The jumper shoulders past Sitor Ananta. "I've brought Mr. Charlie. I hope he's okay. There was an explosion-"
"Is she talking about the archaic brain?" Exu asks.
"Pay attention, dear." Hannas raises her palms to stop the slim, muscular woman in the matte-black flightsuit. "The archaic brain you've contributed to Solis certainly merits your admittance to our community, Mei Nili, but if you
are to stay among us, you know, you will have to earn credits. Please, listen to the counselors we've assigned to you from the terrene anthro commune. They'll help you make the transition."
"What about Shau Bandar and Munk?" Mei asks. "And what has happened to Buddy?" "Can we go now?" Exu complains.
"Shau Bandar is scheduled for cremation later this morning," Hannas reads from the display on her mate's shoulder pad. "His news-clip service claims he left without any protective authorization-"
"That's not true!" Mei interrupts. "I was at Softcopy with him when Bo Rabana gave him the go-ahead."
Hannas shakes her head. "That's not what we've been told. The offices in Terra Tharsis have agreed to fund the installation of the archaic brain in a body clone, and in return the anthro commune here will be sending news clips of the revived man to Softcopy. But they won't pay to revive this reporter. It's too expensive. i'm sorry."
A blue vein ticks at Mei's temple, and she begins to object. But Grielle cuts her off, saying, "I will pay for Shau Bandar's revival. Remove the necessary funds from my account at once."
The wry smile on the Commonality agent's face slips away, and the jumper shoots a surprised look at Grielle.
"Hey, that cuts into the share we get when she passes," Exu complains. "It is her credit, Exu. She can spend it as she pleases.
Control yourself." With a gracious nod, Hannas accepts
Grielle's offer. "Now, about the androne and the Maat:
You are aware you were traveling in the company of a Maat-possessed anthro?" "We had no idea," Grielle states. "He tagged on with the androne. He had
credits, and the more he paid into the caravan, the more I had left to contribute to Solis. So we accepted him, but we had no idea, dears. No idea at all."
"The Maat wouldn't confide in these monkeys," Exu sneers. "Let's go. We've played our role. I say we file for our share of the credits before she gives away any more."
Hannas accedes by showing her teeth to the terrenes. "This, I believe, concludes our business," Hannas says. "There is a large commune here of terrene humans who have emigrated from the Outlands, and I'm sure they will be helpful with any of your-"
"What about the androne Munk?" Mei presses.
"Come on, Hannas!" Exu trills. "These foundlings are unbearable." He modulates his voice to carry his ire, "Jumper Nili, Soils does not tolerate andrones more complex than scout-class. Munk belongs in deep space, not on Mars."
"Okay, dear, we're done here now." Hannas budges her mate to begin their retreat and says charitably as they backstep in tandem, "The androne Munk's power cells have been recharged. The Maat arranged payment for that from Terra Tharsis. Perhaps they have some use for him. They are his manufacturers, after all."
"But there won't be any use for him here in Soils," Exu admonishes. "If you go out to see him, Jumper Nili, I'm sorry to say you'll have to reapply for admission. One archaic brain won't get you into Solis twice. And this next time, you may be turned away. Be advised."
"Don't be too harsh, dear. She offers us no direct credit, but the archaic brain she delivered is already bringing in news-clip funds, and the agent would
pay dearly for possession-"
Exu glares angrily at his lifebond. "Is that the consideration that lizard wants? He can forget it. No deals with the Commonality. The archaic brain stays here."
As if one person, the martians slide fluidly backward down the stairs, and Hannas twitters in his ear, "All he asks is that the brain be given over to the Anthropos Essentia to be bodywoven in their vats. He probably has some arrangement with them. But if there is any trouble-say, a theft of the brain or an accident-it will not be with our people. Our hands are clean, and the credit remains with us. What do you say?"
Exu shows his teeth to the gaping terrenes. "I say, when the credit is good, consideration comes easily. Let's go."
Since waking from the void, Munk keeps drifting in and out of virtual reality. For long intervals, some episodes as much as half a second in duration, he reviews events from his recent past and has even begun modifying them, trying
out variations on what might have been. He daydreams.
While he and Buddy wander among the stony eskers on the perimeter of Soils, Munk wonders where he would be now if he had not detonated the explosives on Phoboi Twelve that killed Aparecida. Mei Nili and Mr. Charlie are gone-as they would have been on the path not taken. But there they would have been dead. On this path, he died, so to speak, and when he came back, the people he saved are gone and he can't stop hoping after them and pondering how events might have turned out differently.
Buddy is talking architecture, about the orange pyramids visible just beyond the lux towers and their lances of sunlight. "Those are the vats of the Anthropos Essentia," Buddy says. "Charles Outis will be taken there."
"Who?" Munk asks. He speculates about what might have happened if he had not acted impulsively in the Moot and stolen the plasteel capsule. Maybe the Moot would have found in their favor. He realizes now, he acted too precipitously...
"Charles Outis is Mr. Charlie," Buddy says and taps the comlink in his shoulder pad to hear whether it's sending. "Munk, are you all right?"
Munk drives quickly through an internal analysis and affirms, "I am fine. But-" He pauses, weighs whether this revelation is the right choice or if he should keep his own counsel about his enhanced subjectivity.
"But what?" Buddy presses. His face through the clear statskin cowl appears pallid, his eyes larger, holding the solar stars from the lux towers.
"Since I have been revived," the androne confesses, "I have been obsessed with my past."
An understanding smile touches Buddy's thin lips. "It's your C-P program. Your little taste of oblivion broke the program's seamless internal narrative. Now it's more obvious to the preconscious monitoring systems in you that there are other ways to tell your story-more human ways."
Munk feels his attention slipping toward the daylight silence of the rocky landscape and its brilliant oxides, but he restrains himself from thinking about what would have happened if he had ignored Mr. Charlie's initial broadcast and never left Apollo Combine. Instead he asks, "Why did you make me this way? I mean, why did you give me an anthrophilic contra-parameter program?"
"It's not anthrophilic," Buddy says, stepping closer, a compassionate crease between his luculent eyes. "Munk, don't you see? It's anthropic"
The androne scans Buddy's face and body profile time and again, searching for the signs of double entendre, metaphor, or just plain outright deception that must be there. "Human?" Munk queries. "Are you saying that my C-P program is designed to make me eventually experience reality as a human?"
"Yes."
"That's not possible!"
"What? You don't believe that humanity is nothing more than a pattern?" Buddy edges even closer, looking up at the faceless abstraction of the androne's head with an incredulous expression. "You've been around Mr. Charlie too long, Munk. Your thinking's become archaic."
"No," Munk says. "I understand that consciousness is emergent. I know it is
generated through pattern complexity, whether of dendrites or electron tunneling junctions. I understand that. But I can't believe that I am-that."
"Yes, Munk," Buddy asserts, staring earnestly into the ruby-bright depths of his lens bar. "You are human. We have made you that way."
"Why?"
"To be here with me right now," Buddy answers at once. "I need you to fulfill the aftermath of my passing."