TO TRAVEL IN spirit with her through her whole desperate odyssey, only to watch her wash up twice on the same rocks, was more than I could bear. I made a perfect ass of myself then. I told her that no matter what happened that evening, no matter how bad and senseless things seemed, she could always come back to me. That I would take care of her. That I would dote on her and never swindle her. And that I needed no lungplant or nose filters to be close to her.
“Whatever are you talking about?” she said, a little frightened by my earnestness.
I told her that her hero was not simply late, but that he had skipped town, just like the Sonnet Man at the hotel. I told her she’d been robbed again, but that I would take care of her.
“I have to go now,” she said abruptly. “Thank you again, Myr Harger, for the fish and for listening to my story.”
“We both know he’s not coming,” I said as gently as I could. “We’re both stinkers, dear Mel, and stinkers shouldn’t try to deceive one other.”
She said good-bye and left.
When she was gone, Skippy closed my door, and I returned to my suite. It seemed unusually cold, but Skippy said the temperature was fine. I told him to dispatch some bees to keep an eye on Melina’s floor.
To my great surprise, in about ten minutes, all the elevators on her floor arrived at the same time and opened their doors. Out came a procession of arbeitors, each of them burdened with bouquets and wreaths and sprays of fresh flowers. The arbeitors looked like floats in a parade to her door. The elevators departed but soon returned with another wave of floral arrangements. Finally, after a third sortie of flower-bearing arbeitors, the man, himself, appeared with a final bundle of red roses in his arms. He was fashionably young but otherwise short on looks. He wore evening clothes and a foolish grin. I followed his progress at the tail of the parade and saw him disappear across Melina’s threshold.
As per my orders, my bees kept vigil throughout the night. Flower Man didn’t reemerge until morning, with Melina on his arm. She was radiant. She wore a gaudy new ring. And that, my dear new friends, was that.
JUSTINE, UNCOMFORTABLY AWARE that Samson’s story lacked a proper ending, prompted him. “Did Melina Post replace your shark with a comparable one?”
“Oh, yes, she did,” Samson said, “the very next day, in fact, and of the same vintage. Skippy learned later that the remains of their dinner, including the fin soup, was enjoyed at shelters across Chicago the following evening.”
Samson was sagging in his seat, but still owl-eyed from the Alert! and any form of interrogation might be too much of a strain on him. Nevertheless, Justine went on to say, “This hero of Myr Post’s. What happened to him?”
“I never saw her or him again,” Samson said, “but I followed them on the Evernet. Together, they founded an association dedicated to forcing the UD Parliament to pay restitution to the survivors of the seared. You may have heard about that. From what I could tell, they lived harmoniously until her death from more-or-less natural causes a few years ago.”
“And what of you, Myr Harger Kodiak? Did you return to your interrupted loneliness?”
“No. That was the unintentional gift Melina left me. In the fleeting minutes she spent in my hermitage, she poisoned it. She succeeded in provoking me to imagine my own smelly self out there in the greater world once more. Even to imagine myself together with a lover again. And once that bug bit me, I could never return to my solitude. The next day I had Skippy unopaque my window walls and I saw my city for the first time in a long time. Soon after that I met my Kitty and her charter. They eventually invited me to join their house, and I can honestly say that at no time in the twenty-seven years since have I ever been lonely. Cranky, perhaps, and obstinate—but never lonely.”
The Skytel overhead was well into the canopy celebration show. Samson and his hosts watched it for a few minutes, comparing the hoopla on the boards above with the emptiness on the field below.
“What about Jean?” Justine said. “Where is Her Secret Wound now? And does it still suffer?”
“If Mr. Flowers still lives, he must have it. I left it unsigned and sent it to them as an anonymous wedding gift, though it couldn’t be anonymous to her. If Mr. Flowers has followed Melina in death, I have no idea where it would be. It hasn’t surfaced at auction. But wherever it is, rest assured that it’s suffering. And it will suffer always.”
Justine said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Myr Kodiak Harger. You should have destroyed it.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Samson agreed. From the expression on Justine’s face, he could tell she was holding something back. “Go ahead,” he said, “tell me what’s on your mind.”
Justine collected the cat into her arms and fixed Samson with a look of motherly disapproval. “I agree with my husband,” she said. “At a time like this, you belong at home with your family, not here making a spectacle of yourself.”
“You’re probably right, Myr Vole, but I’m a seared, probably the last of the seared, and we must never let society forget the cruelty done to us in its name. I missed too many opportunities in the past, out of deference to my ex-wife and out of personal weakness, but what could be a better occasion to remind the public than the retirement of this canopy?”
Justine seemed unconvinced. “That’s not what I see,” she said. “Please excuse my bluntness, Myr Kodiak Harger, but what I see is far worse than personal weakness. Terrible, unfair things happened to you, there’s no denying it, but bad things happen to everyone. And though your long period of loneliness is as sad as anything I’ve ever heard, you found your way out before it was too late. You should be grateful, Myr Harger Kodiak, but instead you seek to punish the very people who have sustained you. If you truly love your charter and truly appreciate all they’ve done for you, then you’ll give them the gift of your final moments. Otherwise, you are nothing more than an emotional coward.”
With that, Justine took the cat’s leash from Victor and added, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can’t watch.”
“Why not?” Samson snapped. “Already had your fill of suicides for one day?”
Justine unhitched her chair and returned inside without answering. Victor winked and said, “Best of luck, Myr Kodiak,” and followed her in.
Samson fiddled with the controls of his simcaster for a while. “Right here,” he mumbled, “in about forty-five minutes.”
TWO DOZEN TOBBLERS filed through the roof door. They wore identical jumpsuits of a heavy green fabric. April and Kale greeted them, and Francis and Barry ushered them to benches that Bogdan, Rusty, Megan, and Denny were arranging in the vegetable garden.
The Skytel show had begun, but Bogdan found it dull. The Tobbs seemed to like it, though, and they began to sway on the benches and tap their toes.
Bogdan tried to escape through the roof door, but April caught his sleeve and gave him a look that said, We have guests.
“I’ll be right back, I promise,” he told her. “I have to program my phone.”
“Now?”
Bogdan skipped down the stairs and turned the corner to his room. He strode in and looked around to see if anyone had intruded recently. Satisfied, he riffled through his piles of stuff until he found his editor, the same one he had used to program Lisa. He sat down on his mattress and spread the editor across his lap. When he opened his phone log, the queue of waiting calls had grown to 750 million. He dragged his phone icon over his latest uprefs icon, and the gargantuan queue shrank to a more manageable two calls, one of which was flagged urgent.
It was from Hubert. He opened it.
About time you answered, Hubert said.