Mind Over Ship Read online

  “Those exact words?”

  “I don’t know. That was the meaning, like I’m busy shaving or something routine. But she calls out again, and this time she says, ‘Father, I need you!’ ”

  “What?”

  “It was our daughter.”

  “What do you mean our daughter? Yours and mine?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Go on.”

  “So I hand off the gunneries to my sidekick and run into the room. She’s lying in a pool of her own blood. She’s an adult woman, and she looks like what the daughter of a russ and ’leen might look like, if clones had children. Her uniform is torn, and there’s a big ugly gash in her side. She says, ‘This is real, Father. I need your help, or I will surely die.’ ”

  “Wait a minute. Her uniform?”

  “She’s a lieutenant, but not in my army. In my enemy’s army. So, I’m faced with the dilemma: to save our city or save my enemy daughter.”

  By then it was full morning in the null room, and Mary’s gaze was locked on his. “What did you decide?”

  “I woke up.”

  “Liar! Coward! Tell me.”

  “Honest, I don’t know. I woke up.”

  They lay in each other’s arms, thinking about their dreams, unable to return to sleep. They listened to music for a while. Then they made love again. Compared to the first collision, this was a stroll down a familiar lane. They dallied at favorite places along the way, pausing in mid-intercourse for more discussion—about how much they missed each other, about their dreams, about the obvious fact that only people with a low drive for self-procreation were selected to start iterant germlines. They ground their hips against each other, generating only minimal heat to maintain a slow burn for hours, and in this manner they occupied the morning.

  DURING THE NEXT couple of days, they napped, made love, watched vids from the suite’s extensive library, played games, and talked. Mary secretly worried about Ellen. Had her unplanned absence had any negative consequences? Fred made a secret list of things to do when they got out of the suite. At the top of the list was finding a place for them to live.

  During their third evening, they lay in bed and watched colorful arabesques of light drift across the room. Without discussing it, they agreed to leave the suite the following morning. Finally, when they could avoid it no longer, they discussed Ellen Starke.

  “Our confidentiality oaths never expire,” Fred said to start it off, “not even when we’re no longer employed by Applied People and not even in a null suite.”

  “I know,” Mary replied. “That’s why I asked Ellen to grant us a personal waiver. It’s on file at Applied People. We are free to talk to each other whenever we want about anything we want regarding the Starkes.”

  Fred grunted acknowledgment.

  “All right, Fred,” Mary said, “I’ll go first. From what Ellen told me, I know that you worked several months for the Starkes when Ellen was a baby and her stepfather, Samson Harger, was seared. Of course she doesn’t remember it, but family legend says you were especially compassionate to Samson and helped him get used to his condition. And Cabinet says that after Eleanor was killed and while you and the Justice Department were arresting all of its mirrors and backups, that Cabinet asked you for special treatment, which you refused. Ellen and Cabinet deny any knowledge of how you acquired the false identity to break into the clinic. I assume that came from the TUGs, which is why you said you owe them a debt. How’m I doing?”

  Fred grunted again.

  “What I don’t understand, Fred, is why you’re so angry with them, with the Starkes, I mean. I’m the one who decided to risk my own life; they didn’t compel me. If you must blame anyone, you should blame me.”

  “There’s enough blame to go around.”

  The walls served up blue skies and a calm sea on which their soft raft drifted on gentle swells.

  “How can I blame you?” Fred continued. “You were fighting for the survival of your entire germline, as you told me a hundred times. How can I find fault with that?”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. But what about the Starkes? They’re good people. Why the grudge?”

  Anger rose so quickly that Fred took several deep breaths to damp it down. “Listen,” he said as evenly as he could, “I know where we clones fit into the grand scheme of things, and I’m good with it. But the fact that I’m ‘good with it’ is only because I was bred to be compliant. I’m good with that too. Usually I enjoy my life! I was at the top of my game! I was exercising the talents I was given, and I was being recognized and rewarded for doing so. What more could any person ask for? I know that russes are bred to be protectors; it doesn’t bother me. That’s exactly what I like doing, helping people, protecting them. We’re serially loyal to our clients because it keeps us honest. Petty despots can’t get their hooks into us.

  “But your Starkes are an old-fashioned dynasty. They need a palace guard made up of lifelong retainers, members of their extended service family. Their Cabinet did try to recruit me in the middle of an operation to escort it through probate. It would have meant subverting my duty to Applied People and our client, the UD Justice Department. That’s not a client you want to screw with, and I couldn’t deceive them, even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. So, in their desperation, the Starkes made a side deal with Nick, or somehow gamed the Applied People system, and arranged for you to work for Ellen, knowing that they’d get me in the bargain at no additional cost, even if it meant putting you in the line of fire, which it did. That’s what I have against them. They used me and risked your life in the process.”

  “Hold on,” Mary said. “Wait a minute, mister. Are you saying it was all about you? They didn’t want me or my sisters at the clinic for our own skills, but only to entrap you?”

  “I know how it sounds, Mary, but basically—yes. We’re all chess pieces for them to move or sacrifice as conditions warrant, all in service to the king, who in this case is your buddy Ellen. I risked my life and the lives of two other officers to save her head before she ever made it to the clinic. Did they tell you that? Look up the Sitrun Foundation on the WAD. Remember the canopy ceremony when I had to leave? One officer was killed and another was diced to pieces, but was that enough for them? No, they turned right around and took you too. They broke faith with me, Mary, and nearly cost me the one person I love. And once broken, trust can never be made new, no matter how much cash they throw at it.”

  Mary considered what he was saying for a long while. “I don’t see it in quite those terms,” she said at last. “To my way of thinking, the Starkes offered me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove to the whole world that my Sisterhood mattered. I have never felt happier about myself than I do now. If at first I was a pawn, it didn’t stay that way for long. I became and I remain a player.”

  “Is that why they arranged my acquittal on all counts?”

  “You think the Starkes did that? Well, they didn’t. Ellen would have told me.”

  “Then how do you explain it? I was looking at certain conviction.”

  Mary didn’t know.

  Their raft was drifting toward the shoals of an island with bird-stained bluffs. Mary said, “So what do we do now, Fred? Do I have to quit the Starkes before you’ll want to be with me?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Do I have to give up my Leena, and go back to work for Applied People?”

  Fred had the good sense to make no reply, and Mary turned her back to him and tried to sleep.

  New Kettle of Fish

  Merrill Meewee addressed a meeting of prospective Oship colonists in person in Laurence, Kansas. He skipped the lunch banquet to hurry back to Starke Enterprises to make the scheduled GEP board meeting. The noontime rush was in full force and the Kansas City Slipstream station was crowded, except in certain small pockets of the platform where no one walked. They were like open meadows in a forest of people. Meewee was preoccupied with his thoughts when he absentmindedly walked through a holobar
rier and across one of these meadows. Halfway across, his foot went through the marbelite floor tile up to his shin. The otherwise indestructible artificial marble had crumbled underfoot like a cookie. He stumbled but was unhurt. A few spectators paused to look at him, but no one offered assistance, except for one woman who called out, “Filter 21,” and tapped the frame of her spex.

  Meewee extricated his foot from the flooring and stood a moment examining it. “Arrow, give me filter 21.” Suddenly the ruined flooring glowed deep orange. He looked around; the vacant, cordoned-off spots of terminal floor had an orangish tinge in their centers. His shoe and pant leg were stained orange. It looked like orange meant trouble.

  Sure enough, when he looked up, he was surrounded by bloomjumpers arrayed in full hazmat gummysuits. “Don’t move, Myr Meewee,” one of them ordered.

  THE NANOBOT ATTACK was benign. Decontamination meant sitting in a tiny plastic solo gas tent for an hour. Meanwhile, the bloomjumpers cleaned the tube station and extinguished the hot spots on the floor, including the one Meewee had broken through.

  An hour was plenty of time for Meewee to ponder his situation.

  he asked his mentar in Starkese

 

  Regrettably, that was the answer Meewee had expected.

 

 

  Naturally.

 

  He settled back in his chair and considered whether or not to attend the board meeting by proxy, something he hated doing. Right outside his decon tent, it seemed, a woman said

  Meewee couldn’t see who had spoken. “Tell her the time,” he said to Arrow.

  “Tell who the time?”

  “Hello?” Meewee said, but the woman must have been speaking to someone else and moved on. “It’s late,” he replied to no one.

  THEY WERE ALREADY seated around the conference table by holo or proxy. “Good afternoon, good afternoon,” Meewee said, bustling around to the head of the table. “Sorry for my tardiness. No excuses. I was caught in a slow elevator. The dog ate my homework.”

  Meewee sat and looked around the table at relaxed, happy faces, a rare sight in this room, and for a brief moment he thought it was in appreciation of his humor. But he found the real cause sitting in Jerry Chapwoman’s former chair: a rotund man with a neat little mustache and shiny black hair. The stranger lounged in the chair with his large hands clasped over his generous belly, and his expression was nothing less than merry.

  “No need for apology, Merrill,” Trina Warbeloo said. “Million has been entertaining us with stories about colleagues of his on the subcontinent.”

  Meewee recognized the man from his dossier. “It’s good to finally meet you, Myr Singh,” he said. On paper, at least, the man looked like he might be an acceptable replacement for Chapwoman.

  “Please, call me Million.” Singh rolled forward in his seat—he was attending from his office in Mumbai—and offered Meewee a holo salute. “And the pleasure is all mine, Bishop Meewee. I am a very big admirer of yours and the noble work you have done for Birthplace International. And, of course, I am a believer in extra-solar colonization, which is why I leaped like a tiger at the opportunity to purchase Exotic Fields. It was truly a chance of a lifetime.”

  Meewee was struck by the earnestness of this declaration. “Then I suppose we had better move on to the final interview,” he said and opened the meeting. There were three items of new business: Singh’s interview and possible installment, routine labor contract renewals, and Jaspersen’s perennial attempt to pervert the GEP’s mission.

  They had all reviewed Singh’s résumé, and there was very little discussion of his eligibility. Most of the grilling came from Jaspersen’s balloon-head proxy, who attempted to uncover some questionable lapse or scandal in his long, successful career. But Singh breezily answered all questions and deflected all conceivable criticism, and Jaspersen shut up in sour resignation. During the last few weeks, Meewee had done his own investigation of the man with Zoranna and Nicholas’s help. Whoever took Chapwoman’s seat had the potential to hand Jaspersen’s faction a devastating supermajority. But the deeper they had looked, the better Singh appeared. His devotion to the GEP’s mission was no hollow boast. A decade earlier, Singh had traded two hundred acres of land for passage aboard ESV Garden Hybris for his own newly decanted clone and his clone’s future house hold.

  In the final analysis, it would be difficult for either faction to deny Singh a place at the board, for his newly acquired company, Exotic Fields, was the designer and sole provider of the generators for the Oship propulsion torus. It was this fact, above all, that reassured Meewee of his loyalty, because if Jaspersen got his way and turned the Oships into Lagrangian space condos without propulsion toruses, Exotic Fields would lose ninety percent of its GEP business.

  Singh’s holo withdrew while they voted. Only Jaspersen voted against him, and Meewee cheerfully declared him a board member. He called him back to the meeting and installed him with little ceremony. “Welcome aboard,” he said when Singh’s membership was official. “You may want to sit out the rest of the meeting until you’ve had a chance to inform yourself of the issues.”

  Singh nodded and leaned back in his chair looking very pleased with himself.

  Item 2: labor contracts. Warbeloo motioned for renewal, and Tiekel seconded. Meewee said, “Seeing no discussion, I—”

  “Not so fast,” Jaspersen’s proxy said. “Just because I lack hands doesn’t mean I’m not waving them.” He seemed amused by his own wit. “Actually, I have lots of discussion about this one.” He turned to Zoranna and said, “No offense, Alblaitor, but one would think that after five decades of supplying labor to space-based industry, you’d finally get around to designing a germline optimized for space conditions. But you haven’t. Your spacers are merely terrestrial types with no special adaptations. You are entirely too anthropomorphically conservative.”

  Zoranna was clearly surprised by the accusation, but she brushed it aside. “My people undergo extensive training before they are shipped out.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. I’m talking about morphology. True spacers should be smaller than human normal, have denser bones, resistance to radiation damage, superior microgravity balance—the list goes on.”

  “What you’re talking about are trans-humans,” Zoranna said coolly. “Applied People tried that with their penelope line. It failed miserably. You accuse me of being too conservative, but it’s the general public that’s conservative. Most people don’t approve of modifying the human body that much.”

  “The penelope line was forty years ago!” Jaspersen retorted. “Public attitudes change. And even if they don’t, so what? Spacers by definition live in space. Who cares what people in Indiana and Iowa think about them?”

  Zoranna shook her head in stoic forbearance. “In any case, it’s a moot point, Saul.”

  “It’s not a moot point,” Jaspersen insisted. “There are other labor vendors, Capias World for instance, who have people designed specifically for space. Adam here is trying some of them out right now. Aren’t you, Adam?”

  Gest, who was attending via proxy this time and experienced no transmission lag, nodded his handsome head. “He’s right, Zoranna. Capias World has released three new spacefaring germlines. We’re giving them a limited field test in my Aria yards. I must say, they’re terrific. In fact, as soon as my contracts with Applied People are up, I’m going all Capias World.”

  Zoranna’s whole demeanor changed. Her eyes narrowed to slits as Nicholas fed calculations into her ear. “I am sorry to hear that, Adam,” she said. “But what you do at Aria Yachts is your own business and has no bearing on GEP contracts.”

  “It doe
s now,” Jaspersen said with glee. “I move that we award the expiring contracts to Capias World instead of Applied People.”

  Byron Fagan seconded.

  “Point of order. Point of order,” Zoranna said. “There is already a motion on the table. And besides, Saul’s motion is disallowed under Bylaw 12. ‘Board members shall have first vending rights for all GEP material and services.’”

  “I know that!” Jaspersen crowed.

  Everyone looked at him, and the room fell suddenly silent as board members consulted with their mentars. Meewee surveyed their expressions, which ranged from amusement to outrage. “What’s going on?” he said.

  This is Nick, a voice said in his ear. Several moments ago, a secret deal was concluded in Mumbai. Apparently, Capias World has just changed hands. Look to your left.

  Meewee turned to see Million Singh, tilted all the way back in his chair, a tiger’s toothy grin on his face.

  THE DISASTROUS BOARD meeting grew only worse. After the members stripped the labor contracts from Applied People and awarded them to Singh’s new company, Zoranna left a placeholder in her seat and withdrew from active holopresence. Meewee asked for a motion to suspend the meeting. Andrea Tiekel so moved, but no one seconded, and Meewee was forced to proceed to item 3: an Amendment to the Garden Earth Project Mission Statement.

  Meewee had already had plenty of time to try to reconcile himself to the idea of constructing space condos alongside the Oships, but he wasn’t prepared for Jaspersen’s actual proposal. Jaspersen proposed nothing less than wiping away all mention of the GEP’s original mission and transforming the consortium into a for-profit company. When time for the vote came, and Zoranna had not yet returned, Meewee made an urgent plea to Nicholas.