they blocked your workspace.'
'Mom-'
'Now's not the time, Nicky,' she said, the anger showing in her voice for the first time. 'You have a lot of apologies to make, but not now. It sounds too easy now. Maybe in the next couple of days your dad and I can take what you have to say more seriously.'
She went out. A moment later Nick heard the apartment door shut.
He stood there with the envelope in his hands, trembling, first with embarrassment-Oh God, what will everybody say? What will they think? This is the end! — and then, with something more familiar, something peculiarly more bearable, more acceptable: rage.
This stinks.
But then everything stinks!
He was right. Joey was absolutely right!
The only question is-am I going to take this lying down… or am I going to let them see that I'm not going to just take what they dish out?
There was only one possible answer to the question, for someone who had been down as far as Seven in Death-world… only one possibly answer for a Banie.
' 'Surprise, surprise. ' Nick sang softly, and headed out of the room to have his supper, and start laying his plans.
Charlie came down the stairs from his bedroom early that Friday morning, still rubbing his eyes a little despite having been showered and dressed for half an hour now. He'd been up late putting final touches on a physics paper that was due today, and he was pleased with his efforts, even if he did feel like he wanted to turn right around and go straight back up the stairs to bed.
Charlie headed for the coffeemaker and was astounded to find it empty. He opened the cupboard above it, got out another drip-pak, slapped it into the holder, filled the brewing reservoir again, and got the brew cycle started. The coffeemaker promptly began making the noise which both his father and mother referred to as 'Cheyne-Stokes respirations,' a horrific gurgling gasp followed by a long 'breath' outward that sounded more like a death rattle than anything else.
'Urgh,' Charlie said to the coffeemaker, 'you sound like I feel.'
He went back to the table and glanced at the paper, which his dad had left there still folded. Charlie hit the 'go' corner and it started to unfold itself in the usual manner, and at that point his dad came down the stairs with his white doctor's overcoat on and his stethoscope doubled up around his neck. 'Did you start the coffee?'
'Yup. Somebody drank it all.'
'Speak to your mother.' Charlie's dad sat down and looked the paper over, regarding the front page with his usual mild interest, then started paging through to the part that really mattered. Charlie watched this process, secretly amused that his dad was managing to stay away from the sports pages for even this long-and then paused, catching sight of a headline on the first of the local news pages.
DOUBLE SUICIDE STUNS VA, MD PARENTS
Charlie leaned in closer over his dad's shoulder.
Arlington, May 7, 2025-Two families in the Arlington and Fairfax areas were grieving today for a son and a daughter who were found dead early Tuesday in what appeared to be a bizarre suicide pact. The bodies of Jeannine Metz, 18, and Malcolm Dwyer, 17, were discovered in a room in a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, last night, after relatives received timed e-mail messages from both teens. The messages contained slightly different versions of the same suicide note.
Police were called to the scene at 1:03 A. M. on Tuesday by hotel management at the Arlington Radisson- Hilton Towers, who opened the room after being alerted by Net messages from the pair's concerned parents. Shortly thereafter the police on scene notified staff from the county coroner's office and secured the room for investigation as a possible crime scene, but by morning the coroner said that there was no initial indication of murder or other 'foul play' as a factor. Further statements, he said, would have to await the processing of initial tissue sample tests and a full autopsy. The coroner's office declined to comment on details of the suicide method.
Dwyer and Metz were taken to Arlington Hospital, where they were identified by their parents. 'I can't understand it,' Metz's mother, Quinne Ryan Metz said when interviewed Monday morning by local media. 'She was such a normal girl, she did well at school, there weren't any family problems, we were very close… ' Relatives of Malcolm Dwyer declined to speak to reporters.
Police investigating the suicides had no initial comment. They would not confirm or deny the suggestion that both teens had been regular users of the controversial 'Deathworld' Net environment run by morbo-jazz star Joey Bane. Calls to Joey Bane Enterprises were not immediately returned Tuesday, but a Netted template press release from the firm's public relations department, issued to the media on Tuesday evening, stated that the managers of the Deathworld environment, because of privacy issues, do not comment on user information unless specifically required to by subpoena or other court order according to the guidelines established by the Protection of Personal Data Bill-
Charlie gulped. 'Nothing,' he said. 'I gotta go get ready for school… '
He headed out, but not upstairs, where his books and the take-to-school computer were. He headed for the den and swung into the implant chair. He closed his eyes, twitched the implant awake. It lined up with the Net server and activated. Things went dark-
A moment later Charlie was in his workspace, down by the big worktable in the shining wooden-benched operating theater. The sun was already high there, pouring in the windows. It was noon in London.
'Nick?'
No answer. Charlie was a little surprised by that. He and Nick had for a long time maintained a 'live shout' link between their two workspaces: when one of them said just the other's name by itself, while working, the computer would open up a portal between the two spaces without further fuss. If he was going to change that, he would have told me…
'Main routine,' Charlie said.
'Here.'
'Link to Nick Melchior's main Net address.'
'Linking now.'
Suddenly the air around him went bright, and a sign appeared in it, hanging in front of him: SERVICE SUSPENDED. Now, that's weird-Charlie thought, until abruptly that sign flickered, to be replaced by another: FORWARDING.
Has the family changed its master Net address or something? Charlie wondered. It did happen. People changed providers from time to time if they didn't like the service they were getting, but Nick hadn't mentioned anything like that-
There was another flicker, and then Charlie found himself looking at Nick, who was sitting in a bare, white space, in an Eames chair, reading his mail in the form of the usual various floating icons, little colored or flashing cubes and spheres and pyramids and other isometric threedimensional solids hovering around him in the air. 'Nick?' Charlie said.
Nick looked up. 'Oh, hi. Come on in.'
'What's the blast?' Charlie looked around him with some bemusement. 'Where's your workspace? You get tired of Castle Dracula?'
Nick grinned. 'Mr. Tact. Nope, my folks pulled the plug on me. Sorry if it's a little bare in here… I haven't had time to refurnish yet. I was mostly occupied with getting the forwarding routine installed around the service block my folks had the provider put in.'
Charlie's eyes went wide. 'Well, at least you're still online.'
'Yeah. It's just a public-terminal account at the twenty-four-hour printing and mailbox place down in the Square, though. I can't spend as much time as I would usually. I have to sneak out to use it. Listen,' Nick said as Charlie opened his mouth to say something. 'I can't be with you long, I have to get back into Deathworld soonest. I'm on the verge of going seventh-circle, but my last save didn't take and I'm having to re-create a lot of stuff in
