“Yes!”
The display stage showed the corridor outside the apartment door. Three of the people, including the woman, now held guns. Theresa felt her throat close and she gasped for breath. No, not now, not now… The Livers weren’t shouting. The one with the mobile spoke calmly but loudly, in their street talk: “—get for our kids, us, more Change syringes. That’s all we want, us. We won’t hurt nobody. I tell you again, me, that all we want is more Change syringes, we know you got them. Dr. Aranow, you’re a doctor, you—”
“Go away!” Theresa called. The words came out strangled, unable to force themselves past her panic attack. She tried again. “Go away! No Change syringes here! My brother doesn’t keep them at home!” Which wasn’t true. There were sixteen Change syringes in the house safe.
“What? Is that Dr. Aranow, you? Open the door!”
“No,” Theresa whimpered. She couldn’t breathe.
“Then we’re coming in, us!”
The front door clicked open. The security procedure… why wasn’t Jones responding? What had these people had time to do to Jones… and how did they know how to do it? Theresa wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. Jones said, “You are unauthorized intruders. If you don’t leave immediately, this system will activate its bio-based defenses.”
“Wait, Elwood, don’t—”
“I knocked out the defenses, them. Come on!”
“But you—”
“The syringes—”
“Activating now,” Jones said, and abruptly the holostage was full of a dark yellow gas, coming from everywhere at once. And it was everywhere. Theresa’s study was suddenly full of it Gasping for air, she drew gas into her lungs and—
—and her arms and legs fell off.
Theresa tumbled to the floor. She could see her arms and legs lying beside her, clearly detached… But, no, they couldn’t be hers, because there was no blood. They were somebody’s else’s arms and legs… the intruders’? But how had they gotten as far as her upper-floor study, without their legs? How odd! But interesting, actually. Although maybe they weren’t the intruders’ arms and legs. But, then, whose could they be?
She pushed the nearest leg away from herself. Really, the disgusting thing shouldn’t be lying around on the floor. Where was the cleaning ’bot? Perhaps it was broken…
As she shoved the stray leg hard, Theresa was astonished to feel her own body jerk. Now, what was that all about? Nothing seemed normal today. Although Jackson always said that normal was a huge warehouse… he must be right, if “normal” had to include arms and legs that weren’t even hers cluttering up her study.
Theresa grasped a detached arm and tried to throw it across the room. Again her torso jerked, and pain tore through her shoulder, which didn’t make sense. And how had the intruder dressed his arm in one of Theresa’s flowered sleeves? He must have gone first to her bedroom, changed clothes, and then come in here to fall apart. Maybe Leisha had sent him. Yes, that would make sense—Leisha was always compassionate to Livers. Compassionate and unafraid.
“Theresa!” someone called. “Tess!”
Although now that she thought of it. Theresa wasn’t afraid either. Really, she was very calm. Jackson would be proud of her. She was staying calm and thinking what to do. First, get the cleaning ’bot to clear up these extra arms and legs off the floor. Then, notify the enclave police about the intruders. Third, figure out what made Thomas Carlyle’s sentences so good, so that she could write ones just as good. Or so her personal system could. Yes, that made sense—she would ask her system to duplicate Carlyle’s prose. After all, they both were named Thomas.
“Tess! Where are—oh, my God!”
Theresa looked up. Cazie stood over her, wearing a Y-shield helmet with air filter. Cazie seemed to have all her arms and legs. This was interesting… how had Cazie hung on to hers when both Theresa and the intruders hadn’t been able to? Fourth on her list would be to ask Jackson about this. It was probably a medical problem.
“Here, breathe deep… hold still, Tessie, just breathe as deep as you can, the gas only needs a few minutes to leave your body… just breathe…”
There was something over her head, although it must be made of Y-energy because through it Theresa could still see Cazie. Cazie looked so concerned… but she needn’t, really. Theresa was fine. Jackson would be proud of how fine she was, staying calm in an emergency, breathing normally, making a rational list of what to do and what order to do it in… But she should speak the list to Thomas. That way she would be sure to remember everything on it. Thomas could write it down.
She crawled toward her terminal to do this. “Breathe deep.” Cazie said again, but before Theresa could, everything went black.
She awoke on the living-room sofa. Jackson and Cazie stood over her. Cazie said, “How do you feel, Tessie?”
“I… there were Livers…”
“Gone now. No, don’t get upset, Tess, it’s all right. Enclave security has them all, and nobody was hurt. It won’t happen again.”
“But how… what…”
Jackson sat beside her and took her hand. “They dipped the building entry codes, Theresa. Nobody knows how they got into the enclave. But all our systems have been reprogrammed—building, elevator, and Jones. Cazie’s right, it won’t happen again.”
His voice sounded hollow. He was lying to her.
Cazie said, “Nothing was stolen. Maybe they didn’t even intend to steal anything but Change syringes. They knew Jackson was a doctor. Other medical types were breached, too. The cops will take care of the whole thing. Nobody was hurt.”
“But there were arms and legs all over the floor!” Theresa cried. She could see them, horrible detached limbs… she shuddered and gasped. “And my arms and legs—”
“Easy, Tess,” Cazie said. “It’s all right now. There weren’t any arms and legs on the floor, and yours are all right, too. It was just the system biodefense. Why didn’t you put on your mask when you activated it?”
“You’re upsetting her,” Jackson said. “She didn’t know. Tess, it’s all right now, we’re right here. You don’t need to think about it anymore.”
“But…” Theresa said. Her fingers tightened and loosened on Jackson’s, tightened and loosened. “But tell me… what did I breathe in? Please tell me, Jackson.”
Jackson said reluctantly, “It was a gas that acts directly on the parietal cortices, inducing anosognosia. The parietal cortices control how the mind perceives the sensations and movements of the body. In anosognosia the mind is incapable of recognizing its own limbs, and also incapable of recognizing that anything is wrong. So the victim invents elaborate scenarios to explain the perceived limb paralysis. It makes a good security method to incapacitate without increasing the anger and panic that can lead to reckless response. And it doesn’t harm anyone.”
“The arms and legs on the floor were your own,” Cazie said. “The Livers never got past the foyer.”
Jackson said, “You just breathed a temporary neuropharm. Even without the Cell Cleaner, it doesn’t last long. You might have a tingling in your limbs for a while, but it’s not harmful.”
A neuropharm. She had breathed in a neuropharm, and become a different person. A person without arms and legs, a person who thought other people’s arms and legs cluttered the floor, a person who hadn’t been upset by that but rather had planned a calm list of ways to deal with it. Not Theresa. Someone else entirely.
She looked up at Jackson, and for the first time she could remember, Theresa didn’t want him close. “You… you made me somebody else.”
“No, I didn’t, the house system—”