“Through the ship’s sensors, I monitor the sexual function of over nine thousand people. Patterns emerge.”
“You once described to me that privacy thing in your algorithm. If I asked you how often Harry Purcell had had sex with Tania Seven, you wouldn’t be able to tell me.”
“I could if it was necessary for your welfare. These things about Evelyn and John, it hurts me to say them, in the only way that I can feel pain. But this is a context you established. And that context, along with my estimation of your response, determines what I am allowed to say to you.”
“Give me some more of the ‘yes’ part.”
“The one who would benefit most from the marriage would be Sam. At twenty-four, he’s under a lot of personal and social pressure to join a line. The other two women he’s involved with are only sexual partners.”
“That’s another thing I needed to know?”
“You’ve met them both. Did you think he played chess with them?”
“At the pool, I remember, those two. With the breasts.”
“The first time he had sex with you, before he could get up the nerve to ask, you did play chess. You played fairy chess and he spotted you a barrel queen.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“I never forget anything. That’s one advantage you have over me.”
“You don’t think he’s really interested in either of them?”
“You are the one he asked to marry. He does love you. But you have to be clearheaded about it. He’s certainly aware that your line allows casual sex with people outside the line. It’s an important factor.”
O’Hara looked at her twin for a long moment. “Now there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
“It’s not something you need to know.”
“If it’s about Sam I need to know it.”
The image picked at nonexistent threads. “When I was hooked up to you during our initial orientation, we talked in some detail about your experiences with Charlie Devon, on Devon’s World. When I asked about one particular sex act, your fear response was instant and strong: respiration and pulse increased, you sweated profusely. Your adrenal medulla squirted norepinephrine. Your anus clamped shut like a trap.”
“The ropes.”
“That’s right.”
“Sam… ties up those women?”
“One of them, Lilac. Sometimes she ties him up.”
“Sam?”
“It’s a common enough practice. More common here than in New New.”
“Sam?”
“You were very young and afraid of Charlie’s hugeness and physical strength. He could have ripped your head off with one hand. One reason you fell for him was that he was so mysterious and scary. With Sam, the ropes would be different. But I don’t think he would ever ask you. He would rather continue doing it with Lilac.”
“Maybe I’ll ask him. Shock him out of his shorts.”
“That’s the spirit. He would never harm you.” The image crossed and uncrossed its legs, actually looking nervous. “Marianne. Be realistic. So far in this life you’ve fallen in love with two giant foreigners, two alcoholic intellectuals, and an Irish hunchbacked philosopher. So Sam is an introverted Jewish polymath who sometimes likes to combine restraints with oral sex. He’s probably the most normal person you’ll ever be interested in.”
5. ONE PART HARMONY
The harp was easy to play, though of course it would take years to be able to play it well. Sam had put a daub of color at the top of each string, linking major triads, so O’Hara was able to strum simple melodies after only a few minutes’ experimentation. There were knobs on the base that gave the instrument an electronic dimension, so you could add vibrato and echo effects, but O’Hara liked it better plain, unplugged. It was just the right size for her to set the base in her lap and rest her chin on top of the vertical arm, so the chords sang inside her head, amplified by bone conduction.
She was sitting on the bed she shared with Daniel, playing a blues progression over and over, eyes closed, memorizing and didn’t hear the quiet door slide open.
“Taking up the harp?” Daniel said.
She started; almost dropped it. “Scared me!”
“Sounds pretty.”
“Yeah.” She strummed across the strings. “Sam made it for me.”
“Sam?”
“Wasserman. The historian. Remember? We were lovers, back in the New York rescue thing.”
He nodded silently and stepped over to the sink for a glass. Looking at her in the mirror: “Lovers again, then?”
“No.” She watched his face give away nothing. “It’s more serious than that.”
Daniel poured two centimeters of boo into the glass and diluted it with an equal amount of water. “Go on.”
“Why don’t you guess.”
“No games, Marianne. It’s been a bad day.” He took a sip and leaned against the wall. “Eliot had a real hair up his ass about TE&S allocations. I’m gonna get TE&S’ed out of existence.”
“Sam wants to marry me. Us.”
“Join the line.”
“Of course.”
Dan put the drink down and sat on the bed, his back to O’Hara. “Jesus. Everything happens at once, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sorry about the timing. Could I have some of that?”
Without speaking, he prepared her an identical drink and brought it around the bed and sat next to her, not touching. “You love him?”
“If you want a simple answer, yes.”
“But you haven’t been…”
“No; he’s funny that way. Shy. And you know I wouldn’t have kept anything like that secret from you.”
“I know. I’m just… it’s sudden.”
“It was sudden for me, too. Let’s both just think on it for a while.” She drank half the drink in a gulp and coughed. “So what’s the TE&S problem?”
“Have you talked to John and Ev about him?”
“Not yet. Ev’s not off till 1800; John’s probably napping. Meeting for dinner anyhow, remember?”
“I remember.” He looked at the wall for a long moment. “Eliot’s working from an unassailable position, of course. I need less TE&S than anybody in the Cabinet. I need less than half the people in this can need.” TE&S was the three-dimensional budget unit “Time, Energy, and Supplies,” time meaning manpower.
“You need a certain amount just to keep things going.”
“That’s been my argument. Keep a skeleton staff in case we do come back on line with New New. Of course I’d never say ‘in case’ in front of Eliot or Tania; it’s always when.
“So Eliot in his wisdom has said that I don’t need any staff at all. When we do hear from New New we’ll automatically acknowledge the signal, and then it’ll be at least a week before we can have any kind of back-and-forth conversation. Plenty of time for me to recall my staff from wherever they’ve been ‘temporarily reassigned.’ It’s logical, at least from Eliot’s point of view.”
“You don’t think those assignments would be temporary.”
“Exactly—or even worse, they’d be selectively temporary. Suppose it’s a couple of years? The only people I’d get back would be people who hadn’t been able to advance in their new positions. All my most talented would be better off in their new jobs, reluctant to come back and start over.”
He was growing animated, reliving the argument he’d had with Eliot. “And goddamnit, it’s not as if we sit around on our hands all day! We have to have strategies for all kinds of scenarios! What if New New comes back on just to slap us with another cybervirus? All the incoming data have to be isolated, analyzed, filtered. What if they come on for only a week or a month or a day? There’s a hierarchy of data we have to ask for, and that hierarchy changes every hour!”