Glasshouse (37 page)

“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.

IT'S
raining when I wake up the day after the murder. And it rains—gently, lightly, but persistently—every 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 easy—no need to go in to work in the library—so 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 me—people 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 here—no 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 system—need 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 late—the library is already open—but 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 back—this 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?”

“I've been bored!” I manage to keep myself from squeaking. “It's been boring at home, and it's been raining all week long.” I pull out the other chair and sit down. “You can't go shopping every day of the week, there's only so much cleaning and tidying you can do in one house, the television is boring, and I should have stopped here to borrow some books but I thought . . .” I wind down.
What
have
I been thinking?

“I think I see.” A wan smile tugs at the corners of her eyes. “How's Sam?”

I tense. “What makes you ask?”

The smile fades. “He was here yesterday. Wanted to talk about you, wanted to know my opinion . . . He doesn't feel he can talk to you, so he has to let it out with someone else. Reeve, that's
not
good. Are you all right? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes, you can change the subject.” I say it lightly, but she just about freezes right up on the spot. “Sam's taken offense to something I said, and we need to sort it out between us.” My stomach churns with anger and guilt, but I bite back on it. It's not Janis's fault after all, but Sam should know better, the pig. “We'll sort it out,” I add, trying to reassure her.

“I . . . see.” Janis looks as if she's sucking on a slice of lemon. Right then the kettle comes to a boil, so she stands up and pours the hot water into two mugs, then scoops in the creamy powder and mixes it up. “I hope you won't take this the wrong way, Reeve, but you seem to have changed since you came out of hospital. You haven't really been yourself.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?” I blow on my coffee to cool it.

“Oh, little things.” She raises an eyebrow at me. “You've gained a certain enthusiasm. You're more interested in exteriors than interiors. And you seem to have lost your sense of humor.”

“What's humor got to do with it?” I glare at my mug, willing myself not to get angry. “I know who I am, I know who I was.”

“Forget I said it.” Janis sighs. “I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm getting really bitchy these days.” She falls silent for a while. “I hope you don't mind my leaving you for a few hours.”

I manage a forced laugh. Janis's issues aren't my business, strictly speaking, but—“What are friends for?”

She looks at me oddly. “Thanks.” She takes a mouthful of her coffee and makes a face. “This stuff is vile, the only thing worse that I can think of is not having it at all.” Her frown lengthens. “I'm running late. See you back around lunchtime?”

“Sure,” I say, and she stands up, grabs her jacket from the back of the door, and heads off.

I finish my coffee, then go back to the front desk. There's some filing to do, but the cleaning zombies have been thorough—they didn't even leave me any dusty top shelves to polish. A couple of bored office workers drop in to return books or browse the shelves for some lunchtime entertainment, but apart from that the place is dead. So it happens that I'm sitting at the front desk, puzzling over whether there's a better way to organize the overdue returns shelf, when the front door opens, and Fiore steps in.

“I wasn't expecting you,” he says, pudgy eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Really?” I hop off my stool and smile at him, even though all my instincts are screaming at me to be careful.

“Indeed not.” He sniffs. “Is the other librarian, Janis, in?”

“She's out this morning, but she'll be back later.” I get a horrible sense of déjà vu as I look at him, like a flashback to a bad dream.

“Hmm. Well, if I can trouble you to turn your back, I have business in the repository.” His voice rises: “I don't want to be disturbed.”

“Ah, all right.” I take an involuntary step back. There's something about Fiore, something not quite right, a feral tension in his eyes, and I'm suddenly acutely aware that we're alone, and that he outweighs me two to one. “Will you be long?”

His eyes flicker past my shoulder. “No, this won't take long, Reeve.” Then he turns and lumbers toward the reference section and the secure document repository, not bothering to look at me. For a moment I don't believe my own instincts. It's a gesture of contempt worthy of Fiore, after all, a man so wrapped up in himself that if you spent too long with him, you'd end up thinking you were a figment of his imagination. But then I hear him snort. There's the squeak of the key in the
lock, and a creak of floorboards. “You might as well come with me. We can talk inside.”

I hurry after him. “In what capacity am I talking to you?” I ask, desperately racking my brains for an excuse not to join him. “Is it about Janis?”

He turns and fixes me with a beady stare. “It might be, my daughter.” And that's pure Fiore. So I follow him through the door and down the steps into the cellar, a hopeless tension gnawing at my guts, still unsure whether I'm right to be worried or not.

Fiore pauses when we get to the strange room at the bottom of the stairs. “What exactly do you think of Dr. Hanta?” he asks me. He sounds tired, weighed down with cares.

I'm taken aback. What is this, some kind of internal politicking? “She's”—I pause, biting my tongue, acutely aware who I'm talking to—“refreshingly direct. She means well, and she's concerned. I trust her,” I add impulsively, resisting the urge to add,
unlike you
. I manage to maneuver so my back is to the storage shelves on one wall.
If I have to grab something
—

“That's not unexpected,” Fiore says quietly. “What did she do to you?”

“She didn't tell you?”

“No, I want you to tell me in your own words.” His voice is low and urgent, and something in my heart breaks. I can't pretend this isn't happening anymore, can I? So I play for time.

“I was having frequent memory fugues, and I picked up a nasty little case of gray goo up top in the ship's mass fraction tankage. That set my immune system off, and it began taking out memory traces. Dr. Hanta had to put me on antirobotics and give me a complete memory fixative in order to stop things progressing.” I move my hands behind my back and slowly shuffle backward, away from him and toward the wall. “I'd say she's a surprisingly ethical practitioner, given the way everyone else here carries on in secret. Or do you know differently?”

“Hmm.” Fiore—fake-Fiore—leans over the assembler console and taps in some kind of code. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

While he isn't watching I take another step back until I bump up
against shelves.
Good.
I'm already mentally preparing what I need to do next.

Fiore continues, implacably. “One of your predecessors here—yes, they're still around in deep cover—got it worked out. Dr. Hanta isn't her real name. She, or rather it, used to be a member of the Asclepian League.” I give a little gasp. “Yes, you do remember them, don't you? She was a Vivisector, Reeve. One of the inner clade, dedicated to pursuing their own vision of how humanity should be restructured.”

“Thanks for reminding me what I came here to get away from,” I say shakily. “I'm going to be having nightmares about that for the next week.”

He turns and glares at me. “Are you stupid, or—” He stops himself. “I'm sorry. But if that's all it means to you, you
really
are beyond—” He stabs at the console angrily. “Shit. I thought you'd be at least vaguely concerned for the rest of us in here.”

I take a deep breath, trying to get my nausea under control. The Asclepians were another of the dictatorship cults, a morphological collective. Much worse than the Solipsist Nation. They restructured polities one screaming mangled body at a time. If Dr. Hanta is an Asclepian, and she's working with Yourdon and Fiore, the future they're trying to sculpt is a thing of horror. “She can't be. She just can't.”