Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow [reading e books TXT] 📗

put your own experts up when you had your
hearing."

"Well, of *course* they should have."

"No, he said that they *had* to, that it was the law in Massachusetts. He used
to live there, you know."

"I didn't know."

"Oh yes, he had a congregation in Newton. That was before he moved to Toronto.
He seemed very sure of it."

"Why was he living in Newton?"

"Oh, he moved there after university. He's a Harvard man, you know."

"I think you've got that wrong. Harvard doesn't have a divinity school."

"No, this was *after* divinity school. He was doing a psychiatry degree at
Harvard."

Oh, my.

"Oh, my."

"What is it, Arthur?"

"Do you have Father Ferlenghetti's number, Gran?"

28.

Tonaishah's Kubrick-figure facepaint distorted into wild grimaces when Art
banged into O'Malley House, raccoon-eyed with sleepdep, airline crud crusted at
the corners of his lips, whole person quivering with righteous smitefulness. He
commed the door savagely and yanked it so hard that the gas-lift snapped with a
popping sound like a metal ruler being whacked on a desk. The door caromed back
into his heel and nearly sent him sprawling, but he converted its momentum into
a jog through the halls to his miniature office -- the last three times he'd
spoken to Fede, the bastard had been working out of his office -- stealing his
papers, no doubt, though that hadn't occurred to Art until his plane was
somewhere over Ireland.

Fede was halfway out of Art's chair when Art bounded into the office. Fede's
face was gratifyingly pale, his eyes thoroughly wide and scared. Art didn't
bother to slow down, just slammed into Fede, bashing foreheads with him. Art
smelled a puff of his own travel sweat and Fede's spicy Lilac Vegetal, saw blood
welling from Fede's eyebrow.

"Hi, pal!" he said, kicking the door shut with a crash that resounded through
the paper-thin walls.

"Art! Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?" Fede backed away
to the far corner of the office, sending Art's chair over backwards, wheels
spinning, ergonomic adjustment knobs and rods sticking up in the air like the
legs of an overturned beetle.

"TunePay, Inc.?" Art said, booting the chair into Fede's shins. "Is that the
best fucking name you could come up with? Or did Toby and Linda cook it up?"

Fede held his hands out, palms first. "What are you talking about, buddy? What's
wrong with you?"

Art shook his head slowly. "Come on, Fede, it's time to stop blowing smoke up my
cock."

"I honestly have no idea --"

"*Bullshit!*" Art bellowed, closing up with Fede, getting close enough to see
the flecks of spittle flying off his lips spatter Fede's face. "I've had enough
bullshit, Fede!"

Abruptly, Fede lurched forward, sweeping Art's feet out from underneath him and
landing on Art's chest seconds after Art slammed to the scratched and splintered
hardwood floor. He pinned Art's arms under his knees, then leaned forward and
crushed Art's windpipe with his forearm, bearing down.

"You dumb sack of shit," he hissed. "We were going to cut you in, after it was
done. We knew you wouldn't go for it, but we were still going to cut you in --
you think that was your little whore's idea? No, it was mine! I stuck up for
you! But not anymore, you hear? Not anymore. You're through. Jesus, I gave you
this fucking job! I set up the deal in Cali. Fuck-off heaps of money! I'm
through with you, now. You're done. I'm ratting you out to V/DT, and I'm flying
to California tonight. Enjoy your deportation hearing, you dumb Canuck
boy-scout."

Art's vision had contracted to a fuzzy black vignette with Fede's florid face in
the center of it. He gasped convulsively, fighting for air. He felt his bladder
go, and hot urine stream down his groin and over his thighs.

An instant later, Fede sprang back from him, face twisted in disgust, hands
brushing at his urine-stained pants. "Damn it," he said, as Art rolled onto his
side and retched. Art got up on all fours, then lurched erect. As he did, the
axe head in his pocket swung wildly and knocked against the glass pane beside
his office's door, spiderwebbing it with cracks.

Moving with dreamlike slowness, Art reached into his pocket, clasped the axe
head, turned it in his hand so that the edge was pointing outwards. He lifted it
out of his pocket and held his hand behind his back. He staggered to Fede, who
was glaring at him, daring him to do something, his chest heaving.

Art windmilled his arm over his head and brought the axe head down solidly on
Fede's head. It hit with an impact that jarred his arm to the shoulder, and he
dropped the axe head to the floor, where it fell with a thud, crusted with blood
and hair for the first time in 200,000 years.

Fede crumpled back into the office's wall, slid down it into a sitting position.
His eyes were open and staring. Blood streamed over his face.

Art looked at Fede in horrified fascination. He noticed that Fede was breathing
shallowly, almost panting, and realized dimly that this meant he wasn't a
murderer. He turned and fled the office, nearly bowling Tonaishah over in the
corridor.

"Call an ambulance," he said, then shoved her aside and fled O'Malley House and
disappeared into the Piccadilly lunchtime crowd.

29.

I am: sprung.

Father Ferlenghetti hasn't been licensed to practice psychiatry in Massachusetts
for forty years, but the court gave him standing. The judge actually winked at
me when he took the stand, and stopped scritching on her comm as the priest said
a lot of fantastically embarrassing things about my general fitness for human
consumption.

The sanitarium sent a single junior doc to my hearing, a kid so young I'd
mistaken him for a hospital driver when he climbed into the van with me and
gunned the engine. But no, he was a doctor who'd apparently been briefed on my
case, though not very well. When the judge asked him if he had any opinions on
Father Ferlenghetti's testimony, he fumbled with his comm while the Father
stared at him through eyebrows thick enough to hide a hamster in, then finally
stammered a few verbatim notes from my intake interview, blushed, and sat down.

"Thank you," the judge said, shaking her head as she said it. Gran, seated
beside me, put one hand on my knee and one hand on the knee of Doc Szandor's
brother-in-law, a hotshot Harvard Law post-doc whom we'd retained as corporate
counsel for a new Limited Liability Corporation. We'd signed the articles of
incorporation the day before, after Group. It was the last thing Doc Szandor did
before resigning his post at the sanitarium to take up the position of Chief
Medical Officer at HumanCare, LLC, a corporation with no assets, no employees,
and a sheaf of shitkicking ideas for redesigning mental hospitals using
off-the-shelf tech and a little bit of UE mojo.

30.

Art was most of the way to the Tube when he ran into Lester. Literally.

Lester must have seen him coming, because he stepped right into Art's path from
out of the crowd. Art ploughed into him, bounced off of his dented armor, and
would have fallen over had Lester not caught his arm and steadied him.

"Art, isn't it? How you doin', mate?"

Art gaped at him. He was thinner than he'd been when he tried to shake Art and
Linda down in the doorway of the Boots, grimier and more desperate. His tone was
just as bemused as ever, though. "Jesus Christ, Lester, not now, I'm in a hurry.
You'll have to rob me later, all right?"

Lester chuckled wryly. "Still a clever bastard. You look like you're having some
hard times, my old son. Maybe that you're not even worth robbing, eh?"

"Right. I'm skint. Sorry. Nice running into you, now I must be going." He tried
to pull away, but Lester's fingers dug into his biceps, emphatically, painfully.

"Hear you ran into Tom, led him a merry chase. You know, I spent a whole week in
the nick on account of you."

Art jerked his arm again, without effect. "You tried to rob me, Les. You knew
the job was dangerous when you took it, all right? Now let me go -- I've got a
train to catch."

"Holidays? How sweet. Thought you were broke, though?"

A motorized scooter pulled up in the kerb lane beside them. It was piloted by a
smart young policewoman with a silly foam helmet and outsized pads on her knees
and elbows. She looked like the kid with the safety-obsessed mom who inflicts
criminally dorky fashions on her daughter, making her the neighborhood
laughingstock.

"Everything all right, gentlemen?"

Lester's eyes closed, and he sighed a put-upon sigh that was halfway to a groan.

"Oh, yes, officer," Art said. "Peter and I were just making some plans to see
our auntie for supper tonight."

Lester opened his eyes, then the corners of his mouth incremented upwards.
"Yeah," he said. "'Sright. Cousin Alphonse is here all the way from Canada and
Auntie's mad to cook him a proper English meal."

The policewoman sized them up, then shook her head. "Sir, begging your pardon,
but I must tell you that we have clubs in London where a gentleman such as
yourself can find a young companion, legally. We thoroughly discourage making
such arrangements on the High Street. Just a word to the wise, all right?"

Art blushed to his eartips. "Thank you, Officer," he said with a weak smile.
"I'll keep that in mind."

The constable gave Lester a hard look, then revved her scooter and pulled into
traffic, her arm slicing the air in a sharp turn signal.

"Well," Lester said, once she was on the roundabout, "*Alphonse*, seems like
you've got reason to avoid the law, too."

"Can't we just call it even? I did you a favor with the law, you leave me be?"

"Oh, I don't know. P'raps I should put in a call to our friend PC McGivens. He
already thinks you're a dreadful tosser -- if you've reason to avoid the law,
McGivens'd be bad news indeed. And the police pay very well for the right
information. I'm a little financially embarrassed, me, just at this moment."

"All right," Art said. "Fine. How about this: I will pay you 800 Euros, which I
will withdraw from an InstaBank once I've got my ticket for the Chunnel train to
Calais in hand and am ready to get onto the platform. I've got all of fifteen
quid in my pocket right now. Take my wallet and you'll have cabfare home.
Accompany me to the train and you'll get a month's rent, which is more than the
police'll give you."

"Oh, you're a villain, you are. What is it that the police will want to talk to
you about, then? I wouldn't want to be aiding and abetting a real criminal --
could mean trouble."

"I beat the piss out of my coworker, Lester. Now, can we go? There's a plane in
Paris I'm hoping to catch."

31.

I have a brand-new translucent Sony Veddic, a series 12. I bought it on credit
-- not mine, mine's sunk; six months of living on plastic and kiting
balance-payments with new cards while getting the patents filed on the eight new
gizmos that constitute HumanCare's sole asset has blackened my good name with
the credit bureaus.