“What should we do, if anything?”
“Engage her. Ask questions. Challenge her answers.” He thought about all the time he’d spent on the banks of the fishponds. “And startle her.”
“Startle her?”
“Splash the water. Throw rocks.”
MEEWEE MADE ARRANGEMENTS to leave. Everything at the Mem Lab seemed to be under control, the natpac action had been discontinued when they achieved a 97 percent upload total. Fishy Eleanor was slowly gathering her wits. Twenty-nine surviving Eleanor fetuses had passed the developmental landmarks of the first trimester in record time. Oddly, the closer to success the Mem Lab got, the more depressed the staff seemed to become. They were even becoming frosty toward Meewee in the commissary.
SOMETIME DURING THE night, Meewee was awakened by the shaking of his bed. His first thought was — Momoko. He smelled her perfume. He turned over and found that she was awake.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” she said. “Lab Rat had a question that couldn’t wait.”
“It’s all right,” he said, with his cheek pressed against her simply perfect breast.
“Oh, this reminds me,” she said, “a decision for LOG 1. You have here a facility with over six hundred dedicated employees scattered throughout an archipelago of modules who have had no contact with their loved ones and the outside world for 465 days. This is hard on everyone, it is true, but unavoidable under the circumstances. At least that’s my judgment. Cabinet says it can safely import people’s mail, but I disagree. Since you have the final say, we thought we’d bring the matter to you.”
Over a year in total isolation. Meewee never ceased to be amazed at the degree of loyalty that Eleanor evoked from her people. “What harm could there be in letting people receive mail?” he asked.
“Let them receive mail, and the next thing you know, they’ll want to send mail, and then they’ll be clamoring to go home on leave.”
“I see.” Meewee thought about the people he had met at the lab. “How brave you all are.”
“Eh,” she said dismissively.
“If I hadn’t come when I did, how long would you have stayed here in total isolation?”
“Three years. Then protocol would have lowered stealth enough to listen and eventually make discreet inquiries. Four years max.”
“Astonishing. Such dedication must take its toll.”
“Maybe,” she said and planted a kiss on his lips. “It makes us all a little bit crazy.”
Meet the Donalds
Port Clarke camera feeds were available to the
ON THE EVENING of the thirty-fourth day since departing the port at Mezzoluna, the ISV
“Say again?” Fred shouted. Although Mando clung to handholds right next to him, the din outside the main hatch was deafening. Passengers, desperate to get off the claustrophobic transport, seemed to have lost all sense of courtesy, as well as their space legs, and there was much jostling for place. The total weightlessness made things that much worse.
Mando shouted in reply, “I said as soon as we get situated in the rez, we should get together and look around.”
Floating not far away were the two retrokids. They were dressed in miniature HomCom blacksuits, complete with visor cap and faux standstill wands. When the boy caught Fred’s eye, he snapped a salute. Fred pretended not to see. “Listen, Mando,” he shouted. “There’s something I need to tell you.” He had been dreading this moment, but he had no choice in the matter. The temporary cover ID that Marcus had provided him would expire the moment he entered the space station. “My name’s not Walter.”
Mando pointed at his ear and shook his head.
“I said I’m not Walter Mitty!”
The queue surged ahead a few meters and stopped again. Someone far ahead of them shouted something unintelligible, and hundreds of voices gave three cheers. The logjam broke all at once, and the passengers scrambled for the hatchway. Fred and Mando became separated, and Mando yelled, “See you at the rez!” as he vanished into the crowd.
Fred reached the docking seal where ship met station. If ever there was a threshold, this was it. As he pulled himself across, he had a sick feeling of making the worst mistake of his life, which was saying a lot.
In the receiving area of the Terminal Wheel hub, passengers pulled themselves and their luggage along handhold arrays and through scanways and document inspection stations. Then they queued up for the spokeway lifts. The cars took them out to the wheel rim. The farther they traveled from the hub, the heavier they became until they arrived at an Earth Standard one-g. Anticipating wobbly legs, a fleet of carts awaited the newcomers to take them to TECA exam rooms where additional scans took place. Fred managed to keep his legs under him, and he submitted to pricks and swabs, radiation and sniffers. When he felt about as tested as a man could be, he was ushered into the final station.
It was a small booth with only one piece of furniture, a metal seat with an attached arm board. A medbeitor waited next to it, and a bored russ in TECA gray and green watched from a frame on the wall. He motioned for Fred to sit.
“What’s this, brother?” Fred said, indicating the arm board. “It looks positively cheneyesque.”
The officer launched into a well-worn explanation. “This station employs a deep-tissue screening procedure. In order to pass through that door” — he gestured to a door opposite the one through which Fred had entered — “and report to duty, all arrivals must sit in that chair. The screening entails pouring ten ccs of HALVENE into your cupped palm. Have you ever been treated with HALVENE, myr?”
Fred nodded.
“Good. Then you know it’s not that bad. But it’s a free choice. You may simply turn around and proceed back to the holding facility to await return to Mezzoluna.”
Fred sat in the chair and laid his right arm on the arm board; restraints flicked like frog tongues to strap him down. The restraints, the ceramic walls, and the absence of anyone but him in the booth suggested to Fred that if he failed this test, he wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
“Make a cup out of your hand,” the russ in the frame said.
“But won’t it see my palm array? They told us palm arrays are legit.”
“They are. What we’re looking for are the bots that like to hijack them or hide in them. We might end up giving you a complete sheep dip before we’re through, or maybe the ten ccs is all it takes.”
There was a bowl-like depression at the end of the arm board, and Fred cupped his hand and laid it in it. “I’ve had the full treatment before, brother. Piece of cake.”
The medbeitor next to the chair poured a yellowish liquid into Fred’s palm. It was ice cold, just as he remembered, then it warmed up as it passed right through his hand and dripped into the bowl beneath.
