Paul scratched his head. “They give the name ‘realist’ to people who escape normal life in VR?”
“Well, it is a higher reality,” Dor said. “The VR you have on your ship is antique. It’s a lot more… convincing now.”
Sam smiled broadly. “Yeah. You can tell when you’re unplugged because everything’s boring.”
“Guess who’s the realist here.” Dor patted her on the knee.
“Not really. I don’t spend even half my time plugged.”
“I’m curious about politics,” Paul said. “Mervyn Gold is president of what? What is this United Americas?”
“Let me see.” Sam moved her hands over the notebook. “It’s most of your old United States, except Florida and Cuba, which now are part of Caribbea, and South Texas (which is its own country) and Hawaii, which is the capital of Pacifica. The United Americas otherwise runs from Alaska down through English Canada, the old U.S., most of Mexico, and most of Spanish-speaking Central and South America down to the tip of Argentina. Not Costa Rica; not Baja California.”
“Thank God for that,” Dor said. “Baja’s such another world.”
“The United Americas are really not that united.” Sam continued. “It’s an economic coalition, like Common Europe and Cercle Socialisme.
“The smallest country in the world is the one we’re citizens of, Elevator.”
“The smallest country but the longest,” Dor said. “The Space Elevator Corporation declared sovereignty back when there was still a United Nations.”
“And now?” Namir said. “Instead of the UN?”
“All nations are united,” Sam said, echoing the commander. Her expression was a tight-lipped blandness.
United against the Others, I realized, through the fleet, which they couldn’t mention in public. Everyone else was probably thinking the same thing.
“I wonder who will pay my UN pension,” Namir muttered.
Sam overheard him. “You have all been well taken care of. The world is wealthy and grateful.”
For what, I didn’t want to say. We took a long trip to talk with the enemy, and they sent us back without even saying a word. But at least the Earth wasn’t destroyed. Something to be grateful for.
So we were each given fifty million dollars to spend, in a world where Namir’s New York City penthouse could be bought for ten million.
The only thing I really wanted was a hamburger.
My mother and father were dead, no surprise, though she had made it to 101, waiting for me, and left behind a brave, wistful note that made me cry.
My children were still on Mars as well, but were not speaking to each other, the girl a total humanist and the boy a total nerd realist. I spent over an hour in difficult conversation with both of them, difficult for the twelve-minute delay as well as emotional factors. I signed off promising to visit both of them as soon as I could get to Mars. Though with the realist I’d have to communicate electronically, no matter what planet I was on. He’d sold his organic body for parts.
That gave me a flash of irrational anger, but it passed. He actually only had half of one cell of mine.
My brother, Card, was also a realist, but he had not yet become bodiless. He lived on Earth now, in Los Angeles, and promised he’d put on his formal body (he had three) and come see me when we landed. I waited while he made a few calls, then called back and said he’d gotten all the vouchers and permissions to make the trip.
I wondered how free the Land of the Free was nowadays. But I guessed I could always go back to Mars.
16
MOONBOY SPEAKS
I put the two balalaikas in the padded boxes I’d made for them, and set the Vermeer book, and the Shakespeare and Amachai and cummings poems, into the titanium suitcase. I’d done a laundry in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and padded the books with clean folded clothes I would never want to wear again.
What were the actual odds that we were about to become dead heroes rather than inconvenient witnesses? Small but finite, as a mathematician would say. We really knew nothing about current politics. When President Gold had been Professor Gold, Paul said he taught medieval history—Machiavelli and the Medici. The Borgias. He could make them seem like current events, Paul said. Maybe current events, then and now, were not so far removed from those good old days.
We hadn’t been publicly interviewed yet. That was disturbing. But they had let us talk to relatives. So they couldn’t be claiming that we didn’t make it back.
(Assuming people did talk to their relatives, and not to VR constructions. Cesare Borgia would have liked that little tool.)
Well, they couldn’t really claim the ad Astra hadn’t returned. What’s left of our iceberg is still bigger than the Hilton, and you can see that in the sky all over the Pacific, brighter than the Pole Star.
Of course, when we got off the lander, we’d go straight into biological isolation. No telling what kind of bug we might be bringing back from the Others. Though a bug that thrived in liquid nitrogen might find human body temperature a little too warm. And there had been nothing alive on the planet Home to infect us. If Spy had told the truth.
We might have been infected with something accidentally or on purpose. Spy was an artificial organism designed to interface with humans. But then so were the Martians, and they had carried the pathogen for the juvenile pulmonary cysts that gave the colonists such trouble.
I should have asked about Israel—find out whether the country I worked for all my life still exists. My notebook didn’t pull any new information about anything, which was not necessarily suspicious. Fifty-year-old hardware and software. But it would be nice to find out some information about the world that hadn’t been handed to us by handlers.
I should be grateful for a few more hours of blissful ignorance and obscurity. The idea of celebrity is not compatible with my choice of career, and thus with my personality. Not that I will ever be a spy again, whatever Israel is or is not today.
Maybe I’ll take up music seriously. Practice several hours a day. That would keep Dustin out of the house.
My notebook pinged in my personal tone. Funny, the only people with that number were close enough to come knock.
I thumbed it, though—and an image of Moonboy appeared!
“I trust I have your attention.”
“Moonboy?”
“Yes and no.” There was a short transmission delay. “This signal is coming from the Moon, but Moonboy is not there. This is a sentient cartoon. The signal is an encrypted and filtered tightbeam that only you, Namir, can receive and decode.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“This cartoon has detected that you are not on Earth.”
“That’s right. We’re in orbit, near—”
“You must land on Earth as soon as possible. Leave space by midnight, Greenwich time, April 23. Tell no one that I talked to you.”
“Not even other—”
“Midnight, April 23.”
The screen went blank. I asked it for the source, and it said LUNA NEAR CLAVIUS.
Midnight on the 23 would be 7 P.M. April 22 in New York; 4 P.M. in the Mojave Desert. We’d be landing that morning, if things went according to plan.
Best make sure things do go according to plan. There was no way to interpret that message other than ominously.
I could use a drink, maybe something stronger than wine. I opened the door, pulled myself up the trellis, and floated over the arbor toward the warehouse.
Paul and Carmen were already there. They turned and looked at me without saying anything.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You just got a message that you’re not supposed to share.”