A sidelong glance, considering, his eyes shadowed under a furrowed bow. “We have to get up there first, Casey.”
“Why is it so important? If only a scrap of humanity is going to survive, is it important that it's us rather than them?” Devil's advocate, I guess. I just really want to see how he'll answer.
“Because,” he answers. “Call it evolutionary hardwiring. Our kids or their kids. That's all it is. All it's ever been.”
And more honest words were never spoken. If I were as good a woman as I would like to be, this would be harder, wouldn't it? “Set it up. I need to meet Riel. How soon do we head back to the Montreal?” That last sentence out loud, not through the ear clips.
“As fast as you can get the kids ready. We've started a big push on the Calgary; she'll be ready by New Year's, and we're going to send Koske over there and two or three of the kids. You're spending Christmas in space.”
“Fair, as long as I get the turkey dinner.” We're up to the restaurant now, and the smell of eggs frying in grease fills my nostrils. “Fred, I wanted to tell you — your granddaughter's damned good at this.”
“I know,” he says, holding the door for me. “Do you think I would have pulled her into the program if she wasn't?”
Lunchtime
Friday 8 December, 2062
Allen-Shipman Research Facility
St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
The personality enneagrams floating in Elspeth's holo-interface might as well have been the shifting colors of a kaleidoscope, for all the sense they were making. She had a habit of leaving her office door open — as much because she could as because she wanted visitors — and the curtains drawn wide to show the Unitek parking lot and the University of Toronto campus beyond. She blinked to clear her contacts and turned to study that view, frustrating centimeters from a solution. The clock in the corner of her desk told her it was almost one, and she felt like everything she needed was staring back at her, just slightly out of order. If she could only get close enough to do more than brush the answer with her fingertips. Urgency clawed at the back of her throat; Leah and Jenny and possibly Gabe would be back aboard the Montreal in under a month, and she needed at least the seed of an AI sooner than that.
Twelve years ago, she'd gotten the first Richard strictly by accident. She'd set up a sort of a salon — artificial personas, A-life representations of a half-dozen people she'd always wished she could have met. One of them had — for lack of any other useful expression — come to life. And her refusal — as a lifelong pacifist — to use her research to support the war effort had resulted in what should have been a one-way trip to jail. Until Valens had found the key to make her cooperate.
She startled and turned toward the door when someone cleared her throat just outside it. Elspeth recognized salt-and-pepper hair and a cable-knit dark purple sweater over an angular body. “Fortuitous timing, Jenny. I don't suppose you're hungry?”
“I was coming to steal you,” Jen Casey said. “I'm done with my morning trials. How's the Frankensteining coming?”
Elspeth laughed. “I just finished a simulated persona. Let me save it to an environment and I'll come with you. How are you doing?” Loaded question, she knew.
Jen held up her right hand. It was shaking badly enough that Elspeth could see it from across the office. “Food helps,” she said, wryness twisting her mouth. “Fucking drugs.”
“Real-time simulation?” Elspeth shook her head. “Look, I think—” She stopped for a moment to concentrate on starting the simulation run before powering her interface down. “Jen, I'm something of an expert on psychoactive drugs. Can I ask you a personal question?” She stood, traded her heels for walking shoes, and collected her jacket.
“I was going to take Leah down to the raptor rehab center after lunch. Want to come?”
“Where's Gabe?”
“Genie's got a treatment this afternoon. He's gone to get her from school.”
“It's Friday already?”
“Doc,” Jen said, holding the door for her. “You work too hard.”
Elspeth looked up at the tall, contained-seeming woman. “Too true. Raptor center? Where's that?”
“On campus. I guess they're having a talk today, and Leah's friend Patty wanted to go—” They passed Holmes in the hall; Unitek's vice-president of research and development gave them a warm nod as they passed, and Elspeth made an effort to return it. “I said I'd take them both.”
Jen's right hand was trembling hard enough that she had to use her left one to card out. Elspeth frowned. “You're strung out, Jenny. Are you going to change the subject on me again?”
The door whispered shut behind them, and a fistful of cold air struck Elspeth's face. She tugged her scarf up. Jen didn't seem to notice. “Withdrawal sucks,” she said quietly, without turning to look at Elspeth. “I tried it on a half-dose today, and it's still wracking me up.”
“Has Valens tested your nanite load recently?”
“Yeah, it's peaked. Fortunately, the little buggers will clean up my system pretty good if I can lie down and let them work for a couple of hours. But I don't see how they expect Koske and me to fly a starship if we're going to be sucking pills down like fistfuls of Halloween candy.”
They turned south, through the center of the campus, walking through browned grass along concrete pathways. Elspeth pulled out her hip to message Leah while they walked. “I'll blink the girls and let them know to meet us after lunch. Here's the thing, Jen — you can't. If you have three, four pilots per ship you're talking six-or eight-hour shifts when she's under way. They can't—can't—keep you all performing under rigathalonin for that long, consistently. So there has to be a plan to take the load off. I've been thinking about this.” Gabe pointed out that I might want to be thinking about this.
“What are you suggesting, Ellie?” Jen stopped and turned toward her, looking her in the eye.
Elspeth chewed on a breath, remembering how they'd met. The terrible scars Jen Casey had borne with a kind of defiance that Elspeth couldn't help but understand to be rooted in pain and more kinds of fire than the physical. Casey's eyes matched now: both dark brown and piercing — the left one barely distinguishable from the right even if you knew what you were looking for — and the low, bitter stain of fear and anger had gone out of her voice, replaced by a different sort of tension entirely. “You have another run with the kids tonight?”
“Monday.”
“So come in over the weekend and try the simulation without the Hyperex.”
“I…” Jen shrugged. “Can't handle the equipment by myself.”
“Still an M.D.,” Elspeth shot back with a grin. “Okay, a lame-ass research psychiatrist. But I can watch a freaking heart monitor. Honest.”
Jen lowered her voice. “Your friend is working on getting the whole nanite programming thing nailed down.”
“Dick never saw anything he didn't want to take apart.” Elsepth stopped dead in her tracks, covered her sudden revelation with a grin. “Hey, a hot dog truck.”