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.
“Suit 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?”