Bogdan took the pedway down to the main floor where he found a site map and touched the beer garden icon. A candy-striped usher line issued from under his shoes and stretched out across the thronging hall. He followed its meandering course through and around exhibits and kiosks. Hail to Charter Jiff (red-white-green), the flagship of our Great Chartist Movement, who owns extruder recipes to practically everything and boasts of conveniently located outlets everywhere, including our own pirate-infested building on Howe Street.
Hail to Charter Bolto (navy-charcoal-teal), whose financial services in insurance, investment, and banking rival those of many major aff establishments.
Hail to Charter Vine (green-green-green), whose worldwide chain of resorts and spas lend solace to those who can afford to visit them.
Bogdan halted in the center of the Hall of Nations and closed his eyes. He was washed in the sparkling energy of five floors of Strength in Numbers, Strength in Diversity, Strength in Our Vision of a Cooperative Society.
Our Kodiak founders were larger than life. The market demand for their outstanding craft was nothing less than exuberant, and they engaged shipyards all over the world to satisfy it. They coopted, bought out, or otherwise beat down all obstacles in their way. For a number of years Charter Kodiak was a poster child for the whole chartist movement. But the heroic times didn’t last, the condo could not hold, the original thirty-two jumped ship to pursue private fortunes, and it was left to the likes of Kale and Gerald to drag anchor into the shoals.
Somebody rubbed Bogdan’s head, and he whipped around and found himself nose to nose with Troy Tobbler. “’Lo, Goldie,” the boy said. “Out walking the chair?”
Troy wore a tailored green and silver tunic with short, yellow sleeves that highlighted his chubby arms. Bogdan looked down at his own arms. They were chubby too, with no hint of budding muscles under smooth skin. But somehow they weren’t the same.
“Hello in there,” Troy said, waving his hand in front of Bogdan’s face. “What’s the news on ol’ what’s its name? What’s mentar jail like anyway? Do they really cut their inference engines from their knowledge bases? That’s harsh.”
Bogdan could remember what it was like when he was Troy’s age. Things were perfect then. Kodiak still had shipyards in the EU and UAR and owned the whole building on Howe Street and chapter houses in other cities. Whenever anyone visited Chicago, they brought him presents. They loved to hear him and Lisa sing songs he made up.
“Troy,” he said, fixing the boy with Hour 61 intensity, “have you told anyone about Hubert yet?”
“No, but I was just going to.”
“I don’t think you have to.”
“Oh, no?”
Bogdan yearned to crush the boy, but instead he explained, “You didn’t tell them about hacking my door, did you?”
“No.”
“You said you’d let me feck it up myself, and I did, or Sam did. So, you were right.”
Troy smiled.
“Well, the same thing applies to Hubert. You can count on me to feck it all up on my own. What do you say?”
“I don’t think so.”
Someone else rubbed Bogdan’s head, and he swatted at the hand and spun around. It was a middle-aged man in a Charter Candel jumpsuit (turquoise-magenta-black). “Is your ’meet asleep, son?” he said.
Bogdan glanced at the lifechair. “Samson? Yes, myr, I think so,” he said. When he turned back, Troy had slipped away.
“A pity. I was wanting to give him my regards.”
The chair piped up, “I can record you, myr.”
The man nodded his head and stood over the chair. “Greetings, Samson Kodiak,” he began, but Samson’s eyes fluttered open, and the man exclaimed, “Hello! Awake after all.”
“Yes?” Samson said, trying to focus on the man. “Can I help you, officer?”
“Ha, ha,” the man replied. “I’m not with security, Myr Kodiak. My name is Charles Candel, though when we first met, way back in ’38, your name was Harger, and mine was Sauze.”
Samson knit his brows with the effort of remembering. “Charles Sauze? Oh, yes, cybersculpture. But you were a boy.”
The man’s jaw dropped. “You remember me, though a century has passed. Yes, I was a boy, a failing student, but your lectures on pseudotissue molding captured my imagination. To make a long story short, your workshop turned me around, gave my life a direction, and the rest is history.”
“History?” Samson said. “Henry, what is he talking about?”
“I am Belt Hubert, and Myr Sauze Candel is expressing appreciation for influencing his life in a positive manner a century ago.”
“He is?”
“I am,” Candel replied. “Take my word for it, Myr Kodiak. You changed my life. Anyway, I saw your sky show the other night, and when I heard you were attending, I wanted to come by and say hello.”
By the time the Candel departed, two more chartists had stopped to speak to Samson. Soon many more well-wishers arrived and formed a line. “Belt Hubert,” Bogdan said, “tell April what’s happening and that I have to go off on my own.”
“She says she’s sending someone.”
When Kitty arrived, the queue of visitors completely encircled the lifechair and was still growing. “What’s this?” she asked, but Bogdan didn’t stick around to answer.
He went back to the Rondy site map and said, “Where’s Troy Tobbler?” A moving dot appeared on the map, and Bogdan took off after him.
UNDER THE LIFECHAIR blanket, Blue Team Bee crawled from the hankie’s pocket to the underside of his jumpsuit lapel. There it wove hairlike cams through the fabric in order to get a visual of the vicinity and put faces to the voices it was recording for LOG2.
EVERYTHING WAS HUMMING along, and Fred thought he might have an evening without a disaster. The head count had reached 47,600 and change. Twelve hundred lethal weapons, mostly laser sabers and pocket billies, had been confiscated at the scanways. Three felons with arrest warrants were detained for the police. (What were they thinking coming through an arena-class scanway?) Five hundred thirty-six persons with false or suspended charter memberships were turned away.
Seven deaths had occurred so far, all apparently by natural causes: three coronaries, one stroke, one asphyxiation (hot dog lodged in throat), and two undetermined. The dead and dying had been hustled off the floor with minimal fuss and quickly put into biostasis.
Through all of this, the impromptu TUG security force had performed beside his Applied People force without incident. Fred was reluctantly impressed by their professionalism. He decided it was probably a good time to visit the troops. With five hundred TUGs on floor duty, he had kept many of his own people in reserve in the labyrinthine system of service corridors that interlinked the halls and ballrooms. Fred threaded his way through these corridors and chatted with his jerrys, belindas, and russes. They were mostly sitting around, snoozing or gossiping or playing casino games, as caterbeitors scooted around them. No one seemed happy, especially the russes. In fact, his brothers seemed to be avoiding him. Fred’s other twenty pikes were also held in reserve here and every one Fred saw was engaged in that klick-eating back and forth pacing of theirs. It took no special insight to read the body language. Pikes were cultivated to leap into street battles with clubs aswinging, not to stroll peacefully through retail emporia, and certainly not to sit idly in service corridors.