The reunion continued for a short while, and when Gray Bee began to float to the surface, Eleanor said
ON HIS SECOND trip to the Mem Lab, Meewee visited the “melon patch.” The forced march of rapid fetal development had taken its toll, and of the original sixty-four beans, only eleven Eleanor clones remained. They were the size of toddlers, and although they were no longer in wombs, they hadn’t been completely born yet; they were still nourished via a vine-like umbilical cord. They lay in identical cribs and twitched and jerked in unison as Lab Rat exercised their muscle groups. They had their eyes open, but their mushrooming brains were idling, and they stared blankly as they kicked and twisted and arched their tiny necks.
As Meewee watched, the thought that kept returning to him was something the panasonic Eleanor had once said, “Imagine — a thousand Eleanors ruling under a thousand suns.”
Someone next to him said, “Looks pretty frightening, doesn’t it?” He turned to face her holo. She looked like the Eleanor he first met almost fifteen years before. “Hello, Merrill,” she said. “Why so glum?”
“Do I look glum?”
“You look like a boy who’s just lost his best friend. Could it be you’re disappointed that Momoko wasn’t here to greet you?”
“Where is she? No one will tell me.”
“That’s because no one knows but me. I sent her and Dr. Strohmeyer on a secret mission to one of my other labs. Part of our counteroffensive. But don’t worry; she’ll return in a few days.”
They turned their attention back to the melon patch. “A pity,” Eleanor said. “We had hoped to end up with at least six of them, but at the current failure rate we’ll be lucky to have three. We’re going to start feeding them engrams the day after tomorrow.”
“Before you even know if they’ll survive?”
“We have to. They can’t develop much more without functioning brains.”
Some program switch closed, and the babies all stopped moving at once and lay as still as dolls. A moment later they began to bawl. Piercing cries of disgruntlement, flailing arms and legs, little red faces.
Meewee said, “So what about this counteroffensive?”
“Yes, there’s something I need you to do. But first, I don’t know if I’ve thanked you yet for all you’ve done already. Reconstructing the last year, Cabinet tells me that we owe our very survival, as well as Ellen’s, to you. I’m glad to see that I did not err when I recruited you. So, on behalf of myself, Cabinet, and Ellen, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Her rare expression of gratitude threw Meewee off balance, but he recovered and said, “You’re welcome, Eleanor, but you must realize that I did what I did for the Earth, not necessarily for the Starke family.”
“Then I’d like to thank you on behalf of the Earth as well. And speaking of the Earth, that’s what I need you to do. Call a GEP meeting and settle with them. Offer to drop your Trade Board appeal in return for all rights to the Lucky Five.”
She had gone from gratitude to order-giving so smoothly, it took Meewee’s breath away. Had she always been like that and he too charmed to notice? “But if we take the five ships,” he said, “that’ll be all we ever get from them. My way and we can eventually get all ninety-nine.”
“You deceive yourself, Merrill. The Trade Board will never rule in your favor, believe me. There are too many powerful interests aligned against you. You’ll end up with no ships at all. So make the deal; it’s imperative that we get the first Oships away as soon as possible. Don’t worry about the rest of them. When I get back on my feet, so to speak, I’ll whip the GEP back into line, and we’ll have all the ships we want.”
Deconstructing Lyra
Cabinet replied,
The two ghosts stepped through a veil of water and entered a rock grotto in the middle of a fountain. There was an eccentric collection of things inside: a mannequin dressed in a gown of leaves and wasp nests, driftwood logs spotted with beach tar, gold coins in a pouch made from butterfly wings, and many more oddments. While the Cabinet’s attorney general strolled around the space inspecting its contents, Lyra felt both proud and self-conscious. Finally, Cabinet smiled at her and said,
They exited the fountain, and Cabinet walked around it planting a metal post in the pavement every few meters. Each post was topped with an optical relay.
Cabinet chuckled.
The posts morphed into miniature marble obelisks, with all-seeing eyes on top.
Lyra’s inner rooms were as eccentric as her personality matrix. Doors that didn’t open, staircases leading to nowhere, lots of stained glass and curved walls and mismatched floor tiles. The furnishings and decor came from all periods and styles, and some objects defied description.
In one room, a throne made of the splayed tines of moose antlers with hemp rope cushions stood on a spongy marble floor. A pair of fuzzy pink slippers lay nearby.
Lyra walked around the room inspecting everything. When she finished, she said,
In a flash, the room became a woodland glade. The ground was carpeted with tiny black flowers, and the furniture morphed into living deer, a lion, and a fawn. Lyra made another round, and this time she stopped and pointed to something on the ground. Two brown-and-white rabbits were concealed in a patch of goldenrods.
Cabinet changed the meadow back into a study, and the rabbits morphed into the fuzzy slippers.
