by Tom Caldwell
“It does to me,” said Jacob, drawing him in closer for a kiss. He always said that, even when Ezra wasn’t exactly making sense, as such. Because he was grateful for the answers, whether he understood them or not. It was better to hear Ezra’s confusion and doubt than his silence. Jacob liked being trusted. “I hear you.”
Nestling’s corporate headquarters were in Russia; the company had been founded in the 2040s and had changed hands several times, moving from city to city, country to country, changing its name and then returning to the old, dividing like cells.
The driverless limo took Jacob and Ezra to St. Petersburg from the airport, driving through flat, autumnal country full of solar fields and windmills. The Cyrillic billboards gave Jacob a giddy feeling that always came over him when he was travelling overseas: I finally got away, I escaped, I did it…
Not that it was a great place to be, really. The visa form had an uncomfortably detailed questionnaire about race, and the outskirts of the city were ragged and poor. Cops had roadblocks every few miles, like in Middle America, checking documents and searching for weapons and holding up traffic. Ezra was so nervous he was practically vibrating, but he paid no attention whatsoever to the police; Jacob concluded that this meant they wouldn’t be arrested today, so he tried to stay calm.
The limo rolled through tent cities and an abandoned spacefield where stacked shipping containers were serving the people in place of apartments. Jacob tried not to think about what an earthquake would do to this place, or the falling wreckage of a cargoliner.
The city itself was still beautiful at its centre, though, graceful yet austere. They were meeting Nestling’s CEO in a literal palace, now a luxury hotel. Close to St. Isaac’s golden dome, the Admiralty spire, the bronze horseman. The ornate Empire-style building was painted a buttery yellow, with white columns and a pair of splendid Medici lions at the entrance.
Ezra, however, was in no condition to appreciate them.
“I’m gonna hurl,” he kept muttering to himself as they waited for the elevator. “Gonna hurl, gonna hurl…”
“Do you want more of the pickled ginger?” Jacob asked, unzipping his briefcase. “Or would you rather the pills—”
“Sure, both, why not.” Ezra was rubbing his clammy palms on his trouser legs, antsy. “I don’t think the ginger does anything. It’s not even medicine, it’s a sushi topping. Christ, I can’t do this, I’m gonna fuck it up, I’m gonna say something wrong and—and Mozersky won’t want to work with us anymore, and then—”
“Try the ginger anyway,” Jacob told him, dispensing a few of the little plastic packets. “Or I have the meds for anxiety, but let’s tackle the nausea first. I hate to see you in distress, but the pills do dull your sparkle a bit, when the dosage is too high.”
Ezra was still talking. “And in twenty years when the patent runs out, we won’t have done anything helpful for this new generation of telepaths and they’ll be cannon-fodder, Jacob, they’ll be—”
“Ez, take a deep breath for me, okay?” said Jacob. The elevator doors opened. It looked like another small, mirrored chamber, like the one on the Bija station. “Is this something that’s actually going to happen or are you just afraid?”
Ezra got on the elevator, bracing himself in the corner, eyes closed. “Both. Maybe. I don’t know, Jacob, I’m so—so sick of having to do this. Manipulating, controlling. I don’t want to micromanage reality. That sounds so stupid but it’s true. It’s like being really aware of your tongue. Some things should be out of our control, if it means we get to give our goddamn brains a break once in a while.”
Jacob took this to mean that Ezra was, in fact, simply afraid. “Well, once this deal is secure then we can relax, right? Then our plans will be settled and all that’s left to do is build the place. And you love to build things.”
Ezra smiled, a quick flicker, and he looked back up at Jacob. “Yeah, I do.”
The elevator doors opened. The corridors, marble and gold, felt sinfully luxurious to Jacob. Literally sinful: his awe of the place was tinged with disgust, thinking about those tent cities outside of town. Magnus’ penthouse used to make him feel the same way. All he could do was hope that this wasn’t history repeating.
Ezra was sweating. Like a pig, like a horse, like a nun in a cucumber patch. Damp all down the back of his shirt, ass sweat, ball sweat, flop sweat. Precipitation like this sometimes meant a seizure was on its way, but that was typically a cold sweat. This one was hot. Nervous, that was all. He hated meeting people. He hated people. He hated the universe. He hated existing—
“Zdravstvuyte,” said Nestling’s CEO, Anton Mozersky, as he opened the door. “Mr. Roth, Mr. Barany, come in, welcome. You can leave your shoes, slippers are right here. Please. Would you like coffee, tea?”
Ezra had been practicing with Bija Translate, but zdravstvuyte was an intimidating thicket of consonants. Pick an easier synonym. “Spasibo—um, that’s the wrong one, I mean privyet, sorry—”
“You don’t have to do that,” Mozersky interrupted, with pity.
“—I would love some coffee. Actually. Thank you.” Joke’s on you, I’m just as incoherent in English, Ezra thought. “We really appreciate you taking the time to meet with us, Mr. Mozersky.”
“Not at all.” Mozersky had a hoarse voice and a thick accent. He was the same age as Magnus, probably, but with less hair. Plump in a compact, tightly-contained way, with olive skin and a fussy mustache that made Ezra think of a cartoon Italian chef on a pizza box. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way, but for me life has been very hectic. And please, you must call me Anton.”
“Well, we had some carbon credits saved up, so we were happy to make the trip,” said Jacob, sitting down gingerly on the elegant sofa. “We’re not so jaded that we don’t get a thrill out of travel. And pitching to you is even more exciting.”
“Of course.” Mozersky was bent over the hotel’s coffee-maker, reading the instructions on the screen. “Magnus Vollan treated you with his customary civility and compassion, I noticed.”
“He told me that you guys have some kind of bad history,” said Ezra, twisting a napkin in his hands. “Not that—I’m not trying to poke into your business or anything—”
“Oh, I don’t think we need to delve too deeply into the past,” said Mozersky. He plugged the coffee pods into the machine and sat down on the other sofa, across from Ezra and Jacob. “We’re here to talk about the future, are we not?”
“Right. Okay. Yes.” Ezra appreciated it when guys like this were willing to get straight to the point, but it did throw his rehearsed small talk off its rhythm. “Magnus is planning a Bija genetic program. We have some tech that could cut him off at the knees. But we need a biotech company to partner with.”
“What sort of tech?”
“I have a gene isolated that creates a predisposition to developing psionic abilities. Like mine. Not necessarily the same,” Ezra said, stumbling, because he saw Mozersky’s pupils dilate and suffered a sudden drop in confidence. “A lot of different abilities are linked to this gene, precognition’s the tip of the iceberg. I think that’s probably down to epigenetic factors—”
“You’re not a geneticist, though,” said Mozersky. He was poker-faced, his hands resting folded loosely in his lap, but he was paying close attention now. “Where is this research from?”
“It hasn’t been done yet.” Ezra wanted to take Jacob’s hand for support, but he also didn’t want to look like he needed support. “Bija’s team discovers it two years from now. Or you can have it right now—I’ve watched them go through trial after trial in the future, I can describe every step of the successful process. The patent application’s already complete.”
The coffee-maker beeped, and Mozersky got up to pour. “Interesting,” was all he said.
“You must be sceptical,” Jacob said, reaching out to smooth a hand over Ezra’s shoulder, while Mozersky’s back was turned. “We do have some literature to back us up, if you’d like to know
more.”
“I’ll read it. If it’s possible, what you say,” said Mozersky, “What would you like us to do with it?”
“Nestling does fertility solutions. Genetic screening, embryo selection, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, all that stuff—your clients could choose to have kids with these abilities.” Ezra fumbled with the napkin as he took the proffered coffee cup from Mozersky. “Their own kids, I mean. Most of the same DNA, but with a copy of this gene. There are side effects, but it’s still an edge. Rich parents want their kids to have an edge, right?”
“Mm.” Mozersky didn’t sit back down right away, wandering to the window. “What side effects?”
Ezra rhymed them off. “Seizures, hemiplegic migraine, digestion issues, disorders of movement and coordination…”
“Similar to the issues with your implant technology, then. Consumers won’t be happy about that.”
Ezra shook his head. “Lower incidence and severity.”.
Jacob tried to spin that out and make it sound more persuasive. “It’s true. In fact, Ezra himself has improved a lot since the removal of the implant prototype. Compared to the potential advantages, we think the side effects are very manageable. With the right patient education and support, of course.”
Mozersky shrugged slightly, his back to them as he looked out the window onto the treetops of the Aleksandrovskiy Garden across the street. “And what does Taltos want in return, if we were to go forward with a deal?”
“We want it to be a—a condition of—if parents use this process on their children, they have to send the kids to us for training.” Ezra was embarrassed by his own stutter, the dead-air pauses where he reached for more words and couldn’t find them. The back of his neck was hot. “Not forever, obviously. A program for, for support and education.” Jacob had already used the same words. Fuck. “I mean, psi abilities are hard to deal with. These kids are going to need to be around adults who understand what they’re going through.”
“Reasonable. Is that all you want?”
“We’d also like to negotiate some funding from Nestling to build this school,” Jacob said, rescuing Ezra. “Ahriman will be funding most of the physical site, and some of the operating costs, but…schools are very expensive to run. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. But it’s all part of making sure the next generation has the tools they need to succeed.”
Mozersky was quiet for a few moments, while Ezra tried to keep his hands still and prayed for death. The older man finally let a breath out. “Why?”
“Why?”
“The Taltos technology had its issues, but it was very promising. You’re talking about throwing that away and going into…psychic education? Why?”
“Because one way or another, this type of genetic engineering is going to happen. It just is,” Ezra said wearily. “In the future I’ve seen, people like me spend their lives in a sensory-control pod the size of a coffin. Okay? Also known as a ‘distraction-free working environment.’ Drugged to keep calm, drowning in consumer debt, working for a corporation. Eighteen hours a day, predicting tiny fluctuations of the market, spying on users, manipulating their lives in the tiniest, shittiest ways. Counteracting the other telepaths who work for the competition. You don’t talk to your co-workers, you don’t talk to anyone, your boss is an app that tracks your productivity. You earn a pittance every day and it all goes into the black hole of your debt, and you never get free. You never leave the trading floor. Your mind makes you too valuable to have any control over your own life.”
“And you’d rather come to me?” said Mozersky, turning aside from the window to look back over his shoulder at Ezra and Jacob. “You’d rather make these abilities…a status symbol for rich parents?”
Ezra did not, in fact, like the sound of that. But he didn’t see a way around it. “What I want is some—some goddamn leverage, okay? So that these kids will have a sense of, of ownership over their own brains. Let them learn, let them discover, let them have their own dreams. In the future I see, this school is infamous. Notorious. It opens doors. High-level training for specialists, the protection of a guild.” Tech guys hated union talk, in Ezra’s experience, but sometimes they liked guilds. Exclusivity. Appeals to vanity. Whatever would work. “Employers who want to hire telepaths will have no choice but to negotiate fairly with them.”
“This is very ambitious.” A few spy-drones buzzed past the window, and Mozersky pressed the button to draw the blinds. “You have no real proof that you can do any of this.”
“Listen, I’ll—listen. I’ll give Nestling a limited license to use this genetic process for testing,” Ezra said, desperate. “If it doesn’t work, you don’t owe me anything. If it does work, if children are brought to term and exhibit psionic abilities—then I want to train them. And Magnus Vollan gets shut out of the whole racket. Right? Come on. That’s a good deal for Nestling.”
Mozersky came back to sit down across from Ezra and Jacob. “Maybe it is. Our lawyers will talk about it. And talk, and talk. Palaver, good English word. But for me—my interest in all this is very personal. I remarried two years ago. We struggle to conceive.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jacob said right away, while Ezra was still wondering if he was supposed to say something. Jacob was always quicker off the mark with things like this.
“My wife and I have been discussing our options, talking about genes,” said Mozersky. “She has breast cancer in her family, I have Tay–Sachs in mine, so we want to be careful. But you want to give your child as many gifts as you can. You want to leave them weapons and treasures.” He picked up his own coffee cup, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the plastic stir-stick. “Is your gift really an advantage, Mr. Barany? Has it made you happy?”
“Um—” Ezra hadn’t been expecting that question, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he could answer. Was he happy? If he was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure. Work had been a frustrating, repetitive maze of failure. Over and over, he’d had to double back on his plans and change direction at the last second, from the ill-fated music app to the finicky technical problems of the implant to the crash of the Handsome Lake. Ezra’s abilities had always promised riches and fame, but never quite within his reach.
But his visions had also led him to Jacob. They’d allowed him to save twelve kids from certain death. Twelve instead of zero.
“It doesn’t—I don’t know,” Ezra said, deciding to forge ahead. He might as well talk, he thought. He might as well try to explain, for the sake of everyone who needed to hear it. “I don’t really know what it’s like to be normal. Sometimes I wish I was. And I don’t want to say that the seizures and the headaches are all worth it compared to—look, ‘worth it’ is bullshit, okay? Pain is pain, it’s an uncountable noun. You can’t argue yourself out of pain. You can’t compare it. You definitely can’t decide how much of it somebody else should be able to handle. So…so I don’t like this question. But still, there’s something beautiful about seeing the world this way. Not beautiful,” he corrects himself. “Not always. But amazing, even so.”
Mozersky was listening intently, watching Ezra with a level gaze. He glanced away only to take in Jacob’s expression as well, and then said, “Ezra. Yes or no. Should I give this gift to my own child, to my son or my daughter? If it can be given at all?”
“I don’t—”
“You’re cautious, I respect that,” said Mozersky, raising a hand. “But you need to be able to answer this question. To do what you’re planning, you need to know the answer. Even if you’re not sure, you must wager. Place your bets. Yes or no?”
Ezra could still have said no, and the timelines would fracture. Magnus would have his way. But even if there’d been nothing at all riding on this question, Ezra found that he did know the real answer. “Yes,” he said, letting his weight drop back against the sofa cushions. “It’s the next goddamn frontier of human consciousness, okay? It’s my life’s work, and it’s fucking miserable sometimes, but yes, this is
important. And it’s exciting for the kids who get to forge a path through it. It’s a privilege. It’s terrifying. You should do it. You should give that to them.”
Mozersky set down his coffee cup. “And if I do,” he said, “you will teach them? I need to think of the long term, you see. For me, this can’t be a scheme or a stratagem, an idea for you to pick up when it’s convenient and jettison when it’s not. You can’t back out of this later and say it’s just business. This isn’t business. This is a promise.”
“What happened to—letting our lawyers palaver?” Ezra said, not in the mood to lower his expectations any further. “You want me to promise, what about you? You want my personal lifelong loyalty to your kid, seriously? Then this school gets anything it asked for from you, funding-wise. Anything. Every budget, every year, approved without question.”
Mozersky stared at him in silence for a second, calculating. “Our lawyers will discuss,” he said again, and even Ezra could tell it was a small capitulation. “But I think we can afford to be generous.”
Ezra shrugged. “Then I think we can help you.”
“So. You agree?” Mozersky said, looking to Jacob. “We can go ahead?”
But Jacob’s eyes were on Ezra, and he was smiling—that raw, edge-of-tears smile that nobody but Jacob had ever given him. A look of pride. “Full steam ahead, Captain.”
It was corny. It was so corny. Ezra had to laugh.
Epilogue
Weapons and Treasures
