But what Bogdan was attending to in his thoughts was the houseer’s repeated use of the word “asset” to describe Hubert. Last night, when Kale had allowed himself to be arrested rather than give up Hubert, Bogdan had been impressed by the houseer’s newfound devotion to Samson’s mentar. Now he wasn’t so sure. Asset? Hubert had never been much of an asset to the house before; how would Samson’s passing change that?
He turned to Rusty and said, “What is old what’s-its-name’s status?”
Rusty glanced at the head table where their two guests were seemingly enthralled by one of Kitty’s anecdotes. “He’s been disappeared,” Rusty said.
“What? Disappeared?”
“Yeah,” said Louis from across the table. “Hacking into the you-know-what in the sky is a serious crime against national security. The kind that makes you disappear.”
“There is one upside to disappearing, though,” Rusty said. “Nobody, not even the neighbors, can find out about the arrest. So at least that won’t spango whatever deal Kale is cooking up with the Wyoming folks.”
“Unless of course the neighbors saw them hauling it away,” Louis added.
“I was here,” Megan said. “The blacksuits stuck him in an evidence box before removing him. Nobody saw nothing, except us.”
During dessert, at precisely 7:12 PM, Bogdan’s second Alert! ran out. He yawned like a cave, then leaned over his plate and fell asleep. Hands all around shook him awake. April was calling from the head table. “Send him to bed. Bogdan, go up to bed. Someone go with him.”
Bogdan struggled to his feet and wrapped one last wedge of chocolate pie in a napkin. Rusty got up too, but Bogdan waved him to stay put.
“All right,” Rusty said, “but just remember you’re bunking on seven now in my room.”
“Yeah, yeah.” As Bogdan left Green Hall, Kale was explaining to their guests how the boy worked too hard. Never knew when to quit. The two gray emissaries murmured approvingly.
Bogdan trudged up the steps, more asleep than awake, when, on the fifth-floor landing, he was startled by an incoming, fullscape phone call right there in the stairwell. An official-looking sig appeared in the air, lighting up the whole landing. It occurred to Bogdan to wonder how this was possible—there were no cam/emitters in the stairwell—but his question drifted away when the sig morphed into a tall, handsome young officer in a vaguely familiar uniform.
“Who are you?” Bogdan said.
The man only smiled and pointed to a dataframe that opened beside him and displayed an invitation under the seal of the USNA Astronaut Corps:
Myr Bogdan (“Boggo”) Kodiak
by order of the President
you are invited to explore
the admission opportunities to the
CADET CORPS
of the
FUTURE OSHIP PILOTS LEAGUE.
Please attend our introductory seminar
as well as the 2134
Garden Earth Project Banquet.
—Dress uniform optional—
In disbelief, Bogdan read it again and said, “You mean me? I don’t understand. You want me?”
The officer only grinned and saluted as he and the scape dissolved.
“I’ll be there!” Bogdan shouted at the fading light. He saluted and shouted, “I accept!”
Rude laughter broke out. When Bogdan’s eyes readjusted to the gloom, he saw two boys sitting on a step, doubled over with glee. They mock saluted each other and cried, “I accept. I accept.” Troy Tobbler and Slugboy.
Without uttering a word, Bogdan turned around and went downstairs. He marched past Green Hall, where the assembled ’meets and guests were singing old charter songs, down to the foyer on the ground floor, where he pulled the bamboo walking stick from its charger. He slashed the air with it in a couple of trial swings. He jabbed its trodes against the metal umbrella stand and was thrown backward by the ferocity of its snapping blue sparks. That woke him up for a minute, but by the time he’d reclimbed a couple flights of steps, he was asleep on his feet and almost forgot what he was doing. So he fished in his pocket and found the package of Alert! Bogdan knew all about the dangers of SSP—Sleep Starvation Psychosis—but just not at that moment, and he swallowed a third eight-hour tablet. Moments later he charged up the stairs, holding the walking stick like Excalibur itself, his fuzzy-headedness replaced by crystalline murderous intent.
The boys were still waiting for him on the fifth-floor steps, and they resumed their taunts when he reappeared.
“Get out of my house!” he demanded, waving the stick at them. But they only mocked him more, so he moved in and jabbed Troy with the stick.
There was no discharge, only more laughter as the boys collapsed into a pile of dust. A pile, moreover, that formed the capital letter H on the step before it, too, vanished.
Bogdan continued up the steps, scouting all the Kodiak halls for his tormentors. He went past his former room, where new Tobb guards were playing the same old card game, to the roof. There he checked all the shadows and, finding no one, joined Megan and BJ, who had just started their vigil next to Samson’s cot.
“How is he?” he asked them.
Megan said, “He hasn’t stirred since this morning.”
BJ said, “And he hardly even stinks much anymore.”
Bogdan lay on a chaise lounge and watched the homcom bee hovering overhead. It reminded him of the bee under Samson’s lapel, which reminded him of going to Soldier Field and Hubert. Would they ever see Hubert again? Bogdan counted ten hours before he had to get ready for work tomorrow. He knew he should go down to the NanoJiffy for a Sooothe to counteract the Alert! he had just taken so he could sleep, but when he tried to get up off the chaise lounge, he discovered that his body was paralyzed. His mind was wide awake, roaring along like a rocket, in fact, but his body was asleep. He knew he should force himself up anyway to take that Sooothe, but the thought of climbing up and down the stairs again was more than he could manage. How come the Tobblers had an elevator and they didn’t? And besides, if he did fall asleep, could he trust the houseputer to wake him up at six? He didn’t think so; it was probably safer to just stay awake, especially since his eyes were closed and Megan or BJ had covered him with a blanket.
So while his body slept, Bogdan’s mind raced all over the known universe, from his private ski chalet on Planet Lisa, where Annette lay naked with him next to the fire, to the micromine control shed in Wyoming where his expertise alone was responsible for discovering a rich new vein of precious trace elements, to his meeting in a few scant hours with HR at E-Pluribus where he would undoubtedly receive the Employee of the Year Award, plus a healthy raise and substantial bonus. Through all of this, he wondered what the dusty H on the step stood for.
3.7
When Mary arrived home, she didn’t even bother to change her clothes but jumped enthusiastically into Concierge’s recommended lessons on the revivification sciences: neurology, genetics, micromechanics, embryology, biochemistry, and histology. She plowed through units on basal nuclei, fast axoplasmic transport, and Flinn-Long glial grafting. Needless to say, the material was far too advanced for her, and she had no luck finding anything more elementary on the WAD. So she swallowed two Smarts and slogged on, hoping for the best.
When Fred came in, he sat next to her on the couch and watched part of a colorful tour of the sarcoplasmic reticulum, an organelle essential to coma management. After a few minutes, he said, “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either.” Mary laughed.
“I mean, what does this have to do with your companion job?” He was being disingenuous. He knew exactly what this had to do with her work.