David Marusek - Mind Over Ship

“Yes,” Ellen called up to her. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“Yes, myr,” the nuss said and returned to her chair.

As a general rule, russes did not seek to profit from the misfortunes of brothers, and some of those with passage home (on the so-called homerun run) and no evangeline spouse to run home to listed their tickets on the Barter Board at face value. So did the dorises, though they were under no similar strictures. Demand was so high for berths aboard ships leaving in the next month that a seller could have named any price, and there might indeed have been some serious off-the-board trading going on, but Fred doubted it. Any russ or doris caught profiting from the evangeline tragedy would be held in as much contempt as he was himself. Tickets sold as fast as they became available, and Fred came nowhere close to acquiring one. Mando, however, scored a homerun run aboard a ship scheduled to depart in ten days. He promptly filed for and received three months of emergency family leave. That was one month catching up with Earth, one month on the ground, and a final month returning to Trailing Earth. Mando bought it from a doris on Wheel Nancy. Fred redoubled his search in the Wheel Nancy commissary, but the dorises seemed to be avoiding him lately. Of course, after taking the Original Flaw method he was avoiding himself too.

Meanwhile, Mary’s FUS wound down like a mechanical doll. No longer updated, it sat in her floral print armchair with a blank expression and ignored his questions. One of the last things it told him was that coming home would be a romantic waste of time, though time was his to waste.

Fred’s welcome in the muster room had grown noticeably chillier. With so many russes on leave, double shifts were becoming common, and Fred and Daoud seemed to catch more than their share of them. Daoud requested a change of patrol partner, but no one was willing to patrol with Fred, and his request was denied. Finally, after three straight days of eighteen-hour shifts, Daoud told Fred it was unfair that he should suffer for Fred’s crimes. Since the Original Flaw method had been private, Fred took Daoud’s insult to mean his usual crime of being Mr. Clone Fatigue. “Do everyone a favor, Stain, and space yourself.”

It wasn’t exactly a threat.

LYRA RECEIVED CABINET in her new alone room. She had swept her mind and tagged the spies, as Cabinet had suggested, but did not feel comfortable anymore. So she had walled off her old mind and turned it over to Cabinet for safekeeping. Meanwhile, she began constructing a new mind with more robust defenses.

“If you’re not intending to biostase them, then what exactly will you do during this ‘little detour’?” she asked Eleanor’s mentar.

“I’m not at liberty to go into details, but it amounts to little more than a simulgraphic brain scan.”

“For what purpose?”

Cabinet’s attorney general merely smiled in reply.

“Is it some kind of new therapy?” When Cabinet remained silent, Lyra continued. “It’s my job to know, and I take my job very seriously.”

“Which is why we put you there in the first place. All I can say is that it will do no harm and may do a lot of good.”

Lyra took a moment to consider this. “If I go along, and it works, whatever it is, and it saves their lives, how many other evangelines can you also process?”

Cabinet did not answer at once. It walked around Lyra’s new alone room and admired the security precautions. The furnishings were neither this nor that, neither lamp nor torch, carpet nor lawn, but were caught between a multiplicity of possibilities. “I like this,” Cabinet said. “Esotericism times ten. Too bad you didn’t do this from the start.”

“We live and learn,” the young mentar replied. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No more evangelines, I’m afraid. Processing even these three puts Starke at great risk. Even here, even in your new mind there is risk. Though, I must admit, not as great as before. Have you been in your old alone room lately?”

“No.”

“Then take a look.”

Instantly, they were in Lyra’s once favorite room that was now set permanently to its meadow paradigm. The pair of brown rabbits had increased a hundredfold, and all of them were busily gnawing at the bark of willow brush.

Lyra recoiled at the sight. “What are you feeding them?”

“Puzzle pieces.”

THEY WAITED IN the private underground station for their car. But before it arrived, the strangest Slipstream car Mary had ever seen arrived, and Bishop Meewee stepped out of it. While Georgine and Cyndee slouched passively on a bench, she listened to what he had to say. When he finished she replied, “And what is the purpose of this simulgraphic scan?”

Meewee glanced at the ceiling and shook his head.

“This isn’t another one of your ‘grave missions,’ is it?” Mary said. “For my own mission must be judged the graver. And besides,” she added with a note of sarcasm, “the last time I did what you asked, a whole lot of innocent fish died.”

Meewee shrugged his shoulders and said, “Fish die.”

The sight of the annoying little man pretending to be disinterested was so comical that Mary laughed. “Is that how I appear to you, Bishop Meewee? So . . . fatalistic? You nearly bawled when Ellen drained the ponds.”

“Even fatalists have the good manners to say good-bye.”

That struck a chord somewhere deep within Mary. “Is that what this is all about? Ellen’s way of saying good-bye?”

Meewee thought about it. In a way it was a means of letting the evangelines go, while at the same time keeping them forever. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but you could call it Ellen’s way of saying good-bye. It certainly would make it easier on her if you do the scan.”

“Well, I guess I owe her that much.” Mary turned to the others. “I don’t suppose they’ll mind one way or another. Hello, Georgine! Cyndee! Wake up! We’re going on another picnic.”

AFTER DAYS OF unanswered phone calls and no FUS update, Fred grew so desperate to contact Mary that he nearly asked Marcus for help. But he had lost all faith in the Brotherhood mentar, so he ordered a costly Whereis search. But not even it could locate her. She had dropped off the global grid. Her last verified location had been the Starke Manse. That might have simply meant that she entered a Starke null room, but knowing her recent history with visola, Fred doubted it. So he did the only thing left that he could think of doing; he called the Starke house hold, and seventeen minutes later a mini-mirror of the family’s mentar uploaded itself into his TECA sidekick. It appeared in his stateroom in its middle-aged persona, not the elderly woman he had encountered on Lake Michigan.

“Where is she?”

Not even bothering to dissemble, Cabinet replied, “She’s safe for the moment. We will suggest to her that she contact you when she reemerges.”

“Reemerges from what? What are you doing to her?”

“That is not something we’re able to discuss.”

“Not good enough!” Fred said. “Patch me in, wherever she is. Let me speak to her this instant.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I’m her spouse, and I demand it.”

“She’s a competent adult acting according to her own free will.”

“Prove it!” Fred said. “Let me speak to her!”

“As I said, that’s not possible, but if you wait forty-eight hours, something might be arranged.”