Counting Heads (56 page)

“Dr. Rouselle,” Meewee said, “please look at this for me.” But she was watching the pair of children who were coming up the drive and about to pass them.

“Sorry?” she said.

“Please examine Ellen’s—” He was interrupted by the boy, who had stopped directly in front of him with an awestruck expression. “Yes?” Meewee said. “Can I help you?”

“You’re—” the boy said. “Excuse me, but aren’t you Myr Meewee, the guy with the Oships?”

Not anymore, he wanted to say. You’ll have to deal with the Chinese from now on. But he nodded his head and said, “Yes, that’s me. Do I know you?”

“Not in realbody, myr. Only in the upreffing suites at E-Pluribus.” The small boy straightened his posture and raised his hand in a solemn military salute. “I am Bogdan Harger Kodiak, future jump pilot of the ESV
Garden Charter
, at your service!”

Meewee didn’t know quite how to respond to this, but the boy held the salute, with a stiff-armed resolve, until Meewee clumsily returned it. Then the boy rejoined the girl on their way to the iron arch and street, and Meewee slowly lowered his arm.

“Touching,” Wee Hunk said. The document frame still floated beside him. “Now, if you don’t mind, your holiness, the death certificate.”

Your holiness? Meewee peered closely at the smug Neanderthal face and imagined he caught a glimpse of Saul Jaspersen. Or maybe the fecker Chapwoman. Your grace? These were favorite taunts of the GEP board, not Wee Hunk. He couldn’t remember the mentar ever using them. Meewee turned again to the document frame. The certificate was probably authentic and Ellen probably dead, but this could not be her true mentar. This was a traitorous monster.

<
Arrow
> he said <
kill the mentar Wee Hunk
.>

The document frame closed, but nothing else seemed to happen. Wee Hunk still stood in front of them with an arrogant expression on his face. Eventually, the doctor passed her hand through him. “He is gone?”

“Yes, gone,” Meewee said and continued down the drive. <
And now, Arrow, figure out how to drop the gate, if you can
.>

BLUE TEAM BEE noticed a sudden change in network chatter. The facility was still in Orange, but the pervasive presence of the clinic mentar diminished, and for long moments, control of critical systems was passed to backup subems. Meanwhile, the campus grid showed a clinic team of armed personnel approaching Feldspar Cottage. To complicate matters, Blue Team’s wasp had become trapped in the gatehouse when the southern campus was put on Orange. The bee, swimming in a sea of action checks but unable to wait any longer, launched its highest-confidence plan.

“Oh, Nurse,” said Dr. Ted, who appeared next to Hattie. Mary recognized it as the character from the clinic’s simiverse.

“Leave us alone, Dr. Ted,” Hattie said. “There’s no time now for your frippery.”

The doctor nodded and said, “Excellent diagnosis, Nurse. A deficit of time. And Concierge’s departure has tripped semiautonomous subem assets.”

“Say what?”

“Concierge has left the building,” Dr. Ted said and vanished.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Hattie said. She lifted the tote bag and carried it to the door. Mary and the others followed her to the patio where they paused to take in great lungsful of fresh air. “You should all leave now,” Hattie said. “You’ve done your duty.” Everyone looked at everyone else, and no one made a move.

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.