Armor (30 page)

Lya looked skeptical. “A negative motivation?”

“Sure,” he said happily, turning to her. “It all fits. But you’ve got to take the factors in order of priority. First comes the fear. The defeatism comes next, Felix has no faith that he will live. But it’s that very lack of hope which allows him to avoid, temporarily, the burden of the fear. For without suspense, the major effects of fear are sidetracked.” “And so, too,” added Lya,” are most motivational factors.”

“Only the positive ones.”

She looked at him oddly. “You mean. . . he wants to die?”

“Of course not,” retorted Holly. “He merely expects to.”

“Then the negative push?”

I jumped in. “He refuses to.”

She looked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

Holly laughed. “Don’t you see, Lya. He believes he will eventually be killed. Yet each time a danger threatens, he repels it. He doesn’t repel all danger he doesn’t believe he could but….”

“... but he does take issue with specific threats!” she finished for him, seeing it at last. She sat back in her chair, delighted with her revelation. “That’s marvelous,” she said, mostly to herself.

Holly sounded a little awed himself. “Oh, he’s a marvel, all right. Imagine living like that! Here is a human being with absolutely no sense of optimism, no faith in his own future.

No hope.

“Yet he manages to survive not through an inherent craving for life but through a stubborn refusal of death.”

“No wonder he’s splitting apart,” breathed Lya and the two of them laughed.

I smiled.

After a few moments, Lya added: “But the ants will get him.”

“Oh, hell,” I snarled, angry at her. I held up my hands, indicating hordes in the unseen distance. “The ants will get him, sure. But,” I stabbed the air before me, indicating an individual among the hosts, “not this one. And not the one behind him either, goddammit!” I looked at her beseechingly, willing her to understand. “Don’t you see, Lya? The ants scare him. But he can fight the individuals because …” “Because why. Jack?” she prompted.

“Because they piss him off!”

Holly had to perform a Fleet Citizenry Certification on a newborn baby girl so we got no chance to Immerse that day. It was our first break in weeks. Holly didn’t like it any better than I did. At first.

“I don’t know why I have to handle this personally,” he said to Lya.

She explained to him, and me, that the father of the child, one Neil Phillips, was not part of Fleet at all. “He’s an independent subcontractor, building some of the installations that aren’t prefabs. Technically he’s not under our direct authority. But he is a citizen, so he has a right to demand witnessing from the head of the nearest Fleet installation. That means you, Dear.”

Holly nodded, looking at the request on the screen in front of him. “Wants to be certain his daughter can claim North American Humanity Privilege….”

Lya looked confused. “That’s the part I don’t understand,” she said. “He says he wants to be sure she’s a Texan.” I laughed. “Sugar, Texas is in North America.”

“It is? I thought it was a planet!” She shook her head.

“The way he talks about it. ...”

So we went. Reluctantly at first, and then with more enthusiasm. This Phillips dude understood how to throw a party. There were substances there even I, in all my years of debauchery, had never tried. I suspected that Phillips had made some of it himself, a charge to which he. never responded unless you count a devious grin, which I did not. Still, he was nice enough to take me aside and suggest, kindly respectfully, what I shouldn’t try that night for the first time. I took him up on his advice.

Holly took him up on more than that. Seemed neither he nor Lya had ever seen anyone that chewed tobacco before. Lya was understandably appalled by the notion, but Holly was delighted and anxious to try it. He was particularly curious as to how Phillips managed the spitting and a clean beard at the same time. Phillips, complete with devious grin, was pleased to provide instruction.

Holly swallowed a lot of it. But Phillips was instantly at his side, commiserating and bearing some obscure green stuff to “get that taste out of your mouth. Director.” By the time of the ceremony. Holly was just barely audible. But he managed well enough.

“... certify that Natalie Anne Phillips, daughter of Neil and Cindy Phillips, weighing five pounds and thirteen ounces on this fourteenth day of March, year 2081, Standard, is hereby and forevermore a full citizen of the North American Commonwealth. ‘ ‘

And once the ceremony was over, there didn’t seem to any of the three of us any pressing reason to leave. At least half of the Project was there for the occasion of the birth of the first earthchild on Sanction, all happy and excited and full of homesickness and booze. It was a lot of fun.

I didn’t see much of either Holly or Lya for several hours.

I think Lya spent most of her time with the proud mother. And Holly spent at least an hour talking with Phillips’ first child, handsome blond ten-year-old named Nathan. I just sort of mingled randomly, the feeling of frustration about not Immersing temporarily offset by the joy of the people around me.

Toward the end of the evening, I had a chance to stand outside the nursery viewer and actually see the little baby girl for the first time. She was beautiful, exquisitely formed, pixielike in her soft little fisty sleep.

I suppose I stood there too long, long enough to think about all such things that never seem to have anything to do with me. Things like children, of course. But especially Things, like the birth of beautiful baby girls. She had sandy hair, I remember. It looked very soft.

Talking about him that day had gotten to me. I resisted sleep.

I don’t know that I was really afraid of nightmares. I doubt it.

Nothing was that clear to me on purpose.

Back to the curved railing of the dome’s balcony, staring at the city. I lit a cigarette and somebody close by gasped. It was Lya, standing a few paces away in the shadows. I started to say something but I turned around instead at the sound of a foot scraping behind me. It was Holly.

He looked as surprised as Lya and I did. I wondered how long the three of us had been there without knowing about the others. I had often caught the other two like that, in the lab or the dining room. Sitting and staring. Usually I just moved on. But tonight, either because of the party earlier or because of the things that had been said if they weren’t really the same1 spoke up.

“Can I buy somebody a drink?” I asked.

My voice seemed to boom across the dome. We all jumped a little. But then we relaxed and Holly smiled and said he had had plenty to drink already and Lya laughed at that, volunteering that she might never drink again and we all laughed at that. Lya said she was hungry, however.

So the three of us headed down into the dome, weaving slightly, in search of food. The surly galleytech was like every other cook since the dawn of dawning. It may have been Holly’s Project, but the kitchen was his. With great reluctance and muttered hitching about the hour, he managed to lay out a cold snack for three. Then he stood around waiting for us to eat it.

“Out!” said Holly when he had had enough editorializing. He pointed his finger toward the door imperiously. It scared the hell out of the cook and made us all laugh at Holly’s new Command Voice.

We laughed a lot. We needed it. We needed a drink too and something, syntho, was found. So we drank and picked at the food and became, inevitably, talkative. It was an eerie couple of hours in the half-light of that immense Galley. Not just because we talked, but because of what we talked about. And something else: the way we talked.

We were fiercely cheerful.

And oddly enough, we didn’t avoid talking about it. Rather macabre black humor as a matter of fact.

About how we had each of us been drinking a hell of a lot lately, not just tonight because even a hangover was better than some of the dreams we were having, ha ha ha. Maybe Lewis was right after all, ha ha. Probably have to stick to syntho ourselves once we got the habit. Ha.

Holly wondered aloud what it was that Lewis was scared to dream about and Lya said it was fish. I agreed. “He thinks they’re plotting against him.”

Holly laughed: “Paranoia is its own reward who said that?”

I laughed: “Are there any fish in that river?”

Lya laughed: “Over sixty species catalogued so far. But that won’t do Lewis any good.”

Holly and I laughed: “Why not?”

And Lya laughed back: “Because most of the big ones are in on it.”

And we laughed back at her and the three of us laughed at the three of us laughing.

Ha ha ha ha.

Later on a grain or two of truth from me. True Jack Crow. About how come I really didn’t get the residuals from the Blazedrive because I had discovered the Aiyeel in a stolen ship and how it came out at the piracy trial that Quan Tri couldn’t really press charges against me for stealing the ship as he had stolen it from the Dalchek Mining Combine. And since Dalchek was already longdead by that time without heirs or a will. Mid especially on account of the Blazedrive being the single most valuable tool in history. Fleet had ended up with the whole thing. Or public Domain had, but at the time that was about the same thing.

They laughed at that story and at the part about me admitting being lost when I discovered the Aiyeel in the first place. It seemed to help.

So I told them the truth about how come the Darj regarded me as a God. Lost again and frantic again and then there I was with them spacesick and seasick and full of time lag and planet lag and throwing up the traditional feast prepared in my honor all over the Touch Mother who regarded, by doctrine dogma, all aspects of regurgitation as holy. Meaning only sacred chow was good enough for me.

“I threw that up too,” I added and they laughed. “But the Touch Mother didn’t know because I was deep in the Inner Fold which was this very damp cellar, essentially, where gods hung out and I was alone and before anybody could find out, I was already on my way back.”

Holly said he bet I was in an awful hurry to get out of there before they found out and I said yes, that too. “But mostly I was starving to death.” Holly and I laughed at that and Lya, too, a little. But she was starting to drift.

Holly tried taking over, telling something I don’t remember about being a young Prodigy. He tried to make it funny and, of course, failed. But I egged him on just the same, laughing hard and trying to get Lya to.

But she wouldn’t or couldn’t and eventually, inevitably, it got very quiet in that huge dark place. Holly couldn’t stand it. “You tell one. Honey,” he said at last.

And she did. But she didn’t just tell it. She carved it, carved it deep in the deepest place for it, our shame. It didn’t start out as a story. It started out as a confession. As The Confession. The tears were already welling when she began to speak.

“I haven’t been honest with you two,” she said, starting the thick beads rolling. “I know I’ve been cold and distant and,” bitterly, “oh so scientific! But the truth is. Holly, Jack . . . The truth is that I feel so. . . so small and mean and….”

She drifted off. Holly sat beside her like a statue. He could not move. And I knew what he felt, for I, too, wanted to shout: “DON’T! Don’t crack us open!” But I didn’t. I was a statue, too. And worse, I didn’t even help.

She wiped her eyes and positioned herself more firmly on her stool. She stretched her hands out flat on the chopping board in front of her. She examined the knuckles. Then she curled her fingers securely together.

“It’s like. . . it’s like once on Trankia., when I was little and my brother had a dog. You know, a puppy.” She looked at us to see if we knew. We nodded like the statues we were. “A puppy my uncle had brought him. From Earth, I think, or somewhere.

“Anyway, my brother, Gay, loved this dog. This puppy. He really did. I mean he did everything for him. Fed him and petted him all the time.” She took a deep breath. “And all that. And I used to kid him about it. Not really much. Really! But some, I guess. Because he was younger than me and I was full of being the oldest and wise. You know, becoming a woman.” She stopped, thought. “I think I was ten.”

“Anyway, Gay was younger, like I said. And one day he had to go into town. Into the settlement. Cholesterol implants, maybehe was about the right age. And Morn and Daddy were going to be away.” She took another deep breath, a longer one this time. I begged her to stop. But she couldn’t hear what I couldn’t say.

“I was to look after the house. And after the dog. The puppy. Gay was so worried! He was sure I didn’t like the puppy because I had kidded him so. And I laughed and acted really bored by his concern. ‘Of course I can take care of one measly animal, ‘ I told him. And eventually he left, left the puppy with me. Only because Morn told him to stop being silly.” She paused. “Just before she left she took me aside and told me to please be sure and I got mad that she had so little faith in me. But I didn’t show it then. I waited until they were gone and then I let the puppy out by itself.”

The tears were really rolling by then. She made a halfhearted attempt to wipe them away.

“The puppy never went out alone. Just never! We had sunk a geotherm close to the house but, I don’t know, we’d struck the water table or something and anyway there was this deep, deep, well. About ten meters and it was jagged on the side without plastiform and some water at the bottom.

“I was at the kitchen window and I could see him bouncing around and I knew that anybody could watch him that way. Gay didn’t have to be a baby about hovering over him all the time and, well, I looked up once. ...” She sighed like a death rattle. “And he was gone.

“I ran outside right then, of course. And I knew. . . instantly. . . I knew what I should have known all along. That I had known it was going to happen. I mean, I knew he was going to fall. I knew it. Why else had I let him out?” And she sobbed.

“He was still alive but his little haunches his hips, you know were broken. The fall had smashed them. And the water was too deep for him so he was paddling with just his two front little paws to keep up. To keep alive.