David Marusek: Mind Over Ship

“Listen up!” the El in red announced to the room. “We’re choosing our first colonist.” The music stopped playing, and the Mem Lab faithful crowded around.

Meewee turned the coin over in his hand. Heads or tails, mole or freckle, red or blue. “Winner goes on the Hybris ,” he said and tossed the coin over his head. “Elaine, call it.”

Try not to think about it. Think about trying not to think about it. Try not to think about it. It was a short to-do list, but it was caught in a loop.

Fred sprawled on his couch not watching two holos running in his stateroom. One was of Mary’s last FUS, still catatonic, still seated in her floral print armchair staring serenely into space. The other was a short tape loop depicting a donald dockworker floating serenely in the starry space beyond the buoys that marked the Port Clarke boundary. He wore only his dock overalls and was quite dead. An anonymous person had sent the clip to Fred. Fred had no doubt that the space-blown donald was the dock-worker who had been clowning around during the hull breach emergency, and that Top Ape had both ordered his murder and sent the clip. It was an offering of appeasement. Top Ape probably thought that the insult to Fred was the reason he had not left his stateroom for the last few days, and the reason he hadn’t swiped the latest shipment of Raspberry Flush. How frustrating it must be for them, to have a flask of heaven in their grasp but no way to open it.

Someone began knocking loudly on his door, kicking it actually. This had happened several times during the last day or so. There had also been shouted insults and threats by russ voices. Fred had ignored all this, but this time, just to mix things up a little, he pushed himself to his feet. Before he reached the door, a phone call arrived from Earth Girl with a floating red glyph pulsing EXTREME URGENCY.

Decisions, decisions, what not to do? Fred returned to the couch and said, “Okay, Earth Girl, what do you want?”

“Hello, Specialist Londenstane,” the mentar’s voice said. “So nice of you to take my call. You are signed up to depart on the ISV Fentan in ten hours. The ship will seal its hatches in four hours.”

“Isn’t that fascinating?”

The banging on his door continued, and the mentar said, “Do you intend to board the ship?”

“That’s a good question. Anything else?”

The mentar paused, then added, “Yes, TECA authorities have asked me to inform you that if you intend to remain on emergency leave status but not return to Earth aboard the Fentan , you cannot remain in Wheel Nancy. We need the accommodations for incoming personnel. You will have to move to a civilian residential sector and be responsible for your own rent.”

“Amazing.”

The banging ceased and was replaced by scratching sounds.

“Is that all, Earth Girl?”

“Yes.”

Fred ended the call with a swipe and went to the door. He made a fist and cocked his arm, intending to punch whoever was there in the face. But when he swung the door open, there was no one there. Someone had scratched a crude hangman’s noose into the surface of the door, and Fred wondered idly how hanging would work in weightlessness as he shut the door and returned to the couch.

He was hungry, but the last time he’d gone to the commissary, even the dorises had shunned him.

THE THING ABOUT not thinking about things was that while you were busy not thinking about certain things, you were actually thinking about other things. So when the call from Marcus came, Fred took a break from not thinking and answered it.

“There’s still time for you to board the Fentan ,” it said.

“That’s very interesting.”

Marcus refused to be put off and continued. “There have been sporadic incidents between russes and donalds out in the spars.”

“Define incidents.”

“Fights.”

“What a shame.”

“You have no intention of leaving the station, do you?”

“I honestly don’t know, Marcus. I don’t see what I would gain one way or another. For the first time in my life I don’t know what to do.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“Give it a shot.”

“The Original Flaw.”

“What about it? You going to tell me what it is?”

“Not I. In your present frame of mind, I doubt you would believe me anyway. The person responsible for sealing that information in the first place will tell you.”

A third holo opened in Fred’s crowded stateroom. It was a life-sized sim of Agnes Russ. She wore the old-fashioned pants and blouse, big hair, and kindly smile Fred remembered from Russ School.

“Mother?” he said, sitting up.

“Yes, Freddy, it’s me. Marcus tells me you’ve made a mess of things up here, and he asked me to come up and straighten you out a little.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“First off, Tommy never diddled children, so get that out of your mind this instant. It’s garbage , and it’ll only poison you. Now, what I’m about to tell you is in the utmost, strictest confidence, and you must promise me you’ll never tell anyone. Not even Tommy knew it, and it could only harm the rest of your brothers. Do you promise me, Fred?”

What else could he say? “Yes, Mother.”

“Good.” The sim gazed at him with a mixture of skepticism and affection. “Honestly, boy, how you could ever believe those disgusting lies is beyond me. You’re so much like your father, worry and worry about every little thing until you’ve made a mountain out of air. It’s what killed him in the end.” She shook her head. “If you must know what was wrong with Tommy, I’ll tell you. He was a congenital moron, or would have been. When I was carrying him, they had just started finding and fixing birth defects while the baby was still in the womb. A DNA scan discovered that my fetus had Gorman’s Syndrome, a rare genetic brain disease. Marcus, explain to Fred what GS was.”

“Yes, myr,” Marcus said. “Gorman’s Syndrome is the faulty expression of a cluster of genes responsible for manufacturing the calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein Kinase II. Its function in the pathway responsible for —”

“Thank you, Marcus. What the defect does is it makes it hard to learn things. To learn anything.”

“Processing long-term synaptic potentiation, or LTP, into long-term memory,” Marcus added.

“Thank you, Marcus. Anyway, it’s a severe mental handicap. Children who have it never learn to speak. They can’t tie their own shoes or hardly feed themselves. Even with the best care they rarely live beyond ten or so years. That’s what my doctor told me.

“Your father wanted me to have an abortion, but my doctor told me about this new treatment. She said that GS was the result of only three defective genes, and they could try to insert normal ones into my fetus and maybe fix the problem in the womb. It was risky, but I loved you before you were born, and I decided to do it. It worked beautifully, and you — Tommy was born with normal intelligence.

“Your father and I were thrilled and very thankful, and we chose to seal Tommy’s medical records so he could grow up as a normal kid without this condition hanging over his head everywhere he went. There was a so-called DNA Bill of Rights back then.

“Then he grew up and joined the Secret Service and died saving President Taksayer, and she picked him to be the first commercial clone donor, and nobody knew of his original handicap, or they surely wouldn’t have picked him, no matter how heroic he was. But the genetic repair was stable and passed through to his clones and no one was the wiser, not even Applied People. Applied People still doesn’t know. That’s why you must keep this secret.