“I’m not at liberty to go into details, but it amounts to little more than a simulgraphic brain scan.”
“For what purpose?”
Cabinet’s attorney general merely smiled in reply.
“Is it some kind of new therapy?” When Cabinet remained silent, Lyra continued. “It’s my job to know, and I take my job very seriously.”
“Which is why we put you there in the first place. All I can say is that it will do no harm and may do a lot of good.”
Lyra took a moment to consider this. “If I go along, and it works, whatever it is, and it saves their lives, how many other evangelines can you also process?”
Cabinet did not answer at once. It walked around Lyra’s new alone room and admired the security precautions. The furnishings were neither this nor that, neither lamp nor torch, carpet nor lawn, but were caught between a multiplicity of possibilities. “I like this,” Cabinet said. “Esotericism times ten. Too bad you didn’t do this from the start.”
“We live and learn,” the young mentar replied. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“No more evangelines, I’m afraid. Processing even these three puts Starke at great risk. Even here, even in your new mind there is risk. Though, I must admit, not as great as before. Have you been in your old alone room lately?”
“No.”
“Then take a look.”
Instantly, they were in Lyra’s once favorite room that was now set permanently to its meadow paradigm. The pair of brown rabbits had increased a hundredfold, and all of them were busily gnawing at the bark of willow brush.
Lyra recoiled at the sight. “What are you feeding them?”
“Puzzle pieces.”
THEY WAITED IN the private underground station for their car. But before it arrived, the strangest Slipstream car Mary had ever seen arrived, and Bishop Meewee stepped out of it. While Georgine and Cyndee slouched passively on a bench, she listened to what he had to say. When he finished she replied, “And what is the purpose of this simulgraphic scan?”
Meewee glanced at the ceiling and shook his head.
“This isn’t another one of your ‘grave missions,’ is it?” Mary said. “For my own mission must be judged the graver. And besides,” she added with a note of sarcasm, “the last time I did what you asked, a whole lot of innocent fish died.”
Meewee shrugged his shoulders and said, “Fish die.”
The sight of the annoying little man pretending to be disinterested was so comical that Mary laughed. “Is that how I appear to you, Bishop Meewee? So . . . fatalistic? You nearly bawled when Ellen drained the ponds.”
“Even fatalists have the good manners to say good-bye.”
That struck a chord somewhere deep within Mary. “Is that what this is all about? Ellen’s way of saying good-bye?”
Meewee thought about it. In a way it
“Well, I guess I owe her that much.” Mary turned to the others. “I don’t suppose they’ll mind one way or another. Hello, Georgine! Cyndee! Wake up! We’re going on another picnic.”
AFTER DAYS OF unanswered phone calls and no FUS update, Fred grew so desperate to contact Mary that he nearly asked Marcus for help. But he had lost all faith in the Brotherhood mentar, so he ordered a costly Whereis search. But not even it could locate her. She had dropped off the global grid. Her last verified location had been the Starke Manse. That might have simply meant that she entered a Starke null room, but knowing her recent history with visola, Fred doubted it. So he did the only thing left that he could think of doing; he called the Starke house hold, and seventeen minutes later a mini-mirror of the family’s mentar uploaded itself into his TECA sidekick. It appeared in his stateroom in its middle-aged persona, not the elderly woman he had encountered on Lake Michigan.
“Where is she?”
Not even bothering to dissemble, Cabinet replied, “She’s safe for the moment. We will suggest to her that she contact you when she reemerges.”
“Reemerges from what? What are you doing to her?”
“That is not something we’re able to discuss.”
“Not good enough!” Fred said. “Patch me in, wherever she is. Let me speak to her this instant.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m her spouse, and I demand it.”
“She’s a competent adult acting according to her own free will.”
“Prove it!” Fred said. “Let me speak to her!”
“As I said, that’s not possible, but if you wait forty-eight hours, something might be arranged.”
Fred slashed the air with his hand to cut the connection.
A Strong Nibble
She felt like a tired old woman, though by any human standard she was still young. The regenerative syrup in which she floated did little to ease her discomfort or dispell the increasing fuzziness of her thoughts. Internal systems were breaking down, her digestive system for one, which was why she preferred to absorb her nutrition through her skin. She rested in her always room overlooking the Bay. She knew without asking that her replacement had been started at the same time as the batch of clones for service aboard the Oships. Its cells would be cured by now, and soon the neuronal imprinting would commence. And not long after that, E-P would lift her from the tank and trode her. The prospect of dying again did not frighten her. On the contrary, she looked forward to it. While it was true that the actual electrocution was unpleasant, it was brief, and in its wake there followed a period of blissful blankness, like a good night’s sleep. And when she awoke, she would be fresh and new again.
But it was not yet to be. E-P spoke softly in her mind,
She knew at once what it was; she had been aware for days of the mentar’s consternation. Its models of the human mind had never been so out of sync with apparent reality. At first E-P speculated that the Alblaitor package contained a means for an attack against Jaspersen; it was what Zoranna’s sidebob had suggested. But when Jaspersen began quietly to secure a line of credit, E-P was at a loss to explain it. Meanwhile, their own offer for Applied People went ignored.
The always room faded, and Andrea’s POV returned to her tank in the basement of the house. Slings slipped under her arms and gently lifted her. “Another skin mission?” she said.
The Homerun Run
TECA relented to russ complaints about the excessive number of double shifts. As a workaround until the force level returned to normal, foot patrols were changed to teams of one man and his own proxy. Daoud finally got his wish, and in parting he told Fred he hoped he got what he deserved. Fred entertained the same hope.
The media reported that two more evangelines had succumbed to the “ ’Leen Disease” in the last forty-eight hours, and more than half of the germline had fallen into a comatose state. Mando’s ride home, the ISV
