doodles were for. He sprawled on the bench and dropped a handful of the crisp little elbows of crunchy puffery, piece by piece, into his mouth, where he ground them to a sweet mash that he let trickle down his throat. It was a satisfying pastime. But still, shouldn’t part of a bonus be not having to wait for it?

“Myr Kodiak,” someone said, “this way please.”

Bogdan looked up; the middle door was talking to him. It was always the middle door. He swung his feet to the floor and swallowed his sweet cud. He stood up and brushed crumbs from his jumpsuit. The door slid open, and he entered the office.

The HR director was not there—naturally—which meant another round of waiting.

The office looked exactly as it had the last time. That is, messy. There were piles of
paper
files everywhere, on shelves, on top of old-timey cabinets, in leaning towers on the floor and desk. A layer of dust covered everything, and the air was stale. Drink cups and takeout packages with desiccated remnants of unfinished meals had been artfully tucked into every available niche. Just for once he wished one of the other doors would call him and he could experience a different—and nicer—corporate culture.

Bogdan knew from past experience that the only real object in the room, other than himself, was the adult-sized chair parked in front of the HR director’s desk. Near the chair was a basket labeled “
URGENT
” that held a stack of manila folders. When he leaned over to read the top folder, the words printed on it squirmed out of focus.

Bogdan sighed, climbed into the chair, and reached for more snickerdoodles. But the inner door opened, and the Human Resources director sailed in. Her feet seemed barely to touch the floor. She was balancing yet more paper in one arm while using the other to bulldoze a clearing on her overburdened desk. She deposited her stack of papers and shored up several others before even marking Bogdan’s presence. Finally, she clapped realistic dust from her hands and said, “Myr Kodiak. Thank you for coming in.”

Bogdan leaped from his chair and said, “Thank you for asking me, Myr Director.”

The director continued riffling through the files on her desk until she found the one she was seeking. She propped it open between two hillocks of paper and sat down. Without another word to Bogdan, she perused its contents. After a while, Bogdan climbed back into his chair. He was forced to sit and watch her read. She moved her lips as she read. Her lips were big rubbery things, painted purple, all out of proportion with her nose, which was short and pointy. Not an easy face to watch for very long. Especially with the blemishes.

The director’s eyes swiveled up to take him in. “Myr Kodiak, today marks your one-year anniversary with us. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Bogdan said, poised to leap to his feet again. She went back to her reading.

The blemishes on her face were two round fleshy moles, one cresting her cheek, and the other perched on her left nostril. One was brown, but the other was colorless. Each had a single curly strand of hair growing out of it. The moles upset him plenty, but it was the hairs that pushed him over the top. Why couldn’t she pluck them for crying out loud?

Finally, the director closed the folder and said, “I have a memorandum here I’d like you to look at and sign.” A dataframe opened in front of Bogdan with a document on it. The document’s title did not have any variation of “bonus” or “raise” in it. Instead, it read somewhat nonspecifically, “Memorandum of Agreement.”

Bogdan tried to read the tightly wound text but couldn’t make sense out of it, and there were
pages
of the stuff, with a signature box at the bottom to swipe.

Bogdan said, “What is it?”

“It’s an agreement by which you sell back the final two years of your employment contract to E-Pluribus.”

Bogdan heard the words but couldn’t understand them. Against all hope, he said, “Today is my one-year anniversary.”

“Again, congratulations,” the director said. “We believe you will find our separation payment and bonus quite generous.”

A paragraph entitled “Severance Compensation” became highlighted in the document floating before him. E-Pluribus was offering him a lump sum equal to three months pay, some 103.9174 UD credits in exchange for extinguishing his three-year contract immediately.

“I don’t get it,” Bogdan said. “You’re firing me?”

Another dataframe opened beside the first, and his original employment agreement appeared, with a paragraph highlighted. The director said, “We’re not terminating you, Myr Kodiak. We’re merely exercising this clause which empowers us to buy out your contract at any time for any reason.”

“Is it because I’ve aged a little? I have an appointment at a juve clinic this weekend. You can check it out. I’ll be back to eleven-eleven by next week. You can bank on that.”

The director smiled, with gaps between all her teeth. “We were well aware of your impending adolescence, and we considered using it as cause for dismissal, but we are nothing if not concerned corporate parents, and we’d rather not sully your permanent record unnecessarily.”

“Then why?” Bogdan said miserably. “Aren’t I doing a good enough job?”

“Your performance is not the issue. When we hired you, we calculated that it would take twenty-four months to completely map your personality, and another twelve to verify our model. Our calculations were wildly inaccurate. You are an astonishingly uncomplicated person, Myr Kodiak. One might even say simple. It took us only six months to build an exact replica of your personality that accurately predicts your response to virtually anything. Thus, we no longer need you.”

Bogdan was reeling. He didn’t know what to say and blurted out the first thing that came to him. “That may be so—today, but what about tomorrow? I’m an
evolving
personality. In no time at all, your replica of me will fall out of synch with the real me.”

“Ho, ho.” The director chuckled. “We knew you were going to say that.” She opened his folder and pointed to a document. “We wrote it down. Want to see?” When he didn’t respond, she shut it again and continued. “We’re not at all interested in your evolution, Myr Kodiak. We have other control subjects for normal human development and maturation. In you we were interested in something entirely different, that is, in a stalled personality, one that has ceased evolving. Imagine, a twenty-nine-year-old boy who hasn’t grown up yet, the spoiled lottery baby of a senescent charter, a housemeet who yearns for adventure but does nothing about it, a virgin too involved with a hollyholo to have a relationship with a real girl, any real girl.” She stopped to pick her teeth with a fingernail, giving him a chance to say the next thing they knew he would say, but he crossed his arms and refused to say anything.

“You’re offended,” she went on reasonably, “even though you know that what I say is true, and you wish that I’d die. You are certain that we don’t know you at all, and you’d just love to get your hands on our so-called model of you. Then you’d show us, correct?

“Very well,” she continued when he refused to agree or disagree, “meet Bogdan Kodiak.”

A chair, duplicate of his own, appeared next to him, and in it slouched a small, skinny boy who observed Bogdan through slitted eyes.

“What do you think?” the director said. “Spooky, eh?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bogdan said.

“No, you don’t, do you?” the replica boy said, sitting up. “You don’t know nothing.” Suddenly and without warning, the false Bogdan leaped from his chair and, crying and shrieking, ran about the room knocking over piles and towers of folders and scattering paper everywhere. Then he climbed back into his chair and yawned.

The director looked at the real Bogdan and said, “Feel better?”

Bogdan had to admit that he did.

“But you’re still not convinced.”

“No, I’m not. Not that it makes any difference since you plan to fire me anyway.”

The director leaned back in her chair and said, “There may be a way for you to stay.”

Bogdan’s ears pricked up. “Really?”

The director scratched the mole on her cheek. “Yes, you can stay if you can demonstrate a flaw in our model.”