by Jim Stark
I promised to talk to Lilly Petrosian, and I never did, she remembered. The problem was, Lilly and her father were getting to be “friends” now, and Venice wasn't at all sure she was in favor of that. It was enough that her mother had men “friends” without her father getting into that kind of thing too. She had been meaning to visit her Aunt Julia on the warm, but her dad was really negative on that ... at least if it meant Venice's going out to Victor-E. Actually, Aunt Julia had been spending a lot of time at the Wilson Lake lodge the last couple of weeks, ministering to the hermit, or at least being with him when she wasn't working at the clansite.
Everyone now knew that Victor was talking again, even if he wasn't saying anything publicly. He was being besieged with requests for interviews from all over the world, but he had granted not one. He'd told Julia “never,” and Julia told Patriot Security, and that was the end of it. Everyone also knew that he was dying. His snail-mail was up to twenty bags a day, and his Netmail was in the order of a hundred thousand arrivals per week—not that he ever opened his N-mail.
Venice didn't think that was right, actually. “He should talk to people while he still can,” she had mentioned to her mother, a couple of times. “There's no rule anybody has to talk to people,” her mother had countered. Venice had almost cut back with a snarly comment about how Victor had gone to something of an extreme proving that seldom-debated point, but she had stopped herself—and was proud of herself for having done so.
Maybe he'll talk to me! the thought suddenly struck her. That opened her eyes right up again. She'd done occasional columns for her school's internal Netnews program, and she had many times wondered if she might end up being a journalist. She liked thinking up really good questions and asking them to people ... and she certainly was not going to waste her whole life being a rich lazyperson ... like Mom, she couldn't help thinking.
"But how?” she asked herself aloud. Venice knew she could simply take advantage of her family connections to try and talk with Victor, and she figured she could likely guilt him into an interview, but a “real journalist” wouldn't approach it like that ... unless she really had to, she thought.
"Face with Captain Lillian Petrosian at Victor-E,” she said to her MIU, “Netsite on file.” She felt very grown up and professional to use the word “Captain,” like it happened every day, and the sound of the word “Victor-E” had always stirred the reporter magic in her. That's what's the most fun about journalism, she thought ... the feelings. It wasn't exactly what she imagined a Human Three perspective would be, but she was still a kid, barely Human Two ... and besides, she reviewed, Human Threes actually enjoy their feelings more than adults that are Human Two. Nothing wrong with that.
"Well hello, Venice,” said Lilly's image on the MIU. “How are things?"
"Fine,” said Venice. She wanted to launch right into the meat, but she had been on what she called an “un-me” campaign lately, an effort to let other people play with the agenda too. “How's your life tooting along?” she asked, trying to sound interested and hoping for a short answer ... and one that doesn't include her and Dad getting to be ... like friends.
"Keeping busy,” said Lilly. “Anything particular on your mind, or did you just call to—"
"When's your next LieDeck-verification session with Mr. Helliwell?” asked Venice before Lilly could get to the predictable end of her sentence.
Lilly commanded her LV schedule onto her screen. “On the—uh—on March ... the fourteenth,” she said. “A week from tomorrow. Why?"
"Can I come with you for that?” asked Venice. “I wouldn't listen to the LV part, of course, but I thought ... well, I thought maybe I could talk to him for a few minutes after you're done ... for my life profile, you know? For my kids and grandchildren when they get here. Would that be—"
"It's not up to me,” said Lilly. “Why don't you ask your Aunt Julia ... she seems to be his gatekeeper these days."
"Gatekeeper?"
"It's just a term,” explained Lilly. “You know how the Patriot Security people at your front gate control who gets onto the estate?"
"Yeah...?"
"Well, Julia sort of plays that role with Victor—not like who gets in the lodge, but who gets to talk to him, you know? He's pretty busy these days, Julia told me, and he's ... well, he's not getting any better."
Venice looked sad, and felt sad. It wasn't that Lilly couldn't or wouldn't help; it was death. Venice hated the word and resented the very idea of it. Life was a gyp, sort of. You get to live for a while, and then ... you're dead. She remembered the awful day in 2027 when she'd learned about people dying for real, including herself. She was six years old at the time, and she'd cried for days, wondered every night whether she'd even wake up the next morning. But that was part of the idea of doing your life profile—to get around death, not in the material sense or in any divine sense, but at least your descendants got to know their ancestors even after they'd fallen into that ghastly pit called death. She wished her Grandpa Whiteside had done his life profile before that crazy Christian preacher shot him. “Okay,” she said finally. “Thanks, Lilly,” she added, as sincerely as she could. “Net, down, now."
It turned out that Julia was over at the lodge, and Victor had only just awakened from an afternoon nap. He was almost finished the work he'd been doing to prepare for some meeting or other, Julia told Venice. And after a hollered reality-check between Victor's living-room MIU, where Julia was, and his bedroom, where Victor was, Julia told her niece that Victor was quite agreeable to a short visit. “He says like as long as it's just for your life profile,” Julia had stressed, “and you use like a video camera and not an MIU or a Sniffer,” she explained. “And it has to be done in his bedroom where there's no MIU, he says, and it can't get shown to anybody at all till after he's dead, he said."
Venice winced at that last part, but agreed. She didn't understand the why of all that, but on reflection, she didn't really care. In fact, she was elated. She ran quickly out of the house, and told a Patriot agent to drive her out to the lodge with such urgency that she—the agent—thought there must be an emergency in progress out there. Eight minutes later, Venice jumped out of the Patriot van, ran up to the lodge and went right into her father's bedroom on the first floor. That room was huge, and it was like a museum—in fact that's what Randy used to call it when he lived at home: “Dad's museum.” There were perhaps one hundred different electronic products in there, samples of maybe half the products that Whiteside Tech had turned out over the last half-century, and all of it was in perfect working order ... or so her father had always bragged.
She picked out two old-fashioned videotape cameras that had plugs for the wall—she didn't want to rely solely on batteries that could croak and just ruin everything—and she made sure they were loaded with tape. She also took two of those fold-up tripods her dad had taught her how to use when she was just eight. One of the cameras would be trained on Victor, the other on herself, for what she had learned was called a “2-shot.” She would transfer the images and sound to digital format later, and edit it herself. That'll be fun, she thought as she gathered her low-tech haul into a big bath towel for transport up the stairs. I bet this'll get shown all over the world ... after he dies.
Chapter 37
TWO BOSSES
Wednesday, March 9, 2033—6:15 p.m.
Through the day, Becky and Venice had both watched the silent progress of one of those late-winter/early-spring snows, with big, fat, sticky flakes that float down rather than fall from the sky—the kind that almost beg to be rolled into a snowman. Becky had watched the slow-motion drama from the windows of the manor house, wishing the hours would move along a little bit faster than the clock allowed. Venice, who normally loved school, had been distracted all day, to the point where her teachers had noticed, and commented.
Mother and daughter were both looking forward to their 7:00 p.m. rendezvous with Victor Helliwell, so when Michael called at 5:00 p.m. to say he had to be away for
a few days on business, they ate supper early, and decided to drive out to the lodge a bit ahead of schedule. With forty-five minutes to kill, they tramped on down to the dock in shin-deep snow and tossed affectionate snowballs at each other whenever the spirit moved.
It wasn't that many weeks ago that the sun would be down at this hour. They had no visible sun above, but they had a diffused ceiling, a waning light. Spring was coming, but it certainly wasn't here yet. They had eschewed the kind of regular nylon garments that retailers insisted on these days, and donned old-fashioned “woolies,” the kind their early-20th-century ancestors used to wear—"just for the hell of it,” Becky had said. On the way up from the dock, they had lain down on their backs, side by side, and made snow-angels by waving their arms and legs. The snow had caked onto their backs and toques, and when they reached the porch, they fell to laughing and flailing at each other with floppy wet mittens ... perhaps more roughly than was necessary, but all in good old-fashioned fun.
Becky wondered if Victor could hear them from his second-floor hideaway. She wondered if he ever laughed any more, or if he ever had done much of that. She had visited with him briefly several times over the past couple of weeks, and supposed she knew him better than anyone except Julia, and yet she realized she hardly knew the man at all. For almost two decades, he had excused himself from the acquisition of friends, even from most interaction, by refusing to talk. Yet he was sure to go down in history as having had a profound influence on human life, more perhaps than anyone else save the usual short list—Jesus, Einstein, et al.
She also wondered about the wisdom of bringing Venice along with her for this visit. Normally, she would have discussed the matter with the men in her life, starting with Michael, of course, but also including one or two of the other lovely men that shared her nights from time to time. True, Venice had met with Victor once already, three days ago, last Sunday, and interviewed him for her life profile. That had gone very well, according to the vague report she'd been given by her daughter. But that was for history; that was about externals, mostly—or so Becky had assumed. This encounter was supposed to be “in the pudding,” a no-holds-barred conversation about and confrontation with reality—internal, external—the whole gamut.
There was a real need on Becky's part to better understand the process of transition. She knew that Human Threes were always in transition, sort of. At times she felt she was through it, done with it, finished, graduated, even if lesson #1 in the evolving “book” was that anyone could regress at any time, even all the way back to Human One! Part of her reason for shunning the C.Q.E. services and participatory encounters with Human Three chatrooms was the unfortunate knowledge that a Whiteside couldn't do anything without risking unwanted attention from the Netnews. If she wanted her consciousness quotient evaluated, or bumped up a notch, she was pretty well on her own. It was a challenge she accepted and largely enjoyed, whatever the unfairness of her circumstance.
However, there was another element to her situation, a positive aspect that no one else in the world would even imagine. Becky could go to right the proverbial horse's mouth, now that he was talking again—or at least while he was still alive. The problem now was that she was secretly uncertain of her footing as a Human Three, and she just didn't want Venice to know that, even though there was no good Human Three reason to fear such knowledge by her own daughter ... or anyone else, she supposed. She didn't know if she could be open in front of Venice, and deep down Becky was terrified she might discover that her daughter's CQ was higher than her own! That's a typical Human Two worry, she scolded herself as she removed her toque and flicked snow off ... into Venice's face.
"Mom!” squealed the girl. “You said truce!"
"I lied,” said Becky playfully. “So sue me."
Venice scooped up a handful of snow from the porch railing and chased her mother inside. They both laughed when Venice got her final shot in—snow down her mother's neck—and then a real truce was declared as they stomped their boots and took off their outerwear. They put on the slippers they'd brought with them, and the mood slid from giddy to apprehensive as they mounted the wooden stairs. They both flashed inwardly on what it might be like to make this climb after Victor had died.
"Come on in,” shouted Victor. There are few silences as complete as that created by a soft, floating snow, so he had heard every word spoken on the walk to the dock, and he'd heard the fake feud on the porch, and left the door to his suite open. He wore his yellow and green silk paisley caftan—no way was he going to “dress up” for a CQ session unless a yellow and green paisley caftan is “dressed to the nines” for a Human Three. “Who the hell knows,” he mumbled to himself, realizing afterwards that if he didn't have a clue, no one else did either.
He wasn't too sure why he had agreed to meet with them both, and together ... not just as a matter of doubtful memory, but as an issue that could have gone either way at the time of the decision, and could still be reversed on appeal. He had talked with Becky several times recently, both on the Net and at the lodge, and found her to be a bubbling cauldron of anxious hunger and a multiplicity of self-inflicted blind spots. Venice was a just a child, and his experience with children was ... well, basically nil. He didn't know how much Venice could understand, no matter how hard she tried. Oh well, he thought, maybe if I simplify for Venice's benefit, Becky will get it ... better.
"Door's open,” he bellowed as he draped a blanket over his dark MIU. Long before such speculation was rampant, he suspected that the WDA was able to see into the private lives of civilians using the technology that was built into every MIU. I don't give a shit if they listen, he said to himself, but I'll be God damned if I'll let them see me. “So ... who won?” he asked as the rosy-cheeked guests entered his domain.
"Me,” Becky and Venice said, both at once.
"You know what it means when people fight like that, eh?” he asked as he showed them to the sofa.
Becky squirmed emotionally—she figured they were in for some kind of Helliwellian crypto-analysis on how their play-fighting represented some obscure—
"You love each other, that's all,” said the host, killing the anxiety he had already seen on Becky's face. He knew it wasn't just that, of course. He knew all about cannabinide receptors in the brain, and the brain's production of it's own THC product, anandimide, and he knew that Ananda was the Sanskrit word for bliss, and he knew that science knew precious little about the mechanics or genesis of human feelings or emotions, but a word had to say something, even if it wasn't perfectly scientific, and “love” wasn't altogether unscientific, so ... “Jeeze Louise,” he added, by which he meant “Duh!"
Venice laughed. She knew that. Becky smiled. She knew it too, but her feelings got her off track, and now she was nakedly Human Two. “I knew that,” she play-huffed as she reached down and snicked a stubborn clump of snow off her left sock.
Victor pulled a straight-backed chair to a position in front of the couch, twirled it backwards, and straddled the seat, tucking the loose caftan under his crotch as he did so. “Of course you did,” he said as he watched both of them glance as his bare knees, shins and feet. “Pretty ugly, eh?” he asked.
"Oh yeah,” said Venice, rolling her eyes in jest ... well, partly in jest.
Becky was embarrassed, but Victor hooted. “Given enough time, we all get ugly,” he said, “but let's not get all lost on appearance stuff. That's too basic, and I—"
"Actually,” interrupted Venice, “I was sort of hoping...” Her voice quit on her as she worried about the reactions of the other two players.
"Finish your sentence,” said Victor. This is no time to wimp out over some irrational fear or other, he thought, but didn't say. Christ, we haven't even started!
"I know lots of Human Three stuff,” said Venice, “but I'm not real sure that I've got all the basics sometimes, and like—"
"Me too,” Becky blurted out.
Victor had his forearms on the back of the dining chair, and
his chin on his forearms; his beard was mostly hidden behind the back of the chair. He lifted his head and flicked the long white beard over the top, letting it flop over his forearms and the chair. He did it dramatically, as if this action had some hidden meaning.
Venice laughed. “I'll never be able to do that,” she ventured.
"Well, I'll never be able to have a baby,” said Victor.
"Do you—uh—want to do basics?” asked Becky, trying to steer things back to ... to what? she wondered. To where they should be, she added to her thought.
"What I want is not the issue,” offered Victor. “You start,” he said to Venice.
The girl's mind went into overdrive. She swallowed visibly as her eyes shifted way up, way left, towards ... nothing, she realized.
Victor wondered how far he could or should go into the biology of our most primitive emotion, the little bits buried in the almond-shaped amygdala, on both sides of the brain. Should I explain the difference between the Pavlovian conditioned response that relies on past memory to trigger a gush of hormones, a quickened heart rate, sweating, the freeze response, and the involuntary emergency reflex response that needs no serial processing or messages to the higher brain centers for environmental assessments? Jeeze—what am I thinking? She's a kid, for Christ's sake! “Fear?” he asked.
"Yeah,” said Venice, who was simultaneously caught in the emotion and amused by it.
"Of...?” he asked.
"That ... you won't like me?” she said, questioningly.
"I already do like you,” said Victor, “or you wouldn't be here. You're my favorite kid in the world."