Boggy, Hubert said, come back to the taxi at once.
Bogdan scurried back across the parking zone. Suddenly a large man appeared from the shadows several slots away and jogged toward him, carrying something in his arms. He looked old but was still strong because he was carrying Samson and wasn’t even winded.
“You must be Bogdan Kodiak,” the man said. The sky cracked and crazed behind his head. “Get in the car, son, and help me lift him in.”
Bogdan jumped into the taxi and helped lift Samson. Samson weighed almost nothing. He was deathly still, but his eyes were wide open.
In getting Samson situated, Bogdan ruffled his jumpsuit collar and exposed a glittering mech that was hiding there. He recoiled in surprise, but the man helping him said, “That’s his, I think. At least he spent a lot of time talking to it.” He straightened Samson’s lapel and said, “Good-bye, Myr Harger Kodiak. It was an honor to meet you. The best of luck to you.”
Samson looked at him blankly, and the man swung the gull door down and latched it. He patted the roof twice and stepped away from the car.
The taxi was halfway home when Samson tried to sit up. “Relax, Sam,” Bogdan said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Bogdan was on the phone to April.
“Boggy?” Samson said.
“Yes, Sam, it’s me. I’m taking you home.”
“Not home, not yet. Take me to Roosevelt Clinic.”
Over the phone, April said, “Don’t listen to him. Bring him straight home.”
“AMAZING,” FRED SAID. The great city was spread out before him like a glittering island. He watched from the car he had borrowed to get home. Access to the city’s grids had been suspended until after the grand finale, and he had jumped to a high parking loop to get a front-row seat. “Oh, look at that one.”
“Which one? Which one?” Mary said. They had opened a frame between them, and he could see most of the gang at the Stardeck rail. Champagne corks were flying, and faces were damp with tears. A whole generation’s long march was coming to an end, and Fred was exhausted himself.
But Mary was lit up, if anything, brighter than the fireworks. Fred could tell she had news, but he waited for her to tell it, and finally she did.
“Fred, the DCO called me ten minutes ago,” she said, stretching out the suspense, “and I have a job!”
“That’s wonderful!” Fred said.
“A real job—a companion job!” Once started, it all came out in a rush. “I begin tomorrow, in just a few hours, downstate from here, companioning someone at a clinic. At Roosevelt Clinic. It’s for two weeks at full evangeline rate, with a renewal option.”
Fred didn’t interrupt. It sank in as she talked. “That’s wonderful,” he repeated when she paused for breath.
“Fred, is something wrong?”
The edges of the canopy suddenly flared with a magnesium fire, and they both turned to watch it, letting her question linger. He watched from his high car as intersecting vaults of the once invisible canopy were suddenly revealed. As though Chicagoland were covered by a ghostly cathedral. A cathedral built of many overlapping layers of large flattish hexagonal cells. As Fred watched, a white-hot light raced up through their interstitial spaces.
Mary watched from high in a gigatower inside the largest vault. The sizzling light seemed to blaze right overhead, and she shivered when the walls collapsed and the span toppled and ashes fell like snowflakes.
Tuesday
3.1
April Kodiak got her vigil for Samson after all. Bogdan called her from the taxi, and she ran up the stairs with the news. Several of her housemeets were still sitting in the rooftop garden looking up. With the Skytel dark and the protective canopy burnt to ashes, the Moon alone ruled the sky. “Boggy’s got him,” April exclaimed. “He’s bringing him back! He’s all right!”
The ’meets stirred as though from a dream. “I’ll get his cot,” Kale said and, rising from a chaise lounge, lumbered to the garden shed.
“Good, and let’s bring some blankets up here,” April said, “and make some mush and juice.” She sent Megan and BJ down to roust ’meets already in bed. She sent Denny down to wait in the street for the taxi.
In the shed, Kale gathered up the paper envelopes, each bearing a housemeet’s name in Samson’s handwriting, and stacked them on the potting bench. He carried the cot out to the garden where April rearranged benches and chairs around it. All was ready when Denny returned, climbing ten flights of stairs bearing Samson’s emaciated body. They entombed the old man in pillows and comforters and slipped an autodoc probe into his ear. They barely got any lifelike readings from him at all.
“It won’t be long now,” April whispered.
“But why are his eyes wide open?” Kitty said.
“It’s all the Alert! he took,” Bogdan said.
At the autodoc’s suggestion, they placed a Sooothe patch on Samson’s throat, and in a little while his eyelids fluttered shut, and in a little while more he was snoring comfortably. The ’meets, themselves, battled sleep on chairs and benches. Finally, Kale returned to the shed to retrieve the envelopes. He passed them out, and the ’meets took turns reading Samson’s personal farewells to them by flashlight. They held hands and sang several charter hymns. They traded anecdotes about first meetings with Samson, about living with him through the years. They approached the cot one by one to kiss his burning cheek and to whisper in his ear.
When it was his turn, Bogdan sat on the cot and didn’t know what to say. He had been a toddler when Samson joined the charter, and therefore none of Samson’s troubled DNA had gone into his own patchwork genome. Not that they could, what with the searing and all. But even though Bogdan had no blood tie to Samson, he still felt closer to him than any other ’meet. He lay down on the cot next to the old man and listened to his breath whistling through the gaps in his teeth.
In a little while, April tugged Bogdan’s sleeve and told him to go to bed. She sent everyone to bed. “Check your vigil schedule on the houseputer,” she told them. “We’ll call you if anything develops.” But most of the ’meets decided to stay, and since he had to be up in a few hours anyway to get ready for work, Bogdan stayed too.
Kale and Gerald, meanwhile, left the garden to huddle near a cam/emitter mounted on the side of the building. “Hubert, can you hear me?” Kale said.
“Loud and clear.”
“How could you let him do that? How could you let him do something so stupid?”
“I don’t see how I could have dissuaded him,” the mentar replied.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Kale snapped.
“What tone? This is my standard conversational tone.”
“What he means,” Gerald said, “is why did you help him? You took an active role in this stunt.”
“Well, yes, I did. I am his mentar.”
“There’s that tone again,” Kale said, and Gerald added, “What you did to the Skytel was highly illegal, Hubert. Surely, even a mentar can see that. You have jeopardized this charter’s integrity and endangered your own freedom.”