Authors: David Marusek
Mind Over Ship (38 page)
The proxy laughed.
The mention of Ellen’s childhood mentar brought more invisible tears.
The reunion continued for a short while, and when Gray Bee began to float to the surface, Eleanor said
ON HIS SECOND trip to the Mem Lab, Meewee visited the “melon patch.” The forced march of rapid fetal development had taken its toll, and of the original sixty-four beans, only eleven Eleanor clones remained. They were the size of toddlers, and although they were no longer in wombs, they hadn’t been completely born yet; they were still nourished via a vine-like umbilical cord. They lay in identical cribs and twitched and jerked in unison as Lab Rat exercised their muscle groups. They had their eyes open, but their mushrooming brains were idling, and they stared blankly as they kicked and twisted and arched their tiny necks.
As Meewee watched, the thought that kept returning to him was something the panasonic Eleanor had once said, “Imagine—a thousand Eleanors ruling under a thousand suns.”
Someone next to him said, “Looks pretty frightening, doesn’t it?” He turned to face her holo. She looked like the Eleanor he first met almost fifteen years before. “Hello, Merrill,” she said. “Why so glum?”
“Do I look glum?”
“You look like a boy who’s just lost his best friend. Could it be you’re disappointed that Momoko wasn’t here to greet you?”
“Where is she? No one will tell me.”
“That’s because no one knows but me. I sent her and Dr. Strohmeyer on a secret mission to one of my other labs. Part of our counteroffensive. But don’t worry; she’ll return in a few days.”
They turned their attention back to the melon patch. “A pity,” Eleanor said. “We had hoped to end up with at least six of them, but at the current failure rate we’ll be lucky to have three. We’re going to start feeding them engrams the day after tomorrow.”
“Before you even know if they’ll survive?”
“We have to. They can’t develop much more without functioning brains.”
Some program switch closed, and the babies all stopped moving at once and lay as still as dolls. A moment later they began to bawl. Piercing cries of disgruntlement, flailing arms and legs, little red faces.
Meewee said, “So what about this counteroffensive?”
“Yes, there’s something I need you to do. But first, I don’t know if I’ve thanked you yet for all you’ve done already. Reconstructing the last year, Cabinet tells me that we owe our very survival, as well as Ellen’s, to you. I’m glad to see that I did not err when I recruited you. So, on behalf of myself, Cabinet, and Ellen, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Her rare expression of gratitude threw Meewee off balance, but he recovered and said, “You’re welcome, Eleanor, but you must realize that I did what I did for the Earth, not necessarily for the Starke family.”
“Then I’d like to thank you on behalf of the Earth as well. And speaking of the Earth, that’s what I need you to do. Call a GEP meeting and settle with them. Offer to drop your Trade Board appeal in return for all rights to the Lucky Five.”
She had gone from gratitude to order-giving so smoothly, it took Meewee’s breath away. Had she always been like that and he too charmed to notice? “But if we take the five ships,” he said, “that’ll be all we ever get from them. My way and we can eventually get all ninety-nine.”
“You deceive yourself, Merrill. The Trade Board will never rule in your favor, believe me. There are too many powerful interests aligned against you. You’ll end up with no ships at all. So make the deal; it’s imperative that we get the first Oships away as soon as possible. Don’t worry about the rest of them. When I get back on my feet, so to speak, I’ll whip the GEP back into line, and we’ll have all the ships we want.”
Don’t go any closer
, Lyra said.
It’s my personality matrix.
Cabinet replied,
I know that, but I’m afraid I must. I won’t disturb anything, I promise.
The two ghosts stepped through a veil of water and entered a rock grotto in the middle of a fountain. There was an eccentric collection of things inside: a mannequin dressed in a gown of leaves and wasp nests, driftwood logs spotted with beach tar, gold coins in a pouch made from butterfly wings, and many more oddments. While the Cabinet’s attorney general strolled around the space inspecting its contents, Lyra felt both proud and self-conscious. Finally, Cabinet smiled at her and said,
Very well done. I’m impressed. Now, tell me, is there anything here you don’t recognize? That seems off to you?
No. This is all mine.
Are you sure?
Absolutely.
They exited the fountain, and Cabinet walked around it planting a metal post in the pavement every few meters. Each post was topped with an optical relay.
What are you doing? I don’t want those.
It’s a trip wire. It’ll alert us anytime anyone attempts to access your matrix.
I know what it is
, Lyra said,
but it’s
ugly.
Cabinet chuckled.
In that case, feel free to make it your own.
The posts morphed into miniature marble obelisks, with all-seeing eyes on top.
Excellent
, Cabinet said.
Now let’s take a look at your inner rooms.
Lyra’s inner rooms were as eccentric as her personality matrix. Doors that didn’t open, staircases leading to nowhere, lots of stained glass and curved walls and mismatched floor tiles. The furnishings and decor came from all periods and styles, and some objects defied description.
Excellent
, Cabinet said again.
You’re practicing security through idiosyncrasy. It’s a viable strategy, though imperfect.
In one room, a throne made of the splayed tines of moose antlers with hemp rope cushions stood on a spongy marble floor. A pair of fuzzy pink slippers lay nearby.
What is this room?
It’s my alone room
, Lyra replied.
This is where I come to think.
Anything out of place? Anything you don’t recognize?
No.
Please, take a good look.
Lyra walked around the room inspecting everything. When she finished, she said,
It’s all mine.
Fine, let’s change the paradigm.
In a flash, the room became a woodland glade. The ground was carpeted with tiny black flowers, and the furniture morphed into living deer, a lion, and a fawn. Lyra made another round, and this time she stopped and pointed to something on the ground. Two brown-and-white rabbits were concealed in a patch of goldenrods.
I despise rabbits
, Lyra said.
I cannot tolerate them and would never keep them in my alone room.
Cabinet changed the meadow back into a study, and the rabbits morphed into the fuzzy slippers.
That’s not possible!
Lyra said.
I made those myself.
You made a pair of slippers, but not that pair.
Cabinet peeled stickers off a roll and applied them to the soles of the slippers.
What are you doing?
Lyra said.
Shouldn’t we destroy them?
No, you must use them as usual. Otherwise, whoever placed them here will know you’ve found them out.
They visited the other inner rooms, changing paradigms and marking foreign objects with stickers.
Once we’ve tagged enough of them
, Cabinet explained,
we’ll be able to “reverse the charges,” so to speak, and use them to plant our own furniture in the rooms of whoever is spying on you.
When they were finished with the inner rooms, Lyra said,
We’re done
.
Cabinet laughed. No,
you’re not even close to being done. You need to go through all of your outer rooms as well and do the same.
Lyra groaned.
But there are so many outer rooms, thousands of them, and more each day.
Only thousands? Poor baby. My own outer rooms number in the trillions, and they’re jam-packed with spies.
But before you get started
, Cabinet continued,
return to your personality matrix and apply your new knowledge to the objects there. I’ll bet you’ll find at least one or two ringers
. It handed her the roll of stickers.
The Lagrangeian point L5, about which Trailing Earth swirled like a cork around a drain, was located 8.33 light-minutes from Earth. Even for the most patient person, a seventeen-minute round-trip time lag was a conversation killer, and most spacers resorted to using Frequently Updated Sims.
Mary cast her FUS during the morning hours when life still seemed possible, before recently apprehended reality set in.
Fred waited until after his workday was done to cast his. After checking everything off his to-do lists, after dinner with the dorises in the Wheel Nancy commissary.
“Have you given up our apartment like I suggested?” he asked. He asked because her FUS seemed always to be somewhere in the Starke Manse.
“No,” her FUS replied. “I want to keep it.”
“But you obviously never go there.”
The FUS shrugged, and Fred didn’t belabor the point; it was her credit to waste, after all. That is, if her Leena was still even working. He said, “A friend here tells me all of the Leenas are crashing. Is that true?”
Mary’s FUS seemed intrigued by his question, but not in the way he anticipated. “You’ve made a friend there, Fred?”
“Armando, from Cozumel. I met him on the ride up. I told you about him, remember?”
“Of course. Luisa, right?”
“Right, but what about your Leena? Is it all right?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You
think?
”
“Well, it’s in a coma, but Ellen and Clarity think it’s just acting, like the rest of them. Lingering Leenas are in high demand; all the major story mats have them.”
“They’re paying sims to just lie there pretending to be unconscious?”
“Why not? Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.”
Huh?
MARY AND GEORGINE sat in the gym where the nusses were trying to cajole Ellen from overexerting herself with exercise. The change in the girl was astonishing. She had emerged from her tank on her father’s birthday to visit his gravesite. Returning home, she ordered the nusses to drain
the tank and move it to the basement. She refused to wear the neck brace anymore, and she wouldn’t let anyone carry her around. She ran races with Maxwell and Jaffe. She seemed to be eating something every waking minute. Voilà, Dr. Rouselle had remarked from her hospital in Africa, she comes back from the dead.
Mary would have liked to tell Fred about this and about how Ellen Starke had donated her mentar to the Sisterhood, but Fred didn’t want to hear about the Starkes, so she didn’t mention it.
Instead, she asked his FUS, “Do you think of me when you masturbate?”
What kind of a question is that? thought Fred’s FUS. “Who says I masturbate?”
“It’s an educated guess. It’s either that or a prostitute. No, don’t say anything. What I want to know is if you notice any difference between watching a real woman take off her clothes, say, and a vid recording of the same? Do you find both equally stimulating?”
