“Desist!” he shouted, and the swarm of bees lifted off immediately to hover outside his privacy zone. But new arrivals were already taking their place. “Desist! Desist!” he repeated, scattering the waves of arrivals. He knew they would keep coming and wear him down eventually.
“Slate,” he said, searching its menus, “can you make a continuous privacy declaration in some non-auditory channel?”
“No need for that, Myr Russ,” said the waiter who appeared next to him with his order. “I’ll activate the establishment’s blanket.” His words were muffled by his masklike spex.
“I’d appreciate it.”
With the mechanical pests kept out of sight and hot coffee and freedom’s Danish, Fred worked at his slate for another half hour or so. When he looked up, his waiter was daydreaming into the sky again, and Fred had to clink his cup with his spoon for his attention. The waiter grabbed the coffee carafe and came over.
“Another Danish?” he said, refilling Fred’s cup.
“Another Danish would be ideal,” Fred said. “Maybe one with fruit this time.”
The waiter nodded and took a step back. But he did not set off at once with Fred’s order. Instead, he continued to look up and watch the sky through his spex. Fred looked up too but saw nothing out of place. The waiter’s gaze dropped slowly until he was looking down at Fred’s slate on the table. He drew a small aerosol canister from his apron and moved Fred’s slate aside, and after several more moments, squirted a dollop of red goo on the tabletop. The goo sizzled for a few seconds, and when it stopped the waiter mopped it up with his rag. He replaced Fred’s slate to its place and said, “A fruit Danish it is.” Even then, he scanned the airspace over Fred’s head as he went inside.
Fred was dumbfounded. He moved the slate aside and lowered his eyes to tabletop level. He found a tiny, blackened pit in the resin surface. He noticed other pits near it, dozens of them, stippling the surface of the table, some of them quite large. He noticed burn marks on the arms of his seat and tiny craters in the glassine floor of the deck. Even the sleeves of his new togs bore scorch marks.
Fred held his breath and looked up again into the intensely blue canopy-less sky. His to-do list no longer felt so urgent. He skipped the Danish, covered his head with his hands, and ducked indoors. He returned to his and Mary’s room, and instead of going out, he stayed in. He climbed into bed — the bed outside the null suite that they had not used. Fred pulled the covers over his head. It was not enough. He abandoned the bed and cycled back into the null suite.
Babying Ellen
When Mary arrived at the private station under the Starke Manse, she thought she was at the wrong house. Instead of russes and jerrys at the checkpoint, there were men of a type she’d never seen before. Handsome, compact men in gold-accented, yellow uniforms, not the brown and teal of Applied People. She swiped the post and tried to pass, but they stopped her politely.
“There must be some mistake,” she said. “I live here.”
“No mistake, myr,” one of them said. “Everyone gets scanned before entry.”
“You don’t understand; I’m Myr Starke’s personal companion.”
“Do you want access or not?” the man said cheerfully.
There was a chime, and Lyra appeared. “Hello, Mary,” she said. “Welcome back.”
“Lyra, what’s going on here? Who are these men?”
“These are guards from Capias World.”
“But what are they doing here?”
“Ellen has changed her services contractor. Capias World will be handling Starke security from now on.”
“They want to scan me.”
“I’m sorry, Mary, but you’ll have to submit to their rules, like everyone else, at least during the transition phase.”
UP ON THE ground floor, the marvels continued. Instead of Applied People janes and dorises, there was a Capias World variety of domestics.
Mary hurried to her own suite, concerned that it, too, might have changed allegiance during her absence. But all was the same as she had left it four days earlier. She shut the door and sat in her armchair. In a little while, the door chimed and announced Georgine.
“Let her in,” she said without getting up.
Georgine crossed the room and crouched next to her chair. “Mary, are you all right? How is Fred?”
“Fine, fine,” Mary said. “We’re fine. I’m just a little overwhelmed. What’s going on around here? Who are those people? Why are they here?”
“You should’ve let us know you were coming in today. I could’ve tried to prepare you. Ellen has gone off the deep end again. Everything was going well with the Protatter and extinguishing her mother delusion and all, but then apparently a new one sprang up in its place, a fixed idea, as Dr. Lamprey called it. Now Ellen accepts that her mother is dead, but she wants to exact unholy revenge against her mother’s killers. Myr Tiekel from E-Pluribus is fanning the flames. She told Ellen it was Zoranna Alblaitor who killed Eleanor Starke.”
“Our Alblaitor? That makes no sense.”
“I know, but it didn’t stop Ellen from firing all Applied People iterants on the spot, here at the Manse and throughout the entire Starke Enterprises, and replacing them with these Capias people.
“Then Dr. Lamprey started talking about doing a more radical procedure to extinguish this new delusion and all memory of the crash, and she fired him too. Now there’s no physician, and the Capias nurses are in charge.”
“Didn’t Cabinet do anything?”
“No, it stayed out of it, and Lyra didn’t know what to do. Right now we’re trying to talk Dr. Rouselle into coming back, but she’s too busy running her new hospital. And on top of that, Ellen is depressed and hasn’t left her tank for two solid days, and the nusses won’t even let us talk to her.”
“The nusses?”
“The Capias nursing line.”
“They won’t even let you near her?”
Georgine shook her head.
“We’ll just see about that,” Mary said, rising from her armchair.
“NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS allowed,” the nuss said, blocking the door to Ellen’s bedroom.
“We
“Not according to my orders.”
Mary smiled in a dead-on imitation of a russ game face. “Myr Nuss, I am Mary Skarland. Have you ever heard of me?”
The nuss nodded tentatively.
These nusses weren’t as physically imposing as jennys, and Mary threw back her shoulders and declared, “Then you know what I’m capable of. You know that the last person who tried to keep me from assisting Myr Starke is rotting in his grave, a stick driven through his brain. And you know that I’d rather fight than talk and that if you don’t remove your person from my sight this very instant, I will walk right through you. Do you understand me, myr?”
The nuss gave way.
Inside the bedroom, the shades were drawn, and the hernandez tank stood in shadow. A second nuss on duty turned to Mary and said, “What are you doing here?”
“As you were, Nurse,” Mary said and went around her to the tank. “Lights at full!” she commanded the room. “Window full wide!” The woman/baby floated, eyes closed, in the purplish medium like a medical curiosity. Mary rapped sharply on the tank, and Ellen’s eyelids fluttered. Mary continued to rap. At first Ellen stared blankly at her, but gradually her eyes focused, and she reached out her arms.
