He remembered these words and suddenly he wanted life to matter again, for death to mean something.
He wanted to tell Joanna something, but her eyes were closed. She gripped his hand once, and then relaxed.
“No,” he said. “Not you. Don’t go.”
His vision swayed and he realized he was very cold. He leaned against her, knowing it wouldn’t be too long for him either.
He could use a rest.
Maria carried guilt on her shoulders.
She also carried Hiro on her shoulders.
Everyone else was dead. She would take care of them soon.
Minoru had unlocked the door on her request when he had let the sun rise again. She carefully climbed the ladder with Hiro over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry toward the higher deck where the gravity was easier to deal with.
Hiro was bleeding from a deep cut and his bullet holes. Her own wounds had opened with exertion and her bandages were soaked through with blood.
He was bleeding badly, but he wouldn’t die. She wouldn’t let him.
“Come on, we can make it. We’ll get you to medbay and the doctor will stitch you up until you’re irritating the hell out of all of us again,” she said.
She was hoping the playful barb would get him moving, but he didn’t respond. She didn’t know if he knew the doctor was dead or not, but hope might help keep him going.
She was grateful that he was a small man, and that the gravity was lighter with each step up the ladder.
Hiro’s blood ran down his side to soak her neck where she carried him, and she wondered how much he had lost.
That asshole Paul. No. It went deeper. Sallie had caused all of this. Sallie and her twisted desire for revenge and reach for power.
Poor Hiro. Poor Hiro with his fractured personality. That she had caused. She and Sallie.
Maria muttered to herself, part apology, part chant to keep herself going. One more step. Now another one. Now another.
They reached the hallway of the clones’ quarters. The entire floor was quiet. Minoru hadn’t said anything since she had left the gardens. She looked behind them, wincing at the trail of blood they had left. When this was all over, someone would have a mess to clean up.
No, wait. She would have a mess.
“Who were you talking to?” Hiro asked sleepily.
“No one. Myself. Nothing important. Don’t worry about it, just try to hold on.” She adjusted her grip on him. “Can you walk?”
“I don’t think I can do much of anything,” he said. “Listen, just let me die. Then you can clone me again. It’ll be okay. I have faith in you.”
She shook him gently. “Hey, no, don’t leave me. I can’t clone you again, remember? Paul fucked with all the machines. We don’t have any new bodies. This is the last one, you better take care of it.”
“A clone without a body. A rebel without a cause. A horse with no name,” he said in a singsong voice. “You’re nice.”
“You talk all you like, Hiro. Just remember to hold on, all right?” she said.
“Sorry,” he mumbled into her ear. “This must be hard. Want me to carry you for a minute?”
She choked out a laugh. “That would be nice, but you’re the one here who paid for the pony ride, and you’re getting your full money’s worth.”
“Wanted a pony with white spots,” Hiro complained. “You’re just one uniform color.”
“We must all live with disappointment. This is the pony you have, so it’s the pony you will ride. Let’s go.”
“Giddyap,” he whispered, sounding far away.
She slapped his leg. “Hey. Come back. We each have our different jobs here. I can’t do mine if you won’t do yours.”
“Sorry,” he said. He began to hum a tuneless song.
She began to list what she needed to do. Get Hiro’s DNA matrix from the medbay. Figure out a way to mindmap him. Then fix him. How to fix him, though?
She thought of Mrs. Perkins, the keeper of her secrets, rocking away in her library. The hacked mindmaps nested inside her, locked away for posterity, like vials of smallpox. The clue to fix Hiro was actually inside her.
“You had the power all the time, Dorothy,” Maria said to herself, imagining red shoes clicking together.
“You’re Maria,” Hiro said.
“And you’re Hiro,” she said, realization giving her new energy. “And you’re going to be okay.”
Wake Six: Minoru Takahashi
Deus Ex Bebe
Maria deposited Hiro facedown on a medbay bed. There were no clean ones, so she had to put him back in the bed he’d been confined to. She removed his jumpsuit, cleaned him, and sutured the wounds closed. He’d bled a lot. She set the medical printer to synthesize more blood for him.
She realized with despair that she couldn’t use the doctor’s smart syringes, so she hooked Hiro back up to the painkiller drip—half gone—he had been on before.
“I wish you hadn’t drunk so much,” she said. “For that matter, I shouldn’t have either.”
Hiro spoke up suddenly, startling her. “I spent a lot of time in jail for the yadokari crimes, and then more time with psychiatrists, trying to keep them subdued. Hypnotic suggestion worked, but only until I woke up again in a new body.”
Maria held her breath, worried any sound would break him from his conversational trance. He didn’t open his eyes. “The one thing I found that silenced them, the other voices, is drinking. A doctor told me that in a bar. She told me that as my drinking buddy, not as my doctor, because she said it wasn’t right for her to suggest a patient drink more. But she suggested I try it. It worked. I was suicidal at the time, the only way I thought to kill them would be to kill myself. But then I discovered that a strong sake fully put down something inside me that hours of psychology and psychiatry couldn’t.
“So what I mean is, I can hold my drink,” he concluded. He reached out, not opening his eyes. She took his hand. “We are all pawns, Maria.”
She managed a smile, but it slid away quickly. “Yeah, we all got played. Big-time.”
Hiro didn’t answer. He breathed long and deep, finally asleep.
Maria collapsed into a chair and wept.
Bebe. Bebe printing out a fat, juicy pig. Bebe printing out a piping hot cup of coffee, just the way Maria liked it.
Maria’s eyes snapped open. Why was she dreaming about Bebe?
“Now I know I’m either dying or becoming more sane, dreaming about a machine making a pig from synthetic proteins and high-quality flavorings that it takes—”
She pushed herself up hard out of her chair, cursing to herself for not thinking of this earlier.
“—it takes the data from basic mindmaps of the crew,” Maria finished. “Shit. Bebe can read our mindmaps!” She rushed to the door.
And Bebe was big enough to cook a pig.
“Holy. Shit.”
Maria stood in the server room staring at Minoru’s facial hologram. “Open up. I’m going to find your lost data.”
His eyes widened in surprise, but he let her in. She went past his databases, and his programming, and his personality, into the corner where she usually put commented code.