“I’m not sure that’s true. He may have thought he was speaking plainly enough–”
Her fingers formed a mudra that gave vent to a brand of disdain that did not translate into words. “He knows his effects perfectly well,” she said. “He was trying to suggest the idea without making it clear that this was his choice for you, that he wanted you to fall in line with his theories.”
Anger was clear in her voice. She rose, stalked angrily to the bronze of Rosmerta, adjusted its place on the wall by a millimeter or so. Turned, waved an arm.
<Apologies>, flung to the air. “Let’s eat. Silent Davout is the last person I want to talk about right now.”
“I’m sorry I upset you.” Davout was not sorry at alclass="underline" he found this display fascinating. The gestures, the tone of voice, were utterly familiar, ringing like chimes in his heart; but the style, the way Fair Katrin avoided the issue, was different. Dark Katrin never would have fled a subject this way: she would have knit her brows and confronted the problem direct, engaged with it until she’d either reached understanding or catastrophe. Either way, she’d have laughed, and tossed her dark hair, and announced that now she understood.
“It’s peasant cooking,” Katrin the Fair said as she bustled to the kitchen, “which of course is the best kind.”
The main course was a ragoût of veal in a velouté sauce, beans cooked simply in butter and garlic, tossed salad, bread. Davout waited until it was half consumed, and the bottle of wine mostly gone, before he dared to speak again of his sib.
“You mentioned the Silent One and his theories,” he said. “I’m thirty years behind on his downloads, and I haven’t read his latest work–what is he up to? What’s all this theorizing about?”
She sighed, fingers ringing a frustrated rhythm on her glass. Looked out the window for a moment, then conceded. “Has he mentioned the modular theory of the psyche?”
Davout tried to remember. “He said something about modular memory, I seem to recall.”
<Yes> “That’s a part of it. It’s a fairly radical theory that states that people should edit their personality and abilities at will, as circumstances dictate. That one morning, say, if you’re going to work, you upload appropriate memories, and work skills, along with a dose of ambition, of resolution, and some appropriate emotions like satisfaction and eagerness to solve problems, or endure drudgery, as the case may be.”
Davout looked at his plate. “Like cookery, then,” he said. “Like this dish–veal, carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms, parsley.”
Fair Katrin made a mudra that Davout didn’t recognize. <Sorry?> he signed.
“Oh. Apologies. That one means, roughly, ‘har-de-har-har.’ “ Fingers formed <laughter>, then <sarcasm>, then slurred them together. “See?”
<Understood.> He poured more wine into her glass.
She leaned forward across her plate. “Recipes are fine if one wants to be consumed,” she said. “Survival is another matter. The human mind is more than just ingredients to be tossed together. The atomistic view of the psyche is simplistic, dangerous, and wrong. You cannot will a psyche to be whole, no matter how many wholeness modules are uploaded. A psyche is more than the sum of its parts.”
Wine and agitation burnished her cheeks. Conviction blazed from her eyes. “It takes time to integrate new experience, new abilities. The modular theorists claim this will be done by a ‘conductor,’ an artificial intelligence that will be able to judge between alternate personalities and abilities and upload whatever’s needed. But that’s such rubbish, I–” She looked at the knife she was waving, then permitted it to return to the table.
“How far are the Silent One and his cohorts toward realizing this ambition?” Davout said.
<Beg pardon?> She looked at him. “I didn’t make that clear?” she said. “The technology is already here. It’s happening. People are fragmenting their psyches deliberately and trusting to their conductors to make sense of it all. And they’re happy with their choices, because that’s the only emotion they permit themselves to upload from their supply.” She clenched her teeth, glanced angrily out the window at the Vieux Quartier’s sunset-burnished walls. “All traditional psychology is aimed at integration, at wholeness. And now it’s all to be thrown away. . . .” She flung her hand out the window. Davout’s eyes automatically followed an invisible object on its arc from her fingers toward the street.
“And how does this theory work in practice?” Davout asked. “Are the streets filled with psychological wrecks?”
Bitterness twisted her lips. “Psychological imbeciles, more like. Executing their conductors’ orders, docile as well-fed children, happy as clams. They upload passions–anger, grief, loss–as artificial experiences, secondhand from someone else, usually so they can tell their conductor to avoid such emotions in the future. They are not people any more, they’re . . .” Her eyes turned to Davout.
“You saw the Silent One,” she said. “Would you call him a person?”
“I was with him for only a day,” Davout said. “I noticed something of a . . .” <Stand by> he signed, searching for the word.
“Lack of affect?” she interposed. “A demeanor marked by an extreme placidity?”
<Truth> he signed.
“When it was clear I wouldn’t come back to him, he wrote me out of his memory,” Fair Katrin said. “He replaced the memories with facts–he knows he was married to me, he knows we went to such-and-such a place or wrote such-and-such a paper–but there’s nothing else there. No feelings, no real memories good or bad, no understanding, nothing left from almost two centuries together.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “I’d rather he felt anything at all–I’d rather he hated me than feel this apathy!”
Davout reached across the little table and took her hand. “It is his decision,” he said, “and his loss.”
“It is all our loss,” she said. Reflected sunset flavored her tears with the color of roses. “The man we loved is gone. And millions are gone with him–millions of little half-alive souls, programmed for happiness and unconcern.” She tipped the bottle into her glass, received only a sluicing of dregs.
“Let’s have another,” she said.
When he left, some hours later, he embraced her, kissed her, let his lips linger on hers for perhaps an extra half-second. She blinked up at him in wine-muddled surprise, and then he took his leave.
“How did you find my sib?” Red Katrin asked.
“Unhappy,” Davout said. “Confused. Lonely, I think. Living in a little apartment like a cell, with icons and memories.”
<I know> she signed, and turned on him a knowing green-eyed look.
“Are you planning on taking her away from all that? To the stars, perhaps?”
Davout’s surprise was brief. He looked away and murmured, “I didn’t know I was so transparent.
A smile touched her lips. <Apologies> she signed. “I’ve lived with Old Davout for nearly two hundred years. You and he haven’t grown so very far apart in that time. My fair sib deserves happiness, and so do you . . . if you can provide it, so much the better. But I wonder if you are not moving too fast, if you have thought it all out.”
Moving fast, Davout wondered. His life seemed so very slow now, a creeping dance with agony, each move a lifetime.
He glanced out at Chesapeake Bay, saw his second perfect sunset in only a few hours–the same sunset he’d watched from Fair Katrin’s apartment, now radiating its red glories on the other side of the Atlantic. A few water-skaters sped toward home on their silver blades. He sat with Red Katrin on a porch swing, looking down the long green sward to the bayfront, the old wooden pier, and the sparkling water, that profound, deep blue that sang of home to Davout’s soul. Red Katrin wrapped herself against the breeze in a fringed, autumn-colored shawl. Davout sipped coffee from gold-rimmed porcelain, set the cup into its saucer.