New to the Academy
The elevator halted at the 123rd floor and opened its door to the E-Pluribus lobby. And what a lobby! The regulars called it the Temple, and it was the same basic arrangement E-Pluribus used wherever it rented space. The effect was one of vastness, and the elevator passengers, mostly Applied People iterants, were duly awed as they emerged from the car. The limpid blue lobby floor seemed to extend for kilometers in all directions. Far on the horizon stood giant stone columns, some broken and crumbled, some still joined by stone lintels. Beyond these lay a restive green sea. Lightning flashed in the yellow sky, and thunder rolled underfoot. Subliminal music swelled. At the sound of a trumpet blast, the visitors turned around to behold, not their elevator car, but a mountainous, stone ziggurat rising high into the sky. At its truncated peak, nearly as high as the pink clouds, towered the corporate logo, the quicksilver E-Pluribus Everyperson.
Arrayed on steps beneath the Everyperson was a pantheon of vid idols: thousands of the most celebrated hollyholo simstars of all time. This was the famous E-Pluribus Academy, the largest, most extensive stable of limited editions in existence. The visitors gushed with delight. At the bottommost tier, Annette Beijing stood alone and waited for their attention. She wore the loose-fitting house togs she had popularized in the long-running novela Common Claiborne and held aloft her graceful arms.
“Welcome!” she said at last. “Welcome all to the House of E-Pluribus!” She dropped her arms and bowed. Her audience applauded with fervor. “Dear guests,” she continued, “you have been chosen to join us today in the very important and quite exhilarating task of preference polling. As you know, society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them. Thus, society turns to you for guidance. Each of you possesses a voice that must be heard and a heart that must be plumbed.
“You, all of you, are the true E-Pluribus Everyperson.” She raised her hands to the ever-morphing statue high above them. “When Everyperson speaks in the halls of Congress or Parliament, in corporate boardrooms, jury rooms, and voting booths, it speaks with your voice.”
She paused a beat and added, “Now I’m aware that some of you may find our methods a little overwhelming, especially if this is your first visit with us. Therefore, we have arranged for a few of my friends to stop by.”
The legion of simstars on the ziggurat tiers above her chorused a resounding “HELLO!” and the newcomers cheered again.
“We invite each of you,” Beijing continued, “to select your most favorite celebrity in the whole world to be your personal guide throughout the day. Feel free to choose your biggest heartthrob. She or he is bound to be here. And please, we’re all friends at E-Pluribus, so don’t be bashful. Choose whoever you want. Even me!
“Now then, we have a full day of taste-testing, opinion-polling, and yes—soul-searching—planned for you, but before we can begin, please review the terms and conditions of hire, and if you approve, authorize them. Then call out the name of your heart’s desire, and he or she will come down to be at your side.”
On the tier above Annette Beijing stood the Academy’s newest inductees—two Leenas from Burning Daylight Productions. They had quickly become the iterant visitors’ favorite celebrity, and jerrys, jeromes, and johns all shouted to call the Leenas down.
A jerry named Buddy got one of them, and together he and the Leena strolled across the marble plain to a distant stone structure in which the prep booths were housed. Buddy was proud to have the Leena at his side. She looked eerily like an evangeline, only hotter. A superb ass and large breasts went a long way to sex up the rather plain evangeline germline.
In a prep booth, Buddy was fitted with a visceral response probe. After the discomfort passed, the Leena led him to his first scenario room. It was a long, narrow, empty room that suddenly became a tennis court. A man in a white shirt and shorts and carrying a racquet approached them. He looked vaguely familiar, and though Buddy couldn’t place him, he took him to be an aff, and without even thinking, Buddy assumed the habitual deference of a service clone. But to his surprise, the aff addressed him with easy familiarity. “Buddy, Leena, welcome,” he said. “Care to join us in a game of doubles?” There was a woman, also vaguely familiar, waiting across the net.
Buddy was at a loss for words. He worked for people like this, and never once had they asked him to join in a tennis game.
“Hey, forget about that,” the man said. “We’re all equals at E-Pluribus. And besides, I’ve heard so much about the famous jerry prowess on a tennis court, I would be delighted to see it for myself.”
The game was fast and challenging. The aff and his partner were strong players, as was Buddy’s partner, the Leena. Though, truth be told, he was more impressed by the bounce of her breasts than the power of her backhand. And every time he glanced at the aff, the man seemed a little bit more familiar until, with a slap to his forehead, Buddy realized he was a recent client of his, a Myr Hasipi. Buddy had served as his bodyguard for six weeks. And his partner was not his wife but his lover, whom Buddy had fetched for the boss whenever the coast was clear. Across the net, she winked at him.
After several strenuous sets, the tennis party took refreshments in the clubhouse lounge, a place Buddy had only ever entered as a bodyguard. It was a special thrill to have steves and johns wait on him. And the Leena, with beads of sweat trickling down her cleavage, adored him with her big brown eyes.
“So, Buddy,” Hasipi said, “you remember that spot of trouble I was having a while back?”
Which one? Buddy wanted to say. Myr Hasipi had been up to his eyeballs in shady deals.
“Don’t say it out loud, Buddy, but you know the case.”
It must be the bribes and kickbacks, Buddy thought. He had been tasked to deliver a few of them himself. Or what about that so-called accident in Istanbul? Buddy grinned and said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Hasipi guffawed. “Good man.”
Summoning Death from the Air
The sun topped a sand dune and jabbed Fred in the eye. He turned on his side, but the desert caught fire and there was no returning to sleep. The morning list marched through his mind: kiss Mary, roll out of bed, cycle out of room, toilet and shower, news and mail, coffee, dress, kiss Mary good-bye, leave the apartment. But when he leaned over to accomplish item number one, he discovered that Mary was gone. Her spot on the mattress was already cool to the touch. Barely 6:00 A.M. and his routine was already gummed up.
But Fred had a flexible personality—he was a russ—so he propped himself up on one elbow and squinted into the harsh light. They had fallen asleep gazing at the Milky Way in the desert. “Room, default walls,” he said, and the plain, too-small room returned around him. There was barely enough space between the bed and wall for him to maneuver. Unlike the null suite at the Cass, the null room in their apartment had no sitting room, kitchen nook, or closets, let alone full bath and toilet. Instead, it had built-in counters, shelves, drawers, and a narrow comfort station with a curtain. Fred had to stand in the comfort station when he reset the bedroom into a day room. The bed contorted into an armchair. Out came the end table and lamp, the shelves and another armchair. Default windows and posters appeared on the walls. Fred and Mary didn’t spend any daytime hours in here and hadn’t gotten around to decorating.
Fred gathered up the empty flasks of Flush, spent chem-pacs, and other trash and cycled out. The null lock was not a sauna but a plain, closet-sized, gas-exchange two-seater. Out in the hallway, he heard voices from the living room—Mary and two more evangelines, it sounded like. He turned the other way and continued to the bedroom. Since moving in, they hadn’t actually slept in the bedroom, instead spending every night in the null room. Fred ordered fresh clothes and a skullcap from the closet and went to the bathroom. He could feel the tingly sensation of the nits already recolonizing him, and the skin of his wrists and ankles were reddened by the daily assault of visola and nits. But it was nothing a little lotion couldn’t handle, and well worth it. His limp cock was crinkly with dried cum. He squeezed himself and brought his hand to his nose to inhale Mary’s oceanic fragrance. Well worth it.
WHILE IN THE shower, Fred caught up on news and mail. He was shaved, trimmed, and spritzed with cologne. He donned his old robe and moccasin slippers and set forth in search of coffee, item six on his morning list. In the living room there were, as he had guessed, three evangelines: Mary on the sofa in her robe, her bare feet tucked beneath her; her best friend Shelley, who was strapped into a Slipstream tube car and was visiting by holo; and Cyndee, one of his escorts at the prison, who was present in realbody. They cut short their conversation when he appeared in the hallway.
“Good morning, Cyndee,” Fred said into the silence. She offered her hand, and he gave it a gentle squeeze. Her hand was small and delicate. Evangelines were such dainty women, which was one reason why he loved them so. He turned to Shelley and made a holo salute. “Hello, Shell.”
“Hello, Fred.”
“You’re looking well.”
After she made no reply for several long moments, Fred continued around the coffee table to sit on the sofa next to Mary. “Good morning, dear heart.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, finally satisfying item one on his list. Mary was scratching her ankle. He took her hand and kissed it too and held it out of harm’s way. Other than itchy ankles, Mary seemed at ease. Cyndee, too, appeared relaxed, which probably meant that their client’s condition was improving. Not that he gave a crap about Ellen Starke’s condition except in how it rubbed off on Mary.
He had lied about Shelley looking well. She looked a mess. She drooped in her seat. She had puffy eyes. Her hair was flat and dull. She peered at him with cool resentment.
“What are we watching?” he said in a hopeful voice. On the coffee table were a half-dozen stacked holocubes. In one he recognized Shelley’s employer, Judith Hsu, the renowned death artist, who was reading from a paper book. A second holocube showed a ride through a pinkish sewer on a stream of lumpy, greenish slurry. A third depicted a funeral tableau of a black enameled coffin and bowers of snow-white carnations.
Mary said, “We were comparing Hsu’s earlier deaths to her current one.”
Fred turned to Shelley. “She’s already on the next one? I guess I missed the last one.”
Shelley stared blankly, and Mary said, “It just premiered last week, Fred. Though it hasn’t really found its legs yet.”
The arbeitor arrived with Fred’s coffee and Danish, and he released Mary’s hand. Mary was disappointed, for her ankle still itched. Fred seemed to be adjusting to life outside prison, all things considered. He sure was making good use of the apartment’s null room. His sexual appetite was Olympic. He was working too. With his acquittal, Applied People had been forced to reinstate him, though not willingly. Mary’s hand crept back to her ankle.
In the sewer holocube, the cam entered a section where the walls turned from pinkish to bluish, and the passage was blocked by a huge, pulsing mass that was spiderwebbed with red veins.
Fred pointed and said, “So, what is it this time—colon cancer?”
Mary said, “No, Fred. That was three deaths ago. Don’t you remember? ‘Treasonous Plumbing’?”
“Oh, yes, how could I forget ‘Treasonous Plumbing’?” He smiled at Shelley, but she didn’t respond, so he turned to Cyndee. “Are you a Hsu fan?”
“Yes, I am,” Cyndee said. “ ‘TP’ broke a lot of new ground in documemoirs and established Judy Hsu as one of our leading contemporary artists. The first time she died, and the jennys just let her lie there—dead—minute after minute, not jumping in to intervene, not stabilizing her, just letting her go, like in the bad old days, it was the most terrifying thing I ever saw. People used to just get sick and die!”
Mary said to Fred, “They had supersaturated her tissues and brain with oxygen, so she could go a half hour without oxygen. But we didn’t know that at the time.”
“That’s what made it so disturbing,” Cyndee said. “It made me glad to be born in this century.”
Through all of this, Shelley fiddled with her seat harness and seemed not to be paying attention. Fred asked Cyndee, “What about that one?” He pointed at a holocube, and its volume came up. Hsu was reading from a book:
“. . . lingering, raw-nerve, helpless, hopeless, an assault on basic human dignity. So overwhelming that self-awareness begs for extinction.”
Cyndee said, “Oh, that’s death lit. Hsu loves it. She reads it continuously until she gets too sick, and then she has Shelley and her other companions read it to her.”
Mary said, “He knows that, Cyn. He watched this with Reilly. He’s just playing dumb to be a good conversationalist.”
“Oh, of course,” Cyndee said.
Someone changed the cube. Now it was Shelley reading a death poem:
I’s hungry. What’d you do? Is it dead? Look at it bleed!
Can I pluck it? Do chicken’s insides have names?
Do we have insides like chickens?
Can you take my insides out so I can see?
I like breast the best. Can we cook it up?
I’s hungry. Let’s start the fire. Chicken’s good.
“Bravo, Shell,” Fred said. “All it needs is a soundtrack.”
“It has one,” Cyndee said. She twirled her finger and brought up the strains of a solo cello fantasia.
Fred set down his coffee mug and clapped. “Perfect!” He squeezed Mary’s foot and rose from the couch. “If you’ll excuse me, dearest, I need to get dressed for duty.”
When Fred left the living room, Mary said, “Because having the living flesh rot off your bones is so appealing.”
“Which is to say that colon cancer isn’t appealing?” Shelley retorted. “Or pancreatic cancer, for that matter. In any case, the scleroderma was a ratings flop—you should look it up—and so we have this.” She wiped the colon holocube and replaced it with a new one. It was the familiar rustic breezeway at Hsu’s Olympic Peninsula home. Hsu, looking completely fit, her recently ravaged skin restored to flawless youth, was sitting at a crafts table and swirling something around on a plate with her finger.
“What’s she doing?”
“Finger painting.” Shelley raised the view to look at the plate from over Hsu’s shoulder. The death artist was repeatedly tracing a simple shape, a zigzagging spiral with a diagonal slash through it. “It’s supposed to be a deadly figure from the Dark Reiki,” she said.
“Which is what?” Cyndee said.
“It’s the opposite of reiki.”
“Which is what?” Mary said.
“It’s a superstitious healing technique that claims to channel energy into a person’s body by means of touch. Conversely, the Dark Reiki sucks life energy away. Don’t ask. Now, look at this.”
The holoscape changed abruptly to a candlelit nighttime scene. Judith Hsu was sitting on a low bench and rocking slowly back and forth. She appeared to be naked under a simple paper shift. She was chanting some incomprehensible string of words. The view zoomed to the cleavage between her breasts to reveal what looked like a little bag hanging from a cord. It was decorated with feathers and beads and long, curved talons.
“It’s a voodoo fetish for causing mortal harm to an enemy,” Shelley said. “Only she’s trying to turn it on herself. That and a dozen more charms and spells from a dozen other superstitions. But so far she hasn’t even conjured up a decent migraine.”
Mary said, “She wants to kill herself with magic?”
“With willpower.”
“That’s absurd.”
“What’s absurd? That she’s trying to will herself to death or that she can’t seem to get any traction?”
“Both. No one can will themself to death. It’s not physically possible.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure about that, Mary Skarland,” Cyndee said. “There are plenty of documented cases. The trick is you gotta believe you can.”
In the breezeway, someone passed through the death artist’s holospace, and Mary said, “Shell, was that you?”
“No,” Shelley said and panned the view to show a figure seating herself in the shadows. It was a Leena.
Mary and Cyndee exchanged a glance.
“That’s right, a Leena,” Shelley said. “Hsu likes Leenas so much lately that she’s talking about replacing half of her evangelines with them.”
Mary covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my God, Shelley, are you being let go?”
“Not yet, but the writing’s on the wall. You guys have done your work well. Our clients are beginning to prefer your sims more than the real us. And it’s not just Judy Hsu. We’re being replaced everywhere.”
“Are you sure? Leenas cost ten times what an evangeline makes. Only the novelas can afford to use them.”
“Look at the figures,” Shelley said, “and I think you’ll find that’s not so.”
Cyndee said, “Even if it’s true, Shell, what’s wrong with it? There are ten thousand Leena units and ten thousand of us. Except for Mary’s, Georgine’s, and mine, the Sisterhood receives royalties from all ten thousand units. If even a fraction of them keep working, none of us will ever have to work again.”
“Except that I love to work!”
“No, you don’t!” Mary said. “Give us a break, Shell. You’ve been bellyaching about Hsu for the last six years!”
“Let me rephrase,” Shelley said evenly. “I love the fact of having the opportunity to work. No offense, but I’m not interested in living off your and Cyndee’s and Georgine’s largesse.”
“Our largesse? What are you talking about? The Leena earnings belong to the Sisterhood; they belong to all of us.”
Just then, Fred came from the hall wearing a teal and brown jumpsuit and scuffed-up cross-trainers. Cyndee pointed to a wad of khaki in his hand. “What’s that?” she said.
“That’s his hat,” Mary said. “Fred isn’t taking any chances.”
“You bet I’m not taking any chances,” Fred said and unfurled his hat. The brim was so wide that it draped over his shoulders like a pair of droopy wings.
Cyndee laughed out loud, and Mary said dryly, “He’s afraid of his hair catching fire.”
“You got that right!”
Cyndee said, “Is it one of those turismos?”
Fred looked insulted. “A turismo? Have you been outdoors lately? No, it’s a Campaigner 3000.”
“We spend time outdoors every day,” Mary said, “and the Campaigner 3000 looks dashing on you. Along with the shoes.”
“Thank you,” Fred said and admired his cross-trainers. He leaned over and kissed Mary on the lips, the penultimate item on his list. All that remained was walking out the door. “Great to see you again, Cyndee. Say hello to Larry. And, Shell, I hope this death improves for you. And give my regards to Reilly.”
Shelley replied coolly, “You’ll have to do that yourself, Fred. Reilly and I have broken up.”
Fred was astonished. Even Mary and Cyndee were taken off guard. “Oh, Shell,” Mary said, half rising from the couch, but Shelley signaled curtly for her to stay away from her.
“He couldn’t get over his first death,” Shelley went on. “You remember that one, don’t you, Fred? It was the strangulation one. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Roosevelt Clinic recording is freely available. Or I can get you a copy if you like.”
Fred twisted the Campaigner hat in his large hands. “No, thanks, Shell,” he said softly. “That’s not necessary. I see that movie every time I close my eyes. I’m very sorry to hear your news. I truly am.”
As Fred and the evangelines talked, no one was watching the holocube of the Leena who was still sitting in the shadows of the death artist’s breezeway. The Leena was painting a dark figure in the air with two spit-wetted fingers. First she made a counterclockwise spiral, and then she slashed across it. Again and again she did this, as though trying to summon death from the air.
The Hairball
A few floors down, Fred paused at the pedway merging ramp to shape his floppy hat into a cycling helmet. It didn’t take him long, but by the time he joined the throng of rush-hour commuters, he had attracted a cloud of media bees.
Fred sprinted onto the pedway and entered a jogging lane. After building up a little speed, he began a skating stride, pushing his cross-trainers sideways with each step, and the pedway plates beneath his feet switched to skate mode. When he was skating fast enough, he merged into the velolane. Just then, the pedway emerged from the interior of the Lin/Wong gigatower, and he was suspended two hundred munilevels over a deep traffic well. Around him, the towers rose as high above as they stretched below, and Fred had to focus in order to manage the passing and weaving of velolane traffic. He reached for the ideal stride that he could maintain for hours, and the bees fell far behind. Then two skaters came up on either side of him. They wore form-fitting crashsuits in glowing colors. They weren’t iterants. They glanced at Fred with scorn and pulled ahead with ease. A challenge! Fred was game. He increased his pace and adjusted his stride multipliers, and when he caught up to them, the race was on. They moved as a group into the fastest lanes and reached truly frightening speeds. The two skaters appeared to have augmented bodies, and he couldn’t tell by their figures if they were male or female. They outclassed him in technique, but he was fueled with spit, and he managed to keep up with them all the way to the interchange plaza where he would have to turn north.
Without warning, the slipskate function of the pedway ceased, and Fred’s cross-trainers defaulted to ordinary running mode. He was going much too fast to stop and he sprinted as fast as he could to dump speed and stay on his feet. His two competitors fell and slid on their backs, their frictionless racing suits riding the plates with ease. Eventually Fred tripped hard and rolled and slid to a halt, bumping into a number of people along the way but doing no great harm. He lay on his back and caught his breath and felt himself for injury. The reinforced knees of his jumpsuit were shredded, as were the palms of his gloves, but he was whole. The Campaigner helmet had protected his head.
When Fred sat up, he found himself near the middle of the interchange. The entire hundred-lane interchange plaza surrounding him had come to a halt, and its throngs of pedestrians were standing or lying perfectly still. It was weird.
Fred got up and looked around for the nearest exit, but before he could set off, a CPT bee flew over to him and said, “In the interest of public safety, do not move, Myr Londenstane. The local pedway system is temporarily malfing, and any unauthorized movement may cause a dangerous traffic situation.” For good measure, it spritzed him with a pinch of dust. “Stay where you are until instructed to move.”
“Hey! Stop that!” he yelled, trying to clear the dust with his hand, but he instantly felt calm and patient. “What’s going on?” he asked, but the transit bee flew off to the next stranded pedestrian.
Several lanes away, a jack yelled to those around him, “Don’t nobody fart or we’ll have us a hairball.”
A hairball. Fred had heard about pedway hairballs, gnarly traffic patterns that had only started occurring after the canopies had dropped. As Fred waited, he called the mentar Marcus at the BB of R and told him he might be late. He readjusted his Campaigner into a floppy hat and watched the traffic channel with its visor for a while, and then he switched to filter 21 and just stood there gazing at the showers of nano crap that rained like glitter upon the city. Another legacy of the missing canopies.
“Please bear with us as we work to restore service,” droned the transit subem. Its voice was broadcast through the transit bees, which had formed a flying grid over the interchange. “And remember, do not move until directed to.” There was one advantage to the malfunction, at least. The transit authority kept all but official mechs out of the plaza, so Fred was able to stand outdoors, enjoy the sunny weather, and admire the monumental cityscape without being bothered by the media.
The person nearest Fred was a jerome, a plain-looking, unpretentious type that excelled in administrative tasks. This one wore a derby-style hat with hardly a brim at all. Most of the hats around Fred seemed more fashionable than functional.
Without warning, the interchange lurched, sending many pedestrians stumbling. “Don’t move! Don’t move!” roared the transit subem, but the damage was done, and the interchange lurched again into sustained motion. The lane markers disappeared, and the entire intricate interchange plaza merged into one huge, counterclockwise merry-go-round.
“Don’t move! Don’t move!” droned the bees. The jerome drifted away, saluting farewell to Fred, and new people drifted in and out of his vicinity. One of the skaters he had raced, jennys, dorises, johns, and a lot of free-rangers. A pair of lulus in sexy clothes, one of them sobbing on the other’s shoulder. A free-range man who argued belligerently with the transit bees surrounding him. Around and around they went at a not unpleasant rate of speed. Fred’s encounters were repeated: the jerome, the skater, jennys, dorises, and johns. The lulu was still crying, and her sister looked about desperately.
“Can I help?” Fred shouted, but he couldn’t make out her reply.
The belligerent free-ranger had had all he could take. With an angry bellow, he broke free from his spot and sprinted across the plaza. The transit bees converged on him and dusted him with something that made him sit down very quickly. But it was too late; the pedway plates under Fred’s feet began to twitch. They darted this way and that. A cry of alarm rose up from the plaza, and the orderly counterclockwise rotation broke up into a random, slow-motion helter-skelter. People slowly skittered off each other; they clumped up; they collided.
“Do not be afraid!” commanded the transit subem. “Do not move! The current pattern of motion is not dangerous. Do not overreact to unpleasant encounters with other pedestrians.”
Fred did his best to radiate calm. He stood at ease, smiling like a fool, and when he grazed other people, begged their pardon.
The movement alternately sped up and slowed down, and some of the collisions knocked people off their feet. The bees were very busy maintaining order. At one point Fred was at the center of a gyrating knot of thirty or so people. At first they were twirling around each other like some kind of folk dance, but gradually the circle closed in, and they were pressed tight. They either laughed or urged calm or cursed the politicians. Soon they were squeezed cheek to jowl, and a few ribs snapped. Bad as it seemed, it could get worse, and most people were able to remain calm. Eventually, the knot loosened, and they were do-si-do-ing around each other again and gasping for air.
At one point, Fred was pressed back-to-back with a man who he thought must be another russ, for he was Fred’s size and build. He wore an appealing cologne, and Fred was going to ask him what it was, but when they were separated and he got a look at the man, he wasn’t a russ at all but a Capias man in a gold and yellow uniform. He was handsome in a boyish way, square-jawed and rugged-looking, someone you could trust. He and Fred nodded to each other as they drifted apart.
The freaky ride was not yet over, but it did slow down, and Fred’s next encounter was with the tearful lulu who had become separated from her sister and who pirouetted slowly into his arms. She buried her face in his chest and sobbed, her bare honey-brown shoulders heaving with unstoppable misery. “There, there,” Fred said, patting her on the back in a brotherly fashion. Her hair was just under his chin, and it was flecked with scarlet and yellow strands and smelled of lilac, and though it had been some years since he’d held a lulu in his arms, he fondly remembered the pleasant shape and heft of them. “There, there,” he repeated with affection. She relaxed in his arms, but before long, the pedway plates drew them apart. As she flowed away, the lulu raised her face, ruined by tears, and struggled up from the depths of her despair to blow him a kiss.
TWO HOURS LATER, Fred arrived at the BB of R chapter hall on the 83rd Munilevel of North Wabash. Once inside, he removed his hat and twisted it into a solid little fob that he hung from his belt web. Then he went downstairs to the canteen. He needn’t have hurried or, for that matter, come at all. Contrary to the impression he had given Mary, there were no duty call-outs waiting for him. He’d spent the last few weeks sitting in the canteen drinking coffeesh and watching vids. He sat in the corner where he could avoid his brothers while keeping an eye on the door, in case Reilly came in. Fred dreaded their eventual reunion, especially now with Shelley’s news.
The morning passed, and during the lunchtime rush, Fred left the building and wandered around the nearby shopping arcade. About the time he started back, the BB of R mentar paged him.
“Yes, Marcus, what’s up?”
Are you available for a call-out?
“You bet I am.”
Good. City sanitation needs skilled custodians to help clean up a toxic spill.
At first Fred thought he’d misheard. “Say again.”
A barge has hit a tower abutment and spilled a container of industrial precursor into the river.
“I see,” Fred said, “but I don’t understand why you’re telling this to me. This sounds like john duty.”
It is john duty, and you will be paid at john rate.
Fred swore out loud, and the people in the arcade looked at him. He clamped his mouth shut and marched back to the chapter house. He went upstairs and found the first vacant quiet booth. “John duty? John rate? Are you crazy?”
“It’s an opportunity for gainful employment.”
“As a john? That’s no opportunity; that’s an insult! I’m a russ, and I have the right to duty commensurate with my skill and experience ratings. Let me remind you that I was acquitted of all charges and that I have the right to be treated as any other law-abiding russ.”
“On the contrary,” the soft-spoken BB of R mentar replied, “Applied People is a private company. It has the prerogative to offer any duty opportunity it sees fit, including no duty.”
“Bullshit! I’m a russ! I’ll never do john work!”
Fred left the booth and slammed the door. He stormed down the stairs and out of the building. As he went down the steps, three brother russes were coming up, and one of them clipped his shoulder, upsetting his balance. When he looked up, the three russes were waiting at the top, challenging him with their eyes.
“Feck you, brothers,” he said.
ON THE WAY home, Fred counted four more people, like the lulu earlier, crying their eyes out.
Twenty Questions
Meewee stood on the bank of the fishpond, his pockets full of gravel. With his world crashing down around him, with the GEP yanked out from under him, he could think of nothing better to do than throw some stones and grill Arrow.
<Arrow, is Jaspersen tied financially to Million Singh?>
<Yes.>
<How?>
A row of organizational charts popped up in front of Meewee. There wasn’t much tying the two businessmen together. Besides their mutual interest in the GEP, Jaspersen’s Borealis Botanicals supplied all of Capias World’s needs for bath and body care products. For a hundred-million-person workforce, Meewee supposed that amounted to a lot of shampoo.
Tossing stones, grinding his teeth, Meewee browsed the public and confidential links Arrow supplied. Among other facts he gleaned, he learned that all new labor contracts at the Aria Yachts yards at both Mezzoluna and Trailing Earth had already been let to Capias World workers. Moreover, there were published rumors that TECA, the space colony port authority at Trailing Earth, was also considering replacing its own Applied People labor force with Capias personnel.
<Arrow, is there any way for me to thwart the Capias World labor contracts with the GEP?>
<How?>
<You could eliminate Million Singh from the board.>
<How could I do that?>
<Through murder, character assassination, blackmail, bribery, buyout—>
Meewee interrupted the litany. <I mean is there any ethical way?>
After a moment of reviewing Meewee’s upref files to determine his personal definition of what could be considered ethical, the mentar said <I do not see any ethical way.>
<Is there any ethical way to expel Jaspersen or Gest from the GEP board?>
<I do not see any.>
<Is there any ethical way to negate the GEP vote to build space condos?>
<I do not see any.>
<Is there any way I can force the GEP board to continue the mission of extra-solar colonization?>
<Yes.>
It was like playing a game of Simon Says with this thing. <I mean, any ethical way?>
<Possibly.>
Now here was an unexpected answer. Afraid it was too good to be true, Meewee tossed a half-dozen stones before asking <How?>
A frame opened before him that displayed a clause of the 2052 International Spacefaring Treaty. As best as Meewee could parse the legalese, it stated that once a privately owned, nonmilitary ship was launched from Earth orbit or from any spaceport in the inner solar system, it acquired a provisional sovereign status and authority over its own disposition in most nontreaty matters. Meewee read and reread the clause and tried to understand why Arrow was showing it to him. Finally, he gave up and said <But we haven’t launched any ships yet.>
In reply, Arrow painted the sky above him black and projected a recording of the nuclear blast Meewee had witnessed from this very spot several weeks ago. Meewee had not been expecting this, and the explosion blinded him for several moments.
<That was the launch of the advance ships> he said finally. <Not the Oships.>
More frames opened with case law and definitions. Meewee skimmed them and got an inkling of what Arrow was trying to show him. <Are you saying that the law considers an advance ship to be a material part of the main ship that it precedes? That the launch of an advance ship constitutes a “launch” for that main ship as well?>
<Possibly.>
<So that the main ship becomes the equivalent of a sovereign nation?>
<Possibly.>
<You mean a case could be made for it in court?>
<Yes.>
It took several long moments for the news to hit home, and then Meewee was jumping up and down, shrieking, pumping the air with his fist. He was even more excited than he had been at the original boost. He climbed the bank to his cart and said, “Call the IOPA leaders. Arrange a confab in my office in thirty minutes.” When Meewee reached the cart he realized that his pockets were still full of stones. So he returned to the bank and gleefully flung them into the pond by the handful. “Take that, you pigs,” he cried. “Eat stones, you snakes.”
A voice said <Stop that!>
Meewee stopped dead. It was no voice in the breeze this time. No squeaky hinge or crunch of snow underfoot. It was a real voice, and it had spoken in Starkese.
<Arrow, was that Eleanor who just spoke?>
<Yes.>
<Ask her where she is.> There was no reply for a full minute, and Meewee said <Well?>
<I have used all public and proprietary channels, but without a known destination, I cannot complete the task.>
Meewee bent over and picked up several hefty rocks. He tossed them one after another into all parts of the pond. Finally, a lone fish leaped out of the water, a slab of shiny silver muscle that reentered the water with a splash. <Merrill?>
<Yes, Eleanor, it’s me! Arrow, tell her it’s me.>
More fish jumped. <What the hell?>
<Where am I?>
<What is this?>
Meewee stared in wonder. <Eleanor, can you hear me?>
There was the sound of a hysterical giggle in his head, and then <Holy crap, I must be drunk. My head is swimming.>
<Eleanor, how is this possible?>
Gibberish, then nothing, and no matter how many more stones he threw, the connection was lost.