HOW DID A caterpillar feel when it opened up in the butterfly business?
Small, Cedric thought.
Lonely.
The hotel room was cramped and dingy, stinking worse than the streets outside. Fungus flourished around the shower pad. The wallpaper looked like beans fried in blood. The single chair was hard and unsteady, and the bed would be too short for him.
For the third time he checked his credit. He had a clear choice: he could either call home to Madge at Meadowdale, or he could eat breakfast in the morning. That was not a hard decision. He pulled his chair closer to the com, but then he got distracted again by the action. God in Heaven! Were they going to . . . Yes, they were. Again! He squirmed with embarrassment. But he watched. Holo shows at Meadowdale had never been like this. And the quality of the image was so good! He could have sworn that he was looking through a window into the next room where a couple was—was doing certain things he had never seen done before. Doing, in fact, some things he had not known were possible. Great Heavens! At Meadowdale the images had been fuzzier, and there had been long periods of fog, on one channel or another, with nothing visible at all.
Everything was visible here.
Suddenly he became disgusted at his own reactions. He barked an order, switching to com mode. In two minutes Madge was standing on the other side of the window, smiling at him. Before she even spoke he knew he had erred. He had forgotten the time difference and caught her in the middle of putting youngsters to bed. But she did not complain; she merely smiled and sat down.
"I promised to call," he said.
"So you did. And you've survived your first day in the Big Wide World!" Rosy cheeks and white hair—no one could have looked more motherly than Madge. But when had she grown so small? She could hardly have shrunk since he had left that morning.
"I didn't buy Brooklyn Bridge, like Ben said I would."
"Ben didn't mean that!"
But Ben had meant the other things he had warned about. Cedric might think he owned nothing of value except the camera Gran had given him, Ben had said, but any healthy nineteen-year-old must look out for bodyshoppers, or he would soon discover he was a mindless zombie in one of the darker corners of the vice industry, with every prospect of eventual promotion to a freezerful of spare parts.
"I hired a percy," Cedric said. "Can you see it?" Madge leaned sideways and looked where he pointed. She said yes, she could. The big metal cylinder stood in a corner, dominating the room—a blank, blue, bullet-shaped pillar.
"I buzzed around all over the place like a native," Cedric said proudly. No one could get knocked off in a percy, which was why all city dwellers used them.
Percy: Personal Survival Aid.
"Doesn't look big enough," Madge said doubtfully.
"It's okay," Cedric insisted. "I was lucky. It's an XL, and they just happened to have it in stock."
In a percy, the occupant stayed upright, half sitting, half standing. It would have been quite comfortable, had his legs not been so damned long. His neck was still stiff.
"Did you see all the sights?" Madge asked.
He told her about his day, or most of it—his trip on the super, his sightseeing, and how he had tried to go to a ball game, but the new stadium was not complete yet and the old one had finally been abandoned after Hurricane Zelda last fall. He did not describe how he had gaped at the ads for surgical improvements to various body parts, nor did he detail the varieties of chemical and electronic stimulation he had declined, or the educational opportunities both erotic and exotic, some of them even promising real girls. He had not been tempted, and he had had no money anyway.
Nor did he mention that he had gone window shopping, because he had been choosing gifts he was going to give Madge herself, and Ben, and all the others. Of course, he had not been able actually to buy anything, but as soon as he started earning money he was going to send gifts to everyone at Meadowdale. Well, not truly everyone, but all the adults, certainly. Maybe some of the older kids, although all his own group had gone long since. He had been the oldest for almost a year now.
And then he asked if Gavin had used his fishing rod yet, and if Tess had had her pups, and stuff like that.
"Did you eat properly?" Madge asked, mother instincts roused.
"I had a pizza."
She pouted disapprovingly at the mention of pizza. "I'll get Ben. He took some of the small fry out to watch a calving."
But Cedric had just realized that his credit was about to die. The call would end without warning and Madge would guess why, and then she would worry. "I'd better go," he said. He sent his love to everyone and disconnected. He checked his credit and discovered that he had cut it very fine. He would not even be able to buy a Coke in the morning; but he had his ticket to HQ, and the percy was prepaid, so he was all right.
It was nice to know that Meadowdale was still there. It was the only home he had ever known.
He stayed where he was and watched the holo again for a while, seeming to jump from one bedroom to another—did the audiences never get tired of the same stuff? On an unfamiliar channel he found Dr. Eccles Pandora doing the news. Pandora had always been a Meadowdale favorite, being Garfield Glenda's cousin. And Glenda had certainly been a Cedric favorite.
Cedric abandoned the news halfway through the floodings—Neururb, now, and Thailand. That was after the food riots in Nipurb and before the usual update on the Mexican plague. He found an old Engels Brothers rerun and watched that instead.
Later he stared out for a long time at the shining towers of the city and the streets far below, still quite busy. He had never seen all this, except in the holo, and he had expected it to look more real than it did. Apparently streets full of racing percies seemed much the same whether one saw them directly or in three-dee image. These streets had more garbage lying around, that was all.
He set his watch alarm for 0800 and went to bed. The bed was not only too short, it was lumpy and it smelled wrong.
He had trouble sleeping, and that was another new experience.
He wondered about Madge.
Madge had not wept when he said goodbye. And when he called on the com she had smiled. Madge always wept when someone left. Of course, he was older than the others had been. Of course, he had tried to leave on his own a few times in the past, but he did not think she resented those attempts. Strange that she had smiled and not cried. She had never hinted that she loved him any less than any of the others, so he could not help but be surprised that she had not cried, and surprised that he should care . . . and surprised that he should be surprised . . .
He slept.
When the lights came on he blinked at his watch; it registered 0316. Then he rolled over on his back and tried to focus on the gun lens at the end of his nose.
It had to be a gun, although it was as thick as his arm. He could not read the label, but it might very well be a Mitsubishi Hardwave, and one flash from a thing like that would vaporize him and his bed and the people downstairs.
He blinked a few times. He wanted to rub his eyes, but moving his hands might be risky. As his vision adjusted, he saw that the room was full of percies, at least five of them. His own was still standing in the corner—doing nothing, bloody nothing, two and a half meters of useless crysteel and whiskerfab.
So much for survival. First time off the farm, and he had crashed already.
On the safe end of the gun was a large, thick person, anonymous inside bulky combat gear that looked as if it were made of black leather. Just possibly it was a bull suit, in which case it would stop anything short of a fusion torch and the limbs would have full power assist. Or it might be only armor—not many could afford a real bull suit, and they took years of practice to manage. Its face was a shiny nothing, as noncommittal as the door of an icebox.
"Got you at last!" the intruder said in a voice like the San Andreas. It was male.
"M-M-Me?"
"Harper Peter Olsen!"
"No, sir! I'm Hubbard Cedric Dickson!"
"What kind of sap do you take me for?" the faceless helmet demanded. Actually it was not faceless—its shiny blackness bore a faint reflection of Cedric's own pale features, distorted into a wide-eyed omelet by the curve of the crysteel and by sheer witless terror. "Three years I've waited for this, Harper!"
"I'm not Harper!" Cedric shouted. "I'm Hubbard! Hubbard Cedric Dickson. Check my thumb." He had pulled his hand from under the covers before he remembered that sudden moves were supposed to be unwise.
The intruder did not seem worried—if anything, he was merely more contemptuous. "Thumbprints can be altered." The gun moved higher, blocking out Cedric's view of almost everything else. He saw his eyes reflected in the lens.
Cedric had rarely needed ID for anything, but on holo shows they used thumbs, or retinas. Or a sniffer. He had not known that thumbs could be changed in the real world. He had no other ID at all.
There was something completely unbelievable about all this.
If the intruder was a thief, then he was going to be sadly disappointed—and therefore, likely, irked. Cedric had the square root of fresh air left in his balance, but theft by enforced credit transfer was a crime for morons anyway. That left ransom, or possibly bodyshopping—and that brought up the curious question of why he had ever been allowed to wake up. But . . . his first day out in the world and he had spilled the whole bucket.
And yet, oddly, he felt no more scared than he had as a twelve-year-old when Greg and Dwayne had taken him behind the horse barns and explained what they were planning for him. That had been real terror, but although he had endured a nasty experience, he had suffered no real damage. Of course, this character was not in the same league as two muddled fifteen-year-olds.
"I've got nothing here worth taking, but help yourself," Cedric said, and was pleasantly surprised at how calm he sounded.
"I don't want your money, Harper. I want to watch you burn."
Breathe slow, he told himself. "Well I'm not Harper, whoever he is. So either shoot me in error, or go away and let me get back to sleep."
"Oh . . . big brave man!"
Cedric attempted to shrug. It was tricky while lying flat. "What else can I say, sir? I'm not Harper. Check my thumb."
The faceless intruder seemed to hesitate. "Thumbs get faked. I'll check your retinas, then."
Cedric felt relief in floods. "Go ahead."
The man barked an order, and one of the percies floated closer to the bed, while the others made way for it. He must have brought four of them with him. They looked very much the same as the one Cedric had hired at the station, and he could not tell if they were occupied. Bull Suit might be running them himself. The room was not large enough for all that equipment.
"Retina scanner," the man said, without moving his gun from the end of Cedric's nose. Something whirred faintly, a small hatch opened, and a binocular device dropped out, hanging on a helical cord. That was no standard percy.
Cedric had watched enough holodramas to know that he was supposed to put the gizmo to his eyes and focus on the center marks in the red glow, but he did not expect the sudden bright flash. Ouch!
"Well?" he said as he released the gadget. It whirred back out of sight again, and the percy floated away. "I'm not Harper." Green afterimages coated everything, and he felt sick. His throat hurt.
"Who?" the man asked.
"Harper—the guy you thought I was."
"Never heard of him. Appendectomy scar?" He whipped off the covers. Cedric yelped, but he was relieved to see that the gun was no longer pointing at him. "Yup," the man agreed. "Appendectomy scar."
"Then you know who I am?"
"Always did. Just like to confirm things." The stranger tipped back his helmet to reveal a completely bald head and a round, jowled face lacking both eyebrows and eyelashes.
"You mean all that crud about Harper . . . " Cedric's fear began to turn to anger, mostly anger at his own fear. He tried to sit up and was poked flat again by the cold tubular end of the gun. The safety catch was on, but it was a good club.
"Just relax, sonny. Yes, you're Hubbard Cedric. I checked out your pheromones before I opened the door."
"How did you open—"
"Quiet! You've got some explaining to do. Do you know where you are?"
An apology would be nice, Cedric thought. "North American Urban Complex."
The intruder's eyes narrowed.
The lack of hair, and the shiny, unnatural skin—the man's face had been regenerated with dermsym. That meant a major accident, or perhaps an illness or a bad cancer job. The gravelly voice might mean extensive work on his throat, too. Cedric could not even guess at his age. The man was reptilian—his scalp smooth and shiny and quite hairless, everything below his mouth concealed by the neck ring of his suit, as though his head had sunk into his shoulders, turtle fashion. His eyes were almost invisible, hooded by drooping flaps of skin below craggy overhanging brows. The slivers that did show were blue-gray as winter sky, and no more friendly.
"Nauc's a big place, sonny. Try to be a little more specific."
"The sixteenth floor of the President Lincoln Hotel." Cedric was resenting being exposed there like jam on bread, with only a few grams of cotton between him and total nudity. He groped for the covers, and the stranger flipped them out of reach with his gun.
"One more chance."
Damn you! "Well, with a name like that it must be somewhere between the Canadian border and the Mason-Dixon line."
The gun muzzle slammed into Cedric's solar plexus hard enough to double him up in a choking, gasping tangle of limbs. He had never been hit that hard before. He could not have guessed how bad it would feel. For a long age there was only pain and shock and lack of air. He heaved and strained, and there was no air in the world. Black fog and terror . . . then something seemed to snap, and he sucked in one long, shuddering breath, and the black fog began to clear. Agony! His assailant stood in patient silence, waiting as though the force of the impact had been calculated precisely, its effects guaranteed to wear off after an exactly predetermined interval.
Finally the man spoke. "Want some more, smartass?"
Speechless, Cedric shook his head.
"Right. You were credited first-class fare on the super and told to fly to HQ at Manchester on Thursday—that's today, now. You took peon class and flew to Norristown on Wednesday."
About to ask how the intruder knew all that, Cedric had an attack of discretion and stayed mute, still breathing through his mouth and fighting a shivering nausea.
"Why, Cedric?"
"I just wanted to see some of the world . . . " He had planned on adding "sir," and changed his mind.
The man's lip curled in a contemptuous snarl. "Anyone who goes touristing in person is nuts. You can put credit in the holo and see it all at home."
Not the same—Cedric just shook his head.
"So what did you see, Cedric?"
"The White House. Capitol Hill. Independence Hall. Ply-mo—"
The man's expression stopped him. Cedric had been told that it was Plymouth Rock, but the original rock must be well out to sea now, and of course it would never have been so close to . . . He had been gulled. "I asked Ben where the best sightseeing was, and he said here-abouts."
The man raised dermsym where he should have had eyebrows.
"So I got taken?" Cedric muttered. "They're all fakes?"
"Replicas. Some of the originals got moved inland, but you didn't see any of those."
For a moment there was silence. Cedric's belly still throbbed, but now he was partly faking his panting, while he reviewed combat training. What would Gogarty suggest? That gun was being held much too close to him. Murder did not seem to be the intruder's intent, but what mattered was whether his outfit was a real bull suit or only armor. Cedric started to lever himself up on an elbow, and the man moved the gun to push him down again. Cedric slammed his free hand against the barrel and spun both legs around to impact the man at knee level and topple him backward.
The gun did not move one millimeter, and Cedric might as well have rammed his shins into a concrete post. Beyond a glare of pain, he heard the man chuckle. Then came the punishment—the gun was callously slammed into his gut again, and for a long while there was only the familiar black fog, and retching, choking agony.
Eventually—bruised, breathless, and half blinded by tears—Cedric was back where he had begun, flat out, staring up impotently at his tormentor with nothing to show for his feeble attempt at heroism except a throbbing monster of pain in his gut. Probably he would not even have a bruise there. The man was an expert.
"Who the hell are you?" Cedric rasped.
"Thought you'd never ask. Name's Bagshaw. I'm with the Institute."
That was much too good to be credible. "How'd you find me?"
Bagshaw snorted in derision. "You think it was hard? Still, that's the best defense you've got—if you were up to something, you'd never be so stupid. But I've heard it before."
"Me? Up to what?"
"That's what we want to find out. You came to meet someone. Who?"
"No one!" Cedric said, and hoped desperately that he had managed to sound convincing. "I've got no secrets to spill, nothing to sell. What—"
"Why did you come a day early?"
"I'm a free agent."
Bagshaw snorted. "You've never been a free agent in your life. You were livestock in an organage."
"Foster home! Not all of us are orphans. Wong Gavin's father's president of—"
The man looked so contemptuous that Cedric half expected him to spit. "All right, a maximum-security kindergarten. For rich kids—although by the look of you, fatso, someone hasn't been paying the food bills. Have you ever been out in the real world before?"
"Sure! Lots of times. I took first in the Pacurb junior skeet lasering two years ago. I didn't do that in Madge's kitchen. Cities—"
"Skeet lasering!" Bagshaw chuckled. "Who took you there?"
"Cheaver Ben."
"Have you ever been outside unsupervised?"
"Yes! I took younger kids on camping trips and—"
"And of course you couldn't abandon them when they were in your care?"
"Of course not."
Bagshaw's hairless head shook gently in massive contempt. "So? Ever been out in the real world by yourself? Ever once?"
"Yes."
"The times you went over the wall?" He smirked.
"If you know the answers, why ask?"
The gun's icy muzzle nudged his belly threateningly. "I'll ask what I like, sonny, and you'll answer. Why did you try to break out, anyway?"
Pride! "It was illegal incarceration." Cedric could still feel the old resentment. Keeping kids locked up might be permissible, but he had been eighteen by then. All the guys his age had been called back to their families, yet Gran had kept insisting that he must stay on at Meadowdale.
"Illegal bullshit," Bagshaw said. "You got picked up for vagrancy?"
Cedric nodded miserably. Three times he had skipped. Three times the cops had brought him back like a strayed puppy.
"And you never thought that you were in Meadowdale for a reason? You never thought about kidnapping and extortion?"
"Well . . . no."
The man shook his bull head pityingly. "So now you're on your way legally. Did the old bag say she had a job for you?"
Cedric hesitated again, and the pressure increased nauseatingly, as though he were about to be impaled. "Yes, sir."
Bagshaw's eyes slitted even more, and his face seemed to sink lower inside his suit. He was barely human, a mechanical construct fueled by anger. "So you got hired on by the Institute! Your academic standing must have been remarkable."
Cedric's father had been a ranger, his mother a medical doctor. They had died exploring a Class Two world for the Institute, so there was a fallen torch to be picked up. That argument would not likely carry much weight at the moment. Cedric said nothing.
"Most men would peel off their skins to land a job with the Institute, you know? They'd sell it in strips. I worked myself crazy to get mine—eighteen hours a day like a machine for a whole year. They took fifty of us, out of five thousand." Bagshaw's plasticized face was turning even redder, little nauseating jabs of the gun barrel emphasizing his words. "I came in forty-eighth—and I've had combat experience. I've got postdoc degrees in urban survival. But you get hired fresh out of the shell. Hot from the oven. Of course, your grandmother is director. Amazing coincidence, that. But then . . . Ah, but then do you do what you're told? No, you don't. You sneak out of the organage a day early and go to a part of Nauc that you've got no right to be in. Why, Cedric, why? This is what we need to know, Cedric."
Cedric's throat was very dry, and there was a sordid taste in his mouth. "I've told you, sir."
"No, you haven't. Just because you're the old broad's darling grandson doesn't mean you haven't been bought."
Nothing Cedric could say was going to make any difference. He might as well keep quiet and wait until he found out what this hoodlum really wanted. For a moment there was a staring match. The gun muzzle came up to his face again, and he just squinted past it defiantly. Then it vanished and began slithering icily down the center of his chest like a cold steel snail.
He grabbed it with both hands and totally failed to slow its progress at all—as well try to strongarm a truck. It scraped past his navel, mercifully jumped his shorts, and then poked between his legs and stopped. Clutching it still, Cedric looked up to see Bagshaw leering at him. The man pursed thick lips and scratched an ear with one finger of his free gauntlet. There was no doubt who had control, or whose health and happiness were at risk.
And then Bagshaw began to move the gun in the opposite direction—slowly and irresistibly. "You can talk easy, sonny, or you can talk hard. But now you're going to talk."
"I told you." Cedric was squeaking. Half sitting, straddling that thick metal cylinder, gripping it hard to hold it away from important things, he was being forced inexorably up the bed.
"No, you haven't. Who did you come to meet?"
"How do I know that you're from the Institute?"
"You'll tell me anyway."
Cedric set his teeth as the knobs on his backbone came into contact with the headboard of the bed. For a moment the pressure was checked—but the barrel was still between his thighs, and he had nowhere left to go.
"You're sweating, Cedric. You'll sweat more soon. Lots more."
Cedric made a discourteous suggestion, long on historical precedent and short on anatomical plausibility.
"Now that is really stupid," Bagshaw said, shaking his polished head sadly. "In the sort of fix you're in, you do not say things like that. You beg, you plead, you sing loud. You do not say things like that. Well, get up." He stepped back and pulled. Cedric, reluctant to let go of the gun, was almost hauled off the bed.
"Up, sonny!"
Cedric dropped his feet to the floor and stood up, slowly and painfully. It hurt to straighten, but pride insisted. Swaying, blinking back tears, he gazed down at his tormentor. The ape was far shorter than Cedric but about four times as thick, and just being vertical did not help greatly. Contrary to first impressions, Bagshaw did have a neck; it just happened to be wider than his head. Even on equal terms, unarmed, he could make coleslaw out of Cedric, who was all reach and no weight.
And at the moment he could not quite stand straight and breathe at the same time. Bagshaw looked at him with open mockery in those curiously hooded eyes. "Want to play some more?"
Cedric was an organage boy. He shrugged. "You decide. You must be enjoying it."
He might have scored there. Bagshaw grunted softly, and when he spoke it was in command mode. "Com two: Relay message for Hubbard Cedric Dickson." He nodded his head to indicate that Cedric should turn around.
It could be a trap—Cedric did not move until a familiar voice at his back made him whirl. Two people were standing behind him, and one of them was Gran. His first reaction was shame at being caught in his briefs, but comprehension came fast thereafter. It was a holo projection, of course, which was how she could be knee deep in his bed. The man beside her was this same Bagshaw character, wearing a standard business suit which amply confirmed his wrestler's build. He was a human barrel. But he could not be in two places at once, so it was not a live transmission, and in any case the figures had the fixed-eyed look of people dictating. It was certainly Gran—a slim, imperious woman with white hair and enough determination to break rocks. Hubbard Agnes.
" . . . in every respect. Com end," Gran concluded, and the two images vanished.
"Huh?" Cedric said.
"You heard," Bagshaw said.
"No, I didn't. Com two, repeat that transmission."
Nothing happened.
Bagshaw sighed. "Not coded to your voice, sonny. All right, we'll try again; but I do wish you'd start behaving like a grownup." He repeated the command, and the two images flashed into existence again in the middle of the bed.
"Cedric, I am informed that you have departed from Meadowdale earlier than instructed. That was extremely foolish of you. I am very concerned for your safety. The man beside me is Dr. Bagshaw Barney, a personal security expert employed by the Institute. I have instructed him to locate you and bring you to HQ as soon as possible. You will obey his orders in every respect. Com end."
Cedric closed his mouth, which for some reason was hanging open. He turned back to face Bagshaw's contemptuous amusement.
"How do I know that was genuine?"
The contempt faded slightly. "You don't."
"You could have faked it."
"In about fifteen minutes, with the right equipment."
"Is that why you began by showing me I don't have any choice?"
For an instant Bagshaw seemed tempted to smile. "Naw, I just like hassling you. Which is it to be—force or cooperation?"
Cedric shrugged. "Cooperation, I guess. But I wish you'd explain . . . "
"You clean up, then, and I'll talk. Is this your month for shaving?"
Cedric squeezed between two of the percies and hobbled over to the basin. "I could call HQ and ask for confirmation that you're genuine."
Bagshaw made a scornful noise. "It happens to be five in the morning, and you have no priority codes. Security never answers questions, even about the weather. Those guys won't admit what day it is. You couldn't get through to Old Mother Hubbard in less than two hours at the best of times, and even then it would only be if you could prove your relationship."
"I've called Gran dozens of—well, often."
Bagshaw sighed dramatically. "From Meadowdale—priority call."
"But if she's really worried about me," Cedric said with a feeling of triumph, "she'll have told System to admit my calls!"
"I wouldn't let her."
"You wouldn't?"
"Breach of security. If she'd done that, then who knows who might have learned that we had a cannon loose? Pardon me—popgun loose. No, you can't call in. You can come willingly, or I take you by force. I don't care. You may, but I won't."
Still stroking his face with his shaver, Cedric peered around the percies. Bagshaw had seated himself in midair, as though there were an invisible chair under him. He looked quite relaxed and comfortable, so he must have locked his waldoes into position.
"How did you get into this room?"
"That's my job. I can get into a bank vault, given time. Hotel rooms? Took me half a minute, all three locks."
"And you knew I was in here?"
"Like I said, I tested for you with a gas detector—sucked some air from under the door and checked for human pheromones. Another half minute. Your exhalations are on file. They matched. Of course, you might have had a friend in here with you, but I didn't give a damn about that, really."
He made it all sound infuriatingly easy. Cedric dropped shaver and shorts and stepped toward the shower pad.
"Water first!" Bagshaw snapped.
"Huh?"
"Turn on the water before you get under it. Always. Elementary precaution."
Growling, Cedric complied. "And what about my percy?"
Bagshaw snorted. "That junk? Those rental jobs are all right for two-bit lawyers or their wives coming into town for the day—mostly because no one cares about them except tin-pot muggers. Even them not much. No city resident would ever trust a rental; no one of any real importance."
So? Cedric was not of any real importance. He stepped under the shower, a fine, cold mist and a suffocating odor of chlorine. The rotting rug around it suggested the electronics were not working too well. He knew about percies from seeing holo commercials. Most people owned a percy. Anyone really important had half a dozen—one to ride in, the others to run interference.
Damn, but his gut hurt! He wondered about the four percies that Bagshaw had brought with him—were there watchers inside those, staying silent? Was Bagshaw genuine? If he was, then why so nasty? If not, then what use was all that extra equipment? None of that mattered much, Cedric decided. Having used up the last of his credit calling Madge, he had left himself with no options but to do as he was told.
"That rental abortion probably has more pitches and patches on it than you could believe," Bagshaw remarked. "I turned it off before I even opened the door. I could have taken it over and made it break your neck instead. Never, ever, trust anyone else's percy!"
Cedric gave up hope that the water would run hot, or the soap ever produce a lather. Perhaps such things were luxuries that only places like Meadowdale could provide. He turned off the water and reached for the dryer.
"Don't!" Bagshaw shouted. "Jeez, man! Those things are deadly!"
"I've used one hundreds of—"
"Easiest booby trap in the world!"
Cedric scowled back at the older man's glare. "All right, how do I dry myself?"
"With the bed sheets, dummy! You'll catch some bugs and funguses, of course, but we can treat most of those. You probably got them already, just sleeping there."
Not sure how much of that to believe, Cedric stalked across to the bed, feeling absurdly aware of his nudity as he did so. He hauled off a sheet. "Tell me about your friends," he said. He nodded at the percies.
Bagshaw had pivoted to watch him. "Those? Just some girls I know." He laughed meanly. "Naw, they're empty. Backup equipment."
"You run them?"
"Sure." Bagshaw frowned, making odd wrinkles in his synthetic skin. "My job. I'm a pro, sonny. Remember, percies are only robots. That means computers. Computers have limitations. They're not good enough for the real enchiladas, the nobs, the big bumps on the world's ass—they have personal guards as well, real human beings who go everywhere with them, who open the doors and taste the soup and defuse the bombs and step in front of the bullets . . . usually a team of two or three, taking shifts. They're known as bulls."
"Short for pit bulls," Cedric said, to show he knew such things. "You're telling me you're a bull? You guard Gran?"
"Naw. I'm not senior enough to be trusted with her. The Institute has five people who rank high enough for bulls—the old girl herself and the four horsemen . . . deputy directors."
"Five?" Cedric was impressed. "Five just in 4-I?"
"Don't call it that! It's the Institute. Yes, five—right up there with the Secretary General, and the chairman of IBM, and the Speaker of the Chamber."
Cedric threw his bag on the bed and rummaged for clothes. "So why are you telling me this?"
"Because from now on it's six. I'm your bull, buster."
Half into his pants, Cedric tried to turn around and almost fell over. "Me? You're crazy! I don't rank a bodyguard!"
Bagshaw rose from his invisible chair. He stretched and yawned. "Yes, you do. Two of us—me and Giles Ted. In future, one or the other of us will be breathing on your neck and stepping on your toes twenty-four hours a day. Like your grandmother said, you'll obey orders. Ted or me'll be calling the shots, and you will do exactly as we tell you. With a little luck, we'll keep you alive, healthy, and sane. That'll be nice, won't it?"
Cedric could only assume that the man was serious. He did not look as though he were joking. He might be crazy, of course. "But I—I'm nothing! You said yourself—fresh from a foster home, wet behind the ears. Green as grass."
"That's right, sonny. But you're grandson to the best hated woman in the world."
"Gran? Hated?"
"Get dressed!"
"But who—"
"Get dressed!" Bagshaw repeated. "I'll run you a list when we get back to HQ. It runs to ten or twelve pages: Earthfirsters and ecology freaks and pilgrim groups and half the cults on the globe; them that's scared the Institute will poison the planet, them that says it's doing too much, and them that says it ain't doing enough. People who want to disband it, and people who want to take it over. People who believe it really has discovered habitable worlds and is keeping them secret . . . every type of nut there is."
Cedric's head emerged through the top of his poncho. "But what has this to do with me?"
Bagshaw rolled his eyes. "Ever heard of the Trojan horse? How do I know you haven't already been rewired so's you'll strangle the old lady as soon as you meet her?"
"That's not possible!"
"No?" Bagshaw somehow conveyed a shrug. "Well, not without a small amount of cooperation, it isn't, I guess."
Cedric stood on one leg to pull on a sock. "So!"
"So? So, you say? How about the media, sonny? The media have more short-term power than anybody. Homogenize Old Mother Hubbard's grandson, and a thousand groups would try to claim credit. What you are is a bulletin standing by to interrupt normal programming."
Cedric found that his mouth was open again. He would have to watch that. "You are saying that . . . people . . . would kill me, just to spite Gran?"
"Spite? Score off? Coerce? Turn? It wouldn't matter much to you, would it? You'd be dead—or worse—in a week. I promise you. Why do you think she put you in Meadowdale in the first place?"
Shoving feet into sneakers, Cedric thought of Glenda, who was Eccles Pandora's cousin, and Gavin, whose father was president of ITT—and suddenly understood. "Neutral ground?"
"Hey! Maybe you're not quite as simple as you look. Of course, some of the real rabid groups wouldn't respect any sort of sanctuary—the Sierra Club, or such—but you were fairly safe there. Now you're in play, right? And the Institute has infinite money, so you're a potential kidnap, too. Ransom victims rarely earn pensions." Bagshaw was grinning grotesquely, enjoying Cedric's horror. "Your dear gran's got power, sonny, and anyone with power has enemies. She's got more than most. BEST for example."
"BEST?"
"Are you deaf? I thought you were just stupid. Hurry up and let's get the hell out of here. Yes, BEST. She's fought it off for years, and almost no one else has ever won a single round against BEST. This area happens to be BEST's turf. You didn't know that? There are hundreds of little power centers scattered around Nauc—some just local gang barons, others more important; even a few of the old legit governments still survive in places. There's even a mob down Blue Ridge way calls itself the Congress of the United States. Has a good militia."
To save his life, Cedric could not have told how much truth there was in that tirade.
And Bagshaw knew that. "But BEST's HQ is less than ten miles from here, so of course it's staked out its own territory all around. Now do you see? Sweet little Cedric with his feathers still wet flies out of the nest and perches right on the cats' litter box. If BEST knew you were here, you'd be in surgery already. Apparently it doesn't."
Cedric grunted and began stuffing things into his bag. His gut still hurt.
"So just remember, sonny, that this ain't the Meadowdale Organage no more and—"
"Organage? What's that mean? That's the third time—"
Then the helmet that hung behind Bagshaw's head uttered a quiet beep. In an instant he had nodded the helmet into place, leaving Cedric to stare blankly at its shiny exterior. The inside would contain vid displays, of course, and speakers.
Bagshaw emerged again, grim-faced. All trace of banter had vanished and there was only business showing.
"We have company. Never mind all that stuff." He took two steps to one of the percies and opened it. "Have you got anything here that's valuable?"
"My camera."
"Forget it. Anything that can't be replaced—souvenirs, personal sentimental things?"
"Just my coins." Gran had given him that camera . . .
"Bring those, and leave the rest. They aren't worth running through decon. Don't leave any information, though. No letters, diaries?"
Feeling more bewildered than annoyed, Cedric shook his head. Clutching his small bag of personal recordings, he stepped backward into the percy. Bagshaw reached in and swiftly began making the adjustments for him—the saddle and the shin pads, the chest and head straps. He was making them tight, and he had a deft touch despite his massive gauntlets.
"Ouch!" Cedric muttered. His head felt as though it had just been set in concrete. The rental unit had not gripped nearly so hard. This one smelled much better—a clean, new, factory sort of smell. It was also larger.
"Pull your chin in!" Bagshaw snarled, nimbly crushing Cedric's aching belly with heavy padding. "This model's guaranteed to twenty-five meters. Know what that means?"
Cedric mumbled a negative as yet another strap immobilized his chin, wrenching his neck in the process.
"It means you can drop about eight stories in it. I've tested one at twelve. Now, I'll be running things, so you just relax and enjoy the ride. Keep your hands at your sides."
Cedric's hands were almost the only thing he could move at all below his eyelids. The curious half-sitting position was surprisingly comfortable, as he knew from the previous day's travels, and the new unit was a vastly better piece of machinery than the rental job that Bagshaw had scorned so much. It was even big enough for his freakish height. He had a good view through the front window, flanked by innumerable vids that he could see without moving his head, although few of their displays meant anything to him. He had a rear view through a mirror. A percy was a mobile coffin, a tomb with a view.
Eight stories? That was only halfway down. It was the second half that would hurt.
Bagshaw's voice spoke in his ear. "Hear me okay?"
"Fine."
The percies rose a few centimeters to lev position. They all tilted forward and began to move as a group for the door. Bagshaw was wearing only his bull suit, but his boots were off the floor also. He looked small and vulnerable between the five giant cylinders, as though he were a prisoner being escorted.
He had put the rental job in front. It reached out its claws to flip the locks. Then it threw open the door and floated out into the corridor. White-hot fire jetted in from one side, searing right through the rented percy, cutting it in half, causing it to explode in a shower of molten metal and flaming plasteel. The carpet burst into flames. Even inside his armored tube, Cedric heard the roar and felt the blast. The blaze was bright enough to overload his viewplate and turn the images momentarily violet and red.
"Well, damn!" Bagshaw's voice muttered in his ear. "Looks like they want to play rough."