The Quiet Pools

“I’ll make secondary entries for the missing volumes with the information available,” Benjamin volunteered.

“Do that,” Christopher said.

“Shall I add them to the Red List as well?”

“No. But you can find me a current hydraulics instructional. A lot of these nulls look like demonstration gadgets. They may correspond to some of the computer models used later on.”

The instructional came up on a blank display a moment later. Christopher leaned on the red bar and began navigating through the full-color animated sequences with half-whispered commands, seeking a match for the pen- and-ink drawing on the adjacent screen. It was several minutes before he noticed the blue mail window up on display ten, and the one-word message therein:

LUNCH?—DK

“Send to Daniel,” Christopher said, touching the white bar. “Sure. I’ll come there. I can use the walk.”

The mail window dissolved into Daniel Keith’s sandy-haired and smiling visage. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. I need to get out of this zoo for an hour a lot more than you need to exercise. I’ll come to you. Twelve-fifteen.”

“Food’s better at the central cafeteria,” Christopher reminded his friend.

“If you get a chance to eat it,” Keith said dryly. “It’s three weeks until the first batch of selection notices. A selection counselor’s got about as much chance of enjoying a quiet lunch as Jeremiah has of being named captain of the Memphis.”

“Read and understood,” Christopher said with a grin. “I’ll see you downstairs in a bit.” He touched the black bar. “Ben, show me the Bramah Press again, will you? And let me know when it’s ten after.”

The rumble of a departing Pelican echoed in the garden courtyard just as Christopher McCutcheon and Daniel Keith were settling at a small table shaded by a broad-leafed tree.

“I’m serious,” Keith was saying. “It’s like they think the rules are different now than they were a year ago. I’ve had all kinds of offers this last month—and that’s from our people. God help me if anybody outside finds out what I do.”

“If you want to keep the secret, you’d better watch where you flash this,” Christopher said, reaching across the table and tucking the bottom half of Keith’s ID inside his shirt pocket. “We know what goes on in Building 37, too. You’d probably get accosted just on general principles.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Keith said, cracking his soup container open.

“So, did you report the offers?”

“A few. The serious ones. The scary ones.”

“Take any offers?”

Keith’s mouth worked wordlessly, then turned up in a sheepish grin. “No. And I don’t know if that makes me a saint or an idiot,” he said.

“Depends on the temptation in question, I guess,” Christopher said, amused.

“Ranged from truly sad to died-and-gone-to-heaven.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll have to show you. One woman mailed me sixty seconds of very—uh, wet video. On reconsideration, I am a saint,” Keith said. “Look, you must have something to talk about that doesn’t have anything to do with Memphis. Tell me about Jessica. Tell me how wonderful it is to wake up next to something like that.”

“Don’t tell me you want her, too,” Christopher said dourly.

Keith shrugged. “Hair down to here, tits out to there—what did you expect?” Then he caught the unhappiness in Christopher’s eyes, and his demeanor changed. “Don’t tell me there’s a problem already.”

“Yeah. Me.”

“Huh?”

He toyed with a spoon before answering. “I found out I don’t like sharing Jessie.”

“No surprise,” Keith said. “Nobody does. Your woman lies down with someone else and your genes start screaming at you for not protecting their interests. No matter how noble and rational you’re determined to be, there’s a little program running in the back of your mind saying, ‘No, you idiot,’ and worse.”

“I know.”

Keith went on, “This can’t have been a surprise, though—even though she’s only been living with you for, what, two months? A woman like that’s going to attract a lot of attention, and you three aren’t contracted. And hasn’t Loi had other lovers all along?”

Christopher nodded. “I couldn’t do anything about that. That was clear going in. That’s why she wouldn’t go for a closed contract.” He paused, then added quietly, “I guess that’s part of the reason I wanted Jessie in the house. I thought she was going to be all mine.”

“While she had to share you with Loi?”

“I said it was what I wanted. I didn’t say it was fair.” He sipped at his iced tea. “So maybe it’s justice, after all.”

“What’s justice? What exactly happened?”

“Loi and Jessie happened. While I was playing my usual Sunday gig down in Freeport.”

“Oh-ho.”

“Which means?”

“Which means I could have seen that one coming.”

“This makes sense to you?”

“Sure,” Keith said. “My moms were closer to each other than to either of my dads. Same thing happened with Brenda and Jo. As far as I can tell, if there’s two women in the house, they either form the strongest bond in the family or they split the family apart scratching at each other. Mostly the former.”

“I don’t have the benefit of your experience,” Christopher said. “My only other trine was two men and a woman.”

“What about your own family?”

Christopher shook his head. “My mother died three years before I was born—”

“Excuse me?”

“Frozen embryo. They took some eggs when my mother took sick, just in case.”

“Huh,” Keith said. “Interesting. Right out of the soaps.”

Tight-lipped, Christopher nodded and said, “Anyway, Deryn—she was my host and my nurture-mother both —was the only woman in the house when I was growing up.”

“You have a sister, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t count.”

“I suppose not,” Keith said. “Look, did you bring this business up hoping for some free advice?”

“Did I bring it up?” Christopher asked. “Never mind. You can play relationship technologist if you want, Doctor Keith.”

Keith smiled. “It’s nothing brilliant. It just seems to me that what happened was still inside the family, even if it was kind of a rude surprise. And along the lines of what I said earlier, you’ve probably got to take it as a good thing.”

“You’re talking to the guy up here,” Christopher said glumly, tapping his temple. “And he knows all that.” He touched the center of his chest. “It’s this guy that’s having the trouble.”

“Evict him,” Keith said with mock solemnity.

“I tried. He’s got a long-term lease.”

“Bribe him, then. See if you can buy him off with the erotic possibilities of two women together.”

“No chance. We were playing three-in-a-bed the first week Jessie moved in. He just feels left out.” Christopher shook his head. “I really love both of them.”

“Try ‘loving’ them a little less and trusting them a little more,” Keith said wisely. “It’s a better mix in the long