“Got to run off now, and try not to trip too much while waiting for the other leg to drop. There’s always something to distract me, but at least it’s not dull.
“Go forth and conquer. -G”
He was on the computer with a young lawyer. Martin looked on. The associate said, “We can’t hold it off, sir. You have to show up in Maryland in twenty days to be deposed — interviewed — about whether society should let you continue.”
“When did my work become society’s business?”
“Everything is, sir. The plaintiffs are paying your expenses though.”
Garrett sighed. “Nice of them. How long will I need to be there? And why do they have to schlep me there and back again at God knows what carbon tax, instead of doing this by video?”
“We argued it’d be ‘undue hardship’ for you to leave, but the judge didn’t listen. It should only be a day of interviews, and my boss will attend.”
“I’m too busy for this, and it’ll cause problems when I try to leave again, I’m told.”
“Sorry, sir. You have no choice.”
Garrett got Martin to come in. “Any cards up your sleeve?”
“No, and I’m probably invited next.”
“He is,” said the lawyer.
Garrett said, “I guess I have to. But thanks.”
“Sir?” The associate stopped Garrett as he was about to end the call. “A lot of people want you to succeed. You’re doing something different.”
Garrett nodded.
He had a lot to think about while packing. The lawsuit was an amazing waste of time, money and paper designed to use intangible means to destroy him. Not to solve a problem, or to enforce a deal, but to tell him he was forbidden to run an honest business. If it’d been a specific claim about him breaking a contract or something he’d have understood that, and the small-scale pollution by some of his residents really did need to get resolved. But this lawsuit was a nebulous thing where people were suing on behalf of “the environment” and “the youth of the world”. He chuckled, thinking of an old lawsuit where an environmental group had sued the feds on behalf of the world’s dolphins, only to be told that dolphins lacked “standing”.
He’d managed to handle what arguments there were aboard Castor, so far. He doubted that a judge could play engineer as well as Garrett could play judge.
“Hey, Zephyr,” he said into a headset. “Think with me for a minute.”
“Aye!”
Garrett fell into a little discussion he could barely follow, tracing the shape of the threats to Castor. They explored the case against him and how it might be attacked. When he visited he could at least see Tess again, stop by the old office, meet with Samuel, walk around the Inner Harbor — and get arrested.
“What?” said Zephyr, snapping out of the head-dive.
The possibility had leaped out at both of them. Garrett said, “It doesn’t matter that the lawsuit is frivolous; it’s a trap. If I set foot in Maryland I’ll be busted as a drug dealer and a pimp.” He called Eaton next.
Eaton’s voice radioed, “Fox, don’t go!”
“One step ahead of you. What exactly will happen if I do?”
“There’s talk of issuing a quick warrant, or grabbing you without one.”
“Talk among who?”
Eaton said, “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”
Garrett didn’t press him. “Then I have to stay here?”
“Travel to and from Cuba is probably all right for you. Because of the ongoing political situation with Cuba, the US has an excuse to pretend that you’re untouchable so long as you stay in that area. Only a pretense, mind you. You might get nabbed anyway or your whole station seized, if the US needs leverage with Cuba for reasons unrelated to you.”
Garrett said, “A raid on us would threaten Cuban citizens.”
“Which is one good reason to have them working for you.” Eaton sighed. “But if you go back to the mainland, you’re screwed.”
Garrett smacked a wall, making his fist throb. “I’ve hurt no one who wasn’t a direct threat! All I want to do is work and earn a living!”
“That’s no longer considered an admirable motive, Captain.”
Garrett said, “People have flocked here. We have investors, well-wishers, tourists, even a fan club. I get mail from Cuba asking if I’m married. There are people who understand what I’m doing.”
“That’s nice, but those people aren’t the jackals in power.”
“What do I do? I can’t stay and I can’t go.”
“Stay,” said Eaton, “and hope no one comes in the night to grab you.”
Garrett paced and fumed when Eaton was off the line. Powerless. There was only one solution, and he hated it. “Zephyr. Hear all that?”
“You had the line open, so yes. Sorry.”
“Never mind. I need to talk to Tess.”
“She’s not online. She hasn’t been, lately.”
“Regular phone, then.”
“She doesn’t answer, and her parents keep making excuses. It’s like they don’t want their daughter conspiring with an inhuman intelligence.”
Garrett looked around the empty office. “Where are you?”
“The lab.”
He went there and found Zephyr playing with a pair of white rats. They looked identical, each with a silvery-blue panel on its forehead in a kite shape. One lay on a bed of newspaper, while the other sat up and wiggled its whiskers at Garrett.
“Stranger,” said a little voice from a speaker box.
Zephyr said, “Friend. Name is Garrett.”
“Okay,” said the speaker, and the rat returned to licking itself.
Garrett blinked. “These are your experiments from Martin?”
“Steamboat Willie, the one that talked, is. The one laying down is Algernon, not what I asked for. Look.” The inert rat sat up and waved stiffly. Zephyr said, “It waved because I told it to. That one is a bioshell, a meat puppet anyone can control with the right code. Most of its brain was removed.”
Garrett stared. It was a robot made of flesh! It looked identical to the other, yet the inert one gave him the creeps. He said, “You have remote control over it?”
“Only over this one. It can’t even feed itself without my control, so I have to pay close attention. Willie acts on his own.”
“Which do you like better?” he said, looking back and forth between the seemingly identical creatures.
“I don’t know,” said Zephyr. “I was hoping Tess would be here to see them. I don’t know how to decide.”
Tess. Right. “While you’re busy transcending biology, I need to make a phone call.”
“Maybe you can get through to her. I can’t.”
“I need your help. Can I get a secure commline, one where I can speak my mind and not have possibly-malevolent agencies listening in?”
“No. In fact there’s a big chance our ‘friend’ Eaton has bugged even Castor’s internal lines, and that some of our tourists have been spies for one of five or six interested countries.” Zephyr made the puppet rat shake the bars of a nearby cage. “If Tess were here we could scan everything thoroughly and make sure.”
Garrett felt the world close in on him. He didn’t feel like he could function if he had to add a layer of defense to every conversation, hedging his words to make sure he wouldn’t trigger some alarm. It was like being on a date with an imposing chaperone: Go ahead, kids, have fun, but I’m watching. Like a spike through part of his mind, the part that he kept in other people’s heads. He sighed. “I think I know how Valerie feels now.”