Eakins shook his head. 'I'm not convinced.'
'What are you looking for? What is it I didn't say?'
'I can't tell you that. That's the part you're going to have to work out for yourself.'
'You're still testing me.'
'I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Do you want to keep going?'
I sank back in my chair. Not happy. Looked away. Scratched my nose. Looked back. Eakins sat dispassionately. No help there.
'I hate these kinds of conversations. Did I tell you I once punched out a shrink?'
'No. But we already knew that about you.'
Turned my attention back to my plate, picked at the fruit. Pushed some stuff around that I didn't recognize. There was too much here, too much to eat, too much to swallow, too much to digest. It was overwhelming.
What I wanted was to go home.
'Okay,' I said. 'Tell me about Matty. Why is he irrelevant? Why isn't he on the list?'
'Because he didn't fit the profile. That's one of the reasons you didn't spot the pattern earlier. You kept trying to include him.'
'But he still disappeared.'
'He didn't disappear.'
'Yes, he did - '
'He committed suicide.'
'He what-?' I came up out of my chair, angry-a cold fear rising in my gut.
'About three weeks after we picked you up. You didn't come back. The rent was due. He had no place to go. He panicked. He was sure you had abandoned him. He was in a state of irreparable despair.'
'No. Wait a minute. He didn't. He couldn't have. Or it would have been in the file Georgia gave me.'
'Georgia didn't know. Nobody knew. His body won't be found until 1987. They won't be able to ID it until twenty years later, they'll finally do a cold-case DNA match. They'll match it through his mother's autopsy.'
I started for the door, stopped myself, turned around. 'I have to go back. I have to - '
'Come back here, Mike. Sit down. Finish your breakfast. There's plenty of time. If we choose to, we can put you back the exact same moment you left. Minus the Mustang though. We need that to cover the costs of this operation.'
'That's fine. I can get another car. Just send me back. Please - '
'You haven't passed the test yet.'
'Look. I'll do anything-'
'Anything?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Because I need to save that kid's life.'
'Why? Why is that boy important to you?'
'Because he's a human being. And he can hurt. And if I can do anything to stop some of that hurt-'
'That's not enough reason, Mike. It's an almost-enough reason.'
' - I care about him, goddamnit!' The first person I've cared about since the land mine -
'You care about him?'
'Yes!'
'How much? How much do you care about him?'
'As much as it takes to save him! Why are you playing this game with me?'
'It's not a game, Mike. It's the last part of the test!'
I sat.
Several centuries of silence passed.
'This is about how much I care…?'
Eakins nodded.
'About Matty?'
'About Matty, yes. And… a little bit more than that. But let's stay focused on Matty. He's the key.'
'Okay. Look. Forget about me. Do with me whatever you want, whatever you think is appropriate. But that kid deserves a chance too. I don't know his IQ. Maybe he isn't a genius. But he hurts just as much. Maybe more. And if you can do something-'
'We can't save them all - '
'We can save this one. I can save him.'
'Do you love him?'
'What does love have to do with it-?'
'Everything.'
'I'm not-that way.'
'What way? You can't even say the word.'
'Queer. There. Happy?'
'Would you be queer if you could?'
'Huh?'
Now it was Eakins turn to look annoyed. 'Remember that long list of things I rattled off yesterday?'
'Yes. No. Some of it.'
'There was one word I didn't give you. Trans-human.'
'Trans-human.'
'Right.'
'What does it mean?'
'It means -this week-the transitional stage between human and what comes next.'
'What comes next?'
'We don't know. We're still inventing it. We won't know until afterwards.'
'And being queer is part of it?'
'Yes. And so is being black. And female. And body-modded. And everything else.' Eakins leaned forward intensely. 'Your body is here in 2032, but your head is still stuck in 1967. If we're going to do anything with you, we have to get your head unstuck. Listen to me. In this age of designer genders, liquid orientation, body-mods, and all the other experiments in human identity, nobody fucking cares anymore about who's doing what and with which and to whom. It's the stupidest thing in the world to worry about, what's happening in someone else's bedroom, especially if there's nothing happening in yours. The past was barbaric, the future doesn't have to be. You want meaning? Here's meaning. Life is too short for bullshit. Life is about what happens in the space between two people -and how much joy you can create for each other. Got that? Good. End of sermon.'
'And that's trans-human -?'
'That's one of the side effects. Life isn't about the lines we draw to separate ourselves from each other-it's about the lines we can draw that connect us. The biggest social change of the last fifty years is that even though we still haven't figured out how to get into each other's heads, we're learning how to get into each other's experience so we can have a common ground of being as a civilized society.'
'It sounds like a load of psycho-bullshit to me.'
'I wasn't asking for an opinion. I was giving you information that could be useful to you. You're the one who wants to go back and save Matty. I'm telling you how-'
'And this is part of it-?'
'It could be. It's this part. The psychometric match is good. If you want to marry him, we'll go get him right now.'
'I'm missing something here -?'
'You're missing everything. Start with this. Our charter limits what we can do. Yes, we have a charter. A mission statement. A commitment to a set of values.'
'Who are you anyway? Some kind of time police?'
'You should have asked that one at the beginning. No, we're not police. We're independent agents.'
'Time vigilantes?'
