Chapter Thirty-three
Harry's passing
After switching off a computer screen with Mary’s sad pale face, Dee puts her face in her hands for a moment to gather her courage, and then yells at her husband.
"Duff, Mary called," Dee yells at her husband just finishing his noisy morning shave. "Mary’s is worried. Harry won't wake up for his medicine. Mary called the doctor."
"Any hope that it's just another spell?" Duffy asks hurrying toward his wife.
"No."
"I'm sorry, Dee." As Duffy hugs and comforts his wife he can feel her body shudder and the warm tears flow as she cries. He is still holding her when the screen blinks on again in the room.
Moments later Breen's face fills the screen, "Harry OpDyke died in his sleep. Wray has Harry's directions. He gave me a picture of a place on the west side of his South Pass Wind Farm where he wants his ashes scattered."
The screen fills with a picture of an angular up-thrust of reddish and gray rock and green leaved aspen trees. A nodding Bakman remembers the picture. When Harry had shown him that picture, he told him that his real Mary thought it looked just like the head of a whale coming up out of the sea. In Harry’s picture that Bakman first saw it had a grove of aspens beside the up-thrust rock in golden fall colors.
After a moment Breen continues, "His wife Mary's ashes were scattered in the same place."
Bakman nods his agreement and adds, "Put up a bronze plague on that outcrop of rock. Have it say only in memory of Harry Zeed OpDyke and Mary Dae Iversen-OpDyke."
"Will do! Breen out."
Before Bakman can answer the customary “Bakman out,” Wray's face flashes on the screen to say, "Harry left everything to you. Some twenty-one billion dollars in cash, this building, and a short list of nine still unsold properties according to his recorded will. I'll make all the arrangement for the funeral and file the necessary paper work. Funeral will be in two days. Also, Breen said to tell you that it was much too dangerous for you to attend Harry’s funeral or the scattering of his ashes . . . Wray out."
The screen goes blank and silence fills the room. After a moment of silence, Dee asks, "What about Mary?"
"She'll come down here and live with us," Bakman replies without hesitation.
"Thank you dearest," Dee tells her husband, tries to reward his kindness with a smile and only half succeeds, and Bakman’s reply gets lost as Dee kisses him. They hold each other for a long private moment before Dee's fingers touch a screen saying, "Mary."
In a moment, a wrinkled and lined face with long tangled gray hair hanging in a mess in front of her sad face speaks in a flat mechanical voice for grief was not in her program. "Yes Dee."
"Mother, now gather your things and come down and live with Sonny and Me. Harry wanted it that way. Help me with your grandbaby."
"They have taken Harry away. What should I do with his medicine?"
"Just leave it there. Collect your clothes and things. We will meet you at the elevator."
"Yes daughter."
In less than ten minutes, the elevator opens to Mary with her hair fixed wearing a floor-length black long sleeved dress. Behind her is a rack with tunics and dresses hanging on it. The rack stood on an old fashioned four-wheeled moving platform and behind it a three drawer chest on another wheeled-platform. Dee hugs Mary and cries. Duffy puts his arms around both.
After a few minutes, Dee and Mary push the rack of clothes and her chest of drawers down the hallway. They put them in the bedroom next to the waiting nursery—now Mary’s room.
Two days later the building is silent as everyone watches nearby screens filled with the funeral ceremony. Everyone is unsettled because Informationalists are all over the building covering the funeral and doing interviews. They all stand silently watching every screen in the building showing the scattering of Harry's ashes in the area around the up-thrust rock outcrop and golden aspens from a low fast flying military hovercraft. A long two minutes of low somber music before two heavy-set men wearing dark green and tan military tunics and officer rank jackets step forward, drill four holes into the rock face with a hammer drill, and fasten a bronze plague. A tall skinny hook-nosed bald man in black wearing a clerical collar with a long thin white beard steps forward, reads the plaque, reads a short statements sent by the Mayor of New Dallas and reads another from the U.N. President. The ceremony ends with a request for bowed heads in remembrance and for a short half-minute of silence before soft low music for a long half-minute. As the music ends the screen went blank. After another awkward minute of silence and a still view of the up-thrust rock on the screen, a recording of Harry's image appears before normal programming resumes and recording interviews began.
Three days later when they have time again, Breen and Bakman sit in his office looking at the recorded interviews. When an Information Screen fills with Bakman and Dee being interviewed, Breen starts shaking his head and saying, "I was afraid of that."
"What's the problem? It's just a picture of Dee and me."
"They have been trying to kill you without any success. Now they will know that you have a wife and she is expecting a child. We gave them with just one picture two new targets—two new ways to hurt you."
"You're right. I hadn't thought of that, but I'm not sure Dee would have remained in hiding during the funeral of the man she considers her father."
"I thought the same thing. Therefore, I did not mention it. Now, I'll increase security, and in a way we already have."
Bakman looks at Breen with a puzzled frown.
"Mary's living with you."
"I'd forgotten she was Harry's bodyguard."
"You now have four bodyguards on your floor. We've increased security. After reprogramming three of those, you will still have one. I'll see to some improvements above the Nineteenth Causeway anyway."
"Good thinking . . . I'll let you finish looking at these disks. I had best go up and talk to Dee about this," Bakman told him and rises to leave.
Breen nods and puts in a new disk.
The Centauri Conspiracy Page 35
