Shelter (28 page)

    "Ugh. So your parents have lost a lot of people over there, other family?" She felt stupid for never having asked before. It had never even occurred to her. It should have.

    "Of course. Cousins and things, to both HIV and CV. Nobody I knew very well at all, not even as well as I knew her, but it was hard on my folks, and I think they felt guilty for not being there too. I think that's the only reason they're letting me study AI in college at all, because AI will help the economic recovery over there." He glanced sidelong at her; they both knew he'd be going to college in the fall, but they hadn't really talked about it. Merry kept telling herself not to worry; his first choice was Berkeley, where MacroCorp had a big AI lab, and Raji was certainly more than smart enough to get in, and if he went there, he'd still be close by and she'd be able to see him and talk to him, even if he started dating other people—which he surely would—and even if they didn't sleep together anymore, which they probably wouldn't. She tried very hard to be a grown-up whenever she thought about the subject, and every time, the effort made her feel starved for oxygen. She could get other boyfriends, but she didn't want to. Things will change, she told herself. You'll feel differently in a few years. You'll still be his friend.

    ''I'm sorry," she said. "That you've lost so much family."

    "Thanks. Me too ... so anyway, I wasn't there when my grandmother died, but both of my parents were, and afterwards, they both said it was like being at a birth. It took hours, and they sat with her and held her hands and encouraged her to let go, and they listened to her breathing change and saw her push herself up off the bed, fighting for air, and then she gave one last huge gasp and she was gone. The room was totally filled with peace then, they said. They said it was a good death, the best death they'd seen. My mom said the last big breath was just like the first big breath a baby takes, the one that starts the crying, you know."

    "That's so sad, Raji!"

    "But they didn't think it was. I mean, sure they did, they cried and everything, they missed her, but the death itself wasn't sad: her being gone was, or her being in a place where they couldn't see her anymore. And they were happy because wherever that was, she wasn't in pain anymore, which sounds like a huge cliche but really means something when somebody's just spent months on morphine."

    "Yeah." Merry wondered, in a sudden, dizzying rush, what her father's death had been like. She'd never thought about it before, never wondered if it would have been easier for him if she and her mother had been there to hold his hands. Poor Daddy!

    "But anyway, I think that's the kind of death Harold wants Hortense to have, and he wants her to have it here, where she knows everybody, or used to. This is her home. We're her family, especially because they don't have kids. My dad said—when his mother died, he said it would have been much harder if he hadn't had me, if he hadn't known that the chain was going to go on."

    Merry frowned down at the greasy water in the sink, remembering her mother's question from that morning. It had gotten knocked out of her head by the reporters, by her anger over the fact that her private life wasn't private at all, but now it came back again. If you could have a baby with Raji, wouldn't you want it to have his genes, because you love him? She moved closer to him, nestling into his embrace as his arm slid reassuringly around her shoulders, and pondered the problem. Sure, she'd want her child to look like Raji, to have Raji's lean build and almond eyes and clean jawline. Raji was gorgeous. But it would be more important to have a child with Raji's compassion and cheerfulness and curiosity, and at least some of that could be taught.

    If she and Raji spent the rest of their lives together—again that pang as she recognized that they probably wouldn't, that they'd both find other people, that in five years she wouldn't even care—if somehow they managed to beat the odds and move from being childhood sweethearts to elderly lovers, she would want some legacy left behind when he died; of course she would. But she'd want someone who remembered him. That would be more important than having someone who shared his shoe size and predisposition to gum disease.

    She was aware of the contradiction even as she let him pull her into a long kiss, and then down the hall to his cubicle, leaving the half-done dishes behind. If only memories mattered, if bodies didn't, translation was a wonderful option. And bodies—she thought as she lay on his bed, as she felt her own body insistently responding—certainly mattered, would always matter. That was as far as she got; she'd have to solve the philosophical conundrum some other time, when her mind wasn't being so thoroughly distracted by what was happening to her flesh.

    Eleven

    OF course industrial staffing is important," Raji said. "That's the main application, sure. But your dad also wants AIs to contribute to the arts, to family life, to broader culture."

    "The key word there is contribute," Meredith told him irritably. "Theo, no, don't put salt on your cake!"

    It was the fall of her freshman year at Berkeley, and the three of them were sitting in a coffee shop on Telegraph Avenue. Raji was already in his second year in the AI graduate lab, even though he was only a junior, and Merry had just declared her major in domestic ecology, even though too many campus intellectuals despised the field as a flashy peripheral to interior design. Theo was three, majoring in mayhem. Merry extricated the salt shaker from his chubby toddler's fingers and handed it to Raji. "Here, make sure he doesn't grab this again, okay? Hey, Theo, want to draw? I'll get you some paper and crayons." She'd put them in her pack; she knew she had. Ah, here they were, squashed underneath her Intro to World Aesthetics textbook.

    "Sugar!" Theo's piping voice always sounded like the call of a seabird to her.

    "No, honey, that's salt. You've got enough sugar in that chocolate cake, anyway."

    "He'll be bouncing off the walls after he eats that. Do you think your mother would approve?"

    "I have no idea. I don't plan to tell her. She and Jack won't be picking him up until eleven or something, anyway; he'll be asleep by then. Thanks for helping me watch him, Raji."

    The words stuck slightly in her throat. She was glad Raji was here, but since she'd arrived on campus, he'd never seemed to be able to get together with her unless there was a third party present. They hadn't been lovers since he left for school; they'd agreed that they should see other people. She hadn't seen anyone she particularly liked; at least, not enough to get naked with, not enough to risk ScoopNet announcing the connection to the world. She didn't know if Raji had or not, because he adroitly changed the subject whenever she tried to ask. Goddess knew they talked enough, still: hours of conversations, several times a week, about art and politics and movies and what was happening at the Temple. She'd hoped that when she started living on campus too, they could sleep together again, in the privacy of actual dorm rooms with actual doors on them, but so far Raji was sending out very mixed signals. He was clearly delighted to talk to her, and he seemed genuinely happy whenever he saw her—but he never saw her without someone else along as chaperone, most often her little brother.

    Who was now energetically using his cake frosting as finger paint. "Oh, Theo! You're making a mess!"

    "Picture! "

    "Yes, I know, it's a picture too." Well, it was that much less mayheminducing sugar that would get into his stomach. Raji was right: she shouldn't have let him have the cake in the first place. "Okay. What's it a picture of?"

    "Funnybot. Grampa Preston."

    Raji gave her a quizzical look, and she said, "Daddy likes to talk to him through his favorite bot. You didn't know that? I thought Daddy told you everything." Maybe I should ask Daddy why Raji's acting this way, she thought grimly. No, that's cowardice. You have to ask him directly, Merry. Ask him if he's dating anyone. Ask him if there's any chance, any, that he'll date you again. Tell him you love him.

    "We don't talk about Theo," Raji said. "We talk AIs, Merry. Now look, you have to admit that having an AI around could be useful if you had to watch Theo all the time."

    She took the plunge. "Having you around could be useful if I didn't have to watch Theo. Raji—"

    "Theo! Don't wipe your hands on Merry's pack!"

    Merry, stifling a curse, tried to pull her pack away, and in the process her water glass got knocked over, and Theo got wet and started to howl. By the time they'd gotten him cleaned up and dried off, gotten her pack cleaned off, paid their bill and escaped back onto Telegraph Avenue, Meredith knew that the moment for personal conversation had passed. Raji swung Theo up onto his shoulders, and the three of them wandered among the tables selling jewelry and candles and bumper stickers—EQUALOPPORTUNITY IMMORTALITY: RIGS FOR ALL, and CALL ME A LUDDITE: FRIG RIGS! and Merry's least favorite, PAPA PRESTON FOR PRESIDENT!—while Theo kept up a stream of exclamations about all the pretty colors. Meredith wasn't sure if he was on some kind of trip from the sugar, or was just infinitely less jaded about Telegraph Avenue than she was.

    "In two more months I'll have enough for a down payment," Raji said. He was using his work in the AI lab to save toward his own rig; his parents had insisted that if he wanted one, he had to pay for it.

    "Raji, can we not talk about this? You know my position."

    She'd done the math for him once, given him a worksheet about how much low-income housing that down payment would build, how much food it would purchase, how many textbooks it would buy. He'd answered mildly that in that case, she'd better sell her car, not to mention her parents' mansion. She'd retorted that she needed her car and that her parents' house wasn't hers to sell; he'd given her a maddening smile and said, "Well, I need a rig, and if your parents' castle isn't your business, neither's my wiring. Come on, Merry, I'm doing work that will make life better for people. I deserve good things too." They hadn't spoken for two weeks afterward.

    "Okay," he said now, with a shrug. "What do you want to talk about?" Shit. So they were on Telegraph Avenue: So what? If she didn't get this said now, she never would. She took a deep breath. "Raji, can we go out again? Why do you keep avoiding me? Why—"

    She was stilled by his hand on her shoulder. "Raji, don't let go of Theo's leg! He could fall!" Raji withdrew the hand and clamped it back around her little brother's ankle. "I just—I'd like—I—"

    "Merry," he said. Trapped in the brownian motion of oblivious observers, they stood in front of a display of rainsticks. She couldn't breathe. "Merry, we're a hundred eighty degrees apart on just about any issue you can think of. Our friendship's about argument, and that's fine, but we need to—move on. Otherwise ... Do you understand?"

    No, she didn't. Not really. She remembered when Johann and Fergus had split up, how she'd come across Fergus sobbing in his cubicle and had said, "Maybe you can talk to him. Maybe you can work things out."

    Fergus had shaken his head. "He doesn't want to work things out. When somebody breaks up with you, Merry, it's always a unilateral decision. There's nothing you can do about it except grieve. If you're really lucky, you stay friends, but that doesn't happen very often."

    "Stick!" Theo said. "Stick!"

    The rainstick vendor, a placid young woman with huge pupils, smiled dreamily and handed Theo a small rainstick. "Here you go, baby boy." Theo began turning the rainstick one way and then the other, enchanted by the noise. It would keep him still for as long as they let him hang on to it; she and Raji could stay here all day, if they wanted to. Merry wondered if the vendor was listening to their conversation, but given those pupils, she doubted it.

    Well. She and Raji were friends, anyway. That was certainly true, and it wasn't something she was prepared to risk by whining about his unilateral decision. She swallowed, her tongue ashy, and said, "So are you seeing someone else?"

    "Well," Raji said, looking down at his shoes. "Well, yeah, sort of." Theo, on his shoulders, had begun crooning along to the buzzing of the rainstick; the thing seemed to be hypnotizing him. Merry wished it was having the same effect on her.

    "You are? Who is it? Why didn't you say anything before?"

    "Because I was afraid you'd be upset, Merry! And because I only met her last week!"

    "Oh." Well, that hardly counted. There was still hope, then. "So who is she?"

    "Her name's Zephyr. She's an art major—performance. We got talking about AI stuff in the cafeteria. She's cute. And smart and interesting. We had our third date last night."

    Merry swallowed. "I thought you were in the AI lab last night."

    "I was," he said gently. "With Zephyr."

    "Oh, that sounds like fun." She couldn't seem to keep her lip from curling. She knew she sounded like a jealous shrew; she couldn't seem to help that, either.

    He gave her a rueful look. "It was. It was a lot of fun. Now, Merry, look, if I see more of her—"

    She had to sound happy for him, had to try to sound supportive. "When do I get to meet her?" No, that hadn't worked; it had come out in a bark, as if she were interrogating him under a klieg light. Reveal the names of your co-conspirators!

    "As soon as you want. Let me finish. If I start seeing more of her I may not be hanging out with you so much, you know?"

    "Of course," she said bitterly. "But it's not like you've been hanging out with me anyway, unless someone else is around. So maybe now that I know the score, you'll hang out with me more?"

    Raji coughed, and the vendor said, "Are you going to buy that? I think the little boy wants to take it home."

    "What?" Merry blinked, registered that Theo was still lulling himself into catatonia with the rains stick—he looked nearly as glazed as the vendor did, and must be ready for his nap—and started digging in her pack for money. "Yeah, sure, sorry ... "