Counting Heads

3.5

Meewee slept most of the morning. The lump under his skin, his new brainlette, didn’t bother him when he scratched it. In midafternoon he left his executive suite at Starke Enterprises headquarters for the last time and made the short trip to Starke Manse. An arbeitor with Wee Hunk perched atop it was waiting for him in the family’s private Slipstream station.

“Top o’the afternoon to you, Bishop,” the tiny mentar said, greeting him like an old friend. “I trust your leave-taking from Cabinet territory was civil.”

“Civil enough, though Cabinet saw fit to send a security team to escort me to the tube. As though I intended to steal the linen or something.”

“And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Steal the linen.”

Meewee took the question for a tasteless joke and did not answer. The arbeitor grabbed up his luggage, and he followed it to the lifts. It was only when they were riding up to the ground floor that he realized that he and Wee Hunk had been conducting two conversations at once. The banter about Cabinet was only the surface one. Beneath it was a more serious one—Wee Hunk had just updated him about Ellen’s condition—still critical—and asked if he’d had any more direct encounters with Cabinet.

Moreover, Meewee had left the question dangling. So he said, “Sheets, towels, robes—I took as much as I could carry.”

Wee Hunk guffawed and said, “I’ve set aside a room for you overlooking the fields. Would you like to go there now?”

Under the surface, this was an identity challenge. Meewee replied, “Yes, please. I would like to get settled in.” Then in turn, he challenged the mentar’s own integrity, “Do you happen to have an extruder on the premises? I need to make some new apparel.”

Wee Hunk responded positively to both layers of inquiry, and as he led Meewee through the warren of rooms, he secretly briefed him on events of the last dozen hours: Ellen’s head had been installed in a hernandez tank in a cottage at the clinic, evangeline hires were with her now with continuity counters embedded in their hats, no progress had been made in tracking down Eleanor’s assassins or Ellen’s abductors, and efforts to find an independent revivification specialist had thus far been fruitless.

The Starke Manse, for all its impressive size, managed to retain a homey ambiance. The arbeitor led Meewee to a suite of rooms that was easily double the size of his executive quarters. More room than Meewee knew how to occupy.

“I’m pleased to see that the metalanguage has kicked in,” Wee Hunk said in plain English. “And with no lasting harm done to your health. Your sudden command of Starkese is impressive, but there is no need to use it or to glot while we are here. The manse is double canopied and shielded against all forms of espionage. It’s more secure here than in many null rooms.”

Wee Hunk jumped off the arbeitor and assumed a full-sized appearance. He opened a small scape showing the interior of Ellen’s clinic cottage, with four of the eight evangelines present. Two of them were preparing to leave, and the scape split into two, one remaining inside the cottage, and the other following the departing companions down a path to South Gate.

“You said she’s not doing well?” Meewee said, zooming in on the skull inside the hernandez tank.

“No, not well at all. Critical neural functions have not resumed. Concierge says the doctors have no explanation but are guardedly optimistic.”

“Damn, I wish we had our own doctor.”

“I’m still looking for one,” the mentar said, “but all of the thousands of qualified revivificationists practicing in the UD are either employed by or on retainer to the Fagan Health Group, and thus are unacceptable. Fagan has a solid lock on the specialty in the West. Perhaps one of your old Birthplace contacts outside the UD would be useful.”

“I’ll look into it, but there’s not much call for revivification in famine countries.”

In the scape, a medtech entered the cottage and went to the tank. He checked its controller, then climbed a ladder and dipped a small vial into the tank for a sample of the amber amnio fluid. After marking the vial, he dropped it into a pocket and proceeded with other monitoring tasks. Meanwhile, in the other scape, the two off-shift evangelines reached the South Gate gatehouse and were processed through. On the other side of the gatehouse a Starke limo waited for them.

“I’ll debrief them as soon as the car leaves the grounds,” Wee Hunk said.

“You mentioned something about continuity counters. What are those?”

“Something like time code generators. The Roosevelt Clinic, as we saw in the nustscape last night, is a self-enclosed environment. It, like this house, is double canopied and shielded. All transmissions to and from the clinic must pass through a gatekeeper, which happens to be Concierge. While it’s true that I’ve been watching Ellen continuously, how can I trust the images and data that Concierge is feeding me? When the evangelines leave the mentar’s domain, I’ll be able to compare the time log in their hats to my own records. Any tampering whatsoever with my surveillance will show up.”

“Clever.”

The evangelines boarded the limo, which drove up the drive to the parking lot and jumped into the air. Once outside clinic space, a miniature Wee Hunk appeared on the seat opposite them and said, “Good afternoon, myren. How did your first day go?”

Mary said, “Good afternoon, Myr Hunk. It went well, I think. Concierge is very nice.” Then she added, “Will she ever recover?”

“Ah, Myr Skarland, that’s a difficult question. The doctors are troubled by Ellen’s lack of improvement but aren’t ready to panic yet. According to their experience with such cases, there is a five-day window in which a cryogenically frozen brain may regain consciousness, with the rate of recovery proportional to the cube of the inverse of days since thawing.”

Mary glanced at Renata who shrugged, and Mary said, “Excuse me, Myr Hunk, but I’m not good at math.”

Back at the manse, Wee Hunk said to Meewee, “Unfortunately, without our own specialist, there is no way we can test the findings of these clinic doctors.”

“Surely there are autodocs equipped to analyze such cases,” Meewee said. “Why don’t you bring out a sample of that hernandez tank fluid? That ought to tell us something.”

“Good idea,” Wee Hunk said. “I’ll see what I can do.” In the limo, he said, “Sorry, Myr Skarland, what it means is that if Ellen doesn’t wake up tomorrow, she’ll have only one chance in eight of waking up on Thursday. If she doesn’t awaken on Thursday, she’ll have one chance in twenty-seven on Friday, one chance in 256 on Saturday, and one in 625 on Sunday. You see how quickly her prospects dim. By then, even if she does awaken, she would most likely suffer irreparable psychosis.”

In the manse bedroom, the arbeitor finished unpacking Meewee’s luggage and putting his things away. It came around the bed to where Meewee was sitting and held out a trophy in its gripper arm. It was the 2082 Mandela Humanitarian Award that Meewee had won for his Birthplace work.

“Put it there for now,” Meewee said and pointed at the night table. The arbeitor placed the trophy on the table and then, without warning, extended its arm and tried to grab Meewee by the throat. Meewee reared back reflexively and blocked it with his hands. The arbeitor caught one of his arms and squeezed it in a crushing grip. Meewee screamed and tried to break free. “Help! Help!” he cried.

“I’ve called for security,” Wee Hunk replied.

“Make it stop!”

“I can’t. Someone else is controlling it.”

The arbeitor dragged Meewee off the bed by the arm and extended its other gripper, trying to catch his throat, but Meewee squirmed out of reach.

“Listen to me, Bishop,” Wee Hunk said calmly. “Tell Arrow to stop it.”

“Arrow, stop this thing!” Meewee shouted, but the arbeitor continued its assault. It twisted Meewee’s arm, forcing him into gripper range.

“Not in English,” Wee Hunk said. “Use Starkese.”

Meanwhile, in the limo scape, Wee Hunk continued its explanation to the evangelines. “That’s why the doctors will employ more aggressive methods of rousing her in the coming days, including microsurgical tissue replacement.”

“Arrow!” Meewee cried when the gripper found his throat and began to squeeze. “Arrow!” he choked, fumbling for the proper syntax, “make me a pot of tea!”

Immediately something inside the arbeitor’s casing sizzled, and the machine went slack. Meewee pulled its gripper from his throat and rolled away, gulping air.

“Thank goodness,” Wee Hunk said. “Are you all right?” In the limo, he continued. “Tonight they will try to induce dreams and reestablish a ninety-minute sleep cycle by chemical means. Tomorrow they wire her directly to a simulacrum jacket.”

Meewee lay wheezing on the floor while his heart bounced around in his chest. Someone was banging on the bedroom door, unable to get in. Manse security?

“So much for our double canopy and shielding,” Wee Hunk said.

On the other side of the room, the closet opened, and two small cleaning scuppers emerged and charged across the carpet directly at Meewee’s head.