Counting Heads (52 page)

“No, you don’t, Fred,” she said and went to sit on the bed, the smelly tote bag at her feet. “So, we freely discuss each other’s DCOs now? I just want to be sure I am understanding this conversation. We withhold vital information from Nicholas, right? That’s so unlike the both of us, don’t you think? We must have very good reasons. I know I do. Why don’t I tell you mine so you can see why I must go do this thing. But first I’d like to ask you a personal question. Would that be all right, dear?”

Oh, shit, Fred thought. He didn’t like the sound of that. He was tempted to reach up and block his ears with his hands like a child. Mary hopped off the bed and came to him on the soft carpet, watching him with birdlike intensity. “Or maybe we should skip the question for now,” she said. “How does that sound, Fred?” She placed her small hand on his chest and pushed, but he didn’t budge.

“Fine, have it your way,” she said and returned to the bed. “Let me first say in my own defense that I’m not totally stupid. I know there’s an element of danger in what I’m doing. But not as much danger as you seem to imagine. That clinic is
highly
secure.”

“Are you saying this from your wide experience in security matters?”

“Shut up, Fred, and listen. I’m telling you why I’m doing what I’m doing. I am aware of the risk involved, and let me state for the record that I accept it.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I probably don’t, Fred, but I do know one thing. I know that my sisters and I are not prospering. I mean my whole germline. There’s more of us heading for the subfloors every day. We seem to lack any practical skills, try as we might to acquire them, and it’s only a matter of time. You know it’s true, Fred.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Fred said.

“We’re to be kept women, then? And meanwhile, we drag you down. Did you know that russes married to ’leens are on average 4.6 years older than their brothers married to other types? And growing older every day. Ask your Marcus; he’ll give you the stats. And tell me this, Fred, how many juve treatments have you and I skipped in the past three years? When was the last vacation we took? The last furniture we bought? Face it, Fred, they’ve set the bar pretty high for us iterants. Couples must earn together, or they will slide together.”

“Mary, please—”

“I’m talking about
oblivion
, Fred. If you and all your brothers were facing oblivion, don’t you think you’d take extraordinary steps to turn it around? You can’t blame us, Fred. This opportunity fell into our laps. There are eight of us. We’ve been assigned to companion one of the most celebrated invalids on the planet, and in doing so, we are pioneering a new branch of companion work—companions to people undergoing deep body mechanics. Even people who are comatose need us. If we can do this, thousands of our sisters will have new duty opportunities. But only if our client survives and wakes up. That’s where I come in.” Mary got up and approached the doorway again. “Surely, Londenstane, you would not interfere with the destiny of an entire type?”

Fred shook his head. “No, only just you. Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Fred. You offer me no choice.” Mary seemed to sag. “Do we have to do this? If you love me, Londenstane, step aside, I beg you.”

“Don’t say that,” Fred said. “You know I love you.”

Mary began to pace, which for an evangeline was an especially bad sign. “You know this big Russ Centennial coming up in August?” she said. “Imagine that, the world’s oldest commercial germline turns one hundred. Congratulations, Fred.”

“Thank you, Mary.”

“And you, yourself, go back nearly to the beginning. You’re Batch 2B.”

Fred tracked her back and forth, from the bureau to the closet and back.

Mary said, “You confided in me the other day about your fears of catching clone fatigue.”

“Yes, I confided in you. Will you now use that as a weapon against me?”

That almost gave her pause, but she barged ahead and said, “You want the truth, don’t you, Fred? Even if it hurts? That’s what you’re always telling me. That’s why you told me all that stuff in the first place, isn’t it? Anyway, I was thinking about your
Book of Russ
.” He flinched at the name. “At first I thought that simply by creating it, you were out of type, but now I’m not so sure. I think it all depends on your urbrother Thomas A. Russ. What if
he
kept a private journal of his own, in which he recorded his
most secret
thoughts and feelings? And let’s say for the sake of argument that he had this journal set to self-delete if anything ever happened to him. So no one knew anything about it after he died. That’s possible, isn’t it, Fred? Thomas A. might have been a secret journal keeper. If he was, then your starting the
Book of Russ
might have been a normal response to a deep-seated russ need. You have to admit it’s possible, don’t you?”

Fred nodded, not knowing where she was going with this and afraid to ask.

“Good. I was thinking about this, Fred, and I came up with a question for you. Are you ready?”

Such a long windup. Fred was so tense the door frame creaked. Mary looked at him with pity and said, “Did Thomas Russ have something for little girls? Because, from what I witnessed in the park last night, mister, you sure do.”

THE NEXT THING Fred knew, he was sitting on the side of the bed, with his head hanging so low it nearly touched the floor. Mary was gone, escaped. She had knocked him down with a handful of words. Despite his shame, he was impressed. He got up and wandered around the apartment. She had nailed him, and still he couldn’t keep the thought of Kitty out of his head. Or Costa, for that matter, or the cute michelle he had just run into in the shop downstairs. What was happening to him? Whatever it was, it would have to wait. Mary was a dead clone if he didn’t do something fast. But what? His first impulse was to call Nicholas and turn her in. That was what a “normal” russ would do, and he didn’t have any better ideas. He was a russ in need of a plan, and a friend.

“WE WENT YESTERDAY,” Kitty said.

“I already told him that,” the chair replied, “but he doesn’t remember.” Kitty had caught the chair on the first floor, trying to sneak out of the house.

“Remind him that that’s because he slept through it.”

“He asked how Ellie looked, and I told him we were turned away at the gate.”

“Tell him again, but tell it to him on your way back to my room, and this time
stay there
.”

The lifechair swiveled a bit to face the retrogirl straight on. “With all due respect, Myr Kodiak,” it said, “Sam is my sponsor, not you.”

“What?” Kitty said. “Belt Hubert, are you talking back to me?”

A frail hand rose above the rim of the basket. “Kitty,” Samson peeped.

Kitty climbed up and leaned into the basket. “Morning, Sam,” she said, caressing his cheek. “I was just telling the chair to take you to my room.”

“My daughter Ellie,” he said in a strained whisper.

“They won’t let us see her,” Kitty said. “We tried, Sam. It’s no use.”

The chair said, “He says, I have no time to argue. I must go.”

“There’s no point in going, Sam, if they won’t even let us in.” The retrogirl climbed off the chair and said, “Belt Hubert, take Sam to my room. Do it now.”

The chair didn’t budge. Neither did Kitty. It was a standoff.

“Let him go,” Bogdan said. The boy had just come from the kitchen with a steamy cup of troutcorn chowder. “It’s something he has to do, and you shouldn’t be trying to stop him.”

“Fine,” Kitty said and got out of the chair’s way. “You can go with him, because I’m not.”

“No problem,” Bogdan said and went to the chair. “Good morning, Sam,” he said. The old man smiled up at him. “I hear you’re off to see your daughter.”

The chair said, “He says, That’s right.”

“Can I go too?”

“That would be nice.”

Bogdan turned and led the lifechair to the foyer and out to the street. Kitty stood with her arms crossed and watched them go. A moment later she heard the chair clop, clop, clop down the porch steps. “Oh, for pity sake,” she said and took off after them.

MARY TOOK A taxi all the way to the clinic. At the gatehouse, the sealed sample in her large tote bag passed through the scanway without raising a flag. She hurried down the path through the little woods that separated South Gate from the cottages. Inside Feldspar Cottage, Cyndee and Nurse Hattie stood at the tank controller. Mary could see that Cyndee had something to tell her.

The brain model above the controller showed only sporadic neuronal discharges, like fireflies on a summer night. Hattie switched it off and said, “They declared her irretrievable early this morning. I have to go now, but I’ll return to help Matt pull life support.” She hugged the evangelines in turn and said, “I know it’s hard to lose your first one.” She paused at the daybed on her way out. The Ellen jacket was still twisted in her never-ending scream. “Tell Matt to shut this thing off first.”

When the evangelines were alone, Cyndee told Mary that she and Ronnie had been discharged by Wee Hunk, but that they didn’t leave. But when Mary and Renata failed to show up at shift change, Ronnie decided it was really all over and left.

“But you stayed,” Mary said, tapping Cyndee’s saucer hat, “and that’s all that matters.”

Mary went to the controller and brought up the rhinecephelon display. She took the package from her tote bag and unsealed it.

“Yuck!” Cyndee said. “What is that?”

“I looked up Myr Starke on the WAD and learned that her father was a seared,” Mary said and held the napkin against the olfactory sampler grate. “Ellen,” she said, “your father is here. It’s time to wake up. Samson Harger is here. Ellen, do you hear me?” She watched the skull’s eyes as she talked. She pulled a chair next to the sampler grate and propped the napkin up on it. She stood in front of the skull and told Ellen Starke all she had learned of her father.

On the rafter above her head, the Blue Team bee recognized the signature aroma of the hankie. The bee flagged the human who had brought this sample as a possible friendly.

FRED SAT ON a packing crate next to the porthole of a TUG Moving and Storage container that was flying in a parking loop over Decatur. Its figure-eight route brought him near the Roosevelt Clinic once each sixteen-minute lap. This flying boxcar made an ideal staging platform, and Fred’s access to it was remarkably sudden. Veronica Tug, when he called her from his apartment, had taken his list of logistical needs, no questions asked. A few minutes later she called back with the address of the storage container. He took a taxi to Decatur and made a midair docking with the container. It was loosely packed with several households of wrapped furniture and appliances. He found the field identikit that he had requested and a scanway-proof weapon that he had not. The blackmarket kit contained everything he needed to create and assume a foolproof new identity. Fred went through it and found a red and black jumpsuit cut in a garish paramilitary style. It looked like the household livery of some self-important aff, but it was lightly armored and included a fairly decent cap and visor. Fred put on the cap and read his cover doss. Myr Randy Planc was a Chicago area russ who lived in an APRT near Gary Gate. He was engaged as major domo to a materials broker named Abdul al-Hafir. Fred researched both Planc and al-Hafir on the National Registry and found neither of them listed. He consulted the UD Whois, Applied People Directory, and several other key sources. Neither man existed—at least not yet. Fred’s disguise required the conjuring up of not one, but two, complete identities out of thin air. It couldn’t have been cheap, and Veronica never mentioned the cost.

Fred broke open a tube of skin mastic and squeezed it on his arm. While it melted into his skin, he swallowed a capsule of self-migrating keratochitin concentrate that would collect on his cheekbones and chin to slightly alter several key facial landmarks. He chewed a gum that thickened his larynx and deepened his voice.

Eyecaps, mouth dam, false palms, uniform—Fred changed into Myr Planc. He considered the weapons package. It was a carboplex dagger that came in binary blister packs. To use it, he would need to spread the contents of a blister on the skin of each leg, taking care to keep his legs apart until he was through the scanway. Though the weapons package bore the seal of a reputable arms dealer, Fred was doubtful about trying to smuggle a weapon of any kind through a Fagan clinic scanway.

Checking the cap’s chronometer, Fred peered through the porthole to watch the clinic pass below.

A MEDTECH ENTERED the cottage and said, “Holy shit!” She pinched her nose and looked around the room. Mary and Cyndee had been joined by Renata and Alex, an evangeline from swing shift. “What are y’all doing in here?” the medtech demanded. “And what is that
smell
?”

Hattie and Coburn entered after the first medtech, and Hattie said, “I know that smell, but I thought they were all dead by now.” She, too, looked for its source. Mary held up the offending napkin, then rewrapped it and dropped it into her tote. It had apparently had no effect on the comatose woman.