Okay, put him on the “of interest” list. Who else? Doris Nguyen. Former homemaker. Mike eyed the youngish face. She looked almost his mom’s age, even though she was forty years older. He searched on the name, shed collisions and obvious myths; the Friends of Privacy piled the lies so deep that sometimes it was hard to find the truth. But Doris Nguyen had no special connections in her past. On the other hand … she had a son at Camp Pendleton. Okay, Doris stayed on the list.
Chumlig was still going on about how to morph results into new questions, oblivious to Mike’s truancy.
And then there was Xiaowen Xu. PhD physics, PhD electrical engineering. 2005 Winner of Intel’s Grove Prize. Dr. Xu sat hunched over, looking at the table in front of her. She was trying to keep up on a laptop! Poor lady. But for sure she would have connections.
Politicians, military, scientists … and parents or children of such. Yeah. This affiliance could get him into a lot of trouble. Maybe he could climb the affiliate tree a ways, get a hint if Bad Guys were involved. Mike sent out a couple hundred queries, mainly pounding on certificate authorities. Even if the certs were solid, people and programs often used them in stupid ways. Answers came trickling back.
If this weren’t Friends of Privacy chaff, there might be some real clues here. He sent out followup queries—and suddenly a message hung in letters of silent flame all across his vision:
Chumlig → Villas:_You’ve got all day to play games, Miguel! If you won’t pay attention here, you can darn well take this course over.
Villas → Chumlig: Sorry. Sorry! Most times, Chumlig just asked embarrassing questions; this was the first she’d messaged him with a threat.
And the amazing thing was, she’d done it in a short pause, where everyone else thought she was just reading her notes. Mike eyed her with new respect.
Shop class. It was Mike Villas’ favorite class, and not just because it was his last of the day. Shop was like a premium game; there were real gadgets to touch and connect. That was the sort of thing you paid money for on Pyramid Hill. And Mr. Williams was no Louise Chumlig. He let you follow your own inclinations, but he never came around afterwards and complained because you hadn’t accomplished anything. It was almost impossible not to get an A in Ron Williams’ classes; he was wonderfully old-fashioned.
Shop class was also Mike’s best opportunity to chat up the old people and the do-not-call privacy freaks. He wandered around the shop class looking like an utter idiot. This affiliance required way too much people skill. Mike had never been any good at diplomacy games.
And now he was schmoozing the oldsters. Trying to.
Ralston Blount just sat staring off into the space above his table. The guy was wearing, but he didn’t respond to messages. Mike waited until Williams went off for one of his coffee breaks. Then he sidled over and sat beside Blount. Jeez, the guy might be healthy but he really looked old. Mike spent a few moments trying to tune in on the man’s perceptions. Mike had noticed that when Blount didn’t like a class, he just blew it off. He didn’t care about grades. After a few moments, Mike realized that he didn’t care about socializing either.
So talk to him! It’s just another kind of monster whacking.
Mike morphed a buffoon image onto the guy, and suddenly it wasn’t so hard to cold start the encounter. “So, Professor Blount, how do you like shop class?”
Ancient eyes turned to look at him. “I couldn’t care less, Mr. Villas.”
O-kay! Hmm. There was lots about Ralston Blount that was public record, even some legacy newsgroup correspondence. That was always good for shaking up your parents and other grownups …
But the old man continued talking on his own. “I’m not like some people here. I’ve never been senile. By rights, my career should be on track with the best of my generation.”
“By rights?”
“I was Provost of Eighth College in 2006. I should have been UCSD Chancellor in the years following. Instead I was pushed into academic retirement.”
Mike knew all that. “But you never learned to wear.”
Blount’s eyes narrowed. “I made it a point never to wear. I thought wearing was demeaning, like an executive doing his own typing.” He shrugged. “I was wrong. I paid a heavy price for that. But things have changed.” His eyes glittered with deliberate iridescence.
“I’ve taken four semesters of this ‘Adult Education.’ Now my resume is out there in the ether.”
“You must know a lot of important people.”
“Indeed. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Y-you know, Professor, I may be able to help. No wait—I don’t mean by myself. I have an affiliance.”
“Oh?”
At least he knew what affiliance was. Mike explained Big Lizard’s deal. “So there could be some real money in this.”
Blount squinted his eyes, trying to parse the certificates. “Money isn’t everything, especially in my situation.”
“But anybody with these certs is important. Maybe you could get help-in-kind.”
“True.”
The old man wasn’t ready to bite, but he said he’d talk to some of the others on Mike’s list. Helping them with their projects counted as a small plus in the affiliance. Maybe the Lizard thought that would flush out more connections.
Meantime, it was getting noisy. Marie Dorsey’s team had designed some kind of crawler. Their prototypes were flopping around everwhere.
They got so close you couldn’t really talk out loud.
Villas → Blount: Can you read me?
“Of course I can,” replied the old man.
So despite Blount’s claims of withittude, maybe he couldn’t manage silent messaging, not even the finger-tapping most grownups used.
Xiaowen Xu just sat at the equipment bench and read from her laptop. It took even more courage to talk to her than Ralston Blount.
She seemed so sad and still. She had the parts list formatted like a hardcopy catalog. “Once I knew about these things,” she said. “See that.” She pointed at a picture in the museum section. “I designed that chip.”
“You’re world class, Dr. Xu.”
She didn’t look up. “That was a long time ago. I retired from Intel in 2005. And during the war, I couldn’t even get consulting jobs. My skills have just rusted away.”
“Alzheimer’s?” He knew she was much older than she looked, even older than Ralston Blount.
Xu hesitated, and for a moment Mike was afraid she was really angry. But then she gave a sad little laugh. “No Alzheimer’s. You—people nowadays don’t know what it was like to be old.”
“I do so! I have a great grandpa in Phoenix. G’granma, she does have dementia—you know, a kind they still can’t fix. And the others are all dead.” Which was about as old as you can get.
Dr. Xu shook her head. “Even in my day, not everyone over eighty was senile. I just got behind in my skills. My girlfriend died. After a while I just didn’t care very much. I didn’t have the energy to care.” She looked at her laptop. “Now, I have the energy I had when I was sixty. Maybe I have the same native intelligence.” She slapped the table softly. “But I can’t even understand a current tech paper.” It looked like she was going to start crying, right in the middle of shop class. Mike scanned around; no one seemed to be watching. He reached out to touch Xu’s hand. He didn’t have the answer. Ms. Chumlig would say he didn’t have the right question.
He thought a moment. “What’s your shop project going to be?”
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I don’t even understand this parts catalog.”
Mike waved at her laptop, but the images sat still as carved stone. “Can I show you what I see?”
“Please.”
He slaved her display to his vision of the parts list. The view weaved and dived, a bad approximation to what Mike could see when he looked around with his headup view. Nevertheless, Xu leaned forward and nodded as Mike tried to explain the list.
“Wait. Those look like little wings.”
>
“Yeah, there are lots of small fliers. They can be fun.”
She gave a wan smile. “They don’t look very stable.”
Mike had noticed that, but not in the view she could see. How did she know? “That’s true, but hardly anything is passively stable. I could take care of that, if you want to match a power supply.”
She studied the stupid display. “Ah, I see.” The power supplies were visible there, along with obvious pointers to interface manuals.
“You really could manage the stability?” Another smile, broader this time. “Okay, let’s try.”
The wings were just tissue flappers. Mike slid a few dozen onto the table top, and started some simulations using the usual stuff from ReynoldsNumbers-R-Us. Xiaowen Xu alternated between querying her laptop and poking her small fingers into the still tinier wings.
Somehow, with virtually no help from anywhere, she had a power train figured out. In a few more minutes, they had five design possibilities. Mike showed her how to program the fab board so that they could try a couple dozen variations all at once.
They tossed handsful of the tiny contraptions into the air. They swirled around the room—and in seconds, all were on the floor, failing in one way or another.
From the far end of the table, Marie Dorsey and her friends were not impressed. “We’re making fliers, too, only ours won’t be brain damaged!” Huh? And he’d thought she was making crawlers!
Dr. Xu looked at the Dorsey team’s floppers. “I don’t think you’ve got enough power, Miss.”
Marie blushed. “I – yeah.” Her group was silent, but there was heavy messaging. “Can we use your solution?” She rushed on: “With official credit, of course.”
“Sure.”
Marie’s gadgets were making small hops by the time the class bell rang.
End of class, end of school day. But Xiaowen Xu didn’t seem to notice. She and Mike collected their midges and merged improvements.
Three generations later, all their tiny flappers were flying. Xu was smiling from ear to ear.
“So now we put mininodes on them,” said Mike. “You did pretty well with the power configuration.” Without any online computation at ail.
“Yeah!” She gave him a strange look. “But you got the stability in less than an hour. It would have taken me days to set up the simulations.”
“It’s easy with the right tools.”
She looked disbelieving.
“Hey, I’m near failing at bonehead math. Look Dr. Xu, if you learn to search and use the right packages, you could do all this.” He was beginning to sound like Chumlig. And this fits with the afftliance! “I-I could show you. There are all sorts of joint projects we could do!” Maybe she would always be one of those deep resource people, but if she found her place, that would be more than he could ever be.
He wasn’t sure if Dr. Xu really understood what all he was talking about. But she was smiling. “Okay.”
Mike was late walking home, but that was okay. Ralston Blount had signed onto the affiliance. He was working with Doris Nguyen on her project. Xiaowen Xu had also signed on. She was living at Rainbow’s End rest home, but she had plenty of money. She could buy the best beginner’s wearable that Epiphany made.
Big Lizard would be pleased, and maybe some money would come Mike’s way.
And maybe that didn’t matter so much. He suddenly realized he was whistling as he walked. What did matter … was a wonderful surprise. He had coordinated something today. He had been the person who helped other people. It was nothing like being a real top agent—but it was something.
The Radner twins were almost home, but they showed up to chat.
“You’ve been scarce, Mike.” They were both grinning. “Hey, we got an A from Williams!”
“For the Vancouver project?”
“Yup. He didn’t even check where we got it,” said Jerry.
“He didn’t even ask us to explain it. That would have been a problem!” said Fred.
They walked a bit in companionable silence.
“The hole we put in the Pyramid Hill fence is already repaired.”
“No surprise. I don’t think we should try that again anytime soon.”
“Yeah,” Fred said emphatically. His image wavered. The slime was still messing his clothes.
Jerry continued, “And we collected some interesting gossip about Chumlig.” The students maintained their own files on faculty. Mostly it was good for laughs. Sometimes it had more practical uses.
“What’s that?”
“Okay, this is from Ron Williams. He says he got it firsthand, no possibility of Friends of Privacy lies.” That’s how most FoP lies were prefaced, but Mike just nodded.
“Ms. Chumlig was never fired from Hoover High. She’s moonlighting there. Maybe other places, too.”
“Oh. Do the school boards know?” Ms. Chumlig was such a straight arrow, it was hard to imagine she was cheating.
“We don’t know. Yet. We can’t figure why Hoover would let this happen. You know those IBM Fellows they were bragging about? All three were in Chumlig’s classes! But she kinda drifted out of sight when the publicity hit. Our theory is there’s some scandal that keeps her from taking credit … Mike?”
Mike had stopped in the middle of the path. He shrugged up his record of this morning, and matched Big Lizard’s English usage with Chumlig’s.
He looked back at the twins. “Sorry. You … surprised me.”
“It surprised us too. Anyway, we figure this could be useful if Jerry and I have serious grade problems in her class.”
“Yeah, I guess it could,” said Mike, but he wasn’t really paying attention anymore. It suddenly occurred to him that there could be something beyond top agents. There could be people who helped others on a time scale of years. Something called teachers.
Skin Deep
MARY ROSENBLUM
One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine, and one of its most frequent contributors, with almost thirty sales there to her credit. She has also sold to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Pulphouse, New Legends, and elsewhere.
Rosenblum produced some of the most colorful, exciting, and emotionally powerful stories of the nineties, earning her a large and devoted following of readers. Her linked series of “Drylands” stories have proved to be one of Asimov’s most popular series, but she has also published memorable stories such as “The Stone Garden,” “Synthesis,” “Flight,” “California Dreamer,” “Casting At Pegasus,” “Entrada,” “Rat,” “The Centaur Garden,” “Skin Deep,” “Songs the Sirens Sing,” and many, many others. Her novella “Gas Fish” won the Asimov’s Readers Award Poll in 1996, and was a Finalist for that year’s Nebula Award. Her first novel, The Drylands, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of the year; it was followed in short order by her second novel, Chimera, and her third, The Stone Garden. Her first short-story collection, Synthesis and Other Stories, was widely hailed by critics as one of the best collections of 1996. Her most recent books are a trilogy of mystery novels written under the name Mary Freeman, and she is at now at work at more science fiction novels. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives in Portland, Oregon.
In the moving story that follows, she shows us that although beauty may be skin deep, once you get below the surface, you may find quite a bit more that you weren’t expecting to find …
I never thought they’d be looking for me when the media crew came through the restaurant door. I didn’t even look up from the pot-sink. I mean, why should I? The crowded little floor out there, with its fifteen tables, was the hot new review in the Times these days, so there was always somebody with a name out there. I was never sure if it was Antonio’s pricey wild-harvest-only menu, or if it was just that there were so few tables. It
was a bad night anyway. The new salad girl was trying hard not to look at my face when she had to come back to my station. And Presidio and the crew kept sending her back here. It was kind of an initiation thing. I never got the joke. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know what any woman’s reaction was, looking at me.
So I was up to my elbows in saffron-colored dishwater and paella pans when all of a sudden there’s light and more noise and bodies than usual in the crowded barely legal little kitchen. And I turn around, dripping greasy yellow suds, and there’s this woman with a mic and a couple of walking-camera guys all rigged out in the relay-goggles, getting the “human eye” view. And the woman is pointing the mic at me and babbling something in a loud, bright, talking-head voice. Something about technology and Doctor somebody, and how do I feel?
I feel like crap. I don’t own a mirror, not even to shave. I don’t need one. Any time I want to see my face, I just have to look at somebody. I get a nice clear reflection of the minimum rebuild work that National Health did on me. Not pretty. Be glad you never ran into me on a dark night. And I’m used to it; I mean, I can’t even remember what I looked like before the fire, but … well, I guess it still bugs me. And I’m looking at the camera goggles and thinking I won’t even be able to surf the news streams for at least twenty-four hours.
“So, Eric, tell us how you feel about having a normal face again! Are you excited? Has Doctor Olson-Bernard given you an idea of how long it will take?”
Olson-Bernard. The news-head’s words finally make it through the fog. He’s the dude over at the University Hospital. I filled out the usual forms for some kind of new artificial skin graft—an experimental cloning thing, or something. And there were thirty other people there, too, and a couple were as bad as me, and I guess I just put it out of my head. I’ve applied for this kind of thing before, but they always tell me that the damage went too deep and you just can’t rebuild. But I still go.
“Doctor …” I say and I know I sound like it wasn’t just my face that got cooked.
The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004 Page 48
