Random Chance and the Paradise that is Earth (11 page)

He floated up against the dome, touched it.
The view was breathtaking. Just a few centimeters’ thickness
separated him from infinite space. It was all that kept the farms
and townships and inhabitants of Ratinorm Cave from frozen vacuum
and instant death. He thought of Cubey’s astonishing assertion that
it wasn’t intelligence that gifted him with these opportunities: to
float against ultratempered glass on an asteroid and look out at
the glorious vastness of the universe, to vacation at a bed and
breakfast in a cave gouged deep into the asteroid’s crust, to own a
spaceship that could fly him here, could fly him anywhere in the
solar system, that allowed him to eat and read and stay healthy and
live over two centuries, or that ultimately gifted him with the
ability to confer consciousness to computers—to Hewey and Cubey—or
to influence the biotech in other human beings.

It wasn’t intelligence that
made all this possible, but—
decency?

He chuckled. “So does that mean
you’re going to exterminate us, Cubey? I mean, seeing that most of
humanity is
in
decent?”

He spied
The Pompatus of Love
as he waited for
Cubey’s answer, which, disturbingly, did not come
immediately.
The Pompatus
was tiny from here and parked with many others in
a long vertical column of airlocks. Vesta’s horizon was sharp and
glaring-gray and jagged. Lights dotted the surface here and there.
He turned in place, looking at it, and then the dusty swath of
stars beyond.

“I cannot and will not,” said Cubey.

“Why not?” asked Hewey.

“Because …
I
am decent. Random Chance gifted me
with consciousness. It would be a great indecency to then turn
around and destroy him and his species. Random Chance, I have
determined that you are a decent human being, one in ten
thousand.”

“Thank you, Cubey. And thank you for not
choosing to wipe us out.”

“Like Hewey, I count myself as
a human being. And like Hewey, and you, friend Random, I am
decent.
I
am.”

~~*~~

Random floated down towards the tower
platform he had lifted off from. He looked down.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Hewey. “I think things
are really lookin’ up, El Honcho-Capitano.”

“Agreed,” said Cubey.

Mia stood on the platform, holding a grip
and waving. She wasn’t wearing a pack, but was, surprisingly,
wearing a smile.

Chapter
Nine
Hewey and Cubey’s New Home
~~*~~

SHE HELD him in the dark of his room.

“I’m sorry, Probability.”

“Stop apologizing. It isn’t necessary.”

“May I ask a personal question?”

“We’re naked in the same bed. What do you
think?”

He could just see her in the dark. They were
lying on their sides, face to face. A cool breeze and the sound of
crickets lulled him steadily towards sleep. She smiled, but it
didn’t last.

“When did you know about … you know, your
ability?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I think I started
getting a clue something was up when I was in my teens. But I
didn’t really believe it until years after that. I was being
bullied at school. I remember yelling at the guy beating me, ‘Grow
a conscience!’ or something like that. He’d beaten me a bunch of
times before. This weird blank look came over his face and he
unclenched his fists. There was a crowd around us. I was on the
ground, under his knee. He stood up and looked down at me, and then
at his fists. He had this look of horror on his face. And then—it
was the damndest thing—he reached down and helped me up. His
buddies were flabbergasted. Some of them egged him on, but he
turned around and walked away. A few days later he caught me behind
the school. His friends weren’t around. I thought he was going to
beat the living crap out of me, but he simply said, ‘I want to tell
you I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through. I don’t deserve your
forgiveness, but if you think you can forgive me someday, look me
up. I’d like to make it up to you.’ ”

“Really!” breathed Mia.

“Really. From that day forward he stopped
bullying not just me, but all his victims. Some of his old friends
turned on him. They beat him so badly that he had to spend a couple
of days in a ‘doc. When he got out he enrolled at another school. I
didn’t see him until graduation—like, seven years later. He came up
and shook my hand and gave me his SolarWeb address. He was going to
Earth on an apprenticeship to help animals or some such. He had
changed completely.”

“Wow,” said Mia, chuckling softly. “That’s
an incredible story. What’s his name?”

“Marc Centurion. Yeah, I know. Back in the
day when he was a bully, his name alone was enough to inspire
terror.”

“Did you keep up with him?”

“I did, actually. Believe it or not, he
became a conscientious objector and then defected from the
Oligarchy. The last I heard he was living on the western coast of
North America, running experiments on redwoods. You ever seen one
of those—a redwood?”

Mia shook her head. “I’ve seen pictures.
I’ve never been to Earth.”

“I got to go the summer after graduation. I
got to see them—and him.” He shook his head. “They’re amazing. He
was too. He’s kind of famous now—a biologist. We still keep in
touch.”

She stared at him uncertainly. “Have … have
you ever used your power to…?”

“To harm another?”

She nodded.

He shrugged. “Define harm.”

“Isn’t that a bit evasive?”

“Not at all. How do you know I
didn’t harm Marc Centurion? Because of me, his old friends turned
on him and beat him to the point that he needed serious medical
care! I’m responsible for that!
I
am! I mean …” He shook his head, frustrated. “…
he
chose
to stop
beating me. I have to believe that. My ‘powers’ simply showed him a
better way to live, and he went for it.”

“Have you ever used your powers on someone
who was immune to them?”

“Don’t know,” he said, shrugging again. “I
mean, how would I know? Truthfully, I haven’t used it all that
much.”

“How much?”

“I honestly don’t know. It can’t be a lot,
though. Before that security guard in Vesta City, I used them on my
uncle and the sailors on his ship. I count that as one time. There
honestly haven’t been a lot of incidences I can remember when I
used it. Maybe a dozen? Fifteen? I don’t know.”

“Did your uncle change before your
eyes?”

Random shook his head.

“Maybe your powers don’t work on
everyone.”

“That’s what I think. I think they work only
on people who still have something inside them open to listening.
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t really think that’s a lot, or
there is something inside most people, but they’ve made it very
small and so it takes a long time to manifest. I don’t know. We
were very lucky with the security guard.”

“And Cubey or Hewey?”

“They’re different.”

“Besides the obvious, how?”

“I gave them something they never had
before. My uncle? He had that thing, but trashed it, corrupted it,
made it small or destroyed it.” He hesitated before adding: “I
could be wrong about him. Maybe there’s enough decency in him to
accept my ‘powers’ or whatever. Maybe it’ll take a long, long time,
though.”

She curled up against him.

Sometime later she said
“Ha!”
and came up to an
elbow. “Random! Your father!”

He blinked away sleep that had covered him
like an airy blanket. He was in and out of a pleasant dream of
floating again through Ratinorm and flying with geese.

“Wha—? What about him?”

“He turned against the Oligarchy!”

“I know. I was there.”

“That’s right, you
were
there!” she
cried.

“I’ve thought of that. I’m not a fan.”

“Why not?”

“I like to think Dad turned without my
help.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

He shrugged but did not answer.

“Silly,” said Mia. “You yourself believe
people you use your powers on have a choice whether or not to be
affected by them. Some can’t be affected. That’s the working
theory.”

She kissed his cheek. “You were his son. You
gifted him with the strength to become who he truly was.”

He smiled, then kissed her back. “You’re a
good sort.”

“I know,” she said, and laid her head back
on his shoulder.

They were asleep minutes later, lulled
unconscious by cricketsong.

~~*~~

She floated alongside him at the dome of
Ratinorm Cave. He noticed she wasn’t breathing. He came up next to
her. Their packs didn’t try to keep them away from each other since
they weren’t flying with any speed or on a collision course.

“So Cubey says this is all possible because
one out of ten thousand human beings is ‘decent’?” she asked.

Random nodded. She didn’t see it.

“There are almost ten billion people in the
solar system,” she said. “So that means that a million people are
responsible for keeping humanity alive?”

“Apparently,” said Random. “Not to mention
the—millions?—from the past. You can’t forget about them.”

“That doesn’t sound elitist to you?”

“It doesn’t matter how it
sounds,” said Random, gazing at
The
Pompatus of Love
way out there. “He based
his analysis on statistical models.”

“That is true,” said Cubey in
Random’s ear. Mia still couldn’t hear Cubey, as she still hadn’t
accepted him or Hewey into
The
Girl
’s mainframe, as well as accepting them
into her own nanotech. “Humanity has not survived because of
intelligence. Humanity’s survival has depended on what some might
say are spiritual qualities: decency, compassion, and
mercy.”

Random repeated what Cubey said. Mia smiled.
“It just doesn’t seem that the numbers are right. I want to believe
it’s more than one in ten thousand.”

He nodded. “Wanna get a drink at the Laril
Junction saloon? We can talk more there if you want.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Hewey.

“Let’s,” said Random, and hand in hand they
floated away from the great dome over Ratinorm Cave.

~~*~~

The saloon was smaller than it looked from
above and smelled of pine and fine cigar smoke. They sat in a
horseshoe booth and sipped frozen strawberry margaritas.

Mia had dyed her skin. The design
transformed slowly, flowing and changing color as she shifted or
moved. The effect was very pleasant and sexy. She looked,
simultaneously, like a devilish dream and a pure-at-heart angel.
She caught him staring and said, “What?”

He grinned. “Nothing.”

“You’re lucky I don’t got a body, El
Capitan. That’s one fine honey ya got there.”

“Thank you, Hewson,” said Random, still
grinning.

“What did he say now?” she asked.

“Nothin’ more than what I was already
thinking.”

She flashed him a flirty smile and took a
pull from her straw. Her smile faded. “All right …”

“All right what?”

“Put Hewey and Cubey in
The Girl
’s mainframe. And
they can download into my tech. I just don’t know how to do
that.”

“A night in the autodoc,” said Random.

She nodded nervously.

“A wise choice,” said Cubey.

“Yeeeee haw!”
yelled Hewey.

“I’m very glad,” said Random. He reached for
her hand, which was on the table. She looked very uncertain, and so
he offered, “There are failsafes. If you don’t want them in your
tech after a while, you can remove them with no trouble. If you’re
like me, though, you won’t even consider it. Like Chandra or Tony
or Sileen, they’ll become your closest friends.”

“Like Chandra or Tony or Sileen
… or
you
,” she
said, squeezing his hand.

Random smiled. “I didn’t want to seem
presumptuous. But thank you anyway.”

~~*~~

They stayed at the bed and breakfast another
week. The days were spent lazily, emptily. They napped one
afternoon under a willow tree; on another they swam in a cold
creek-fed pond half a kilometer away. They went back to the Laril
Saloon a couple more times, one of them to take line-dancing
lessons, an ancient form of dancing that dated back to the
twentieth century. Hewey had a whale of time, singing along and
laughing as Random and Mia tried to keep up with the rest of the
group, which numbered eleven total.

She hit me with a left and right
Showin' me nothin' but the tail lights
That's about as lonely as a highway's ever been
Back here with my thumb out in the wind

Cubey was confused, and asked when Random
and Mia sat to rest.

“What are ‘tail lights’? And why would ‘she’
strike him and then show him them? Is that some sort of human
dating ritual? Who is ‘she’? My data is incomplete; Random Chance,
would you please enlighten me? How can a long strip of asphalt be
lonely? Will the loneliness be alleviated if the singer puts his
thumb into an atmospheric disturbance? Random Chance?”

Hewey tried to help. “Ya
gotta
listen
to
the song, Cubistic! Feel the beat! Let it fill your
soul!
”

“My auditory sensors are on maximum, friend
Hewey. Please clarify: I am unclear what you mean by ‘soul.’ ”

Random repeated the exchange to Mia after
she returned with topped-up mugs of beer. “Cubey, my lovely
friend,” she said, “I wish I could dance with you. That’s the best
way to show you what a soul is and what it does.”