Orgonomicon by Boris D. Schleinkofer Page B

washed it
down with half a glass of red without even noticing what she was
doing.
    Thirty minutes later, she was feeling warm
and comforting. The boy was suffering; what he needed most was his
mother. She went into his bedroom to watch over him as he slept,
standing at the foot of his bed. He began shifting nervously and
making an uncomfortable whimper.
    He hadn't been the same since his father
left, poor kid. She went to the side of his bed and stroked his
hair, but he still wouldn't settle down and sleep peaceably.
Something really was wrong.
    And then she sat up rigidly straight, and
stared directly at the wall in front of her as her hands shot
quickly forward to grip the boy by the sides of his head.
    Her gaze never left the same spot on the wall
above the boy's head as she tipped it back and plunged her pinky
finger into his mouth, questing upward and dislodging something
with the nail. Only when she'd pulled the bloody device out of his
sinus cavity did she shift her eyes to look at it, before pinching
it tightly and rolling it between her fingers, crushing it. The
metal liquefied in her grasp and gathered together into a silver
droplet, which slithered off her hand and disappeared. The broken
device which had exempted the child for the past eight years from
the regular harvestings removed, Jaime's absence from the tallies
was noted and new directives issued.
    "Jaime, honey, it's all right. We're just
having another bad dream. Let's both go back to sleep." The boy
wouldn't calm down for anything. What must it be like, to be at his
age and have to watch his parents go through this kind of thing?
And his brothers always picking on him. The world was hard
enough...
    She couldn't imagine.
     
    Agents BUZ4937 and SEL6210 put down their
gear, removing their headsets and unplugging them from the
workstation. Since the events of the year before with MON2985, no
field agent was allowed to work a rad-station alone, and for no
longer than two-hour intervals without submitting to rigorous
checks and protocols. The new restrictions were onerous,
heavy-handed and redundant, a source of aggravation to anyone
working radionics on-the-go. The resentment of the other's presence
was palpable in the small motel room.
    "Did you get that recorded?" Agent BUZ4937
was terse, the hostility in his voice a cutting edge.
    "Of course I got it recorded. So what?"
SEL6210 wasn't used to working under a superior any more, least of
all semi-competents questioning his judgment. He'd been commanding
officer of his team in Afghanistan, where no one so much as
questioned his orders if he sent them on what was an apparent
suicide mission. Now he was being double-checked on his ability to
press the record button. It was ridiculous.
    "'So what' is that I don't want any screwups
on this mission. My ass is on the line and I don't trust it to
someone I've never worked with before."
    "Just do your job and I'll do mine."
    "I'm C.O. on this mission and you'll do
exactly what I tell you to do. Is that perfectly crystal fuckin'
clear?"
    Good lord, the man was a savage. "Clear as
ice. No need for civility."
    "What was that last part? I don't think I
caught it."
    "Nothing, sir. I didn't say a thing."
    "Yeah, that's right. Now get this place
scrubbed before we go again. Copy that, Agent?"
    Agent SEL6210's only reply was to wind the
cables around the headsets and plug them into the charger. The man
was a savage but he didn't merit another disciplinary action.
Buzzsaw wasn't the only one with his job in jeopardy; he couldn't
afford to be called up for review again. They'd decommissioned his
chip once before and the consequences had been significant; his
immune system still hadn't recovered and possibly never would.
    If the chip was rejected a second time, his
brain would be fried just like the Mongoose's had been before him.
People talked smack about Mongoose, said he'd gotten old and weak,
but SEL6210 had known the man and saw that there was nothing really
different about