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blackboard, scooped up a piece of chalk, and began writing rapidly.

“See,” he said, “using Dirac notation, if we let Webmind’s default conscious state be represented by a bra of phi and a ket of psi, then this would be the einselected basis.” His chalk flew across the board again.

“Now, we can get the vector basis of the total combined Webmind alpha-state consciousness system by tensor multiplying the basis vectors of the subsystems together. Of course, the unitarity of time-evolution demands that the total state basis remains orthonormal, and since consciousness requires a superposition of—”

“I—I’m not following,” said LaFontaine.

Malcolm allowed himself a small smile. “Ludwig Silberstein once said to Arthur Eddington, ‘You must be one of the three people in the world who understand relativity.’ To which Eddington replied, ‘I’m trying to figure out who the third person is.’ ” He turned, and did manage to hold LaFontaine’s gaze for a moment. “Actually, I suspect there are a few people in this building who might follow this, too. How widely would you like me to disseminate information about Webmind?”

“We don’t want you to disseminate it at all, Professor. But since you do seem to understand all this, we need you to come to Ottawa, and—”

“Do you know who is in this building right now? Stephen Hawking. I uprooted my family, I took my blind daughter away from her friends and a specialized school that she’d been in for a decade— I changed things—so that I could work here, and work with Hawking. He only comes here once a year, and I’m not going to waste any more time. I’ll happily discourse further on Webmind’s workings, but I’m not going anywhere. You’ll have to bring someone here who can follow what I’m saying.”

LaFontaine took out a small digital camera and photographed the blackboard. “All right, Professor. But don’t leave town.”

Malcolm spread his arms in exasperation. “Where would I go? This is the center of the universe.”

twenty-nine

Shoshana drove Maxine to UCSD early Wednesday morning; she was an engineering student there. As Max prepared to get out of the car, she said, “Dr. Zira, I’d like to kiss you good-bye.”

Shoshana grinned at the ritual. “All right—but you’re so damned ugly!”

Maxine smiled and they kissed for several seconds.

Sho and Max had watched the end of the Apes saga last night: Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Maxine had been immediately incensed because they had changed the color of Roddy McDowall’s makeup. When he’d been playing Caesar as a rebellious leader of a slave uprising, they’d given him quite dark skin. Now, in this film set many years later, Caesar was the peaceful, wise leader of a new ape civilization—and he’d been given a downright Caucasian complexion.

Shoshana, meanwhile, had complained that the final film had suffered from its obviously low budget: mutants, scarred by a nuclear blast, had attacked the ape city in a school bus of all things! But Max had said, “No, no, no, don’t you see—it’s brilliant! A school bus! It’s a metaphor about forced integration.”

Shoshana dearly loved Max, but she thought that was going a bit too far. Still, for her own part, she’d been astonished to see that that movie featured an orangutan named Virgil, who was the smartest of all apes. She’d always thought the Feehan’s pride and joy had been named for the Roman poet, but it seemed Hobo’s buddy was actually called that in honor of this character.

Virgil had been portrayed in Battle by Paul Williams. Shoshana had checked the IMDb; she was curious about what the actors who had portrayed apes looked like without their makeup. In the case of Williams, it was hardly an improvement, sad to say. But she’d been surprised to learn that he was a songwriter, and had written “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song,” and many others.

As Shoshana drove along, she wondered if Virgil—the real Virgil—had spoken with Hobo today. Hobo was usually up at the crack of dawn, and it was three hours later in Miami, so Virgil should be up, too. God, she hoped so; she hoped Hobo was still reachable by someone.

The 7-Eleven was coming up. She pulled into the parking lot and went inside to get a coffee. The pimply young man was behind the counter. He knew enough not to call her “the ape lady,” but he still wasn’t great about understanding where the boundaries were. “What happened to your ponytail?” he asked.

Sho was wearing her hair loosely about her shoulders; she didn’t want to explain. “Just thought it was time for a change,” she said.

“Looks nice,” he replied.

Well, that was commendable restraint. “Looks freakin’ hot,” is what Max had said. “Thanks.”

In Battle, Caesar had asked Virgil if they could choose their future, or if they were doomed to a violent end. Virgil had replied that violence was only one future—they could opt to change lanes, choose to head toward a different destiny. She decided, on the off-chance that Hobo was going to be good today, to buy some Hershey’s Kisses, his favorite treat of all.

She paid the clerk, headed out into the warm morning, and drove to the Marcuse Institute. Dr. Marcuse’s black Lincoln was nowhere to be seen; he and Werner had driven up to Los Angeles for the day to attend a conference there.

She entered the bungalow and used the closed-circuit video cameras to check on Hobo. He was walking along on all fours, just outside the gazebo. She thought about waiting for someone else to show up, but then figured what-the-heck. She put a couple of Kisses in a Ziploc bag, and headed outside. She did take one precaution: she put on her mirrored sunglasses; they let her look at Hobo without him knowing that he was being looked at.

As she walked across the lawn, she saw a large flock of birds flying south; it never really got cold here, but there was no doubt winter was coming.

Hobo must have seen her even before she got across the bridge. He made no move to charge at her—but neither did he run to the far side of the island.

She approached him, signing Hello, hello.

Hobo sat back on his haunches. Shoshana was, quite literally, waiting for a sign.

And, at last, she got one: it wasn’t much, just a side-to-side wave, a single word, the same word she’d just signed at him. After a moment, though, he turned and ran away. Shoshana sighed and headed up to the gazebo to check on the webcam hookup, and—

And the canvas on the easel was no longer blank.

She walked over to it, but she couldn’t make out what it was supposed to depict. For one thing, Hobo had turned the canvas to landscape orientation, but it wasn’t a painting of the landscape; surely if it were, he’d have made the top of the picture blue or black to represent the sky.

Hobo wasn’t the first ape to paint pictures. What was remarkable was that he did representational art— not abstracts, not random splashes of color. But this—

This was the most colorful painting Hobo had yet made, and, even though she couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be, it was also the most complex.

There were circular blobs of various sizes scattered here and there on the canvas, and each of them had straight lines radiating from it. In the foreground, rising from the bottom of the frame to touch a large circle was a bright, thick orange line, and in the background there were many other, thinner lines of different colors.

Shoshana’s heart jumped as she heard a sound of metal clanging against metal: Hobo was opening the screen door to the gazebo. She turned to face him and tried not to look apprehensive; he was between her and the only exit.

She gestured at the canvas. What that?

Painting, Hobo signed.

Yes, yes, Shoshana replied. But of what?

He made a wide, toothy grin, but said nothing.

Did you talk to Virgil? she asked.