budgets.
Kindly Uncle Jack had been the first person in the Family-Firm to decide that she might be okay. “Our Johnny has found himself a pretty foreign girl,” Jack had said, “an illegal alien, no prospects, no capital, bizarre education, unspeakable heritage” —and then Jack made himself her friend.
Inthe sunlit, louvered spot where Toddy’s big, frilly bed had once stood, a bright-eyed entity was busy inside a medical bubble. The creature in that bubble was alive, but it was no longer Toddy Montgomery. The creature did not recognize Radmila. Random, empty expressions crossed its waxy face. It scratched at the black bruises on its long, skinny haunches, and it stared into a crystal ball.
“I almost thought that she knew me for a moment, when they rebooted her last night,” said Jack. “But I was dreaming. I’d hoped that she might recognize you now. You were always the daughter in this Family that she loved best.”
“They revived her body… ?”
“Yes, she’s pretty much exactly as she looks. I’m really sorry.”
The old woman had always been particularly obsessed with her biosphere hobjects. Those complicated pocket worlds, so safe and protected and serenely distant from reality, always consoled her somehow. The gleaming world in Toddy’s distracted grip was comforting her even now.
“She’s still interacting with that hobject there,” Radmila said hopefully. “Surely that has to mean something… I mean, if she can still engage with it.”
“She’s become part of it,” said Uncle Jack remorsefully, “and it is part of her.”
“I never understood what people see in those things.”
“I understand that matter quite perfectly,” said Jack, “but that certainly doesn’t make me like this situation any better.”
“So—what do we do now, Jack?”
“We have to deal with the legal snarl.” Uncle Jack shrugged. “She had her Living Will and all that business, so we plucked her loose from her life support… And here she is. Her simpler organs and tissues, those are all juiced-up and hyperactive, but her poor tired old pumpkin up here… “ Jack patted the fine, silky hair on his own skull. “She can’t speak anymore, she can’t walk… She tore all her clothes off, she won’t stay dressed… I think she might be able to feed herself. Someday. She’s still got her appetite. Those monkey hands and eyes keep right on going, but she’s way overdrawn at the brain bank.”
Radmila stared through the tender skin of the antiseptic bubble. “I guess something like this has to come to all of us, sooner or later…”
“She was medically dead for fifty-seven seconds,” Jack said. He turned away from the pod, pulled his wand, and brusquely shot a command at a robot.
Radmila had nothing to say to that. Being Hollywood stars with strong political interests, the Family-Firm had suffered many scandals, intrusions, voyeuristic interventions, vile rumors, sometimes even armed assaults… Yet this was the single worst, most heart-sickening calamity she had ever seen the Family suffer.
Jack spoke again. “When I was a kid your age… there was this curse called ‘Alzheimer’s disease.’ Have you ever heard of that syndrome?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s gone now. That syndrome was even worse than this. In some ways.”
“Oh wow.” Radmila drew a breath. “So, let’s take some action. What can I do to help right now, this minute?”
Jack was pleased by this, for it was a very with-it, Family-Firm thing to say. “Well,” he said, “you can help me make the Family’s Directors see some sense about the situation… Her investors will truly hate this de velopment.”
“Okay. I’ll do that. What’s our game plan?”
Uncle Jack pointed skyward with his elegant ivory wand.
Radmila was incredulous. “We launch her into outer space?”
“Plenty of room up in LilyPad.” Uncle Jack nodded. “That’s the Family’s attic. At least it’s way, way out of Californian legal jurisdiction. That was always the best thing about outer space, if you ask me.”
Radmila had no counsel to offer about hiding a crazy old woman in orbit. Such events had certainly been known to happen. Jack knew about that, and she knew about that; adults didn’t have to linger over the details. It was a dispensation. A way to duck the consequences of a tangled legal, ethical, social system that couldn’t deal with catastrophe.
That was the true genius of the Dispensation. They weren’t exactly revolutionaries, but they always had some brand-new way to shuffle from the bottom of the deck.
Radmila dodged a robot with a socketed tray of stray hobjects. “What will the investors make of her prognosis?”
“Stars don’t die easy, but the woman did die.”
“She doesn’t look very dead this morning. The brain is just another organ, isn’t it? There must be some kind of investment path for us there.”
“Of course there’s an investment path,” said Uncle Jack. “We could waste an incredible amount of our Family capital trying to revive our oldest star… Or we could invest that same amount of money into you. Or into Lionel. Or best of all, into little Mary… What course of action has the best long-term return for our Family? You can do the math.”
“I hate math,” Radmila lied.
“We have to think in the long term. That is our core Family value. So we stick by our core values now, eh? We’ve got to cut and run on Toddy. She’s become a sinkhole. We’ve got to get those knotheads to reroute her investment stream. As soon as we can.”
“I would never ask the Family to do that for me.”
“Well, it’s time for you to ask for that. No, more than that. You’re a big, grown-up girl now, Mila. It’s time for you to bite off a chunk and just
“That sounds so selfish of me.”
“It is not selfish. It’s practical. Toddy always did practical things. Toddy did a hundred things like that, and worse things, harder things. Being beautiful, that is not a pretty business. You can see where that leads. Because: Look at her. That’s your own future, girl. That is what you will be asking for. In the long term, inside there, that’s you.”
Inside the puckered plastic bubble, the naked creature sucked at her wizened fingers and glared madly into her fine glass toy. Radmila realized, fatally and finally, that she would never get another kind word from Toddy. Not another smile, not another knowing nod of approval. Grief rolled through her like thunder.
Radmila wanted to die. She’d never wanted to die in this keen way before. She’d never realized that dying could be such an aspiration.
She drew a breath. “No, that is
Her outburst surprised Uncle Jack. “Mila, I never realized you were quite so Synchronistic.”
“My husband insists on all that.”
“Are we entirely on the same page here?” asked Jack. “By Synchronistic standards, I rather let the Family down… God knows I tried to buy into that modern highbrow stuff, but, well, my heart was never in it.”
Jack’s embarrassment was painful. “Well,” she said haltingly, “I do know, for sure, that Toddy would want me to remain a star… So I’ll do that. For her. She gave us all that, because she had so much to give to her audience… She brought so much grace and elegance and beauty into people’s lives… Toddy Montgomery never forgot her public! Toddy always wanted to give them beautiful dreams.”
Jack’s nose wrinkled a bit. “That’s how you remember her?”
“I know I’m talking silly star-hype… but I can remember how she made me
