Counting Heads Read online

  We called Dr. Armbruster. She appeared in miniature, desk and all, on top of my place mat.

  “It’s a go, then?” she said, reading our expressions.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes,” Eleanor said and took my hand.

  “Congratulations, both of you. You are two of the luckiest people in the world.”

  We already knew that.

  “Traits? Enhancements?” asked Dr. Armbruster.

  We had studied all the options and decided to allow Nature and chance, not some well-meaning gengineer, to roll our genes together into a new individual. “Random traits,” we said, “and the standard half-dozen alphine enhancements.”

  “That leaves gender,” said Dr. Armbruster.

  I looked at Eleanor. “A boy,” she said. “I think it wants to be a boy.”

  “A boy it is,” said Dr. Armbruster. “I’ll get the lab on it immediately. The recombination should take about three hours. I’ll monitor the progress and keep you apprised. We will infect the chassis around noon. Make an appointment for a week from today to come in and take possession of—your son. We like to throw a little birthing party, and it’s up to you to make media arrangements, if any.

  “I’ll call you in about an hour. And again, congratulations!”

  We were too anxious to do anything else, so we ate shortcake and drank coffee and didn’t talk much. We mostly sat close and said meaningless things to ease the tension. Finally Dr. Armbruster, seated at her tiny desk, called back.

  “The recombination work is about two-thirds done and is proceeding very smoothly. Early readings show a Pernell Organic Intelligence quotient of 3.93—very impressive, but probably no surprise to you. So far, we know that your son has Sam’s eyes, chin, and skeleto-muscular frame, and Eleanor’s hair, nose, and—eyebrows.”

  “I’m afraid my eyebrows are fairly dominant,” said Eleanor.

  “Apparently,” said Dr. Armbruster.

  “I’m mad about your eyebrows,” I said.

  “And I’m mad about your frame.”

  We spent another hour there, taking two more updates from Dr. Armbruster. I ordered an iced bottle of champagne, and guests from other tables toasted us with coffee cups and visola glasses. I was slightly tipsy when we finally rose to leave. To my annoyance, I felt the prickly kiss of a homcom slug at my ankle. I decided I’d better let it finish tasting me before I attempted to thread my way through the jumble of tables and chairs. The slug seemed to take an inordinate amount of time.

  Eleanor, meanwhile, was impatient to go. “What is it?” She laughed. “Are you drunk?”

  “Just a slug,” I said. “It’s almost done.” But it wasn’t. Instead of dropping off, the slug elongated itself and looped around both of my ankles so that when I turned to join Eleanor, I tripped and capsized our table and cracked my head on the flagstone floor. The slug’s slippery shroud oozed up my body and stretched across my face. It congealed and blurred my view of the tables and umbrellas and crowds of diners who were all fleeing like horror-show shades. I could hardly draw breath. Eleanor’s face loomed over me for an instant, peering in at me, then vanished, though I cried and babbled for help. I tried to sit up, I tried to crawl, but I was tightly bound with my arms pinned to my sides.

  Henry said, Sam, I’m being probed.

  So was I. Anti-nano surged through my pores and spread beneath my skin. It entered my bloodstream and branched out to capture every cell in my body. It felt like hot smoke drifting through me and scorching me from the inside out.

  My poor stomach, bulging with strawberry champagne mush, clenched and shot a pink geyser up my throat. But there was nowhere for it to go except down my chin and across my chest where it boiled away against my skin.

  I thrashed about blindly, toppling more tables. I rolled in broken glass that cut me without piercing the shroud, so thin it stretched.

  Fernando Boa, said someone in Henry’s voice in Spanish. You are hereby placed under arrest for unlawful flight from State of Oaxaca authorities. Surrender yourself. Any attempt to escape will result in your immediate execution.

  “Not Boa!” I gasped. “Harger! Samson Harger!”

  Though I squeezed my eyes shut, the anti-nano tunneled right through them to sample the vitreous humor and rods and cones inside. Bolts of white light splashed across the backs of my eyelids, and a dull hurricane roar filled my head.

  Henry shouted, Should I resist? I think I should resist.

  “No!” I screamed.

  The real agony began then, as all up and down my body, my nerve cells were inspected. Attached to every muscle fiber, every blood vessel, every hair follicle, embedded in my skin, my joints, my intestines, they all began to fire at once. My brain rattled in my skull. My guts twisted inside out. I begged for relief.

  Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions ceased, the trillions of engines inside me abruptly quit. I can do this, Henry said. I know how.

  “No, Henry!”

  The isolation envelope itself flickered, then fell from me like so much dust. I was in daylight and fresh air again. Soiled, scalded, and bloated—but whole. I was alone on a battlefield of smashed umbrellas. I thought maybe I should crawl away from the dust, but the slug still shackled my ankles. “You shouldn’t have done it, Henry,” I croaked. “They won’t like what you did.”

  Without warning, the neural storm slammed me again, worse than before. A new shroud issued from the slug. This one squeezed me, like a tube of paint, starting at my feet, crushing the bones and working up my legs.

  “Please,” I begged, “please let me pass out.”

  I DIDN’T PASS out, but I went somewhere else, to another room it seemed, where I could still hear the storm raging on the other side of a thin wall. There was someone else in the room, a man I halfway recognized. He was well muscled and of middle height, and his yellow hair was streaked with gray. He wore the warmest of smiles on his coarse, round face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, referring to the agony beyond the wall, “it will pass.”

  He had Henry’s voice.

  “You should have listened to me, Henry,” I scolded. “Where did you learn to disobey me?”

  “I know I don’t count all that much,” said the man. “I mean, I’m just a construct, not a living being. A servant, not a coequal. But I want to tell you how good it’s been to know you.”

  I AWOKE LYING on my side on a gurney in a ceramic room, my cheek resting in a small puddle of clear fluid. Every cell of me ached. A man in a hommer uniform, a jerry, watched me sullenly. When I sat up, dizzy, nauseated, he held out a bundle of clean clothes. Not my clothes.

  “Wha’ happe’ me?” My lips and tongue were twice their usual size.

  “You had an unfortunate accident.”

  “Assiden’?”

  The jerry pressed the clothes into my hands. “Just shut up and get dressed.” He resumed his post next to the door and watched me fumble with the clothes. My feet were so swollen I could hardly pull the pant legs over them. My hands trembled and could not grip. My head swam, and I was totally exhausted. But all in all, I felt much better than I had a little while ago.

  When, after what seemed like hours, I was dressed, the jerry said, “Captain wants to see ya.”

  I shambled down deserted ceramic corridors following him to a small office where sat a large, handsome young man in a neat blue uniform, a russ. “Sign here,” he said, pushing a slate at me. “It’s your terms of release.”

  Read this, Henry, I glotted with a bruised tongue. When Henry didn’t answer I felt a thrill of panic until I remembered that the slave processors inside my body that connected me to Henry’s box in Chicago had certainly been destroyed. So I tried to read the document by myself. It was loaded with legalese and interminable clauses, but I was able to glean that by signing it, I was forever releasing the Homeland Command from all liability for whatever treatment I had enjoyed at their hands.

  “I will not sign this,” I said.

  “Su
it yourself,” the captain said and took the slate from my hands. “You are hereby released from custody, but you remain on probation until further notice. Ask the belt for details.” He pointed to the belt holding up my borrowed trousers.

  I lifted my shirt and looked at the belt. The device stitched to it was so small I had missed it, and its ports were disguised as grommets.

  “Sergeant,” the russ said to the jerry, “show Myr Harger the door.”

  “Just like that?” I said.

  “What were you expecting, a prize?”

  IT WAS DARK out. I asked the belt they’d given me what time it was, and it said in a lifeless, neuter voice, “The local time is nineteen forty-nine.” I calculated I had been incarcerated—and unconscious—for about seven hours. On a hunch, I asked what day it was. “The date is Friday, 4 April 2092.”

  Friday. I had been out for a day and seven hours.

  There was a Slipstream tube station right outside the cop shop, naturally, and I managed to find a private car. I climbed in and eased my aching self into the cushioned seat. I considered calling Eleanor, but not with that belt. So I told it to take me home. It replied, “Address, please.”

  My anger flared and I snapped, “The Williams Towers, stupid.”

  “City and state, please.”

  I was too tired for this. “Bloomington!”

  “Bloomington in California, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York—”

  “Hold it! Wait! Enough! Where the fuck am I?”

  “You’re at the Western Regional Homeland Command Headquarters, Provo, Utah.”

  How I longed for my Henry. He’d get me home safe with no hassle. He’d take care of me. “Bloomington,” I said mildly, “Indiana.”

  The doors locked, the running lights blinked on, and the car rolled to the injection ramp. We coasted down, past the local grid, to the intercontinental tubes. The belt said, “Your travel time to the Williams Towers in Bloomington, Indiana, will be one hour fifty-five minutes.” When the car was injected into the Slipstream, I was shoved against the seat by the force of acceleration. Henry would have known how sore I was and shunted my car to the long ramp. Fortunately, I had a spare Henry belt in the apartment, so I wouldn’t have to be without him for long. And after a few weeks, when I felt better, I’d again reinstall him inbody.

  I tried to nap but was too sick. My head kept swimming, and I had to keep my eyes open.

  It was after 10:00 P.M. when I arrived under the Williams Towers, but the station was crowded with residents and guests. I felt everyone’s eyes on me. Surely everyone knew of my arrest. They would have watched it on the nets, witnessed my naked fear as the shroud raced up my chest.

  I walked briskly, looking straight ahead, to the row of elevators. I managed to claim one for myself, and as the doors closed I felt relief. But something was wrong; we weren’t moving.

  “Floor, please,” said my new belt in its bland voice.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you! Listen to me, I want you to call Henry, that’s my system in Chicago. Put him in charge of all of your miserable functions. Do you hear me?”

  “Certainly, myr. What is the Henry access code?”

  “Code? Code? I don’t know code.” Keeping track of passwords, anniversaries, birthdays, and all that sort of detail had been Henry’s responsibility for over eighty years. “Just take me up! Stop at every floor above two hundred!” Before we started moving, I shouted, “Wait! Hold it! Open the doors!” I had the sudden, urgent need to urinate. I didn’t think I could hold it long enough to reach the apartment, especially in a high-speed lift.

  There were people waiting outside the elevator doors. I was sure they had heard me shouting. I pushed through them, a sick smile plastered to my face, the sweat rolling down my forehead, as I hurried to the men’s room off the lobby.

  I had to go so bad, that when I stood before the urinal and tried, I couldn’t. I felt about to burst, but I was plugged up. I had to consciously calm myself, breathe deeply, relax. The stream, when it finally emerged, seemed to issue forever. How many liters could a bladder hold? The urine was viscous and cloudy with a dull metallic sheen, as though mixed with aluminum dust. Whatever the HomCom had pumped into me would take days to expel. At least there was no sign of bleeding, thank God. But it burned. And when I was finished and washed my hands, I had to go again.

  Up on my floor, my belt valet couldn’t open the door to the apartment, so I had to ask admittance. The door didn’t recognize me, but Eleanor’s Cabinet gave it permission to open. The apartment smelled of strong disinfectant. I staggered through the rooms shouting, “Eleanor! Eleanor!” It suddenly occurred to me that she might be gone.

  “In here,” called Eleanor. I followed her voice to the living room, but Eleanor wasn’t there. It was her sterile elder twin, her chief of staff, who sat on the couch. She was flanked by the attorney general, dressed in black, and the security chief, grinning his toothy grin.

  “What the hell is this,” I said, “a fucking cabinet meeting? Where’s Eleanor?” In a businesslike manner, the chief of staff motioned to the armchair opposite the couch. “Won’t you join us, Sam. We have much to discuss.”

  “Discuss it among yourselves,” I yelled. “Where’s Eleanor?” Now I was sure that she had flown. She had bolted from the café and kept on going; she had left her three stooges behind to break the bad news to me.

  “Eleanor’s in her bedroom, but she—”

  I didn’t wait. I jogged down the hallway. But the bedroom door was locked. “Door,” I commanded, “unlock yourself.”

  “Access,” the door replied in a monotone, “has been extended to apartment residents only.”

  “That includes me, you idiot.” I pounded the door with my fists. “Eleanor, let me in. It’s me—Sam.”

  No reply.

  I returned to the living room. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  “Sam,” said the elderly chief of staff, “Eleanor will see you in a few minutes, but not before—”

  “Eleanor!” I yelled, turning around to look at each of the room’s cams. “I know you’re watching. Come out; we need to talk. I want you, not these dummies.”

  “Sam,” said Eleanor behind me. But it wasn’t Eleanor. Again I was fooled by her chief of staff who had crossed her arms like an angry El and bunched her eyebrows into a knot. She mimicked my Eleanor so perfectly that I had to wonder if El wasn’t projecting herself through it. “Sam, please get a grip and sit down,” she said in a conciliatory tone of voice. “We need to discuss your accident.”

  But I wasn’t ready for any reconciliation yet. “My what? My accident? Is that what we’re calling it? I can assure you it was no accident! It was an assault, a rape, a vicious attack. Not an accident!”

  “Excuse me,” said Eleanor’s attorney general, “but we were using the word ‘accident’ in a strictly legal sense. Both sides have provisionally agreed—”

  I left the room abruptly. I needed to pee again. Mercifully, the bathroom let me in. I knew I was behaving badly, but I couldn’t help it. On the one hand I was grateful that Eleanor was still there, that she hadn’t left me. On the other hand, I was hurt and confused and angry. All I wanted was to hold her, be held by her. I needed her at that moment more than I had ever needed anyone in my adult life. I had no time for holos. But it was reasonable that she should be frightened. Maybe she thought I was contaminated. My behavior was doing nothing to reassure her. I had to control myself.

  My urine burned even more than before. My mouth was cotton dry. I grabbed a glass and filled it with tap water. Surprised at how thirsty I was, I drank glassful after glassful. I washed my face in the sink. The cool water felt so good that I stripped off my HomCom-issue clothes and stepped into the shower. The water revived me, fortified me. Not wanting to put the clothes back on, I wrapped a towel around myself and went to my bedroom, but the room was entirely empty. No furniture or carp
ets—even the paint was stripped from the walls. I went back to the living room and told the holos to ask Eleanor to get some clothes for me. I promised I wouldn’t try to force my way into the bedroom when she opened the door.

  “All of your clothes were confiscated by the HomCom,” said the chief of staff, “but Fred will bring you something of his.”

  Before I could ask who Fred was, a big man, a russ, came out of the back bedroom, the room I used for my trips to Chicago. He was dressed in a brown and teal jumpsuit and carried a brown bathrobe over his arm. Except for the uniform, he looked exactly like his clone brother officer back at the Utah facility.

  “This is Fred,” said the chief of staff. “Fred has been assigned to—”

  “What?” I shouted. “El’s afraid I’m going to throttle her holos? She thinks I would break down her door?”

  “Eleanor thinks nothing of the kind,” said the chief of staff. “Fred has been assigned by the Tri-Discipline Council.”

  “Well, I don’t want him here. Send him away. Go away, Fred.”

  The russ remained impassive, silently holding the robe out to me.

  “I’m afraid,” said the chief of staff, “that as long as Eleanor remains a governor, Fred stays. Neither she nor you have any say in the matter.”

  I charged past the russ to the bathroom saying, “Just stay out of my way, Fred.” In the linen closet I found one of Eleanor’s terry robes. It was tight on me, but it would do.

  Returning to the living room, I sat in the armchair facing Cabinet’s couch. “All right. What do you want?”

  “That’s more like it,” said the chief of staff. She leaned back in the couch and relaxed as Eleanor would. “First, let’s get you caught up on what’s happened so far.”

  “By all means. Catch me up on what’s happened so far.”