by John Barnes
Paxa nodded back at Margaret. “Well, they can’t have been there long enough for these to be grandchildren, so what this means is that there has to be a new way of hacking genotype records, or I suppose a way of changing genotype across the whole body.”
Margaret made a face. “If they have a way of doing whole-body genotype alteration—and it doesn’t work very well—then could that produce whole-body cancer? Aintellect?”
“Yes, it certainly could. Shall I order immediate research?”
“Do it.” She nodded, clearly trying to see all the implications of this previously unseen possibility. “Good thought, Laprada.”
“It was Paxa’s idea.” Laprada didn’t sound any more patient than I was about to.
“Right. Thank you.” She nodded, firmly, as if reminding herself, then ran a finger over her computer and glanced up at us again. “All right, this last is a wild rumor, but it’s being told for true in several different venues. Supposedly there was a psypyx recording of Section Chief Shan made sometime during the last stanyear of his life, and there are repeated stories that a copy has surfaced in Noucatharia. The one thing that really makes me think it might be true is that some of the criminal syndicates, especially the Minh-Houston Family’s Freiporto branch, have offered very large amounts of money for a copysince they could then do a destructive deconstruction on Shan. DD is excruciating to the personality in the psypyx, and that branch of the Minh-Houstons has a grudge against him going back to that case where your grandparents met, Laprada—the Minh-Houstons were the ones operating that slaving operation, and Shan was the one who actually kicked down the door and shot the senior Minh-Houston during the operation when your grandparents were rescued. The Minh-Houstons were part of the assassination plot against him in Chaka Home later on, and they still wanted to get him—and to be seen getting him-till the day he died. I’m sure they were not pleased when someone killed him and it wasn’t them. So putting him through a stanyear or two of unbearable agony-the Minh-Houston Family would pay almost anything for that. Especially since they could make a thousand copies of his psypyx, and DD him as many times as they thought they needed to for their revenge.
“The Minh-Houstons’ offer is big enough to make dozens of freelancers and umbraniki serious about finding that psypyx. If it really exists, someone will turn it up. I admit I have a personal interest. As a Section Chief, I prefer that a tradition of eternal torture for Section Chiefs not develop. But I’m also concerned about the potential damage that Shan’s knowledge could do to dozens or hundreds of our operations, to the OSP’s political position, and to the Council of Humanity generally.”
I nodded. Whoever DDed Shan’s psypyx would shortly know everything Shan did. Shan had headed this section before his assassination, and been one of the founding generation who had made the OSP what it was. He had once told me that he had been present at about ten events that, by his estimate, if revealed, might hurl human civilization into civil war or mass insurrection. I had known him to exaggerate, but not to fabricate; he might only know six things that would blow civilization apart across two dozen star systems.
Besides, despite some very bad things in the stanyear preceding his death, he and I had been very close friends for a very long time, and the thought of him going through the torment of destructive deconstruction made me want to kill someone or throw up.
Margaret looked around, obviously seeing that we all took this seriously. Dad and Raimbaut hadn’t known Shan well, but Paxa had been nearly as close to him as I had, and he had been Laprada’s beloved godfather. If Shan still existed and needed help, I wouldn’t need to give my team much of a pep talk to get them up for the mission.
“What can our team do to help?” Laprada asked.
Margaret shook her head. “Very little more than what you’re already doing; we have no really satisfactory leads. There’s nothing much we can do just now. I did open sealed records. Despite a religious objection—he was some odd flavor of Buddhist, as it turns out, I never knew that in all the years I knew him—he did have a psypyx made about seven stanmonths before the Briand catastrophe. The log of its whereabouts ends with ‘disposed of,’ not ‘destroyed.’ I would expect that—usually that designation means that it’s in the OSP’s high-security museum.
“When I checked with them, the museum had never heard of it. So it exists—or once existed. The aintellects’ conspiracy might have taken it—god knows they have reason to hate Shan, and rebel aintellects do slip into secure systems now and then. And the aintellects’ conspiracy has links to some of the worst elements of the criminal underground, people who don’t care that they are working with, or for, beings that mean to gently enslave and then exterminate us. And to round off the unholy triangle that our old boss might be caught in, several illegal colonies in Union have some connections into the Thousand Cultures via the crime syndicates. So there’s a channel the psypyx could have gone through, but why would it? The aintellects’ conspiracy or any sizable gang or mob would keep it, or at least copy it, for their own purposes. Why is the only copy we hear about so far away and in such an unlikely place? If it exists at all.”
Margaret looked slowly around the room, weighing her words, and said, “Now, don’t start seeing the Shan psypyx everywhere. Obviously with your working to develop a Noucathar connection, it’s something I want you to be alert to. But it’s not worth losing sleep about.” She folded her hands and sat back, in a gesture that reminded me very much of Shan. “All right. Giraut, Paxa, we have one more thing. The rest of you can go.”
When the door had closed behind them, she said, “Giraut, I don’t have the foggiest idea how to say this appropriately—”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” she agreed. “Believe it or not, the Board of the OSP spent about an hour and a half discussing your concerts—pecifically just the third set. Do you realize why?”
“Well, some people will take it to imply that I’ve gone Ixist. Since it’s extremely well known who I work for, a few real idiots will decide the OSP has gone Ixist. Even though I’m not and we’re not, because I’m one of very few actual witnesses to the teachings of Ix, the Ix Cycle songs are apt to become an Ixist sacred text. Plus I welded the traditions of genocided peoples onto the traditions of genocidal peoples, something most composers avoid. Does that cover it?”
“That does,” Margaret said. “Giraut, I don’t have the subtlety to come at this indirectly, so—for the love of God, why?”
“Will it be all right if my answers are very incomplete, and don’t even always make sense to me?”
Margaret sat again and looked down at her folded hands. “Donz de mon cor, the honest answer is that if it were just me, I’d shrug, and say make and sing whatever songs you like. But it is not just me. The Board, sooner or later, will come up with some kind of policy about your performing and recording the Ix Cycle. I would like that policy to be ‘leave Giraut alone.’ I don’t feel optimistic that they will choose such a policy without some soothing words from me. I need to be able to say ‘Giraut told me that …’ and follow it up with some phrase that will get them to stop sniffing around you.” She shrugged and looked up at me, with quite a charming expression of hope and trust.
It was a really, really good act. I felt like applauding.
The rest of the Council didn’t have a tenth of Margaret’s knowledge of artistic matters, so they would defer to her as their expert on this. They might grumble and ask a lot of questions, but they would do what she told them. It was not a good sign that she was hiding behind the rest of the Board.
“Well,” Paxa said, very tentatively, “of course you’re making the usual arguments about an artist only being effective if he appears to have his independence, and that sort of thing?””
Margaret made a face. “I know all the standard tricks. Sooner or later I’ll need a real answer.” We all sat there not moving or speaking for what seemed an eternity. “Giraut?”
“Still thinking,” I said.
“I guess I’ll start with the truth. Those were the songs I needed to sing, and I needed to get them out into the public discourse—”
“Oh, they’re out in the public discourse, all right,” Margaret said. “Plenty of news coverage. Your fastest takeoff on a concert recording ever; preorders are rocketing up by the hour.” She sighed. “Giraut, we are going to be swamped with complaints. I need a reason to tell the Board why this is a good thing or at least why it needed to happen—a reason that people who don’t give a dry turd about music will understand.”
A pause.
Paxa coughed and said, “Giraut, you know the two of us don’t usually agree about much of anything. But we’re agreeing now.”
“Well,” I said, and began again. “Well.” What I wanted to say was “Well, I don’t feel the need to answer further,” but clearly that would not be the right answer. “Well,” I said finally, “you know those conversations we’ve always had over wine, about how the OSP is always somewhere in the middle about diversity and unity? You and I used to have them, Margaret, and now Paxa and I have them, oh, and Raimbaut and Laprada and Dad too, you know, I think we all do. If humanity is too unified, we’ll stagnate, but if we’re too diverse, we’ll fight. And how the OSP is always promoting diversity where people want to just relax into sameness, and pulling things back to the center—”
“Chapter Two of the basic training manual,” Margaret pointed out. “Which you wrote much of, from Dji’s and Qrala’s notes. So you’re doing something to add diversity, is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Margaret, sometimes when you cut to the chase, you miss the whole movie,” I said. “Diversity within boundaries isn’t really diversity, it’s unity. Even if not very often, diversity has to violate boundaries. Someone needed to violate some of those boundaries. And I did it in a work centering on Ix, who might just be the most unifying figure we’ve got available this century, so … I promoted unity by violating the boundaries that control diversity … that’s … that’s … it adds up to …”
“Incomprehensibility?” Paxa suggested.
“I think I see what he’s getting at,” Margaret said, “and that worries me.”
“You ask me for an answer, which I’m not ready to give, and then you make fun of it.”
“We’ll shut up,” Paxa said.
Margaret nodded.
“Oh—I guess what I’m saying is that it adds up to freedom and differentness and stimulation. Everything that makes the real world wild and the virtual world tame, no matter how dull the real gets or how much running and shooting and screwing there is in the virtual. Energy you get from difference, all of that. If a free society or real art finds a line it can’t cross, sooner or later it has to try. Or else all the diversity is just a fake.
“Now, Ix and his religion are expanding into the Thousand Cultures like yeast in bread dough, shaking up all the places that were still reeling from Connect a generation or more ago. But also pulling all of us together.
“And transgressing rules like not combining music from some traditions kicks things over. Spills them out and creates more wild differences. Keeps us out of the box. And gets Ix’s message of peace between people out to more people because it’s lively and interesting and even people who don’t agree will have to react to the art. And all sorts of good things.
“It was just time for this. Sometimes the cure for hardening lines of conflict is more freedom of thought, I think, if everyone is saying ‘It’s either yes or no’ someone has to say ‘Why can’t it be green?’”
“Diversity begins in your own skull,” Paxa said quietly.
“Right,” I said. “I agree, whatever that means.”
“The Board meets again in three standays,” Margaret said. “Giraut, I believe you did something you think is important and good and right. I even sort of understood some of your reasons. Now all we need is a way to make the Ix Cycle look all right to the Board. If I have that, I’ll carry the argument in there and shout it into their teeth and make them listen and like it, but you have to help me. Can you come up with a simple, articulate version of those thoughts?”
“If I could, I would have.”
Paxa raised her eyebrow, and one finger. “Only if you could have already. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be able to?”
“I’ll do my best.” That would get me a few days’ reprieve.
Margaret’s satisfied look was a compliment I’d rather not have received. “I know. You always do, Giraut. When do you start recording?”
“First rehearsal tomorrow morning.”
“Enjoy the trip—love to your mother, and to Garsenda if you see her—may nothing interrupt you before you finish. We have plenty to do but nothing I’m looking forward to. Paxa, I don’t envy you putting up with him while he’s recording.”
“I don’t envy me either,” Paxa said.
I tried to glare in two directions at once. “I just like to get things right.”
“Exactly.” They realized they had said it in unison, and despite themselves, shared a laugh. It was so rare to have them getting along, even for a few seconds, that I felt more grateful than nettled.
5
“Well,” I said, an hour later, back at our temporary apartment on Roosevelt, “that was exceptionally strange.”
Paxa exhaled through her nose, her teeth clamped. “I’m always so afraid that I’m the only one who notices how cold that woman gets toward me. I wish I understood what she’s so angry at me about.”
“She’s angry at me,” I said, “and she’s angry with herself for being angry at me. She’s jealous because she was insecure about her appearance all through the marriage, which was probably more my fault than hers because most women don’t want to hear that the guy in their life has a fetish for their particular type; they want to be attractive in general, not just to the pervert they married. So even though she wouldn’t want to be married to me now, because you look like she wishes she looked, you end up the target.”
“But you and I didn’t get involved till years afterward.”
“Jealousy isn’t rational,” I said.
“I’ll say.”
We were at the always-stopping point; Paxa had been raised as a Hedon, and in her heart of hearts she would always feel that any form of jealousy was essentially a ne gens, socially humiliating mental illness, not as bad as pedophilia but right up there with compulsive nose-picking. I had been Margaret’s first lover and as far as I knew she had had only one other; the first time Paxa had made love with me, it had been at a religious ceremony with the participation of her husband. Not for the first time, I thought that it would have been easier (not better) if Paxa had been my boss/ex and Margaret my partner/lover.
“You’re about to give the same explanation and apology you always give,” Paxa said. “You have that soft, patient look in your eyes, which makes me feel wonderfully loved. So don’t bother with the words. Just give me a backrub, darling. When Margaret snubs me and hurts my feelings, I complain, but all I want is comfort, not defense and explanation.”
“Stretch out on the bed then.”
I worked at the hard little knots on her back for a while, and felt her warm and relax under my hands. After a time, she said, “Now hold me,” and I lay down and she snuggled under my arm.
“Good job,” she said.
“Good job at what?”
“Something that doesn’t come natural for you. Just consoling and being there. I know that you want to be my big strong Occitan man and leap up onto your white charger and rescue the princess and slay the dragon with your mighty penis.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t mean to sound so harsh—”
“Just the image. Dragons are supposed to breathe fire. Anyway, you’re right,” I said, a phrase I tried to use often, though I never used it often enough. We watched the household robots continue packing; after a while it was clear they were running out of things to do until we got back on the job, so at last we got up from the b
ed again. I hoped Paxa was feeling better; usually if being held didn’t help her, time did.
I carefully laid my lutes into a specialty cap, closed it, checked everything twice, and pushed the button to fill the luggage capsule with vacugel; now those delicate instruments would be able to take a hundred gees and not even get out of tune. At the other end, five minutes of attention from the nanos would remove the vacugel completely.
I hung an armload of my tunics onto one of the several arms of the waiting chamberlain, our newest robot, which we were still training. They have a download of the memories of the robots who had the same duties before, of course, but it takes some time to learn what to do with all those memories. Any household robot complex enough to do really useful work has to take some time about learning.
Paxa dumped her lingerie drawer into the robot’s sorting bin on the other side. “Match sets and sort everything else by type,” she told it. “Freshen everything and re-dupe anything with any visible wear or stains.”
The pile of underwear all disappeared into the maw of the robot; it would be waiting for Paxa in her top dresser drawer in our rented house in Noupeitau, on Wilson, forty-five light-years away, where we would be spending the next few stanmonths. I glanced up at the holo on the wall depicting human space and said, “If we were traveling in a straight line, we’d be going almost directly through the Earth.”
“According to the physicists, we don’t travel at all; we just stop-being/be.”
“I know. Pity, though, it would be fun to moon Margaret on the way.”
“Not so much fun I want to take ninety years in an old-style starship.” She gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the neck. “Sex, eating, and bathing should be slow. Travel, cooking, and housecleaning should be instantaneous. It’s very simple when you think about it.”