The Lovers Emerge
They risked another short conversation in the morning. Mary wanted to know if they should breakfast and shower in the null suite or wait until they’d cycled back out to the real world. Cycling out involved no purging and was quick, and Fred wondered at the subtext of the question. Was she asking him if he wanted to make love again before they left, since he refused to be intimate with her out there.
“I’m not being paranoid,” he said flatly. “I know they’re watching me.”
“Who? Who’s watching you?”
“Everyone.”
“You’re right; that’s not paranoid. That’s our new reality.”
“I’m being serious!”
“So am I!”
Mary got out of bed and started putting her things together. “The nits are always watching, Fred, but they watch everyone. I know what you mean, though. I’m something of a celebrity now, myself, just like you, and everyone watches me all the time. I feel like I’m always onstage, wherever I go, and believe me, that’s not something my type is used to dealing with.”
Fred sat up in bed, shaking his head. “I’m not talking about celebrity, Mary, and I’m not talking about the nits, although they’re bad enough. I’m talking about clone fatigue, and before you tell me there’s no such thing, I know there isn’t, but I’ve still got it. Or at least they’re afraid I do. Do you realize what a threat I pose to the economy? Do you realize what a disaster it would be if ten million russes started coming unglued and falling out of type? The whole value of iterants is the reliability of our core traits. Without that we’re no better than free-rangers. So, hell yes, they’re watching me. The only reason they don’t disappear me is they want to see what I’ll do next, see how bad it’ll get for them, see if I’m only an aberration or the first in a trend.”
Mary stood in front of the exit hatch. “It doesn’t make me feel good hearing you talk like that, Fred. It seems obvious to me that whatever you did you did to protect me, your wife. I just don’t see how anyone could interpret that as falling out of type.”
Fred smoothed the sheet on either side of him. “Then let me explain it to you. This is the way my brothers and I are built. I don’t know about your line or the jerrys or belindas or any of the others, but we russes are single-mindedly committed to our clients. We will put ourselves at risk for them to the point of sacrificing our own lives. It doesn’t seem to matter to us if our clients are princes or fools, as soon as we take an assignment, we’re committed. Marcus is there to vet our clients and guarantee we’re not hired for criminal purposes, but when—”
“I know all that, Fred.”
“My point is, at the clinic, if you were my client being held against your will, say, and Marcus approved my mission, I could have done exactly what I did—employ a black market identity to gain entrance, kill two guards and assault a third—and afterward I would have been given a medal. But the fact is you were not my client but my spouse, and that means that I was acting in self-interest and my actions were not officially sanctioned. I was displaying rogue tendencies.”
Mary spied her slippers under the bed and bent over to retrieve them. “I doubt they would have given you a medal for killing Reilly.”
Fred pictured his batchmate and oldest friend again as he had a million times already, his body limp, the livid bruise across his throat. “It doesn’t happen often,” he went on, “but russes have killed russes in the line of duty and been commended for it.”
“That must be awful. Listen, I think that maybe you should take it easy for a few days, get used to things, before deciding anything.” She opened the hatch and added, “But come out of here while I get ready. I’m going to work today. Or stay in here, and I’ll come in when I return.”
Fred threw the sheet off him. “I’ll come out. I’m going to go apartment hunting. Then I’m going to visit the Brotherhood.”
“So soon?”
OUT IN THE suite, the living-room walls were alternating live views of the city from various tower locations, and Fred got caught up in watching them. His city looked different somehow. It occurred to him that nearly a year had passed since he had been outdoors. Even the ride from the prison had been underground. So he put that at the top of his day’s to-do list—Go outside.
Mary called him into the bathroom. She wore only a towel around her waist. She wiped condensation from the mirror and opened two frames. In one, an evangeline was interacting with a small group of aff-looking people. The muted audio sparkled with jests, jokes, and off-camera laughter.
“That’s her,” Mary said.
“Who? Shelley?”
“No, Fred, my hollyholo, my Leena. She’s playing a supporting role in a popular novela.” The scene changed to a desert landscape where a party of four rode camels. “And here she is in a Pretty Tall Productions novela. She’s also working eight more minor roles simultaneously. And here . . .” she said, pointing to a dynamic graph in the other frame, “are her earnings per role, and at the bottom her cumulative income.”
Fred studied the charts. “Impressive,” he said. “This axis measures what, hundredths?”
“No, hundreds.”
He looked again. “So the total is annual income?”
“No, hourly.”
Fred was speechless.
“I’ve thought it over,” Mary said, “and I’ve come to a conclusion: I’ve earned this sim, and I’m not giving it up. If you can live with that, and if you’re serious about looking for an apartment, then find one with either its own null room or time-share access to one. I’m not going to wait another six months before you touch me again.”
“I’ll add it to my list.”
“Do that.”
While Mary dressed, Fred ordered town togs from the closet and took a shower. Mary was waiting for him when he emerged. He barely recognized her in her aff outfit. On her head was an odd, boxlike hat. She had been wearing a hat at the prison. He wondered when she had taken to wearing hats.
“Like it?” she said, adjusting its fit. “It’s an original.”
“I’ll bet.”
She kissed him with luscious red lips, almost overwhelming his celibate resolve. “I’ll call you this afternoon,” she said, leaving the suite. “And don’t worry about this place. I’ve already paid the bill.”
Hat Weather
The house togs that the closet produced for Fred included a hat. It was made from crushable felt and shaped somewhat like the all-weather headgear for outdoor enthusiasts, with an extra-wide brim for protection against sun and sleet. Not exactly urban fashion and, besides, Fred had never been a hat-wearer. Except for security visor caps, and then only while on duty. So he left the still-warm field hat in the closet, along with his duffel bag, and went out for breakfast.
Fred took an elevator and pedway to the nearest outdoor café, the Senator’s Café on the 300th floor. On the way, he bought a disposable slate at a Handinook.
The outdoor deck of the Senator’s was flooded with dazzling yellow glare from the side of the neighboring gigatower. Fred chose a table in the shade of a deflector screen, but he could still feel the sun’s insistence.
Fred’s waiter, a jack, was wearing full-face spex, not the usual attire for a café, as well as a wide-brimmed hat. Everyone on the deck wore a hat of one sort or another, including a lot of hats like the one he’d left in the closet. Fred seemed to be the only hatless one there. It was amazing—go to prison a mere nine months, and the world is different when you get out. The waiter was standing next to the serving station peering up into the sky, daydreaming it would seem, and Fred had to raise his voice to get his attention. Coffee. A cheese Danish. If you don’t mind.
While waiting for his order, Fred browsed the apartment listings that his slate demon had collected. There seemed to be no shortage of one-bedroom units with their own null rooms. The rent, however, was astounding, pure fantasy for a guy like Fred, yet he knew from this morning’s little lecture at the bathroom mirror that Mary could afford it.
Fred noticed two bees keeping station near the balcony of the floor above him. They were too far away for him to identify without a visor. Even as he watched, the two bees were joined by dozens of others.
Fred returned his attention to his slate and apartment hunting. He found a unit in the Lin/Wong gigatower, which loomed over his left shoulder and dominated the local skyline. The Lin/Wong was the corner post of a giant fence where two major crosstown pickets met.
Fred found less costly units in Indianapolis, closer to Mary’s work. Did he want to leave Chicago? While he was browsing, a background buzz grew imperceptibly louder until Fred noticed it and looked up to see scores of media bees right overhead.
“Desist!” he shouted, and the swarm of bees lifted off immediately to hover outside his privacy zone. But new arrivals were already taking their place. “Desist! Desist!” he repeated, scattering the waves of arrivals. He knew they would keep coming and wear him down eventually.
“Slate,” he said, searching its menus, “can you make a continuous privacy declaration in some non-auditory channel?”
“No need for that, Myr Russ,” said the waiter who appeared next to him with his order. “I’ll activate the establishment’s blanket.” His words were muffled by his masklike spex.
With the mechanical pests kept out of sight and hot coffee and freedom’s Danish, Fred worked at his slate for another half hour or so. When he looked up, his waiter was daydreaming into the sky again, and Fred had to clink his cup with his spoon for his attention. The waiter grabbed the coffee carafe and came over.
“Another Danish?” he said, refilling Fred’s cup.
“Another Danish would be ideal,” Fred said. “Maybe one with fruit this time.”
The waiter nodded and took a step back. But he did not set off at once with Fred’s order. Instead, he continued to look up and watch the sky through his spex. Fred looked up too but saw nothing out of place. The waiter’s gaze dropped slowly until he was looking down at Fred’s slate on the table. He drew a small aerosol canister from his apron and moved Fred’s slate aside, and after several more moments, squirted a dollop of red goo on the tabletop. The goo sizzled for a few seconds, and when it stopped the waiter mopped it up with his rag. He replaced Fred’s slate to its place and said, “A fruit Danish it is.” Even then, he scanned the airspace over Fred’s head as he went inside.
Fred was dumbfounded. He moved the slate aside and lowered his eyes to tabletop level. He found a tiny, blackened pit in the resin surface. He noticed other pits near it, dozens of them, stippling the surface of the table, some of them quite large. He noticed burn marks on the arms of his seat and tiny craters in the glassine floor of the deck. Even the sleeves of his new togs bore scorch marks.
Fred held his breath and looked up again into the intensely blue canopy-less sky. His to-do list no longer felt so urgent. He skipped the Danish, covered his head with his hands, and ducked indoors. He returned to his and Mary’s room, and instead of going out, he stayed in. He climbed into bed—the bed outside the null suite that they had not used. Fred pulled the covers over his head. It was not enough. He abandoned the bed and cycled back into the null suite.