Part 46 (1/2)

The newer-model senior-rehab equipment had just a single readout, which

gave you a go or a no go, and if you got the no go you could

immediately request data on specific organic or pseudo-organic

malfunctions. But Uncle James was one of the early models, and there

was no money in the rehab budget for updating citizens left over from

the previous century.

”You think I'll live?” he asked her, suddenly feisty.

”For another five hundred years, minimum.”

Quickly, deftly, she finished the job of making him ready to go out. She

disconnected the long intravenous line from the wall and put him on

portable. She disabled his chair control override so that she alone

could guide the movements of his vehicle via the remote implant in her

palm. She locked the restraining bars in place across his chest to

keep him from attempting some sudden berserk excursion on foot out

there. More than ever now, the old man was the prisoner of his own

life-support system.

Just as she finished the job Carlotta felt a strange inner twisting and

jolting as though an earthquake had struck: the unexpected, sickening