When the beevine, with Yellow Bee at the head, reached the main parlor, it discovered two provocative objects. One was a procedure cart and the other a glass-topped coffee table. Yellow Bee ran every scan at its disposal on the objects. The cart—titanium steel, smart, with multiple servo appendages of unknown function—stood at one end of the room. Orange Bee, watching the pictures, could not fit such a cart into any of its library models of things found in residential households.
The coffee table, next to the cart, was a slab of glassine resting on a four-legged base. The base was made of military-grade resins normally used in body armor.
Orange Bee, sitting in the gap between the sill and foundation, made a best guess decision and ordered Red Beetle to advance up the beevine, trading places with the other mechs until it was within the parlor.
When all was in place, Orange Bee ordered, Prepare to launch Paintbrush.
All six mechs countersigned, Paintbrush.
Launch.
Red Beetle’s carapace snapped open, and the beetle dove into the open room, flying straight for the procedure cart. At the same moment, the other mechs broke from the beevine and flew pell-mell through the rooms and halls, dodging in all directions. Except for Orange Bee, which stayed at its post and began to broadcast a message to the world at large in all bands and channels at its disposal.
A millisecond later, the glassine top of the coffee table exploded upward as the resin base sprang up on four legs and began to spit rapid-fire laser pulses from cannon mounted along its legs. Red Beetle was hit first and incinerated before it could reach the cart. Flakes trailing from its carapace drifted to the floor. More laser fire cut through the walls and floor like wax, hitting and destroying all of the fleeing mechs in seconds.
The four-legged mech turned its fire on the Orange bee but couldn’t penetrate the clinker sill covering it. Meanwhile, the bee continued to broadcast. The mech bounded out of the parlor and down the hall, crashed through the cellar door and down the steps until it had a better firing angle. Then it easily picked off the last member of the fleet. End of transmission.
REILLY DELL RETURNED to Rolfe’s and joined them on the Stardeck where they were mostly ignoring the canopy variety show on the boards overhead. He brought a small package that he tossed to Fred. “Here, someone’s trying to reach you.” It was a skullcap, like the one he, himself, wore.
“Is it against the law to be off-line for one evening?” Fred complained, but from the blank stares he got from the others, apparently it was. He sighed and opened the wrapper and let Mary fit the cap to his head. Its gummy material migrated through his hair to his scalp. There followed several uncomfortable moments as the cap’s microvilli wriggled through his skin to lay against his skull. He heard discordant scraps of overlapping signals as interfaces were established and aligned. When he got a pure tone, he peeled a throat patch from its backing and stuck it next to his Adam’s apple.
Testing, testing, he glotted, and then checked his DCO channel.
Good evening, Commander, said an all-too-familiar voice.
So, it’s Commander again, he replied.
Only if you’re up to it, Inspector Costa said. I realize you’re off duty after a hard day, but an opportunity has arisen that you might be interested in.
I doubt that.
When Fred noticed Mary watching him, he rolled his eyes and shook his head to try to put her at ease.
A Cabinet rogue has appeared downstate, and I thought you might want to help me catch it.
A rogue? You mean another Cabinet backup?
Looks like it, said the inspector, except Cabinet, the Cabinet we caught and processed, claims to know nothing about this one. Says it doesn’t have any records or recollection of it.
Then how do you know it’s Cabinet?
It made a brief transmission from a private residence a few minutes ago in which it used Starke’s sig. We checked it out; the sig is authentic, and as you know, those things are impossible to counterfeit.
Fred rubbed his forehead. The new skullcap was going through an itchy phase, and Mary, bless her heart, was scratching her own head in sympathy.
It’s all very fascinating, Fred told the inspector, but I think I’ll pass.
Really? A shame, because Cabinet asked specifically for you. Fred’s heart skipped a beat. Yes, Costa continued, it told me it trusts your long experience in this matter. It feels we’ve cooked enough of its backups today and would like to salvage this one intact, if at all possible, and it wants you there. Far be it from me to ask you why. All I want is the pastehead. Are you in?
Fred seethed. Would the unnatural creature never leave him alone?
Where do I meet you, Inspector?
I’m waiting on the taxi deck next to Rolfe’s, she said.
Figures, Fred thought, and he glanced in that direction. I suppose you brought me a kit and blacksuit.
Affirmative, in size russ.
Fred leaned over to Mary. “Seems there’s a loose end to tie up. I won’t be long.” He tried to leave the table, but she held onto his hand and wouldn’t let him go.
2.25
The spectator placeholders in the bleachers around them suddenly went silent. “There, how’s that now?” Victor Vole said. The placeholders still bounced in their seats and waved and mouthed back and forth, but now the roar of the stadium was more distant, like the sound of a remote motorway.
“Better,” Samson said. He could talk without straining his voice. “Where was I?” He had told Victor and Justine and their cat, Murphy, about how, at the beginning of his and Eleanor’s life together, when power and praise, a baby permit, and unwarranted joy were being heaped upon them, a defective slug sampled him. He didn’t tell them about his and Eleanor’s suspicions that his assault was an object lesson for her.
Naturally, the Voles had heard of Eleanor Starke. How could they not? She was a figure of mythic stature and ever in the news. But that such a woman should be married to this bundle of sticks and rags seated between them stretched their credulity. And when Samson informed them that Eleanor had died that very morning, Justine was compelled to exclaim, “Ah, Myr Harger, just like in a novella.”
This had caused Samson to pause in his narrative and reassess his life through the filter of melodrama. “Yes, I suppose it is, Myr Vole,” he said. “Now, where was I?”
WHEN FIRST I departed from Eleanor’s manse, I was in high spirits. Or as high as possible, given the fact that I had been seared through no fault of my own, that I stank to high heaven, that no one could bear to be in the same room with me, and that strangers on the street avoided or insulted me. To balance the bad, I had my good health. Up to the time I was seared, I had enjoyed the best health that credit could buy. Though I was 140 real years old, my body maintenance was all up-to-date. I had just erupted my sixth set of teeth, my neurons had all recently been resheathed, and my pulmonary and circulatory systems had been scraped and painted. I was an apparent thirty-five-year-old man in excellent health. This was fortunate because the seared cannot avail themselves of modern medicine, and from there on out it was all downhill for me.