The screen blinked, wiped clean, and displayed a message:
ACCESS TERMINATED.
PLEASE INSERT YOUR NIDC IN YOUR CARD DRIVE.
*
IDENTIFY YOURSELF
BY CLEARANCE NUMBER
AND ACCESS AUTHORIZATION.
“Do we have enough?” asked Frederick. Donna Rose glanced up at him, the tips of the leaves that covered her chest twitching away from her skin just enough to reveal her collar bones.
Hannoken nodded jerkily and made an abrupt, chopping motion with one hand. “Close it down.”
The bot obeyed.
As her screen cleared, however, another caught Frederick’s eye. The view it showed was familiar, horizontal, not sky-eye vertical, but… He pointed. “Turn up the sound.”
It was a newscast: “Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames,” the announcer was saying as the camera centered on a broken window from which a tendril of smoke escaped.
“But the damage had been done.” Another camera moved through an open rotunda, past a rubble of smashed souvenirs and filigreed grillwork that marked what had been a gift shop. The walls overhead still held, intact but soot-stained, antique WPA bronzes. The mouth of a corridor was partially blocked by the crushed and tattered remnants of biological sculptures and other products of the gengineer as artist.
“The mob destroyed almost everything before the police arrived.” On the steps outside, bodies. In the auditorium where Frederick and his wife and their children had once entertained audiences with the music only they could make, more bodies. In an office…
“Even the museum’s director. They found his wife in another part of the building.” The bodies looked small, the near-white hair stained with blood, the faces smoothed of wrinkles.
“No,” said Frederick. Franklin and Kimmer Peirce had been his friends almost as long as Tom Cross. They had survived the massacre that had cost him Tom, and Porculata, and… They had helped him become what he was. And now…
He hadn’t seen them in weeks. Not since before Renny’s case had landed on his desk. He should have visited them before he left for Probe Station. But he hadn’t had the time, and he hadn’t dreamed that they would not be there when he returned, and…
He wanted to scream, to hit something, to burst out in tears. But he felt stunned, frozen. The tears refused to come. All he could do was turn away, head down, and stumble from the room.
* * * *
This time, the elephant—what had been her name? Martha?—had not been in the nightmare. But Tom and Muffy had been, and they had died as messily as they had in reality. So had Franklin and Kimmer, who had survived the massacre that had helped Frederick into manhood but now, in the dream, joined the others in death. Porculata, his wife, had died more messily. In reality, an Engineer’s sword had simply cut her in two. In his night-dark mind, she was cloven, stabbed, hacked, burned, boiled, dead a hundred times, a hundred ways, and more, and worse.
When Frederick drew back the curtain that divided his quarters, he found Donna Rose facing him. Her eyes were closed, her back arched to thrust her breasts forward, her arms by her sides, their lower portions angled outward. Her leaves were unwound from her torso and draped over her forearms to soak in the beam of light that shone through the porthole behind her. The light was constant, steadied by the mirrors Hannoken had ordered installed. As in the Director’s office, a filter reduced the sun’s searing brightness to a near equivalent of a summer noon.
For a moment, he stared at the spot where a navel would have been if she were human, or even truly mammalian. Then, suppressing the catch in his breath that her pose invited, he grunted morosely. “Are you trying to cheer me up?”
Her eyes opened. Languidly, she refurled her leaves. She grinned. “I was just getting a last bit of sun before going back to work.”
He grunted again. “I need some breakfast. Down there…” He gestured toward the porthole as if Earth were just outside. “Down there, I could just pick a sausage. Here the bushes are all in the cafeteria.”
“Bots eat too,” she said. “Sometimes. And I’d like something now. So let’s go.” She drew her roots from the soil, shook her feet daintily to remove the crumbs of soil that clung to her soles, and stepped toward the door. He stood, leaving the bed down, unmade, and followed her. But before they could leave the room, the communicator spoke: “Frederick? Donna Rose? Director Hannoken would like to see you as soon as you’ve eaten. In his office.”
When they reached Hannoken’s office, the Station’s Director was facing his picture window, his hands clasped behind his back, his face turned into the light. His kudzu plant stood nearby, a simple nonsentient decoration. Withered purple petals had fallen to the floor around its pot.
He turned to greet them and said, holding Donna Rose’s hand, “I knew you’d found a slot in the com center. I didn’t know how good you were until yesterday. I just hadn’t seen you in action.” He faced Frederick. “She’s good,” he told his guest. “She worked that console like a pro. And you say she was a menial. A cleaning bot.”
Frederick nodded. When Hannoken added, “But why? That’s an utter waste. And how’d she learn?” he shrugged. He didn’t know how she had learned. He did know how to explain the waste. “People keep them out of every job they can,” he said. “Some are good enough to escape that, but most…” He shrugged again.
“Ahhh.” Hannoken sighed. “I know, really. But…” He shook his head. “I thought I was doing something good,” he said. “When I became a gengineer. I saw what others had done before me. I thought I would benefit society, that it would welcome whatever I came up with. Not…”
He turned toward Donna Rose. “That tissue sample I took,” he said. “It’s growing fine. And your genome.” He shook his head. “Anyone I know would have pieced it together in a very different way. But it works. Of course it does. And very nicely, too.” His eyes added another meaning to his words.
“And they reject you too.” he said. “Look at this. Athena, veedo on. Play that last recording.” All three turned to face the veedo on the wall. The recording was that of a newscast, and it showed a street littered with bodies. Most showed green leaves or skin.
“Ahhh!” Donna Rose’s wordless cry shook with pain. Frederick said nothing at all.
“One of those ‘local disturbances,’” said the Station Director as the tape reached its end and began again. “For some reason, they put this one on the news.”
“Can’t you…?” She fell silent, staring at the veedo and its recording of blue-clad Engineers and others—others in more varied clothing, not uniforms, others who were not Engineers but sympathizers, fellow-travellers, perhaps just ordinary people who wished to be left alone and therefore allied themselves with what seemed the most threatening force in sight—as they walked among the scattered bodies, hacking with Engineer machetes, axes, kitchen knives, removing flowered scalps, the bulbs that hung between bot legs, and other trophies, smearing their clothes with blood as if it were some badge of honor. “They’ll be killed, won’t they? They’ll all be killed. Can’t you save them? Some of them? Bring the bots up here? To the stations?”
The ensuing silence, though it did not last long, not even long enough for the recorded excerpt from the veedo news to begin once more, seemed oppressive. Finally, Alvar Hannoken raised one hand to his nose. He pinched the bridge and drew his fingers down. He sighed. “I wish we could,” he said. “But this Station could hold only a few. The habitats could do better, but even they are pretty close to their design capacity already. We just don’t have the room for many.”
“The lifeboat problem,” said Frederick. When the others looked puzzled, he explained: “When people used to travel across the ocean in ships, the ships would sometimes strike a rock or an iceberg and sink. The passengers would get into smaller boats, the lifeboats.
But the lifeboats could only hold a few, and the ships often did not carry enough for everyone. And if too many crowded into a lifeboat, that boat would sink too.”
“Yes,” said Hannoken. “Not enough stations. Not enough habitats. And not enough spaceplanes or shuttles even if we did have places to put the ones we rescued.”
“But can’t you try?” cried Donna Rose. “Can’t you save a few? As many as you can?”
There was silence again while they stared at the recording, each absorbed in thought. Finally, Hannoken said, “Would it really help? Or would it hurt? Raise false hopes? Shouldn’t they work out their problems down there?”
“Can they?” asked Frederick. He did not sound optimistic.
* * * *
“I should go back,” said Frederick. It was evening. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands cradling the sides of his head, facing Donna Rose in her rocket-casing trough of compost. “That’s where I belong, and I can’t do much here.”
Donna Rose held her unfurled leaves toward the light that still streamed through the port, unfaded by Earth’s diurnal rhythms. She turned to put her breasts in silhouette, but Frederick barely noticed. “You can’t do much there, either,” she said. “No one can. We’re doomed.”
“But I should try,” said the man. “That was my job at BRA, to try. The agency was supposed to protect the environment, people, from reckless gengineering. But it had begun to realize that some of the gengineering needs protection too. Intelligent genimals, that’s what I dealt with. Now it’s obvious we need to do more for the bots. And greenskins, and gengineers, and…”
He fell silent. The bot said nothing. There was nothing to say, for his words were only truth. If BRA, or some other agency, did not act to protect gengineering and its fruits, licit and illicit, deliberate and inadvertent, the technology would be lost. And civilization would tumble across the thin line that was all that separated it from utter savagery.
Finally, he added, “I’m sure I could get into the nets better from down there. Keep better track of what’s going on. Maybe even…”
“It’s too late for them,” said Donna Rose softly.
“I know.” He stared at the floor, his voice thick with unshed tears.
* * * *
“You shouldn’t go,” said Alvar Hannoken. “It’s futile. One man can’t halt the tide.” They were standing beside the small office in the full-gee zone that handled bookings for travel to Earth, the Moon, and the other stations and habitats in orbit. Just beyond the open door, a single clerk sat before a terminal, looking bored.
“I have to try,” said Frederick. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but…”
“Stay here,” said Donna Rose quietly. There were tears in her eyes, as there had been when she watched her friends being slaughtered. “Please, Freddy.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” said Renny. In a lightweight wheelchair beside him, one hand on his shoulder, sat Lois McAlois. She alone said nothing.
“Then I’m an idiot,” said Frederick. He turned, stepped into the booking office, and held his return ticket toward the clerk. “Can you get me on the next trip down?”
The clerk tapped his keyboard and stared at a screen of glowing characters. “Not many going in that direction. There’s empty seats,” he said. “Now let’s make your reservation.” He copied a string of numbers from the ticket. “Just a sec.”
Frederick was standing close enough—he would have been close enough even in the corridor—to see the screen wipe itself clean and display three lines:
TICKET CANCELLED
MESSAGE WAITING
MR. SUIDA, PLEASE INSERT YOUR NIDC IN THE CARD DRIVE.
Vaguely, Frederick was aware of noises behind him, but he paid no attention. He felt stunned. His ticket cancelled? Had Judith Breger fired him after all? But then why…? Had PETA sued him, and the court frozen all his assets?
The clerk shook his head. “I’ve never seen that before. You want the message?”
Frederick didn’t dare to try to speak. Mutely, he produced his niddic and handed it over.
The clerk inserted it into his machine’s card drive. Immediately, the screen displayed a new message:
YOUR NIDC HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
MESSAGE WAITING
“Mechin’ litter,” growled Renny. “That’s a nasty trick. What’s going on?”
“I haven’t got the…,” said Hannoken.
“He’ll have to stay here, won’t he?” said Donna Rose. She sounded relieved.
The clerk simply shook his head and touched his keyboard’s Enter key. A moment later, the screen displayed the message file:
You have been fired.
Your severance pay has been credited to account # QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your airline ticket has been cancelled.
Its price has been refunded to account # QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your apartment lease has been cancelled.
The security deposit and pro rata rent refund have been deposited in account # QW-47033 on Probe Station.
Your National Identification Card (NIDC) has been revoked.
You no longer have permission to cross national borders.
“You’re stuck,” said Renny.
“I am,” said Frederick. Earthly governments, including his own, viewed low Earth orbit as marking the upper border of all nations. His future travels were now limited to visiting other space stations, habitats, the Moon. Earth was off limits. “Dammit. I didn’t dream they would go that far.”
“They’re probably doing you a favor,” said Lois McAlois. “That’s no place to be, down there, not now.”
“But why?” asked Frederick, though he knew there could not possibly be any answer. Not one of his companions, nor anyone else on Probe Station, was privy to the thoughts of those who could fire him and banish him. “I stuck my neck out,” he said. “I went outside channels to send Donna Rose and Renny up here. I expected to catch some litter for it. But this much?”
“It does,” said Hannoken. “It does look like overreaction.”
“You’re an administrator,” said Lois. “And you wouldn’t do something like this.”
“What about my ticket?” asked Donna Rose as the Station’s Director shook his head, and Frederick remembered. Renny’s ticket had been one-way; supposedly he had not been intended to return. The bot’s had been round-trip, to support the pretense that she was on official business. He had not expected that she would ever use the return half.
“Do you have it with you?” he asked.
“I remember the numbers.” She recited them, the clerk typed them into his machine, and the screen revealed that she too no longer had a valid niddic. Her ticket too was cancelled, its value credited to a Probe Station account even though the money had not been her own, but BRA’s.
“I don’t get it,” said Renny with a low growl.
Together then, they turned away from the clerk and his perplexing machine. Hannoken’s office was not far away, nor a small rack of bottles and glasses. When those with hands—even Donna Rose, to the surprise of those who thought botanical beings could not tolerate or welcome alcohol—were all supplied, the Director said, “Perhaps the Engineers brought pressure on your bosses, Frederick. Being what you are, defending Renny, working for BRA, you are a symbol of all they are against. As soon as you were off the planet, assuming they knew about it…”
“They knew,” said Frederick, thinking of the Engineer at the airport, the one with the “NO BOTS” sign.
“Then they could have moved immediately to make it permanent. Certainly, they have the clout. And who else could it be?”
* * * *
Indeed, who else could it be? But that was a quest
ion no one could answer. Each time Frederick used Hannoken’s office facilities to try to call Judith Breger, he got only the computer-synthesized voice of StarBell telling him that all satellite circuits were busy, all ground lines were busy, the ground station was down, the number was busy, the number was out of order.
“Athena, query,” said Hannoken. “Is anyone else on Probe Station having any similar communications difficulty?”
The answer came immediately in the same voice that Frederick had heard from the communication grills in the dining room, the corridors, his own quarters: “No, sir.”
“That,” said Renny, his lips wrinkling into a suggestion of a snarl and his ears flattening against his skull. “That sounds like someone doesn’t want you talking to your boss. Or maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you. Is there anyone else?”
He tried to call Berut Amoun at the office, but with no more success. Nor did he get through when he called Bert’s home. He knew his friend had an answering machine, but he wasn’t being allowed to reach even that.
“Let me try,” said Hannoken. “I have a friend who might… Athena, get Lou Polling.” As promptly as anyone could wish, a young man with swept-back blond hair was on the office screen. Hannoken and Polling exchanged greetings, and then the Director described the problem. “Can you help, Lou? Relay a call to BRA for us?”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 80
