Too Like the Lightning (9 page)

Carlyle smiled. “Hello. You must be Member Eureka Weeksbooth?”

Perhaps Carlyle could see Eureka's subtle wiggles as they texted, or perhaps he thought he could.

“And that's Member Sidney Koons?” Carlyle gestured to the sleeping one before remembering Eureka could not see.

“I have to if I'm going to be your sensayer. My first appointment with you is next Thursday, I believe.”

Eureka flailed vaguely toward a couch to their left. I will use ‘they' for Eureka, for there is nothing female about a creature to whom the body is no more than the mind's imperfect interface, and the sex organ one more convenient place to cluster sensors. Even if Eureka's robe falls so loose that this guest can see the spiral of peeking pubic hair, Carlyle would feel nothing but awkwardness.

“My stat trail?” Carlyle scratched his head, his blond hair shining glossy in the light despite its neglectful overgrowth.

I saw Carlyle's flinch over the cameras: his first test keeping the secret. “Are you looking at my tracker data?”

“I wanted to talk to Thisbe again, or to that Servicer named Mycroft who apparently comes here a lot?” Carlyle's voice had that slight shrill edge of someone who fears he might be less than plausible. “Yours is a very important bash', and this is a very special situation. When you all have the same sensayer and something happens to them you all need to mourn at once, but you've just lost the one person who could help you do it. I need to help you get comfortable with me as quickly as I can, and sometimes that'll mean repeat sessions.”

Carlyle had not sat, and paled now catching himself staring at Eureka, at her mouth, the pale edge of the tastepad that filled it like a gag just visible between slack, silenced lips. “Sorry.” He settled on the sofa. “A bash' all sharing a sensayer is tough in this one situation, but it's still absolutely what I recommend. We can do so much more when we have the whole bash' in context. You're really wise to ask for it, it speaks well of how carefully you're being custodians of yourselves, as well as of the system.”

Eureka twitched, but there was no way to guess whether it was a response to Carlyle or the lunch hour of some distant capital.

“There were a lot of factors in picking someone for your bash', you all have special needs. I know I have a lot to learn, but I'm excited to get started.”

Carlyle fiddled with his flowing gray-green Cousin's wrap, uncomfortable watching a face that could not watch back. “Just because set-set training is illegal in my Hive doesn't mean I'm personally uncomfortable working with you.”

“Fair question,” Carlyle answered cheerfully, “but I don't have a firm opinion.”

(At this point I received a message from Eureka's brother Cato Weeksbooth, asking me to get the sensayer out of the living room.)

Carlyle smiled the slow, patient smile of one struggling to swallow something difficult with grace. “Let me clarify. I have an opinion, but my opinion isn't firm. I'm fully aware that I don't really know anything about what it's like being a set-set. I have a gut reaction, that to me it sounds horrific growing up all wired to a computer, never playing with other kids, or seeing the real sun. But I also know there's a lot of propaganda surrounding set-sets, and I don't even know if those clichés are true. I want to have my mind made up by getting to know you. I've met other kinds of set-sets briefly, a flash set-set and an abacus set-set, and they both said they were very happy, and I respect their opinions more than mine, since I know I don't know anything.”

The Cousin's face was hard to read at that moment, sad perhaps. “I could get another assignment, but I was proud to be trusted with one this important, so I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance.”

“I think I can if you help me. You can clear a lot of the propaganda.”

“Did you really grow up in a computer, isolated from your ba'siblings? Or is that propaganda?”

A shade of melancholy protest darkened Carlyle's face. I can guess the sorts of deprivations that trickled through his mind: no horseplay by the beach in this text-only childhood, no irresponsible late nights making fortresses of bunk beds, no hugs changing month by month as ba'sibs grow at different paces. Perhaps he thought of his Cousin-run foster bash', swarming with colors, games, too effervescent for even the pain of lost parents to linger. Hers must have seemed a nightmare. As for Eureka's thoughts during the long pause, I can no more guess than I can imagine the set-sets' all-sensory dreams, or take over their all-important task. “May I ask another—”

Carlyle smiled. “I presume it's also propaganda that you never saw the sun?”

Carlyle ran his fingertip across his knee. “Can you tell me what it's like? You were watching my car, you said. Are you watching another one now?”

“I've heard it looks like schooling fish?” Carlyle asked.

Carlyle winced at ‘cultivating,' probably remembering the infamous Ongaro anti-set-set poster, clippers snipping the last rebellious shoot from a tightly trimmed rosebush, superimposed over a brain. “So what does it look like to you? Not fish?”

(At this point I received a second, more frantic and incoherent message from Cato Weeksbooth, simultaneously commanding and begging me to get the scary sensayer out of the living room. I started up the stairs.)

Carlyle tugged free a lock of hair caught in his collar. “Are set-sets the only way to run the cars?”

I hope, good reader, that the name of ‘Nurturist' has faded by your age, that the zealots are quiet, and that the wound sliced by the violence has finally healed. For me it has been two centuries since the Set-Set Riots rocked our young Alliance, so the wound has scabbed over, but reminders like Eureka still pick it raw.

“Please!” Carlyle answered, “I'm not a Nurturist, and I didn't mean the question adversarially, honestly, I just genuinely want to know. It's such an adversarial topic, I can't ask anything without it being a question someone asked in anger some time.”

He nodded. “You must be very proud, protecting so many people.”

Carlyle smiled; that sentiment at least transcended the barrier of plastic and sensory rift.

We are fortunate Eureka could not see the shock on Carlyle's face. “I told you.”

He floundered. “It's not normal, it's a very unusual situation.”

“What?”

A facial expression might have helped Carlyle tell whether Eureka was joking, but a
Homo sapiens
whose world since birth has been raw data swimming in the void does not learn facial expressions like a “normal” child.

Carlyle leapt to his feet. “Absolutely not! Thisbe's my parishioner!”

“If you mean a sensayer who takes my oath seriously, yes, I am!”

Carlyle on his feet, his Cousin's wrap swishing like storm, is what greeted me as I rounded the landing and reached the living room. The sight of me forced instant calm upon the sensayer, but, for the set-set who sees only cars, I wasn't present in the room until I spoke. “Sorry to interrupt, Member Eureka, but you're being a little cruel.” I hadn't intended the words to have a double meaning, but they did in some sense apply to how Eureka was treating Carlyle, as well as how they were taunting Cato.

“Sib?” Carlyle repeated, frowning his confusion.

I smiled apology. “It is in no way your fault, Cousin Foster. Cato Weeksbooth is in that room,” I pointed, “and has been sending Eureka messages for several minutes. Cato desperately wants to cross through here to get to the bathroom, but they're phobically afraid of sensayers.”

Carlyle followed my gesture, and may have been quick enough to glimpse a sliver of black hair and white cloth through the cracked door before it slammed.

“Sorry!” Carlyle called. “I had no idea!”

I shook my head. “It's not your fault. There's no way you could have known.” I moved close enough to Cato's door for my gentle voice to reach him. “I'm taking the sensayer downstairs now, Doctor Weeksbooth, no need to worry. I'll make sure they leave by downstairs, and I'll let you know when they're gone.”

I will not repeat the sob-strained mix of thanks and curses which Cato muttered back—no, they were not even curses, just those words that sound like curses which children use who aren't quite brave enough to say a real forbidden word. Better not to meet him here, good reader; Cato Weeksbooth is a beautiful if fragile creature, and I will have you meet him when he is a little more himself. Today you meet Eureka.

I turned to Carlyle, and gestured to the stairs. “Shall we go down?”

Carlyle was frowning hard at Eureka, his pale forehead wrinkled by a consternated mix of guilt and blame. “Why didn't you say something? I would have gotten out of the way.”