“Yes,” she said quietly.
In an hour the doctors would be ready for her. They would begin preliminaries for the Linking operation. She had needed terribly to arrive early, to have time to think, and to hear her own thoughts in peace.
And would they be Jillian’s thoughts at this time next week? Could one be a god, and human, too?
Room 110-A opened to her touch. She sat in a small theater looking down on the operating room. A place of conference, perhaps. Of meditation and strengthening of resolve.
In the white-tiled room beneath her, her skull would be opened once again, and new life breathed into her.
She folded her hands around her face, biting her lip until pain rang in her head. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t.
What price privacy? Saturn certainly had ways of maintaining his privacy. Perhaps there was a way to write fiction into what her Comnet sent to the Council. She had better learn how.
After a time, her wristlink buzzed. Jillian wearily touched it to an intercom on the seat in front of her, and a throat/earpiece popped out of a slot. She slid it into place. Fog washed across the seat in front of her, and then it was a window.
The man in the window was crested like a bird, in silver. It was the first thing she noticed: a fatly curved metal ridge, three or four pounds from the look of it, ran from his forehead to halfway down the back of his head, to where tightly coiled white hair was still growing.
“Jillian Shomer!” he said merrily.
“Yes.” Too heavy for comfort. Could it be silvered plastic? Its proud obtrusiveness had to make him a Council member. He looked to be in his sixties, in good health given a sedentary lifestyle; and that would make him one of the second generation, after Saturn but previous to the altered Olympics.
“I’m Carter McFairlaine. Transportation.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Well, well. I know that Arts and Entertainments is bidding for your services, but I wanted to have lunch with you next week to discuss the advantages of a Transportation contract.”
After you Link, and you are ours.
“I’d be His head turned for an instant, to something offstage, and back. She saw the socket at the back end of the crest. Her breath caught. She understood with her guts, then: He’s part machine!
“—delighted,” she finished.
“Fine.” That gleeful look: he’d caught her reaction. “I’ll put the appointment into your personal data system. Beverly, I think her name is?”
“I… what?!”
McFairlaine chuckled. “Welcome to the team.” And he faded out — and was replaced almost immediately by another face.
The coppery strands were more pronounced in Beverly’s hair now. The cheekbones somehow softer, the mouth gentler. But it was Beverly, and Jillian’s first, frighteningly powerful urge was to say to hell with the Linking operation and just jump into her Void that moment.
She dared not, not yet. Beverly had been edited.
Jillian reached out to touch the holoscreen, her fingers disappearing into depth before brushing flat plastic. “Beverly.”
“Who else, sugar?”
“I was so worried…”
“You’re getting to be a popular girl. I put through that last call, but starting next week, you’ve got appointments lined up from here to Memphis.” Beverly cocked her head slightly, gave Jillian a shrewdly appraising gaze. “Is there something I should know about, hon?”
“You will, in time.”
“I notice they’re piping me in over the priority network. Executives, rich folks, and Linked only Beverly stopped, and her mouth was an 0 of surprise. “Persons unknown have updated me, two seconds ago. I’ll be— You lost and then you won! Jillian, why can’t you do things like other people do?”
“I don’t seem to be like other people.” Her fingers scratched against the plastic like a kitten pawing at a porch screen, trying to get into a warm house. “Please, Beverly. Don’t go on at me. I missed you so much.”
“Missed me? I haven’t been anywhere. You don’t call, you don’t write, sometimes I think you just don’t love me anymore Beverly locked up for a moment, because Jillian was crying.
She couldn’t help it now. Tears were spilling from her eyes and both palms were pressed against the holoscreen, buried in Beverly’s face.
“I haven’t seen you cry for eleven years, darlin’,” Beverly said softly. “Shhh. I’m here with you. I’ll always be here. You’ve got to help me understand what you need, and I’ll be that for you. You know that.”
There were sounds in the building around her. A three-man medical tech team entered the operating room below her, led by a thin, efficient-looking Chinese man who began to check the instruments with sober thoroughness.
“Beverly. You Go look for the Old Bastard. Make contact with him. Partition off, and find out everything that you can…
She couldn’t tell Beverly that. It would be suicide, until they could slip into a Void together. Honesty, like so many other things, would have to wait.
The men down in the operating theater looked up at her, motioned her to come down. Talk. And then Preop. And then.
“Beverly. I have to go now. I’ll be back.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“I have promises to keep.”
“And miles to go before you sleep?”
“Yes.” Jillian smiled. “Miles. Good night, Beverly.”
“Good night, Jillian. Sweet dreams.”
The screen winked off.
Lives, Jillian thought, are like weather, are sensitive to initial conditions. And because of that, not Comnet, or the Old Bastard, or the Council…
Especially the Council… could predict lives.
