NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Robinette Murphy Won't Concede

(visual: excerpt from FRM's Around the Corner net series)

VO: Professional psychic Fawzi Robinette Murphy, who surprised the entertainment world by retiring after predicting that the end of the world was imminent, does not appear at all embarrassed that her proclaimed deadline for apocalypse has passed.

(visual: FRM interviewed by GCN's Martin Boabdil)

BOABDIL: "Do you want to extend the timeline on your original prediction?"

MURPHY: "It doesn't matter what I say, what you say. It happened."

BOABDIL: "What happened?"

MURPHY: "The world ended."

BOABDIL: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I mean, isn't this a world we're both sitting in?"

MURPHY: "Not the same one. I can't explain it any better than that."

BOABDIL: "So you meant the whole thing . . . philosophically? Like, every day the old world ends and a new one begins? I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense."

MURPHY: "You really are an idiot, aren't you?"

The memorial service was a small one. The minister they hired to say a few words clearly felt something was going on that he didn't understand, but was enough of a professional not to ask too many questions.

He probably thinks we're in a good mood because we didn't like the dear departed much, or because we're making out like bandits in the will, Ramsey thought as he listened to the recorded music. Well, that part's true, anyway.

The only face in the tiny gathering that seemed to wear a wholly appropriate expression was that of the little girl Christabel—wide-eyed, confused, tearful. Ramsey and her parents had done their best to explain, but she was very young and was having trouble understanding.

Hell, he thought, I'm having trouble with it myself.

"Patrick Sellars was an aviator," the minister said. "I'm told he gave freely of himself in service to his country and to his friends, and that although he was badly injured in that service, he never lost his kindness, his sense of duty . . . or his humanity."

Welllll. . . .

"Today we say farewell to his mortal remains." The minister indicated the simple white coffin surrounded by flowers—Mrs. Sorensen's touch. "He was a gardener," she had insisted. "We have to have flowers." "But the part of him that is immortal lives on." The minister cleared his throat—a nice man, thought Ramsey, way out of his depth. But he would never know that. "I think it might not be too great a liberty to suggest that he is flying still—going to a place none of us has yet reached, seeing things none of us has yet seen, free of the encumbrance of his wounded body, the burden of his wearisome years. He is free, now, truly free to fly." And that, thought Ramsey, is some world-class irony.

"They have a little surveillance camera in the corner of the chapel," Sellars told them when they returned. On the wallscreen he looked just the same as he had in real life, although his surroundings were quite different. Ramsey thought the stony plain and faint stars behind him looked distinctly eerie—otherworldly, even. He could not help wondering why Sellars would choose such an odd background but preserve his image in that same strange, crippled body, unless it was to make the little girl more comfortable. "I couldn't resist the temptation to watch the service," the old man went on. "I found it unexpectedly moving." His smile was just a little wicked.

"But why are you dead?" Christabel was still close to tears. "I don't understand."

"I know, little Christabel," he said. "It's difficult. The fact is, that body of mine was just worn out. And I can't use it anymore, so I had to . . . had to use some tools I have now to transfer myself. Make a new home, I guess you'd say. I live on the net, now—or at least in this special part of it. So I'm not dead, not really. But I didn't have any more use for that old body, and it's just as well that people think I've . . . passed on." He looked out at the others. "There will be fewer questions."

"There'll be plenty of questions anyway," said Major Sorensen.

"Yes, there will."

"I'm still not sure I forgive you," said Kaylene Sorensen. "I believe you when you say it was an accident—about Christabel, I mean—but I'm still angry." She frowned, then showed a little half-smile, her own touch of wickedness. "But I suppose we shouldn't speak ill of the dead."

The boy Cho-Cho got up and walked out of the room, stiff and uncomfortable in the dark formal clothes Kaylene Sorensen had insisted he wear to the service. Ramsey was troubled about the boy and had begun considering what might happen to him now, but he had other things to deal with first.

"Speaking of questions," he said, "we need to begin strategizing."

"I don't want to strategize," said Mrs. Sorensen. "I want to take my daughter away from this and go home. She needs to be in school." She looked around for Cho-Cho and saw the open bedroom door, Her expression was troubled. "Both these children need to be children again."

"Trust me—a little thought now will make things much easier later on," Ramsey said. "Things are going to get very strange. . . ." He paused, shook his head. "I suppose it's more accurate to say they're going to continue to be strange. We're going to court with this. We're suing some of the most powerful people in the world. This is going to be a story the tabnets dream about. I can do a lot to shield you, Mrs. Sorensen, but I can't make it foolproof. Even the money you inherit from Sellars isn't going to make it foolproof. This is going to set the world on its ear."

"We don't want the money," Major Sorensen said. "We don't need it."

"No, you don't need it, Major," Sellars told him gently. "But you're going to get it. If you're worrying that the money is tainted somehow, I promise you there was no theft involved. I made many investments over the years, all of them quite legitimate—I had decades of all the world's information at my fingertips, and I am not a foolish man. I used most of that money upgrading myself and investigating the Grail Brotherhood. Surely you will not balk at using the small amount I have left to help protect your family, after all you've done for me."

"Small amount! Forty-six million credits!"

Sellars smiled. "You won't be forced to take all of it. It will be split among several . . . volunteers."

"It's tiny compared to what we're going to get when we drag Telemorphix and some of these others into court," Ramsey said. "But most of that will go to, the parents of the Tandagore kids, the ones put into comas by the Grail network's operating system. Oh, and to one other thing, which I might as well tell you about now. We're planning to build a hospital—the Olga Pirofsky Memorial Children's Hospital."

Sellars nodded slowly. "I did not know Ms. Pirofsky as well as you did, Mr. Ramsey, but may I make a suggestion? I suspect she would have preferred to call it the Daniel Pirofsky Children's Hospital."

It took him a moment to understand. "Of . . . of course. Yes, I think you're right."

"But why do we have to take these people to court?" asked Kaylene Sorensen. "After all we've been through?"

"You don't," Ramsey said carefully. "I have no qualms about filing a class-action suit. But when General Yacoubian's role in this comes out, I think it will be difficult to keep you folks out of it entirely. This is going to be the biggest story since the Antarctica War. Hell, it's going to be bigger than that—we've got a cloud of smoke over most of southeastern Louisiana, the J Corporation island is a melted slab at the middle of a federal disaster zone, and that's just a tiny piece of the goddamned puzzle." He saw Mrs. Sorensen's look and couldn't help smiling. Things were returning to normal, even if she didn't recognize it yet. "Sorry for the language. But there may be a court-martial ahead for your husband, too, I'm sure with Captain Parkins' testimony we won't have any trouble winning. . . ."

"We?" asked Christabel's father.

Ramsey paused, nodded. "Actually, I may be . . . a bit busy in the months to come. But I'm sure any decent military lawyer will be able to get it handled. We'll find one if you don't know one already."

"Please, take the money, Mrs. Sorensen," said Sellars. "Buy yourself a house off the base. Insulate yourself a little. This will go on for a long time. I'm sure you will have to struggle to keep your privacy."

"I don't want to move off the base," she replied angrily.

"As you choose. But take the money. Use it to give Christabel some freedom."

"What about the boy?" Ramsey asked. "I can make some arrangements if you'd like—before things get too hectic. Find him a good foster home. . . ."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kaylene Sorensen was not going to be jollied or led. Ramsey suspected she was going to be a very good trial witness. "That boy's not going anywhere. I haven't spent all that time washing and feeding him just to hand him off to someone who wouldn't care. He's staying with us, the poor little thing." She looked at her husband. "Isn't that right, Michael?"

Major Sorensen had the good grace to smile. "Uh . . . yeah. Sure. The more the merrier."

"Christabel," her mother said, "go get. . . ." She frowned and turned to Sellars. "What's his name? His real name?"

"Carlos, I believe." Sellars was smiling, too. "But I don't think he likes it much."

"Then we'll think of something else. I'm not going to have a foster son named Cho-Cho. It sounds like a train or something." She waved at her daughter. "Go on, honey—go get him."

Christabel looked at her strangely. "He's going to live with us?"

"Yes, he is. He doesn't have anywhere else to go."

The little girl thought this over for a moment. "Okay," she said, then trotted into the bedroom. She emerged a moment later pulling the protesting boy by the arm. He had taken off his suit, but as if he had been uncertain of what to do next, wore only his T-shirt and underwear.

"You're going to come live with us," Kaylene Sorensen said. "Is that all right?"

He looked at her as though peering up out of a hole. Ramsey thought he might actually try to run away. "Live with you?" he asked. "Like, su casa? In your house?"

"Yes." She nodded emphatically. "Tell him, Mike."

"We want you to live with us," the major said. To his credit, he definitely sounded like he meant it now. "We want you . . . to be part of our family."

The boy stared from one to the other. "Not going to school," he said.

"You most certainly are," Kaylene Sorensen told him. "And you will take regular baths, too. And we'll get those teeth fixed."

"Teeth. . . ?" He looked a little stunned. One hand crept up to finger his mouth. Then his expression changed. "Gonna live with the weenit?"

"If you mean Christabel, yes. She'll be . . . your sister, I guess."

He stared at them again, calculating, still suspicious, but also glimpsing the outlines of something about which Ramsey could only guess.

"Okay," he said.

"If you don't say bad words, I'll let you play with Prince Pikapik," Christabel promised.

He rolled his eyes, then the two of them wandered off to the other room—lawsuits, court-martials, even a dead man talking on the wallscreen not enough to keep them around while grown-ups were doing boring grown-up things.

"Good," said Sellars. "This is all good. Now we have a few more matters to discuss."

This truly is the story of the century, Ramsey marveled. I wonder if someday, half a millennium from now, people will be studying what we're saying here today. He looked at the bedroom doorway. The other wallscreen was on. Christabel was lying on the floor talking to a stuffed toy. Cho-Cho was watching cars explode.

No, he thought, and turned his attention back to what Sellars was saying. People never remember this stuff, no matter how important it is.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I've only been back a day and I still feel . . . pretty strange. And you know how slow the buses are downtown." Renie looked around. "The office isn't quite what I expected."

Del Ray laughed and waved his good hand dismissively at the windowless space, the small screen on the unadorned white wall. His other arm was pulled tightly against his chest in a sling, the damaged hand invisible under a knot of bandages. "It's only temporary—I've got my eye on a much nicer one at the main UN building on Farewell Square." He settled back in his chair. "Bureaucracies are a funny thing. Three months ago you would have thought I had a communicable disease. Now I am suddenly everyone's best friend again because the smell of a wrongful-termination suit is on the wind and my face is on the newsnets." He looked at her. "But not your face. It's too bad—it's a nice face, Renie."

"I don't want it—the attention, anything. I'm tired. I just want some quiet." She lowered herself into the chair facing the desk. "It's a miracle I'm up and walking around, but those old-fashioned tanks were actually better than what some of the other people in the network went through. Let us move our limbs so the muscles didn't atrophy, things like that. And, of course, we didn't get bedsores."

"You'll have to tell me one day about the others. I still don't entirely understand."

"It will be a long conversation," she said. "But yes, I'll tell you. It's quite a story."

"So was our end. How is your father?"

"Grumpy. But also a bit different, somehow. Actually, I'm on my way to see him."

He hesitated. "And your brother?"

She tried to smile but it wasn't easy. "No change yet. But at least I can touch him now."

Del Ray nodded, then began to look around on his desk and in the drawers. For a moment Renie thought that he was pretending to be busy—that he wanted her to leave. "I don't think there's such a thing as an ashtray in this office," he said at last. "Shall I go find you one?"

It took her a moment. "You know, I haven't started smoking again. I wanted one so bad while I was stuck in that place, the VR network, but once I got out, it just seemed. . . ." She moved nervously in the chair. "Things just seemed different. But I don't want to keep you away from your work, Del Ray. I just wanted to thank you face-to-face for getting things smoothed out—with the military, the police; all that."

"Still a long way to go. But the military doesn't know that it was Sellars who tipped them off, and they're more than a bit embarrassed a bunch of armed mercenaries were about to take over one of their bases without them even noticing, so they will be just as happy if it all goes away quietly. And as I said, people want to be my friends now. Important people."

He liked it, she realized. Did she begrudge it to him? She didn't think so. "But I still want to say thanks. After all that, I think I would have gone mad if they'd kept me in some government cell."

"So would I," he laughed. "The first time I saw the sky again I burst into tears."

"I didn't have much crying left in me," Renie said. "But I know what you mean." She cautiously levered herself up out of the chair. I might as well be an old woman, she thought. "Like I said Del Ray I won't keep you, got to get going if I'm going to catch my bus."

He reached into his pocket with his good hand. "Here, Renie. For God's sake, take a taxi. A real one."

It hurt. "I don't want any more money from you, Del Ray."

For a moment he too looked stung, then he shook his head slowly. "You don't understand. There's a lot more where that comes from, and it doesn't come from me. I've been talking to our friend Sellars while you've been out of touch. He's hooked me up with a man named Ramsey. You're going to get a surprise, Renie. But trust me, Sellars would want you to take a taxi. Use this."

She stared at the card for a moment, then took it. "Okay. But only this once, because my legs hurt."

He smiled as he came around the desk. "Same old Renie." He put out his arms and she moved into them. For a moment she rested her head on his chest, then, suddenly uncomfortable, tried to pull away. He held against her pressure, kissed her gently on the cheek, then leaned back to look at her face. "And your new man?" he asked. "Is it serious?"

"Yes, I believe it is. Yes. I'm meeting him at the hospital. He's been getting his things from his landlady's house. We're going to look for a flat."

He nodded. She wondered if she was imagining a little sadness in his smile. "Ah. Well, then I wish you two good luck. But let's not be strangers, okay? I am not just saying that—not after what we've been through."

She looked at the white club of bandages at the end of his arm. The doctors had sewed two of the fingers back on, he had told her when she called, but they had been badly mangled and there was little chance they would ever function. None of us will ever be the same, she thought. Not ever. "I know, Del Ray." She disengaged herself, but reached out and touched his cheek. "And thank you,"

"One other thing, Renie," he said as she reached the door. "Don't be too quick to pick out a flat."

She turned, anger bubbling up again. "You don't think it's going to work out?"

He was laughing. "No, no. I just mean you may find you have more housing options than you think."

It was an interesting experience to see the exact amount she was expected to pay displayed on the cab's screen. Is this how it always is? she wondered as she waved the card in front of the reader and added a tip for the driver. For people who have money? Things just . . . work?

Durban Outskirt Medical Facility was a different place with the quarantine lifted. Visitors milled in the lobby or nested around the waiting areas in little family groups of tired relatives and yammering children. The doctors and nurses looked like people instead of visitors from other planets. At least they've got that vaccine now, she thought. At least I don't have to worry about Stephen getting Bukavu 4 anymore. It was not much solace.

She held the bag carefully as she made her way up the elevator, feeling as though she had turned into someone else when she wasn't looking. But why? Everything's the same, really—same Renie, same Papa, same sick Stephen. While we were in that place, the world went on. Nothing's really changed.

Except for how she felt about !Xabbu, of course. That scared her a little. She wanted it to work so badly, but she could see so many problems. They were so different, so completely separate in their experiences. What they had, they had made in the most unreal environment imaginable. How would it hold up in the day-to-day of missed buses and scraping for rent, of countless miserable visits to the hospital?

Her father's door was open. She had only spoken to him over the net so she was surprised to see that he had a private room and couldn't help wondering how they were going to pay for it. But even if she had to go into debt, she wasn't going to let Del Ray set himself up as their savior.

She hesitated at the threshold, suddenly frightened for reasons she could not name. Her father was watching the wallscreen, waving his long fingers to jump from node to node, his expression blank and bored. He's so old! she thought. Look at him. He's an old man. She took a breath and stepped in.

When he saw her he blinked, then blinked again. To her astonishment she realized his eyes were filling with tears. "What is with everyone?" she asked, startled and afraid again. "Is that all anyone does anymore? Cry?"

"Renie," he said. "It is so good to see you."

She was not going to cry—not for this old fool. Jeremiah Dako had already told her of his little trick, wandering off to Durban and leaving poor Jeremiah to mind the fort. But she found herself getting teary whether she wanted to or not; to hide it, she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. His hand closed on hers; she found herself trapped, held tight against his whiskery face. He smelled of honey-lime aftershave, and for a moment she was a child again, overwhelmed by his bigness, his power. But I'm not a child. I'm not. Not since a long time gone.

"I am so sorry," he said.

"Sorry?" She got free and carefully sat down. "Why are you sorry?"

"For everything." He waved and the wallscreen went blank. "For all the foolish things I have done." He found a tissue and blew his nose angrily. "You the one who always tell me about the foolish things, girl. You saying you don't remember them now?"

Something unbent inside her just a little. "Yes. I remember. But we all make mistakes, Papa." She took a nervous breath. "Show me your arm."

"See? Dog close to tore it off me. Then they call me One-Arm Joseph instead." He displayed the lacerations with pride. "Tried to bite my neck out, too. Bet you happy you were safe in that tank."

"Yes, Papa. Safe in that tank."

He heard something in her tone and his satisfied smile died. "I know it wasn't like that, really. I am just making a joke."

"I know, Papa."

"Have you seen Stephen?"

"Not today—I'm going to see him after you and I have our visit. I'll come back and tell you if there's . . . any change." Seeing her brother's little body, still withered and empty, had stolen away most of her joy at being back in the world again.

Joseph nodded his head slowly. He broke a long silence by asking, "And that man of yours? Where is he?"

Renie fought down irritation. Why did men always ask that? It was like they needed to know whose protection she was under—to make sure that a suitably responsible transfer had been made. "He's okay, Papa. I'm going to meet him later. We're going to look for a flat. I have enough left in my bank account. I think I might even be able to get my old job back—called the chancellor's office and apparently some of them have been watching the newsnets."

He nodded, but he wore an odd expression. "So that's why I am here? So you can find a place with your new man?"

It took her a couple of heartbeats to understand what was bothering him. "You think. . . ? Oh, Papa, I only left you here because there wasn't anywhere else for you to go. !Xabbu and I stayed at his old rooming house last night, sleeping on the front room floor." Despite her sadness, a little smile surfaced. "The landlady wouldn't let us stay in his room because we're not married."

"So?"

"So of course you're going to live with us," she said, although it made her feel heavy and cross to have to say it. "I wouldn't leave you on the street. We're family." She darted a glance at the time display in the corner of the darkened wallscreen. "I'd better go." She stood, then remembered the bag clutched in her hand. "Oh, I brought you something."

He balanced it against his chest to open it with his working hand. He lifted the bottle out and peered at it for a long time.

"I know it's not your old favorite," she said, "but they told me at the store that it's good. I figured you might as well drink something decent—you know, to celebrate." She looked around. "I don't think you're supposed to have anything like that, so you'd better hide it."

He was still staring at the bottle. When he looked up at her, his expression made her a little uncomfortable. "Thank you," he said. "But you know, I don't think I drink it here. Maybe when I get out." He smiled, and again she was struck by how old he looked, bony and . . . scoured. Like rocks in a windy valley. "When you find the new place. We will have a little celebration." He handed her back the bag,

"You . . . you don't want it?"

"When I get out," he said. "Don't want to get in trouble here, do I? They might keep me longer."

She took a long time trying to fit the bottle back into the bag. When she had finished she stood for a moment, fighting the urge to walk straight out the door, to avoid confusion and difficult feelings and simply get on with things. It was only as she looked at him, at the way he was looking back at her, that she realized what she wanted to do.

She bent and kissed his cheek again, then wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a squeeze. "I'll be back tomorrow, Papa. I promise."

He cleared his throat as she stood up. "We can do better, you and me. You know I love you, girl. You know that, right?"

She nodded. "I know that." It was hard to talk. "We'll do better."

!Xabbu was not in the waiting room for the children's wing. Renie was a little surprised—it was not like him to be late—but her brain was too full to spend much time wondering about it. She left a message for him with the receptionist, then went to see Stephen.

She found !Xabbu sleeping in a chair at the foot of the hospital bed, his head back, his hands open in his lap as though he had held and then released some flying thing. She felt ashamed. If she was tired and out of sorts, how much more exhausted must !Xabbu be, after those last hellish minutes holding open the line of communication with the Other? And now I'm going to drag him out looking for some miserable little flat. Her heart twisted in her breast.

But it will be our miserable little flat, she reminded herself. That's something, isn't it?

She gently stroked his head as she stepped past him to the side of her brother's bed. Stephen's little arms were still curled against his chest as if in mantis-prayer, his body terrifyingly bony under the thin hospital blanket, his eyes. . . .

His eyes were open.

"Stephen?" It almost came out a scream. "Stephen!"

He did not move, but she thought his eyes followed her a little as she leaned in. She took his head in her hands, terrified by his frailty. "Can you hear me? Stephen, it's me, Renie!" And all the time a voice in the back of her brain was saying, It means nothing, it's just something that happens, their eyes open, he's not there, not really. . . .

!Xabbu had begun to stir at the sound of her voice. He sat forward, but seemed still to be partly asleep. "I had a dream," he murmured. "I was the honey-guide . . . the little bird. And I was leading. . . ." His eyes finally came all the way open. "Renie? What is happening?"

But she was already at the door, shouting for a nurse.

Doctor Chandhar had taken her fingers from the pulse in Stephen's neck, but she was still holding one of his bony hands in hers. "The signs . . . are rather good," she said, the smile on her face a fine counterweight to professional caution. "There is definitely improvement, the first we've seen since he's been here."

"What does that mean?" Renie demanded. "Is he coming out of it?" She leaned in to stare at Stephen again. Surely that was a flash of recognition deep in his brown eyes—surely it was!

"I hope so, yes," the doctor said. "But he has been comatose a long time. Please listen, Ms. Sulaweyo. Do not get your hopes up too high—the odds against full recovery are very long. Even if this means he's awakening, there might still be brain damage."

"I'm here," Renie told her little brother firmly. "You can see me, can't you? You can hear me. It's time for you to come back to us, Stephen. We're all waiting for you." She straightened. "I have to tell my father."

"Not too much all at once," said Doctor Chandhar. "If your brother is truly waking up, he may be disoriented. Soft voices, careful movement."

"Right," Renie said. "Of course. I'm just . . . God, thank you, Doctor. Thank you!" She turned to !Xabbu, threw her arms around him. "His eyes are open! Really open!"

When the doctor had left to go call a specialist at one of the bigger hospitals, Renie sagged into the chair and wept. "Oh, please let it be true," she said. "Please, please." She leaned forward and reached between the bars at the side of the bed to hold Stephen's hand. !Xabbu came and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her neck as they both looked at the shrunken shape. Stephen's eyes had closed again, but this time in what Renie felt unprovably sure was something closer to normal sleep.

"I had a dream," he said. "That I was a honey-guide bird, and that I was leading Stephen to honey. We came a long way. I could hear him behind me."

"You led him back."

"Who knows? Perhaps I felt him coming up and it touched what I was dreaming. Or perhaps it was just chance. I am not so certain of anything as I was." He laughed. "Was I certain of things once?"

"I am certain of something," she said. "I love you. We belong together. With Stephen, too. And even my father." Now she was the one to laugh. "My ridiculous father—he wants to do better. Wants to start over with me. Isn't that the most ridiculous thing you've heard?"

"I think it is a fine thing."

"It is. A fine thing. I'm just laughing because I'm tired of crying." She reached up to touch !Xabbu's hand, then pulled it against her mouth so she could kiss it. "If everything is a story, do you think we could actually have a happy ending?"

"There is no telling." !Xabbu took a deep breath. "About stories, I mean. Where they come from. Where they go. But if we do not ask for too much, then yes—I think that in our story, happiness is most possible."

And as if he had heard !Xabbu and agreed, Stephen tightened his fingers on hers.