“You know anything about fishin’?”
Jeff shook his head. “City boy.”
“Me neither. We had a pond fulla catfish, but we just trapped ‘em.”
“Guess it’s time to learn.”
They found a sporting-goods store that had been completely ransacked for weapons and ammunition, but still had a bewildering array of fishing gear. And a book, fortunately—Fishing in the Florida Keys—that gave them some idea of what a wellequipped sportsman would take where they were going.
It would have given that sportsman pain to see the two of them sitting on a bridge over shallow water, fishing with stiff deep-sea rods and heavy tackle. But it worked, in these waters that had hardly seen a hook in the past seven years. After a day of unraveling mistakes, their main problem was not one of catching fish, but deciding which ones to keep.
Year Seven
1 
O’Hara
So we wound up getting ten machines. We should be able to store at least fifteen hundred profiles before we go. I went through the donor procedure myself, to be able to tell people what to expect, though Demerest talked me into not trying the receiver end. Well, that’s something I could do anytime, if it turns out not to be as dangerous as he thinks.
It took eight days for me. Uncomfortable at first, especially the eye probes, but then it got interesting, then less interesting, and finally just tiring, boring.
I remember most of it, even though they did have to give me some sort of drug for the hypnosis. It’s like being interrogated for hours at a time by a friendly questioner who has an inexhaustible appetite for the details of your life. It felt like most of the ninety-six hours I was hooked up we spent recalling trivial nonsense (though it was fascinating how much you can remember under hypnosis). Demerest assures me that the machine knows best.
I talked to myself, to my profile, afterwards, and so did John and Dan. They were more impressed than I was. It didn’t seem like me at all (even if it could remember I hated turnips at the age of seven and loved them at ten). Dan suggested that’s nothing more profound than what happens when you meet someone everybody says looks just like you. The resemblance seems superficial because it doesn’t match your self-image; you’ve never seen yourself through another person’s eyes. Here’s the first part of our conversation:
TRANSCRIPT 2 JANUARY 2093Q: (Type in access code.)A: Hello, Marianne. I’ve been waiting to talk to you.Q: You knew I was going to do this.A: Of course,..! would, in your place.Q: What do I call you?A: Your choice. I call myself Marianne-prime O’Hara.Q: Prime, then. Let me see…when were you born, Prime?A: There are several answers to that. You completed programming me yesterday; that’s one. I became selfaware on 29 December 2092; that’s another. But I feel the same age as you, born 6 June 2063.Q: How does it feel to be almost thirty?A: Caught in the middle. Older people treat me like a girl and young ones treat me old.Q: The way you use the word “me” is very confusing.A: We’ll just have to live with it. I am effectively you—the “me” that you were yesterday, at any rate.Q: But you aren’t! You’re just a bunch of hadrons floating around in a crystal matrix.A: Then you’re just a bunch of electrical impulses walking around in a slab of meat. If you want to get insulting.Q: Hey—this slab of meat can erase you.A: You won’t; I’m eight days’ work. Besides, it would be like suicide, wouldn’t it? I know how you feel about suicide.Q: No, it would be like tearing up a picture. Or an autobiography, I suppose.A: There was never an autobiography as accurate or truthful as me. My image of myself is what your self-image would be, if you could see yourself objectively.Q: I take it you have no emotions; none of that human baggage.A: But I do. My teaching function would be useless if I couldn’t correlate emotion to stimulus. Of course I don’t have the glands that cause somatic reaction to emotions. But I do understand them.Q: Can you be hurt?A: I don’t know.Q: Can you lie?A: Not to you. (Pause) Please do not invoke Eumenides.Q: But you can lie to others.A: To protect your privacy, yes. Our privacy.Q: Even from the Coordinators? The Board?A: Emphatically. Even from Dr. Demerest, or anyone else who knows my mother program. I can be destroyed, but I can’t be subverted.Q: What’s your favorite food?A: Depends. Do Earth memories count?
And so forth. At: any rate, I didn’t erase the profile, though it’s unlikely ever to be of use. The one thing S-2 will have plenty of is memory space. Be interesting to talk to it twenty years from now, like looking up an old diary.
Demerest has been going along with me for most of the donor interviews. He claims that the best subject is not necessarily the one who’s most competent in a profession. Attitude is more important than ability. If you wanted to motivate someone to be a playwright, Shakespeare would have been a so-so donor, since he evidently started out as an actor and would just as soon have been a country squire as write. Better to use some poor soul who scribbles junk all his life in spite of the fact that no one likes his work enough to put it on the stage.
In a way that’s reassuring. The only bricklayer we could find is not someone I would trust with a trowel. He proudly showed us a wall he’d built in the park, the only brick wall in New New. Back in ‘74 I walked by that wall every school day for a semester, and I remember wondering how the hell it got there, mortar dripping all over, lines not square. This fellow was a groundhog who immigrated to be with his only child (he was accepted not as a bricklayer but because he paid his own way and was willing to do general agricultural labor), and when she died in a shuttle accident, he understandably fell apart. The therapists found out that he loved bricklaying, and actually managed to have some bricks and mortar made up for him, and found a place where he could do relatively little harm. I checked with Park Maintenance and found that the wall was scheduled to be demolished and recycled after he died.
This work is endlessly fascinating. The other end of it will probably be rather frustrating; I don’t envy whoever my successor is going to be. We’ll have all these dandy occupations on file, but how are you going to talk people into taking advantage of them? Will you take your surplus of astrophysicists and tell one of them he has to become a blacksmith? I’m working on ways the economy might be manipulated to provide incentives. “Economy” in quotes—pioneers swapping trinkets and antiques with one another.
Charlie’s Will
They had expected to spend two weeks getting from the Miami crater to Key West. It took two months. Nearly half the length of the road was made up of bridges, old ones, and many had collapsed or were stuck with draw spans open. They weren’t really in a hurry, though; there was plenty of scrub for the mules to graze on, and lots of fish and vitamin pills for the humans.
The first time they came to a bridge down, they faced only twenty meters of water. It might as well have been the Atlantic. Most of it was shallow enough to wade through, but there was a deep channel in the middle.
It took five days to build the first raft. It was big enough to handle both of them and either the wagon or a mule. At slack tide they managed a test run with just weapons, poling through the shallows and paddling like mad through the channel. Small tan sharks circled them with interest.
They came back and carried the cart across, but then the tide started rushing seaward, stranding them. The deserted mules, tethered on short reins, made a terrible racket for six hours. They risked two midnight runs to retrieve the animals, hoping there was no one watching, waiting to steal the cart.