“I will not!” he cried, and when the jerry tried to lift him from the seat, he spat at him. The spittle boiled away against the officer’s face mask.
The jerry backed away from the car and said, “Hey, this guy’s toxic.”
“No, he’s a stinker,” said the russ, “like I said.”
“Yeah? Well? I don’t recall how we’re supposed to handle ’em. Do you?”
The two security men fell silent while Nicholas briefed them on protocol for handling the cellularly seared. Meanwhile, the taxi closed its doors, shutting Samson in, and spoke to him in yet another new voice, “Good afternoon, Myr Harger,” it said. Harger, not Kodiak. “This is Hi-Top mentar Fuller speaking. I’d like to apologize for any misunderstanding caused by my partials. Please sit back, and we’ll proceed to your destination as soon as I smooth things over with building security.”
In a little while, the two security men outside Samson’s window turned around and left the bay. The taxi’s motors revved up, and the seat melted once again into an ultra-soft restraint.
“That’s more like it!” Samson said. “Be afraid!”
Chicago slipped by beneath them. Soon they were flying over the lakeshore, and the tall trapezoidal shape of Soldier Field Stadium lay below them. Samson ached all over. There were simmering bruises on his arms where the jerry had grabbed him, and his fist burned where he’d beat the seat cushion. It occurred to him that the next time he was in a situation like that, all he had to do was whack his skull against something solid, and that should do the trick. “Hubert,” he said, “next time, do exactly as I tell you. No arguments, no negotiations. Is that clear?”
If you say so, Sam.
“I do say so. I insist so.” The portable simcaster had been in his breast pocket the whole time. He took it out and flipped the control switch to voice mode. “Charge yourself,” he said to it, and the small device powered up.
“Ready,” it said.
“Myr Harger,” the taxi broke in, “we have arrived, see? And Hi-Top Taxi is pleased to waive the entire fare. In fact, we’re crediting you with three free rides to any Chicagoland destination in private cars. We’re landing now. We’re here!” The taxi settled on the uppermost transit parapet of the stadium and opened its door.
“That’s more like it,” Samson said, and when the seat released him, he began to climb out, but stopped and said, “You waived the fare? Anything else?”
“Yes, Myr Harger. Hi-Top Charter has asked me to apologize for this unfortunate incident. It seems a shame that chartists should fight among themselves.”
“Yes, a shame,” he said and put the simcaster back into his pocket. As soon as Samson got out of the taxi, the taxi slammed its doors and took off, leaping into the air on all six fans, not waiting for him to clear its wash zone. The dust caught Samson, and he coughed for a whole minute. He waited a few more minutes to recover, then crossed in front of the row of waiting scanways. Spared a side trip to Indiana, he was early. It was hours before the canopy ceremony would start, and the place was empty. Samson skirted the scanways and went to an adjoining pressure gate. The intrusive radiation of a scanway would set off his cellular wardens just as surely as a simcaster, and as a registered seared he had a waiver (something the taxi should have checked). The pressure gate fell, and a security arbeitor rolled out. It performed a gentle but thorough frisk and sniff of his person. It even asked him to open his mouth so it could peer down his throat. It confiscated his walking stick, loading his palm with a claim ticket for it, and escorted him through the gate. On the other side, an orange usher line lit up at his feet and led out of sight down the spiraling stadium gangway.
“Is it far?” he said.
“Not far, and downhill all the way,” Hubert replied from his belt.
Samson shuffled past not-yet-activated concession kiosks. It was hard to believe he was really doing this at last. “Hubert, have I written a farewell speech?”
“No, Sam, you haven’t.”
This puzzled him. He was almost certain he had jotted down a few ideas for a speech. Certainly, it was all he’d been thinking about these last few weeks. “Are you sure?”
“You said,” Hubert continued, “that when the time came, the words would take care of themselves.”
Samson didn’t believe it, but at this point, what could he do? “It’s refreshing to see how much confidence I have in myself.”
He followed the usher line to a loading gallery. Gratefully, he collapsed into a seat. Soft restraints threaded themselves over his shoulders and across his chest. “Ready to exit?” the seat asked.
Samson said, “Ready,” and the seat lifted him slowly outside through a pressure curtain and up and over until he was suspended over the gaping maw of the stadium. It was exhilarating to be the first seat out, and Samson took several deep breaths. The playing field was so far below him that it looked like a dinner plate at the bottom of a well.
“Tilt back,” he said, and the seat complied. “A little more.” Now he was looking into the blue sky beyond the stadium rim. This was the direction where the real action would take place tonight.
Hubert said, “I suggest a Gooeyduk snack now and some ’Lyte and maybe another oxytab. Then a nice nap. I’ll wake you up in plenty of time. Are you warm enough?”
“Toasty,” Samson said and reopened the Gooeyduk he had been nibbling on earlier. “But, tell me one thing, Hubert.”
“Go ahead.”
“What you said about El and Ellen earlier—how is that going? What do we know for sure?”
Hubert said, “Eleanor is gone. Ellen is an open question.”
“Ellen is all right?”
“No, Sam. Ellen is either dead or dying. The reports conflict.”
Samson opened a pouch of ’Lyte and drank several sips. He pulled the hood of the jumpsuit over his head. Oh, El, to pick the same day as me, he thought. What’s the point in that?
There was no point, at least none that he could see, just as his searing had been pointless. Just as Eleanor’s whole Target UKB turned out to be pointless. She had promised to identify those responsible for his attack, and she did, five years after he and Skippy left the manse. Only, she found too many of them, over two thousand individuals and groups. There seemed to have been a widespread consensus that her success was too meteoric and that brakes needed to be applied. The baby permit had been one result of this consensus, as they had suspected. His assault had been another. But not even with her most sophisticated snooping could Eleanor uncover anyone who actually gave the orders.
“It doesn’t work like that,” she told him. “No one at this level of the game actually orders such things. One merely expresses one’s annoyances, and others translate that into action on their own. That’s what minions are for.”
She left it up to him whether or not to destroy all two thousand miscreants. She said, “I promised I would, and I will. Though many of these people are currently my colleagues and business partners.”
She waited for him to answer. He had just moved into Cass Tower and started throwing gala dinner parties for probably these same people. “No,” he told her. “Dining with me is punishment enough. For now.”
THE DIMINISHED BLUE Team entered Chicagoland through the Gary Gate, posing as a media bee with armed escort. Within its mission files, the bee had only five purloined IDs to use, and it used up three of them at the gates separating the city sectors.
At Howe Street, the team ascended to the roof and traversed the tiered rows of hydroponics to the garden shed. The wasp easily sliced a hole through the door screen, and the two mechs entered.
A voice spoke immediately, “This is private property. Identify yourselves.”
The bee quickly scanned the room. The aromatic signature of the catcher was present and strong, but there were no living bodies in the space. The wasp confirmed the bee’s readings. The bee flew closer to the cot where a still form lay under covers.