"Perhaps," Sellars said, cutting him off. Sam got the feeling he didn't want to speculate about such things in front of her—or maybe in front of Orlando, since he was code himself.
Code. She felt a dizzy strangeness at the thought. My best friend's dead. My best friend's alive. My best friend is code. "But I can come back, can't I? Can't I?"
"Yes, Sam. We will just choose another place, that's all. We have all the network to pick from. Or almost all." Sellars was solemn. "There are a few simworlds that I may not choose to continue."
"But they are all worth study!" said Kunohara.
"Perhaps. But we will have a sufficiently difficult time just to keep the Grail network functioning. You will forgive me if I do not choose to devote precious resources to the worlds built almost entirely around torture and pederasty."
"I suppose you are right." Kunohara did not seem entirely convinced.
Sam turned back to Orlando and tried to catch his eye, but couldn't. For the first time in the years she had known him the Thargor body seemed not his real self but a costume, the face a mask. Where was he? Was he still the same Orlando in there? She thought so, but the friend that had meant so much to her seemed at the moment to be out of reach.
"I'll be back to visit you every day," she told him. "I promise."
"Don't make any promises, Frederico," he said gruffly.
"What do you mean?" Now she was angry. "Do you think I'll forget you? Orlando Gardiner, you scan so utterly, utterly. . . !"
He lifted his big hand. "No, I don't mean that, Frederico. I just mean . . . don't make promises. I don't want to think that when you come to see me, it's because . . . because you made a promise."
She opened her mouth again, then closed it. "Chizz," she said at last. "No promises. But I will come. Every day. You just see if I don't."
He smiled a little. "Okay."
She didn't like the silence that followed. She balanced on one foot. Sellars had turned Kunohara aside, she guessed to engage him in some interesting grown-up discussion. "Well, fenfen, Gardiner," she said at last, "aren't you going to hug me or anything?"
He did, clumsily, but then he held tight. His voice sounded funny. "I'll see you around, Fredericks, Sam." He squeezed. "I . . . I love you."
"I love you too, Orlando. And don't you ever dare think I'm coming to see you because I have to or some impacted idea like that." She wiped at her eyes angrily. "And don't think I'm crying because I'm a girl."
"Okay. Don't think I'm crying because I'm dead."
She laughed, gulped, then pushed him away. "See you tomorrow."
"Yeah. See you."
She made the command gesture. "Offline."
It wasn't as easy as she thought it would be—as it seemed like it should be. There was no pain this time, at least not the hideous voltage she had experienced before, but her body ached and she could not open her eyes.
When she did at last manage to get her gummed lids apart, it was almost worse. Her eyes itched, but she could not raise her arms to rub them. She seemed caught in a web of barbed wire, prickling, leaden. She rolled her head down—it was so heavy!—and saw the tubes taped to her arms and legs. How could such flimsy plastic things feel so much like chains?
Sellars had called her parents, just as he had promised he would. She could see them asleep at the end of the bed, their chairs side by side, her mother slumped across her father's chest, her head tucked against his broad neck just below his jaw.
I'm crying again, she thought as her parents' faces blurred. That's all I've been doing lately. That's so stupid. . . ! She tried to call them but her voice was as weak and unready as her limbs. Nothing came out but a wheezing gurgle.
I hope after all that, I'm not dying or something, Sam thought, but she was not frightened, only tired, tired. I'm so scanny. I've been in bed for, like, weeks, but all I want to do is sleep. She tried to call her parents again, and although the sound she finally made was no louder than a fish coughing, her mother heard her.
Enrica Fredericks' eyes came open. An initial moment of bleariness vanished when she saw Sam looking at her.
"Jaleel!" she shrieked. "Jaleel, look!" She leaped toward the bed and kissed Sam's face. With his prop gone, her husband woke up to find himself sliding toward the floor.
"What the hell. . . !"
But then he saw, and he was up and coming toward her too, big and dark and beautiful, his arms spread so wide that it looked like he would grab Sam and his wife together, fold them into his arms and lift them both up in the air. Sam couldn't muster the strength even to turn her head so she could hardly see her mother, who was kissing her cheek and getting it wet and saying things that Sam couldn't quite make out—but she didn't need to, because she recognized the sounds of joy, real joy.
The kind that only comes when you think someone's going to die, but they don't, Sam thought, and tried to smile at her father. There was an idea there, an important idea, but it was too high and complicated for such a moment. When death turns its face away. . . .
She let it go and gave herself up to happiness.
CHAPTER 51
Watching Cars Explode
* * *
NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Robinette Murphy Won't Concede
(visual: excerpt from FRM's Around the Corner net series)
VO: Professional psychic Fawzi Robinette Murphy, who surprised the entertainment world by retiring after predicting that the end of the world was imminent, does not appear at all embarrassed that her proclaimed deadline for apocalypse has passed.
(visual: FRM interviewed by GCN's Martin Boabdil)
BOABDIL: "Do you want to extend the timeline on your original prediction?"
MURPHY: "It doesn't matter what I say, what you say. It happened."
BOABDIL: "What happened?"
MURPHY: "The world ended."
BOABDIL: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I mean, isn't this a world we're both sitting in?"
MURPHY: "Not the same one. I can't explain it any better than that."
BOABDIL: "So you meant the whole thing . . . philosophically? Like, every day the old world ends and a new one begins? I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense."
MURPHY: "You really are an idiot, aren't you?"
* * *
The memorial service was a small one. The minister they hired to say a few words clearly felt something was going on that he didn't understand, but was enough of a professional not to ask too many questions.
He probably thinks we're in a good mood because we didn't like the dear departed much, or because we're making out like bandits in the will, Ramsey thought as he listened to the recorded music. Well, that part's true, anyway.
The only face in the tiny gathering that seemed to wear a wholly appropriate expression was that of the little girl Christabel—wide-eyed, confused, tearful. Ramsey and her parents had done their best to explain, but she was very young and was having trouble understanding.
Hell, he thought, I'm having trouble with it myself.
"Patrick Sellars was an aviator," the minister said. "I'm told he gave freely of himself in service to his country and to his friends, and that although he was badly injured in that service, he never lost his kindness, his sense of duty . . . or his humanity."
Welllll. . . .
"Today we say farewell to his mortal remains." The minister indicated the simple white coffin surrounded by flowers—Mrs. Sorensen's touch. "He was a gardener," she had insisted. "We have to have flowers." "But the part of him that is immortal lives on." The minister cleared his throat—a nice man, thought Ramsey, way out of his depth. But he would never know that. "I think it might not be too great a liberty to suggest that he is flying still—going to a place none of us has yet reached, seeing things none of us has yet seen, free of the encumbrance of his wounded body, the burden of his wearisome years. He is free, now, truly free to fly." And that, thought Ramsey, is some world-class irony.
"They have a little surveillance camera in the corner of
the chapel," Sellars told them when they returned. On the wallscreen he looked just the same as he had in real life, although his surroundings were quite different. Ramsey thought the stony plain and faint stars behind him looked distinctly eerie—otherworldly, even. He could not help wondering why Sellars would choose such an odd background but preserve his image in that same strange, crippled body, unless it was to make the little girl more comfortable. "I couldn't resist the temptation to watch the service," the old man went on. "I found it unexpectedly moving." His smile was just a little wicked.
"But why are you dead?" Christabel was still close to tears. "I don't understand."
"I know, little Christabel," he said. "It's difficult. The fact is, that body of mine was just worn out. And I can't use it anymore, so I had to . . . had to use some tools I have now to transfer myself. Make a new home, I guess you'd say. I live on the net, now—or at least in this special part of it. So I'm not dead, not really. But I didn't have any more use for that old body, and it's just as well that people think I've . . . passed on." He looked out at the others. "There will be fewer questions."
"There'll be plenty of questions anyway," said Major Sorensen.
"Yes, there will."
"I'm still not sure I forgive you," said Kaylene Sorensen. "I believe you when you say it was an accident—about Christabel, I mean—but I'm still angry." She frowned, then showed a little half-smile, her own touch of wickedness. "But I suppose we shouldn't speak ill of the dead."
The boy Cho-Cho got up and walked out of the room, stiff and uncomfortable in the dark formal clothes Kaylene Sorensen had insisted he wear to the service. Ramsey was troubled about the boy and had begun considering what might happen to him now, but he had other things to deal with first.
"Speaking of questions," he said, "we need to begin strategizing."
"I don't want to strategize," said Mrs. Sorensen. "I want to take my daughter away from this and go home. She needs to be in school." She looked around for Cho-Cho and saw the open bedroom door, Her expression was troubled. "Both these children need to be children again."
"Trust me—a little thought now will make things much easier later on," Ramsey said. "Things are going to get very strange. . . ." He paused, shook his head. "I suppose it's more accurate to say they're going to continue to be strange. We're going to court with this. We're suing some of the most powerful people in the world. This is going to be a story the tabnets dream about. I can do a lot to shield you, Mrs. Sorensen, but I can't make it foolproof. Even the money you inherit from Sellars isn't going to make it foolproof. This is going to set the world on its ear."
"We don't want the money," Major Sorensen said. "We don't need it."
"No, you don't need it, Major," Sellars told him gently. "But you're going to get it. If you're worrying that the money is tainted somehow, I promise you there was no theft involved. I made many investments over the years, all of them quite legitimate—I had decades of all the world's information at my fingertips, and I am not a foolish man. I used most of that money upgrading myself and investigating the Grail Brotherhood. Surely you will not balk at using the small amount I have left to help protect your family, after all you've done for me."
"Small amount! Forty-six million credits!"
Sellars smiled. "You won't be forced to take all of it. It will be split among several . . . volunteers."
"It's tiny compared to what we're going to get when we drag Telemorphix and some of these others into court," Ramsey said. "But most of that will go to, the parents of the Tandagore kids, the ones put into comas by the Grail network's operating system. Oh, and to one other thing, which I might as well tell you about now. We're planning to build a hospital—the Olga Pirofsky Memorial Children's Hospital."
Sellars nodded slowly. "I did not know Ms. Pirofsky as well as you did, Mr. Ramsey, but may I make a suggestion? I suspect she would have preferred to call it the Daniel Pirofsky Children's Hospital."
It took him a moment to understand. "Of . . . of course. Yes, I think you're right."
"But why do we have to take these people to court?" asked Kaylene Sorensen. "After all we've been through?"
"You don't," Ramsey said carefully. "I have no qualms about filing a class-action suit. But when General Yacoubian's role in this comes out, I think it will be difficult to keep you folks out of it entirely. This is going to be the biggest story since the Antarctica War. Hell, it's going to be bigger than that—we've got a cloud of smoke over most of southeastern Louisiana, the J Corporation island is a melted slab at the middle of a federal disaster zone, and that's just a tiny piece of the goddamned puzzle." He saw Mrs. Sorensen's look and couldn't help smiling. Things were returning to normal, even if she didn't recognize it yet. "Sorry for the language. But there may be a court-martial ahead for your husband, too, I'm sure with Captain Parkins' testimony we won't have any trouble winning. . . ."
"We?" asked Christabel's father.
Ramsey paused, nodded. "Actually, I may be . . . a bit busy in the months to come. But I'm sure any decent military lawyer will be able to get it handled. We'll find one if you don't know one already."
"Please, take the money, Mrs. Sorensen," said Sellars. "Buy yourself a house off the base. Insulate yourself a little. This will go on for a long time. I'm sure you will have to struggle to keep your privacy."
"I don't want to move off the base," she replied angrily.
"As you choose. But take the money. Use it to give Christabel some freedom."
"What about the boy?" Ramsey asked. "I can make some arrangements if you'd like—before things get too hectic. Find him a good foster home. . . ."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Kaylene Sorensen was not going to be jollied or led. Ramsey suspected she was going to be a very good trial witness. "That boy's not going anywhere. I haven't spent all that time washing and feeding him just to hand him off to someone who wouldn't care. He's staying with us, the poor little thing." She looked at her husband. "Isn't that right, Michael?"
Major Sorensen had the good grace to smile. "Uh . . . yeah. Sure. The more the merrier."
"Christabel," her mother said, "go get. . . ." She frowned and turned to Sellars. "What's his name? His real name?"
"Carlos, I believe." Sellars was smiling, too. "But I don't think he likes it much."
"Then we'll think of something else. I'm not going to have a foster son named Cho-Cho. It sounds like a train or something." She waved at her daughter. "Go on, honey—go get him."
Christabel looked at her strangely. "He's going to live with us?"
"Yes, he is. He doesn't have anywhere else to go."
The little girl thought this over for a moment. "Okay," she said, then trotted into the bedroom. She emerged a moment later pulling the protesting boy by the arm. He had taken off his suit, but as if he had been uncertain of what to do next, wore only his T-shirt and underwear.
"You're going to come live with us," Kaylene Sorensen said. "Is that all right?"
He looked at her as though peering up out of a hole. Ramsey thought he might actually try to run away. "Live with you?" he asked. "Like, su casa? In your house?"
"Yes." She nodded emphatically. "Tell him, Mike."
"We want you to live with us," the major said. To his credit, he definitely sounded like he meant it now. "We want you . . . to be part of our family."
The boy stared from one to the other. "Not going to school," he said.
"You most certainly are," Kaylene Sorensen told him. "And you will take regular baths, too. And we'll get those teeth fixed."
"Teeth. . . ?" He looked a little stunned. One hand crept up to finger his mouth. Then his expression changed. "Gonna live with the weenit?"
"If you mean Christabel, yes. She'll be . . . your sister, I guess."
He stared at them again, calculating, still suspicious, but also glimpsing the outlines of something about which Ramsey could only guess.
"Okay," he said.
"If you don't say bad words,
I'll let you play with Prince Pikapik," Christabel promised.
He rolled his eyes, then the two of them wandered off to the other room—lawsuits, court-martials, even a dead man talking on the wallscreen not enough to keep them around while grown-ups were doing boring grown-up things.
"Good," said Sellars. "This is all good. Now we have a few more matters to discuss."
This truly is the story of the century, Ramsey marveled. I wonder if someday, half a millennium from now, people will be studying what we're saying here today. He looked at the bedroom doorway. The other wallscreen was on. Christabel was lying on the floor talking to a stuffed toy. Cho-Cho was watching cars explode.
No, he thought, and turned his attention back to what Sellars was saying. People never remember this stuff, no matter how important it is.
"I'm sorry I'm late. I've only been back a day and I still feel . . . pretty strange. And you know how slow the buses are downtown." Renie looked around. "The office isn't quite what I expected."
Del Ray laughed and waved his good hand dismissively at the windowless space, the small screen on the unadorned white wall. His other arm was pulled tightly against his chest in a sling, the damaged hand invisible under a knot of bandages. "It's only temporary—I've got my eye on a much nicer one at the main UN building on Farewell Square." He settled back in his chair. "Bureaucracies are a funny thing. Three months ago you would have thought I had a communicable disease. Now I am suddenly everyone's best friend again because the smell of a wrongful-termination suit is on the wind and my face is on the newsnets." He looked at her. "But not your face. It's too bad—it's a nice face, Renie."
"I don't want it—the attention, anything. I'm tired. I just want some quiet." She lowered herself into the chair facing the desk. "It's a miracle I'm up and walking around, but those old-fashioned tanks were actually better than what some of the other people in the network went through. Let us move our limbs so the muscles didn't atrophy, things like that. And, of course, we didn't get bedsores."