It was all there, just the other side of a fifteen-minute splice job and a cervical socket. Why endure the cramped and smelly confines of real-life space travel to go visit pond scum on Europa?
And so, inevitably, a fourth Tribe arose, a Heavenly host that triumphed over all: the Tribe that Just Didn’t Give A Shit. They didn’t know what to do when the Fireflies showed up.
So they sent us, and—in belated honor of the Historian mantra—they sent along a warrior, just in case. It was doubtful in the extreme that any child of Earth would be a match for a race with interstellar technology, should they prove unfriendly. Still, I could tell that Bates’ presence was a comfort, to the Human members of the crew at least. If you have to go up unarmed against an angry T-rex with a four-digit IQ, it can’t hurt to have a trained combat specialist at your side.
At the very least, she might be able to fashion a pointy stick from the branch of some convenient tree.
* * *
“I swear, if the aliens end up eating the lot of us, we’ll have the Church of Game Theory to thank for it,” Sascha said.
She was grabbing a brick of couscous from the galley. I was there for the caffeine. We were more or less alone; the rest of the crew was strewn from dome to Fab.
“Linguists don’t use it?” I knew some that did.
“ We don’t.” And the others are hacks . “Thing about game theory is, it assumes rational self-interest among the players. And people just aren’t rational. ”
“It used to assume that,” I allowed. “These days they factor in the social neurology.”
“ Human social neurology.” She bit a corner off her brick, spoke around a mouthful of semolina. “That’s what game theory’s good for. Rational players, or human ones. And let me take a wild stab here and wonder if either of those is gonna apply to that .” She waved her hand at some archetypal alien lurking past the bulkhead.
“It’s got its limitations,” I admitted. “I guess you use the tools you can lay your hands on.”
Sascha snorted. “So if you couldn’t get your hands on a proper set of blueprints, you’d base your dream home on a book of dirty limericks.”
“Maybe not.” And then, a bit defensive in spite of myself, I added, “I’ve found it useful, though. In areas you might not expect it to be.”
“Yeah? Name one.”
“Birthdays,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Sascha stopped chewing. Something behind her eyes flickered, almost strobed , as if her other selves were pricking up their ears.
“Go on,” she said, and I could feel the whole Gang listening in.
“It’s nothing, really. Just an example.”
“So. Tell us.” Sascha cocked James’ head at me.
I shrugged. No point making a big thing out of it. “Well, according to game theory, you should never tell anyone when your birthday is.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s a lose-lose proposition. There’s no winning strategy.”
“What do you mean, strategy? It’s a birthday .”
Chelsea had said exactly the same thing when I’d tried to explain it to her. Look , I’d said, say you tell everyone when it is and nothing happens. It’s kind of a slap in the face.
Or suppose they throw you a party , Chelsea had replied.
Then you don’t know whether they’re doing it sincerely, or if your earlier interaction just guilted them into observing an occasion they’d rather have ignored. But if you don’t tell anyone, and nobody commemorates the event, there’s no reason to feel badly because after all, nobody knew . And if someone does buy you a drink then you know it’s sincere because nobody would go to all the trouble of finding out when your birthday is—and then celebrating it—if they didn’t honestly like you.
Of course, the Gang was more up to speed on such things. I didn’t have to explain it verbally: I could just grab a piece of ConSensus and plot out the payoff matrix, Tell/Don’t Tell along the columns, Celebrated/Not Celebrated along the rows, the unassailable black-and-white logic of cost and benefit in the squares themselves. The math was irrefutable: the one winning strategy was concealment. Only fools revealed their birthdays.
Sascha looked at me. “You ever show this to anyone else?”
“Sure. My girlfriend.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “ You had a girlfriend? A real one?”
I nodded. “Once.”
“I mean after you showed this to her.”
“Well, yes.”
“Uh huh.” Her eyes wandered back to the payoff matrix. “Just curious, Siri. How did she react?”
“She didn’t, really. Not at first. Then—well, she laughed.”
“Better woman than me.” Sascha shook her head. “I’d have dumped you on the spot.”
* * *
My nightly constitutional up the spine: glorious dreamy flight along a single degree of freedom. I sailed through hatches and corridors, threw my arms wide and spun in the gentle cyclonic breezes of the drum. Bates ran circles around me, bouncing her ball against bins and bulkheads, stretching to field each curving rebound in the torqued pseudograv. The toy ricocheted off a stairwell and out of reach as I passed; the major’s curses followed me through the needle’s eye from crypt to bridge.
I braked just short of the dome, stopped by the sound of quiet voices from ahead.
“Of course they’re beautiful,” Szpindel murmured. “They’re stars .”
“And I’m guessing I’m not your first choice to share the view,” James said.
“You’re a close second. But I’ve got a date with Meesh.”
“She never mentioned it.”
“She doesn’t tell you everything. Ask her.”
“Hey, this body’s taking its antilibs. Even if yours isn’t.”
“Mind out of the gutter, Suze. Eros is only one kind of love, eh? Ancient Greeks recognized four.”
“Riiight.” Definitely not Susan, not any more. “Figures you’d take your lead from a bunch of sodomites.”
“ Fuck , Sascha. All I’m asking is a few minutes alone with Meesh before the whip starts cracking again…”
“My body too, Ike. You wanna pull your eyes over my wool?”
“I just want to talk, eh? Alone . That too much to ask?”
I heard Sascha take a breath.
I heard Michelle let it out.
“Sorry, kid. You know the Gang.”
“Thank God . It’s like some group inspection whenever I come looking for face time.”
“I guess you’re lucky they like you, then.”
“I still say you ought to stage a coup.”
“You could always move in with us.”
I heard the rustle of bodies in gentle contact. “How are you?” Szpindel asked. “You okay?”
“Pretty good. I think I’m finally used to being alive again. You?”
“Hey, I’m a spaz no matter how long I’ve been dead.”
“You get the job done.”
“Why, merci . I try.”
A small silence. Theseus hummed quietly to herself.
“Mom was right,” Michelle said. “They are beautiful.”
“What do you see, when you look at them?” And then, catching himself: “I mean—”
“They’re—prickly,” Michelle told him. “When I turn my head it’s like bands of very fine needles rolling across my skin in waves. But it doesn’t hurt at all. It just tingles. It’s almost electric. It’s nice.”
“Wish I could feel it that way.”
“You’ve got the interface. Just patch a camera into your parietal lobe instead of your visual cortex.”
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