Kevin Anderson - Resurrection, Inc.

Rodney felt a terrified relief, but then he cringed. “How do I know you’re—”

The woman snapped at him, “What do you expect us to do, carry ID cards? Name tags? Shit!”

Avoiding her glance, Rodney could barely stutter an inane reply.

The male Cremator was a largely built man, dressed unusually but comfortable enough in his unusual appearance that he didn’t seem strikingly noticeable. He stood tall and wore a beard looping around his chin, framing it in Abraham Lincoln fashion but leaving his lip clean shaven. His skin was all the same tone, somewhat textureless, even pasty-looking, and Rodney wondered if perhaps the man was black and trying to hide the fact. But then he realized his own inability to see the obvious—the Cremators, incognito, of course. Covering themselves.

“You can call me Rossum Capek,” the man said. “You can call her Monica. If you must have names.”

The man was dressed in a khaki overcoat and wore a black top hat that made him look like something out of a classic Charles Dickens presentation. Yet when the Cremator spoke, his voice had a rich timbre, a confident and knowledgeable tone but not condescending. The slightest touch of condescension would have immediately put Rodney on his guard.

The accompanying woman, Monica, was thin and stern looking with dark hair cut in a jagged page boy—she looked familiar to him in the vaguest of ways. She was dressed in a nondescript wrap decorated with hexagonal blotches of earth tones. Her eyes were alert, flicking back and forth—darker than dark eyes, opaque eyes, and Rodney suspected that she wore contact lenses augmented with extra micro-sensors. The woman said nothing and only watched Rodney, watched Rodney, making him feel uneasy.

Capek put a hand lightly on the tech’s shoulder, and with an unyielding force, directed Rodney to walk with them. “Let’s go to more pleasant surroundings. We have some very important matters to discuss, and I’d like to make things a little more congenial.”

The two Cremators quickly guided him to a street corner where they could board a mass-trans vehicle. After only five stops Rossum Capek motioned for him to disembark. Air pressure hissed as the mass-trans vehicle spewed open its doors in front of a large shopping-plex. The man and woman rapidly escorted Rodney out onto the pavement again, flanking him right and left.

The propped-open mall doors had been smeared with fingerprints too high for any child to reach. Rodney didn’t have time to discover the name of the particular mall as they ushered him inside—all shopping-plexes looked basically the same, anyway.

Capek knew exactly where he was going and moved ahead, confident that Rodney and the woman would follow. The various specialized shops blurred past, and Rodney caught glimpses of them with wide eyes, but most passed in an indistinct collage. Capek halted once to allow them to catch up.

“I know a delightful little café at the heart of the mall. It’s rather exclusive, but we can talk there.”

The cafe was indeed very exclusive. Almost empty, it was hushed and waiting impatiently for a luncheon crowd. Capek smiled and, without a word, the cafe host nodded and led the three of them to a small table deep in the back.

Rodney forgot his anxiety for a moment and savored the surroundings. The air smelled fresh from dozens of hanging ferns and potted plants, from moist terrariums on every table. Mingling with the smell of earthy greenery was also the complex aroma of fresh-baked bread.

Huge skylights of plate glass let the hazy sunshine pour through, dappling the interior cobblestone walkways. A colorful patio umbrella shielded each table from the bright sunlight streaming down. The sound of running water made the atmosphere seem even more peaceful, and Rodney realized that a tiny moat surrounded each exclusive table, more for appearance than for an actual barrier. The tech noticed as he stepped over the two flat stones to their table that the bottom of the shallow stream had been strewn with old pennies and dimes, apparently for decoration, artifacts from the days of tangible currency.

Capek held a wicker chair for Monica, and she sat down without taking her opaque eyes from Rodney. The Cremator sat down himself as Rodney awkwardly took his own seat. The tech looked at the two Cremators, first the man and then the woman, waiting in silence, but neither of them seemed ready to speak.

Momentarily a waiter appeared, walking lightly over the stepping-stones to stand expectantly beside their small table. Rodney saw with slight distress that he carried no menus. “I’m ready to take your order.”

The waiter placed his hands behind his back and smiled with a vacuous stare. Rodney wondered if the waiter would be filing away their selections in his memory, or if he had a transmitter hidden somewhere on his uniform to send their order directly to the kitchen.

Capek folded his hands on the table and answered confidently. “I’ll have an espresso, and she will have tea—Lapsang souchong, I believe?” The woman nodded.

The waiter turned to Rodney, who hesitated uncomfortably for a moment. The waiter immediately spoke into the silence, “If you’re not in the mood for coffees or teas, sir, may I offer you something else? Some wine perhaps, or a beer?”

The Cremator interjected, “They do have a very good beer, Mr. Quick. They brew it themselves, in large oak casks. ”

Rodney grasped at the suggestion and nodded. After the waiter had vanished, Rossum Capek made brief at tempts at small talk, to which Rodney mechanically responded. Monica sat in silence, scowling, suspicious, until the waiter returned with their order.

The Cremator picked up the tiny white china cup in his large hands and took a sip of the steaming liquid. He closed his eyes in obvious satisfaction. Monica ignored her tea, but Rodney could smell a smoky, tarlike aroma drifting toward his nostrils. He took a swallow of his reddish-amber beer; he would have liked it colder.

“Now then, Mr. Quick,” Capek spoke, finally getting down to business. Reflexively Rodney took another deep drink of his beer, looking around the castle-like terrarium in the center of their table. “You obviously know what services we offer, or else you wouldn’t have been so persistent in trying to find us. However, you are the first from your, er, organization to express anything other than hostility toward our operations.”

“I’m in a better position to be afraid than most people,” Rodney answered. “I know what goes on there. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to find the Cre—”

“Careful!” The woman suddenly sat up straight. Her tea sloshed near the rim of her cup, spilling a drop onto the saucer.

“Yes, Mr. Quick. Please be vague if at all possible.” Capek smiled patiently and made Rodney feel comfort able again. The tech understood their paranoia, though, and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Yes, I know what you promise. But death is such an unpredictable thing—how can you guarantee that you’ll be able to… you know, carry out our agreement?”

“We haven’t made any agreement yet,” Monica interrupted. Her companion waved her to be patient.

“We can’t make any guarantees, since death is such an unpredictable thing. But we do promise that we’ll at tempt everything in our power to see you safely removed from the resurrection loop. Since we don’t make our contracts public, you can’t know how many times we fail… but so far we’ve been successful in more than eighty percent of our attempts. We have greater powers than you might suspect.”

Rodney tried to calculate how many contracts that meant, but then he realized that on Lower Level Six he saw only the suitable pre-Servants; others too old or too badly damaged would never have shown up on his roster at all. Many of those cadavers must disappear as well, not to mention the ones that vanished before an Enforcer could even log the death onto The Net.