Everyperson shrugged its shoulders. In the center of its chest burned the glyph for No Matches—Try Again?
“Screw it,” Fred said and pressed the button on the player to irradiate the datapin. Everyperson abruptly vanished. Fred took the expensive pin from the player and held it up. The tiny bulb of paste at its heart was cooked. He dropped it into his pocket and fished around for the other one. He still had a few minutes of null-room time left, so he opened the Book of Russ and added a new entry: “To my brothers cloned: Your response to this book is just plain sad. By the way, I was completely sober when I recorded it. Since none of you has seen fit to add your own observations, I offer the following list for your consideration:
“One, we russes are created with emotional muzzles locked to our personalities. I have removed mine.
“Two, although we often complain about the strictures of Applied People’s confidentiality policy, we actually prefer it that way because it reinforces our own inability to communicate.
“Three, why shouldn’t we be attracted to hinks? We’re men, right? No offense to our sisters, but why should we only find lulus, evangelines, and jennys appealing? Why do johns pine only for janes and juanitas, steves only for kellys, and jeromes only for jeromes? This strikes me as deliberate genetic programming, not any natural human sexual response. Our ur-brother, Thomas A., kept lists of women he desired to screw. He was attracted to a variety of women. And we’re not? Why is that?
“And finally, why don’t we own the patents to our own genome? Why is our genetic recipe the property of Applied People? Shouldn’t it belong to us? At least, shouldn’t we have a say in how it’s expressed?
“These are only a few of the questions I have. Suck on them for a while, my brothers. Signed: Fred Londenstane, Batch 2B.”
ALL THURSDAY AFTERNOON, the medtechs came in, and the medtechs went out. They fiddled obsessively with the tank, controller, and jacket, but Ellen Starke’s condition only worsened through the afternoon. The only positive thing they accomplished, it seemed to Mary, was to turn down the volume of the jacket’s breathless, pitiful cry.
The jenny Hattie visited in the late afternoon to tell Mary and Renata about a little meditation booth near the dining commons that had a decent grief program in case they needed a good cry. Starke was not expected to survive the night.
Quitting time was the quarter hour of french fries, an aroma guaranteed to send tired day workers home in search of dinner. But there was the trace of another, strange odor in the gatehouse. It was ripe and revolting, and Mary realized that it was the same odor that Fred had brought home on his skin and hair last night. The old coot in the Skytel.
At the outer pressure gate, she asked Reilly about the odor.
“I’m surprised you can still smell it,” he said. “We scoured this place pretty good.”
“But what is it?”
Reilly only shrugged; confidentiality was confidentiality.
Mary wished Reilly a pleasant evening, but he was getting off shift too, and he offered to accompany her and Renata to the train station. As they walked down the drive to the street, Mary picked up the odor here and there in the hedge.
At home she got a message from Fred who said he’d be late. She dialed up a pasta dish and ate it on the couch in front of the flatscreen. She searched the WAD and Evernet for background on the man who had appeared on the Skytel. Most of the stories were dated—he had been a celebrity of sorts in the last century—and these turned out to be what she was looking for.
Mary watched an old clip of the wedding ceremony of Samson P. Harger and Eleanor K. Starke in 2092. They were young, beautiful, and strong. Starke, especially, had a remarkable face, with wildly extravagant eyebrows. Samson looked dashing in a charcoal-gray tux. He exhibited a certain cockiness. He was an artist and package designer of note. This was right before his run-in with a homcom slug and his subsequent undoing. He was one of the first people ever seared—hence the odor. Some years later he joined a charter. That was how Fred had run into him last night.
Mary watched the clip of Samson’s arrest by slug and bloomjumpers at an outdoor café. The other patrons stampeded away, his wife among them.
There were no pictures of the three of them together: mother, stepfather, and baby Ellen, but from what information Mary could glean, her client in the tank at Roosevelt Clinic had lived with the stinker for a short period of time during her infancy.
“Call Wee Hunk,” she said.
The little muscle-bound persona appeared before the couch and said, “Good evening, Myr Skarland. What can I do for you?”
“You asked us to keep our eyes and ears open,” she replied, “and to report anything unusual or suspicious.”
“Yes?”
“It might be nothing,” she said, “but when I was leaving the clinic by the South Gate today, I smelled something strange.”
“Yes, I heard your exchange with the guard. You smelled the odor of a seared individual who was turned away from the clinic.” An aerial view appeared on the flatscreen of a girl and lifechair traveling in circles on the greensmoat.
Mary said, “But he’s Ellen’s stepfather. Why is Concierge obstructing his visit?”
Wee Hunk seemed impressed with her information. “The doctors assure us that it’s too late for visitors to have any effect on Ellen’s condition, and we have no cause to doubt them in that regard.”
“Shouldn’t we at least try? And why was he turned away in the first place? Doesn’t he have a right to see his daughter?”
“So many questions,” Wee Hunk said. “Without intruding on family privacy, allow me to just say that it’s a long story. But when Ellen wakes up, we’ll add her stepfather’s name to her FDO list. Until then, there is very little his presence would help.”
MEEWEE TRAILED BEHIND Wee Hunk and an arbeitor to the null suite next to the bunker shelter. “I still don’t see why I need to go in,” he said. “It’ll strip me of my implants, which will take weeks to regenerate.”
“Trust me, Bishop, it’s necessary,” the caveman replied. When they reached the in-lock, the hatch irised open. The Starke null suite was no economy model, and its locks could accommodate a dozen people at once. But Meewee entered alone, the mentar stayed out in the hallway, and the arbeitor entered only long enough to deposit a paste canister on a shelf.
“See you in a couple of hours,” Wee Hunk said from the hallway. When the hatch shut, and Meewee was alone, the mentar reappeared and said, “Please challenge my integrity.” Wee Hunk was now a miniature man, lounging in a miniature armchair next to the paste canister on the shelf. Meewee was perplexed; he had just challenged the mentar in the bunker shelter, but since this was a backup, which was cut off from its prime, he did so, and it passed.
“You should get into the habit of challenging me every few minutes from now on,” Wee Hunk said.
“Why so often?”
“Let’s just call it a precaution.”
The in-lock utilized gas instead of expressing visola to purge bodies of machinery. The gas process took much longer, but it was surer and gentler on living tissue, and it made Meewee drowsy. He lay on a couch and fell asleep. He was awakened by the noise of the inner hatch unbolting. An arbeitor entered from inside the null suite and handed him a chilled liter bottle of Orange Flush. Then it lifted the paste canister from the shelf and went into the suite, with Wee Hunk and his armchair floating behind.
Meewee followed them to a large conference room where dozens of machines were busily assembling other machines. Meewee looked around and tried to make sense of the carts, cartons, and crates. When he saw the empty hernandez tank, he said, “Ah, our clinic.” He did a double take when he noticed a woman among the toiling machines.