They glared at each other. Finally Hiro said, "I don't want to talk about it," and sullenly picked up his cards.
Five or six hands later, a woman wandered up and plumped to the grass by Krishna's feet. Her eye shadow was vivid electric purple, and a crazy smile burned on her face. "Oh hi," Krishna said. "Does everyone here know Sally Chang? She's a research component of the Center for Self-Replicating Technologies, like me."
The others nodded. Gunther said, "Gunther Weil. Blue collar component of Generation Five."
She giggled.
Gunther blinked. "You're certainly in a good mood." He rapped the deck with his knuckles. "I'll stand."
"I'm on psilly," she said.
"One card."
"Psilocybin?" Gunther said. "I might be interested in some of that. Did you grow it or microfacture it? I have a couple of factories back in my room, maybe I could divert one if you'd like to license the software?"
Sally Chang shook her head, laughing helplessly. Tears ran down her cheeks.
"Well, when you come down we can talk about it." Gunther squinted at his cards. "This would make a great hand for chess."
"Nobody plays chess," Hiro said scornfully. "It's a game for computers."
Gunther took the pot with two pair. He shuffled, Krishna declined the cut, and he began dealing out cards. "So anyway, this crazy Russian lady--"
Out of nowhere, Chang howled. Wild gusts of laughter knocked her back on her heels and bent her forward again. The delight of discovery dancing in her eyes, she pointed a finger straight at Gunther. "You're a robot!" she cried.
"Beg pardon?"
"You're nothing but a robot," she repeated. "You're a machine, an automaton. Look at yourself! Nothing but stimulus-response. You have no free will at all. There's nothing there. You couldn't perform an original act to save your life."
"Oh yeah?" Gunther glanced around, looking for inspiration. A little boy--it might be Pyotr Nahfees, though it was hard to tell from here--was by the edge of the water, feeding scraps of shrimp loaf to the carp. "Suppose I pitched you into the lake? That would be an original act."
Laughing, she shook her head. "Typical primate behavior. A perceived threat is met with a display of mock aggression."
Gunther laughed.
"Then, when that fails, the primate falls back to a display of submission. Appeasal. The monkey demonstrates his harmlessness--you see?"
"Hey, this really isn't funny," Gunther said warningly. "In fact, it's kind of insulting."
"And so back to a display of aggression."
Gunther sighed and threw up both his hands. "How am I supposed to react? According to you, anything I say or do is wrong."
"Submission again. Back and forth, back and forth from aggression to submission and back again." She pumped her arm as if it were a piston. "Just like a little machine--you see? It's all automatic behavior."
"Hey, Kreesh--you're the neurobiowhatever here, right? Put in a good word for me. Get me out of this conversation."
Krishna reddened. He would not meet Gunther's eyes. "Ms. Chang is very highly regarded at the Center, you see. Anything she thinks about thinking is worth thinking about." The woman watched him avidly, eyes glistening, pupils small. "I think maybe what she means, though, is that we're all basically cruising through life. Like we're on autopilot. Not just you specifically, but all of us." He appealed to her directly. "Yes?"
"No, no, no, no." She shook her head. "Him specifically."
"I give up." Gunther put his cards down, and lay back on the granite slab so he could stare up through the roof glass at the waning Earth. When he closed his eyes, he could see Izmailova's hopper, rising. It was a skimpy device, little more than a platform-and-chair atop a cluster of four bottles of waste-gas propellant, and a set of smart legs. He saw it lofting up as the explosion blossomed, seeming briefly to hover high over the crater, like a hawk atop a thermal. Hands by side, the red-suited figure sat, watching with what seemed inhuman calm. In the reflected light she burned as bright as a star. In an appalling way, she was beautiful.
Sally Chang hugged her knees, rocking back and forth. She laughed and laughed.
*
Beth Hamilton was wired for telepresence. She flipped up one lens when Gunther entered her office, but kept on moving her arms and legs. Dreamy little ghost motions that would be picked up and magnified in a factory somewhere over the horizon. "You're late again," she said with no particular emphasis.
Most people would have experienced at least a twinge of reality sickness dealing with two separate surrounds at once. Hamilton was one of the rare few who could split her awareness between two disparate realities without loss of efficiency in either. "I called you in to discuss your future with Generation Five. Specifically, to discuss the possibility of your transfer to another plant."
"You mean Earthside."
"You see?" Hamilton said. "You're not as stupid as you like to make yourself out to be." She flipped the lens down again, stood very still, then lifted a metal-gauntleted hand and ran through a complex series of finger movements. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Tokyo, Berlin, Buenos Aires--do any of these hold magic for you? How about Toronto? The right move now could be a big boost to your career."
"All I want is to stay here, do my job, and draw down my salary," Gunther said carefully. "I'm not looking for a shot at promotion, or a big raise, or a lateral career-track transfer. I'm happy right where I am."
"You've sure got a funny way of showing it." Hamilton powered down her gloves, and slipped her hands free. She scratched her nose. To one side stood her work table, a polished cube of black granite. Her peecee rested there, alongside a spray of copper crystals. At her thought, it put Izmailova's voice onto Gunther's chip.
"It is with deepest regret that I must alert you to the unprofessional behavior of one of your personnel components," it began. Listening to the complaint, Gunther experienced a totally unexpected twinge of distress and, more, of resentment that Izmailova had dared judge him so harshly. He was careful not to let it show.
"Irresponsible, insubordinate, careless, and possessed of a bad attitude." He faked a grin. "She doesn't seem to like me much." Hamilton said nothing. "But this isn't enough to ... " His voice trailed off. "Is it?"
"Normally, Weil, it would be. A demo jock isn't 'just a tech on retainer,' as you so quaintly put it; those government licenses aren't easy to get. And you may not be aware of it, but you have very poor efficiency ratings to begin with. Lots of potential, no follow-through. Frankly, you've been a disappointment. However, lucky for you, this Izmailova dame humiliated Don Sakai, and he's let us know that we're under no particular pressure to accommodate her."
"Izmailova humiliated Sakai?"
Hamilton stared at him. "Weil, you're oblivious, you know that?"
Then he remembered Izmailova's rant on nuclear energy. "Right, okay. I got it now."
"So here's your choice. I can write up a reprimand, and it goes into your permanent file, along with Izmailova's complaint. Or you can take a lateral Earthside, and I'll see to it that these little things aren't logged into the corporate system."
It wasn't much of a choice. But he put a good face on it. "In that case it looks like you're stuck with me."
"For the moment, Weil. For the moment."
He was back on the surface the next two days running. The first day he was once again hauling fuel rods to Chatterjee C. This time he kept to the road, and the reactor was refueled exactly on schedule. The second day he went all the way out to Triesnecker to pick up some old rods that had been in temporary storage for six months while the Kerr-McGee people argued over whether they should be reprocessed or dumped. Not a bad deal for him, because although the sunspot cycle was on the wane, there was a surface advisory in effect and he was drawing hazardous duty pay.