“Three fifty.”
We waited. We waited. We waited. Fee-5 began a quiet howl. Borgia gave me a black look of despair, went to the sterilizer, and took out tools. She knelt alongside Sequoya and poised a scalpel for primary incision. Suddenly his chest rose to meet the point. It was the deepest, most beautiful breath I have ever seen taken in all my life. We began to bubble.
“Quiet,” Borgia ordered. “Give him time. No fuss. Back off. Everything familiar when he wakes up. He’ll be weak, so no unnecessary strain.”
The steady breathing was accompanied by tics, muscular contractions, twitches. “Linking up fine,” Borgia murmured to no one.
The Chief’s eyes fluttered open and took in the scene. “ — but cryology recycles ontogeny,” he said. He tried to get to his feet. Borgia motioned to Fee, who ran to him and helped him, steadying him while he rocked. He looked at himself, looked around, took us all in. Then he smiled. It must have been his first realsie and very painful, but it was a nice smile. Fee began to weep. “The old familiar faces,” he said. He swayed to me and slapped palms. “Thanks, dude. You’re ace. Fee, you’re my girl more than ever. Lucy Borgia, down tools.” She dropped them and he palmed her. “Edison. M’bantu. Gung to the fifth power. Jacy, you heard the lady, go back to bed. Where’s that tutta? Oh. The Rover Girls take a break every two hours to make room for the next shift, Borgia. We’d better get out of here before they’re back.”
I stared at her. She smiled. “Told you he was aware of everything around him.”
“Guig, the greatest thing you ever did was putting a hold on the cryocapsule. Fee, chop to JPL and call a stockholders’ meeting for one hour from now.”
I gave Borgia another questioning look.
“Everything.”
“This is going to be tremendous,” the Chief said. “Those naked rats have opened up a Pandora’s box that — I have to eat something. Where?”
“My place,” I said, “but don’t walk into the oven, the door doesn’t work.”
Edison started to protest vehemently. Sequoya soothed him. “Never mind, Ed. I was impressed by your smoke screen at JPL. You’re brilliant. The whole Group is.”
“He knows too much,” I muttered to Borgia, “and I’m scared.”
“How many times must I ditt? He was aware of everything going on around him.”
“Y, but I think he’s aware of things that didn’t go on around him. I think I’ve got a tiger by the tail.”
“Then let go.”
“I can’t now. I only hope we don’t return from the ride with me inside and the smile on the face of the tiger.”
The Rover Girls came on again and we got the hell out while rotten Dan Baxter was selling the secret signals to Annapolis. We marched Jacy back into bed and then walked to my place where Scented Song and M’bantu faked a sort of Afro-Chinese dinner. It wasn’t bad and it reminded the Sachem of his wolves. He said he hoped some goon would try to rip his tepee so they could get a decent supper. While we were cross-legged on the dining room floor, Fee-5 came tearing in.
“All set for four o’clock, Chief. What are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know yet.” He grunted. “It’s too damn big to simplify, and the U-Con heads aren’t very bright.”
“Exactly what is the problem, doctor?” M’b asked.
“Shifting gears, M’bantu. I had to make a lightning shift when I looked into the capsule and I feel like a damned fool for going into shock. Bless you all for saving me. My God, it was like a paleface ambush…”
“When you saw the naked rats?” I asked.
“They aren’t rats.”
“Aliens from outer space, maybe, taking over our world?”
“Don’t Rover Girl me, Guig. You’ll find out in due time. I have to sort it out in my head first. I wish you could transplant an extra brain into my skull, Nemo.”
“You don’t need it, lad.”
“Thanks. Now let me think for a minute.”
So we all ate in silence and waited. Even Fee was quiet. That was quite a quantum jump she made.
“Here are the problems,” Sequoya began at last. “Explain to United Conglomerate what actually happened, and the overwhelming concept it opened up. I must give them some idea of the procedures involved in exploring the discovery. I must make them understand that the Pluto mission will have to be scrubbed.”
“Scrubbed! After all that advance publicity?”
“That’s what’s going to hurt, Guig, but the results of the cryo exploratory have wiped out the Pluto mission for our time, maybe for all time. But on the other hand it’s produced something so unexpected and challenging that I’ve got to persuade them to transfer the Pluto funding into it. I can handle the scientific palaver but I’m dumb as a honk when it comes to selling a proposition.”
“We’ll need the Greek Syndicate for advice on that,” I whispered to the princess. She nodded and slipped out.
“The only reason I’m being so open with you is that I’ve learned to trust and respect your Group.”
“How much do you know about the Group, Sachem?”
“A little.”
“Fee told you?”
“I never said a word!” she protested.
“You’ve been reading my diary. Yes, Fee?”
“Yes.”
“How the devil did you learn how to decode my private terminal keyboard?”
“I taught myself.”
I threw up my hands. Go live with a genius girl. “How much did you pass on to your guy?”
“Nothing,” Sequoya said with his mouth full. “What little I know is from induction, deduction, hints, clues, things overheard. I’m a scientist, you know, and I’ll tell you something else, I not only speak XX, I read body english. So why don’t we drop it? I’ve got a murderous scene ahead of me and I depend on your Group to help me. Wilco?”
“Why should we?”
“I could blow the whistle on your act.”
“F.”
“Good for you.” He realsie smiled again and it was very winning. “Because we all like each other and want to help each other.”
“You Indian con. Wilco.”
“Gung. I’ll need you and Edison. Fee too, of course. I’ll brief you in the chopper so you can ask the right leading questions at the status review. Let’s chop.”
When we arrived at JPL I was so dazed by the enormity of Sequoya’s discovery and the frontiers it had opened that I wasn’t aware of anything around me. All I know is that I recovered consciousness in a large astrochem laboratory seated on a kinobench along with some fifty United Conglomerate majority stockholders. We were facing Hiawatha, who stood with his back to a work table cluttered with chemical apparatus. He was leaning against it and looked relaxed and pleased, as though he was about to hand the U-Con brass a surprise package. He sure was. The question was, would they buy it? The entire review was conducted in Spang, of course, but I translate for my goddamn diary and Fee-snoop Grauman’s Chinese.
“Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. You’ve been waiting anxiously for a status review so I won’t apologize for calling you together on such short notice at four in the morning. You all know me; I’m Dr. Guess, project scientist on the Pluto mission, and I have remarkable news for you. Some are expecting this to turn into a failure review, but—”
“Never mind the guff talk,” I yelled. It had been agreed that I was to be the Bad Guy. “Just tell us why you failed and lost us ninety million.” Some of the stockholders glared at me, which was the purpose of my nasty behavior, to attract hostility from Guess to myself.
“A fair question, sir, but we have not failed; we have had a tremendous unexpected success.”
“By killing three cryonauts?”
“We did not kill them.”
“By losing them?”
“They are not lost.”
“No? I didn’t see them. Nobody saw them.”
“You did see them, sir, in the cryocoffins.”