The slim black syringe emptied into her wasted arm.
Twenty-four
When Vicki finally stopped speaking, Jackson lay silent a long time. Her body beside his on the narrow Kelvin-Castner guest bed no longer distracted him, and he certainly no longer felt sleepy.
He believed her. Even though some of the events she’d just whispered into his ear seemed incredible. Theresa—his Theresa—bailing Lizzie Francy out of jail? Going alone to a Liver camp to give them the nursing ’bot? Choosing to be Changed?
And yet he believed Vicki. But, then, he’d always believed Cazie, too, right up until he came to Kelvin-Castner…
“I have something to show you,” Vicki said, and now it was her voice that drowsed. “Proof, of a sort. But it can wait until morning. I am spectacularly sleepy. Worn out with Lizzie and Theresa, the children of the next age…”
“The what?” Jackson said, more harshly than he’d intended, because he felt so disoriented. Theresa, choosing to be Changed… Theresa, Changed. Would she still need him?
“Children of the new age,” Vicki repeated, almost mumbling. “Self-appointed…” She was asleep.
Jackson eased himself away from her limp body and off the bed. Sleep was impossible. The room, ten by ten at the most, had no room to pace. And if he used its terminal, he might wake Vicki. He didn’t want Vicki awake. She’d only hit him with additional emotional right hooks—that’s what she did—and he’d already been hit too many times today.
How many brain-rattling punches were too many? And why the hell was he the one receiving them?
Soundlessly Jackson opened the bedroom door, closed it behind him, and padded barefoot in his borrowed pajamas down the unfamiliar and institutional-looking hallway. At the end he found a small, empty lounge. Of course it was empty—this was the middle of the night. The lounge held a sofa, chairs, table, servebot—all as institutional as the hallway—and a flat-screen terminal.
“System on,” Jackson said.
“Yes, how can I help you?” An anonymous program, for waiting technicians or bored insomniac guests. Undoubtedly limited access. It was enough.
“Newsgrids, please. Channel 35.”
“Certainly. And if there’s anything else Kelvin-Castner can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“—in eastern Kansas. The tornado brushed the Wichita Enclave, which immediately activated high-security shields. In Washington, Congress continued debating on the controversial airport-regulation package; the Senate vote is scheduled for tomorrow morning. In Paris, the Sorbonne Enclave saw the first performance of Claude Guillaume Arnault’s new concerto, Le Moindre. The venerable but irascible, much-feted composer did not—”
“Internal communications,” Jackson said. The newsgrids didn’t have anything fresh on the destruction of Sanctuary. And the inhibition-neuropharm wasn’t yet major news, merely an isolated phenomenon, a local curiosity among backward Livers.
Fools. The enclaves were all fools.
“Yes, how can I help you?” the program said. “With which internal department would you like to link?”
“Not a department, an individual. Lizzie Francy. She’s a guest user somewhere in this building. In the bio-unshielded portion.”
“Certainly. And if there’s anything else Kelvin-Castner can do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Lizzie’s face came on the screen. Her wiry black hair stuck out in twenty different directions, hirsute vectors. Her black eyes gleamed with excitement, despite the deep shadows underneath. “I just tried to link with your room.”
“I’m not there,” Jackson said inanely. “Only Vicki is. She came from my and Theresa’s—”
“I know,” Lizzie said hurriedly. She raised both hands to her hair and pulled, creating even more hair vectors. “I woke her up. Jackson, I need, me, to come in to you. To see you, me, in person. Now.”
“Lizzie, it’s bioshielded here. If you come in, you can’t leave for—”
“I know, I know! But I have to come in, me. Now.”
Jackson looked more closely. It wasn’t excitement shining in Lizzie’s eyes. It was fear. And her speech had reverted to Liver.
“Lizzie, what—”
“Nothing yet. I can’t dip this system, me. It’s too hard. But I don’t like it here, me, by myself. I want Vicki. I want to come in, me!”
Lizzie, Jackson saw, was trying hard to look pathetic. A teenage girl alone in the middle of the night in a strange place, who wanted her surrogate mother. Except that this was Lizzie Francy, who had walked to New York alone, had broken into a supposedly impenetrable enclave, had dipped more donkey corporations than Jackson could probably name. The pathos was faked.
The underlying fear was not.
He said, “Dirk—”
“I know that if I come in, me, I’ll be in quarantine a few weeks. But I want Vicki, me! And I can’t dip this fucking system!” Tears filled her black eyes.
Bewildered, Jackson said, “All right. I’ll tell a holo to lead you to Decon. Thurmond Rogers gave me the code. The whole process takes about an hour. But you can’t take your terminal through, Lizzie.”
“My diary is on here! And Dirk’s baby pictures!” And she started to cry.
“Lizzie, sweetheart—”
“I want Vicki!”
So, all at once, did Jackson. Vicki might know how to deal with unexpected hysteria. Lizzie, of all people, wailing and throwing a tantrum for her mother… But Vicki wasn’t even her mother. And Jackson didn’t believe that Lizzie hadn’t dipped the Kelvin-Castner system.
“Come on in, Lizzie,” Vicki said beside him. “Leave your terminal. Isn’t the information you’re concerned about backed up at Jackson’s?”
“No! If I try, it might be zapped!”
“Then carry your personal system—you’ve unlinked it from K-C already, haven’t you? Of course you have—carry it outside the building. Through the door behind you, turn left at the end of the corridor, continue to the fire exit. Right outside are seven people in a van. Give them your system, and they’ll safeguard it while you come in to me.”
Jackson blinked. A van?
Immediately the screen split, and Thurmond Rogers said from the other half, “No proprietary data can be physically removed from Kelvin-Castner. Ms. Francy has been analyzing K-C systems, and—”
Vicki interrupted him. “Two of the six people in the van are bonded shield-security agents. They have appropriate equipment for encasing Lizzie’s system in such a way that it cannot be opened without retina scans from her, Jackson, and two Kelvin-Castner officials present at the sealing. One official could easily be you, Thurmond.”
“Even so, you can’t—”
“One of the people in the van is a lawyer. He has a court order to safely remove any Kelvin-Castner records that may be pertinent to Dr. Aranow’s legal contract with Kelvin-Castner.”
“That’s only contractual if—”
“Another person in the van is a microbiologist. She is prepared to examine Lizzie’s data before sealing and declare, as legally valid expert opinion, that it is indeed relevant to Dr. Aranow’s contract. Unless, of course, you don’t wish her to examine the data.”
Thurmond Rogers stared at Vicki with hatred.
“Go now, Lizzie,” Vicki said. “It’s a short walk, and no one will stop you. There’s, a homer stuck inside the collar of your jacks; the people in the van will track you when you move out of sight of K-C monitors. Dr. Rogers will tell the building to open the door for you, and to let you back in. With a witness from the van accompanying you. Go now, honey.”