There was no point in asking why I couldnt see it today. I was still under close observation and they didnt want to let me out of my cage just yet, not even for a stroll in the garden.
How about a VE hood and access to your data banks? I
asked. Id like to read up on my history.
You only have to ask, she said. Having seen the way shed produced a dining table and a plateful of bad food I knew that she didnt even have to ask. She was IT-linked into a microworld-wide communication system that allowed her to issue commands and initiate semiautomatic responses almost unobtrusively not just by forming the thought, I assumed, but certainly by means of carefully contrived subvocalizations. I didnt have that kind of IT. I couldnt give orders directly to the walls or the window but if I spoke my requests aloud, someone would overhear, and decide whether or not to turn the request into a command.
I only had to ask, and anything within reason would be delivered to mebut I did have to ask, and anything my captors thought unreasonable would not be forthcoming. For the time being, the walls confining me would only produce an exit door for Davida Berenike Columella.
I could be useful, you know, I told her. I was born two hundred years after Adam Zimmerman, from an artificial womb rather than a natural one, but I have a lot more in common with him than you do. By the same token, I have a lot more in common with you than he does. I could be a useful intermediary, if you let me. That might not be why you woke me up, but its a definite plus.
Secretly, of course, I was hoping that it was one of the reasons theyd woken me up but I knew better than to take it for granted.
Thank you for the offer, she said.
For a moment she seemed almost human. Id been brushed off in exactly that casual manner a hundred times before, though never by a nine-year-old. I knew that Id have to try harder.
I know how hell feel, I told her, flatly. You dont. You think hell be grateful. You think youll be waking him up to tell him exactly what he always wanted to hear: that you can finally give him the emortality he craved. But I know how hell really feel. Thats why Ill be able to talk to him man to man. Thats why Ill be the only one who can talk to him man to man.
She didnt bother throwing Christine Caines name into the ring. She was too busy worrying about the possibility that I might be right.
How will he feel? she asked, without even bothering to add a qualification reminding me that my guess could only be a guess. I knew that I had to be succinct as well as confident, provocative as well as plausible.
Betrayed, I said, and left it at that.
I assumed that if she could figure out what I meant, shed probably be able to understand why she might need me. If she couldnt, then she would definitely need me, whether she understood why or not.
Six
Welcome to the Future
Iwas fairly certain that Christine Caine wouldnt want to wake up in a sterile room with a window looking out on a star-filled universe. I suggested to Davida Berenike Columella that she and her sisters might like to let Christine wake up in Excelsiors Edenic garden, bathing in the complex glory of fake sunlight, but they wouldnt hear of it. They wanted her inside.
Presumably they still wanted me inside too, although they were too polite to say so in so many words. They wanted to take their time about exposing their world to the untender gaze of two supercriminals from the legendary past.
Their idea of compromise was to let me choose the scenic tape that the virtual window would display.
If Id had the chance to do some serious research before the sisterhood offered me that choice I might have picked the finest ice palaces on Titan, or the AI metropolis on Ganymede, or perhaps a purple forest on the world that home-system people still called Ararat because that was the first name reported back to them but I knew nothing, as yet, of wonders like that. A little taste of home seemed to be the better bet.
I asked for the oldest pre-holocaust footage they had of Yellowstone. Christine had been a city girl, but she must have used a VE hood as much as or maybe more than her peers. I thought she might look longingly at trees, wildlife, and geysers.
I was wrong, but it didnt matter.
I watched two of Davidas sisters they seemed like sisters, and I hadnt yet figured out the questions I needed to ask about their real nature arranging Christine Caines sleeping body on the chair just as they must have arranged mine. It hadnt occurred to me until then that they must have built the chairs specifically to contain us, fitting them to our exaggerated size. To them, we were giants. Christine was no more than one metre sixty, but if shed been able to stand upright shed have towered over
her handlers to the same extent that Id have towered over her. To me, ignorant as I still was, she seemed to be not so very unlike them, but to them she must have seemed utterly alien.
I had no idea exactly how mad shed be, but that was because I couldnt get the idea of that wretched VE tape out of my head. If Id thought about it sensibly, Id have realized that nobody could commit thirteen murders over a period of years without being able to put up an exceedingly good impression of total normality in between. The walls of her world hadnt been quite as full of eyes and ears as the walls of mine, and shed moved around a great deal, but she couldnt have done what she had done without an exceptional talent for seeming utterly harmless.