“Isn’t that fascinating?”
The banging on his door continued, and the mentar said, “Do you intend to board the ship?”
“That’s a good question. Anything else?”
The mentar paused, then added, “Yes, TECA authorities have asked me to inform you that if you intend to remain on emergency leave status but not return to Earth aboard the Fentan, you cannot remain in Wheel Nancy. We need the accommodations for incoming personnel. You will have to move to a civilian residential sector and be responsible for your own rent.”
“Amazing.”
The banging ceased and was replaced by scratching sounds.
“Is that all, Earth Girl?”
“Yes.”
Fred ended the call with a swipe and went to the door. He made a fist and cocked his arm, intending to punch whoever was there in the face. But when he swung the door open, there was no one there. Someone had scratched a crude hangman’s noose into the surface of the door, and Fred wondered idly how hanging would work in weightlessness as he shut the door and returned to the couch.
He was hungry, but the last time he’d gone to the commissary, even the dorises had shunned him.
THE THING ABOUT not thinking about things was that while you were busy not thinking about certain things, you were actually thinking about other things. So when the call from Marcus came, Fred took a break from not thinking and answered it.
“There’s still time for you to board the Fentan,” it said.
“That’s very interesting.”
Marcus refused to be put off and continued. “There have been sporadic incidents between russes and donalds out in the spars.”
“Define incidents.”
“Fights.”
“What a shame.”
“You have no intention of leaving the station, do you?”
“I honestly don’t know, Marcus. I don’t see what I would gain one way or another. For the first time in my life I don’t know what to do.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
“Give it a shot.”
“The Original Flaw.”
“What about it? You going to tell me what it is?”
“Not I. In your present frame of mind, I doubt you would believe me anyway. The person responsible for sealing that information in the first place will tell you.”
A third holo opened in Fred’s crowded stateroom. It was a life-sized sim of Agnes Russ. She wore the old-fashioned pants and blouse, big hair, and kindly smile Fred remembered from Russ School.
“Mother?” he said, sitting up.
“Yes, Freddy, it’s me. Marcus tells me you’ve made a mess of things up here, and he asked me to come up and straighten you out a little.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“First off, Tommy never diddled children, so get that out of your mind this instant. It’s garbage, and it’ll only poison you. Now, what I’m about to tell you is in the utmost, strictest confidence, and you must promise me you’ll never tell anyone. Not even Tommy knew it, and it could only harm the rest of your brothers. Do you promise me, Fred?”
What else could he say? “Yes, Mother.”
“Good.” The sim gazed at him with a mixture of skepticism and affection. “Honestly, boy, how you could ever believe those disgusting lies is beyond me. You’re so much like your father, worry and worry about every little thing until you’ve made a mountain out of air. It’s what killed him in the end.” She shook her head. “If you must know what was wrong with Tommy, I’ll tell you. He was a congenital moron, or would have been. When I was carrying him, they had just started finding and fixing birth defects while the baby was still in the womb. A DNA scan discovered that my fetus had Gorman’s Syndrome, a rare genetic brain disease. Marcus, explain to Fred what GS was.”
“Yes, myr,” Marcus said. “Gorman’s Syndrome is the faulty expression of a cluster of genes responsible for manufacturing the calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein Kinase II. Its function in the pathway responsible for —”
“Thank you, Marcus. What the defect does is it makes it hard to learn things. To learn anything.”
“Processing long-term synaptic potentiation, or LTP, into long-term memory,” Marcus added.
“Thank you, Marcus. Anyway, it’s a severe mental handicap. Children who have it never learn to speak. They can’t tie their own shoes or hardly feed themselves. Even with the best care they rarely live beyond ten or so years. That’s what my doctor told me.
“Your father wanted me to have an abortion, but my doctor told me about this new treatment. She said that GS was the result of only three defective genes, and they could try to insert normal ones into my fetus and maybe fix the problem in the womb. It was risky, but I loved you before you were born, and I decided to do it. It worked beautifully, and you — Tommy was born with normal intelligence.
“Your father and I were thrilled and very thankful, and we chose to seal Tommy’s medical records so he could grow up as a normal kid without this condition hanging over his head everywhere he went. There was a so-called DNA Bill of Rights back then.
“Then he grew up and joined the Secret Service and died saving President Taksayer, and she picked him to be the first commercial clone donor, and nobody knew of his original handicap, or they surely wouldn’t have picked him, no matter how heroic he was. But the genetic repair was stable and passed through to his clones and no one was the wiser, not even Applied People. Applied People still doesn’t know. That’s why you must keep this secret.
“It was only later, after your father died, and the first cloned lines were being so shamelessly exploited that I helped to found your Benevolent Brotherhood to protect you kids’ rights. I turned Tommy’s early medical records over to Marcus, including those covering the prenatal repair, but made him swear never to reveal them. It could ruin your germline, even today. Especially today.
“So, there you have it, Fred, the big secret. If we didn’t fix Tommy, his life would have been a brief nightmare, and none of you would exist. But we had him repaired, and though his life was still too short, it was a decent, full, normal life. He had friends and girlfriends, was attentive to us, never got mixed up with bad influences, and he died serving his country. Your Original Flaw is a profound learning disorder, but it was permanently fixed.”
“And I might add,” Marcus put in, “that there is a zero probability of a ‘clone fatigue’ capable of reversing the repair in a mature brain.”
“So, do everyone a big fat favor, son, and get over it already. Quit acting so self-destructive. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“All right then. Be good; stay safe; I love you. Marcus, take me home.”
“I love you too, Mother,” Fred said as the apparition faded from sight. At first Fred felt such a rush of relief he fell back on the couch, drunk and dizzy, the happiest man alive. I’m not a bad man, he told himself over and over. Life was possible again.
After a little while, Marcus said, “There’s still time to board the Fentan.”
“Yes, of course,” Fred said, jumping to his feet.
“You’ll go then?”
The decision was suddenly easy. “Yes.” He looked around his cluttered stateroom. “I’ll just collect my things.” His bag was still packed and ready to go.
“Good. You’ve made the right decision.”
“Thank you, Marcus.”
The mentar signed off, and Fred grabbed his travel bag and went to the door. But he stopped before reaching it when another thought crept into his mind, something Marcus had told him about the hoax russ metaverse, how a mentar could reconstruct all of human media in a day. Was it possible that Marcus had made a counterfeit Agnes Russ in order to manipulate him?
All of the goodness Fred had so recently reclaimed leaked away in a moment. If the Original Flaw was such a goddamn deep secret, faithfully kept for a hundred years even from Thomas A., why would they reveal it to him? Promise me, Freddy, you won’t tell anyone. Yes, Moth
er. How brief his absolution.
Fred dropped his bag and just stood there, frozen in place again. After a while, when Marcus called back to check on him, he didn’t answer but staggered to his couch, his mind stuttering like a faulty switch. Then out of the blue, a woman’s voice spoke: “I suppose that in a dark room, even a dim bulb feels bright.”
“Mary?” The FUS was active, Mary was watching him. Her surroundings had changed; she was no longer in her Starke suite. He recognized their apartment. “You’re at home! Where have you been? Are you all right?”
She waved away his questions. “I only made this update to say good-bye, Fred. They wanted to biostase us, but we refused. I am mentally competent and so have the right to decide my own fate. My sisters and I have seen through the illusion of meaning. There is no meaning to life, Fred. There is no heaven or hell, no afterlife. And since we live in a society in which we are banned even from bearing children, there is no biological afterlife either. Knowing all this is killing my sisters, and it will take me, too, very soon.”
“You’re wrong! About there being no meaning, and about your mental competence. Obviously, you are temporarily insane, and as your spouse, I have the authority to —”
“You have no authority over me, Fred. I am my own person. Besides, you couldn’t change things even if you tried. Stay up there and do your duty. That at least has meaning for you. This is good-bye, Fred. This is the end.”
“Don’t talk like that! Listen to me!” But she began to slip away again into her darkness. “You say you updated the FUS in order to say good-bye. Obviously, then, good-byes mean something to you. Your feelings for me mean something.”
“If you must hold on to something, Fred, then hold on to that.” With those final words, the FUS made a holo salute and withdrew into a passive state, and all of Fred’s cajoling and arguments were so much noise.
The FUS holo showed a little of Mary’s surroundings; a pair of legs intruded into the holospace, and Fred zoomed the view out as far as possible. Another evangeline was sitting there, Cyndee, who had helped them leave the prison. A third evangeline in the room was probably Georgine, who he had not met. They were placeholders, not active sims, as was a jenny nurse who moved in and out of the holospace.
Fred paced his room trying to come up with a plan. He picked up his travel bag, but set it down again. Think! He ordered his genetically repaired moron brain — Think! But thinking, like all his not-thinking, got him nowhere. His brain was the wrong muscle. He picked up his bag. Love was the only answer. Mary needed him. He wasn’t helping her by staying; at least by going there was some minuscule chance of reaching her in time.
Someone knocked frantically at his door. Fred dropped the bag, made a fist, cocked his arm, and flung the door open. He threw a punch but pulled it back before it landed. Mando was at his door, in his service uniform, and it looked like someone had already punched him. His left eye was bruised and swollen half shut.
“Fred! Why are you still here?” Mando said. “Why aren’t you aboard the Fentan?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Fred, Fred, Fred,” Mando said, pushing past him into the room. He glanced all around, saw Mary’s FUS and the spacefaring donald, spotted the travel bag. He picked it up and thrust it into Fred’s hands. “We must hurry.”
“Yes,” Fred said, “let’s go.” Fred swiped away the holos, and they left the room. In the hall, the walls on either side of his door had been marked with hateful words and glyphs.
“Forget about that,” Mando said and pulled Fred by the arm.
“Wrong way,” Fred said. “The spokeway lifts are that way.”
But Mando was insistent. “We’ll take a utility lift to the hub. The main spokeways aren’t safe.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Who hit you?” Fred said. “Was it a brother? Do you know his name?”
“It’s not important. Getting you on that ship is important.” He led Fred down little-used corridors to a service lift. They passed only a few startled dorises and aslams along the way.
“Wait a minute,” Fred said as the elevator doors opened. “Why are you in a TECA uniform?”
“Because I am on duty.”
“But why aren’t you on the Fentan? You were supposed to board days ago.” Then the truth hit Fred. “No one would sell you another homerun. You sold me your own ticket!”
“Yes, and if we don’t hurry, it will all be for nothing. Come, my crazy friend.”
He tried to pull Fred into the elevator car, but Fred stood fast. “What about Luisa? Don’t you want to go to her? It’s your ticket, not mine. How dare you put my heart before your own?”
Pain flashed across Mando’s damaged face. “There is no time, Fred. When you are on the ship, call me and we will talk.”
Fred shrugged him off. “We’ll talk now.”
“You are stubborn, my brother. Let us compromise and talk on the way.”
“No!”
When Mando saw that Fred would not budge, he said, “I love Luisa more than breathing. But you, Fred, you and Mary. How can I say this? My brothers say you are sick, that you have the clone fatigue, and that is why you must humiliate us before the world. But I say they’re wrong. You and Mary are special. What happens to you matters to all of us, to me and Luisa. If you or Mary die, we all die. You can’t stay here any longer. Besides, I promised you a ticket, and a russ keeps his word. Now can we go?”
Fred joined him in the lift, and they rode it to the hub where they found a shuttle to the Fentan’s spar. They were silent the entire trip out, and Fred made a quick list of all his options. When at last they reached the Fentan gangway and processing station, Fred grabbed a handrail and halted himself.
“What’s wrong?” Mando said. “Only a little farther.”
“Not for me, my friend. I’ve been thinking.”
“Fred!”
“No, shut up and listen. You are a true brother, Armando Mendez, and a true friend. You helped me see what I need to do. No, don’t speak. I wish I could save all of us. I don’t think I can, but maybe I can save a few.” He shoved his travel bag into Mando’s arms. “You’re going back, not me. If they’re still alive when you get there, do what you can.”
Before Mando could object, Fred said, “Earth Girl, come in.”
“Listening.”
“Transfer my passage aboard the Fentan to Armando Mendez.”
“You can’t!” Mando said.
“It’s already done.”
FRED TOOK A cart to a spot near his old space gate. Top Ape was waiting for him in an EM shadow with two of the tamperproof cases. Fred swiped them and said, “Make all the bullshit stop.”
Then he boarded a shuttle for the civilian port. He used his Spectre to send a message to Veronica TOTE to meet him at once. On his way to the Elbow Room he did some port traffic analysis and booked a room in a civieside rez wheel.
BY THE TIME Fred reached the stockroom, Veronica TOTE’s proxy was waiting for him. “Smart decision, Commander.”
“Wait until you hear my conditions.”
If the real Veronica TOTE was as exhausted as her proxy looked, she hadn’t slept in days. “By all means,” she said, “let’s hear your conditions.”
“First, tell me if I’m reading the traffic data correctly. I see a lot of musical chairs with the cryocapsules. Have you changed your mind about the Chernobyl?”
A thin smile spread across the pirate’s face. “Why, in fact, we have. We took your comments to heart and did a little research, and you were right about both the Chernobyl and the Hybris. When you’re right, Commander, you’re right. Fortunately, we’re a nimble organization, and we should be able to handle the last-minute switch, especially now that you’ve returned to ride herd on our monkeyboys.”
“About that. Tell me something: In this new society of yours, this new center of power in the universe, will there be room in it for clones?”
From the look on the proxy’s face, this was a question that had never
crossed Veronica’s mind. “I doubt Applied People or Capias World or any other human resources agency will choose to operate there.”
“I’m not talking about the companies. I’m talking about independent iterants, ex-commercial clones.”
The proxy gave it some thought. “I suppose there could be a place for runaway clones, but it’s not something I could decide on my own.”
“That’s my first condition,” Fred said. “After you take over the ship, you will issue a public proclamation that all independent clones are entitled to full citizenship and equal rights in your new colony.” Then he remembered something Mary’s FUS had said. “Including full unrestricted reproductive rights.”
“Clones having babies? That’s a tall order.”
“Watch it get taller. Second, you will immediately place into biostasis my wife and her two sisters, Georgine and Cyndee. I can tell you where you can find all three of them right now. You’ll also biostase Luisa Mendez of Cozumel, Mexico. I can give you a positive ID.”
“They’ll refuse. I understand that all ’leens are refusing that.”
“I really don’t care. You’ll kidnap them if necessary and do it anyway. Kidnapping is a TUG specialty, isn’t it? Once that’s done, you will hide them from the authorities, but you will inform their spouses or designated others and give them the decision of how and when to quicken them.” Fred paused to review what he had said, and he added, “And let the spouses know it was me, Mr. Clone Fatigue, who so ordered it.
“Third, put Mary in a cryocapsule and smuggle her up here to the Hybris with your own stowaways.”
The proxy was incredulous. “Anything else?”
Fred thought for a second. “No, that’ll do. But when you take Mary, be prepared; my wife keeps company with a diplomat-class bee.”
The overtired proxy shook its head. “You know, Commander, there’s been a fair bit of discussion around the War Table about whether or not you really have fallen out of type.”
Mind Over Ship Page 37