Brian Stableford - Busy Dying

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BRIAN STAPLEFORD - Busy Dying
HE COULDN'T REMEMBER whether he'd ever been to that particular spot before, but
the open plaza looked vaguely familiar. As he climbed the ugly centerpiece of
the fountain, aiming for the pagoda-like roof above the bug-eyed gargoyles, he
seemed to be reaching for familiar footholds. They were already shouting his
name, but that didn't mean a thing; he supposed that he'd be recognized in any
of a hundred cities, in any of four hundred malls. He was quite a celebrity.
By the time he reached his selected coign of vantage a thousand people were
converging on the fountain. The design of the atrium was such that the crowds on
the second, third, and fourth floors had as good a view as the people at ground
level, and the escalators were crammed with excited gesticulators hoping that
the moving stairways wouldn't carry them too far before the show began.
He checked his watch. Give it ten, he thought, beginning to count down.
He knew there were a dozen security cameras on him and that anyone in the crowd
with a camcorder would be pointing it at him already, but the CNI were probably
all ready to go with an injunction against any mall in this or any other city,
and you couldn't trust amateurs to produce A-1 footage even with today's
technological aids. He figured that ten seconds ought to be enough to bring down
a few newsdrones. Even the networks posted drones in mails these days, and not
just because of him. Malls were the commercial arteries of the nation, and
mallnews was always a big item in the human interest slots.
At five he uncapped the can, and threw the cap into the crowd so that the kids
could fight over it. At seven he began to pour, so that he would be ready to
drop the can into the rippled pool of the fountain at nine.
Smoothly, with practiced competence, he struck the match with his fingernail. Is
that slick, or is that slick, he asked himself. He had always cared about
matters of style.
His sneakers were still squelching and the legs of his pants were soaked from
his dash across the pool, but he knew it wouldn't matter. The rest of him was
soaked with something infinitely less inclined to dampen the spirits.
The flames came up about him with an audible whoosh, and black smoke billowed
forth. For a second or two -- but it might have been an olfactory illusion -- he
thought that he could smell his own flesh burning.
Wow, he thought.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
When her bleeper went off Margaret Percik woke up with a sudden start, surprised
and slightly guilty about the fact that she'd nodded off.
She didn't need to check her wristphone; it was Emily signaling that Walter
Murray was recovering consciousness. She hurried, intent on arriving before he
removed the skimskin sealing his eyelids, but she needn't have bothered. The
monitoring devices had blown the whistle on him but Walter was playing possum.
He hadn't moved a muscle; he was probably playing for time while he tried to
figure out who and what and where he was. Thanks to him, doctors now knew that
death usually caused temporary amnesia, and he had had enough practice dying to
have developed habitual methods of dealing with the condition.
As she checked the instruments she felt sure that he was tracking her movements
with avid ears. He flinched, though, when Emily checked his waste-disposal
tubes. She carefully peeled the skimskin away from his eyes, and he opened them,
blinking against the light. He had to close the lids again for a second or two,
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but when he could keep them open they focused readily enough on her face: no
lasting damage there.
He looked up at her without recognition. Emily moved to the head of the bed so
that he could study them both. She and Emily were as handsome as one another but
not in the least alike, in spite of the fact that they were wearing severely
clinical white coats. Margaret was dark and stem and so comprehensively imaged
for authority that she was almost austere; Emily was fairer and softer and
decorated. Nobody was supposed to be able to tell a woman's age anymore, but
that was bullshit. Wrinkles or no wrinkles, Margaret knew, it was obvious to
anyone with half an eye that Emily was an absolutely authentic twenty-one,
whereas she herself was fifty-five and then some.
Margaret darted a quick glance at Emily, to make sure that she was paying
attention. It was important, according to their agreed procedure, that they both
looked at him without the slightest trace of sympathy or admiration.
"Can you remember who you are?" Margaret asked.
There was a twenty second gap before he replied. Finally, he said, "I seem to
have temporarily misplaced my name. I'm sorry."
"You were very lucky, Mr. Murray," she said. "If you hadn't fallen into the
fountain. . . . "
That drew a slight reaction -- as if the horror of it had hit him like a punch
in the gut, although he couldn't quite fathom out why the thought was so
horrible.
"What fountain?" he said, in a puzzled fashion. "Murray, you say? Is that my
name -- Murray?"
"You shouldn't play with fire, Mr. Murray," said Margaret, as sternly as she
could. "It isn't like the knives and the ropes. We can regenerate burned
brain-tissue, but not the field-states which inhabited it before it was burned.
Try this one again, Mr: Murray, and you might come back first cousin to a
cabbage. I guess you already qualify as a zombie ten times over, but this time
you were just a few seconds away from being a hundred-forty pounds of fresh meat
with vacant possession. As I said, if you hadn't fallen into the fountain. . . .
"
"Do I know you?" he asked.
She did her level best to look at him as though he were some kind of insect
crawling around the drawer where she kept her underwear.
"Yes, Mr. Murray," she said sourly. "You know me. And you also know Mr.
Stepanova. He's waiting for a call to tell him that you're awake. He has some
news for you."
She picked up a remote from the instrument-console beside the bed and punched
out a sequence; the wallscreen at the far end of the room flickered blue,
displayed the relevant codes, and then dissolved into a picture.
Stepanova had been waiting to make the call; Emily had bleeped him at the same
time she'd bleeped Margaret. He was looking straight into the camera, as
purposefully as any man could. He'd been chiseled for it, but it wasn't an
overly impressive job. Every man of a certain age went in for that kind of
power-dressing of the features, and it rather nullified the effect.
"You're busted, Murray," said Stepanova, with a bitter wrath he did not need to
feign. "This is the end. We've got an injunction from the Supreme Court banning
you from making any further use whatsoever of any product manufactured by the
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分类:外语学习 价格:5.9玖币 属性:15 页 大小:47.83KB 格式:PDF 时间:2024-11-24

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