When the pouch was empty, Troy Tobbler put on a pair of utility spex and peered closely into the crack. “Nothing,” he said.
“Let it seep some more,” said the houseer.
“Still nothing,” the boy said after another minute, whereupon the houseer removed a rubber mallet from a tool chest and began thumping the sidewalk on either side of the crack. “That helps,” said the boy. “Go that way,” he said, pointing toward the charterhouse.
The houseer beat the ground in a line toward the building and then began tapping the brick side of the building, itself.
“Good! Stop!” said his companion. “I have the little vermin. Come take a look.” He gave the spex to his houseer and looked up at Bogdan. “What are you staring at?” he said.
“Nothing,” Bogdan said and glanced away.
“Ah, this is good,” said the houseer, following an invisible path with the spex. “Three meters deep. Maybe three and a half. We need specimens.” He took off the spex and said to Bogdan, “And so, young Kodiak, how is that room of yours that you share with our elevator? It gets warm up there in this weather, yes? Perhaps you should leave the door open.”
“Warm is good,” Bogdan said, avoiding the topic. They had found something under the charterhouse, and he wanted to know what it was. But he knew they wouldn’t tell him, especially Troy. And since he wasn’t going to beg them for information, he said, “G’night, Tobbs.”
“Good night, Kodiak.”
Bogdan passed the NanoJiffy entrance and climbed up the steps to the Kodiak’s door. This time he didn’t rely on voice recognition. “Here, read this,” he said and placed his open palm against the door plate.
“Hello, visitor,” said a familiar voice. Kitty’s voice.
“Kitty, is that you?” he said hopefully. “It’s me, Bogdan. Open the front door.”
But it was a recording of Kitty’s voice, and an old one at that. It said, “Because of the current state of martial law and ongoing civil unrest, Charter Kodiak has pneumatically sealed its building until further notice. We hope you’ll excuse the inconvenience.”
Martial law? thought Bogdan. That had been way before his time.
Kitty’s voice continued. “We apologize not being able to address you in realbody, but if your business is legitimate, the door will notify us. If not, please move away at once. And remember, this door is a Slage XP model, fully armed and licensed to defend itself against intrusion.”
“Door, tell someone I’m here,” Bogdan said. “Call April or Denny. Just call them.”
There was no reply, and Bogdan was about to give up and go in through the NanoJiffy when the door spoke in yet another voice—Rusty’s? “We’re all asleep at this hour, friend. Please come back in the morning.”
“You are not asleep!” Bogdan cried and kicked the door. There was a metallic click, and gas turrets swung out from the doorjamb and aimed at him. Bogdan kept kicking anyway; he knew that the gas reservoirs had been depleted long ago. The two Tobblers turned from their work to look at him, but he didn’t care, and he kicked until he could hear the intruder alarm go off inside.
At last the door slid open, and there was Houseer Kale. “Bogdan, why are you knocking?”
“Because the feckin’ door won’t open for me. Why can’t you get things fixed around here?” He pushed his way past Kale into the foyer. “Would it kill you to fix the feckin’ houseputer?”
“My, we’re in a testy mood today,” Kale said.
“Are we?” Bogdan said. “I wonder why. Did we have a bad day at work? Or did we sit at home all day wanking off?”
“It sounds like someone’s hungry,” Kale continued, nonplussed. “Go wash up; we’re holding dinner on you. Oh, and take a tray up to Sam. He’s not been feeling well. Tell him we’ll all be up after dinner.”
Too weary to argue, Bogdan trudged to the little room behind the NanoJiffy with its own extruder port that served as the house kitchen. “And don’t forget,” Kale called after him, “you have a meeting scheduled with the Allowance Committee at seven.”
HALFWAY ACROSS THE roof, Bogdan could hear the snoring. Deep, sonorous expressions of revitalizing slumber. He stopped at the screen door and looked in. There was a new hole in the screen, and he stuck his finger in it. Sam’s lumpy form lay on the cot, covered with an old blanket. Bogdan entered as quietly as possible. On the ratty, old footstool, there was another tray—lunch it looked like—untouched. He picked it up and replaced it with the dinner tray he’d brought. The bowl of lunchtime fruitish mash was already fermenting and had a cloying, sweet odor. He wasn’t sure whether to try to wake Sam while his dinner was still warm. He’d apparently returned to bed after Bogdan saw him on the stairs earlier that morning.
“Sam,” he said, not too loud.
“Shhhh,” replied Hubert. “Hello, Boggy. Please be quiet. Sam’s had a rough time of it and needs his rest.” The snoring continued uninterrupted.
“They said to tell him everyone’s coming up later.”
“I’ll relay that to him when he awakens.”
Bogdan turned to go, bearing the lunch tray. But he stopped and whispered, “Hubert, the Tobbs were pouring some kind of optical sapping agent into the ground in front of the building. Any idea what’s up with that?”
“Yes,” Hubert whispered back, “material pirates. It would appear that there are excavating mechs in the neighborhood, and these old brick buildings are being cannibalized. The Tobblers suspect that pirates are hollowing out our house walls.”
“But why would anyone want to steal old brick buildings?”
“Our charterhouse was built with Pullman bricks, bricks made during the nineteenth century from clay from Calumet Lake. This material is highly prized by builders.”
Bogdan was impressed by the quality of Hubert’s information. “They told you all of this?”
“No, I’ve recently learned how to tap their houseputer comm.”
“Great,” Bogdan said. “You can tap their houseputer, but you can’t do anything to fix ours.”
“Not so loud,” Hubert said. “Why don’t you go down to dinner. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
Bogdan opened the screen door, but again he hesitated. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t say just what. The whole time he’d been there, Sam’s snoring continued regularly, maybe too regularly. Then it occurred to him, the really strange thing—he could smell the overripe fruitish on the tray. With Sam in the room you shouldn’t be able to smell anything but him. Bogdan set the tray on the bench and went to the cot.
“What are you doing?” said Hubert. “You’ll wake him up.”
“I doubt that,” Bogdan said, throwing back the blanket. Pillows, no Sam. “What’s going on, Hubert?”
The snoring ceased, and a voice said, “What? What? Where am I, Henry?”
Bogdan went to the speaker on the potting bench. “That’s what I want to know, Sam. Where are you?”
“Bogdan, is that you? Are you in my bungalow?”
“Yeah, are you downstairs?”
“No, upstairs if anything.”
“But I’m on the roof. There’s no upstairs from here.”
“I’m not in the house. I had a little errand to run.”
Bogdan gestured at the rumpled cot. “And you had to sneak out to run it?”
Through the speaker, Bogdan heard Samson sigh. “If I told anyone,” he said, “then you or April or Kitty or someone would try to stop me, and I can’t allow that.”
“You’re scaring me, Sam.”
“Sorry, boy, but I can’t help it. Listen to me, a long time ago, before you were decanted, someone did something inhumanely cruel to me—”