Robert was actually busy between semesters. His contrived synch hack had raised him to the lowest level of guru-hood. He'd been noticed by a small company called Comms-R-Us. In a way it was a traditional firm. It was old (five years old), and it had three full-time employees. So it wasn't as nimble as some operations, but it had managed several innovations in concurrent communications. Comms-R-Us had paid Robert to consult for a period of three weeks. And though it was clear that the "consult" was mainly an opportunity for Comms-R-Us to decide if Robert Gu had any future, Robert jumped at the chance.
For the first time since he lost his marbles, he was creating something that others valued.
Otherwise, things were not going entirely smoothly. Juan Orozco was gone; his parents had taken him on vacation to Puebla, where they were visiting his mother's grandfather. Juan still showed up occasionally, but Miri was not talking to him.
"I'm trying not to care, Robert. Maybe if I stop bothering her, Miri will let me start over with her." Nevertheless, Robert had the feeling the boy might have camped out on their front steps if his parents had not dragged him away.
"I'll talk to her, Juan. I promise."
Juan had looked at him doubtfully. "But don't make her think I put you up to it!"
"I won't. I'll choose the time carefully."
Robert had decades of experience in choosing the right time to strike. This should have been easy. Miri had wangled an Incomplete grade on her demo project. That meant that when she finally did perform, at the end of the next semester, she would have even higher standards to meet. For now, she was a busybody around the house, mainly taking care of her mother. Alice Gu was a ghost of her former self. The steel of the last fifteen weeks of their acquaintance had been torn out of her. The result was… charming. More evenings than not, Alice and Miri were down in the kitchen, attempting to make hard work out of modern cookery. His daughter-in-law was distant, but her smile wasn't the meaningless reflex it had often seemed before.
Then Bob was out of town again, and Miri seemed to be busier than ever. Every day, she had some news for him about her searches on burns and limb rehabilitation. Real soon now he should use that as an excuse to set her straight about Juan… and about himself.
Maybe tonight was the right night. Bob was still out of town. Alice had retired to the ground-floor den shortly after dinner. None of Miri's "board games" tonight. They were fun, one of the nicer things about life since that terrible night at UCSD — but tonight Robert had finally seen his way through some of his Comms-R-Us problems. Working on them, he lost track of the time. When he came up for air, he had some results, maybe things worth showing his employers. What a good night!
Downstairs, a door slammed. His eyes were still on his work, but he heard Miri come pounding up the stairs. She raced down the hallway and into her bedroom.
A few minutes later she came out. There was a knock on his bedroom door. "Hi Robert, can I show you some things I discovered today?"
"Sure."
She bounced into the room and grabbed a chair. "I found three more projects that could help your arm."
In fact, the medical condition of Robert Gu's left arm was best characterized by its absence. It was completely burned off at the lower forearm. There were two places near the shoulder where all that was left was a strip of flesh. His "prosthesis" was more like an old-style plaster cast. But interestingly, the medics had passed on the opportunity to whack the thing off and fit him with some modern miracle. Reed Weber — the physician's assistant had resurfaced now that the MDs needed someone to front for them — had explained the situation, though perhaps not in quite the way the doctors would like: "You're a victim of the new field of 'prospective medicine,' Robert. You see, we have prosthetics with five-finger motor control, and with almost the durability of a natural arm. But they're a little heavy and the sensor system is nowhere near the real thing. On the other hand, there are clear trends in nerve– and bone-regeneration tech. Even though no one knows quite how it will happen — or if it will happen — the odds are that in eighteen months they'll be able to grow out from what you have now, into an effective natural arm. And the MDs are afraid that debriding what's left of your arm for a prosthesis might make the later solution much more expensive. So for a while you are stuck with a solution that wouldn't have impressed your own grandfather."
And Robert had nodded and not complained. Every day with this dead weight on his shoulder was a small penance, a reminder of how close his foolishness had come to destroying lives.
Miri was oblivious of all that. In fact, she had dismissed "prospective medicine" as stupidity. Miri believed in making her own medical solutions. "So there are these three teams, Robert. One of them has grown a complete monkey's paw, another is into whole-limb prosthesis, but very lightweight, and the third has some improvements in neurocoding. I bet your Comms-R-Us friends would put you up as a fast-track guinea pig. What do you think?"
Robert touched the plastic shell that held the remains of his arm. "Ah, I think a deal involving a monkey's paw is too risky for me."
"No, no, you wouldn't have a monkey's paw. The monkey's paw was just — " Then she got a Googling look. "Robert! I'm not talking about some old story. I'm trying to help you. I want to more than ever. I owe you."
Yeah, tonight was definitely the night to set her straight. "You don't owe me."
"Hey, I can't remember it, but Bob told me what he saw. You put your arm in the way of molten rock. You held it there." Her face twisted with imagined pain. "You saved me, Robert."
"I saved you, kiddo. Yes. But I created the problem. I played ball with something evil." Or something very strange.
"You were desperate. I knew that. I just didn't know how deep things would get. So we both made a mess."
It really was time to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness. But first let her know why this was beyond forgiveness. The words were hard to say: "Miri, you made a mess trying to fix things. But I… I was the guy who set up your mother for what practically killed her." There. It was said.
Miri sat very still. After a moment, her gaze fell. She said softly, "I know."
Now they both were very still. "Bob told you?"
"No. Alice did." She looked up. "And she told me they still can't figure out how what you did could have brought her down. It's okay, Robert."
Then abruptly, she was crying. And Robert did get on his knees. His granddaughter threw her arms around his neck. She was in full bawl now, her body shaking. She pounded his back with her fists.
"I'm so sorry, Miri. I — "
Miri's wail got even louder, but she stopped beating on him. After half a minute, her weeping trailed off into choking sobs, and then silence. But she still held on to him. Her words were halting and muffled. "I just found out that… Alice is… Alice is back in Training ."
Oh.
"She's not even recovered!" Miri was sobbing again.
"What does your father say?"
"Bob is out of touch tonight."
"Out of touch?" In this day and age?
Miri pushed him back. She started to wipe her face on her sleeve, then grabbed from the box of tissues he set beside her. "Really out of touch. Tactical blackout. D-Don't you follow the news, Robert?"
"um."
"Read between the lines. Bob is off somewhere making places and things glow in the dark." She wiped energetically at her face, and her voice returned to something like its usual tones. "Okay, maybe not literally. Bob talks that way when he has to do things he really doesn't want to do. But I watch the rumor mills and I watch Bob and Alice. Between the three I'm a pretty good guesser. Sometimes Bob is out of touch, and I read about something wonderful or something terrible happening in another country. Sometimes Alice goes into Training, and I know that somebody needs help or else very bad things may happen. Right now Bob is away and Alice is back in Training." She hid behind her hands for a moment, then resumed wiping her face. "My g-guess is that the top rumors are right. Something awful happened at the Library Riot, worse than the GenGen takeover. Now all the superpowers are running scared. They think someone has figured how to crack their security. A-Alice almost admitted that tonight. That was her excuse !"