Mary and Georgine each took a package of vurt gloves from a pile of them on a supply cart and joined the others at the daybed.
“You’re new,” Hattie said to Georgine. “I’m Hattie Beckeridge.” Cyndee and Ronnie introduced themselves to their new colleague. Today, all of the evangelines wore saucer hats. Then Hattie returned their attention to the woman on the daybed. The woman had a slight build, pretty face, and bushy eyebrows.
“Is this Myr Starke?” Mary said.
“Yes, well, her empty jacket anyways,” Hattie said. “The medtechs adapted it from a holo sim she cast on her most recent birthday. They’ve mapped it through the controller to her brain.”
Mary looked up at the skull hovering above them in the tank like a ghastly judge, its eyes as dead as the day before.
Hattie took the jacket’s hand in her gloved hand and drew it across the rough fabric of the daybed. “This’ll get the old sensory neurons popping,” she said. “Here, take turns doing this. Nice and easy. We don’t want carpet burns.” Mary pulled on her vurt gloves, and Hattie continued. “Myr Starke will need to wear this jacket for the next eighteen months or so while her new body matures.”
Ronnie said, “But if the jacket looks at the tank, won’t she be frightened to see herself as a skull? I know I would.”
Hattie paused to look up at the skull. “The jacket system has a built-in blind spot so she can’t see the tank unless she chooses to. What’s important initially is that the body in the tank can see the jacket. Her developing new body will need both visual and proprioceptive feedback from the jacket. This is so the new nerve cells insinuate themselves properly into the existing brain tissue. Otherwise, she could suffer everything from mild spasticity to profound Parkinsonian symptoms.
“As soon as you wake up, Myr Starke,” Hattie told the jacket, “we’ll have you doing jumping jacks in here.”
Under Hattie’s direction, the evangelines lifted the jacket and turned it on its back. With the vurt gloves, the holo seemed as heavy as a real body. They lifted her legs and slid the soles of her bare feet against the daybed as they had done her hands. While they worked, the evangelines traded looks and glances, and Mary knew there was news from upshift. But there was no chance to talk, for as soon as they finished the sensory workout, a trio of Johns entered the cottage bearing more cartons of Ellen Starke’s personal belongings: hats, photographs and lamps, a bead necklace, trophies, libraries, and more. Hattie and the evangelines arranged these things on nooks and shelves in the cottage.
When they were finished, Hattie had to leave to make her rounds. “Be sure to keep stimulating our guest,” she said. “Remember, she can see, hear, and smell. We chose some of her stuff for its olfactory qualities. There’s nothing like the smell of home to get one’s attention.”
“How does Myr Starke smell?” Cyndee said.
“Didn’t anyone show you? Never mind, follow me.” Hattie led them to the control unit beside the tank. “Here’s the olfactory sampler—Myr Starke’s temporary nose.” She pointed to a small grate at the side of the unit. “It’s constantly sampling the ambient air and transducing the results directly to our guest’s olfactory epithelium, which is intact. I always use the same shampoo so my clients can learn to recognize me by scent.” Hattie stooped and rubbed her hair next to the grate. “Good morning, Myr Starke. It’s me, Hattie Beckeridge, your day nurse.” She straightened up and continued. “In some ways, odors are more useful to our guest right now than sight. Smell is a simpler, more direct sense.”
She told the control unit to project a model of Starke’s brain. It popped up, a large gray walnutlike thing. “Now add the orbits and show us the primary retinofugal projection.” Two eyeballs appeared at one end of the model brain (which was useful for Mary who otherwise couldn’t tell one lobe from another). The eyeballs were highlighted in red. The highlighting followed two neural pathways to the midbrain where they crossed before continuing to the very rear of the hemispheres. “What we perceive with our eyes at the front of our skull has to travel across the whole brain,” Hattie said, tracing a pathway with her finger, “before reaching the visual cortex at the back. There the signals are first processed and then sent out to other areas for further processing.”
She told the model to display the entire visual pathway, and the whole brain seemed to light up. “Impressive, isn’t it?” Hattie said. “Vision is our primary sense. Nearly one-third of our brain’s mass is involved in processing it.”
She told the model to display Starke’s actual visual activity. Only the eyes and ropelike pathway lit up and only to the crossover point in the middle of the brain.
“See? The signal gets lost long before it ever reaches her occipital lobes. The lights are on, but there’s no one home. Now let’s compare smell. Show us the patient’s current olfactory activity.”
Two small projections under the eyes of the model brain became highlighted in green. “This is the olfactory epithelium, which lines the top of the nasal passage of the nose. It makes up the olfactory bulbs, the only brain tissue we have outside our skulls. It comes in contact with the air we breathe.” She pointed to the green projections and then to a lobe of the brain adjacent to them. “Olfactory bulbs here, primary olfactory cortex right next door—smell is our only sensory system that passes directly to the cerebral cortex. This gives it unparalleled influence on parts of the brain that affect emotion, motivation, and certain kinds of memory.”
Finishing the lesson, Hattie took her leave, first passing behind the tank and peering in at the fetus. The evangelines joined her. The little prawn looked to be the same size as the day before.
IN A CORNER of the blast bunker nearly a quarter klick beneath the Starke Manse, Merrill Meewee lay in his makeshift bedroom and stared up at the ceiling. After the household mechs attacked him yesterday, Wee Hunk thought it prudent to move him underground. At least until he figured out who was responsible and how they had penetrated manse security. But while Meewee felt the weight of the intervening layers of earth and limestone over his head, he didn’t feel any more secure and hadn’t managed to get much sleep. If Eleanor’s enemies could pervert carpet scuppers into attack dogs, could anyplace be safe?
Well, actually, yes. Next to the shelter where he lay was the Starke null suite. As null suites went, it was a world-class design. Nothing could penetrate it, not EM radiation, long-wave Earth vibrations, cosmic rays, ultrasound, or any other known means of spying, not even quantum entanglement, or so Eleanor had claimed. She used to brag that not even God, herself, could eavesdrop there. Maybe that was where Meewee could get some sleep.
Meewee’s neck hurt, and his windpipe was sore, and he was bruised where the carpet scuppers had pummeled him. Arrow may have saved him from strangulation but Meewee had had to specifically tell it to do so. Arrow possessed some awesome capabilities, but a quick-thinking bodyguard it was not.
<Arrow> he said in Starkese <what are you?>
The mentar replied in Starkese <I don’t understand the question.>
<Are you a mentar?>
<Affirmative.>
<Do you have a personality?>
<I don’t understand the question.>
<Are you self-aware?>
<I don’t understand the question.>
Meewee got out of bed and padded naked to the bathroom. Eleanor’s bunker shelter was roomy and well appointed. A party of thirty or so people, accustomed to first-class accommodations, could wait out a nuclear attack or biowar and its aftermath here in princely comfort.