“Excuse me?”
“The channel. We’re on Police One right now. The knob is here.” She jabbed a gauntleted finger at his forearm.
“Ah, I see.” Once they’d completed the switch and walked a few paces away he added, “That wasn’t very grown-up of you.”
“Well, I never said I was grown up, did I?”
“Tamra seems to believe it.”
Wood and marble chips crunched beneath their feet, trapped between boot soles and deck plates drawn together by the spacesuits’ safety grapples. They were strolling along a darkened… avenue, he supposed, their head- and hand-lights illuminating jagged stubs of building on one side and, on the other, the shattered remains of a canal, ice crystals glittering along what remained of its sides and bottom. Above, a pair of evidence technicians drifted by, their own lamps setting aglow the fragments of column and slab that spun slowly through the hanging dust.
“Tamra is benevolent,” Vivian said, “and inclined to see strengths. She’s very dear to me—I remember that much— but I’m not sure I’m quite the person she used to know.”
“Er, I’m sure they’ll find your full pattern eventually.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed, “but I’ve lived that life already—her life, the older me. I remember a lot about her. If they did find and reinstantiate that pattern, I’d feel very close—very, um, empathetic—but whether I’d want to be her, to be recon-verged with her, I’m not so sure. Nobody has really asked me that.”
“Oh. I see.”
Vivian’s tone became sharp. “Do you? I don’t see how. People act like this is some kind of unfortunate setback for me. They act like they understand how hard it is for me right now, which they couldn’t possibly.”
“Hmm, well.” Bruno wished he could pinch his chin. “We all have our problems, I fear. I don’t suppose anyone understands the ones that other people have, but it shouldn’t stop them from trying. They know what a problem feels like, anyway. Your police do seem to understand a bit, to be making allowances for you. Even I, an outsider, can see how highly they think of you.”
“Or of her,” she said, making a face. When they’d crunched along a few paces more, she turned and asked him, “So what’s your problem? You’re rich; you own your own planet far, far away; and you once saved the entire Queendom from calamity. What makes you think you know the first thing about people’s troubles?”
“Brat,” he said to her, not unkindly. “If you were an adult, you wouldn’t ask a question like that. I get lonely sometimes. Often. It’s my wealth and my fame, far more than distance, that isolate me. People always seem to expect something of me, some wisdom or eloquence or leadership I’ve never known how to provide. I used to study history, looking for an archetypal figure to emulate when these occasions arose. A tycoon? A philosopher? A military conqueror? I even tried to dress the part, to look historical. But one day, I finally realized how absurd that was. There wasn’t anyone to emulate; civilization had changed too much, and human beings along with it. Changed because of me, I mean, because of things that I’d done. There were no other Declarant-Philander shatterers of worlds, certainly no immortal ones. No other men like me, ever. So really, I’m the archetype for future histories to deconstruct, and I fear that’s a lot of responsibility for one man to bear. Really, a lot.”
They’d stopped walking, and behind the dome of her helmet Vivian pursed her lips and considered his words for several long seconds. “You’re a megalomaniac,” she said finally.
He burst out laughing. “Ho! From the mouths of babes. Indeed, I do think highly of myself. But others do, as well, and not in quite the right way. They admire—too well!—a person who isn’t really me.”
Vivian looked thoughtful. “So you don’t know how to be yourself, without letting other people down. That’s your problem. You feel like everyone’s looking, like they know more than you do about how you should act or what you should do. That’s our problem, both of us.”
He nodded. “All right, that seems a fair comparison.”
The smile she offered him then was self-conscious and self-deprecating, though not actually apologetic. “I suppose a lot of people feel that way. There’s probably nothing so special or unique about it. We all share the same neural architecture, right? Approximately? How embarrassing, to think my traumas and tragedies could be so banal.”
“Shocking indeed,” Bruno agreed, deciding that this girl was every bit as formidable as Tamra and the police seemed to think. “You’re beginning to understand. That’s what growing up means: a good understanding of one’s own banality. But of course, we’re all different and special, too.”
“Oh, joy.” She laughed.
He laughed with her. “Does that sound trite, Vivian? I don’t mean it that way. Whatever unique gifts we possess— things that can’t be had from any other source—those are things we should cultivate. Even if they’re absurd, even if they’re downright counterproductive, they’re the only true signs that we, our own unique selves, were ever here at all. I suppose that’s why crimes are committed; sometimes, that’s the only calling card a person knows how to leave.”
Vivian flung her arms out and tipped her head back inside its clear bubble. “Ah! Right! We should simply let people blow up their enemies and throw Ring Collapsiters into the sun. Thank you, Declarant. To think I’ve been wasting all this effort enforcing laws. Why, it’s all so clear to me now!”
“Ah, you’re a rotten child. I suppose we’re all rotten children, though. In a thousand years, you’ll look back on this conversation and laugh. A young de Towaji, presuming to lecture. On manners, no less!”
Her giggle was pleasant. “You’re funny. Did you know that?”
“Funny? Hrumph,” he replied, feeling a gate slam down suddenly on his good cheer. Tamra used to think he was funny, too, used to laugh along with his observations and suggestions and spontaneous displays of good cheer. What had happened to those days? Why had he found them unsustainable? So many of his archetypes were curmudgeons, or at least he imagined them that way; but was there anything as ridiculous as a curmudgeonly child‘? What a thing to look back on, a thousand years hence. A young de Towaji, presuming to curmudge.
Vivian eyed him and frowned, looking ready to scold. He deserved a scolding for letting his mood collapse like that, for being so damnably self-conscious that a simple compliment should shut him up. But what she said was, “I wonder if she did this, if she had a conversation like this one at this exact point in her life. I don’t see how she could have. It’s all very illuminating, very opinion shaping, and unfortunately that means I really am diverging, becoming a noticeably different person than her. Bruno, what if they do find her? What am I going to do then?”
For all its suppleness, the spacesuit didn’t seem to permit much of a shrug. Not one that she’d see, anyway. “I think you can decide that when it happens. Why worry now? There’s no need to be hasty, not when we’re going to live forever. Perhaps you could be her daughter, or her younger sister, and you could live together in Boston or Calcutta or Cairo, one of the Children’s Cities.”
“I already have a mother. Where do you think I live?”