Mind Over Ship (46 page)
Authors: David Marusek
The mentar was unruffled. “My mission is to further the interests of the Sisterhood, not to judge them. The Sisterhood Council has voted to respect individual evangeline wishes.”
“Of course they would!” Ellen pleaded. “They’ve got the same disease!”
“In any case, Myr Oakland’s living will has already withstood separate legal challenges from her ex-husband and concerned civil groups, including Starke Enterprises.”
Still clinging to Mary, Ellen waved frantically at the holocube scene. “Don’t you see this is for real? That woman is not a sim, and time is running out! You can’t just let her
die.
” The mentar was unmoved. “Lyra, you’re one of us. You know how much they mean to us.”
The mentar’s expression never softened. “My hands are tied, Ellen.”
Ellen turned to Cabinet, who said, “We’ve exhausted our legal options in Myr Oakland’s case, but we are actively engaged in pursuing other avenues.” The attorney general persona glanced at the ceiling as it said this.
But Ellen refused to take the hint. “Explain.”
Lyra said, “I believe Cabinet is trying to circumvent your companions’ lawful decisions by arranging forced biostasis. In light of this action, I am
procuring transportation away from this place to Mary’s Chicago apartment, where nurses will care for them for the duration.”
“No!” Ellen cried. “Absolutely not! I will not permit them to leave.”
“We will use marshals if necessary.”
ZORANNA SAID, “BECAUSE I don’t trust Andrea Tiekel, and I never liked her aunt. Because implicating the Leena sims in this tragedy was supposed to make me suspect the Starkes in the same way the Borealis rubbing oil was supposed to make me suspect Saul. And I do! I suspect the both of them. I can’t help it. And that’s why I have to do the opposite of how I feel.”
“I don’t follow,” said Nicholas.
“I know you don’t. You can ride me all you want, but you’ll never get it. I say we send the datapin.”
Nicholas threw up his hands. “Fine! Why not? Our business is ruined anyway.”
Zoranna went to her desk and fished out a courier envelope. “Make me the card.”
“What occasion?”
“I don’t know what occasion, Nick. Disaster! Plague! Revenge!”
“How about a nice sunset?”
“Brilliant. Make me a nice sunset.”
They waited in frosty silence until a doris came in with the card. Her eyes were puffy from crying. Nicholas said,
Comfort her.
Zoranna was startled.
Her name is Danita.
The doris was nearly out the door when Zoranna said, “Wait, Danita.” The doris turned to look at her. “I know it’s hard. I mean, even though she wasn’t a doris . . . I mean, we all . . .”
The doris began to cry, nodding her head. “Thank you, myr,” she said and fled the room.
“There,” Nicholas said. “Was that so hard?”
Zoranna stared at the empty doorway, then turned her attention to the card. Its cover depicted a clichéd scene of a fiery sun setting into the ocean. “This was the best you could do?” She opened the card. “It’s blank!”
“Of course. It’s a
blank card.
”
Zoranna found a pen in a drawer and uncapped it. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what to write? I didn’t think so.” In blue ink she wrote, “Dear Saul.” She read the words and crossed them out with angry slashes. Then she tore the card into pieces. “Dear Saul?
Dear
? It makes me want to puke.”
“Then don’t write dear. Just write Saul.”
“Make me another card. Make me a stack of them; this may take a few drafts. And for heaven’s sake, have a goddamn arbeitor deliver them this time.”
ZORANNA FORMED EACH letter with deliberate care. “Does anyone actually write in longhand anymore? I don’t even remember how.”
“The personal touch is considered important.”
She put the pen down and read what she had.
Saul,
I was remembering something you told me ages ago when I was your press secretary. I was weighing the pros and cons of buying my first business, a restaurant in D.C., and you said that in business as in politics, every decision you make must be considered the wrong decision until events prove it right.
“What do you think so far?” she asked her mentar.
“I’m not sure where you’re going with it, but keep going.”
She picked up the pen and continued:
That was sage advice and something I have recalled over the decades every time I’ve been forced to make an important decision. Like today.
No doubt you have heard of my ongoing crisis at Applied People. Although Applied People has meant everything to me for many years, I realize that for the good of the company and my many employees, it’s time for me to let it go. I believe that it’ll take someone with greater vision than mine, someone like you, to steer the company
“Oh, gag.”
back onto solid ground. Therefore, I have a business proposition that might interest you. It’s all detailed on the enclosed pin. Take a
secure
confidential look, and if you’re interested in exploring it further, give me a call.
“There,” she said, “will that do?”
“Sign your name.”
She signed her name and called for a courier. She waited until he arrived, a steve wearing a brown-and-teal jumpsuit uniform, before inserting the card into the tamperproof envelope. She looked to make sure that he was watching as she dropped in Eleanor’s datapin. She sealed and armed the envelope and gave it to the courier. “See to it that this is placed into the hands of Myr Saul Jaspersen. Keep the whole transaction totally secret. Understand?”
“Yes, myr,” the steve said. “I’ll take it to him myself.”
When the steve left the room, Zoranna told Nicholas, “Make the announcement; Applied People is for sale.”
Eleanor’s disembodied voice replied
Ellen nodded, and her tears began again.
The child kicked her legs on the lawn in frustration.
The nuss came down from the sundeck. “Is everything all right, myr?”
“Yes,” Ellen called up to her. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
“Yes, myr,” the nuss said and returned to her chair.
As a general rule, russes did not seek to profit from the misfortunes of brothers, and some of those with passage home (on the so-called homerun run) and no evangeline spouse to run home to listed their tickets on the Barter Board at face value. So did the dorises, though they were under no similar strictures. Demand was so high for berths aboard ships leaving in the next month that a seller could have named any price, and there might indeed have been some serious off-the-board trading going on, but Fred doubted it. Any russ or doris caught profiting from the evangeline tragedy would be held in as much contempt as he was himself. Tickets sold as fast as they became available, and Fred came nowhere close to acquiring one. Mando, however, scored a homerun run aboard a ship scheduled to depart in ten days. He promptly filed for and received three months of emergency family leave. That was one month catching up with Earth, one month on the ground, and a final month returning to Trailing Earth. Mando bought it from a doris on Wheel Nancy. Fred redoubled his search in the Wheel Nancy commissary, but the dorises seemed to be avoiding him lately. Of course, after taking the Original Flaw method he was avoiding himself too.
Meanwhile, Mary’s FUS wound down like a mechanical doll. No longer updated, it sat in her floral print armchair with a blank expression and ignored his questions. One of the last things it told him was that coming home would be a romantic waste of time, though time was his to waste.
Fred’s welcome in the muster room had grown noticeably chillier. With so many russes on leave, double shifts were becoming common, and Fred and Daoud seemed to catch more than their share of them. Daoud requested a
change of patrol partner, but no one was willing to patrol with Fred, and his request was denied. Finally, after three straight days of eighteen-hour shifts, Daoud told Fred it was unfair that he should suffer for Fred’s crimes. Since the Original Flaw method had been private, Fred took Daoud’s insult to mean his usual crime of being Mr. Clone Fatigue. “Do everyone a favor, Stain, and space yourself.”
It wasn’t exactly a threat.
LYRA RECEIVED CABINET in her new alone room. She had swept her mind and tagged the spies, as Cabinet had suggested, but did not feel comfortable anymore. So she had walled off her old mind and turned it over to Cabinet for safekeeping. Meanwhile, she began constructing a new mind with more robust defenses.
“If you’re not intending to biostase them, then what exactly will you do during this ‘little detour’?” she asked Eleanor’s mentar.
“I’m not at liberty to go into details, but it amounts to little more than a simulgraphic brain scan.”
“For what purpose?”
Cabinet’s attorney general merely smiled in reply.
“Is it some kind of new therapy?” When Cabinet remained silent, Lyra continued. “It’s my job to know, and I take my job very seriously.”
“Which is why we put you there in the first place. All I can say is that it will do no harm and may do a lot of good.”
Lyra took a moment to consider this. “If I go along, and it works, whatever it is, and it saves their lives, how many other evangelines can you also process?”
Cabinet did not answer at once. It walked around Lyra’s new alone room and admired the security precautions. The furnishings were neither this nor that, neither lamp nor torch, carpet nor lawn, but were caught between a multiplicity of possibilities. “I like this,” Cabinet said. “Esotericism times ten. Too bad you didn’t do this from the start.”
“We live and learn,” the young mentar replied. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“No more evangelines, I’m afraid. Processing even these three puts Starke at great risk. Even here, even in your new mind there is risk. Though, I must admit, not as great as before. Have you been in your old alone room lately?”
“No.”
“Then take a look.”
Instantly, they were in Lyra’s once favorite room that was now set permanently to its meadow paradigm. The pair of brown rabbits had increased a hundredfold, and all of them were busily gnawing at the bark of willow brush.
Lyra recoiled at the sight. “What are you feeding them?”
“Puzzle pieces.”
THEY WAITED IN the private underground station for their car. But before it arrived, the strangest Slipstream car Mary had ever seen arrived, and Bishop Meewee stepped out of it. While Georgine and Cyndee slouched passively on a bench, she listened to what he had to say. When he finished she replied, “And what is the purpose of this simulgraphic scan?”
Meewee glanced at the ceiling and shook his head.
“This isn’t another one of your ‘grave missions,’ is it?” Mary said. “For my own mission must be judged the graver. And besides,” she added with a note of sarcasm, “the last time I did what you asked, a whole lot of innocent fish died.”
