Элизабет Бир - Machine

World’s Most Awkward Nursemaid, that’s what it reads on my favorite mug.

When he was settled again, I put his cup down on the nightstand and asked, “What was so funny?”

“You.” The corners of his eyes twinkled with helpless tears. “You’re so serious . ‘It’s pretty normal to experience a huge sense of dislocation, you know’!” he parroted. “As if there’s literally anything normal about waking up centuries in the future and not even knowing which of my friends or family are alive, or might make it out of the meat lockers. You just—”

His face stilled. He settled back.

“You just have to laugh,” he finished, seriously.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t even imagine your experience.”

“Heck, Doc,” he said. “I can’t imagine it, and I’m living it. So let’s talk about something else. What do you have for me today, more historians?”

“Actually…” I looked toward the door. “Todia I brought somebody along that you might be interested in meeting.”

“Is this show-and-tell?” He moved the console from the bed to the nightstand and hitched himself up, smoothing his pajama lapels. “I have to say, these things are a damn sight more dignified than a hospital johnny.”

I didn’t know what a hospital johnny was, so I made a note to investigate later. “You know the Synarche is comprised of a lot of different species.”

“Systers,” he said, with a squint of concentration. “Are you slow-walking that you’re about to introduce me to my first a—I mean, my first nonhuman sentience?”

I decided not to argue with him about Helen. Or Central.

“Come on, Doc,” he said, jocularity over an edge of irritation. “You can give it to me straight. I’m not as damn fragile as you all seem to think I am. I might not have a little box in my head controlling my thoughts and emotions, but I am a grown man. I can keep a lid on myself!”

I leaned back against the bulkhead—mostly because my feet hurt—and crossed my arms. “Keeping a lid on yourself doesn’t actually help you deal with those feelings and move through them, though. Are you familiar with the concept of repression?”

I’d done a little historical reading and consulted the archinformist, so even without Mercy there riding my senso to back me up, I knew the right terms to use. Always make friends with a super-genius AI historian when you get the chance.

“I’m not gay ,” Carlos said, after a long silence.

“I am,” I answered.

He blinked and frowned, but didn’t say anything. A whole ship full of atavistic bigots, yay. Well, it was only to be expected.

“But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about choosing not to experience and process your feelings. I believe the archaic term would be not owning one’s own shit. ”

“Okay,” he said. “What does any of that have to do with… with nonhuman intelligences?”

“It has to do with your crewmates,” I said. “And your ship. And nonhuman intelligences. These are all things you need to process, not put aside.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “You sound like my wife.” Then he winced, as if remembering that his wife had a three in ten chance of surviving her next adventure, and opened them again. “All right. I promise to try to be more in touch with my feelings. Can you show me what’s hiding behind the door now?”

“Who,” I said, and cued Cheeirilaq to come in.

The Goodlaw moved slowly, one meticulous leg at a time. Which, I think, only succeeded in making it look more menacing, as it seemed to stalk into the room. It stopped halfway, thorax held parallel to the deck so it wouldn’t loom—which had the effect of making it look three meters long instead of two—raptorial arms and manipulators folded away along its carapace so it didn’t bristle. It was trying to take up as little room as a bug as long as a bunk bed can, and I admit, I found its lowered antennae and compressed abdomen kind of adorable.

Master Chief Carlos responded a little differently.

“Holy,” Carlos said. “Holy… cow.”

Greetings, friend Carlos , Cheeirilaq said. I am Goodlaw Cheeirilaq. A constable, of sorts.

The translation came from Carlos’s tablet, because he didn’t have a fox. He touched his ear, and so I noticed he was wearing a bud in the canal.

He said, “A giant praying mantis cop? You have got to be kidding me.”

You are not in any trouble. I would like to ask you a few questions about your experiences.

Carlos looked at me. I said, “You don’t have to cooperate. But the Goodlaw would not lie about your legal status. If it did, and you were in trouble, the courts would throw that out.”

“Due process,” Carlos said, his shoulders relaxing. “That’s a relief.”

It was a bit of a relief to me that he recognized it for what it was. That made me think that integrating these survivors of the deep past into Synarche society might actually work out pretty easily.

I was worried about Carlos’s wife, also. I knew she wasn’t in Ruth’s load of pods, because we had the serial numbers and Helen had checked. Singer was coming in behind her—or might already be here—with a bigger load. But that meant I didn’t know where she was, or if our colleagues had retrieved her yet.

And nobody could know if she would survive rewarming.

I thought Carlos’s continued avoidance of the question meant he was scared for her.

He looked at Cheeirilaq, tipping his head. “Well, you might as well come the rest of the way in.”

Cheeirilaq did, and shut the door behind it. Even folded to its smallest profile, it seemed to fill up the entire isolation room. It slowly extended one raptorial forelimb and pointed at the datapad. You are studying government, friend Carlos?

Carlos waved one hand. “I think it’s some kind of educational game.”

I stepped forward, glancing at the pad. “That’s the modeling protocols. It’s a sector of the government. Synizens can play through simulated problems, and then one or many of the Grand Council’s subcouncils process the results to a series of models to determine policies and outcomes.”

A line formed between his brows. The hand dropped. “Is this really how you run your country?”

I had to look up the archaic word. “Our polity, you mean?”

“If you prefer.” He sounded amused, as if I were splitting hairs. Didn’t country specifically refer to physical terrain on a planet?

“It’s part of the process,” I said. “I’m not an expert. But the game allows Synizens to model an extremely large number of policy paths, and from the repeated models and results—and occasional individual inspiration—a superior policy emerges. Structure modeling has been experimentally proven to consistently produce better results than relying on experts. Democracies, from Before, were a primitive way of managing the math.”

His face stilled, as if assessing a threat. “You don’t vote?”

“You haven’t woken up into a totalitarian nightmare,” I said, laughing. “Don’t worry. The Synarche’s index of personal freedom is around seventy-nine percent, and the index of well-being is close to eighty-seven percent. Those are the best numbers in human history.”

They’re the best numbers in Rashaqin history, too, Cheeirilaq stridulated. It hadn’t moved from its post near the door—it hadn’t moved at all, except to breathe. Essentially, I’d been treating it as a large, emerald-colored chitin statue, and from Carlos’s start I could see that his limbic system had forgotten to be afraid of it.

“Just the local constabulary,” I reminded him as his heart rate spiked.