Counting Heads

2.29

Blue Team Bee and its wasp still maintained their stakeout on the roof of the building across the street from the Kodiak building.

ON THE STARDECK at Rolfe’s, the lulu Mariola pointed to the Skytel and said, “Oh my God.” Everyone looked up. The train of billboards were all displaying the same huge skullish head of a man. Mariola and the others tuned to the Skytel channel to hear what he was saying.

“Someone hacked the Skytel,” Reilly said incredulously.

ON THE ROOF of the Kodiak charterhouse, the housemeets watched the Skytel in openmouthed horror. Their two dozen Tobbler guests squirmed with embarrassment.

“How curious,” Houseer Dieter said to April. “What is the old gent doing up there?”

April was speechless.

Inside the garden shed, Kale threw the blankets and pillows off the cot, scattering paper envelopes.

“Go now, please,” April told the Tobbler houseer. “The show is over.”

Houseer Dieter rose and brushed the front of his overalls. “Yes, fine, so it is,” he said. “Thank you for a pleasant evening.” The Tobblers all rose and shuffled to the stairway door while gazing up at the sky.

The houseer was the last of the Tobblers to leave the roof. On the wall next to the door he spied a small hole in a brick. “When is this hole here?” he said.

“What?” April said. “I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

“I show you what difference,” the Tobbler said and, taking off his boot, hammered the brick wall. The bricks shattered like eggshell, exposing a hollow space where solid wall should have been.

“What are you doing?” cried Kale, running from the shed. “Stop that!”

“It’s not me,” said the houseer. “It is the excavators, the pirates. Soon our building will collapse on itself. Good night, Kodiaks. Tomorrow we shall discuss what to do about this.”

In the sky above them, Samson charged up a pocket simcaster and held it to his forehead.

SAMSON’S FINGER TREMBLED on the button as he thought of one more thing he wanted to say to the world. He lowered the simcaster again and continued. “The sixth reason why I hate to die today is something I only realized this evening as I was watching a novella here at Moseby’s Leap. Our lives, all of our lives as well as the life of the city and society, are just like soap operas. You ever notice that? We become addicted to them in the same way, always eager to see what happens in the next episode. Right now I’m wondering, Will I make the morning news? Will a NASTIE eat Chicago when the canopy falls? Tune in tomorrow. The problem is, once I squeeze this button, I won’t be able to tune in ever again. It’s not fair. I won’t know how it all turned out, and I can’t accept that.”

Samson raised the simcaster again, but he thought of something else he wanted to say, and he wondered if he had begun to ramble. Just then, a blue-headed bee appeared in front of him. The hommers, he presumed, there to arrest him. He glanced at the Skytel and saw his big ugly mug—the hack was still holding. So it was now or never. His finger found the cast button, and he took a deep breath.

But the bee opened a frame that showed a section of spacecraft fuselage with a passenger window. The picture quality was poor, and there was a roar of static. A familiar figure appeared in the window and pressed her hand against the pane.

“El? Is that you?” Samson said.

Hello, Sam, said Eleanor’s voice, barely discernible over the noise.

“El, they said you were dead.”

Hello, my dear. I don’t have much time left, and I wanted to spend it with you. I apologize for the recording. We’re jury-rigging the signal, and I lack the bandwidth for anything better. I’m afraid it won’t be very interactive, unless Cabinet can manage to script something afterward.

One of her bushy eyebrows, that he loved so much, rose in wry amusement. No time and no bandwidth—that’s about as good a definition of death as I can imagine.

“Ah,” Samson said, “so you are dead after all.” He lowered the simcaster.

The frame image flickered, and her voice dropped out. Which is another way of saying—survive this one. Cabinet says someone has taken control—Songbird — — —wanted to tell you how—

“Yes? Tell me what?”

Ellie and I wanted to be there on your special day,” Eleanor continued, “but we may not be able to—all. You didn’t mention why you wanted to see us so urgently, but it wasn’t hard to—not mistaken, you’re going to hold that “press conference” you spoke of all those years ago. Remember? I’ll be sure to watch it if I can. I know you’ll make quite an impression. You always have, in everything you do. That’s why I fell in love with you in the first place, my Samsamson.

Well, I just wanted to say good-bye because I don’t think we’ll ever meet again. And Ellie sends her love too. She’s always been proud of her father and tells everyone she meets that she gets her sense of panache from your side of the family.

So good-bye, my love. You live in my heart always. Farewell! I love you!

The bee closed its frame and flew away.

“I love you too!” Samson shouted after it. “Good-bye! Good-bye! I love you still!” His voice was swallowed up in the huge space. Below him the stadium was dark, all the placeholder crowds were put away. Above him the Skytel boards were dark too. He leaned back in his seat and said, “That was awfully nice of her. Good-bye. Good-bye.”

After a while, he said, “Hubert?”

Yes, Sam.

“Be sure to tell them how much I love them.”

Yes, Sam, I will. Who?

“April and Kitty, Boggy, Rusty, Kale, hell—all of them. And you too. You’re not so bad, you know.”

Thank you, Sam. Shall I call a taxi now?

“A taxi? What for?”

Samson raised the simcaster one last time. He couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to say to anyone, but before he could order his thumb to finally press the button, the blue-headed bee returned and opened another frame, and Eleanor, as young and beautiful as the day he first met her at his friend’s party, was beaming pure happiness at him.

Great news, Sam! she said. Ellie has survived! Cabinet just learned that she’s arrived at Roosevelt Clinic. You remember the place. Please, dear, be a love and go see her. Your daughter needs you.

“WELL, IT LOOKS like we—or Arrow—hired a russ for you after all,” Wee Hunk said. The mentar had shut down all the frames and scapes in the living room, including the nust globe. The two arbeitors helped Meewee back to bed. “Tomorrow,” the apeman went on, “we should see about setting you up in the Starke Manse.”

“Really?” Meewee said.

“Why not? There’s plenty of room, and frankly, I want to keep tabs on you.”

Meewee lay back on his pillows. He felt a long night’s sleep was due him, but he was too keyed up to close his eyes yet. “Answer me something, Hunk,” he said. “You don’t trust me, or russes, or the GEP board, and yet the owner of the clinic, Byron Fagan, sits on the board.”

“I don’t trust him either,” Wee Hunk replied, “but Eleanor apparently did. Besides, Fagan seems to have a monopoly on regenerative technologies. I haven’t been able to find a suitable alternative facility for her yet.” He continued subvocally. But you make a good point. Let’s get some of our own people in there. Problem is, the clinic maintains its own security and nursing staffs; they won’t let us insert our own russes or jennys. Who else can we send?

MARY SAID, “IT’S beginning!” and she joined the others at the balcony. A white star burst overhead. It was followed by electric red chrysanthemums and blue rocket trails. “What is it? What is it?” she cried, unsure whether to be thrilled or frightened.

“It’s fireworks!” the others shouted. Sizzling sparkles, cannon shot, marching bears that melted like wax. The first fireworks since the canopies went up, the first in Mary’s lifetime.

The lulus cried, “Chicago, give yourself a hug!”

BOGDAN’S TAXI LANDED on the transit parapet of the great stadium and rolled to a parking zone. Bogdan leaped out and was startled by a brilliant burst of light overhead. The sky crackled like ice in a glass. With no time for watching, Bogdan ran through caroming shadows to the ticket gates, but there were HomCom GOVs parked everywhere.

Boggy, Hubert said, come back to the taxi at once.

Bogdan scurried back across the parking zone. Suddenly a large man appeared from the shadows several slots away and jogged toward him, carrying something in his arms. He looked old but was still strong because he was carrying Samson and wasn’t even winded.

“You must be Bogdan Kodiak,” the man said. The sky cracked and crazed behind his head. “Get in the car, son, and help me lift him in.”

Bogdan jumped into the taxi and helped lift Samson. Samson weighed almost nothing. He was deathly still, but his eyes were wide open.

In getting Samson situated, Bogdan ruffled his jumpsuit collar and exposed a glittering mech that was hiding there. He recoiled in surprise, but the man helping him said, “That’s his, I think. At least he spent a lot of time talking to it.” He straightened Samson’s lapel and said, “Good-bye, Myr Harger Kodiak. It was an honor to meet you. The best of luck to you.”

Samson looked at him blankly, and the man swung the gull door down and latched it. He patted the roof twice and stepped away from the car.

The taxi was halfway home when Samson tried to sit up. “Relax, Sam,” Bogdan said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Bogdan was on the phone to April.

“Boggy?” Samson said.

“Yes, Sam, it’s me. I’m taking you home.”

“Not home, not yet. Take me to Roosevelt Clinic.”

Over the phone, April said, “Don’t listen to him. Bring him straight home.”

“AMAZING,” FRED SAID. The great city was spread out before him like a glittering island. He watched from the car he had borrowed to get home. Access to the city’s grids had been suspended until after the grand finale, and he had jumped to a high parking loop to get a front-row seat. “Oh, look at that one.”

“Which one? Which one?” Mary said. They had opened a frame between them, and he could see most of the gang at the Stardeck rail. Champagne corks were flying, and faces were damp with tears. A whole generation’s long march was coming to an end, and Fred was exhausted himself.

But Mary was lit up, if anything, brighter than the fireworks. Fred could tell she had news, but he waited for her to tell it, and finally she did.

“Fred, the DCO called me ten minutes ago,” she said, stretching out the suspense, “and I have a job!”

“That’s wonderful!” Fred said.

“A real job—a companion job!” Once started, it all came out in a rush. “I begin tomorrow, in just a few hours, downstate from here, companioning someone at a clinic. At Roosevelt Clinic. It’s for two weeks at full evangeline rate, with a renewal option.”

Fred didn’t interrupt. It sank in as she talked. “That’s wonderful,” he repeated when she paused for breath.

“Fred, is something wrong?”

The edges of the canopy suddenly flared with a magnesium fire, and they both turned to watch it, letting her question linger. He watched from his high car as intersecting vaults of the once invisible canopy were suddenly revealed. As though Chicagoland were covered by a ghostly cathedral. A cathedral built of many overlapping layers of large flattish hexagonal cells. As Fred watched, a white-hot light raced up through their interstitial spaces.

Mary watched from high in a gigatower inside the largest vault. The sizzling light seemed to blaze right overhead, and she shivered when the walls collapsed and the span toppled and ashes fell like snowflakes.