Shelter (64 page)

    Like the Velveteen Rabbit was real. But that was just a story, and Fred was just a machine. And Preston was just a program with a set of memories. And Roberta was just a bag of biological fluids controlled by electrical impulses. "Fred, do you ever wish you could go to Canada or Africa? Someplace where you'd be a person, where you'd get to vote and everything?"

    "No, Roberta. I never wish that. I want to be exactly where I am. I want to be at school, with you and the children and the books and the mice. KinderkAIr is my home."

    Home, she thought musingly after the conversation had ended. Another strange concept for an AI. She remembered trying to teach the brainwipe clients what home meant, how difficult a time many of them had with the idea. They didn't feel as if they belonged anywhere. Somehow it didn't seem fair to her that Fred had a home, when so many people, born of blood and bone from their mother's womb, had none at all. But she had chosen Fred, hadn't she? She'd run from the retrainingjob, fled it; on some level, she cared more deeply about Fred than she had about the clients. Did that make her a bad person?

    Through the floorboards of her apartment, she heard the cacophony of one of Zephyr's rehearsals. Maybe she and Zephyr were just two of a kind. And then Roberta realized that she envied Fred. He had a home and felt at home there. Her sense of home had departed when Doe did.

    She cried herself to sleep that night for the first time in weeks.

    * * *

    She woke up late, feeling hungover, as she usually did after a crying jag. She didn't even have time to shower and wash her hair before she left for work. Cursing, she gulped down some cereal and orange juice, threw on clothing, and jogged to the train station, feeling singularly grimy. She wondered sourly if Mr. Clean could be reprogrammed as an alarm clock. Or maybe he could clean her.

    Please, she thought as she walked into KinderkAIr, let there not be any pissed-off parents waiting to yell at me for being late. Dear Gaia, let this be a good day, a quiet day. I can't deal with any more crises.

    Gaia wasn't listening. To Roberta's horror, Meredith Walford-Lindgren was inside, sitting on one of the napmats and hugging a sobbing Nicholas. Zillinth's mother was in the corner with the other kids, helping them color. Thank heavens for good mothers. Shit, Roberta thought, there goes my job, Preston or not, and then, What the hell? ''I'm so sorry I'm late," she said. "Ms. Walford-Lindgren-"

    "You can call me Meredith," the other woman said, looking up. She looked as haggard as Roberta felt. "It's okay, really."

    "Whatever is wrong? Nicholas, what happened?" Roberta tried to keep her voice professional, appropriately concerned, but her mind was racing. Meredith had found out about the stories. Meredith knew she was in league with Preston. Meredith was going to pull Nicholas out of the school and get Roberta fired.

    Roberta knelt down on the floor next to Nicholas and his mother, hoping that she looked sympathetic instead of terrified. Nicholas had slaughtered small animals on the way to school. Nicholas had asked for a dead mouse for Christmas. Nicholas-

    Nicholas just cried harder and transferred his embrace from his mother to Roberta, clutching her as if he were drowning and she were his only source of air.

    "I don't know what's wrong," Meredith said. She sounded as rattled as Roberta felt. "He wouldn't tell me. He said he wanted to come to school to see you and Fred, so I brought him here. I didn't know what else to do."

    "Ms. Walford-Lindgren," Fred said soothingly, "Roberta and I both care about Nicholas very much."

    "I can see that," Meredith said tightly. "Obviously it's mutual." She stood up and tried to straighten her tearstained tunic; Roberta saw that her hands were shaking. "He's not sick. I took his temperature. He says nothing hurts. I don't know what to do."

    Roberta, still feeling strangled by the howling child, prayed for the right words. "We'll keep him safe. I promise you. I promise, Meredith, he's safe here and we won't let anything happen to him."

    "Of course you won't," Meredith snapped, her voice wound as tightly as—as a mousetrap, Roberta thought grimly. "That's your job."

    That wasn't what I meant. I meant that we won't report him as disturbed. I meant that we'll shelter him. But I can't say that, because this is during school hours and it's all on the record—I think—and because if you don't already know he's disturbed, I'll get into trouble. And I can't promise to let you know what's going on when I find out, because Nicholas is right here, and obviously he doesn't want you to know. "Look," Roberta said, "this is awful, I know, and you must feel rotten that he wants to be here right now—" Meredith gave her such a black look that she rushed on, praying that she'd still have her job at the end of the day. "Look, please, just leave me a number where I can reach you and I'll call you later, okay? I'll call you when he calms down, so you'll know everything's all right."

    Meredith raised her chin a fraction of an inch. "I'll be at home. You can call me there."

    "All right. I'll talk to you later, then." She wanted to say, "Please don't worry," but she was worried too.

    "Nicky," Meredith said, reaching out to touch his hair, "I love you. Everything's going to be okay." She sounded on the verge of tears herself. She got up and left, her shoulders hunched. Roberta wondered if Nicholas would stop howling, now that his mother had left, but the sobs continued, racking his small body.

    "Nicholas, sweetheart, what is it?"

    He gulped air, hiccupped, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Fred, Berta, the Hobbit came back!"

    "Er, excuse me," someone said, and Roberta looked up to find Zillinth's mother standing next to her. "Listen, I have to get to work now."

    "Of course," Roberta said. "Thank you so much for your help. I'm sorry I was late."

    "It's okay. Any other day, Fred could have handled everything, right? I hope you find out what's wrong. I hope he's okay." Zillinth's mother nodded at Nicholas and then at Roberta, and then was gone.

    "I'll show the other children a video," Fred said. "Perhaps you and Nicholas and I should continue this conversation in the conference room?"

    "Right," Roberta said. "I mean yes, of course, thanks for thinking of that, Fred. Nicky, come on. We can talk in here, okay?" Once they were safely in the conference room—the cone of silence, as Roberta always thought of it—she said, "Nicholas, I don't understand. I thought the Hobbit was your friend."

    "He was, Berta!"

    "Then aren't you happy he came back?"

    "No! 'Cause Mommy said people aren't supposed to live in holes in the ground, but that's where I saw him again, where the leaves are, and he's different, Berta. He didn't know who I was, and he looked really scared, and—and—he looked funny."

    I'll just bet, Roberta thought grimly. It hadn't been long enough since the Hobbit's arrest for him to have been resocialized properly after brainwiping, even if he was one of the lucky ones for whom the resocialization would have taken. He must have somehow wandered away from the rehab center without getting caught; it happened. Well, he wouldn't be loose for long. The retraining staff would notify the police, and surely the cops would pick Henry up again, given his history with the famous family up the hill. "Nicholas, where did you see him?"

    "In the bushes, when Mommy and I were walking to school today. Mommy didn't see him. She was looking at a squirrel and she pointed to the squirrel so I'd look at it, but I waved to the Hobbit instead. And he ran away. He was scared. He was scared of me, Berta! He never ran away from me before! He's scared of me because Mommy was mean to him! I wasn't going to hurt him, Berta!"

    "I know you weren't, Nicholas." She thought again of the brainwiping clients who couldn't understand what home meant. She'd heard of others: people who couldn't be resocialized, who'd never relearned how to eat with a fork or to speak in the first person, who nonetheless kept some vestigial memory of home when everything else was gone. Sometimes they made their way back to places they'd loved before—their houses, or childhood vacation spots, or favorite parks—even though they couldn't remember the names of their spouses or children or siblings, even though they no longer knew the words squirrel, pigeon, tree. Such cases had always reminded Roberta of salmon, fighting their way blindly upstream to spawn. She didn't know what was sadder: that Henry had been wiped to begin with, or that his hole in the ground had been so precious to him that he'd made his way back there even when everything else was gone.

    "I couldn't tell Mommy why I was crying," Nicholas said, his voice very small. "I didn't want her to know about the Hobbit. I was afraid she'd call the police again."

    Roberta's stomach clenched. She had no idea how to respond to that. She wondered if Nicholas knew about his mother's activism work, if he understood what had happened to Henry, if he had any way of grasping the hypocrisy those two facts represented.

    "Nicholas," said Fred, "I think you need to tell your mother why you're so upset."

    "But she'll be mad."

    "I don't think she'll be mad if you tell her about the Hobbit this time, Nicholas. She was mad last time because you hadn't told her anything, because you were keeping the Hobbit a secret, and she thought the Hobbit had made you do that. Sometimes grown-ups ask children to keep secrets because they want to hurt them. I think that's what your mother was afraid of."

    Roberta would have given anything for a private phone conversation with Fred just then. She and Fred were in the secrecy business up to their eyebrows; he was a fine one to talk. But Preston was here too now, wasn't he? Roberta suspected that Meredith wouldn't care if Henry was back, since he'd been wiped and couldn't remember anything about Nicholas or the mouse. Meredith could afford her CALM compassion again. Was that what Fred and Preston were thinking? It must have been, if Fred had recommended telling Meredith the truth.

    "Nicholas," Fred went on, "I think if you tell your mommy about the Hobbit this time, she'll feel a lot better. She was really worried about you this morning. She was really scared. And if you don't tell her why you were crying so much, she'll stay worried and scared. She loves you, Nicholas. Please tell her the truth."

    "But what if she calls the police?"

    "I don't think she will. I think she'll probably give the Hobbit food instead. Nicky, your mother's famous for giving food to people like the Hobbit. She does it all the time. It's on TV, on the news. I think she'd be happy if she could help your friend."

    Fat chance, Roberta thought. "Nicholas, I think Fred's right. I don't think your mom will be scared of the Hobbit if you tell her about him. Okay?"

    He scowled. "You tell her. You said you'd call her on the telephone."

    "It would be better if you told her." Nicholas had begun sucking his thumb, and was glaring at her. "Come on, Nick; the phone's right over here. Let's call her, and you can tell her what was wrong, and then you can go out and color or watch the mice or take a nap, okay?"

    Nicholas took his thumb out of his mouth and dried it on his shirt. "You call her," Nicholas said. "I'll talk to her when I go home." Then he stomped out of the conference room.

    "Well," Roberta said, feeling weak. "Do you really think we should tell her? He obviously doesn't want us to. First she betrays him, then we do? Fred—"

    "Roberta, it's all right. You have to call her. You told her you would."

    ''I'm calling her, huh? And what's your role in all this?"

    "I'll dial," Fred said. Roberta wondered—not for the first time—if his makers had given him a sense of humor. "As both you and Preston keep reminding me, Nicholas's mother doesn't like AIs. I think it would be better if you spoke to her."

    "Okay," Roberta said, wondering if her question about outside coaching had just been answered. She couldn't think straight. "Dial, already. Let's get this over with."

    Meredith must have been standing vigil next to the phone, because she answered it about two seconds into the first ring. "Ms. WalfordLindgren," Roberta said, "this is—"

    "Roberta, I know who it is. I told you, please call me Meredith. It's shorter. How's Nicholas?"

    "He's—he's better. He's not crying anymore. He's in the other room with the other kids now."

    "Did you find out what he was upset about?"

    Roberta took a deep breath. "Yes, I did. He—evidently some homeless guy, Nicholas's friend, evidently he's back in the neighborhood." Meredith made a small sound, between a cough and a choke, and Roberta rushed on. "From what Nicholas said, it sounds like he's been brainwiped. He didn't recognize Nicholas at all, and he ran away when he saw Nicholas, and it upset Nicholas a lot. Nicholas, uh, he was afraid to tell you. He was afraid you'd call the police." Dead silence on the other end of the phone; no, not silence, either, but quick, shallow breathing, as if Meredith were hyperventilating and about to fall to the floor unconscious. Great.

    "Um, Ms.—um, Meredith? Are you there?"

    "I'm here."

    "Are you all right?"

    "I'm all right." Roberta heard the other woman take a deep breath.

    "What else did he tell you about—about the vagrant? I mean, about the first time?"

    Bluebell. Was it safe for Roberta to know about the mouse, or not? Stall for time. "He said you were upset because he hadn't told you about the guy right away."

    "I see. Did he tell you why he didn't tell me?"

    "Not exactly, no." That much was the truth. "He, ah, he'd been talking a lot about somebody named the Hobbit, but we thought that was an imaginary friend."

    "Yes," Meredith said drily, "that's what I thought too. I assumed your AI had told Nicholas the story."

    You'd be amazed if you knew the stories we've been telling around here lately. Or maybe not. Roberta felt her hand, slick with sweat, slipping on the handset of the phone. She could switch to the speakerphone, but she didn't want to; even in the privacy of the conference room, broadcasting this conversation felt too dangerous. She closed her eyes—think, think—and wondered how she could win Meredith's trust, "We didn't press him. It's none of our business. Meredith, Fred and I are both very fond of Nicholas."