Eastern Standard Tribe

"Bullshit!" Art bellowed, closing up with Fede, getting close enough to see the flecks of spittle flying off his lips spatter Fede's face. "I've had enough bullshit, Fede!"

Abruptly, Fede lurched forward, sweeping Art's feet out from underneath him and landing on Art's chest seconds after Art slammed to the scratched and splintered hardwood floor. He pinned Art's arms under his knees, then leaned forward and crushed Art's windpipe with his forearm, bearing down.

"You dumb sack of shit," he hissed. "We were going to cut you in, after it was done. We knew you wouldn't go for it, but we were still going to cut you in-you think that was your little whore's idea? No, it was mine! I stuck up for you! But not anymore, you hear? Not anymore. You're through. Jesus, I gave you this fucking job! I set up the deal in Cali. Fuck-off heaps of money! I'm through with you, now. You're done. I'm ratting you out to V/DT, and I'm flying to California tonight. Enjoy your deportation hearing, you dumb Canuck boy-scout."

Art's vision had contracted to a fuzzy black vignette with Fede's florid face in the center of it. He gasped convulsively, fighting for air. He felt his bladder go, and hot urine stream down his groin and over his thighs.

An instant later, Fede sprang back from him, face twisted in disgust, hands brushing at his urine-stained pants. "Damn it," he said, as Art rolled onto his side and retched. Art got up on all fours, then lurched erect. As he did, the axe head in his pocket swung wildly and knocked against the glass pane beside his office's door, spiderwebbing it with cracks.

Moving with dreamlike slowness, Art reached into his pocket, clasped the axe head, turned it in his hand so that the edge was pointing outwards. He lifted it out of his pocket and held his hand behind his back. He staggered to Fede, who was glaring at him, daring him to do something, his chest heaving.

Art windmilled his arm over his head and brought the axe head down solidly on Fede's head. It hit with an impact that jarred his arm to the shoulder, and he dropped the axe head to the floor, where it fell with a thud, crusted with blood and hair for the first time in 200,000 years.

Fede crumpled back into the office's wall, slid down it into a sitting position. His eyes were open and staring. Blood streamed over his face.

Art looked at Fede in horrified fascination. He noticed that Fede was breathing shallowly, almost panting, and realized dimly that this meant he wasn't a murderer. He turned and fled the office, nearly bowling Tonaishah over in the corridor.

"Call an ambulance," he said, then shoved her aside and fled O'Malley House and disappeared into the Piccadilly lunchtime crowd.

29.

I am: sprung.

Father Ferlenghetti hasn't been licensed to practice psychiatry in Massachusetts for forty years, but the court gave him standing. The judge actually winked at me when he took the stand, and stopped scritching on her comm as the priest said a lot of fantastically embarrassing things about my general fitness for human consumption.

The sanitarium sent a single junior doc to my hearing, a kid so young I'd mistaken him for a hospital driver when he climbed into the van with me and gunned the engine. But no, he was a doctor who'd apparently been briefed on my case, though not very well. When the judge asked him if he had any opinions on Father Ferlenghetti's testimony, he fumbled with his comm while the Father stared at him through eyebrows thick enough to hide a hamster in, then finally stammered a few verbatim notes from my intake interview, blushed, and sat down.

"Thank you," the judge said, shaking her head as she said it. Gran, seated beside me, put one hand on my knee and one hand on the knee of Doc Szandor's brother-in-law, a hotshot Harvard Law post-doc whom we'd retained as corporate counsel for a new Limited Liability Corporation. We'd signed the articles of incorporation the day before, after Group. It was the last thing Doc Szandor did before resigning his post at the sanitarium to take up the position of Chief Medical Officer at HumanCare, LLC, a corporation with no assets, no employees, and a sheaf of shitkicking ideas for redesigning mental hospitals using off-the-shelf tech and a little bit of UE mojo.

30.

Art was most of the way to the Tube when he ran into Lester. Literally.

Lester must have seen him coming, because he stepped right into Art's path from out of the crowd. Art ploughed into him, bounced off of his dented armor, and would have fallen over had Lester not caught his arm and steadied him.

"Art, isn't it? How you doin', mate?"

Art gaped at him. He was thinner than he'd been when he tried to shake Art and Linda down in the doorway of the Boots, grimier and more desperate. His tone was just as bemused as ever, though. "Jesus Christ, Lester, not now, I'm in a hurry. You'll have to rob me later, all right?"