“In the meantime, I suggest we encourage all our evangelines to have themselves placed in protective biostasis until a cure is found.”
“Do it,” Zoranna said. “How many are we talking about?”
“All of them.”
“The entire batch? Ten thousand?”
“Yes, all of them around the globe.”
Zoranna glanced at the dog on the carpet. “Our people blame us for this, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Can you issue a company-wide letter of compassion and promise that we’ll get to the bottom of it?”
Nicholas said, “Already taken care of.”
“This is it, isn’t it?”
“This is what?”
“The attack Starke warned us to expect.”
“I believe so.”
“And Starke was involved? She may have been the architect?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ellen Starke owns the Leena franchise through her production company, right?”
“Yes, Burning Daylight.”
“A coincidence?”
“Perhaps.”
“The hollyholo Leenas were based on three actual evangelines who just so happen to be Ellen’s full-time companions.”
“It does make one wonder.”
ELLEN SAID, “DO they know? How are they taking it?” The toddler hurried as fast as her little legs could carry her to Mary’s suite at the north end of the main floor. Cabinet was at her side, and the dog, giraffe, and a nurse trailed behind.
“They know,” Cabinet replied, “but their reaction is rather flat.”
“Shock?”
“Perhaps.”
Ellen banged her tiny fists on Mary’s door. She was just able to reach the handle but could not turn it, and she glared at the nurse behind her. The nurse scrambled to open the door, and Ellen went in unannounced. She found all three of her companions in the living room. They were seated around the coffee table. A holocube was open on the table depicting the dead evangeline lying in a bed in the death artist’s breezeway. The dead woman’s upper body was enclosed in a trauma trolley, and a medical team of people and machines was frantically working on her.
“What are they doing?” Ellen asked Cabinet.
“Trying to retrieve her.”
“Trying? Trying?”
“They have her on life support, but she’s not responding.”
Ellen went to Mary and clung to her robe, but the evangeline didn’t seem to notice. She had a faraway look in her eyes, as did Georgine and Cyndee. “Mary,” the girl pleaded, tugging at her sleeve, “look at me.”
She beat her fists on Mary’s leg until Mary turned and said, “It’s pointless, you know. They can retrieve her heart. They can retrieve her lungs. But the flame has gone out.” With that, Mary turned away again.
“If they can’t revive that woman,” Ellen said to Cabinet, “then they must immediately put her into biostasis.”
Lyra appeared in the room and said, “I agree, but that would go contrary to Myr Oakland’s wishes.”
Ellen turned to her former mentar and said, “Oh, Lyra, thank you for coming. You must tell them to biostase that poor woman immediately.”
The mentar replied, “Shelley Oakland has a living will that clearly refuses all life support and retrieval measures, including biostasis.” She gestured to the holocube, where the doctors and jennys labored. “Therefore, this effort is disallowed, and we are suing to have it stopped.”
Ellen was stunned. “Lyra, how can you say that? I gave you to the Sisterhood to assist the germline, not destroy it.”
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.
Habeas Corpus
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 t
he 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.”
Meewee shrugged his shoulders and said, “Fish die.”
The sight of the annoying little man pretending to be disinterested was so comical that Mary laughed. “Is that how I appear to you, Bishop Meewee? So . . . fatalistic? You nearly bawled when Ellen drained the ponds.”
“Even fatalists have the good manners to say good-bye.”
That struck a chord somewhere deep within Mary. “Is that what this is all about? Ellen’s way of saying good-bye?”
Meewee thought about it. In a way it was a means of letting the evangelines go, while at the same time keeping them forever. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but you could call it Ellen’s way of saying good-bye. It certainly would make it easier on her if you do the scan.”
“Well, I guess I owe her that much.” Mary turned to the others. “I don’t suppose they’ll mind one way or another. Hello, Georgine! Cyndee! Wake up! We’re going on another picnic.”
AFTER DAYS OF unanswered phone calls and no FUS update, Fred grew so desperate to contact Mary that he nearly asked Marcus for help. But he had lost all faith in the Brotherhood mentar, so he ordered a costly Whereis search. But not even it could locate her. She had dropped off the global grid. Her last verified location had been the Starke Manse. That might have simply meant that she entered a Starke null room, but knowing her recent history with visola, Fred doubted it. So he did the only thing left that he could think of doing; he called the Starke house hold, and seventeen minutes later a mini-mirror of the family’s mentar uploaded itself into his TECA sidekick. It appeared in his stateroom in its middle-aged persona, not the elderly woman he had encountered on Lake Michigan.
Mind Over Ship Page 33