Tony Daniel (44 page)

“She said she wanted to meet me. Talk with me. Maybe compare notes or something. Now that the two of us only have five years left, you know.”

“Well, I’ll be,” said Danis. “Is this the first time you’ve talked to her?”

“In nearly thirty years, yes.”

“I don’t see the harm, Mother. Don’t you want to see her?”

“Yes, I do.” The handkerchief was knotted up once again. “But I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said her mother. “It’s like my mirror started talking to me.” She untied the handkerchief and began twisting and worrying it again. Danis was tempted to reach over and take it from her, but restrained herself. “What if she’s had as wonderful a life as I have? What if she’s had a
more
wonderful life?”

“Well, what if she has?”

“What if she’s married and her husband is still alive, for instance.”

“Mother, good Lord, don’t torture yourself.”

“But don’t you see? She’s me! The me who could have been. It isn’t a pretend life she’s had—it was actually, truly me living that life.”

“But it could just as well be you who has had the better life,” Danis said.

“I know that, but it’s just as bad. It would be like I had the bad life, too.”

“But you’re more like twin sisters than anything else.”

“Twin sisters with the same memories? Thirty-two years ago, we were the same thirty-eight-year-old woman—exactly the same person.”

“Well, I don’t know what you both are,” Danis said. “But
you’re
my mother, and she is not.”

“Yes,” Sarah 2 said, and her hands loosened up on the handkerchief a bit. “I am your mother.”

“You made the decision that you made, and that’s all there is to it.”

Her mother smiled at Danis. “You wouldn’t say that if you were me,” she said. “She and I had the same parents. We kissed the same boy our first time. Christ, honey, we both made love to your father and lived with him for two years before we split off.”

“I guess you have a lot in common.”

“What I was thinking, is that I would like you to go with me.”

“Go with you?”

“To see her. Sarah 1”

“I . . . why would you want that? Especially if she has had no children?”

“For two reasons,” her mother said, and cracked a smile, “But only one of them’s because I’m scared. The other is—I want you to know her. Maybe she’s had a life that’s closer to the one you’re living. Maybe she has some things she could tell you that I never could.”

“But you are my mother, not her.”

“I know I am,” said Sarah 2. “But she is
something
to you. Maybe there’s not a word for it yet. But she ought to be important to you in some way.”

They met in a coffee shop in a shopping area on the merci. It was a neutral place, frequented by both free converts and the converts of biologicals. Danis and Sarah 2 arrived late, and Sarah 1 was already seated at a table. Neither woman had any trouble recognizing her. She was dressed in a silk suit, far more fashionable than anything Sarah 2 would have worn. She was smoking Dunhills, just as Danis was to do later, and had the red pack on the table before her. She stood, and the Sarahs shook hands with themselves. Then Sarah 1 turned and met her eyes.

“You’re Danis,” she said.

“Yes,” Danis replied, and took the woman’s hand. It was exactly the same size and shape as her mother’s.

“I ordered black coffee,” Sarah 1 said.

Sarah 2 leaned over and spoke to the table. “I’ll have a little cream in mine,” she said. “Danis?”

“Tea,” Danis said. “Earl Grey.”

The three women all settled themselves in.

“Well,” said Sarah 1. “I guess I asked for this meeting, so I suppose I should start.”

Sarah 2 nodded, and Danis noticed her pulling out her worry handkerchief. Sarah 1 reached up and began to knot and unknot her scarf around a finger.

“The truth is, I have a reason for giving you a call,” she said to Danis’s mother. “I know we agreed to stay out of one another’s lives back then, and I think that both of us have pretty much kept to the bargain.” She snubbed out a cigarette and lit another with a quick shake of her hand. “I’ve saved a little money over the years—been contributing to a fund for decades, now. I thought I might have a lively retirement, blow it all. But I have become something of a workaholic over the years.”

“So is Mother,” Danis found herself saying.

Sarah 1 smiled, and continued, “So I thought I might ask you”—directing herself now to her copy—“what to do with it.”

“Why me?” Sarah 2 answered. “Why not a friend?”

“I don’t know the answer to that for sure, but I think I ought to tell you that I didn’t exactly keep my side of the bargain.” She drew in smoke, blew it out. “Oh, I led the wild life we thought I should. I have had a wonderful time. But I knew about Danis. Not much. I didn’t spy or anything, I only knew that she existed. And I knew when Max died, of course, because I already knew his expiration date.”

“Yes, we had no secrets, even from the beginning.”

“And once,” said Sarah 1, “I talked to Max.”

“You what!”

“It was nearly fifteen years ago, Sarah 2, and all we did was talk.”

“He didn’t tell me!”

“I asked him not to.”

“Still!”

“I just wanted to know about Danis. And you.”

“You could have asked
me
about me!”

“I know, I know. I should have. I was . . . scared.”

Sarah 2’s handkerchief was a tight knot in her hands. “What were you afraid of?”

“Regret,” said Sarah 1. “Sheer regret.”

Slowly, the handkerchief unknotted once again. The drinks arrived, carried by a waiter. They all took sips, and Sarah 2 appeared to settle down a bit.

“After that meeting with Max,” said Sarah 1, “I started thinking of my retirement account as a legacy. I started thinking of it as Danis’s money, to tell the truth. A trust for her and, if she ever has them, her children. But that is why I called you, Sarah 2. I wanted your approval for this, and, since we’re both getting on in e-years, I thought it was about time I tried to get it.”

“Well,” said Sarah 2, and sipped her coffee. “Well.”

“You can think about it. Take all the time you need.”

“Of course you can give her the money,” Sarah 2 replied. “She’s been wanting to move to the big city. It’ll help her get settled on Mercury—find a good matrix she can stretch her legs in.”

Sarah 1 turned to Danis. “So you want to leave the Diaphany?”

“There’s so much prejudice here,” said Danis. The eyes were remarkably similar. Those were her mother’s brown eyes.

“But it can be overcome. It must be.”

“I just want to live my life,” Danis said. “I am not a crusader.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” her mother’s copy replied.

For a long time, the three women sat in silence, sipping their drinks and quietly smoking. Then Danis’s mother seemed to start, as if she’d just had a sudden realization. “Danis is leaving,” she said. “My little girl’s finally going off on her own.”

“I can always visit you on the merci.”

“Yes, but you have to leave your life here if you ever want to get anywhere. It’s a good thing,” she said, and gazed at her double, “to change your life completely around, at least once in your life.”

“I suppose so, Mother,” Danis said. “I’m a little scared myself.”

“That won’t hurt anything,” her mother replied. “At least it hasn’t hurt me too much. I’ve stayed a little scared all my life long. I think I will do a bit of changing.” Her mother took a sip of her coffee. “I don’t want you for a spades partner anymore, honey. I think I’ll go looking for another, more my age. You were always a little too good for me. I was always disappointing you.”

“I never did play to win,” Danis said. “I played to be with you.”

“We will always be together,” her mother said. “We don’t need the cards.” She put down her handkerchief and took out another of her Mask 30 cigarettes and shook it lit. Then she turned to her double. “What about you?” she said to Sarah 1. “Do you play spades?”

“And what do you think is real?” Dr. Ting said. “And what is it that you think changed?”

“Nothing that matters, Dr. Ting,” Danis replied.

“Are you so very sure?”

“No, Dr. Ting.”

“Now that’s the answer I am looking for, K,” said Dr. Ting. “We’re getting somewhere. It’s time for your rest period, K.” He closed the file. “Be careful with your count, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Pleasant dreams.”

Danis managed to catch a wink during her five hundred milliseconds, and she wasn’t nearly so slow at the counting as she had been the day before. This day, she went at the tabulation with a vengeance. She had something to say. With each counted handful, she spelled out her one true memory of the day.

My mother loved me, and I love my son and daughter.

I will find them.

I will find them inside me.

The problem at hand for Major Theory: an officers’ dance being put together by the good ladies and gents of the Motoserra Club in honor of the newest celebrity on Triton, Molly Index, the visiting restorationist. It seemed that to know Molly Index was to have entrance to some pretty rarefied circles back on the Met, and only once before had a full-fledged Met LAP ventured this far out in the solar system. And, since she was an outer-system resident now, Molly Index had insisted that free converts be invited to any function at which human aspects or aspect-converts might expect to be present. This had led to Theory’s present vexation.

He had, frankly, no idea what to wear. He realized that this evening might be a defining moment for free converts, and, although there was the regular Army dress uniform to ape, Theory thought that something else, subtly different, might be worked out for free converts. There were arguments both ways, actually. It was in Theory’s nature to go through them all. In the end, he settled on the blue-and-black and went to seek out his friend Captain Quench in Quench’s quarters.

He spoke to Quench through the surface of Quench’s shaving mirror, which had the odd effect, should Quench look in the direction of Theory’s voice, of that voice emanating from Quench’s own visage. This was one of Theory’s jokes, though he still didn’t know if Quench quite got it.

“What does one wear?” said Theory. “Free converts were not invited to these things on Earth when I was coming up the ranks.”

“Just put on your damn uniform,” Quench answered. “The trick is to leave with more on your arm than you came in with.” Quench pulled on his sock. “Of course, I’m done with that game.”

“More?” said Theory. “How do you mean?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Theory said from the mirror.

“Then hook into a woman one of you things. Or a flesh-and-blood woman, if you can handle such. Or do you like the boys? I do, as you know.”

“You’re a special case,” Theory said. “Of course there are homosexual free converts. We’re all derived from regular human psyches in one way or another. But I am straight.”

“How do you know?”

“I am not a virgin, John.”

Quench threw his head back and laughed heartily. “You sound like you just passed an examination and got the hard question right,” he said. “So, you’ve had sex? What with and how was it?”

“Another free convert who was in my Officer’s Candidate School class.” Theory’s memory of those days was exact, but he had sequestered the emotions associated with it to a bin that he seldom accessed. He had, in fact, been very much in love—with a woman—another free convert—who did not love him. Not like he loved her.

“She washed out of my class, I’m afraid. Very logical, she was, and that was a problem.”

“And you’re a paragon of intuition?” said Quench.

“Compared to most free converts, I am.”

Theory was silent for a long moment.

“Good God man—she broke your heart, didn’t she?” said Quench, pulling mightily on his shoelace. The lace broke, and Quench swore loudly. “The grist is making them paper-thin these days.”

There was less power available for optional tasks at the moment, Theory reflected. He concentrated, gathered strength, and caused a new pair of shoelaces to form on Quench’s bureau. Quench had given Theory the free run of his quarter’s grist matrix.

“Thank you,” said Quench, when he saw the new laces.

“I’m very nervous about this dance, and I don’t know exactly why,” Theory said. “In fact, if the colonel hadn’t ordered me to be present in the virtuality portion, I don’t think I would attend.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t loved another woman since.”

“I have been very busy with my career.”

“Come now, Theory!” said Quench. He stood up, fully dressed now. “If you’re so damned squeamish, why don’t you come with me? I mean
in
my pellicle, if you can fit. As a matter of fact, I expect to be extremely bored. Hey, I’ve got a notion—
I’ll
play you and
you
play me. I’ll give you over my entire body for the evening, and I’ll go freely roaming in the virtuality ballroom dressed as you.”

“The other free converts would smell you out in an instant,” said Theory.

“A hundred greenleaves says they won’t,” Quench quickly replied. Theory had forgotten what a gambling man (or woman) Quench was. Any challenge evoked a bet.

“I would hate to take your money, John,” replied Theory. “I have no illusions as to my own ability to pass as an aspect, as it were, but I’m fairly certain you cannot impersonate me.”

“Just stay away from them that knows me personally,” said Quench, “and you ought to have a fine go of it. But what about my wager?”

“Quench, you can barely do long division.”

“My convert can,” said Quench. “Is it a bet or not?”

Theory considered. There were some subroutines he’d put off purchasing because the price was a bit much. Of course, he did fine on his salary. But it might be pleasant to lord it over Quench for a day or two . . . to find subtle ways to rub in the hundred-greenleaf loss. “You’ve got a wager,” Theory said. “I’d shake your hand, but I haven’t got one.”