farther. Instead, he opened his duffel bag and began to fumble through it, searching for something.
“The quartermaster issued me” — he said and dumped the contents of the bag on the platform floor — “fare back to Chicago.” He rifled through his things and found the paper medallion. He waved it angrily in front of Mary’s face. “I think I’ll take a public train.”
“You can’t, Fred. They’ll eat you alive.”
He stooped to gather his things and jam them back into the duffel. “You go on ahead, Mary, in your limo. I’ll meet you at the APRT.”
The media bees, meanwhile, were returning to the Wait Here tunnel where they circled in ever-widening orbits. Some of them ventured toward the VIP parking. Suddenly, there was a desperate shriek at the far end of the station, followed by the unmistakable whine of small-arms fire. The security guards at the private cars all perked up, and the media bees raced off in the direction of the commotion.
“Please, Fred,” Mary said, trying to pull him into the Starke car, “I don’t have many more tricks left to play here. Why don’t we just drive into Provo and rent our own car there? How does that sound?”
But Fred had made up his mind. He removed his visor cap, threw back his shoulders, and marched in the direction of the public platforms. He didn’t get far before a media bee discovered him and projected a small frame in his path with a talking head who said, “Is it true, Myr Londenstane, your release from prison was purchased by unknown benefactors?”
Fred had been wondering that himself, but he never slowed down. “Get out of my way,” he growled. When the bee persisted in blocking him, he said, “Desist!” and the mech complied, closing its frame and flying outside his privacy zone.
But ten more talking heads replaced it and peppered him with questions: Did Applied People collude with you in infiltrating the clinic? Have you talked to officer Dell since you strangled him? Where did you acquire the black market identikit? Is it true you were on the Starke payroll during the twenty-first century?
“Desist! Desist!” Fred shouted and tried to bat the mechs out of the air with his duffel. They retreated from his privacy zone, but the main body of bees had returned, and everywhere Fred turned, they blocked his way and roared questions at him. A miniature diorama opened at his feet displaying a clearing in a wooded area where two men struggled in desperate combat. One of the figures was a pike wearing a Roosevelt Clinic uniform and the other was a russ. The ground around them was littered with blasted splinters of tree branches. The russ knocked the pike down and straddled him, grabbing up a sharp stick and jamming it into his ear. The pike screamed and stopped struggling, but the russ only shoved the stick in deeper. He rocked back and forth against the fallen man, his crotch bulging with excitement.
“No!” Fred shouted over the din. “That’s a lie! It wasn’t like that at all!” He covered his head with his arms, but the bees pressed closer, and a new picture opened. In it Fred was beating a fallen russ with a baton. Again and again he struck him, though his brother made no effort to defend himself. Fred pummeled his head, his back, his ribs, until he swung so hard the carbon fiber club splintered, something impossible in real life. “Stop that!” Fred cried. “Stop!”
“Desist!” Mary shouted. She was at Fred’s side. “Desist, desist, desist!” she kept shouting until she had cleared a little bubble of free space around them. Then she took Fred’s hand and led him through the melee back to the limo. “Desist! Desist!” But when they reached the car, a veil of bees hung between them and the door and stubbornly and illegally ignored her demand to move.
Suddenly the tiny mechs began to drop from the air like pebbles. They fell in waves all around the hapless couple and beat their wings spastically against the concrete floor. When the way was clear, the limo door gulled open, and Mary urged Fred inside. The jewel-like fallen mechs crunched under their feet with every step. At first Mary was appalled — the cost! — but she remembered who she was, Mary Skarland, the evangeline, and she giddily ground a fortune of hardware under her elevated heels.
More mechs were arriving when Fred and Mary entered the limo, and Mary ordered the door to shut. It lowered but did not shut completely until a bluish blur flew inside. It was a solitary bee, larger than most; it alighted on Mary’s shoulder and crawled under the lapel of her suit.
Fred said nothing, only looked around the interior of the limo: five pods, each a safe harbor for two people, each seat an overstuffed lap of luxury. He fell into the nearest one and allowed the harness to snake over his shoulders and around his waist. It buckled with a decisive snap.
Mary took the seat next to his in the same pod, and when the car released its brakes and began to roll to the injection ramp, she said, “We’ll go to Provo for our own car.”
“No, don’t bother,” Fred said, all the fight gone out of him. “Like you said, it’s just a car.” To the car he said, “Chicago, APRT 7.” Mary bit her lip.
The car rolled down the ramp. It descended several levels to the transcontinental grid, gaining speed, and suddenly they were pressed against their seatbacks as they were shot into the pneumatic stream. The tube walls outside their windows blurred into a smooth umber streak before dimming to blackness.
As gently as she could, Mary said, “You know, Fred, since neither of us were employed by Applied People anymore, they asked me to move out of the APRT.”
He turned to her, his outrage rekindled. “They fired you because of me? They put you out on the street? Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“No, Fred, it’s nothing like that. I
He seemed confused. “Yes, I remember about the Leena, but did you tell me about quitting Applied People? About moving out of the APRT?”
She nodded.
“But you work for Ellen Starke, don’t you? You live there now and borrow her limo whenever you like?” He spoke with strained calm, as though asking her if she had a lover.
She could tell how much he wanted to be told he was wrong, but lying would gain them nothing. Still, it was too soon to have this conversation. “We’ll have plenty of time to decide where and how we’ll live, Fred. For the next few days, why don’t we just stay in a hotel.”
She could see how ready he was to fight — he must have thought she was taking him to Starke Manse. Fortunately, Lyra piped up and said,
“Why don’t we stay in Cass Tower, Fred? I’ve reserved a suite there.”
He nodded but wasn’t able to let it drop completely. “Cass Tower? Are you an aff then?”
She chuckled. “You don’t have to be an aff to stay a few nights at Cass Tower.” But, in fact, you did. Not even her hollyholo’s sizable income would afford that address for long. “You don’t mind?” she said. “Just until the dust settles?”
“What’s to mind?” he said, staring at his reflection in the darkened window. “Living like an aff.”
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at Cass Tower, the limo bypassed the public depot and entered a lift stack that took them directly to their floor. Their suite was on the 630th floor, but its tony altitude was offset by the fact that it was far from any exterior wall, just like their old APRT efficiency. But when they entered and Mary saw how nice it was, she thought it would do.
Their things, which Georgine had sent over, were arranged on shelves and in closets. There was no kitchen but a recessed nook with a kulinmate and wet bar. Fred walked around the living room, taking it all in. He opened bathroom drawers and seemed pleased to recognize things inside. In a bedroom closet he found his favorite bathrobe. The faithful old slipper puppy roused itself to drag out his felt moccasins. He bent down and patted the slipper puppy on its head and was actually grinning when he closed the closet door. He went back to the bathroom and called up archival images of himself in the mirror. They were all there. “I’m still handsome,” he called out to her. Finally, Fred wandered to a stout-looking door on a wall of the main room. “Another closet?”
“I don’t think so,” Mary said.
The door was sealed like an airlock hatch and seemed much too heavy-duty for what he found inside. “A sauna?”
“Look closer.”
Fred climbed into the sauna, fully clothed, and sat on a bench to ponder what was clearly a second hatch on the inner wall. Mary came in and sat opposite him. After a while Fred said, “Well, this is unexpected.”
