“My dear Guig,” Borgia began briskly.
“Nothing!” I shouted.
“Love Fee,” Natoma said.
“Yes. Yes, Nat. She was my baby, and I watched her grow into a woman… A great lady… And I killed her. Arrivederci, F. I’ll never see her again.”
“The cryocapsule killed her, Guig.”
“D’you know how and why, McB? I know and I know I’m accountable. I murdered her.”
“No, no, no!” They were all emphatic.
“It was the oversophisticated machine, Guig,” M’bantu said. “It was bound to break down sooner or later. Machinery always does.”
“But this time I made it break down.”
“How?”
“I talked too much.”
“To whom?”
“The machine.”
M’bantu threw up his hands. “Forgive me, Guig. You’re not making sense.”
“I know it. I know it. Fee-5 gave me the information when we were in the bubble. She could bug Extro’s conversations with Sequoya. I had to blab it like a damned show-off. Damn me. Damn my goddamn mouth. And she’ll never be able to forgive me. Never. Never. Never—” I burst into tears again.
Jacy said, “I will take Guig for a walk. Just the two of us. Please wait here, children.”
M’bantu said, “It’s dangerous to walk without protection. Take a wolf. I will instruct him.”
“Thank you. No wolf will be needed. Kiss him, my love.”
Natoma kissed me and out we went, Jacy’s hand on my shoulder. It was the usual hell in the streets; a labyrinth of horror. The streets and lanes twisted and corkscrewed, crossing each other, sometimes broken through abandoned buildings, giant heaps of debris and small wastelands. They were dotted with rotting bods, alive and dead and stinking. There were cul-de-sacs where gangs lurked, fought, and swung in Sado-Mac wars that would have astonished Krafft-Ebing. We passed one blind alley where a small mob was poised for an attack, but they were all skeletons in tatters. Burned by a flesh gun.
You could hear the turmoil of the hyenas and their prey but we were never bothered. Jacy’s charisma. We came to the San Andreas beach, now filled with shacks on rusted spiles, crowded cheek by jowl, with shaky walkways between them in a lattice of overpop.
“The F-death of the world,” I muttered.
“N,” Jacy said firmly and suddenly switched to Spang. I think I know why. He always identifies with the dregs of the world, and I was the lowest. “Now hear, Guigman. The Beholder bless the poor in soul, for they gets the Kingdom of Heaven. God, he bless the no-way cats. You gone be cool and easy, Guig. Santo, hear, all meek dudes because they gone grab the whole scene. Feliz, Guig, if you flip for the right-on. Then you be filled by the Beholder. Bendito all mercy types; they gone, y’know, reap misericordia.
“Albar, you pure in soul. Gone feast your ojo on the Beholder. Peace-jive hombres, benediction. You gone belong to the God gang. Blessed be losers busted for wanting right. They reap like the whole heaven shtik. All be out of sight, Guig, so give me five, man, and dig what I tell because it trip boss in the heaven pad.”
I was crying again but I gave him five and he embraced and kissed me. I remembered that I’d never embraced and kissed my Fee-5 for real. Dear Dio, you treat your children like toys; you never realize they’re people until they’re gone.
A tracer clanked up behind me and clutched hard. These things have rotten depth-perception. In a canned voice it said, “Edward-Curzon-I-D-please.”
“941939002.”
It clicked and then said, “Remove-message-in-well.”
I remove. It turned and scuttled. I opened the message and read: GUESS NOW EN ROUTE TO CERES WITH ME. SIGNED: POULOS.
I showed it to Jacy. He said, “You’d better follow them.”
Natoma had no passport, but Jim the Penman came over and forged a beauty. Jim says forgery is an entirely different proposition these days. No more penmanship; you have to know how to punch in ID symbols that will swindle computer checks. Jim knows how but he’s not telling. Professional secrets. Then again, he stammers, which may be the real reason.
We had a hell of a time putting down on Ceres, but the crew assured the passengers that this was par for the course. She’s the biggest of the asteroids, around 480 miles in diameter, spherical, and rotating every six hours. She spins so fast that lining up on the kinorep funnel for the landing is like trying to thread a needle whirling around on one of those 33 turntables we used to use back in the 1900’s.
When I say spherical, that was before I.G. Farben took over, and I wish I knew how much it cost them to lobby that goniffery through. I know they spent a fortune on scare programs. Ceres was an inferno; alien bacteria, radioactivity, strangling hydrocarbon chains, poisonous spores. By a spooky coincidence there was no more danger after the government thieves told I.G. Farben they could buy Ceres and good luck to them provided they paid their taxes in laundered cash.
No, it wasn’t a smooth ball any longer; it looked more like a mulberry. The Krauts had a hell of a lot of land to play with, so they abandoned the high-rise space-savers and built small in every possible style from quaint old Frank Lloyd Wright up to the controversial design firm of Bauhaus, Stonehenge, Reims y Socios.
Every building was under a bubble, of course, producing the mulberry effect. Ceres was odd and pretty with the changing light glittering on the domes, and a sitting duck for an attack, but I.G. Farben wasn’t worried. They knew that everybody knew that if anyone laid a hand on them they’d cut off all armaments to a peace-loving solar system, which would be a disaster for the seventeen current wars.
So they put us through customs without any fuss and a lot of laughs at my expense. They spoke Euro on Ceres and mine was sort of rusty. I pulled the most ridiculous boners, getting the French, German, and Italian all mixed up. They enjoyed it and coaxed me to go on talking, but when the Herr Douane Capo actually patted my cheek in delight I felt it had gone far enough. I shut up and simply kept repeating, “El Greco, bitte.”
I figured that ought to mean Poulos to them, but they were disconcerted. They shook their heads. I said, “Poulos, bitte,” and more head-shakes. “El Greco, Poulos Poulos, capo von E. Gay Farben.” One bright boy suddenly exclaimed, “Ah! Oui! Greco. Capisco, capisco,” and put us into a little shuttle shaped like half a melon, punched buttons on the control panel, stood back, and waved as we slid off. All the rest were waving and laughing. It reminded me of happy Rome before Mussolini-F.
We slid along transparent tunnels from building to building but never saw the interiors because we passed through the lower mezzanine floors. We did see the sun set, though, and that was rather startling. It was a brilliant white golf ball that dropped swiftly below the horizon and there was instant night and a blaze of stars. An enormous double star on our left was the Earth-moon enclave. Mars showed a distinct disk. Jupiter, on our right, was an orange smudge with the major moons showing as pinpoint sparkles. Quite a sight. Natoma was oohing and ahing. Nothing like this on the Erie reservation.
The shuttle stopped in a mezzanine and we were handed out by an efficient young tech who pointed to a broad stair leading up. No need for elevators on Ceres, where gravity is so slight that you practically float. So we floated and bounced up the stairs, on our way to see the powerful Poulos Poulos and found ourselves on the main floor of the Greco department store. So much for bright boys.
I was all for leaving in disgust but Natoma took a quick survey and ran wild. Since it was such a joy to indulge her, I tailed along, grumbling now and then to make her feel guilty. It doubles the pleasure of buying when you feel a little guilty about it.