Mind Over Ship (39 page)

“I don’t know, Mary. Why don’t you tell me.”

“This is a serious question. The same neurons fire in much the same way whether the stimulus is real or imagined. Even pencil drawings can be as arousing as the sight of a real breast or ass. If that’s so, wouldn’t it follow that as far as the brain is concerned there’s no material difference?”

“And?”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re just saying what?”

“Let me put it another way. You know how they let a condemned man choose his last meal? Why bother? He’ll be dead in an hour. Here they’re about to take this man’s life away, and yet they consider it important that his last meal is pleas ur able?”

“I guess so. Again, your point?”

FRED GOT INTO a shoving match with another russ in the hub of the Admin Wheel. But shoving matches in zero-g can have unexpected results, and while Fred’s opponent landed up near a handhold, Fred found himself spinning aimlessly in the center of the large open area with nothing within reach. It happened to be a turbulent spot where the air that was pumped from the wheel rim was mixed, and not even his webbed gloves enabled him to break free of its eddies. He was buffeted about like a scrap of paper caught in a dust devil, and for a half hour, he provided free amusement to passersby. Fred was late for muster and took a demerit in his personnel file. As though mere demerits mattered much to him anymore.

_____

AFTER-WORK SHOWER LIST: remove visor cap and sidekick, place on shelf in wardrobe, remove shoes, place in shoe cubby, remove socks, place in trash, empty pockets of contents, place in appropriate receptacles, remove wand from belt mesh, place on shelf next to door, disrobe, place clothes in trash, open fresh towel, hang towel outside shower, check soap supply, enter shower stall, close door, set controls, make a quarter turn to face shower jets, soak/rinse, and so on and so forth. As Fred moved down the list, each checkmark provided another iota of relief.

FRED FOUND ANOTHER observation blister, one frequented by off-duty lovers and dreamers and no donalds. Fred floated there, unmoved by the majestic glory of the Milky Way, and attended to Mary’s FUS in his visor.

A man or a dog?
the FUS said.

“A dog, I guess.”

An ally soldier or an enemy soldier?

“The enemy.”

An old man or a child?

“An old man.” The exercise was deciding who Fred would allow to die if he could save only one.

Why the old man?

“I don’t know. The child has his whole life ahead of him.”

The FUS jumped on this.
So, one person’s future experience is more valuable than another person’s past experience?

“I don’t really know, Mary.”

A cockroach or proxy?

“What is this all about?”

MARY AND GEORGINE sat quietly in the corner of the Map Room as Ellen and Clarity tried to come up with some strategy for fixing the Leenas. Clarity was there in realbody, having come cross-country at Ellen’s request, and the Map Room walls were hidden behind overlapping dataframes. Two Leenas, one of them Mary’s, lay unresponsive on hospital beds in the center of the room.

“What if we reboot them to default?” Ellen said. “Like you wanted to do earlier.”

“Already tried that,” Clarity replied. “It works, but only for a while. After two or three days they crash again.”

“After two or three days in isolation?”

“Uh, no. Not in isolation.”

“Then what’s the point of doing it?” Ellen snapped. “You have to isolate them to rule out outside influences.” She put her baby hands on her hips and glared up at her friend. “I mean, really, Clarity, throw me a bone here. You panic over unexpected behavior, and yet you fail to perform the most basic diagnostics. Have you run side-by-side matrix comparisons? Cascade rates? Krabb tests?”

It was a tense moment, broken when Clarity laughed out loud and threw her arms around the girl. “Oh, Ellie, it’s so good to have you back!”

In the corner, Georgine turned to Mary and said, “Sometimes I wish
I
could come back.”

FRED PUT ON fresh town togs with no built-in ID transponders. He left the TECA sidekick on the shelf. Instead of his visor, he dug out the pair of spex he had bought at a kiosk. Mary’s FUS floated in his tiny room.
Which is better, it said, a good experience or a bad one?

“A good one?”

You sound uncertain.

Fred swiped off the FUS and left his stateroom. This wasn’t his first trip to the civilian sector of the space station. He had ventured there on several occasions with Mando to drink and to listen to live music. But this particular trip was a highly anticipated solo foray, one that was bound to be a memorable experience no matter whether it turned out good or bad. He was seeing a man about a weapon.

In the civieside sectors of Trailing Earth, commercial real estate values roughly followed the incline of gravity, with the low-rent sectors located at zero-or low-g. It was here that true spacers, iterant or free-range, tended to congregate, and here where Fred waited in a bar. By the local clock, it was the middle of a duty cycle, and except for a few of the habitually stoned, he was the only patron. When the waitress, a leggy hink, swam by his cage to take his order, he said, “Tell Charlie D. I’m here.”

“Never heard of him,” she replied. “You here to drink or what?”

Fred ordered a beer and swiped the medallion on her lapel to pay, then swiped her a sizable tip. “Just tell him, all right?”

While he waited, Fred reviewed his shopping list. He had already purchased a new omnitool and inertia gun. The gun was little more than a cartridge of compressed air, but with it always in his pocket, he need never be marooned without a handhold again. Fred had come to the Elbow Room to buy things not available at the kiosks: a scan-proof blade of some sort, sundye for indelibly marking an assailant, and a blow dart gun. A blow dart, tipped with an incapacitating agent, was the deadliest projectile weapon he could hope to find at the station.

After Fred’s tiff with the donalds in the blister, the TECA authorities had replaced his lost visor cap, wand, and sidekick, but not for free. A portion of his payfer would be garnished for his entire tour. After stewing about that for a couple of weeks, Fred decided to make the donalds pay their fair share.

The waitress returned with Fred’s bulb of beer. He said, “Well?” but she went away without responding. A little while later, a group of midday revelers came into the bar, already drunk or otherwise altered. As they drifted by Fred’s cage, one of them, a retroboy, called out to him. Fred tried to ignore him, but the boy broke away from his party and swam over to Fred. “Did you find the circus, Myr Russ?”

“Go away,” Fred said. “I’m busy.”

The retroboy didn’t seem able to take a hint, and his retrogirl companion showed up too. They invaded Fred’s cage without being invited. “We’re going to a party,” the girl said, batting her made-up eyes. “Wanna cum?”

The retroboy said, “Stop that, Jules. I saw him first.”

“Don’t matter if you did. He’s a russie, and russies don’t like boys.”

The retrokids wore casual but expensive clothes. No town togs from a closet extruder for them. And their hair, even in weightlessness, was perfect. Each wore jewelry. Their skin was unblemished. Their teeth sparkled. The expense of maintaining such a narrow age range—eleven to thirteen years, Fred guessed—had to be astronomical, and Fred wondered if there were juve facilities at Trailing Earth, or if retrokids had to return to Earth for it.

“Russes aren’t interested in boys or girls,” Fred said. “At least not in the way you mean.”

“Oh?” the retrogirl said with an uncanny display of innocence. “What way is that, Myr Russ?”

Fred glanced away. “You know what I mean.” Her ability to assume the mannerisms of a child was disarming. “As a sex worker, of course.”

“What’s a sex worker?”

Fred refused to play along, and his consternation greatly amused the boy, who said, “What’s wrong with sex workers, Myr Russ?”

“Nothing. At least not with adult sex workers.”

“But we
are
adults. I’m seventy-six years old, and Jules is even older.” The girl punched him for that, but he continued. “There is no actual child abuse going on here, only a harmless fantasy.”

“A perverse fantasy.”

“Same difference,” the boy said. “Fantasies are fantasies, and by their very nature they are harmless. They’re all in our heads, and what goes on in our heads is still legal, so far as I know.”

“It’s
not
perverse,” the girl said. “Adults have always had sex with children; look it up on the Evernet. In the old days, people used to think it ridiculous letting virgins try to figure things out on their own. Teaching them sex was part of a normal upbringing. It wasn’t until the modern era that repressive, patriarchal societies turned it into a crime. Perversion is taking pleasure in
stealing
a child’s innocence. I’m a grown woman who
plays
at innocence. It’s fun for all involved, and no harm done.”

“Oh, no?” Fred said. “I’ll bet you injure yourself every time you do it.”

“Do what, Myr Russ?” Again the girl fell into character, but Fred plowed on.

“Intercourse. A full-grown man, with a man’s size, strength, and passion, must injure an immature body like yours. That may not be child abuse, but at least it’s
self
abuse on your part.”

The girl drifted closer to Fred until he could smell her bubble-gum perfume, while the retroboy, Fred noticed, had made himself scarce and rejoined his companions in another cage.

“No need to worry about that, Myr Russ. I’ve got adult plumbing down here, and the truth of the matter is it doesn’t get stretched
enough
. Sometimes there’s nothing
finer
than a good stretch, something a big, strong,
passionate
russie oughtta know something about.”

Fred was all but trapped in the corner of his cage by the girl, and he looked around for escape. The waitress swam by and caught his eye. “Like I said,” he told the girl, “I’m busy.” He extricated himself from the corner and left the cage.

THE WAITRESS LED Fred to a stockroom in the back. Before she shut him in, she stuck a tiny cam/emitter to a carton bin. When Fred was alone, he swiped the cam/emitter, and to his surprise, instead of the elusive Charlie D., who should pop up but the proxy of Veronica TOTE.

“Don’t look so shocked, Commander,” the proxy said. “You must have been expecting me to show up sooner or later.” Veronica’s face had unpacked somewhat since their last meeting at the CITP node, and Fred saw what she must have looked like before joining the jar-headed TUGs. But it was small improvement; she had pronounced, coarse features. “Fred, Fred, Fred,” her proxy said, wagging its head. “Honestly, we didn’t bring you up here to start a race war with the donalds.”

“What
did
you bring me up here for?”

“I already told you, to take charge of a space gate, a task you’ve made no headway in achieving.”

“If you’ve been watching me, and you obviously have, then you know why.”

“Excuses, excuses. Listen, we know the donalds are repulsive people, but they have real juice around here, and we need their full cooperation, not their open hostility. You’ll have to set aside your personal baggage for a while and perform like the professional we know you are. Think you can do that?”

“In a word, no. Russes aren’t even allowed realbody access to the docks. My supervisors and coworkers despise me, and the TECA mentar is obviously in someone’s pocket.”

While Fred spoke, the proxy floated along the bins, inspecting star codes printed on the sides of liquor boxes. “Not a bad summary,” it said, “but no obstacle to someone with your abilities. Ah, here it is. Come over here and open this carton for me.”

Fred pulled the carton out of the bin and opened it. Inside was a small, silvery shipping shell, like a briefcase. Its sides were printed with antitampering glyphs: any attempt to open or disable the shell without an authorized ID would result in the total destruction of its contents.

“Go ahead,” the proxy said. “It’s keyed to you.”

Fred swiped the lock plate, and the shell unbolted with a series of snaps. He opened the lid and looked inside. “What the hell?” Inside the shell was a one-liter flask of Raspberry Flush. “You’ve brought me a piss starter?”

“Yes, I have. Tell me, Commander, have you ever heard of the ‘twin shackles’?”

“That’s nothing but an urban myth.”

“Is it? An urban myth like clone fatigue?” Fred winced, and Veronica-by-proxy went on, “Oh, I don’t know if clones can fall out of type, Commander, but I do know that all modern clones, even newly batched russes, are shipped with the twin shackles locked firmly in place. From the point of view of your masters, it would be stupid not to use them. Now, we don’t have
a clue what the donald’s ‘must’ is, or any clone’s must, for that matter. Applied People and Capias World guard their musts very closely. It’s probably some rare but innocuous chemical mixed into their food precursors. Any donald who goes off the reservation won’t have access to it, won’t even know it’s missing until his teeth start to fall out or he has a stroke or something.