Buzzing, crushing, dive-bombing mechs entered the fray, and vicious fights broke out everywhere as thieves stole from each other. The only possible weapon Fred had on him was the omnitool, and its best tool for the job was probably the little plasma spot welder. Given the anatomy of his adversaries, he might be able to cripple them with a few strategically placed spot welds. It was better than nothing.
But in the end, hand-to-hand defense was unnecessary. Like pulling a switch, all the fights ceased at once, and all the surviving mechs scattered to their boltholes, dragging whatever treasures they could manage. After a minute, all was quiet on Daley Plaza.
Fred said, “The hommers must have arrived.”
Mary said, “Good. If we hurry, we can still make part of our appointment.”
That was the last thing Fred had expected to hear. He’d lost all thought of the relationship meeting. Was it so important to her that even a full-scale wrecker assault was merely an inconvenience? “What about your knee?”
“We can stop at a NanoJiffy on the way.”
Fred had his doubts, but he got up and checked their surroundings. HomCom and police GOVs had indeed arrived in force. Fred lifted the Campaigner off Mary. Its outer surface was pitted and scorched. He helped Mary to her feet. “Can you stand?”
She tried, but her knee was swollen like a melon, so he picked her up and held her in his arms. “You know, your injury is probably more than what a NanoJiffy autodoc can handle. And the police undoubtedly have a cordon.”
“Just drive, Fred.”
“Yes, boss.” Fred took a few steps toward the Nestle. “I mean, can’t we just reschedule?”
“Oh, Fred, you are so innocent.”
The matter was taken out of their hands moments later when a hommer bee arrived and dropped a frame of a bored-looking russ proxy in a Watch Commander uniform. He said with a lazy drawl, “Myren Skarland and Londenstane, this area has been declared a SIZ. Do not leave it without authorization. Remain where you are; medical treatment is on its way.”
“Busted,” Fred said.
“It’s like you wanted to be stopped.”
A crash cart raced over to them and lowered two seats. In a caring but authoritative voice it said, “Please sit for treatment.”
Fred placed Mary in one seat and took the other. No sooner had he sat down than the cart informed him, “You are not injured, Myr Londenstane. Swipe for medical release.” Fred hopped off and swiped.
Meanwhile, the cart covered Mary’s swollen knee in a blister wrap and cleaned and sealed her minor cuts and scrapes. All the pain lines melted from her face. Behind her, at the carcass of the limo, another cart was midwifing the three passengers from their crash pods. First, the blue gel liquefied, and then the tough bags burst, birthing the grateful survivors on the bare pavement.
“I’ll tell you what,” Fred said. “We can cut out the middleman and do the session ourselves.”
“What? Here?”
“Right here, right now.”
“Yeah, right,” Mary said. “You won’t even talk to me in our own bedroom, and you’re going to talk out here in public?”
Fred motioned at all the official activity in the plaza. “We’re in a comm fog; we’ll have pretty good privacy for a while. Just tell me what you were going to tell the counselor.”
Mary wasn’t so sure. “It’s not as simple as that,” she said. “Part of the reason for going to a counselor in the first place is for the perspective they bring to what might otherwise sound like a litany of harsh and hurtful things.”
“You’ve never had any difficulty telling me hard things in the past.”
“You really want to do this here?”
The cart peeled the blister wrap off Mary’s knee. Her knee looked good as new. With a hint of swagger in its voice, the cart said, “You may go now, Myr Skarland. Swipe for care instructions and medical release.”
Fred helped Mary stand, but her knee felt fine and she didn’t need his support. They went back to their bench to sit down and finish what they had started. First, they hugged for a while, and then Fred whispered, “I love you, Mary.”
“I know that, Fred,” she whispered back. “And I love you. I say this out of love. What I was going to tell the counselor was that you’ve become a different person. Or maybe we both have, which is probably the case. But whichever it is, I don’t know if the new me wants to be with the new you anymore.”
Fred didn’t know how to respond, though it was more or less what he had expected to hear. “How bad is it?”
Mary rested her head on his shoulder. “The problem is I
There really wasn’t much more to say, and they sat quietly while her words sank in. When a hommer bee flew over and declared, “You are both free to go,” they hardly noticed it. So they were surprised a few minutes later when straining legions of media and witness bees soared overhead, crisscrossing the plaza in search of anything of interest to look at.
“Oh, crap!” Fred said, scanning the airspace above them. “We’d better make a run for it. The tube station over there has the nearest MEZ. Think you can run, or should I carry you?”
“I’m not running anywhere, Fred.” Mary stood and turned up her jacket collar, exposing her Blue Bee escort. It had been there the whole time, waiting in reserve. It dropped off and flew away to lose itself in the menacing swarm above. Mary held out her arm to Fred. “We’ll walk to the station, like civilized people, and woe be to the mech that gets in our way.”
To the Mem Lab
Cabinet was giving Meewee last-minute instructions in the ready room outside a null lock in one of the lower floors of the Starke headquarters arcology. It was a null room Meewee had never used before.
MEEWEE TOUGHED OUT the itchy, half-hour cleansing in the lock, and when the inner hatch undogged and the pressure equalized, he was surprised to find himself entering not any kind of secret lab, but what looked like the inside of a private Slipstream car. It had a much narrower interior than a normal car and no windows at all. Everything in the car appeared to be fireproof; even the seats, which were padded with cushions of ceramic wool. Next to one of the seats was a liter flask of Orange Flush and a portable toilet.
FOR A WHILE, the ride was unremarkable, a normal tube ride underground, but not long into it, the car slowed down, then stopped, and there were loud clanging sounds fore and aft. The interior of the car grew warm and stuffy, and the walls were warm to the touch.
