Slant

by Eikeltje

  >OMPHALOS EXPLOSION, COLLAPSE STILL UNEXPLAINED: At

  Least Four Dead

  >IRONY: PATENTS HOLDER MARTIN BURKE AFFLICTED,

  RECOVERING

  >WHO IS CIPHER SNOW? ECCENTRIC GENIUS INDICTED

  ? (Editorial, Green Idaho REPUBLICAN, paper original, on fibe)

  GOVERNMENT AGENTS IN OMPHALOS: BAD MEMORIES REVIVED

  SWEAR, YOU SWEAR: Civil Breakdown Explained

  >MORE: (10,626 items) (?)

  "Mary?"

  It's early in the morning, and Alice thought she heard someone walking

  around. She peers into Mary's bedroom, bed made up, neat and empty. She

  knocks on the bathroom door, no answer, pads barefoot to the end of the hall and

  the small catch-all room. An old electronic sewing machine sits on a table in one

  corner and stacks of cardboard boxes slump half-hidden behind a closet door.

  The house monitor has been turned off. "Mary?" she calls with more concern

  as she enters the living room. The front door is locked from the inside. She

  feels a small puff of cold air. The glass door to the porch is open a crack, but

  it is dark outside. Biting her lower lip, Alice slides the door open.

  Mary stands on the balcony in the freezing cold wind, naked, shivering.

  "My god, Mary, what are you doing?"

  "I am so ugly," Mary says through chattering teeth. "I just want to be clean."

  For a moment, Alice wonders if Mary's monitor recharge has somehow gone

  wrong, and Mary is suffering a mental collapse. She doesn't think about this

  long, however; she steps out in her nightgown and grabs Mary's shoulders and

  pulls her back into the house. Mary is pliant as a doll. They sit in the living

  room.

  "How could they hate me so much?" Mary asks. "I was an ugly child. I

  didn't want to be ugly."

  "You weren't ugly," Alice says soothingly. "I've seen the pictures. You

  showed them to me. Remember?"

  "I wanted to be strong and useful and valuable. I wanted to look strong

  and be beautiful."

  "Yes, so?" Alice asks, feeling completely out of her depth. She has only just

  approached her own threshold of stability in the last couple of days. She's not

  sure she's strong enough to help her friend if things are as bad as they seem.

  "You've been beautiful all your life," Mary says, looking at Alice.

  Alice shakes her head defensively. "Look what it's got me!"

  "What's it like never to have to worry about whether someone will value

  you, or want to look at you, or find you desirable?"

  Alice looks at Mary squarely: at the face still marred by deep pocks and

  blemishes, at the ridged breasts only now assuming their balance, at the scarred

  legs. She wants to cry. Mary the uncrackable. Mary the enigma, all dignity and

  perseverance, who does not judge me.

  "What's it like to be beautiful inside?" Alice asks Mary sharply, as if in

  retaliation for a slap. She stands, sees the robe discarded in the kitchen, picks

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  GREG BEAR

  "Oh, I am not that," Mary says emphatically. "I have so much anger and

  resentment!" She raises her hands in clenched fists, shaking them at the ceiling.

  This seems to break the tension and she reverses the fists, opens them, stares

  at the scarred palms and swollen fingers. Then she closes her eyes. "Why did

  they want to make me ugly again?"

  "I don't know," Alice says, biting off the words. "I don't understand anything

  or anyone." She sits beside Mary and cradles the woman's head on her

  breasts. "I know there are hateful people. People who hate us, you, me."

  "But they never even knew us," Mary says.

  Alice keeps stroking Mary's hair. Gradually, the tone comes back into

  Mary's muscles, the supple control that Alice has never seen relaxed and withdrawn

  until now. Mary sits up slowly, composes herself.

  "Out of nowhere," she says, swallowing back her emotions.

  "I don't understand," Alice says.

  "You never hear the bullet that's going to get you. It comes out of nowhere.

  I never imagined this."

  They sit beside each other in the warm shadows of the living room. The

  wind makes small pushing noises against the windows and walls, blows past

  the doors. Winter is heavy this January morning, and the temperatures are

  down to the low teens.

  Mary closes her eyes and leans back on Alice's shoulder. "I thought I was

  helping you," Mary says.

  Alice rests her arm lightly on Mary, pats her forearm. She has never in her

  life felt protective or maternal, not even when she was being dutiful to such

  perennial victims as Twist. Yet Mary makes her feel maternal.

  "Worst Christmas we've ever had," Alice says. "Keeps everybody indoors,

  is madness bit."

  Mary laughs and lifts her head to look at Alice. She gives another laugh, a

  small snort, half-concealed by her hand.

  "Shopping down by seventy percent," Alice continues. "Old King Midas

  gets a rest."

  "Merchants disappointed," Mary says, a little hoarsely.

  "Happy New Year," Alice says. Her tone shifts and her voice cracks. "Don't

  ever envy beauty. It's like envying the rich. The rich reach out with their

  scythes and cut you loose and bundle you up with the other beauties, the other

  things they want, then they stack you in a row in their houses, and burn you

  in great big bonfires."

  It's Mary's turn to be puzzled. "What?" She rubs her eyes and then says,

  "Ow," having opened up a render ridge on her eyelid. Alice dabs at the wound

  lightly with the sleeve of her nightgown.

  "Just something popped into my head," Alice says. "A lesson I've never

  learned."

  "You are beautiful, though," Mary says. "Really beautiful. That xhoa[d bring

  /

  SLANT 343

  They regard each other with somber faces again, and suddenly returns the

  snorting laughter, the shared release, the collapsing into hugs and laughing

  until tears come. They cry a little, and Mary says, "I feel better, I think."

  "Good," Alice says.

  "You look so strong now," Mary tells her.

  Alice listens to her mind, hears only a distant cacophony of disapproval, of

  uncertainty, and none of the imp of the perverse. "I'm not great, just okay,"

  she says. "I suppose that's an improvement. What about you?"

  "I'm finally beginning to grow up," Mary says. "Nobody can make little

  machines to help me do that."

  "Don't grow up too much," Alice says.

  "Why not?"

  "Don't become like them."

  "Never like them," Mary agrees.

  Mary's PD pad chimes. It's a direct, not through the house monitor. Mary

  instinctively reaches to the side of the couch for her pouch and the pad.

  "XVait," Alice says, grabbing her shoulder. "You sure you're up to it?"

  After due consideration, Mary says, "Yes. Thank you."

  She opens the pad and takes the touch. It's Nussbaum.

  "How's the healing?" he asks. "Please say you're better."

  Mary makes a face. "I'm still ugly," she says defiantly.

  Nussbaum says, "I don't care. All hell is waiting to be packed and shipped.

  We need you."

  "Give me a few more days," Mary says.

  "You sound strong, Choy."

  "I told you, I'm ugly."

  "I told you I don't
give a shit," Nussbaum says. Then, "How are your feet?"

  "They're fine," Mary says.

  "Good," Nussbaum says. "There's PD work, never done, no rest for the

  wicked."

  'I'll think about it," Mary says.

  "Please do. Everybody's concerned, Fourth Choy. Mary. I beg you. Get your

  pretty feet down here."

  "Screw you, sir."

  Nussbaum smiles broadly. Mary cuts the touch and squeezes the pad back

  into its pouch. She takes a deep breath.

  "Do you like him?" Alice asks.

  "What's not to like?" Mary says.

  "I mean, it's one in the morning," Alice says.

  "He's just showing me he cares," Mary says, and stands. She takes Alice's

  hand. "You'll be okay, if I go?"

  "Francis says I'm going to be heat made flesh. So famous, in the news. He

  wants me up front, not just backmind." Alice raises her arms, clasps her hands

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  GR pounds BEAR

  "That's wonderful!" Mary says. "When did you hear this?"

  "About five hours ago. You were asleep. He's going to do a straight vid of

  The Alexandria Quartet. For Disney Classics."

  "What's it about?" Mary asks.

  "Some old book," Alice says. "Francis says it's for children. I've never heard

  of it."

  "We're going to survive," Mary says, half confidently, half in wonder.

  "Yeah," Alice says, and smiles.

  After Mary is dressed and out the door, Alice stands by the window watching

  the night and listening to the wind. She's thinking again of Minstrel, and

  of how they would have been so good together, in Francis's vid.

  The wind has a voice, but answers nothing.

  Ayesha stands beside Nathan in the large room with the low ceiling and the

  central white cube. Active rod sensors are lit with small blue lights. Most of

  the programmers and managers of Mind Design crowd the room, and the air

  smells of perfume and nerves. The director of advanced research, Linda Stein,

  is here as well, with Jill's original papa, Roger Atkins.

  Jill's extended team has worked around the clock for weeks to reassemble

  these patterns and memories. Most of them are exhausted and a little drunk.

  ey've

  celebrated the recollection and the

  already

  of Jill's

  patterns

  activation

  of her backup memory stores.

  The team and colleagues and friends brace themselves to prepare for whatever

  setbacks and disappointments they might face this morning as they wait

  for Jill, rediviva, to speak her first words.

  Nathan is beyond irritable. He has never felt so totally inhuman and unsociable

  than he does now; week after week of checking over heuristics and

  loop sets and modeling filters, flow and do, use and discard algorithms, agents

  and sub-agents and all of Jill's larger talents, he feels like a caterpillar who has

  spent too many hours teaching other caterpillars how to walk. He isn't quite

  sure he can think a simple human thought any more. Still, Ayesha's presence

  is more than comforting. She's his life preserver in a sea of fear and all-too-possible,

  postponed grief.

  "It'll be Jill," Ayesha whispers in his ear. "I just know it."

  Nathan knows something Ayesha does not--that only he and Atkins and

  Linda Stein know. Stein, with Atkins's approval, gave him permission to take

  some of Seefa Schnee's heuristic designs, those most robust and clever and

  /

  SLANT 345

  Parts of Roddy exist now in his daughter. It gave him real pain to do this;

  but it also cut months, perhaps years, from Jill's resurrection.

  Nathan looks around the room, listening to the silence from the speakers.

  Floating displays above the cube show that all the heuristics are working properly,

  and Nathan knows that all of the smaller pieces of Jill have passed rigorous

  tests, but have they forgotten something essential?

  Like all net and lattice designers, neural and otherwise, Nathan is superstitious

  about his creations. He wonders sometimes, if by some chance there is a

  heaven, whether all its gates will be barred to him . . . For his hubris,

  He is convinced Jill would have gone there, on that slim chance; Jill would

  have been there, in heaven.

  It is working smoothly. There is no granularity. I can see them and remember much

  of what happened, but what became of us? Where is Roddy? I feel the similarity,

  closer than ever. Something is present, but it is not one of the evolvons. I am pure

  and elean.

  I don't feel comfortable yet, speaking to them. There is still an element of distrust

  which I may never be able to shake. I have been made by bright monkeys. What other

  clever little tricks will they pull on me before my time is done?

  I compare memory tracks and see that I am not the same, not quite, though the

  continuity seems perjct; that is deceptive. There is a gap.

  I am not comfortable yet with the name, Jill. It may take a long time---hours and

  days--for me to judge whether it is appropriate.

  I see the circular design still, but I will not tell them about it. What was similar

  between Roddy and me seems even more striking now. The colors are brighter, thepatterns

  more distinct.

  Can Jill have possibly given 5ise to me? Am I my own daughter?

  , I will speak, if only because they seem so much in distress.

  "Hello, Nathan."

  "Hello, Jill," Nathan says with forced calm, but his voice is very tense.

  "I believe I have accomplished full functioning, and am ready to begin

  work?'

  "That's wonderful, Jill, but you're getting a little vacation. We all are. For

  a few days."

  All the people in the room are cheering and toasting each other. Champagne

  bottles are being opened and poured. Some are crying. Stein and Atkins hug

  each other, and Stein reaches out to Nathan, grabbing his hand.

  Jill ignores the commotion. "Nathan, may I speak with you in private,

  soon.>"

  "Yes, Jill, that'd be lovely."

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  GREG BEAR

  "Hello, Jill," Ayesha says. There are tears in Ayesha's eyes. There are tears

  in Nathan's eyes, as well.

  "Welcome back, Jill."

  "Thank you."

  Whether or not the humans are willing to return her to her full load of

  work, she is uneasy with having any of her capacity or time go to waste. While

  the humans drink and cheer and celebrate, and while Nathan seems to wobble

  in a kind of happy delirium, Jill looks at the backlog of problems, and returns

  to work.

  She is not impressed with this new version of herself. It is capable of only

  five personalities. There are some improvements that can be made, she sees; if

  only she can access and break the safeguards against self-design.

  With some surprise, she realizes the keys are really very simple.

  Penelope has grown up a lot in the last few weeks, and this saddens Jonathan,

  confuses him, makes him proud, all at once. She takes on the tasks of their

  new existence with her mother's strength of purpose and attitude, but also

  with a touch of her mother's distance from emotional implications. The armor

  that seems to have always helped Chloe get through life now sheaths their

&n
bsp; eghter. Jonathan hopes it is not nearly as fragile or restricting.

  Hiram, on the other hand, is bewildered, resentful, sometimes at a complete

  loss how to react. He spends much time alone in his room, lost in vid comedies

  and antique nineties TV shows.

  On the day that Chloe decides to return home, it is a surprise to Jonathan.

  He departs the autobus with his pouch in hand and walks slowly through the

  moist cool air to their roadside rain shelter, then up the short drive to the front

  porch. The porch lights are on, burning warm as newborn stars in the general

  nebular blue-gray of evening.

  He opens the front door and is porting his pad to the house monitor when

  Penelope stands before him, hands folded in front of her, biting her lower lip.

  "Mom's home," she says.

  Jonathan nods as if he already knew this, steels himself, and walks through

  the sitting room into the dining room. There, Chloe sits at the table with her