This was apparently the reaction Wee Hunk was waiting for, because he chortled and said, “Bishop Meewee, I’d like to introduce Dr. Rouselle.”
The doctor came over to shake his hand. “The honor is mine, Myr Meewee,” she said. She was an imposing woman, a couple of heads taller than the former bishop.
Wee Hunk said, “The only way I could entice Dr. Rouselle to leave her Birthplace post in Ethiopia to be smuggled here to save the life of one little rich girl was to assure her that you personally required it.”
“Thank you for coming,” Meewee said, “but tell me, what is Birthplace doing with a revivification specialist in patch fly country?”
“I am there for running the sterilization universal,” the doctor said.
“Dr. Rouselle,” Wee Hunk explained, “gave up a lucrative reviv practice in Geneva to volunteer for Birthplace’s campaign to stamp out human reproduction. Thus she’s both qualified and unfettered by obligations to the Fagan Group. And as far as I can ascertain, no one knows she’s here except us.”
The doctor led her visitors on a brief tour of the nascent clinic and assured them she would be ready to receive her special patient in about a week.
“We don’t have a week, Doctor,” Wee Hunk said. “You’ll have to be ready by tomorrow.”
The doctor shook her head. “But it is testing and to calibrate and season the amnio fluid,” she complained.
The little caveman got out of his floating armchair and grew to life-size. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, “and don’t forget the portable tank.”
She shrugged her shoulders and pointed to the bottle of Orange Flush that Meewee hadn’t yet opened. “The kidneys are desiring this, Myr Meewee.”
He assured her he would drink it, and he and Wee Hunk took their leave and went to an empty conference room. Wee Hunk said, “Your name opened the door, Bishop, but what clinched the deal was my promise to buy her a complete peripatetic field hospital. Our doctor drives a hard bargain.”
Meewee opened the bottle of diuretic and drained it. He sat at the conference table and belched. “You mentioned a portable tank,” he said. “Does that mean you finally have a plan of action?”
Wee Hunk took a seat opposite him. “Yes, and now that we’re here, I can run it by you.”
ON THE WAY back to the locks an hour later, Wee Hunk said, “Don’t forget to challenge me repeatedly, Bishop.”
“I will.”
The former bishop entered the out-lock, but the arbeitor remained in the suite with Wee Hunk’s paste canister. “Aren’t you coming out with me?” Meewee said.
“No, I’ll remain here.”
“But you can’t communicate with your prime from in here.”
“That’s a small matter.”
Meewee nodded. “What should I tell you out there? Did you know you were going to stay inside?”
“Not really, but don’t say anything. I’ll figure it out.”
The inner hatch did not close, and after a few moments, Meewee said, “Was there something else?”
“Yes,” the caveman replied. “There’s something I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you.”
When he did not continue, Meewee prompted him, “You still don’t trust me, do you?”
“A hole in one,” replied the mentar. “But given the situation, I suppose I have no choice. Have you ever wondered why Eleanor named your mentar Arrow?”
“Not really. I always took it to be one of those childish names like Spike or Fluffy that people like to give pets. Or, no offense, like your own name.”
“Ellen named me when she was a child, but Eleanor named Arrow, and Eleanor possessed too literal a temperament to misname anything.”
“What’s your point?”
“A couple of days ago, when I told you that I don’t know Cabinet’s kill code, I was telling the truth. But Cabinet might have mine, or might have had it before it lost the ability to use Starkese. It occurs to me that Arrow might have everyone’s, including my own. Something to keep in mind.”
AFTER LEAVING THE BB of R, Fred tubed across town to the Longyear Center. On the way he installed a new skullcap on his head. He had removed his name patch, and the russes he passed along the way paid no special attention to him.
Longyear Center, stripped of its stylish pretensions, was nothing more than a tank farm for the middle class, which apparently included UDJD employees. In the lobby he told the guard on duty that he wanted to visit Heloise Costa. The guard was a russ.
“Certainly, myr,” the guard said, but when Fred swiped the sign-in medallion, he gave Fred a second look. Fred could see the wheels turning in his brother’s head: So this is the guy, and that’s his hink. But all he said was, “Here’s your usher line, Myr Londenstane.”
Fred strolled tiled corridors that separated vast wards containing thousands of hernandez tanks arranged in ranks and rows. He, himself, had once spent an unmemorable fortnight in one of these, recovering from a bad laser burn.
Fred followed the usher line to Ward 286D. Several times he had to step aside to make way for trains of medbeitors and carts. He followed the usher line to a cubicle and stepped through its privacy curtain. The cubicle was only slightly larger than the tank and controller that occupied it. The tank was full of a thick purplish growth medium within which was suspended the reassembled body of Inspector Costa.
She was either asleep or off in some jacketscape. Her skin still clearly showed where she had been sliced into five pieces by plasma rings. The seams were bright red; the major one ran from the tip of her right shoulder diagonally down her chest to the knob of her left hip. It had cut a breast in two, just below the nipple. Her snatch, he couldn’t help but notice, was tufted with ordinary curly brunette hair, and Fred realized that he’d expected it to be shaved into a heart or fleur-de-lis or some such exotic shape like a lulu’s. Costa was no lulu.
Hernandez tanks weren’t exactly erotic settings, and nude bodies floating in them tended to resemble lab specimens more than sex muffins, but Fred was impressed by how thoroughly turned off he was at the sight of Costa’s nakedness.
When he looked up again, she was watching him. Hello, Londenstane, she said and opaqued the bottom half of her tank. So nice of you to visit.
“I wanted to see if they found all the right pieces,” he said.
I believe they have, though some of them don’t work as well as they used to.
“Give it time.”
Oh, I know. I’ve only been in here three days, and it feels like a prison term.
There followed an awkward silence, and Fred realized they had absolutely nothing to talk about. She was a hink. He was a clone. End of story. They spent a few more excruciating minutes exchanging small talk, and then he wished her a speedy recovery and left. Retracing his steps to the lobby, he wondered if that was all it had been, her superficial resemblance to a lulu.
There were two russes at the registration desk when he exited, and their eyes followed him out the door and all the way to the pedway.
Riding in the bead car home, Fred said, “Marcus?”
Yes, Londenstane?
“Marcus, I was wondering—”
I’m listening.
Fred was wondering whether it would do any good to delete the—he couldn’t even say it to himself—what a pretentious name—the Book of Russ—so apocryphal-sounding. “Marcus, can I delete the entries I made to our Heads-Up Log over the last few days?”
Ordinarily, no.
“Ordinarily?”
Do you no longer espouse the views you expressed there?