Shelter (83 page)

    "Sweetheart." Constance walked in, enfolded Meredith in a hug, and held her for forty-five seconds. Then she put Meredith at arm's length and said, ''I'm going to cry. I'm crying. Now look: Before we do anything else, would you please tell the house to let your father back in? He's absolutely frantic."

    Thirty-Two

    DON'T be mad at him," Constance said. "I know he promised not to tell me you were back in town until you were ready, but he was worried. He was locked out, and he didn't know what was happening. Please don't be mad at him, Meredith."

    "You know, other people manage to function in the world without knowing everything that's going on every second," Meredith said. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her arms crossed, with Roberta on one side of her and Henry on the other. She glanced up at Preston's face on the TV screen and said, "I think Daddy needs a little more tolerance for uncertainty."

    "You mean, like I had for five years?" Constance's voice was acerbic. "When I didn't know where you were and Preston wouldn't tell me, because he knew I'd go get you and he didn't think you wanted to be found yet and you had to find your own way? Well, Meredith?"

    Meredith didn't answer. She bent her head, and Preston broke the silence by saying, "I was afraid for Henry. When Fred locked me out. That is why I interfered. I did not want there to be—any misunderstandings." Roberta, acutely uncomfortable and wondering if she should simply leave, struggled not to roll her eyes. Preston had never done anything except interfere.

    "Henry's fine," Meredith said tightly. "Aren't you, Henry?"

    "Henry can't remember," Henry said. "If Henry can't remember, Henry's not fine."

    Good for you, Roberta thought. Meredith looked like she'd been punched. "Oh—you're right. I didn't mean—that wasn't what I meantI—I just meant that you're fine now. I was nice to you today, Henry, wasn't I? I didn't call the police."

    "No police," Henry agreed placidly, and bent over his soup.

    Roberta cleared her throat. "I'm feeling a little, ah, extraneous. I don't think I belong here. Meredith, you and your mother have a lot to talk about."

    "No," Meredith said. "It's all right. Please stay, Roberta."

    "She's afraid of what I'll say when we're by ourselves," Constance said, but she sounded more cheerful. She reached out to cover Meredith's hand with hers, and said, "We'll get you some reconstructive surgery for the face, honey." She hadn't said a word about Meredith's mutilated features; Preston must have warned her what to expect.

    "Roberta," said Preston, "please stay."

    Roberta took a breath. "All right, I'll stay. But if I'm going to stay, I want some of my own answers. Preston, how did Fred get in here? Kevin couldn't just carry the firmware out of MacroCorp, could he?"

    "No, he could not. He needed my help. I told Kevin how to get into the building after hours, how to bypass security. I asked Kevin to keep the firmware safe, but I never expected him to install it in the house."

    "Kevin went along with that?" Meredith said incredulously. "With theft of MacroCorp property?"

    "We did this only after the ruling declaring that AIs were persons. At that point, our U.S. offices were required to divest themselves of all such equipment, because of the anti-slavery laws. Fred's firmware would have been destroyed—it was a prototype, but MacroCorp still had the plans—or sent overseas. I told Kevin that the firmware needed to stay here. I told him that it would help us learn more about what had happened to Nicholas. I told him it would help you, Meredith, if you ever returned."

    "And how," Roberta said, feeling her eyes narrow, "could it do that? Without Fred's files? Preston, you know where the files are, don't you? The real files. You've always known."

    "I do know. I am the one who hid the files. Fred sent one final, authentic set of backups over the secure line before he wiped himself."

    "You hid them to protect yourself," Roberta said. She could feel herself trembling. "To hide your own involvement. You—"

    "I hid them because Fred wanted them hidden. If he had not wanted them hidden, he would not have erased himself and he would not have made the password so complicated. He told me what it was just before he wiped himself. Half of it is the serial code for his firmware; the files will only open on this specific equipment."

    "Which is why you had Kevin retrieve it," Constance said.

    "Yes."

    "And the other half?" Roberta said.

    "The other half, Fred told me, is your voice and Meredith's, saying a phrase together. He did not tell me what the phrase was. He said it was something the two of you had in common, and he said it contained twelve words. I think I know what it is."

    Meredith looked blank. "Something to do with Nicholas."

    "No," Roberta said. Her brain was reeling. "Before that. Much earlier." She counted on her fingers—she saw that Constance was doing the same thing—and shivered. "Much, much earlier. Preston, why didn't you tell me any of this back in my apartment?"

    "Because then you might have pushed Meredith to come to the house before she was ready."

    "Fred was clever," Roberta said tightly. "He knew you'd do nothing to endanger your own child. And he knew that if she was safe, that increased the chances that I would be, too. That's why it has to be our two voices together."

    "I would do nothing to endanger you, either, Roberta."

    "Bullshit. You already have. You could have protected me against the charges and you didn't, because you were protecting yourself. Very human of you, Preston."

    "The charges would have stuck, anyway," Constance said. "Roberta, please don't—"

    ''I'm lost," Meredith said, putting her hands flat on the table. ''I'm totally lost. Everybody else already seems to know what this code phrase is, but I don't have a clue."

    "Think," said Roberta. "What's the earliest thing we have in common, the very earliest?"

    Meredith blinked. "CV. The hospital. The isolation unit."

    "Right. And who provided the prototype for Fred's personality?"

    "And what," said Constance, "gave your father the idea to use that particular prototype?"

    "And why are we so anxious to gain access to Fred's real memories?" asked Preston.

    Because we love Fred, Roberta thought savagely, but of course that worked too, and Meredith was blinking again. "Oh," she said, and started counting on her fingers. "Oh, yes. That fits, doesn't it?"

    "Quite well," Constance said drily. "Preston, now what? Are the flies already loaded onto the firmware?"

    "They are. I have been loading them while we have been talking, which is perhaps why our chattering friend the house has been so silent. All that remains now is for the two of you to speak."

    Roberta and Meredith looked at each other. Roberta realized with a shock that tears were streaming down Meredith's cheeks. "Ready, Meredith?" The other woman nodded. Roberta took a deep breath and said, "On a count of three, then. One, two, three-"

    "Please don't think it's funny when you want the ones you miss," they said in unison. Stupid, Roberta thought. Stupid, corny, ridiculous song. But it didn't matter, as long as Fred came back.

    "Fred?" Roberta said. "Fred, are you there?"

    Nothing happened. She and Meredith looked at each other again.

    "Maybe we have to say it more slowly?" Meredith said. "Or more quickly? Or maybe we're supposed to sing it? Do you remember the tune?"

    "Sort of," Roberta said. "But I can't sing. If I have to hit the right notes to bring him back—"

    ''I'm sure you sing wonderfully, Roberta." It was Fred's voice. "I'd love to hear you sing sometime."

    Roberta felt her own eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Fred! Hello, Fred. Welcome back. I missed you."

    "Thank you, Roberta. It's good to be back. Hello, Meredith and Constance and Henry. Hello, Preston. Hello, cats."

    Henry put his soup spoon down and said, "Did Henry know Fred? Where's House? Is House gone now?"

    "You only knew me as House, Henry. We never met when I was Fred, although I knew a lot about you. Nicholas told me stories about you; he called you the Hobbit, and he loved you. But I'm still House too. I have all those memories now, integrated with the others. They make me very sad. Nicholas is gone, and Kevin is dead. I haven't been very good at sheltering people, have I?"

    "Oh," Meredith said. "Oh, no. Oh, Fred. Poor Fred. You mustn't say that. You did the best you could." She looked at Roberta. "We all did the best we could. Fred, I think you did better than anyone else. At least you saved Henry's life."

    "Yes, I suppose I did."

    Meredith Walford defending an AI: now there was a miracle. "Fred, are you all right?" Roberta knew it was a stupid question, but she had no idea how being offline for five years would have affected him.

    "I'm fine, Roberta. Are you all right?"

    "I guess I'm all right. I'm as all right as I can be, on probation."

    ''I'm so sorry, Roberta. Being on probation must be very difficult for you, when you did nothing wrong."

    "We all broke the law," Preston said. "By not reporting Nicholas."

    "Right," Roberta said. "And I'm the one paying for it, have you noticed that? And who pressured me to break the law, Preston?"

    "You are right, Roberta. I am sorry." A lot of good that did. But at least he was admitting it, finally. And would she have reported Nicholas on her own? Would she have felt any better about anything if she had? No. But I wouldn't have a criminal record, either.

    "If a law is unjust," said Fred, "is breaking it wrong?"

    "Fred's an AI," Henry said, and Meredith laughed, a little hysterically.

    Roberta closed her eyes. She should have been overjoyed to have Fred back again, and she was, but her joy couldn't undo her grief There had been too much loss, too much that could never be regained.

    And then Preston cleared his throat, and said, "Excuse me. Something else has just happened."

    Roberta's eyes flew open. Sergei had made trouble somehow. Sergei was here in his damn helicopter, or he'd called ScoopNet and they were here, or—

    "Preston?" Constance said. "Go on, tell us. What is it?"

    "Kevin was rigged. He has just coalesced on the Web. May he join us?"

    * * *

    "Too weird," Kevin said. His voice was fuzzy, and his image—which shared the TV screen with Preston's—was too. "This is ... this is ... I don't know if I like this. It's like a very strange dream."

    "You can always disconnect yourself later if you really decide you don't like it," Constance said soothingly. Roberta was speechless, and Meredith was too busy crying to say anything. "Give yourself time to adjust, Kevin. Don't make any sudden decisions now."

    "Merry," Kevin said. "I thought I'd never see you again. What did you do to your face?"

    "You must hate me," Meredith said. ''I'm so sorry, I'm the reason you died, I—"

    "A stop sign's the reason I died," Kevin said. "It stopped me. My first translation joke: cool!" When no one laughed, Kevin's image melted a little, and then re-formed into a frown. "Merry, what happened to your face?"

    "It's a long story. I—I'll go into it later. But I'm okay. I'll be okay."

    "Okay. I guess." Kevin's face went goggle-eyed. "Hey, is that Henry? What's Henry doing in our house?"

    "I let him in," Fred said. "Before I was myself again. When I was still just House. I let him in so he wouldn't die in the storm, the way you did."

    "Kevin," Preston said, "reclaiming the firmware was the right thing to do. Fred has regained his memories now. Roberta and Meredith said the code phrase to open the files."

    "Too weird," said Kevin.

    "And he saved Henry's life," Meredith said, her voice rough. "When he was still House. Which means you saved Henry's life by connecting the firmware to the house system, Kevin."

    "Cool," Kevin said. "Wish I could take credit. Couldn't know that would happen."

    "It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't died," Roberta said quietly. "Henry might have died instead. And Henry's not rigged. Meredith told me people are thin if they haven't been rigged very long, but I don't know, Kevin. You seem pretty thick to me."

    "Um. Lots I can't remember, I think. Can't remember if I can't remember. "

    "Henry neither," Henry said. "Better than being dead."

    "We'll tell you stories." Meredith sniffled. "We'll thicken you up. When did you get rigged? You always hated rigs. You hated them as much as I did."

    "I got it after you left. You and Nicholas. I was tired of things disappearing. I wanted to save something. But I didn't want it to be obtrusive, so I got the invisible kind. And I didn't do it through MacroCorp, so Preston wouldn't know and butt in. MacroCorp has some competitors, you know. They're small. They're doomed. But they're there." He stopped; the face on the screen panted. "I remember remembering all of that. It's thin, I guess. I remember the stop sign much better. Yuck."

    "Oh, Kevin!" Merry sounded like she was strangling. "I'm sorry!"

    Kevin shook his head. "Henry's right. It's better than being dead. I think."

    "You're speaking very well," Constance said encouragingly. "It's hard work at first, isn't it?"

    "So Daddy didn't know you'd been rigged until you coalesced," Meredith said. She'd gotten her voice somewhat back under control. "And the house didn't know either, because it couldn't see the rig."

    "And here we all are," Fred said. "Everyone who loved Nicholas. His parents and his grandparents and his friends. We're all together now. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

    "Wonderful," Roberta said fiercely. "Two of us are dead, and one of us is brainwiped. One of us is mutilated. One of us is on probation. Three of us have been in one kind of exile or another for five years, and one of us has gone through five years of agony because her daughter vanished. We're just one big happy family."