It was a necessary job. So is garbage collection. But it was not what she had signed up for, ten years ago.
Ten years! God, it sounded like a long time. Any of the skilled guilds were hard to get into, but the average apprenticeship in New Dresden was six years.
She put down her coffee cup and picked up a hand mike.
"Tango Charlie, this is Foxtrot Romeo. Do you read?"
She listened, and heard only background hiss. Her troops were trying every available channel with the same message, but this one had been the main channel back when TC-38 had been a going concern.
"Tango Charlie, this is Foxtrot Romeo. Come in, please."
Again, nothing.
Steiner put his cup close to hers, and leaned back in his chair.
"So did he remember what the reason was? Why we can't approach?"
"He did, eventually. His first step was to slap a top-priority security rating on the whole affair, and he was confident the government would back him up."
"We got that part. The alert came through about twenty minutes ago."
"I figured it wouldn't do any harm to let him send it. He needed to do something. And it's what I would have done."
"It's what you did, as soon as the pictures came in."
"You know I don't have the authority for that."
"Anna, when you get that look in your eye and say, 'If one of you bastards breathes a word of this to anyone, I will cut out your tongue and eat it for breakfast,'... well, people listen."
"Did I say that?"
"Your very words."
"No wonder they all love me so much."
She brooded on that for a while, until T/A3 Klosinski hurried up the steps to her office.
"Corporal Bach, we've finally seen something," he said.
Bach looked at the big semicircle of flat television screens, over three hundred of them, on the wall facing her desk. Below the screens were the members of her watch, each at a desk/console, each with a dozen smaller screens to monitor. Most of the large screens displayed the usual data from the millions of objects monitored by NavTrack radar, cameras, and computers. But fully a quarter of them now showed curved, empty corridors where nothing moved, or equally lifeless rooms. In some of them skeletons could be seen.
The three of them faced the largest screen on Bach's desk, and unconsciously leaned a little closer as a picture started to form. At first it was just streaks of color. Klosinski consulted a datapad on his wrist.
"This is from camera 14/P/delta. It's on the Promenade Deck. Most of that deck was a sort of PX, with shopping areas, theaters, clubs, so forth. But one sector had VIP suites, for when people visited the station. This one's just outside the Presidential Suite."
"What's wrong with the picture?"
Klosinski sighed.
"Same thing wrong with all of them. The cameras are old. We've got about five percent of them in some sort of working order, which is a miracle. The Charlie computer is fighting us for every one."
"I figured it would."
"In just a minute... there! Did you see it?"
All Bach could see was a stretch of corridor, maybe a little fancier than some of the views already up on the wall, but not what Bach thought of as VIP. She peered at it, but nothing changed.
"No, nothing's going to happen now. This is a tape. We got it when the camera first came on." He fiddled with his data pad, and the screen resumed its multi-colored static. "I rewound it. Watch the door on the left."
This time Klosinski stopped the tape on the first recognizable image on the screen.
"This is someone's leg," he said, pointing. "And this is the tail of a dog."
Bach studied it. The leg was bare, and so was the foot. It could be seen from just below the knee.
"That looks like a Sheltie's tail," she said.
"We thought so, too."
"What about the foot?"
"Look at the door," Steiner said. "In relation to the door, the leg looks kind of small."
"You're right," Bach said. A child? she wondered. "Okay. Watch this one around the clock. I suppose if there was a camera in that room, you'd have told me about it."
"I guess VIP's don't like to be watched."
"Then carry on as you were. Activate every camera you can, and tape them all. I've got to take this to Hoeffer."
She started down out of her wall-less office, adjusting her cap at an angle she hoped looked smart and alert.
"Anna," Steiner called. She looked back.
"How did Hoeffer take it when you reminded him Tango Charlie only has six more days left?"
"He threw his pipe at me."
Charlie put Conrad and Helga back in the whelping box, along with Dieter and Inga. All four of them were squealing, which was only natural, but the quality of their squeals changed when Fuchsia jumped in with them, sat down on Dieter, then plopped over on her side. There was nothing that sounded or looked more determined than a blind, hungry, newborn puppy, Charlie thought.
The babies found the swollen nipples, and Fuchsia fussed over them, licking their little bottoms.
Charlie held her breath. It almost looked as if she was counting her brood, and that certainly wouldn't do.
"Good dog, Fuchsia," she cooed, to distract her, and it did. Fuchsia looked up, said I haven't got time for you now, Charlie, and went back to her chores.
"How was the funeral?" asked Tik-Tok the Clock.
"Shut up!" Charlie hissed. "You... you big idiot! It's okay, Foosh."
Fuchsia was already on her side, letting the pups nurse and more or less ignoring both Charlie and Tik-Tok. Charlie got up and went into the bathroom. She closed and secured the door behind her.
"The funeral was very beautiful," she said, pushing the stool nearer the mammoth marble washbasin and climbing up on it. Behind the basin the whole wall was a mirror, and when she stood on the stool she could see herself. She flounced her blonde hair out and studied it critically. There were some tangles.
"Tell me about it," Tik-Tok said. "I want to know every detail."
So she told him, pausing a moment to sniff her armpits. Wearing the suit always made her smell so gross. She clambered up onto the broad marble counter, went around the basin and goosed the 24- karat gold tails of the two dolphins who cavorted there, and water began gushing out of their mouths.
She sat with her feet in the basin, touching one tail or another when the water got too hot, and told Tik-Tok all about it.
Charlie used to bathe in the big tub. It was so big it was more suited for swimming laps than bathing.
One day she slipped and hit her head and almost drowned. Now she usually bathed in the sink, which was not quite big enough, but a lot safer.
"The rose was the most wonderful part," she said. "I'm glad you thought of that. It just turned and turned and turned..."
"Did you say anything?"
"I sang a song. A hymn."
"Could I hear it?"
She lowered herself into the basin. Resting the back of her neck on a folded towel, the water came up to her chin, and her legs from the knees down stuck out the other end. She lowered her mouth a little, and made burbling sounds in the water.
"Can I hear it? I'd like to hear."
"Lord, guide and guard all those who fly..."
Tik-Tok listened to it once, then joined in harmony as she sang it again, and on the third time through added an organ part. Charlie felt the tears in her eyes again, and wiped them with the back of her hand.
"Time to scrubba-scrubba-scrubba," Tik-Tok suggested.
Charlie sat on the edge of the basin with her feet in the water, and lathered a washcloth.
"Scrubba-scrub beside your nose," Tik-Tok sang.
"Scrubba-scrub beside your nose," Charlie repeated, and industriously scoured all around her face.
"Scrubba-scrub between your toes. Scrub all the jelly out of your belly. Scrub your butt, and your you-know-what."
Tik-Tok led her through the ritual she'd been doing so long she didn't even remember how long. A