Counting Heads

Friday

3.13

Before dawn, with four hours yet to go before the attempt to spring Ellen from the clinic, Meewee sat on a mat on the floor of his shelter bedroom with the lights dimmed, practicing tantric stretch and breath exercises to try to quiet his nerves. He had been up half the night visiting the toilet to excrete all the dead machinery his cells had flushed into his bloodstream. Ordinarily, he would have waited a few days before starting the process of reestablishing his implant ecology, but with the impending rescue, he felt he could not wait. So he had swallowed a comm package at midnight, and now his brain was full of buzzes and flashes as the tiny radio sets unpacked and calibrated themselves.

A diorama of the clinic cottage ran in the corner of his room with its audio muted. All therapy on Ellen had been suspended, and the night evangelines were keeping what was by all appearances a death vigil. Then, out of the blue, Wee Hunk showed up in the cottage and told them to go home.

Meewee jumped to his feet. “Wee Hunk,” he said. “I need to speak to you.”

The mentar appeared at once. Over the last few days, Meewee had noticed Wee Hunk’s habit of frequently changing the appearance of its persona. Sometimes it was life-size, sometimes a Tom Thumb, sometimes realistic, sometimes cartoonish. This morning it appeared in super-realistic detail. Every pore on its broad nose stood out sharply.

Meewee said, “Is that you at the clinic?”

“Yes.”

“You’re discharging the ’leens?”

“That’s right.”

“But why? That wasn’t part of your plan.”

“What plan?” the Neanderthal said.

Meewee began to reply, but changed his mind and returned his attention to the diorama. The two evangelines took their dismissal with equanimity, but did not leave the cottage. They had learned the night before not to trust mentars in the cottage. “Did you dismiss all the other shifts as well, all the young evangeline women?” he said, slipping in a challenge in Starkese.

“Don’t worry, I will, at a more decent hour. There’s no point in attending to Ellen any longer. Don’t you agree?”

Meewee listened hard, but heard no response to his challenge. Arrow, he glotted, challenge Wee Hunk’s integrity.

A moment later, his mentar responded, Identification failure.

It was what Meewee expected, but still the fact of it shocked him.

“Was there anything else?” Wee Hunk said. “I have funeral arrangements to attend to.”

MARY ROSE EARLY to download the odor specimen she had captured in the park. She was in the shower when the houseputer informed her of an urgent call from Wee Hunk. She left the stall and wrapped herself in a robe. Fred seemed asleep as she hurried through the bedroom. She was closing the door when she stopped and whispered, “Are you awake?”

“Yes, I am,” he whispered back. “Good morning, darling.”

“Good morning to you too, Fred. I have a call. Shall I close the door?”

“Yes, please,” he said.

Standing in the living room, Mary composed herself and said, “Use my business persona and put the call through.”

Wee Hunk appeared as a full-sized man wearing an anorak made of blond fur. The fine detail of his projection, the crisp treatment of every strand of fur, struck Mary as unusual. His smallish, thick face was impassive, and he said, “Mary Skarland, it is my unpleasant task to terminate your services at this time, since they are no longer required. Thank you for your conscientious work. Do not report to Roosevelt Clinic today.”

The Neanderthal was swiping off when Mary said, “Wait!” She startled herself. “I mean, is she irretrievable, then?”

“Myr Starke’s condition is no longer your concern,” the mentar said and dissolved.

MARY CREPT BACK into bed. She was crying. Fred gathered her into his arms and said, “DCO?” She nodded her head. “Oh, well,” he went on consolingly, “it couldn’t last forever. You got a good run out of it, nearly a week. And there’s probably severance pay in it too.”

“Please shut up, Fred.”

“At once.”

When she seemed all cried out, Fred ventured, “Feel like talking about it?” She shook her head against his chest. “Feel like breakfast?” She nodded. “Good, so do I.” He struggled to hide his glee at her bad news. “I’m going down to the market for real blueberries for my special blueberry pancake recipe.” He got out of bed and grabbed a package of tower togs off the shelf. “Don’t get up; it’ll be breakfast in bed.”

In the foyer, Fred asked for his tower shoes, and the slipper puppy retrieved them from the far reaches of the closet. As he stood there putting them on, balancing on one leg and then the other, he caught a whiff of Samson Harger. His nose led him to Mary’s tote bag leaning against the closet door, all ready to go. Hating himself, Fred rummaged through it and found a paper napkin that was double-sealed in kitchen pouches. Two layers of hermetically sealed film were not enough to contain the old man’s indomitable essence. So that was what she had been up to. He had wondered about their trip to the park. Still, he wasn’t sure why she’d want a sample of Harger’s stench, but with the phone call, it was no longer an issue. Thank goodness.

Fred slipped the smelly package back into the tote and left the apartment feeling a lot better than he had for days. He mentally crossed off one item on his trouble list.

A CRASHING SOUND woke him. Bogdan squinted against the morning light and saw that he was still in the garden shed, but on a cot, not on the floor. On Sam’s cot. There was an odd thumping sound outside, but he wasn’t ready to wake up yet. He had been performing wonderful things for appreciative strangers in a dream.

Sometime later, another crash made him sit up and look out the shed window. Francis and Barry were carrying armloads of junk and dropping them on a large pile next to the shed.

The thumping sound was coming from the other side of the roof, where the soybimi racks were supposed to be. In their place sat a large tanker van with a CarboFlexion logo painted on its side. Several hoses ran from the tanker, and on the other end of the hoses were Tobblers.

Rusty’s face appeared at the screen door, and he said, “Looky who’s surfaced.”

“What’s going on?”

Rusty opened the squeaky door and came in. He pulled Samson’s elephant footstool next to the cot and sat down. “On this side, ladies and gentlemen,” Rusty said, gesturing toward the roof door, “we are currently inventorying our stairwell shelves while at the same time clearing a path for Samson’s lifechair. We’ve reached the seventh floor.”

“Sam’s still—?”

“Still hanging on. He’s bunking in Kitty’s room till we clear the stairs. Now, on this side,” he said, gesturing toward the van, “our good neighbors are busy injecting carbon resin down all the hollow spaces made by the material pirates. It’s a big project, and they’ve agreed to front us the cost and donate the labor in exchange for the use of roof space. We keep the shed and vegetable garden. They get everything else.”

Troy Tobbler was out there helping his ’meets. His arm was in a sling. Bogdan tentatively pressed his own nose and cheek. They were no longer tender, so he peeled the moleskin off.

Rusty examined his face and said, “Looks all healed up to me.”

“How long have I been down anyway?”

“Not quite a day and a half. We were worried when we found you up here and couldn’t wake you, but the autodoc said you were all right and just to let you sleep. Yesterday we called E-Pluribus to claim a sick day for you. Imagine our surprise.”

Bogdan hung his head. “I was going to announce it at the next Soup Pot.”

“I know it.”

“At least I get a separation bonus.”

“That’s important, and anyway, you’d have to give up that job when you moved out to Wyoming.”

Bogdan’s mouth fell open. Rusty smiled and looked out the window at the Tobblers. “They’re fixin’ the building because they figure it’ll all be theirs one way or another.”

“Are we—? Did we—?”

“Nothing’s official yet,” Rusty went on, “but it looks like we’re still in the running. The Beadlemyren are afraid of losing their own charter identity if they got folded into a big charter, like the Tobbs. So they decided instead to pick two little houses, and mash the three of ’em into a whole new one. We’re on their short list because of Hubert. The micromine project needs a mentar, and not a lot of little houses have one of their own like us.”

“You mean we’re not going to recycle him?”

“No, that was never the plan. Kale says they just wanted to shake him up a bit, make him think we would. You gotta admit, Hubert’s a lazy mentar. Sam’s spoiled him rotten.”

Bogdan looked out the window at Troy again. “You mean nobody told them about Hubert’s arrest?”

“Oh, they got told all right, more than once. They say they’re going to feed us some slack about it, though, and give us some time to straighten things out with the law. The Beadlemyren aren’t bad people, Boggy, once you get to know them. They also don’t mind a barroom brawl now and again and said someone oughtta show you how to duck.”

Bogdan got off the cot. There was a package of togs on the potting bench that April must have left for him. “But how can we get Hubert back if the hommers won’t even let us talk to him?”

“We’ll just have to figure that out. Kale’s talking to an autocounsel.”

When Bogdan was ready to leave the shed, he thought of something else to ask. “So, how’d your dates go at Rondy?”

Rusty pursed his lips and shook his head.

“Sorry.”

“But April got some good news. A matchmaker hit her up, and apparently there’s a big fish on the line.”

“April?” Bogdan vaguely remembered the Saurus woman in the ballroom. “That’s great!”

THE FASTEST WAY to pass a message into the null suite was through the radiation tunnel, a trip no living tissue or paste-based or mechanical mind or electronic device could survive. Meewee wrote a short note in Starkese on a scrap of paper and sent it through, hoping that by the time it arrived, its meaning in the metalanguage would still make sense to Wee Hunk’s backup. Then he went to the galley for breakfast.

Nearly an hour later Arrow said <Dr. Rouselle awaits you in the garage.>

Meewee hurried to the lifts and arrived in the garage just as Dr. Rouselle and a medbeitor from the null suite were lowering a hernandez jr. tank into the cargo well of a sedan. The portable tank consisted of a simple controller, a pump for recirculating amnio-foam, and a chrome chamber just large enough to accommodate a human head. Meewee looked around for the backup paste canister, but didn’t see it.

“Forgive me, please,” the doctor said in a lilting voice. “This—ah—biellette is loose?” She gave Meewee a meaningful glance and reached down to quickly open and shut the tank’s chamber door, just long enough to reveal Wee Hunk’s canister inside. Meewee reached down and pretended to check a coupling on the side of the tank.

“Looks tight to me,” he said and closed the cargo well. “Shall we go?”

Meewee and the doctor got into the car, and the fans revved up. <Arrow> he said <challenge the Wee Hunk in the tank.>

A moment later Arrow replied <Identity confirmed. The Wee Hunk in the tank says that the changing situation calls for a new Plan B for which we must make a detour to the federal building before proceeding to the clinic.>

<In that case, tell him to rehire the ’leens.>

FRED WAS CLEARING the breakfast table when the phone chimed. “It’s for you,” he called to Mary in the bedroom who was preparing for a day at the lake. Fred stayed in the kitchen nook and tossed breakfast scraps into the open mouth of the kitchen scupper and eavesdropped.

“You again,” she said.

“Good morning, Myr Skarland,” said a voice Fred did not recognize, not Cabinet’s. “Please check your DCO board.”

A moment later Mary said, “Why fire me just to rehire me?”

“An unfortunate mistake was made. Please note the bonus offered to smooth over the inconvenience. Your shift has already started, and if you accept our offer, you must leave for the clinic immediately. Will you come?”

Mary hesitated. “Is Myr Starke still alive?”

“She needs you now more than ever.”

Fred didn’t hear a reply from Mary, but the call ended, and she returned to the bedroom. He followed and stood in the doorway. She was dumping the beach blanket from her tote and repacking her work things, including the weird hat and the odor sample.

“I don’t appreciate you spying on my DCO business,” she said without looking at him, “and I’d bet that Nicholas wouldn’t like it either.” She quickly changed into a work ensemble.

“Your client,” Fred said, “is the eye of the storm. When you are with this client you are surrounded by danger. Danger you are not trained for. We have lost 10 of my brothers, 13 jerrys, 26 belindas, and 780 pikes—irretrievably—since this aff Market Correction started. And you want to add evangelines to the list? You had a good idea. Let’s call Nicholas. We’ll get its opinion on the whole thing. What do you say?”

“So, call Nick,” Mary said, gathering her things and coming to the door. “Any normal russ would.” Fred winced but continued to block her way, and she said, “I’m sorry to hear about your brothers and the rest. I really am, Fred. Now, move aside.”

Standing up straight, with his hands on his hips, Fred filled the door frame. He said, “You asked your caller if she was alive, but I didn’t hear the answer. Is Ellen alive?”

Mary was startled by the question.

“Oh, yes, I know your client, Mary. In fact, I once worked for the Starke family, so I should know what I’m talking about. That mentar who’s behind all of this does not have your best interest at heart, believe me.”

He reached into her tote and lifted the saucer hat. “You are just another tool for it to get what it wants. In this case, it wants the daughter.” He dropped the hat back into the tote and continued. “I assume that if she’s alive, she’s still unconscious. Don’t you find that a little bit suspicious? What does she need with companions right now? No offense to you and your sisters, but you’re no jennys.” Mary frowned, and Fred added, “I mean that in a nice way.”

“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.

The Blue Team bee, on the beam over Mary’s head, watched the human activity below with the dimmest of comprehension. Today, all of the humans seemed to be running hot.

The first medtech left in search of nose plugs, but Coburn stormed over to the evangelines at the controller and demanded, “What are you dittoheads doing?”

“Her father was a seared,” Mary said, “and quit using that word.”

“Get away from this equipment.”

“Relax, Coburn,” Hattie said. “No one’s harming your precious equipment.” She went to the controller herself and paged through a quick series of diagnostic reports. “So, Ellen had a stinker in the family. Why didn’t they tell us that a few days ago when it might have done some good?”

Coburn set his medkit on a tray next to the tank and laid out his instruments. “Lower armature,” he told the controller.

“Controller, hold up a sec,” Hattie said.

“Hattie, let me do my job. Concierge wants the deceased unplugged and morgued as soon as possible.”

“Give me two minutes,” Hattie said and continued paging through diagnostic reports. She settled on one that displayed a cross section of Ellen’s brain stem.

Mary stood next to Hattie and said, “Did you find something?”

“Did you, indeed?” said Concierge, who strolled in through the cottage door. “I don’t see anything,” it said, answering its own question, “except use of the controller by unauthorized personnel to input odor. Did it work? No, I see no response.” The tall mentar in its snowy white jacket stopped in front of Mary. “Myr Skarland, in the future, if you find employment in a Fagan facility, please bear in mind that only licensed personnel are permitted to operate clinic equipment. That includes the olfactory sampling port of a hernandez tank controller. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Concierge,” she said.

“I am barring you from this clinic,” Concierge continued. “Please leave at once.”

Neither Mary nor the other evangelines protested, but Hattie said, “It’s not her fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m the one who showed them how to sample odors and told them it was all right to do so.”

“I agree,” Concierge said, “and you shall leave with Myr Skarland. As for you, Medtech Coburn, why hasn’t Myr Starke been de-installed as I requested?”

Coburn quickly removed the wings of the tank lid and lowered the waldo armature into place. Its mechanical fingers immediately began removing tubes and wires from the skull. This got the Blue Team bee’s attention—a machine removing other machines from the prize.

“That’s more like it,” Concierge said. He looked at Hattie and Mary. “Why are you still here?”

Hattie said, “I am entitled to disciplinary protocol, which isn’t initiated until Applied People has received a written complaint from you. Unless you’re accusing us of endangering this patient? Is that what you intend to do? If so, I must say, it will be easy to prove that you’ve been aware of the evangelines’ so-called unauthorized use for days and said nothing.”

Concierge said, “As you wish. I’ve ordered campus security to escort you from the premises.” Concierge went to the door and said, “I am appalled by your lapse of professionalism.” It left the cottage and the door closed behind it.

Hattie, Mary, Cyndee, Alex, and Renata stood in stunned silence. Meanwhile, Medtech Coburn quietly tended to the plucking of Ellen’s skull.

Finally, Mary broke the spell. “Hattie, tell us what you found.”

Hattie shook her head and said, “I didn’t find anything, but Concierge thought I did, so there must be something to find.” Outside, there was the sound of footfalls on the garden path. The door swung open, and two security officers in clinic uniforms, a russ and a jerry, came in. The jerry bawled, “Security! Would Myren Beckeridge and Skarland please step this way.”

The women only stared at him.

“Do it now!” he commanded and extended his standstill wand with a loud snap. This was enough to tip the bee into action. It left the security of the blind spot and crawled to the underside of the ceiling beam.

Hattie, the only jenny present, said, “Officer Jerry, I understand you have a job to perform and all, but are you threatening me with a weapon?”

The jerry blanched. “Nothing personal, Nurse Jenny,” he said and telescoped his wand, “but you and the ’leen have to come with us—right now.”

“No, they don’t,” said another clinic guard who entered the cottage behind the jerry. It was a belinda of a slightly higher rank. “You’ve been reassigned,” she said. “Check your orders.”

The jerry did so and said, “They’re all yours, Lieutenant.” When the russ and jerry had left, the bee crawled back to its blind, and the belinda simply vanished.

“What just happened?” Renata said, but no one had an answer.

THE STARKE CAR set down in the clinic lot, and Meewee and Dr. Rouselle lifted the hernandez jr. tank out of the cargo well and lowered it into the arms of the medbeitor. Man, woman, and beitor traversed the parking lot and turned down the brick drive. When they reached the gatehouse, Meewee ordered the guard, “Drop the gate!”

The guard, a jerry, raised an eyebrow and said, “Excuse me?”

“I’m ordering you to drop the gate.”

The guard turned and called behind him, “Hey, Chaz, come here. You’ll want to see this one.”

A second jerry guard came over and said, “What’s going on?”

“He’s ordering me to drop the gate,” the first guard said, and the two of them had a chuckle. Then the second one said, “Swipe the post, myren.”

Having used up his small reservoir of bluster, Meewee nodded to the doctor and together they swiped the post.

“Myr Meewee,” said the guard, “it says here that you have FDO status, so you may pass. But I’m afraid that you, Dr. Rouselle, have no visitor privileges. And as for that,” he said, pointing to the medbeitor bearing the hernandez jr., “you’d better leave it out here.”

Meewee said, “Call Concierge at once. I demand to speak to it.”

“Speak away,” said the guard. “It’s always listening.”

“Concierge, I demand you let us pass.”

Concierge emerged through the pressure gate and greeted Meewee with a holo salute before turning its attention to the doctor. “Dr. Rouselle, what an honor,” it said, “and surprise. I’ve followed your career with interest. I had no idea you’d returned to the UD.”

“Thank you,” said the doctor.

Meewee broke in. “We didn’t come here to discuss careers.”

“What did you come here for?” asked the mentar.

“We’re here to assist Wee Hunk in removing Ellen Starke from your clinic immediately.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why hasn’t Wee Hunk informed me?”

“It’ll inform you now.” Meewee turned to the medbeitor and said, “Wee Hunk, tell Concierge we want to remove Ellen.”

The medbeitor projected a life-size version of Wee Hunk, but its image quality was poor, and it flickered. Meewee repeated his request, but the mentar seemed not to comprehend, and Meewee said, “Hello? Wee Hunk?”

“Yes?” said a new Wee Hunk that appeared opposite them. It was not flat or halting, but a solid, coyote-skin-clad Neanderthal in hyper-sharp definition. “Ah, Meewee, good to see you again,” it said. “And look what you’ve brought me, my missing backup. I was wondering where it had gotten itself off to.”

Identification failure, Arrow said.

The medbeitor projection next to Meewee ceased, and the portable tank buzzed for half a second. Wee Hunk said, “Sorry, Merrill, but as I told you this morning, Ellen has succumbed to her trauma. The doctors did all they could, but her injury was too extensive.”

Meewee ground his teeth. “That is bad news indeed, but we’ll see her anyway. At once.”

“Patience, old friend. Let’s let the staff clean her up a bit first.”

Dr. Rouselle peered at the Wee Hunk projection and said, “He is not Wee Hunk?”

“I’m afraid he’s an impostor,” Meewee said. It was time to launch Plan B. He stepped back a little, raised his hand, and brought it down sharply to his side.

Immediately a GOV appeared over the treetops and landed on the greensmoat next to the drive. Its gull wings sprang open, and six deputy marshals in blacksuits trundled out, armed with railgun carbines. A large emblem of the UDJD Marshal Service floated above them, and the pressure gate fell at their approach. They hustled right through the mentars Wee Hunk and Concierge, pausing only to swipe them their writ of habeas corpus. The clinic guards offered no resistance.

Meewee grasped both handles of the hernandez jr. and took it from the medbeitor. Clutching the portable tank to his chest, he hurried to get ahead of the deputies. “This way,” he shouted, skirting the scanway and S-barriers and leading them and the doctor through double doors marked “South Gate Plaza.” From the plaza, he found the path to Mineral Way and jogged past Quartz and Mica cottages to Feldspar.

Meewee led the charge up the garden path, but a marshal held him back at the door and signaled her squad to go in first. Meewee was breathing hard from exertion and exuberance. When the officers had all passed inside, he boosted the heavy tank in his arms and followed them through the door.

Only to find himself standing in the clinic parking lot next to his own car.

The deputies were milling around, bewildered.

“This is our car?” said Dr. Rouselle behind him.

BLUE TEAM BEE, in its blind atop the ceiling beam, detected a sudden barrage of clinic comm concerning possible intruders. The whole southern half of the campus was being placed on Yellow. All staffers were instructed to strongly encourage guests to move indoors without causing alarm. For the bee, these events were of a tactical nature and easy to parse. Intruders could mean allies.

The bee sent the wasp to South Gate to investigate. Blue Team Wasp flew to South Gate and lurked near a plaza path until a convenient pedestrian went by. The wasp rode into the gatehouse under a hat brim.

AN ASSAULT PARTY of UD Marshals running around in circles on the greensmoat and parking lot was just the sort of funny business that Fred had been watching for. He called a taxi to pick him up on top of the container. It took him down to South Gate and dropped him off in front of the gatehouse. Behind the pressure gate, two jerry guards were on duty, and behind them Fred glimpsed enough of the gatehouse to guess its basic layout from hundreds of similar facilities he had done duty in. There would be two offset, floor-to-ceiling vehicle barricades that, together with pressure gates on both ends, segmented the gatehouse into three independent blastproof blocks. It was a summit-class gatehouse, and he was glad he had ditched the idea of trying to smuggle a weapon through.

Fred went to the far end of the pressure gate and said, “Hey,” to the jerry standing behind it.

“Hey, yourself,” the jerry replied and opened a sentry window.

Fred swiped the post with his false palm, thereby starting the clock on Myren Planc and al-Hafir’s fictitious existence.

“Myr Planc,” said the guard, “what can we do for you?”

Fred relaxed a bit, relieved that his disguise had passed its first test. He was Myr Planc, and this was a jerry. “What are you asking me for, Myr Klem?” Fred said, reading the man’s name tag. “Why not ask your Visitor Log?”

The jerry said, “I already did, Myr Planc, and you’re not in it.”

Fred made a show of scratching his chin, which was a jerry habit. Jerrys scratched their chins whenever things didn’t add up. The guard frowned and said, “Knock it off.”

“Well, it’s a problem,” Fred said. “My boss is already paranoid enough about deep-body mechanics as it is. So he sends me down here to glass your shop, and the first thing I discover is you lost my appointment?”

The jerry said, “I doubt it’s even possible for Concierge to lose an appointment, Myr Planc.”

“No, wait,” Fred said. “That’s not the first thing I discover. The first thing I discover is you have a squad of deputy marshals chasing themselves around in circles in your greensmoat.” Fred smirked at the jerry, and the jerry smirked back.

“You mean those training exercises?” the guard said. “Give me a minute, Planc, and I’ll try to straighten out your problem.” The window closed, and Fred let out his breath. He watched the deputies across the greensmoat returning to the parking lot. They piled into a GOV and sailed away. Whatever their action was, it was a complete washout.

While feigning a yawn, Fred covertly popped a spitball from the identikit into his mouth. Then he noticed movement on the ground near him. A homcom slug was crawling across the driveway. Fred had to remind himself that he was in Decatur, not Chicago. Decatur still had a canopy in its sky. And it still had slugs.

The skin mastic that Fred wore was coded to Myr Planc, but slugs generally tasted cells deeper than that. The slug made several search grid switchbacks, then stopped and changed course, heading straight for Fred. It seemed to have a lock on him.

Fred took a couple steps closer to the pressure barrier. The slug kept coming, so he pressed his back closer, generating a zone of air turbulence around him. The pressure heated his skin painfully, but the slug stopped advancing. It had lost track of him and resumed its default gridding. When it set off across the drive, Fred stepped away from the gate. Immediately, Marcus’s pulsing icon appeared in his visor. There was an urgent message from the BB of R, and Fred dared not ignore it. But he couldn’t use his newly deeper voice with the mentar, so he glotted instead.

Yes, Marcus?

Oh, it is you, Londenstane. I was unsure. I am getting confusing signals from your most recent skullcap.

It’s me, Marcus. What can I do for you?

We need to discuss a BB of R bylaw.

Now?

Yes.

The slug, which had almost crossed to the greensmoat, stopped suddenly and idled in place.

By all means, Marcus. I’ve had a long week, it’s my day off, and you want to talk shop. Be my guest.

Actually, Myr Londenstane, your time off is germane to the bylaw in question. Tell me, do you know the brotherhood’s policy on taking free-lance assignments?

Of course. We’re against it.

Correct.

The slug started creeping again. It made a looping U-turn and followed its own track back toward Fred.

Ordinarily, continued the mentar, I don’t intrude on member’s personal affairs, but given our recent discussions, I have the obligation to ask you, are you currently or recently engaged in free-lance security work for—

Fred stepped backward into the gate. The slug paused, but the mentar kept talking—for a Myr al-Hafir?

Fred inched even closer to the gate until his skin felt like it was on fire and Marcus’s transmission broke up. A narrow slot opened in the gate next to him, and he ducked into the gatehouse. The guard, Klem, was waiting for him. “Concierge has arranged a private tour, Myr Planc,” he said. “It’s sending someone down from North Gate. Go through and wait in In-Block.” He gestured to the pedestrian scanway.

Fred entered the scanway and surrendered the various prints, specimens, and samples it requested. When it was time to spit, he chomped on the spitball he had tucked in his cheek and broke it, releasing a sour wad of artificial saliva that was coded to Myr Planc and which he squirted into the collection bowl. Then he stood on the red X, his arms outstretched, facing the battery of emitters, and soaked up waves of radiation, ultrasound, and tomographic lasers. The TUG identikit seemed to be holding up under the scrutiny of the multipronged biometric inspection, and as he stood there, trying to keep the faith, trying to still his racing heart, it occurred to him that scanway technology and the countermeasures designed to defeat it, including blackmarket identikits, had been rendered obsolete by the HomCom’s new nitwork. The nitwork was a much more efficient and elegant system. Whole colonies of the little beggars took up permanent residence in burrows under the skin where they tapped the host body’s bloodstream and PNS. They sampled you continuously, knew who you were, where you were, what you ate for lunch, who you ate it with, how often you engaged in sex, drugs, basketball, or whatever, and with whom, and all in real time. And most people weren’t even aware of their presence. Until you have to purge them, like the russes in the null lock. The new nitwork was a boon to law enforcement that would make his job much easier. His former job, that is. At the moment he was standing in a scanner with his arms held out in the modern sign of the crucifixion. Good thing for him he was in Decatur with its obsolete slugs, and not in Chicago.

The lights came up, and the usher line pointed Fred to the scanner exit. He left the scanner and was confronted by another guard, another jerry, who was studying the scanway control panel, one hand scratching his chin and the other resting on the handle of his baton.

“What?” Fred said.

“Nothing,” the jerry replied. “Just stand down a sec, Myr Planc. The nitwork can’t get a fix on you.”

Fred experienced a spasm of fear and surprise. “You have the nitwork here too?”

“Not yet,” said the guard, “but the readers are already being installed, and we’re training to use them.”

Fred felt enormous relief—a jerry’s learning curve was rather steep. “Oh, is that all?” he said. “You want to know why, if I’m from Gary, I don’t have any nits yet, right?”

The jerry gave him a sour look and pointed at the WAIT HERE box. Fred went to stand on the “A” in “WAIT” and glanced around. He was in Mid-Block, as he had figured. The vehicle S-path was blocked with more pressure barriers, and even the scanway exit behind him was shut. Fred’s face itched deep under the skin, not from nits but from the keratochitin scabs on his cheekbones and chin.

“Got it,” the jerry said, pleased with himself. “Your cells are swimming in HALVENE, so the nits don’t like you yet. You’ve been dry-cleaned lately, haven’t you?”

“Bingo.”

“It was easy,” the jerry continued. “We got another russie from Chicago with the same problem.” He opened a barrier, and an usher line appeared at Fred’s feet. “You’ll have to wait in In-Block for your escort, Myr Planc. Have a nice day.”

Fred followed the usher line to the inner block with mounting dread. Another dry-cleaned russ on the premises? Fred stopped dead when he saw him. Reilly Dell stood at the far end of the inner pressure gate, which dazzled in the noontime sun. A john in clinic livery approached the shimmering gate from the plaza side, and Reilly opened a slot for him to pass. Reilly and the john chatted for a while, and when Reilly turned to glance at Fred, his russ jaw dropped.

“Fred?”

MEDTECH COBURN LIFTED a floor tile to reveal a collapsible hose. He stretched the hose and coupled it to a spigot at the base of the hernandez tank. With a wrench he opened the tap, and the amber-colored syrup began to drain through the hose.

At the controller, Hattie disengaged the waldo armature that was plucking Ellen’s skull, and all its prehensile fingers went limp.

“Don’t do that!” Coburn yelled and went to the controller, but Hattie blocked his way. “Move aside,” he said and tried to shove past her.

“You don’t want to be touching me, myr,” the jenny said evenly.

“You heard Concierge,” Coburn protested. “It wants this done like now.”

“I did hear it, but apparently I don’t work here anymore.”

The level of amniotic syrup was inching down the side of the tank. Mary went to the front of the tank and turned the wrench, closing the tap.

“Are you crazy?” Coburn yelled at her and grabbed for the wrench, but Mary tossed it to Cyndee. The other evangelines, as though awakening from a dream, joined in to help. Cyndee threw the wrench out the back window. Meanwhile, Renata and Alex uncoupled the hose from the tank and floor drain and flung it out of the same window.

Hattie, ignoring the medtech, put the controller through its paces, retrieving and comparing streams of brain state reports. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I just know it. Mary, I need your help in the tank. Find a foil glove in Coburn’s medkit.”

Coburn loomed protectively over his open kit.

“Coburn, sweetheart,” Hattie said from the controller, “you’re slowing me down. I suggest you do the math.”

“What math?” said the young man.

“How many jennys are there in the world?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“About ten million, give or take, and we staff every clinic, hospital, spa, doctor’s office, and medical research center in the UD. This means that anywhere you’re liable to find employment, we’re there too. Now, tell me, my fair-faced boy, have you ever heard of the jenny bitch board?”

Apparently Coburn had, for the blood drained from his face.

“All I ask,” Hattie said, “is two lousy minutes.”

Without a word, Coburn stepped aside, and Mary found an elbow-length foil glove in his medkit. Hattie said, “Reach into the tank, Mary, and when I tell you to, squeeze our little mouse.”

Mary used the recessed tank steps to reach the top. She leaned over the rim and snaked her arm between the metal limbs of the armature. “Don’t nobody turn this thing on,” she said. The fumes of the amnio syrup were strong, and she breathed through her mouth, but it still made her dizzy.

Coburn stood next to Hattie at the controller, his arms crossed. “I think you’re all crazy.”

“You’re distracting me.”

Through Mary’s thin metal glove, the syrup felt warm and thick, and the skull was slick to the touch. Mary reached into the gauzy sling under it and found the fetus. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “I can feel its heartbeat.”

“That’s what we’re after, my girl,” Hattie said. She brought up a display of fetal vital signs. “All right, dear, give it a little squeeze.”

Mary was unsure. “How hard?”

“Just a gentle squeeze.”

Mary cupped her fingers around the pulsing lump and pressed it. “Like this?”

“Did you squeeze it?” Hattie said. “I couldn’t tell. Let go a second and do it again a little harder.”

Coburn said, “She’s not doing it right.”

“Yes, she is.”

“I’ll do it.” Coburn motioned Mary off the tank. “Raise the armature,” he told Hattie, and after donning a foil glove and climbing the steps, he plunged his arm into the tank. “Well?” he said.

Mary and the evangelines stood behind Hattie who pointed to the fetal heart bar that measured a rapid but normal pulse. “When you squeeze a heart,” she told them, “its pulse should spike in a purely reflexive response. It doesn’t involve higher brain functions. Even in a class three coma, it should react.”

“Well?” Coburn repeated.

“Nothing, darling. A steady one-eighteen.”

“That’s not possible,” he said, withdrawing his arm and peeling off the glove. “These controller units have triple confidence. They cannot be twigged. I am not believing this.”

“What’s wrong?” Mary said.

“False readings,” said Hattie. “The controller has been tampered with. We probably never had true readings. Someone didn’t want our patient to recover at all.”

The evangelines shared a collective shudder. They looked at each other with dismay. Mary turned to Hattie and said, “How can we help?”

Hattie began to say something but shut her mouth again.

“I believe you’ve helped enough,” Concierge said from behind Mary. The mentar’s doctorish persona stood inside the open door. “Coburn, you disappoint me,” it went on. “And the rest of you should have left when you had the opportunity.” As the mentar spoke, the armature lowered into the tank again, and the waldoes resumed plucking leads and tubes from the skull. The tank spigot opened, and with no hose attached to it, the amnio syrup gushed out onto the floor of the lower room.

“Everyone,” Concierge said in a commanding tone, “go outside for your own safety. Wait in the garden. The amnio fumes in here will make the air unbreathable. That means you too, Coburn.” The mentar stood with a hand on the open door, but no one moved, except Coburn who dashed to the tank to gather his medkit.

“Fine,” Concierge said. “Stay. It’ll make it easier to collect you. Good-bye.”

“Wait for me,” Coburn said and rushed after the mentar through the door.

ON THE WAY from the Decatur station to the Roosevelt Clinic, the two children escorting the lifechair attracted the interest of more than one curious media bee. “I demand my privacy!” Kitty yelled at them, and the mechs quickly vacated her personal zone.

“Don’t,” Bogdan said. “We need witnesses.”

Kitty appraised the boy and didn’t reply.

“Belt Hubert,” Bogdan said to the chair, “when was the last time you tried to speak to Hubert?”

“Not since my connection was severed at 02:21 Tuesday.”

“Well, try now. Call the HomCom and demand to talk to him.”

“Done. They have no knowledge of him.”

“I see. Well, put this on your To-Do list. Call them every five minutes and demand to talk to him. Also, find some kind of lawyer domainware and incorporate it into yourself.”

Kitty said, “What are you doing?”

“Belt Hubert may not be much, but he’s something, and we need everything we got.”

A block away from the clinic, Bogdan stopped the chair and looked up at the half-dozen bees that were pacing them overhead. He motioned them to come down. One of them descended and opened a frame. A head identified its media affiliation and said, “Is this the Chicago Skytel Hacker Samson Harger Kodiak?”

“Yes, the one and only,” Bogdan said, “and we are his housemeets.”

“It looks like you’re heading for the Roosevelt Clinic. Are you, and if so, why?”

Kitty shoved her way in front of Bogdan and said in her best retrogirl manner, “Because they’re holding Ellen Starke there against her will. You heard me—Ellen Starke—and Samson is her father, and he’s going to rescue her.”

Immediately, the rest of the bees were on top of them, more heads peppering them with questions.

Bogdan had to yell to be heard, “And another thing, the HomCom has disappeared Samson’s mentar, Hubert. The same way they disappeared Samson last century and wouldn’t let him go till they seared him. Samson Paul Harger Kodiak is the last and first stinker. We demand his daughter and his mentar be released immediately!” Then he and Kitty climbed on the chair and sped down the last street. By the time they’d reached the iron arch, hundreds of more bees—media, witness, private, novella, and homcom—had joined them. The children and chair rolled through the arch and led the swarm down the red brick drive to the shimmering gate.

THE AMNIO SYRUP level in the tank fell below the crown of the skull. The thick syrup spewed from the open valve at the bottom of the tank, across the floor, and into the lower room, soaking rugs and furniture.

Hattie and the evangelines were standing next to open windows for air. Hattie drew a couple of deep breaths, then went to the hernandez tank and tried unsuccessfully to close the valve with her bare hands. She came away with pant legs and shoes saturated with the strong brew.

“I think this stuff is fully charged,” she said, kicking a spray of syrup as she returned to the window. “Even without a tank or controller, it ought to support brain tissue for an hour or so, I think. Our problem is that even if we had a medevac standing by, anywhere we took her we’d just have to face Concierge at another location.”

“What about a Longyear clinic?” Cyndee said.

“Fagan Health Group owns them,” Hattie replied.

“An emergency room?”

“Fagan Health Group.”

“What about a large animal veterinarian?” Renata said.

“Like one who does thoroughbred horses,” Alex added.

“Fagan’s got those too.”

“What about,” Mary said, “the Machete Death Grudge? I saw them in Millennium Park last night. They have severe trauma tanks.”

Hattie went to a shelf and upended a glass vase, adding its tulips and water to the mess on the floor. “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said and filled the vase with syrup from the open spigot.

Seeing this, the evangelines set to work collecting and filling vases, a teapot, a fruit bowl, waste bins—anything that might hold liquid. Mary filled her large tote bag too.

“Don’t let the syrup stay in contact with your skin for too long,” Hattie warned them as she climbed to the top of the tank, where she unscrewed the skull from its chrome halo.

“Too late,” Renata said. “My feet are soaked.”

Mary’s were too. The amnio concentrate felt ice cold but burned at the same time.

“And check the containers,” Hattie went on. “Amnio eats through most everything. Cyndee, fill the foil gloves.”

Indeed, the dresser drawers and waste bins were leaking, and even the glass vases were sweating syrup. But not Mary’s tote bag. “Think it’ll hold?” Hattie said, holding the glistening skull and its gauzy stump over it.

Mary said, “I think so. The lining folds out into an emergency hazmat suit.”

“It’ll hold then,” the nurse said and lowered the head into Mary’s tote. Then she looked around, wiping her arms on her uniform. The fruit bowl, the only other container large enough to hold the head, was sagging like warm wax, syrup spilling over its brim. Only the tote bag and foil gloves were still intact. The nurse held up a glove, which contained about two liters of syrup, and said, “We need more like this.” She unlocked the drawers of the supply carts for them to search. “Tie ’em off like this,” she said, demonstrating with her own. They found three more gloves and filled and tied them.

“FOG,” SAID THE belinda marshal in charge, “military grade.”

“Can’t you penetrate it?” Meewee said, handing off the portable tank to the medbeitor. “The clinic is obstructing justice!”

“Not anymore it’s not,” the belinda said. She made a mount-up signal to her deputies. “Your writ has just been rescinded in Superior Court.”

“You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you?” he yelled at the officer’s back. She boarded the GOV and didn’t even bother to reply. The doors shut, and off it flew—Wee Hunk’s Plan B.

Dr. Rouselle came over to Meewee and patted his shoulder. “It’s too bad that she died,” she said.

He brushed her hand away. “Save your condolences, Doctor.” He turned to the medbeitor and rotated the hernandez jr. tank in its outstretched arms until he could open the chamber door.

<Wee Hunk, are you in there?>

No reply.

Meewee reached in and removed the paste canister. It was very warm, and when he jiggled it, it sloshed. He closed the chamber door and tossed the canister of ruined paste into the backseat of the Starke sedan. “You, machine,” he said to the medbeitor, “follow me.” He led the medbeitor and portable tank across the parking zone to the brick drive, where he stopped to look at the clinic wall and pressure gate. There appeared to be two children and a lifechair waiting there. The greensmoat was aswarm with hundreds of bees charging about in every direction. More victims of the military fog.

Meewee turned to Dr. Rouselle, who had followed him. “I’m going in,” he said. “I’ll leave the tank at the gate if I have to and bring her head out in my arms. Before you decide to accompany me or not, you should keep in mind that the Wee Hunk who promised you a field hospital is kaput, and the new Wee Hunk will probably renege on the deal.”

He turned while she was still translating his words and started walking. <Arrow, is it true that you know kill codes?>

THE RETROKIDS AND chair made it to the gatehouse, but their cloud of witnesses got no closer than the greensmoat. A sentry window cleared in the gate, and a jerry guard looked out at the bees and then at them and said, “Swipe the post.”

“Belt Hubert,” Kitty said, “swipe for Samson.”

The jerry consulted something in his visor and looked down through the window at Samson’s bald head poking out from the lifechair blanket. “Good afternoon, Myr Kodiak,” he said. “You do not appear on any of our guests’ FDO, so I can’t let you in.”

“Did you hear that?” Bogdan shouted toward the street. The bees had all regrouped on the street and were hovering in neat rows over the clinic shrubbery. “They won’t let him in!” he shouted. “Belt, relay our discussion to the media bees.”

The guard said, “Please turn your scooter around, myren, and leave the premises.”

“Did you hear that?” Bogdan shouted. “They want we should leave.”

“I’ve already relayed that information as you requested,” Belt Hubert said. “I’ve patched them into our discussion.”

Samson raised his hand over the basket rim and said, “My daughter!” in a chair-amplified whisper.

“Oh, for crissake, stinker,” the guard said, “go home.” The window closed and the guard’s figure receded behind the translucent gate.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Samson whispered. “It’s not smart to piss me off.” But the guard kept going, and in a moment the chair started backing up. The retrokids followed, but after a dozen meters the chair stopped.

Kitty said, “Keep going, Belt. What’s holding you?”

“I can’t go any farther,” the chair replied, “or I won’t be able to find the gate again.”

“So what? We’re going home,” Kitty said. “Aren’t we?”

No one replied, and in a moment, she looked from the chair to the pressure gate and said, “No, Sam, don’t do it.” She climbed up and leaned over the basket. “No, Sam, not this way.”

Samson’s stiff old face crinkled into a smile, and he brushed the girl’s cheeks with his finger. “Kitty, I loved you all these years.” The girl began to cry, and he added, “I hate to leave you now.”

“And I you, Sam.”

“Give us a kiss.”

Kitty leaned in to kiss him. Bogdan climbed up on the other side.

“Hello, boy.”

“Hello, Sam. Are you going all the way this time?”

“Unless they let me see her.”

“Do you think you’re far enough away to get up any speed?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Samson said. “Give me a kiss and then take Kitty and go wait in the street.”

“We want to wait here.”

“Don’t argue. Give me a kiss and go.”

The boy kissed him.

Samson said, “I love you, Boggy. Do yourself a favor and grow up.”

“Like I have a choice.”

With a last farewell, Bogdan and Kitty hopped off the lifechair. Kitty took Bogdan by the arm and said, “Come on. I can’t watch.” The two retrokids left the chair and Samson and walked up the drive.

“I MEAN, REALLY,” Reilly said from his post next to the gate. “It’s uncanny how much you resemble him.” Reilly’s uniform was as relaxed as the russ, himself, seemed to be, and his hands were free of weapons.

Fred paced inside the WAIT HERE box. The chronometer in the corner of his visor was counting down the short shelf life of his disguise. “Will you please let it drop, Officer Dell?” he pleaded. “Of course I look like your friend. We all look like your friend. We’re clones, for crying out loud!”

“Fred always likes to point out the obvious too.”

Fred turned his back on his friend and continued calibrating his cap and visor system, which he had started while still up in the container van. The system he’d obtained from the TUGs was a reliable law-enforcement model, but it was designed to be controlled by an onboard subem or valet, neither of which Fred had. Its manual controls were cumbersome, to say the least, and not always intuitive. Fred instructed his cap to query the clinic’s system for station reports, but he had no access privileges. He did get the visitor kiosk to open, and he selected a campus map. It was a tourist aid, highlighting only the major buildings and landmarks and not drawn to scale. But it was all he had, so he pasted it into his Theater Map to serve as a base layer. In his visor, he appeared on it as a steady blue dot in a square symbol labeled “South Gate Entrance.” No other personnel showed up, not even Reilly standing behind him.

Reilly began talking to someone on his comlink. He mumbled his part of the conversation. On his belt were a sidearm and a standstill wand, both of which would be coded to his ID and useless to anyone else. The only weapon Reilly had that Fred could use was his baton. His uniform seemed to be lightly armored, as was Myr Planc’s own, but his cap seemed to be of a much higher quality. And of course Reilly had all of the clinic’s systems at his disposal, including backup.

Fred cursed when he realized he was sizing up his friend as though he were the enemy. Why couldn’t he have been another jerry? He continued to watch his oldest friend and batchmate in the rear view of his visor. Suddenly Reilly’s suit armor stiffened, and the WAIT HERE box on the floor turned into a FOLLOW ME usher line. It led back the way Fred had come, back to the middle block.

“What gives?” Fred said.

“The clinic has just gone to Orange,” Reilly said matter-of-factly, as though it happened all the time. “As a precaution, we ask all civvies to follow the usher lines to more secure locations. That means you, Myr Planc.”

“Orange Alert? Is there trouble?”

Reilly smiled disarmingly. “Let’s just move it along, myr. I have to lock down this section.”

Fred could not afford to lose ground now, and he said, “Let me stay here, brother. I’ll be quiet.”

It was the wrong kind of request for a russ to make of another russ on duty. Reilly read it for the stalling tactic it was, and his whole demeanor changed. He came fully alert, and his body assumed a ready stance. “Do as I instruct, Myr Planc,” Reilly said in a mild voice. “Turn around and follow the usher line. Do it now.”

BLUE TEAM WASP had successfully reached the outer block of the gatehouse without detection and there identified the probable intruder as the hankie and two children, backed up by about a thousand bees. None of them had managed to penetrate gatehouse security. The wasp reported this to Blue Team Bee, who recalled it to the cottage, but the clinic went Orange before it could return, and it became trapped in the middle block.

WHEN MEEWEE AND the doctor were halfway down the brick drive, Wee Hunk appeared before them and said, “Ah, Merrill, and Dr. Rouselle, you’re still here.”

“Don’t waste our time,” Meewee said and attempted to walk through the holo, but the mentar held up his hands and said, “Please hear me out.”

Meewee stopped. “Make it brief,” he said and added a challenge in Starkese, “Every second is precious, and too many have been squandered already.”

“I disagree, old friend,” the caveman replied. “We gave it our best, but we failed. Ellen is lost, and no amount of grandstanding on your part can bring her back.”

None of what the mentar said answered the ID challenge, and Meewee said, “Don’t call me your friend. You are not Wee Hunk, or at least not the Wee Hunk who was my friend. I suggest you stay out of my way, or I’ll have Arrow deal with you. He can do it, you know. You were right about that.”

“Have Arrow deal with me? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you wish to be confrontational, I am more than your match.” The caveman shook his head when he heard what he was saying. “Merrill, Merrill, listen to us. I told you on Monday—did I not?—that I don’t care about your damn Oships. All I care about is the well-being of my sponsor—my former sponsor—and out of respect for her memory, I cannot have you charging about demanding her head.”

“If Ellen is really irretrievable, then let us see her—in person— and I’ll quit.”

“There, see? You can’t help yourself.”

“Enough of this,” Meewee said and went around the mentar.

“You force my hand, your grace,” Wee Hunk said. “I’ve just removed your name from Ellen’s FDO. The guards won’t let you through the gate.”

Meewee stopped and glanced at the pressure gate at the bottom of the drive. The lifechair he’d noticed earlier had left the gate and parked a few meters away, along with the two children. Meewee’s shoulder ached fiercely. He had pulled a muscle hauling the portable tank around like a young fool, and he massaged his neck as he tried to figure out what to do next. Something the mentar had just said reminded him of Cabinet—the fact that Ellen was his former sponsor.

“Good grief,” he said. “You’ve already passed through probate, haven’t you?”

“Yes, actually, this morning when Ellen was declared irretrievable.”

Like Cabinet after Eleanor’s death, Wee Hunk had returned from probate compromised, and probably not even aware of it. Something in the probate process had breached the shell to their personality buds. He had no idea if the breach was intentional or not, but it didn’t necessarily mean they were contaminated, did it? Cabinet was continuing to run Starke Enterprises as it always had; Wee Hunk had said so himself. And if Ellen were, in fact, irretrievable, then Wee Hunk’s behavior was perfectly correct, while he, himself, was acting like a callous fool. Meewee had to admit, it was never about the girl’s well-being for him, but only about the project. He was obsessed with the damn Garden Earth.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll leave, but at least show us Ellen’s death certificate.”

“That I can do,” the mentar said and opened a frame of the document, with verified sigs of clinic doctors.

“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.

There was a burning pain in Mary’s arm where a fléchette had passed through without striking bone. Her sleeve was bright with blood, but the wound seemed minor, and she paid it no attention. It was the tote she was afraid for. A fléchette had entered but not exited, and syrup seeped down its side. One of Cyndee’s bladders was also leaking. “Here,” Cyndee said, thrusting it at Mary, “put this one in the bag and this one in your togs. The clinic wall”—pointing in the direction with a stick—“is over there. Not far, maybe a quarter klick. When you reach it, turn right.”

“What about you?”

Cyndee probed the ground with the stick and pried up a large rock. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’re crazy,” Mary said.

“So are you, Mary Skarland. When you get out, send crash carts.” Cyndee kissed her sister, gathered up her rock, kissed her sister again, and headed back the way they had come.

THE LIFECHAIR IDLED twenty meters from the pressure gate.

“What about the distance?” Samson said. “Will we get up enough speed? I don’t want to die of a broken ankle.”

Belt Hubert said, “I’m releasing your lap belt and uncoupling your Foley. That way you’ll fly off and hit head first.”

“You’re a good helper.”

“Thank you. Ready?”

“Tell them this is for Ellen Henry Starke.”

“The media is still patched in.”

“She needs me, and I’m coming.”

The chair’s micro-turbines revved up, and the chair thrummed with energy.

“Ready?” Belt Hubert repeated.

“Is Kitty clear yet?”

WHEN MARY REACHED the imposing clinic wall with her leaking tote, she was beyond exhaustion. She slumped in a near faint behind a large oak. Her breath whipsawed through her open mouth. The tote bag lay next to her feet, its side wet with syrup and blood. She wrenched it open and looked in at her passenger, afraid to see a ruined mockery of their sacrifice.

The skull lay in the corner of the tote, in a puddle of syrup, its crown completely exposed to the air. The bone was pockmarked with holes where wires and tubes had run. Scraps of raw skin hung from it.

Mary reached her bare arm into the syrup and hunted for the fetus. She thought she felt its heartbeat but couldn’t be sure. The skull’s eyes, in their lidless sockets, seemed to follow her.

Mary tried to untie the knot in the foil glove bladder, her last one, but it was too tight. She searched her pockets for something sharp. She tried to bite through it. Then she heard a buzzing sound next to her ear and was startled by a mech hovering there. It had a jeweled head of blue, and Mary thought it must be a clinic bee.

The bee alighted on the foil glove for a moment, and when it lifted off, there was a thumb-sized hole in the glove. Mary poured the syrup over the head, meanwhile keeping an eye on the bee. It seemed docile enough, but when she tried to stand up, it opened a tiny frame with a Uglyph that meant Keeping Still. Immediately, she heard footfalls crashing through the undergrowth. She huddled against the tree trunk and held her breath, wondering if the pikes’ visors could image through solid oak.

The footfalls grew nearer. Mary looked all around. She was trapped. Suddenly she was staring into a mirror. Her own grimy face startled her. But it wasn’t a mirror. It was a holofied sim of herself, complete down to the bloody uniform and tote. Her mirror image showed her a “You Are Here” map of the clinic grounds, with a pulsing arrow pointing the way to South Gate. Mary was closer to the gatehouse than she had thought. Then her sim double got up and ran in the opposite direction.

Mary heard a grunt of surprise on the other side of the tree, followed by the swoosh of fléchettes. The pike swore under his breath when he missed the decoy, but he did not pursue her at once. Instead he called in. He spoke in low tones, but Mary heard his half of the exchange.

“Repeat that,” he said. “Negative, she’s heading east toward A-three-six.” His tone sounded more inconvenienced than concerned. There was a mechanical click as he reloaded his weapon. “How’s Reggi doing? Say again. No, deploy the battle lid and clean up the mess. That’s an order.” The sound of his voice trailed off in the direction the bee had lured him.

Mary waited until the pike had disappeared into the trees before rolling the tote around Ellen’s head, tucking it under her arm, and dashing to South Gate Plaza. She didn’t slow down until she reached the pressure gate. It was shut solid. There were two shapes on the other side. “Reilly?” she cried. “It’s me, Mary.”

Reilly’s reply came through a speaker over her head. “Mary? What’s happened to you? Are you hurt?”

Mary looked down at herself and felt her arm with her fingers. “No, Reilly, but they’re killing my sisters. Please let me in.”

“No can do, Mary. We’re in Orange. We’re locked down. But I’m ordering a crash cart for you. Hang in there; help is coming.”

As though from a distance, Mary heard the voice of another russ in Reilly’s intercom. He was shouting at Reilly to drop the gate.

“Reilly,” Mary said, “I don’t need a crash cart, but send carts to Feldspar Cottage. There’s three—four dead there. And one more behind me in the woods.” She waved her arm behind her where she and Cyndee had parted. “But, Reilly, please, bend the rules for once, can’t you, and let me in.”

Inside the gatehouse, Reilly unhooked his baton and pointed it at Fred as he replied to Mary, “I would do anything in the world for you, Mary. You know I would, but you ask the impossible. I’m forbidden to open the gate while we’re in Orange.”

“At least take this through,” Mary said and held out the rolled-up tote. Fred approached the gate, but Reilly jabbed him with the baton. “I won’t tell you again, Planc. Leave this block at once.”

A shower of fléchettes bounced against the gate above Mary’s head. She ducked low to the ground and ran along the gate to the end of the plaza where, with a parting look, she disappeared down a path. Reilly watched her go, and Fred used the distraction to wrench the baton from his hands. A man in a groundskeeper uniform approached the gate and watched them struggling for a moment before crossing the plaza and taking the same path as Mary.

Fred slipped behind Reilly and caught him in a choke hold with the baton. He pressed him against the hot pressurized air. “Open the gate!” He screamed.

WHEN MEEWEE, THE doctor, and the medbeitor passed the lifechair, Meewee saw that there was an emaciated passenger inside. “What do you suppose?” he said.

“I’ll look,” the doctor replied and stayed back, but before Meewee advanced much farther, the chair tooted its horn and shot past him, accelerating at a frightful speed directly at the pressure gate.

He’s going to ram it, Meewee thought in disbelief. There was hardly time to blink. he sputtered in the convoluted metalanguage

The pressure gate dissipated even as the lifechair reached it. The chair passed through and braked hard. The guards leaped aside as it flew past them, tires screeching. It came to a halt in front of the massive vehicle barricade. The chair stopped, but its passenger kept going.

SAMSON WENT ALL the way—in honest-to-God slow motion. At least the suicides at Moseby’s Leap had gotten that part right. Samson felt himself lift gently from the basket and float through the air. The barricade wall seemed distant, and there was ample time to take everything in.

To say I have no regrets would be a lie, he mused. I have plenty of them. I regret not being a better citizen, for example. I regret not being a better champion for the seared. I regret not making the most of every single blessed day of my life. But most of all, I regret not being a better man to Jean and Eleanor, and a better father to you. I suppose you might have been a better daughter as well, but I don’t hold that against you. And thank you for this marvelous parting gift of an opportunity to go out with a bang. I’m going to light a big candle for you, Ellie. Hope it helps.

The wall grew close enough to make out the pockmarked texture of its surface, like craters of the Moon, and Samson remembered his honeymoon with Eleanor. She had pulled him aside and told him she loved him more than all the craters of the Moon.

“GOOD GAIA!” MEEWEE cried. “Stop! Stop!” The lifechair braked in time, but the passenger, wrapped in a blanket, flew headlong into the wall, hitting it with a resounding thud. Meewee ran to see. He ran into the open gatehouse where one of the guards stopped him. “The man,” Meewee gasped, gesturing wildly at the crash victim, who lay in a heap against the barricade. A foul smell filled the place, and smoke rose from the crumpled form. Was that a man?

Dr. Rouselle shouted, “I am a doctor.” She and the medbeitor had caught up, but the guard prevented her from lending assistance. The other guard used his baton to unwrap the man’s blanket, and he sprayed the corpse with fire suppressant.

“That won’t help, I think,” the doctor said, sniffing the air. “He is a seared.”

But the smoke cleared, and the victim lay like a broken twig on the concrete floor.

The gateway chimed, and the guard shooed them toward it. “It’s all over,” he said. “Nothing to see.”

Meewee, remembering his mission, refused to budge. “I’m going through, Myr Jerry,” he said. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“Listen to you,” the guard said, drawing his standstill wand. The gate sprang up behind Meewee, but a slot opened, and the guard said, “Go on now. This is your last warning.”

Just then, there was a snapping sound from the corpse, and another, like firecrackers going off. The guard hesitated and turned to watch. The doctor took cover behind the medbeitor, and the other guard ducked into the scanway entrance. Meewee used the distraction to sidle toward the far end of the block where the vehicle entrance gaped wide open, and he reached it just as two powerful blasts filled the block with flaming human bits.

WHEN THE GATE dropped, Fred thought that Reilly had done it, but when he loosened his hold on the man, Reilly fell to the floor. Fred stood for some time looking down at his friend. Fred had been sure he was straining against Reilly’s face mask, but now he saw that Reilly had never deployed the mask. Fred crouched to feel for a carotid pulse and found none. Ugly bruises from the baton crisscrossed his throat, and the front of his uniform was singed from the heat of the gate.

“Medic!” Fred called at the top of his lungs. Something small and fast, the bluish blur of a flying mech, streaked out through the open gateway and shot down the path after Mary and the pike. Fred was drawn along too, but he could not leave Reilly like this. “Medic!” The gateway chimed a warning—the gate was going back up—and Fred had ten seconds to decide on which side he wanted to be when it did. “Medic!” he called desperately, searching through Reilly’s pockets for a cryosac. He couldn’t leave him like this, but at the last moment, he jumped across the gateway groove just as the gate sprang up. He was inside the clinic.

MARY’S PLAN HAD been to follow the south wall till it met the west wall, then turn right and follow that wall to West Gate. But she had already lost sight of the wall and was running blind along unfamiliar paths. She forced herself not to think of Reilly. The man wouldn’t bend the rules even to save her life. She couldn’t believe it.

Actually, she could believe it. Reilly was a russ through and through. Duty over all.

There were scraps of color in the woods. Two clinic guests and a retinue of hollyholo sims were strolling the path ahead. She hollered at them and raced to catch up. The syrup sloshed in the tote under her arm.

The guests stopped to gape at her. They were two of a kind—large, agile, gorgeous—and might have been brother and sister. As Mary approached, they lifted their hands and pointed their closed fists at her, aiming the rings on their fingers.

“Halt!” shouted the woman.

Mary stopped a couple of meters away and hunched over for breath. “You—must—help me,” she gasped.

The man said, “I’ve already reported you to clinic security. They are on their way, so I suggest you leave us alone.”

“Not clinic security. Call the Command. Go outside the gate and call them. Tell them I have Starke.” She patted the tote. “Call a medevac. Please help me!”

The affs regarded her coolly, keeping a bead on her with their rings. The hollyholos accompanying them, who had been quiet until then, now piped up to fill the silence. One of them, a tall woman, said, “What have you done with the ransom?”

“There’s no ransom,” Mary said. “I’m not kidnapping her. She’s my client.”

Another of the sims was Dr. Ted. Mary appealed to him, “You tell them. You tell them what’s happening.”

The sim turned to the others and said, “This girl is suffering from a brain pox and is clearly delusional. Avoid intimate contact with her at all costs.”

The aff woman began to wave her free hand. Mary turned and saw the groundskeeper coming toward them. He was swatting at a bee as he jogged. The bee in turn was batting itself against the man’s visor. At first Mary thought she’d be safe among these affs, ungracious though they were, but as the pike drew near, she panicked and ran again.

She ran over a little rise into a stand of beech trees. Fléchettes riddled the tree trunks around her. One sliced through the flesh at her side, but she hardly noticed. She came across a path and took it. She was beyond all calculation. Her only thought was to outrun the sounds behind her.

These sounds changed abruptly. The zing of fléchettes was replaced by the whine of laser fire. Two separate frequencies meant two different guns. She hugged a tree and peeked from behind it to see an amazing sight. A mech was firing at the pike. The pike had switched his weapon to laser mode and was sweeping the air with bursts of light, but he was unable to hit the mech at such close range. The mech, on the other hand, easily hit the pike, but its comparatively low-wattage lasers were no match for the pike’s armor. Undeterred, the mech continued to hit him, targeting only three points on the pike’s body and hitting those points repeatedly: his face mask, his groin, and the helmet seal at the back of his neck. The pike covered these spots as best he could with his gloved hands, but he couldn’t cover all three at once, and the mech circled and crossed the man’s head, almost too fast to see, firing a staccato stream of pulses. The man returned fire with choked spreads, like laser birdshot. His wild shots gouged smoking holes in the trees around him and brought down boughs and branches upon himself.

Back and forth, the mech flew, hitting its targets repeatedly. If its fuel held, it would eventually wear through the armor. Mary was fascinated by this deadly ballet, but could not stay to watch. She looked all around for the wall. That’s when she saw the second pike. He was standing very still, holding his carbine at his side, letting it self-target. The gun discharged a prolonged pulse that raced through the woods and hit the mech. The mech exploded as its plasma reserve was ignited. The concussion knocked the groundskeeper off his feet.

The second pike lowered his carbine and gestured to Mary to stand still. A utility cart, like the one at the cottage, rolled up behind him.

FRED HEARD THE explosion and set his visor to calculate its location. As he ran, the ground he covered was added to the theater map under construction in the corner of his visor. It was a growing band of known terrain in an unknown territory. The explosion had come from an unexpected direction. If it marked Mary’s location, it would mean that she was doubling back to the plaza in a large arc.

Fred ran toward the explosion marker in his map. He crossed several footpaths and climbed small wooded hills. The terrain was rich in natural cover, which his visor mostly filtered out. Suddenly he was buzzed by a mech, bluish, like the one that had streaked from the gatehouse. He guessed it wasn’t a clinic mech, but didn’t know how it figured into the action. It circled him twice and flew off. Suddenly all of the unknown territory in Fred’s map was filled in. Not only that, but personnel markers appeared, and he had access to clinic comm. Fred paused in order to analyze the situation. Two of the markers were to his left and receding at a good pace. One of them, flagged as armed, was pursuing the other, who was unarmed—Mary? To his right, another marker was at the location of the explosion. It was flagged as armed and uninjured, but unconscious. There was another marker much farther inside the clinic. It was marked by a battlefield lid, which meant it was a casualty. Fred couldn’t read its vitals, but a picture was quickly forming in his mind. Pikes often came in tactical teams of three. These three had been sent to destroy Ellen Starke, but ran into trouble. One was down. A second was stunned by the explosion. And the third was pursuing Mary.

Fred turned to follow Mary but stopped again. She was too far away to reach in time. He needed another plan. He knew that the pike chasing Mary had to be wondering who he was and what he was doing there. The pike could see in his own visor that Fred was unarmed, yet wearing body armor, and that he wasn’t attached to clinic security. The pike had to be watching Fred’s marker on his own map with growing apprehension, for he had made a serious mistake. He hadn’t expected to run into a loose russ, and left his teammate vulnerable. If russes were predictable, pikes were doubly so. They never left their brothers behind. Clients be damned.

On Fred’s map, the pike slowed down, a calculated move. He was still within striking distance of Mary, but he was giving Fred a chance to catch up, luring him away from his teammate. A russ would surely take the bait, especially if his duty was to save the Starke girl, and Fred nearly went for it. The Starke girl wasn’t his client this time, though. This time he was his own client. The downed pike was just over the next rise, and on a counterintuitive impulse, Fred rushed there instead.

Fred topped the hill and crouched close to the ground to study the fallen man who lay amid a litter of shattered and smoking tree branches. His groundskeeper uniform had been burned off at his shoulder, revealing an armored suit underneath. His breathing seemed regular, and his suit looked intact. His carbine lay several meters away in the grass.

Fred scampered down the hill and retrieved the gun. It had timed out, and he brought it to the pike. He took the fallen man’s left hand—pikes were southpaws—and wrapped it around the grip. The gun controls became enabled, and Fred reset the force and shape of the laser pulse to its highest, narrowest setting. In his visor he saw that the other pike had left off pursuing Mary and was heading back to him. Excellent! If his new friend here cooperated, Fred had a target and a weapon.

Fred pushed the pike’s index finger into the trigger guard and laid his own finger over it. He pulled the man’s body around a little and lay down behind it.

But the pike’s eyes fluttered; he was coming around. Suddenly his free hand made a fist and roundhoused Fred on the side of his head. Fred’s cap took most of the blow, but even so, his ear sang.

They struggled for the gun, the pike punching Fred savagely. Fred was losing control, so he pressed the pike’s trigger finger and squeezed off a shot. A terrific bolt of light erupted from the gun so close to Fred’s face that it dazzled him, despite his visor. The blast rived the trunk of a nearby tree like a lightning strike, splitting it in two. On the way, it vaporized the pike’s right hand.

The pike gasped, and his suit quickly sealed his stump with battlewrap. Fred wrenched the carbine and pressed the barrel under the pike’s chin.

“Tell your pal to stop where he is!” Fred ordered him.

The pike didn’t respond. His pupils closed to pinpoints. His suit was doping him for the pain. The other pike was almost in sight. Fred poked the muzzle of the gun hard against the man’s throat and repeated his order.

The pike smiled in drugged serenity. “I see you are unarmed, friend.”

“What do you call this, friend?” Fred said and jabbed him again with the muzzle.

“A soft cock if you kill me with it.”

He was right. The moment the pike died, his gun would shut down, leaving Fred weaponless.

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Fred said and carefully re-aimed the gun. He fired again, taking off the side of the pike’s helmet, his ear, and a strip of his scalp. Before the suit could patch itself, Fred grabbed a splintered branch from the ground and stuck its pointy end several millimeters up the pike’s exposed ear canal.

“Lie still!” he yelled in the man’s good ear. But the pike struggled all the more fiercely, so Fred shoved the stick in until it passed through his brain and jammed up against the inside of his skull. The pike convulsed a couple of times and went limp. On his map, the pike was flagged injured. With any luck he would take a while to die.

Meanwhile, the other pike’s marker stopped just over the next rise, and Mary was making good time back to South Plaza.

“Such a deal,” Fred said and reset the carbine’s spread pattern.

MARY CAME TO a path she recognized. To her surprise, she wasn’t far from the plaza where she had started. On impulse, she turned left, away from South Gate and toward the central complex of clinic buildings. She’d feel safer there, and from there she could choose any of the other gates. But the blue bee, her guardian angel, intercepted her and urged her toward South Gate with pulsing arrows.

Vehicles, both homcom and police, filled South Gate Plaza, but no medevac ambulance. Mary shifted her terrible burden from one arm to the other and approached a belinda in a hommer uniform, but a crash cart intercepted her first. It lowered its treatment platform, and asked Mary to sit.

“No, not yet. Can you call me an ambulance? A medevac?”

The holo of a man projected next to the cart. He was a stranger, but he seemed to know her. “Ah, Myr Skarland, at last! Hurry, give Ellen’s head to the cart. We’ve got a fresh tank waiting for her. There’s no time to lose.”

The cart proffered its arm, and Mary ached to give Ellen to it and be done with it. “That’s right,” the man encouraged. “Give your bag to the cart.”

Mary said, “Who are you?”

“Byron Fagan.”

Mary clutched the tote to herself. “Fagan Health Group? Concierge’s sponsor?”

“Yes, I am. Or rather, I was. Concierge was altered, I don’t know when, or by whom. It fell under the influence of unknown parties. I only discovered this a little while ago, when it was thrown off-line. I have launched a secure backup. He’s back now, as good as new. There’s no need to worry, Myr Skarland. You’ve done a heroic job, and everything is safe now.

“But we must act fast, if we want Ellen to survive.” He pointed at the syrup dripping from the tote. “That is, if she’s still alive. You must trust me, Myr Skarland. I’m the one who called in the Command.”

He seemed sincere. “My sisters, and Nurse Hattie and Matt,” Mary said, gesturing toward the woods.

“We’re already attending to them,” Fagan said. “It’s Ellen Starke we have to think of now.” The cart’s arm reached for the tote.

“Hello! Evangeline!” someone called from the gatehouse. A little man and a tall woman hurried toward her, carrying an odd device between them. “Don’t listen to him,” the man called. “Wait for us!”

The couple stopped next to the crash cart and lowered their burden to the ground. “My name is Meewee. I know you. I worked with Wee Hunk.”

“Where is Wee Hunk?” Mary said. She raised her face to the sky and called, “Wee Hunk, I need you.” But the Neanderthal did not appear. “Let Wee Hunk in!” Mary ordered Fagan.

Fagan held up his hands and said, “I assure you, Myr Skarland, I am not—”

“Wee Hunk is dead,” the little man said. “He was contaminated.”

“There’s no time for this,” Fagan declared. “Every second is crucial. For pity sake, Mary, turn over Ellen’s head.”

While her competing benefactors were vying for her trust, the woman who had come with the little man bent over their device on the ground. She opened its lid, revealing a snug compartment of gleaming chrome. She smiled up at Mary and said, “If you please.”

“This is Dr. Rouselle,” the little man said. “She doesn’t work for Fagan, and this is a portable hernandez tank. Please, Myr ’Leen, let the doctor save Ellen.”

“Save her?” Fagan snapped. “He wants to hold her hostage. Her mother had her brought to my clinic because she trusted us.” The crash cart edged in closer and opened a side compartment; inside was a large glassive jar, brimming with bubbling amber amnio syrup.

Mary unwrapped her tote and gently lifted the head from the dregs at the bottom. She cradled the dripping head in both hands, but she couldn’t force herself to return it to the clinic. “Wee Hunk,” she cried, “where are you?”

Wee Hunk did not appear, but the blue bee did, buzzing her and setting down on the lid of the doctor’s chrome tank. And that was answer enough for her.