So Bascal hadn’t simply crossed the good/bad line in a moment of weakness; he’d leaped right over it, and loitered there for hours. Of course there were worse things, much worse things, that a person could do. There was murder; there was torture; there was genocide.... Conrad didn’t want to overreact—it wasn’t all or nothing, but a matter of degrees. Bascal had decided to be somewhat malicious in pursuit of his goals. Was that all? Was there more to it than that?
Certainly there was no grand design to it. No matter what Bascal said, he was just making it up along the way, doing what felt right. They all were. Peter felt like staying and Bascal felt like going, so that’s what happened. Ho felt like taking something from Preston, so that’s what he did. And nobody stopped it from happening, because nobody was planning that far ahead. And that was a critical point as welclass="underline" could you simply outplan the petty evils of the universe? Surprise them, catch them off guard? Make sure the right thing was easier to do?
For some reason, this idea made him shiver. Then he decided it wasn’t so much the idea as the fact that it really was getting cold in here. So he got back up and went to his control panel and mirrorized the cabin’s wrapping, to reflect all their body heat back inside instead of letting it escape into cold Kuiper Belt space. This blocked the starlight entirely, forcing him to turn more night-lights on. He would have turned a heater on as well, but he didn’t have any idea how much energy this took, or how much was actually on board, or how exactly it was stored in the wellstone. Or where. And he suspected Bascal didn’t know either, and the last thing Conrad wanted to do was find out the answer in some dumbass way that froze or burned or starved them all to death.
It seemed like an egotistical thought, but also a true one: if there was to be any sanity on this insane voyage of theirs, Conrad’s own not-so-bright efforts would have to provide it.
Chapter ten.
Winds of permutation
From the desk at her bedroom window, Xmary gazed eastward at the towers of Denver. Moping, because the sun was shining and there was happy trumpet music playing somewhere. Moping, because she wanted to go, to hang out and be raw and silly and fun. The Gravity Towers beckoned to her; the Cola Dome mocked. And the plain, bright colors of her desk—red and green and yellow and blue, tiles of fired ceramic mortared in place by the child she had been a decade ago—were the punchline of the joke. A handmade object, a hundred hours of labor. Indistinguishable from a fax-to-order design.
She wanted to snort love drugs and flirt, or rent a little car and just drive it around. She’d been cooped up all month—all summer, really—humoring her parents with chores and schoolwork, saving her allowance for that bright, fulfilling future they imagined she was building toward. As what? As whom?
She deserved an afternoon on the town. And a night, and maybe a morning. Gods, did she ever! But she was due at history class in fifteen minutes, and her absence would be noted and logged and forwarded to the attention of Mummy and Da.
By itself, this was not a problem. In the best of months, she faxed up an illicit copy of herself every week, and sneaked away to do her own bidding. In mediocre times she’d get by doing it every two or three weeks, but even in the driest, lamest of months—like this one, for example—she always gave herself the last Friday off. And today—today!—was the day.
There was nothing difficult about the procedure; the fax machine was right outside her bedroom door, and when she stepped into it she’d simply specify two simultaneous destinations: Childrens’ City College, and Market Street Station. Or maybe River Station, if she felt like hitting the kiddie cafés again.
But there exactly was the problem: she’d sent a copy of herself off to River Street on the last Friday of June, and said copy had met briefly with Cherry and Tom, in the upstairs balcony at Café 1551. And then the Unexplained Thing had happened—the building simply collapsing in a heap—and dearest Xmary had passed on into some new phase of existence. Not dead or injured as far as she knew, but simply not listed among the casualties. Simply not there. Covert messages on the network had failed to garner any response, and no friend or relation had yet admitted to seeing or hearing from her.
She feared the worst: raped and murdered out of sight of the world’s sensors and censors and sense. Dumped in a shallow grave, covered over with rocks and dirt, her memories rotting into the earth instead of coming home where they belonged. How melodramatic! How fitting an end for such a wayward and disobedient little girl! It was everything Mummy had warned her about: seeking out the vile haunts of sleaze—of privacy—and wiggling her assets for the leering eyes of the wrong sort of people.
But fitting or no, the idea terrified her. Shouldn’t it? Not simply because the same thing might happen again, but because Mummy’s being right would be the end of everything. No more life of her own. No more hopes or dreams or casual flings, no guilty pleasures that weren’t chosen for her from some carefully vetted menu! We know what’s best for you, dear. Having lived in a world much harder than yours, we know exactly what you should do next.
What did she want to be when she grew up? Anything. Anything but that. She put a shaky hand to the window, caressing the view. Her unrequited lover. If rape and murder were the price of freedom, she supposed she would just have to pay up.
Was that a decision? It surely felt like one, so she stood up, grabbed her sketchplate and purse, and threw open the bedroom door to face the world.
But just to be safe, she printed the copy first, and checked her over, and gave her a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. Xmary was dear to her, obviously, though they didn’t spend much time together. Being identical down to the slightest foible and follicle, she could be difficult and often snotty, and she had a remarkable talent for trouble. Last year she had even managed, during an otherwiseforgettable romp with a boy they barely knew, to play an elaborate and rather disgusting prank on herself. How does it taste, dear? She was still amazed she’d pulled that off, concealing her intentions from herself and knowing all the while that there would not only be payback, but that she’d have to reconverge her copies in the fax at some point, winding up as the victim of both the original crime and its retaliation! In the face of that kind of determined mischief, there was only so much of her own company she could take.
“Be careful,” she told herself.
But Xmary—good old Xmary—just laughed. “Girl, you’re the one facing homework and dinner conversation. My mistakes can be swept under the rug.”
“Along with your carcass.”
“Hey, wow, I’m already more cheerful than you. Poor thing. Don’t wait up for me, eh?”
It wasn’t that her parents never let her out—they did—it was just that they would ask her where she was going, and whom she would be with. And they had their ways of verifying these things, or spot-checking anyway, and if they caught her lying the cost was high. So she went bowling and levitating and even boozing with their grudging consent, and for the most part enjoyed it well enough. But wayward girl that she was, she never felt truly alive or free with them peering over her shoulder that way.