There was, of course, some debate on how much of the Computer was God, though the Church of the Empire was adamant in its declaration that the Computer was made by people to better understand God’s design and was, therefore, not divine in its own right. There were several dissenting groups, mostly in the American States, who stridently decried the use of the Computer to store genetic codes and determine compatibility. The Empire largely ignored these arguments, however, because however much the American radicals’ argument began from religious principles, they invariably ended with loud—and often violent—support for their own “traditional” methods of determining racial supremacy. They were eager to preserve the mystery of genetics and love, they claimed, but the cost of their supposed pro-life agenda was the complete dehumanizing of anyone born without a certain list of characteristics. The Empire combated such bigotry largely through collective bloody-minded stubbornness, which over the decades had become, however imperfectly, both habit and identity.
Helena pushed all thoughts of comparative divinity from her mind. Her own screen was booting slowly before her. It wasn’t the newest model, and she hadn’t touched it since her last accounting exam. She would never have thought to bring it with her to Toronto at all, though, she was very glad that Fanny had packed it. Logging into her aunt’s screen would have been awkward, both since it was in the parlour and because there was no way for Helena to have any real privacy when she did it.
And privacy, really, was what the Computer was meant to be all about. Built by the earliest of the programmer-monks and continually updated ever since, the Computer was the widest and most secure database on the planet. Though the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen of the Empire represented God on Earth, it was the Computer that was deemed infallible. It was medically proficient and perfectly discreet.
In a matter of moments, Helena would see the full readout of her genetic makeup and know as much as science could about the content of her being. That, the Church argued, was the true reason that the Computer could not be divine. Genes were important, but they were not a person’s soul , and they did not speak to a person’s character. This was why prohibitions against direct genetic manipulation—a practice on the rise in other countries—remained strictly forbidden throughout the Empire. That was also why the Empire worked so hard and invested so much money in ensuring that all of its citizens were educated as much as possible and treated with utmost respect. That was why Helena’s mother did her job, and was held in such esteem for it. All things, was the rule, not just some of them.
But there was a difference between knowing, and knowing. Here, the dissidents within the Church tended to get more vocal. The usual argument was that knowledge and curiosity had led to the Fall of Man in the first place, and therefore unlocking even more secrets was the most foolish of ventures—to say nothing of the potential dangers. The official position, oft repeated by the Archbishop of Canterbury and subscribed to by all but the most vocal of traditionalists, was that humanity owed it to itself to use the means it had to make its way, and that, for better or worse, meant science, the Computer, and a judicious sense of self-cultivation.
Helena’s parents considered themselves traditionalists, but not the rabid sort. They only wanted Helena to make her own decisions, and not to feel pressured to accept the Computer’s designation just because it was the Computer. Indeed, given her mother’s job, it was unlikely that Helena could be anything other than a scientist by nature, but it was important to the family, even Aunt Theresa, that Helena herself—and not the Computer’s assay of her genome—control her own future as much as was humanly possible.
So here she was, in the middle of a debut season in Toronto, of all places, still sure that she would marry August Callaghan but suddenly exposed to a much more interesting world than New London, with its dons and students, had ever offered her. Elizabeth Highcastle didn’t seem to care about anything besides Helena’s ability to converse in an interesting manner, and though it was her mother’s work that had garnered the invitation in the first place, Helena felt that Elizabeth had all but forgotten that already and accepted her wholeheartedly.
And as for Margaret Sandwich, well, Helena was beyond pleased to have made her acquaintance, and hoped only that their friendship would continue after Margaret returned to Cornwall. It was probably too much to hope that she would find a nice Canadian boy and stay in the time zone, but stranger things had happened.
All of these thoughts amounted to so much stalling.
It was time. Time to learn the secrets of her own self, the ones that no one could help her determine. The ones that were so secret they could only be trusted to God, and to the Computer.
Helena took a deep breath, and inserted the –chip.
MARGARET HAD borrowed Edith’s workstation, and Edith had taken herself off to the park with the younger girls for the afternoon. Elizabeth was, with her mother’s supervision, writing to Andrew Neymour, who had responded to her original letter with some interest, and so Margaret had a bit of time to herself before they had to get ready for the evening’s party.
She wasn’t afraid of the Computer, precisely. It would only give her a match if she asked it to, and she already had a good idea of her genetic readout, thanks to her godfather’s lessons when she was younger. She might just ask it to find local young people close to her in age and interest so that she could meet them at upcoming events and widen her circle of friends and, therefore, future Canadian influence once her secret dissolved and she returned to England and her usual social circles.
She knew already that she had genes—though not the associated cultural practices—from all over the Empire: Hong Kong, Iraq, Zululand, and more besides. It was one of the healthiest genomes on the planet, thanks to several decades of careful curation-by-marriage, and if she asked it, the Computer would tell her how to proceed. Only she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, even if it was on the hacked–chip that her father had procured from her, all records of which would be erased by the Archbishop as soon as she asked him to do it.
And yet of course she must, someday, know. It was inevitable; this thing that had chased her family since Queen Victoria had sat on the throne and declared her children would marry into the Empire, not into other European royal families. Victoria-Margaret would do her duty, and she would hope that, like her own mother and father, she would eventually find some measure of contentment in it.
Margaret slid the –chip into the workstation and, while she waited for the initial read to be completed, decided that this would be as good a time as any to exercise her limited ability to fly under the radar. She already had a false persona. She may as well maintain the fiction. The results came quickly enough—healthy as a horse—and she entered the data into her profile, taking a moment to be glad to have an unofficial record of her existence before the weight of her obligations settled fully into both her public and private life.
Username: Lizzie
That was safe enough. With her mother on the throne, there were entire generations of girls named for her. Margaret didn’t usually like to think about the generation of Daisys, Gretels, and Pegs that would follow. She left the last name option blank, which was common amongst people who did not wish to disclose their full name, even to the Computer.
Location: Cornwall
She had done enough research on the area already to fit her present cover story, so this seemed the safest option.
Geographical Area of Interest: . . .
The cursor blinked at her. Victoria-Margaret would be given the whole world from which to choose a match, and then the Church would narrow it down based on alliances and geography and a hundred other factors that Margaret didn’t want to think about. Lizzie, though, could limit herself to Canada. Or Australia. Or anywhere, really.
Margaret typed “Ontario,” and then waited while her list of matches filled. There were hundreds of them, of course, and though they were bl
ind results, she knew they would represent every culture in the Empire. She hadn’t given any criteria beyond location, and her genes would be an excellent match with nearly everyone until she, or the Church, requested more qualifiers. She entered a few areas of interest she felt were broad enough to avoid identifying her in real life, and the list of matches narrowed.
The cursor was still blinking.
Would you like to enter chat?
HELENA WAS far too well educated to shake the screen, but she almost succumbed to instinct and pulled the –chip out to make sure it hadn’t been scratched or damaged. It couldn’t possibly be a malfunction. The –chips didn’t do that. They were tested rigorously, and it had been years since there had been even the whisper of a flaw in their design. It couldn’t be the Computer, either. Legions of programmer-monks worked to ensure that. This left Helena’s screen—which also seemed an unlikely culprit—and, finally, Helena’s own genes.
Tears sprung to her eyes. It wasn’t possible. Her parents would have told her.
Her parents wouldn’t know.
That was what it meant to be a traditionalist. Her mother and father didn’t have entries. They had never input their –chips. They had loved each other and taken faith in each other’s health, and that was it. They had no way of tracking Helena’s genes because they had never read them. She was healthy, and so they had respected her privacy until she was old enough to make her own decisions.
And now her first decision sat in her lap, blinking at her with all the emotion of a rock, and Helena had no idea what to do.
Welcome, new entry read the basic beginning screen. A more detailed one would open when she entered more information. Should you wish it, you may enter further details at this time, beginning with your alias.
All of that was to be expected. What had shaken Helena so badly was the basic gene readout that accompanied her scan. Everything about her phenotype was accurate—eye colour, brown; hair colour, brown; skin colour, white; no visible markers indicative of any genetic diversity at all, though like many Canadians, she could claim distant heritage from Hong Kong. But at the top of it were two letters.
XY
It couldn’t be a mistake, and yet it had to be.
The entry wanted a name. A male name. Helena wanted to know more, to find out how this could possibly have happened. And the only way out was through, so she began to type.
Henry Callaghan became a person as soon as she hit enter, and he was immediately issued an invitation to join the Empire-wide chat. Helena narrowed his criteria to Ontario, and watched his matches, her matches, populate on the screen in front of her. The only way out is through, she thought, and requested a more detailed genetic analysis. She would have to do some background reading to fully understand it, she knew. She certainly wasn’t about to ask her parents before she figured out what was going on. It wasn’t the sort of conversation she wanted to have with them on a screen, and if she fled Toronto now, she would have even more explaining to do.
A chat window opened in the corner of her browser. She must have accepted the chat invitation without realizing it as she was clicking through her request for the analysis. It was a girl named Lizzie.
She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. But the Computer had brought her here, and so she did.
To think I am a woman grown, and so unsure. My mother, God rest her soul, fought hard for this day. She had my father’s support before he died, but now I am alone, and I am Queen. There has never been a Queen with living brothers before. My husband is a noble of old family but no power. My children will marry into Chinese noble houses from Hong Kong. My mother began this, but it is my job to make the Empire obey me, support me, love me. We will rise or fall on what I do next. My reign will be the one children learn about in school. I will not be the sunset of the Empire. I will be its new-dawned day.
—Victoria II, Queen of England and Empress,
in her journal, upon her ascension to the throne
CHAPTER
12
Margaret was still at the workstation when Elizabeth came in. She fought off the impulse to slam it shut, but Elizabeth pretended not to notice what the Princess was doing until Margaret was able to write a civilized good night to Henry and log out of chat properly. By the time Margaret looked up, though, Elizabeth had a rather wicked grin on her face.
“Don’t,” Margaret said.
“But it’s so wonderful!” Elizabeth exclaimed. She pulled at Margaret’s hands and drew her over to the window seat. The view of the city was hazy, a testament to Toronto’s already ludicrous humidex, but the outline of the CN Tower was visible, and then the great expanse of the lake. “Is he a match, or are you just talking?”
“We’re just talking,” Margaret said. She felt a flush under her collar. Henry was, according to the Computer, a match. But they had struck up a conversation based on mutual interest. It helped to remind herself of that with some frequency. “I don’t get to just talk to very many people.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what makes it wonderful. I’m so pleased this is working out.”
“What of your . . . communications? Are they working out?”
It was Elizabeth’s turn to colour.
“Yes,” she said demurely. Then the wicked grin returned. “He’s beautiful, Margaret. And I get the sense that he could have taken up the family business and chose not to, as a sort of challenge to himself.”
“Like someone else, perhaps?” Margaret said, eyebrows arched with something a shade less than politeness.
“Well,” Elizabeth said modestly. “The Computer does match on common interests. Whatever did you put in?”
“I didn’t enter anything too specific,” Margaret said. “Mostly an interest in travel and in medical work.”
“Well, both of those things are true,” Elizabeth pointed out. She did not need to point out that both of those interests took on vastly different connotations when they were attached to “Margaret Sandwich” and not “Her Royal Highness Victoria-Margaret.”
“Yes,” Margaret agreed. “It’s nice to be myself without being myself, if that makes any sense at all.”
“You’re on vacation,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing has to make sense. But we do have to make ready for tonight’s festivities.”
“What are we doing?” Margaret asked. “I’ve mixed everything up.”
“The theatre tonight,” Elizabeth said. “We’re seeing Anne of Green Gables.”
The company had been brought in from Prince Edward Island specifically to perform the play for the Queen, and extended their stay for a week, much to the delight of local theatregoers. Procuring tickets was rather an accomplishment, and it had been a scramble, even for Lady Highcastle, to obtain them for Helena and August.
Margaret did her best to pay attention as Elizabeth asked her opinion of the various pieces of their theatre outfits, but her mind kept wandering back to Henry, and their discussions on the Computer. Henry wasn’t from Toronto, he had told her, but he enjoyed visiting it. He preferred a quieter life, one spent working instead of flitting from gathering to gathering. Margaret had argued that debuts were, by definition, meant to happen only once, and that it was a sort of holiday for those involved. Henry had agreed with her, in principle, but even through the screen, she had felt his discomfort, so she had changed the subject, and asked him what career he was interested in.
It was fascinating to engage in conversation like that, with no pretence or expectation. Margaret found it relaxing, as much as anything else. And she and Henry had a lot in common, which also made it very easy to talk to him. Margaret knew that typing and talking were not exactly the same, but it was wonderful to lose herself in the chat. The only other person she had ever come close to speaking that way to was Helena, when they’d been in the window seat at the Callaghan townhouse, but even that hadn’t been as truly private as the
–gnet chat room was.
“Margaret, the pins please,” Edith said, in the tone of a person who was not asking for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” Margaret said, passing them over.
“I’m distracted, too.” Edith’s inclusion in the group tonight wasn’t strictly traditional, but it was a play she loved and was otherwise unlikely to see, so her mother had allowed the younger girl to accompany them.
“Yes, but you’re distracted by excitement, which is permissible.” Elizabeth leaned over and brushed her sister’s curls so that they lay prettily across her neck. “Margaret, on the other hand, is thinking about the boy she talked to on the Computer today, and is therefore distracted by her own future. And that is expressly forbidden.”
“By whom?” Margaret laughed.
“By me, of course. As your cousin and your elder.” Elizabeth grinned.
“Girls?” the Admiral called from the corridor. “If you are nearly ready?”
“Yes, Papa, we’re coming!” shouted Edith.
“Helena and August are meeting us?” Margaret asked, fumbling with the catch on her necklace. It was something she borrowed from Elizabeth, because most of her own jewelry had stayed in England.
“Yes, and then they’ll come with us to the reception afterwards,” Elizabeth said. “Mother has it all organized.”
As she followed Edith into the hall, down the stairs, and into the waiting car, Margaret felt a portion of the younger girl’s excitement at last. She was happy enough to see the play, of course, but she was more delighted at the prospect of spending time with Helena, even if they would not be able to talk with any privacy for a few hours.
HELENA WAS very nearly late, to her great shame, because of the Computer. She hadn’t meant to spend any real time in the chat room, outside of her original exploration, and yet Lizzie had been so immediately interesting that she found it impossible to resist talking with her. Before she quite realized what she was doing, Henry had become a full-blown alias and a means to keep chatting.
That Inevitable Victorian Thing Page 10