Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

Steefer's face became serious-almost grave. "I don't like to be the one to tell you this, and you may be mad at me, but I had a hunch about something, so I had Christiana Stone followed for a few days."

"Yes?" Grego said frostily.

"I put Stubby Butler on it. Remember him?"

Grego paused. "Oh, yes. The guy who always works alone. Lorenzo Butler. Go on."

"Well," Steefer continued, "she's been meeting some guy at the Rondo every Friday afternoon. Usually gives him a packet of papers. Could be our information leak."

Grego was silent. Finally, he murmured, "Stay on it, Harry. We'll see where it takes us." Suddenly, Grego was tired-bone tired. He wanted to lay down and go to sleep and never get up again. "I 'm going to bed now, Harry," he said, "but you call me if there are any startling developments."

"Yes, sir," Steefer said."Like I said, Mr. Grego, I hate it to Nifflheim to have to tell you that, but-"

"It's all right, Harry," Grego said. "I've never been mad at a man for doing a good job of what I told him to do."

George Lunt pushed himself back from the table. "Why, you're just a marvel of a cook, Sandra," he said. "I would never have thought anyone as pretty as you would be a good cook, too."

"Boy, George," Sandra said, "are you full of it. And this after that crack you made about leaving the party snacks after the George Lunt Memorial Beer Bust, so Ahmed could 'stay alive until I learned to cook.' "

Ahmed guffawed. "What'd you think, George-that I married her for her brains?"

Sandra said something indelicate and took the empty plates into the kitchen.

"Gentler sex, indeed," George said.

Ahmed looked at his watch. " As soon as I 'm sure our CZC man is asleep, I'll go back over to detention and rattle him up a bit. We'll have to let him go day after tomorrow, but I want him to think his employers are going to let him rot there."

"Do we have anything new?" George asked.

"Yes," Ahmed said. "I talked to Holderman before dinner and we have the stuff back from our friend at the bank. CZC has been depositing the guy's pay into his account right on schedule."

George turned serious. "Well, then, we've got the goods on him on that one.

Get printouts of it. We will, of course, lodge the stiffest possible complaint with the Company."

Christiana chewed her lip and squinted at the comm screen. "So that's where it stands at the moment, Miss Stone," the doctor was saying. "She's been asking for you, so I thought I should let you know."

"I'll be right over," Christiana said.

The doctor held up his hand. "No, there's no use to that, Miss Stone. You couldn 't talk to her until after she comes out of the recovery room, and, in any case, the police have put a hold on all visitors."

Christiana caught her voice and took a deep breath. "So what do you think?"

she asked.

The doctor shrugged. "'It looks pretty good. She's stabilizing nicely, and neither bullet hit anything terribly irreplaceable. One went through her right lung, but it didn't collapse and we're holding pressure on it without too much leakage. You get a good night's sleep, now, and I'll screen you again after I make rounds in the morning."

"Okay," Christiana said softly. "Okay. Thank you very much." She blanked the screen and slumped down in the chair, sobbing quietly.

After a few minutes, she got up, went into the tiny kitchen of her apartment, and started throwing dishes against the wall. When the cabinet was empty, she stood there in the middle of the room and clenched her fists. "That's enough!"

she shouted at the broken crockery. "Dammit! That's enough! By God, that's enough!"

She went back to the communications screen and punched a call-number for an air cab.

Victor Grego was awakened by the insistent chiming of his front door. Groggy, he got out of bed and tugged into his robe. "Now, what in blazes-" he said, rubbing his eyes as he entered the foyer. Probably some cop with the latest blast, hot off the relay. He opened the door, intending on a vigorous admonishment toward whoever it was-for not merely giving him a screen-call.

"Christiana!" he blurted out.

She looked small and frightened and vulnerable. There were tear-streaks on her face and a puffy redness around her eyes.

"Why didn't you just use your key to the landing-stage door?" he asked.

"After what I've got to tell you," she said, "you may want it back. Can I come in?"

"Of course," Grego said. "Please."

Her knees started to give way, but she threw out her hand and caught herself on the door-jamb.

"Here, let me help you," Grego said.

She pulled away from him. "I'mall right, "she said. "I'm just-all right." She

threw her shoulders back and walked stiffly into the living room.

Grego shut the door and followed. "You look awfully shaky, my dear," he said.

"Can I get you a brandy?"

"I think it's going to be a necessity," she said. Her legs started to buckle again and she sat abruptly on the couch in an attempt to conceal the fact.

Grego disappeared behind the pullman bar, then reappeared-almost instantly-with a small snifter glass and his own unfinished drink. He handed her the small snifter and put a box of tissues on the coffee table. Then he sat down in his chair and waited.

Christiana took a healthy swallow of the brandy and a deep breath. She started to say something, but her voice quavered and stuck. She set down the snifter, jerked two tissues from the box and blew her nose. Then she picked up the snifter glass, got to her feet and began pacing nervously. "When I came to Zarathustra," she began, "I was running-and I kept on running. After I knew I was falling in love with you, I still kept running-running and making a mess of everything I left my tracks on. Well, I'm sick of running, now, and sick of being scared all the time. I picked a peculiar way of taking revenge, though it made some weird kind of sense at the time." She stopped and leaned against the open terrace door. She took two deep breaths and another swallow of brandy, then turned to pace back across the room in the opposite direction.

"One would have thought it the easiest and most natural proposition imaginable to become a-" She drew her mouth into a line, making little parentheses dimples at either corner. "-a whore. After all, I had been compromising all my life, grabbing at crumbs, letting people use me as a-convenience. But I couldn't even do that right. Though one would think it quite simple, I managed to muff it."

Grego listened attentively, silently, except for lighting an occasional cigarette. Once, he refilled Christiana's brandy.

By now, most of the tissues were not in the box, but in a pile on the coffee table. "... and that's why I let that horrible man blackmail me," she concluded. "And now I'm here, in the middle of the night." She paused. "I didn't tell him anything very important, but I would have done anything-anything-just to hang on a little longer." She hesitated, at first turning to pace some more, then stopping and turning away, looking in the other direction, her back to

Grego. She suddenly shuddered, as though from a hard chill that quickly passed.

Victor Grego was not a man to be understanding toward a Company employee who disaffected, but suddenly this woman was more important to him than the Company. That frightened him, because he had drained his very life into the Company for nearly twenty years. Every last scrap of energy, loyalty, and cunning that he possessed had been willingly and eagerly yielded up to the Company. Now, here was something-a mere Terran human creature, assailable by the frailties and failure of the zeal that renders the human spirit brittle and fragile-which, at least for the moment, meant more to him than all the grinding labor he had poured out to make the monolith of the Company impregnable. His entire body ached with the sensation of it, and it ached with the pain he knew Christiana must be going through at the telling of these things to him-unbidden and somehow unashamed.