Mind Over Ship (42 page)

IN SPACE GATE DN, where Fred patrolled with a dour russ named Daoud, the donald dockworkers seemed to compete with each other in being respectful to him. They literally scraped and bowed before him. Daoud made no comment about this. Actually, he made no small talk whatsoever and only addressed Fred as the job required. At one point a donald made a secret sign that let Fred know that a new Raspberry shipment had arrived. Fred ignored him.

A little while later, Top Ape, himself, arrived at the space gate, and Fred ignored him too. Later that day, when Fred finished his shift, he took a detour back to his wheel through a corridor he knew to have a number of EM shadows. Top Ape was waiting for him there with the tamperproof shell. Fred acknowledged him with a silent nod. Without going into any explanation, he swiped the donald the vid clip of Mando’s incident plus several more minor infractions he had found. Donalds used ocular implants instead of visors, and as Top Ape reviewed the recordings, his eyes took on a faraway look.

When he finished, he focused on Fred and said, “Such small crimes.”

“I agree,” Fred said. “That’s why I’m imposing only one twenty-four-hour demerit.”

Top Ape was intelligent enough not to protest.

Twenty-four hours passed, and when again a donald signaled Fred while on patrol, Fred took a break and passed through a transshipment bay. His Spectre picked the shell out from a bundle of similar ones, and he covertly swiped its lockplate as he went by. On his way back to the space gate, every donald he passed saluted him with his tail.

IT SHOULD HAVE been simple to complete: check uniform in mirror, check sidekicks, change stateroom setting from bedroom to day room, enable the door sentry, put on visor cap, leave stateroom. But he became distracted and had to begin the departure list from the beginning several times before he got it right.

“LUISA SAYS THEY’RE
all
failing,” Mando said. “Some of them already ‘died’ and are discarded. They’re pulling others off-line.”

That was a surprise. Mary had made the whole Leena problem seem like an act, a means of increasing ratings. Of course, she hadn’t said much of anything about anything lately except about the futility of trying to accomplish anything real in one’s life.

“What about Luisa, herself?” Fred said, unsure how to approach his fear. “Is she acting—strange?”

Mando took his time replying. He sipped beer from his bulb and drummed his fingers on the table. “No. I mean yes. She’s doing nothing strange, but she is depressed. That’s not strange; people are depressed sometimes. And you know our evangelines. For them life is more novela than fiesta, but they don’t stay depressed for long. At first I thought it was because I am here, but she only grows worse. And she says these crazy things.”

This was what Fred was waiting for. “What kind of crazy things?”

“Yesterday she says she is glad there are no more children in the world because children are the biggest lie of all.”

Fred let the statement roll around in his head. He could easily hear it coming from Mary. “What does it mean?”

Mando shrugged his shoulders.

FOR EACH OF the familiar russ sites, such as the
Wall of Honor
or
List of Lists
, there seemed to be a more ribald alternative—
Russes Behaving Badly
or
The Secret Lists.
What Fred saw on them was, frankly, shocking:
vurt feelies of russ-on-hink action, and even—inconceivably—russes torturing helpless prisoners! This was a whole other side to his germline. Even if they were only fantasies, they were as perverse as those of the retrokid prostitutes.

The scholarly journals were there:
Russ Neurobiology
and
Russology
. But unfamiliar ones, too, including the
New Russ Review
. It was in the
NRR
that Fred came across his first scholarly examination of the russ’s “Original Flaw.”

The idea that the russ germline had an original flaw was something Fred first came across way back in Russ School. It was a hammer that the older brothers wielded to keep the younger boys in line. There were many locker-room theories as to what it might have been, everything from a propensity to wet the bed to the disgusting practice of cramming things up one’s nose. Marcus had refuted all such theories and punished the boys who promoted them.

The
NRR
article made a case that Thomas A. Russ’s actual flaw had been obsessive/compulsive disorder, but that it had been identified and treated in utero. According to the article, Thomas A.’s fascination with list keeping was a vestigial echo of the full-blown disorder. His unstinting sense of loyalty to his clients was another, but a useful one that made his clones so commercially invaluable.

Because the DNA Privacy Act was still in effect in 2010 when Thomas A. was born, his parents were able to seal the records of his retrosomal gene patch. Not even his clones had the power to unseal them, and thus the article’s thesis was pure speculation.

Fred usually lay on his stateroom couch as he browsed the russ metaverse because twice he had grown faint from the immensity of his discoveries. And once he became so wrapped up in his exploration he had been late for duty muster. Another demerit, but well worth it.

The Original Flaw became something of an obsession for him, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. He felt the need to understand it before he could hope to understand clone fatigue. Yet, for all the thousands of references to it, he could not uncover a clear, definitive explanation of what it entailed. It seemed that everyone had a theory, but no one had the facts.

MANDO SAID, “I asked about emergency family leave.”

It came as no surprise; Fred had been thinking about doing the same. Maybe it was time to go down and handle the situation in person. “When do you leave?”

“I’m not leaving, at least not soon. Earth Girl says there are eight hundred russes already on the waiting list. Every brother with an evangeline spouse wants to go home. So, I have to wait my turn for a ship.”

“How long?”

“No sooner than six months, she says. Maybe not till my tour is up anyway.”

This was bad news for both of them. “What will you do?”

“I try to buy someone’s ticket on the Barter Board. If you have a ticket you go to the front of the line.”

After returning to his stateroom, Fred also put his name on the waiting list. And he instructed his sidekick to watch the Barter Board for ticket offers.

FROM THE DISTANT perspective of the docking spars, the Oships under construction in the Aria space yards had the appearance of frosted donuts surrounded by angry hornets. But now that he had actually crossed into the yards aboard a shuttle, he could make out the individual components. The donut frosting was the hull plating that giant builderbeitors were laying down on the habitation drum frames. The hornets were shuttles, tenders, and debris scuppers, as well as the chains of shipping shells that were hurtling toward capture fields. What looked like chaos from afar was actually Earth Girl’s highly choreographed traffic control.

The ESV
Garden Hybris
, Fred’s destination, was one of the Lucky Five. Its construction was complete, and the only craft visiting it were tenders and shuttles. When Fred’s shuttle docked at a hoop frame portal between two ponderous, revolving hab drums, his shuttle’s VIP passenger, a Myr Seetharaman Singh, thanked him for his service. But Fred informed him that his assignment was to accompany the mentars all the way to the vault.

“Splendid!” Singh said. “Then I will show you the ship.” The portly man was very animated and had taken a shine to Fred during the short trip over. He had even introduced Fred to the four mentars in his shipping shell who would accompany the
Hybris
to the
Gliese 581
system, the so-called Ymir Star. The mentars were less gracious than the man and had barely acknowledged Fred.

“I would appreciate that, Myr Singh,” Fred said. “This is my first time aboard one of these Oships.”

“In that case, it will be the
grand tour
!”

TWO DONALDS STEERED the shell from the docking portal, up a dozen levels, to one of the paste vaults where a reception by crew and
plankholders awaited them. Singh palmed the shell open, revealing the four paste canisters. They were placed side by side on a sticky table, and the ship’s captain officially welcomed them and Singh. Then he swore in the mentar that had been designated the ship’s first Decadal Mentar, a post overlapping the captain’s own term of office. Finally, the donalds installed the canisters in their individual cubbies inside the paste vault.

The cubbies were, in effect, mini-vaults within the larger vault. Each was shielded against cosmic rays, fire, and other hazards. They were linked to the ship via thick optical cables and required the palms of two people—the Decadal Captain and civilian President—to unlock.

Fred inspected each mentar canister’s seating in its cubby and its cable connections before shutting and locking it in.

THE MAJORITY OF
Hybris
passengers would spend most of the millennial voyage in biostasis in the stasis crypts. Therefore, it was necessary to maintain only two of the thirty-two tandem pairs of habitation drums in a quickened state. Singh showed Fred one of these called Nightlight. The hab drum wasn’t as grand or imposing as Fred had expected. It did have Earth Standard gravity that was much smoother than the rez wheels, but missing were the futuristic cities with broad boulevards, sports arenas, and public squares that were hyped up in the promotional vids. Instead, Fred found a loose collection of one- and two-story bungalows amid green and purple soybimi fields. Only one of the three core suns was ignited, leaving the distant end of the drum in darkness.

“Don’t let that fool you,” Singh said. “Every 250 years we will hold a General Awakening in which sleepers will be encouraged to quicken and stay up for ten or twenty years. During that time we will have great cities, music, parades. And forty years before reaching our destination star, there will be the
Grand
Awakening. Everyone will be up celebrating, scheming, fucking. Remember, Myr Russ, that there is no population ban on us, except what we impose on ourselves. By the time we arrive, we will have more than enough children to populate a planet.”

The second rotating drum they visited had no core suns at all. Instead, the hub area was dedicated to stasis crypts and other low- or no-gravity uses.

“Welcome to steerage,” Singh exclaimed as they entered a stasis crypt. As far as the eye could see were brackets designed to hold cryocapsules. But to Fred’s amazement, all but a few were still empty.

“We are in a quandary,” Singh said, gesturing at the empty crypt around them. “Unlike the other great ships, we never intended to take a full
quarter-million passengers. We planned to take only a third as many. So what to use this space for? We thought why not take some russies with us, and jennys and kellys, to be our service people when we arrive? Oh, don’t give me that sour eye, Myr Russ; we’re all clones aboard this ship. We, too, have suffered the slings and arrows of the mongrel world. In any case, your Alblaitor and Nicholas nixed the idea.”

Fred was not giving him any such sour eye; he was used to working for insensitive affs, special-edition clones or otherwise. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help saying, “Why not take some donalds along?”

“Oh, yes, donalds,” Singh said, holding his belly and laughing. “My brother, Million, would be so happy about that.” Then, continuing his story, he said, “Next we thought we would take extra raw materials, precursors, metals, rare elements, that sort of thing, in case we need them along the way. But now, with only five ships released to travel, this crypt space has become the most valuable real estate off-planet. Everybody wants to buy a berth. We could make second or third fortunes selling them, but we have to ask ourselves, what kind of people do we want as neighbors on our new world? Surely not frozen peasants.”

“NOW, I KNOW how we all feel about auto-shrinks,” said the anonymous russ, “but this one is different—it works!”

Fred had found a site called “Russ Self-Discovery.” It claimed that with a special combination of autopsyche and preffing technologies, it was possible to uncover the russ Original Flaw by exploring one’s own subconscious.

“Forget the rumors, ignore the hearsay,” the anonymous site creator exclaimed, “and go right to the source—your own mind. I did, and what I found shocked me. Now I understand the true threat of clone fatigue. Now I know why our Original Flaw is kept so secret. I sure as hell wouldn’t tell anyone, and I’m not going to tell you either. Instead, I offer the means for you to discover it on your own, in complete privacy.

“This is no joke, my brothers. I’m deadly serious about it, and if you don’t have the stomach for the hard truth, please stay away from this method.”

Fred was curious enough to download the method to his Spectre, but not foolhardy enough to launch it. After all, its creator and the dozens of positive testimonials were anonymous. But as soon as he had downloaded the method, Marcus called.

“Good evening, Myr Londenstane,” Marcus said. It was the local mirror Marcus and so there was no lag time in their conversation. “I called to warn you that your personality is under attack.”