Shelter (46 page)

    Much later, after they had given Patty a properly solemn funeral, burying her in the flowerpot and then putting it outside, on the sweetly fragrant earth between the lavender bush and the lilac trees, Meredith sat inside the house, shivering, trying to think. Nicholas was building another tower, piling block on block as calmly as if he hadn't arisen in the middle of the night to slaughter a living creature.

    She had to find out what was going on. And she had to keep anyone else from finding out, or even from knowing what questions she was asking. She had to bear this alone, because Nicholas would be in too much danger if anyone else knew. They'd give him CV again; they'd brainwipe him. She had to find some other way to fix him. Once he was fixed, she could talk about it. Once he was fIxed, she could curl up sobbing in Kevin's arms, in her mother's lap. They'd tell her she'd been a good mother. They'd tell her she hadn't been wrong to adopt Nicholas, wrong to love Nicholas. They'd tell her they loved her. But for now, no one could know.

    Think, Merry. Think. She couldn't think here, where Patty had been murdered. She had to get out of the house. "Hey, Nicky, would you like to go to the library?" She could do research at the library.

    He looked up. "The library, Mommy? To read books?"

    "Yes, you can read books, Nicky. And you can play with bots." There were educational bots there, bots who freed parents to browse the shelves by reading to children, or praising children who read to them.

    Nicholas smiled. It was a shameless bribe, the first time she'd ever suggested that he play with bots, instead of trying to get him more interested in other kinds of toys. "Okay, Mommy! Let's go!"

    Please, Goddess, she thought. Don't let him try to dissect any of the bots at the library.

    * * *

    Three hours later, she was no closer to an answer than she'd been before. She'd done a frantic Web search while Nicholas, behind her, read Bitsy Byte's Virtual Adventure to an effusively complimentary bot with a chirpy voicechip—"Very good, Nicholas! What a good reader you are!"—and then had Bitsy Byte's Cyber-Birthday read to him, and then played with blocks. After that, amazingly, he had curled up on a large pillow in the children's corner and gone to sleep, while the bot sang lullabies to him. He was being a model child. Should she get him his own bot? Would having a bot at home help? But she hated them; her skin crawled watching him with this one, and she had to live at her house too.

    Which do you hate more, Meredith? Bots, or dissected mice?

    She stared despairingly at the monitor in front of her. Everything she had read indicated that homicidal tendencies in children were most commonly the result of brain damage combined with severe childhood abuse. Nicholas's brain damage was the same kind she had, and she wasn't killing mice. And Nicholas hadn't been abused. His infancy had been unusual, certainly, but he had received a great deal of focused, nurturing attention from the people in the hospital, even if they had worn isosuits while they gave it to him. She herself was, doubtless, not perfect as a parent, but she had never even spanked Nicholas, much less burned him with cigarettes or thrown him against walls or committed any of the other atrocities so frequently suffered by children who grew up to be killers. When he tried to hurt himself, she stopped him. Could he have given himself brain damage somehow when she wasn't watching? Had he been bashing his head into things when she wasn't awake, wasn't looking? But there would have been scars, bruises, and there hadn't been.

    She sat shivering in front of the monitor. Nightmares, persecution by monsters, bedwetting, and now the torture and murder of small animals. Kids like that turned into adults who made clothing from human skin, even in the twenty-first century, even in the era of isosuits and AIs. Dear Goddess, what was she going to do? Any of the child behaviorists she might consult knew the signs as well as she did. And if anyone found out, Nicholas would be brainwiped, and everything would be gone: the good as well as the bad, the sweet boychild as well as the damaged creature who killed mice. How could you stand the idea of losing your child?

    Breathe, she thought, and forced herself to be calm. Brainwiping was already coming under serious legal scrutiny from people like Holly O'Riley. It would be outlawed soon, surely, surely, and in the meantime no one else would know about Nicholas. No one else would know, if she could help it, not even Kevin; especially not Kevin, who'd never wanted Nicholas to begin with. Once brainwiping was outlawed, she'd get help for Nicholas. Then, even if he was taken away from her, at least his identity wouldn't be annihilated.

    "Ma'am?" Meredith jumped, and looked up to find a smiling librarian next to her. "I just wanted to let you know we're closing in a few minutes. "

    "Thank you," Meredith said, annoyed. Couldn't they just have made an announcement? Didn't the place have a PA system?

    The librarian lingered next to her chair, looking oddly at Meredith. Oh, Goddess. Had Nicholas done something? Merry turned, but he was still blissfully asleep on his pillow. What did this woman want? ''I'll be leaving in just a minute," Merry said, and the librarian cleared her throat.

    "You're, um, aren't you Meredith—"

    "Yes," Meredith said. "I am. I'm leaving now. I don't mean to be rude, but—"

    ''I'm sorry." The librarian turned red. ''I'm sorry, I know you value your privacy; I shouldn't have said anything. I just wasn't sure."

    "That's all right," Meredith said, with her best frosty smile. ScoopNet had, once again, been leaving her alone since the five minutes' wonder of Nicholas' adoption; she wondered why the librarian was interested enough to have recognized her. The woman must be someone who'd seen Meredith corning out of iso, as Kevin had, or someone who'd watched Raji die.

    Meredith didn't want to know. She had her own problems. "Have a nice evening," she said, as dismissively as she could.

    The librarian got the message and scuttled away; Meredith got up to collect Nicky and go home. The librarian had been wearing a scarf Was it covering rig jacks? If the woman was rigged, had she been watching Merry while she was on the computer? Had she seen anything, noticed what Merry was reading on the screen, even gotten a visual image? People with rigs could have their recorded memories subpoenaed; it had already happened in a few murder cases. If anything came out about Nicholas—

    What about the bot Nicholas had been playing with? Was it weblinked? Would Preston know they'd been here? But she had GPS cells, so if he cared to check, he could track her anywhere. What was she going to tell him about why they'd gone to the library? Well, because Nicholas liked it. That was all he needed to know.

    She knelt down next to Nicholas's pillow—the bot was nowhere in sight, praise be—and shook him awake. "Nicky? Time to go home now, sweetheart. Time to go home for dinner and see Daddy."

    "Okay," he said, his voice fuzzy from sleep. "But I can't tell Daddy our secret."

    Meredith tensed. Had the librarian heard that? No, she couldn't have; she was at the other end of the room, and everyone else had left already. Think. Think. Kevin's birthday was coming up: if anyone asked, Meredith would say the secret was about his birthday present. "That's right, Nicholas. The secret's just for us."

    * * *

    "He really liked that bot at the library," Kevin said after dinner. Nicholas was in bed, once again sound asleep, for a wonder. "He told me all about it."

    "I know. I feel guilty for not getting him one, but—"

    "But you hate them." He stroked her hair. "Well, it cheered him up about the mouse, anyway. It was a good idea, taking him to the library after that. Oh, Merry, don't cry, I know it's sad, but she must have been sick. "

    "I know." She wiped her nose, lies sticking in her throat like fishhooks. "I know. It was awful finding her, that's all. I just don't understand how she got out, and finding her dead like that ... "

    "Do you want to get him another one?"

    "Not right away. Give him some time to mourn Patty."

    "Okay. But listen, there's something else we need to talk about. I know you aren't going to like this, but it really is past time for him to be in school."

    "I know." She closed her eyes. It was inevitable; it was also the worst possible time. "That's what Mom keeps saying too. I just–I'd rather keep homeschooling him."

    "Honey, if we had other kids, it would be different, but he's awfully–well, isolated here. You know? And I thought that was the last thing you wanted for him."

    "You're right," she said dully. "I'm just being selfish."

    "If he goes to school, you'll get more of your own life back. You can work on your own projects again."

    Meredith grimaced. "Do you have a particular school in mind?"

    "Well, yeah." Kevin cleared his throat. "Here's the part you really won't like. I've been helping design an AI-enhanced preschool at work. It's just at the bottom of the hill here, and they're taking their first class in a few weeks. All the beta-testing's been fabulous, and by all accounts they have a great teacher. It will be a small group of kids, to start. Five kids, one teacher, the AI. I really think we should think about sending Nicholas there."

    "An AI? Kevin!"

    "And a teacher, and other kids. It's nearby. He'll get a lot of individual attention. "

    That's the last thing I want him to get. Especially from an AI. "I don't believe this! When did you turn soulfreak on me?"

    "Merry, I haven't turned soulfreak! It's just a machine. It's just a teaching tool. Just think about it, okay? Wouldn't it be fun for you to have more free time?" He put a hand on her lips. "Don't say anything. Don't answer yet. Just think about it, all right?"

    She thought about it after Kevin went to bed. Nicholas had to go to school; all right, but not that one. And she needed a hobby? Fine. She'd join the local chapter of CALM, Citizens for the Abolishment of Lobotomy Misuse, the group protesting brainwiping. Celebrities needed causes. Hers would be civil rights for criminals and the mentally ill.

    Eiqhteen

    CALM was delighted to hear from her, as Meredith had known they would be. She told them that she had been touched by the plight of the baggies, the brainwiped homeless—true enough, since whenever she saw one now, she had a vivid image of Nicholas's possible future—and that as a CV survivor and the mother of a CV survivor, she couldn't sanction any supposedly therapeutic use of the virus. These two lines of attack were the accepted ones; she didn't have to invent any of it, and it wasn't even that big a lie.

    She told them she'd start volunteering for them when her son started school. Kevin had made her promise that if she couldn't find another place she liked within three weeks, she'd enroll Nicholas at KinderkAIr. She'd thought that would give her plenty of time, but it turned out not to be that easy. The teachers at the Montessori school fawned over her too much, because she was Preston Walford's daughter; the day-care program at UCSF had too long a waiting list, and anyway, Nicholas was already intellectually far ahead of most of the children Meredith saw there. She told Matt and Constance that she didn't want to enroll Nicholas in the Temple School because he already knew most of those children, and the goal was to have him meet new people. The real reason was that there were too many animals at Temple. She couldn't trust Nicholas there, not until they got this thing straightened out.

    Matt, at least, didn't buy it. "Merry, what's wrong? You're–closed down. As if you're grieving. You're trying to shut people out again. This isn't—"

    "Nothing's wrong," she said, trying to smile and sound cheerful. "Everything's fine, Matt."

    "If Nicholas is having problems—"

    "Nicholas is just fine, but the goal's to expand his social horizon. I've told you that. I have to go now, Matt. I have an appointment to visit another school." She didn't—she was at the end of her list—but she couldn't stand the way Matt was looking at her.

    "I think we should just go ahead with KinderkAIr," Kevin said one night before bed, two days before her deadline. He sat on the bed; she sat at the vanity brushing her hair. "We can always pull him out again if he doesn't like it, Merry, or if we don't. It's close, and we've got an in. No waiting list."

    He knew as well as she did that Nicholas could have skipped over the waiting list at any school in the city, had Merry wanted him to. She'd told Kevin she didn't want to use her connections that way. "No. I'm not sending my son to a school run by an AI." The AI was MacroCorp property, which made it more likely that Preston would be watching too. Especially since he'd helped design the school.

    "It's not run by an AI. There's a very competent human teacher."

    "Forget it," Meredith said. "We're not living in Africa or Mexico, and as long as I have the luxury of being in the United States, I don't see why I should hand my child over to a machine."

    "If you were in Africa or Mexico, you'd be handing your child over to a person, at least legally. Here it is just a machine. No one thinks otherwise. Come on, Merry, there are probably PCs there too, and they don't bother you."

    "They don't presume to express opinions about child rearing," Meredith said, running the brush through her hair with unnecessary force. "I'm not sending him there. It's too much like where we found him."

    "It's not a bit like where we found him! Merry, I helped design this place, okay? It's bright and cheery and airy and has plenty of access to the outside. There aren't any bots. There's a great teacher; the AI's mainly for safety stuff, because the teacher can't be looking everywhere every minute."

    A Panopticon. Meredith, her stomach knotting, put the hairbrush down and closed her eyes. "What about the security issues?"

    Kevin shrugged. "Nicholas has GPS cells, right? He's as safe as we are."

    "That's not what I meant. The other kids will know who he is, the teacher will, the parents, and someone could talk to ScoopNet or sneak a spybot in or—or ScoopNet could spy through the web-link somehow."

    Kevin stood and began pacing, always a bad sign. "Meredith, what's wrong with you? They can't sneak a spybot in that easily, not into a place with a security-equipped AI. That's the whole point. The AI won't permit Web intrusion, either. Come on, you know how nervous people are about Netpervs! They're not leaving this system open to hackers, believe me. There's a dedicated line to MacroCorp so the AI can send daily backup files; that's it." Preston, Meredith thought, dread pooling in her stomach. "And if somebody there talks, somebody talks. So what? People could talk to ScoopNet at any school. So ScoopNet reports that Nicholas likes red crayons better than green ones and eats Oreos at snack time instead of Fig Newtons. Who cares? If he stays here alone with you all the time he's going to turn into some kind of freak. We adopted him so that wouldn't happen, remember? And he's already had enough problems, poor kid!"

    She couldn't tell him the truth. She couldn't tell him that Nicholas was already a freak. He'd say it was all her fault. He'd say they never should have brought Nicholas home in the first place. He'd say they should have kept Nicholas on the medication. She bent her head and said, "I have another two days. Just let me look around at a few more places."

    "You've done that," he said. "You haven't found another place. And there's something else, Merry." He stopped pacing and stood looking down at her; she felt herself tense. "Macro Corp has a lot invested in this. If people know you've been looking at preschools and you don't send Nicholas to this one, they're going to want to know why. It's an, ah, PR issue. Remember those?"

    Checkmate. She knew at once that she had been defeated. Kevin had been working on this school for months. He'd already decided, without her, that it was where they were sending Nicholas, just as she had decided, without Kevin, four years ago, that Nicholas would be their son. She wasn't going to win this one, and she knew it, just as Kevin had known he wouldn't win on the adoption issue.

    Feeling ill, she looked away from him and said, "What was the rest of it for, then? Why did you even let me look at other places?"

    "Because, believe it or not, I want you to be happy." His voice was very sad. "Now look. I want to go check out KinderkAIr with you on Monday, the two of us together, okay? It's not formally open yet, but there are some kids there, anyway—they're not paying yet—so prospective parents can see how everything works, how the teacher and the AI get along with the kids. "

    She took a deep breath. Even if she saved Nicholas, could she save her marriage? Too much to think about. Too much loss. "Okay," she said. "Okay." Fear and failure burned her throat, stung her eyes.

    Kevin sighed. "Oh, Merry, please don't cry! That's all you do these days. You keep telling me nothing's wrong, and the whole time you act like you're having a nervous breakdown."

    "I don't know what's wrong," she said, trying to sound normal. She couldn't deny her weepiness; it was too obvious. If he had any idea how much crying she did when he wasn't home, he'd have her brainwiped on the spot. "Hormones, maybe. Although we know I can't be pregnant."

    "Merry," Kevin said, his voice gentling. "Love, you're still grieving that, aren't you? Look, you need to spend more time with adults. You've been cooped up with Nicholas too much, and it isn't good for either of you."

    "If you say so."

    "And I think you should talk to somebody. Maybe take some meds for a while. You're depressed, that's all. It's common enough."

    She swallowed, feeling the net of lies tighten around her. If she went to talk to someone, she'd have to lie again. She'd have lied to someone else. She didn't know what to do. Could she tell Kevin the truth? She wanted to, but she couldn't. She couldn't. He'd never really wanted Nicholas in the first place, and even if he agreed with her that they had to keep it quiet, she'd only be involving him. It was her burden. For Nicholas's sake if nothing else, she couldn't ask anyone else to bear it. Not even Kevin.

    "Okay," she heard herself saying. ''I'll strike a deal with you. You're right: I know I'm depressed. But let me try my own ways of getting out of it for a while, okay? And if I don't get better, then I'll go to a doctor."

    "Your own ways? Like what?"

    "Exercise," she said. "Temple. More time on my own projects, like this CALM thing, away from Nicholas." Her biggest project would be trying to help Nicholas, but Kevin didn't have to know that. "If I'm not better in a few months, I'll see whomever you say. All right?"

    "All right," he said, and brushed her hair away from her face with his hand. The tenderness of the gesture made her eyes fill with tears. How long had it been since he'd done that? And if he knew how glibly she was lying to him, he'd never do it again. Cautiously, she let the old bubble of security, the Meredith-and-Kevin bubble, surround her again. Such safety. How she yearned for a safe world!