Bogdan rushed to an electrical box and with both of his small hands pushed the huge cutoff switch until—with an explosive blue spark—he closed the circuit. Immediately the huge motor next to him ground to life, the guide wheels rumbled, and the drum took up cable.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Bogdan shouted down the hall, but they were nowhere in sight. He thought he heard them in the Kodiak stairwell, so he slammed his door—he’d have to change the entry code ASAP—and jogged after them, hurtling himself down whole flights of steps with acrobatic precision.
On the fourth floor he passed Kitty going the other way. She was humming merrily and seemed very pleased with herself. When she saw him, she stopped to say, “Since when are you pals with that Troy boy? And who’s his loser friend?”
But Bogdan didn’t even slow down. He blew past her and continued descending. On the third floor, Gerald was coming out of the administrative offices just as Bogdan ran past.
“Oh, there you are,” Gerald said. “Come back here. The committee is waiting.”
Bogdan stopped in his tracks. “The Allowance Committee?”
“What other committee do you have an appointment with?”
“I’ll be right back,” Bogdan said and continued down the corridor.
“You only get a half hour,” Gerald called after him, “and the clock is ticking.”
“Clocks don’t tick,” Bogdan answered from the stairs. At least no clock he’d ever seen. Down on the first floor, he checked the NanoJiffy. They weren’t there, so he went out to the street. Tobbler housemeets were setting up benches and chairs in the street for the evening’s canopy ceremony, but Troy and Slugboy were nowhere in sight. Houseer Dieter was, however, and he came over when he saw Bogdan.
“Good evening, young Kodiak. You will vacate our machine room tomorrow,” he said. “We will come up in the morning to repair the elevator apparatus.”
Bogdan wondered if Troy had, in fact, spoken with his houseer. “There’s nothing wrong with the elevator,” he said.
“Is that so? It was out of service just now for forty-five minutes.”
“That was an accident. It won’t happen again.”
The Tobbler’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me, young Kodiak, that you shut off our machinery?”
“No. Yes. I mean—” Bogdan said.
The houseer turned to go. “You have violated the truce. There will be consequences!”
Bogdan watched the Tobbler stalk away, and a moment later he turned around and ran back up to three where Gerald was still waiting in the corridor.
“My appointment’s not till seven,” Bogdan said. “I’ll be back then.”
“Fine with me,” Gerald said.
“Bogdan!” April called from the inner office. Bogdan went to the door. April and Kale were sitting at a table covered with ledgers and files. “Bogdan, we were hoping to be done by seven. We have the thing with Samson tonight.”
“What thing?”
“Oh, you missed the announcement.”
Kale said, “It’s all right. We’ll catch Bogdan next time.”
“Yeah, next time,” Bogdan said and turned to go. But he remembered his cracking voice and fuzzy cheeks and especially the sprouting hair, and he said, “When is next time?”
Kale consulted an appointment book, a well-thumbed, spiral-bound paper book. “How does six weeks from tomorrow sound?”
“Like crap,” Bogdan said and stepped into the office, slamming the door behind him. “What thing with Sam?”
“He’s dying, Boggy,” April said. “He’s only got a very short time left. We’re not going to leave him alone. From now on, we’ll take turns so there’ll be at least one of us with him at all times.”
“So, who’s up with him right now?”
“No one. He didn’t want us to start till tonight.”
Bogdan chewed this over. He could tell them now or let them find out for themselves later.
Meanwhile, Gerald handed him a sheet of paper, a spreadsheet full of handwritten numbers. Bogdan dropped it on the floor and said, “Let’s skip the bookkeeping portion of this meeting and cut to the part where you approve my two requests. One, make me an appointment for this weekend at the Longyear Center to retro eleven months. They’ll throw in an extra bonus month if you call by Wednesday. And two, buy me a Rhodes Scholar valet to replace Lisa.” Finished, he crossed his arms and glowered at them.
“Fine,” said Gerald, retrieving the sheet of paper from the floor, “we’ll skip the bookkeeping part and cut right to the part where we deny your requests.”
“What? You can’t.”
Kale said, “Bogdan, there’s not enough credit for everything.”
April said, “Bogdan, look at this. Look!” She held up a stack of paper notes from the table. “We’re forced to work with paper and pencil. If we can’t afford to replace the houseputer, how can we justify buying you a new valet, especially after you broke the one you had?”
Bogdan began to shout, “Lisa was twenty years old! It’s high time I got a new one!”
“Please don’t raise your voice.”
“Besides, the new ones are powerful enough so I can have mine temporarily take over the houseputer’s functions. Keeping paper records is crazy. For that matter, why aren’t you using Hubert for that? He’s got enough juice to run the Moon. Surely, he could run this house and keep its accounts.”
Gerald and Kale looked away, and April wouldn’t meet his gaze. “What?” he said, but no one answered him, so he charged ahead, “And as for my juve treatments, that’s nonnegotiable.”
April said, “Oh, Boggy, if you could for once stop thinking only about yourself and look around you. Look at the rest of us. Look at me.”
He looked at her and was disturbed to notice that she, like the rest of the housemeets, was way behind in her body maintenance. It seemed as if someone had dialed down her color saturation levels—her hair and skin were ashen.
April said, “We understand you like to remain a boy, and we’ve managed to grant you this for a lot of years, but now we can’t afford it. Surely you can wait a little while until we’re back on our feet.”
“How long?”
Gerald consulted his spreadsheet. “Eight to twelve months.”
“Eight to twelve months? No way! People, don’t you hear what I’m telling you. I’m pubing out! I’ll lose my job! It’s right in my E-Pluribus contract—I must remain prepubescent. I’m a demographics control. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ll point it out to you—it’s my payfer that’s carrying this whole sorry house. Mine and Sam’s. At the rate I’m going, in eight months I’ll be adolescent. Hell, I’m already sprouting hair in places you don’t want to know.”
Gerald waved the spreadsheet at Bogdan and said, “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t spin yoodies from thin air. You’ll just have to hang on. We’ll boost your hormonal supplements. That’ll slow it down. In a month, who knows, maybe our financial picture will improve.”
As Gerald spoke, Bogdan noticed that April was looking guiltier and guiltier. Something was definitely up. The paper records, the furtive glances. Then he recalled how pleased Kitty had seemed in the hall a few minutes ago, not at all like a retrogirl told she’d have to wait eight to twelve months for her next juve.