“It’s all over now,” I said wearily. “We can talk and think out loud. We can take transport. We can do any damn thing we please. No more war.”
“But what happened to Guess?”
“He’ll be his old self in about twenty years. Just now all he needs is cleaning up. Give me a stiff belt and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
I tell and they listen, taking turns looking over the six-foot baby. Natoma was so fascinated by the events and so relieved that our brother had come out of the crisis alive that she forgot to be upset by his regression. All of them were delighted by the end of the Rajah threat, particularly Hilly, and no wonder. I could see he wanted to thank Hic-Haec-Hoc, but he knew better. There was no doubt that the Neanderthaler had forgotten all about it by now.
I said, “I know you all want to leave and go about your business, but please stay a little longer. I have one more mission and I may need your help afterward.”
“What is it?” Ozymandias asked in an asthmatic voice as thick as his body.
I told them about the cryo offer.
“Too late,” Hilly said. “I’m sorry. She’s been in too long.”
“I’ve got to try anyway. There’s always hope.”
“Not much.”
“It’s too dark, Guig. Dangerous. Wait until morning.”
“The longer I delay, the less hope.”
“Don’t go, Edward. You’ll never find her.”
“I’ve got to try, Nat.”
“Please listen to me. I—”
“Damn it, don’t you think I know it’s a ghoulish search?” I shouted. “I know it’s a rotten job, but I’ve got to try and get a part of the body for DNA-Cloning. If you can’t support me in my try because you’re jealous or whatever, at least don’t dissupport me, or whatever I mean.”
“You’ve made yourself v. clear, Edward.”
“R. Forgive my manners. I’ve had a hell of a day and the worst is yet to come.”
“We’ll go with you,” M’bantu offered.
“Thank you, no. More than one would only make it easier for a patrol chopper to spot us. I’ll go it alone. Sit tight, all. I’ll probably need you for messenger service. Back in an hour.”
I took a pogo to the edge of the burial ground and as I got out a chopper thrummed overhead playing its brilliant beam down and around. The light held on me for a moment and then moved on. I had no idea when the patrol would be back. It depended on how many private ops it had to police.
It was night. It was nightugly, not because of the fear of death but from the revulsion of the living for rot and decay. You could smell the decomposition choking you as you approached; ammonia, nitrates, potash, phosphates, carrion putrefaction. Death couldn’t be wasted these days; every end product of life went into compost.
El Arrivederci filled about five acres — the public composts occupied ten times that space — and used the concrete foundations of the old Waldorf West Hotel which had been torn down forty years ago to make room for an office complex never built. The two thousand evictees had blocked the entire undertaking with a squatters’ rights lawsuit. The case had not yet come to trial and most of the parties concerned were rotting in composts themselves. Progress.
The foundations looked like a squared-off labyrinth; odd-sized boxes, squares, rectangles, even a few diamonds and pentagons, depending on what stress supports the original architects had designed. They were concrete walls, six feet high, three feet wide, and flat on top providing a walkway for workmen and funeral corteges. There weren’t many of the latter. You go to a compost once and never again, and the word gets around. The corpses are layered in with other organic refuse and chemicals, and the piles are kept flat on top to collect rain. After a long wet spell bones thrust up out of the decay.
Bones are always a nuisance when it comes time to empty a pit and ship the matured compost out. There’s a gaint steel mesh mounted on pillars in the loading area. It’s used to screen out the coarse rubbish, and the heaped bones and skulls make it look like a danse macabre. I’d seen all that the day I followed Fee-5’s body to the pit to make sure she was treated respectfully.
This was night. The night was dry… the whole week had been dry… and I was startled by the “fire-fang,” as it’s called, shuddering in some of the pits. It’s generated by the intense heat of fermentation and the flames were parti-colored from the chemicals. I could see by the light of the fire-fang and didn’t need the lampland torch I’d brought to find my way.
I threaded across the compost on the walkways to the small pit where I remembered Fee being placed. The miasma was strangling me. The pit was dark, no flames, so I switched on the torch. Just a flat surface of straw some three feet below. I steadied my nerve and dropped down. The straw was spongy. The heat was burning, and I knew I’d have to work fast or I’d be roasted unconscious. I clawed the straw aside, reached a layer of crushed limestone, shoveled that back with my hands, and there was a bloated body, peeling, shredding, rotting. Not Fee. A man. I vomited.
He must have come in after Fee. You’ve got to move him. Move him, Guig. Be a mensch and move him. I braced myself and used a foot to roll him out of the way and he came apart at the joints, emitting a gangrenous gas. I retched bile. Underneath him was a layer of dried blood, and under that was another large adult in the final stages of decomposition. Only a few fragments of skin and patches of hair adhered to the loose skeleton. If Fee’s under that she must be gone if it’s gone. Gone forever, Guig. Hopeless. Don’t count on it, they said… I dry retched again.
A voice cackled in Spang, “Bod doan dig it.”
Another, “Nadie tell’m us leave nada?”
I flashed the lampland up. Three wild grotesques bright against the black sky. Grave robbers, flashing with corpse jewels.
“Got a union carda, bod?” the third called.
They dropped down into the pit. They were armed with heavy femurs and I would make an addition to the compost, alive or dead. I had no weapon and I backed away from their advance, reaching for whatever valuables I had on me to toss to them. I kept the light in their eyes to blind them but they merely squinted and hefted the thighbones. We’ll meet again v. soon, Fee.
My digging must have introduced enough air into the compost to trigger combustion. A flicker of fire-fang welled up from the cavity and spread over the entire pit. The three goons went up a wall, burning. I went up the opposite wall, burning. While they were putting themselves out, I got myself out of El Arrivederci. Only then did I start slapping and beating.
I didn’t have to do any talking when I rejoined the Group in the tepee. They knew. They didn’t ask questions, even about the condition I was in; clothes nearly burned off, hair nearly burned off, blistering and stinking of compost. They got up quietly, took a last look at the Chief, who’d been cleaned up, and whispered their sympathy to Natoma. Then they left to return to their own life-styles. Why did they whisper? It wasn’t a funeral; just a delay in Sequoya’s life. Y. I’m so vivo. There was a delay in mine coming, too.
“I’ll have to help you bathe and change.” Natoma smiled. “I have two babies on my hands.”
“Thank you. This one is a v. tired baby.”
“And then you’ll sleep.”
“I don’t dare, love. If I go to sleep now it’ll be for a week. We’ve got to get our brother home first.”
“That’s not wise, Edward. You’re still driving too hard.”
“I know you’re right. I — You were right about Fee. I should have listened.”
“You don’t know how right,” she said in a curious tone. I was too exhausted to make anything of it.
“But please let me wrap up the whole package tonight. Then we can be together again, alone. You don’t know how I’ve missed you.”
Natoma cried out. The three cryos had entered the tepee silently, carrying a heavy burden wrapped in plastic. No warning from the wolves; M’bantu had taken them with him. I stared. The cryos were still blind but now moved with assurance. The new computer connection, perhaps?