The police zombies begin to disperse, followed by a gaggle of curious parishioners. I approach Fiore cautiously. I'm very disturbed, and I'm not sure this is the right time, but...
"Yes, what is it, my child?" He narrows his eyes and composes his face in a smile of benediction.
"Father, I, I wonder if I can have a word with you?" I ask hesitantly.
"Of course." He glances at a police zombie. "Go to the vestry, fetch a mop and bucket and cleaning materials, and begin cleaning up the floor of the bell tower."
"It's about..." I trail off. My conscience really is pricking me, but I'm not sure how to continue. I feel eyes on me from across the yard, curious eyes wondering what I'm saying.
"Do you know who did it?" Fiore demands.
"No, I wanted to talk to you about Janis, she's been very strange lately"
"Do you think Janis killed him?" Bushy elevated eyebrows frame dark eyes that stare down his patrician nose at me, a nose that doesn't belong to the same face as those wattles of fatty tissue around his throat. "Do you?"
"Uh, no"
"Some other time, then," he says, and before I realize I'm dismissed, he's calling out to another police zombie, "You! You, I say! Go to the undertaker depot and bring a coffin to the bell tower" And a moment later he's walking away from me, cassock flapping around his boots.
"Come on," says Sam. "Let's go home right now." He takes me by the arm.
I screw up my eyes to keep from crying. "Let's."
He leads me across the car park toward the waiting queue of taxis. "What did you try to tell Fiore?" he asks quietly.
"Nothing." If he wants to know so badly, he can talk to me the rest of the time, when I'm lonely.
"I don't believe you." He's silent for a minute as we get into a taxi.
"Then don't believe me." The taxi pulls away from the curb without asking us where we want to go. The zombies know us all by sight.
"Reeve." I look at him. He stares at me, his expression serious.
"What?"
"Please don't make me hate you."
"Too late," I say bitterly. And right then, for exactly that moment, it's true.
17. Mission
IT'S raining when I wake up the day after the murder. And it rainsgently, lightly, but persistentlyevery day for the rest of the week, mirroring my mood to perfection.
I've got the run of the house and doctor's orders to take things easyno need to go in to work in the libraryso I should be happy. I made up my mind to be happy here, didn't I? But I seem to have messed things up with Sam, and there are dark, frightening undercurrents at work around mepeople who've made the opposite choice and who'll pounce on me in an instant if I don't tread a careful line. Now that I have time to think things through, I'm profoundly glad that Fiore wasn't paying attention when I tried to tell him about Janis. Life is getting cheaper by the week, and there are no free resurrections hereno home assemblers to back up on daily.
Am I really that worried?
Yes.
I manage to make it through to Thursday morning before I crack. I wake up with the dawn light (I'm not sleeping well at present), and I hear Sam puttering around the bathroom. I look out the window at the raindrops that steadily fall like a translucent curtain before the vegetation, and I realize that I can't stand this any more. I don't want another day on my own in the house. I know Dr. Hanta said to take the whole week off to recover, but I feel fine, and at least if I go in to work, there'll be something to do, won't there? Someone to talk to. A friend, of sorts, even if she's behaving weirdly these days. And even if I feel uncomfortable about what I'll say when I see her.
I dress for work, then head downstairs and call a taxi, as usual. I'm half-tempted to walk, but it's raining, and I've neglected to buy any waterproof gear. Rain aboard a starship, who'd have imagined it? I wait just inside the front porch until the taxi pulls up, then rush over to it and pile in on the backseat. "Take me to the library," I gasp.
"Sure thing, ma'am." The driver pulls away, with a bit more acceleration than I'm used to. "Wonder when this weather will stop?"
Huh? I shake myself. "What did you say?"
"I heard from Jimmy at the public works department that they're doing it because they discovered a problem with the drainage systemneed to flush out the storm sewers. I'm Ike, by the way. Pleased to meet you."
I just about manage to recover gracefully: "I'm Reeve. Been driving cabs long?"
He chuckles. "Since I got here. You're a librarian? That's a new one on me. I can get you downtown from here, but you'll need to show me which block it's on."
"The merger," I manage to say.
"Yeah, that's the deal." He taps a syncopated rhythm on the steering wheel, keeping time with the windscreen wipers, then hauls the cab through a sharp turn. "What does a librarian do all day?"
"What does a cab driver do?" I counter, still shaken. Those are manual controls! They put one of us in charge of a machine like that ... They must be serious about turning this into a functioning polity. Which means they probably figure they've got the scoring levels loaded into our implants just about right. "People come in and they ask for books and we help them find them." I shrug. "There's more to it than that, but that's it in a nutshell."
"Uh-huh. Me, I drive around all day. Get a call on the wireless, go find the fare, take them where they want to go."
"Sounds boring. Is it?"
He laughs. "Finding books sounds boring to me, so I guess we're even! Downtown square, City Hall coming up. Where do you want to go from here?"
It's not raining in the downtown district. "Drop me off here and I'll walk the rest of the way," I offer, but he's having none of it.
"Naah, I need to learn where everything is, don't I? So where is it?"
I surrender. "Next left. Go two blocks, then take the first right and park. You're opposite it."
I arrive at my workplace thoroughly shaken and not quite sure why. I already heard Yourdon talking about police sergeants and judges. Are we going to end up without any zombies at all, doing everything for ourselves? That would be how you'd go about running an accurate dark ages social simulation, I realize, but it means things are happening on an altogether larger scale than I'd imagined.
I'm a little latethe library is already openbut there are no customers, so I walk straight up to the counter and smile at Janis, who is nose-down in a book. "Hi!"
She jerks upright, then looks surprised. "Reeve. I wasn't expecting you today."
"Well, I got bored sitting around at home. Dr. Hanta said I could come in to work today if I wanted to and, well, it beats watching the rain, doesn't it?"
Janis nods, but she looks unamused. She closes her book and puts it down carefully on the desk. "Yes, I suppose it does." She stands up. "Want a cup of coffee?"
"Yes please!" I follow her back into the staff room. It feels really good to be backthis is where I belong. Janis is feeling low, but I can help sort that out. Then we've got a library to run! And what could be better than that? Ike can keep his smelly, dangerous cab.
"Well then." Janis switches the kettle on and looks me up and down critically. "I may have to go out for a couple of hours. You going to be all right running the place on your own?"
"No problem!" I straighten my skirt. Maybe it was some lint?
She winces, then rubs her forehead. "Please, not so much enthusiasm this early in the morning. What's gotten into you?"