The Goliath Stone (19 page)

Trying not to laugh, May asked, “What did he say when you confirmed?”

“‘Bring your towel, and put the fish in your ear.’ Literary reference.”

XXVI

All this and Heaven too.

—MATTHEW HENRY

“Fish?” said Alice. The odd random comments were getting obtrusive.

“Literary reference,” said Mycroft Yellowhorse. “Douglas Adams.” He did some things to the phone, but nothing that she considered sufficient retribution for taking them away from a limp drowse. Then he said, “They’ve got copies at the mall.” He set it down, scooped her up, and carried her to the bathroom.

“We’re stopping so we can go
buy a book
?”

“I don’t want to use up my entire repertoire at once.” He stepped into the shower and set her down.

“More of the same suits me fine,” she said, and flinched unnecessarily as the water came on already warm. As he began lathering her up, she said, “Does that shared-sensation thing work when there’s two girls with you? I mean, do they get it from each other too?”

He paused, eyebrows raised. “You’re decadent after one day?”

“No, obsessive after thirty-three years.”

“It wasn’t a criticism. ‘Anything done for the first time releases a demon.’”

“Huh?”

“Literary reference. Dave Sim.”

“I know that name!” she said, pleased at having finally caught one.

He stood up straight, put on an expression of delight, and clasped his hands together by his jaw. Then he jumped and barked like a seal—she had grabbed. “No fair!” he said.

She let go. “He was on the Inappropriate list when I was in school. Misogynist.”

“He wasn’t,” Mycroft said. “He was just walking wounded after a bad marriage. Some things you never recover from.”

“Still in the denial stage?”

“Turn.” He began washing her back. “I grew up with that Five Stages of Loss business. I consider all touchy-feely terms invalidating. It’s like being a teenager and getting described as ‘going through a phase’ when you try to get taken seriously as a human being. ‘Denial, anger, bargaining, sorrow, acceptance.’ Know what their real names are? Shock, defiance, cunning, torment, and apathy. I grant you, the woman who originally named the conditions was just observing and reporting the phenomena she saw as best she could, and
she
was helpful, encouraging, and respectful. But everyone since then has tried to shove the bereaved along, like it was a procedure. That way they don’t have to deal with them as
people
. It’s why, ultimately, every drug prescribed for any strong emotion produces apathy. That’s the desired condition of a nonentity.”

“I think you may be overgeneralizing from your own history.” They’d done a lot more talking than she’d expected. The bots had to be why neither of them had white hair yet. She wasn’t sure when she’d turned red; they’d been distracted.

“I freely acknowledge that I am the sort of person who looks at those charming Currier and Ives prints and wonders how many inhabitants of the snowbound houses are, at that moment, being forced to resort to cannibalism. That being admitted, consider how the selfsame touchy-feely people have always refused to deal with what had been and was being done to hundreds of millions of little girls just like you.” When she went rigid, he put his arms around her and said into her ear, “You never let yourself go past defiance. And you were
right
.” She relaxed and leaned back against him. “You’re wiggling,” he presently accused.

“You obviously like it,” she pointed out.

“You had
weeks
to take the edge off, you know.”

She nodded. “And I did.”

“This is what’s
left
? Merciful heavens.”

*   *   *

Later, out of the shower and toweled dry—the air-circulator arrangement was clever, but better suited to solo washing—she said, “I’m going to be worrying while you’re up there.”

He paused and studied her face. “You don’t get dizzy upside down,” he mused. “The 40-V seats up to fifteen. I think we can fit a suit in three days. Sound interesting?”

“You want me to come?”

“Certainly.”

XXVII

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

— SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

1

The amount of valuable material abandoned in Earth orbit was absurd, but what had been done about it, prior to Foundry’s arrival, gave the entities a handle on the term “ludicrous.” Monitoring of communications had revealed that the most capable of the spacefaring powers had actually enacted regulations that specifically required new objects to be designed to reenter and vaporize from the heat of atmospheric compression. The first enterprise to go up and collect the waste could have made itself rich in the extreme, but most of Earth’s powers were participants in a council whose members had passed rules forbidding each other to engage in such activity—among many other activities whose only possible results would have been to improve human welfare. This seemed to be the council’s principal function.

The entities decided that this was not their problem, and it would be a wasteful indulgence to destroy the meeting place of the council … for free.

Foundry, which was not a member of the United Nations and not likely to apply, had taken up less than a quarter of the debris on its first pass. The second pass was slow enough to allow the oncoming material to be vaporized by lasers and the exhaust before it hit the scoops, which had been repaired by then. Deceleration during this pass put Foundry in an orbit whose period was slightly more than half a planetary rotation. There remained a good deal of eccentricity to the orbit, so the armatures were withdrawn, to process the new material collected on the scoops, and to simplify trim maneuvers.

2

The near-transparency of the suits, though he knew it was useful for the nanos, bothered Toby a lot more than it did May. “I look like a magazine cover from 1943,” he said as they emerged into the hangar.

“Yeah,” she said huskily, “Captain America.”

It was true he was in better shape than he’d ever been, including the first time he was this young. That, and the way she was looking at him, made it suddenly easier to take. “You don’t mind yours?”

“It’s not like anybody’s going to stare at me but you. I get to wear a classic working spacesuit. And I always
wanted
to look like a Kelly Freas poster.”

“You’re not wearing enough makeup.”

May stuck her tongue out at him.

“You always know how to get on my good side,” he said.

“You might have said something before you got your recycler connected.”

He hadn’t expected her to have an answer. “Ah. How’s yours?” he said.

“Intensely personal, but it beats a catheter. —Sh!” she said, holding up a hand and looking grave and alert.

Toby stared at her, looked around, looked at her again, turned his hands up, and shook his head.

May pointed out of the hangar door at an approaching car. “Indians!”

*   *   *

Every now and then she cracked him up a lot more than she expected.

He got himself together as Yellowhorse got out of the car. After a moment Toby said, “No,
that’s
Captain America.”

“That’s more like Superman,” she said. On TV she’d never really seen how big Yellowhorse was. “And that’s a Frank Frazetta poster,” she grumbled as a woman got out after him. Both had suits on, but in their case the suits were decorated. Yellowhorse’s, naturally, was done in streaks of war paint, but the woman’s had the kind of tracery lingerie uses to make you uncertain of how much you’re really seeing. “Hey, how come our suits don’t get fancy designs?” she called out as they came in and the car drove off.

“What did you think the paints were for?” Yellowhorse called back.

“Paints?”

“In the patching kit. You didn’t inspect your gear?”

“We just got this stuff on,” Toby said.

“Oh. Well, we have a couple of hours before the first easy launch window. —This is Alice Johnson, formerly DHS, now a security consultant for JNAIT. Alice, May Wyndham.”

May shook her hand. “I wish my suit looked like yours.”

“I think yours looks
great,
” Alice said, looking it over with a smile.

Oh dear. “Thanks,” May said.

Alice caught the undercurrent. “Oops. Sorry, I’ll tone it down. I pretty much just discovered sex. Born Moslem. Clitoris amputated. Mycroft grew it back.”

May literally staggered with the realization: “If he can do that, he can heal cripples!” she said, waving her arms for balance. Damn boots.

“That’s who about a third of our immigrants are,” Yellowhorse said as Toby caught her. “Were, anyway.”

“Oliver Carter, CIA. You will all turn and raise your hands,” called a man from a side door. He was white, armed, and wearing a standard gray suit and red tie, which at this latitude made him a lunatic. “William Connors, you are under arrest for sedition, rebellion, and treason.” He had about twenty meters to cross as he approached.

Yellowhorse turned to face him, and said, “Alice, the man with May is Tobias Desmond Glyer.” He drew a sharp breath, shuddered faintly, turned sheer black, and charged.

The boots didn’t impede
him
at all.

Every round from the clip hit him. Then he hit the gunman, once, with a palm to the chest as he went past.

The Company man was flung aside into a stack of empty packing cases, the only thing he could have hit that wouldn’t have shattered his bones. He began hauling himself out of the mess at once to go after his machine pistol, but Alice reached him and stamped on his hand. He grabbed for her, ignoring his injury, and she leapt up and kicked him in the head. He fell backward, unable to coordinate but still trying to act. “He’s drugged!” she shouted, and spun aside from the red laser spot on her face as a bullet whizzed by.

“Thomas Appleton Swift Pleasurizer!”
Yellowhorse bellowed, and there were thumps and crashing sounds from several places in and outside the hangar. He came back over to the original shooter, who was now doing nothing except twitching ecstatically. Yellowhorse pried fifteen bullets from dents in his torso and arms, and said, “I thought I couldn’t
go
senile. Should have done that in the first place. I
should
have realized somebody would hit on the idea of loading assassins with painkillers.” He picked up Carter by the scruff of his collar, put his other arm around Alice, and came back over to May and Toby. The whole thing had taken about twenty seconds. “You’re mistaken,” he said to May. “It’s not Superman who’s transformed by saying the name of the wizard who gave power and purpose to a cripple.” He’d heard her from the
car
?

“It turned you bulletproof,” Toby said. That seemed to be all he had at the moment.

“Nominally. I’ve been shot before, it sucks. The thing is, he was firing sniper bullets: high speed, hardcase, denser than usual, and they would have drilled right through me and hit you folks. Fortunately I also made the suits tough enough to stop a glass knife. Don’t try this at home. —I have quite a collection of bot triggers for various situations. Some verbal, some situational. Things I wouldn’t normally say or do. Most don’t work on people with the upgrade, some only work on me. —Alice, how do you feel?”

“A little sore, but I don’t mind,” she said.

There was a moment of silence. “You mean from wrenching aside to dodge the bullet,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, deadpan. “—I didn’t break his neck, I figured you must need him or you’d have taken his head off.”

“I most certainly would not. It’s a disgusting sight. But thanks.” Yellowhorse let go of her, took Carter by his shirt front, and said,
“Feel the burn.”

Carter looked shocked, then began to weep.

“Snap out of it.”

Carter stopped crying and started to look worried.

“The rest of your team is still getting direct limbic stimulus. They’ll be incurably addicted in ten minutes at most. Now tell me, why did you decide to risk World War Three by pissing off JNAIT?”

“We had people searching Mecca for months,” Carter said. “They found the bomb.”

Yellowhorse raised his eyebrows. “Do tell. Describe this bomb you found.”

“A hundred and seventy kilotons,” Carter said. “Did you think I was bluffing? I was given a picture to show you. Jacket pocket.”

The picture was extracted and examined. “Well, this is disturbing,” Yellowhorse said.

“I thought you’d see it that way.”

“I doubt it. My warhead is in orbit. I’ve never seen
this
bomb before in my life. Now, go find your men and give each of them a big sloppy kiss.
Repent, sinner!
” He slapped the man on the forehead and turned him loose.

Carter staggered off to the far side of the hangar, looking stupefied.

“We need to find the guards they took out,” Yellowhorse said. “Then we need to leave.” He got out his phone and sent an automatic message, then led them outside, running. An ambulance siren started up in the distance.

As they reached the first man, May said, “That was quick thinking on the bomb thing.”

“Hardly,” Yellowhorse said as he knelt and opened the man’s shirt. “Mine’s two homemade fission imploders, each about Nagasaki yield. One fireball pancakes the other into the ground and scoops out a crater a mile across. Fusion is a lot of work. And this one’s a government job anyway.
I gotta go feed my witch
,” he said, hands on the man’s chest. The guard twitched, gasped, and started coughing horribly. As he looked around, Yellowhorse got out the photo and handed it to May. “This way.” He ran around the corner of the hangar and found the next man.