The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 9 —CUA— “…look on your works and weep.”

The next time Christopher McCutcheon looked up, August had vanished, leaving very few tracks on his consciousness. It had been a nothing-much month, one day folding unnoticed into the next, time evaporating in the summer Texas sun.

Even the aftertaste of July’s crises had faded into gentle memory. His father, conscience or curiosity satisfied by Christopher’s visit, had pursued no further contact. And Christopher’s brief panic over Loi and Jessie subsided as his worst fear—that of being excluded when all three of them were home together— failed to materialize. The worst crisis at Kenning House that month was the discovery of a nest of Formosan termites in the backyard.

But in the world around him, and in the greater world beyond, August had been a busy, sometimes turbulent month. At work, the new front gate was opened, freeing Christopher from dependence on the tram. Thomas Tidwell, titular head of Christopher’s division, made not one but two visits, events rare enough by all accounts to be a curiosity. One of the center’s archaeolibrarians was picked for Memphis’s staff; two others quit, and one—a woman named Barbara Manly—committed suicide, when they learned they were not.

None of those events had touched Christopher more than tangentially. He recalled them with no sense of involvement or emotional investment, not even that which a witness might feel. Not even for Manly. She was an older woman, a fiction and theater specialist, working in a different project circle in a different part of the building. He was a casual spectator, a passive bystander, the distance between him and her death as great as the distance between him and an image on the multimedia.

He wondered at his own reaction. After the first moment of shock, he could find little more than puzzlement inside. Why had she done it? Building the library was a contribution, a way of taking part. Why was that not enough for Barbara Manly? Daniel Keith had cried for her. Christopher had not. He could not sympathize with the incomprehensible.

Too, part of the distance was numbness. There was too much death to grieve over each departed. All month, the news seemed to cater to a morbid, obsessive fascination with the many and varied ways that people find to die. The running blood in the street, the raglike bodies lying crumpled on the savanna, the burned, the broken, those who went fighting, those taken by surprise—they were all ways to touch the untouchable, to hold in one’s hand the idea of one’s own mortality. How will I die? Like this? Like this? How awful, how sudden, how unfair, how noble, how right. How unready I am—

Death. The world was more peaceful than at any time in a century, and yet there was no end to the dying. The Peace Police were back in West Africa, but not before more than three hundred fell in clashes along the Mauritania-Mali border. A fire in Phobos Station killed three astronauts and left the second largest Martian outpost uninhabitable. One of the Global Environmental Watch’s high-altitude ozonator barges fell out of the sky over the Antarctic, condemning three of its crew to a fiery death and the one who succeeded in ejecting to a slower, icy end. And so on.

Christopher watched the news of the airbarge crash cuddled with Jessica on the huge brown family room couch, with Mobius in turn sprawled on Jessica’s lap in one of the classic boneless-cat positions which had earned him his name. It was the last Saturday of the month. He should have been rehearsing for Sunday’s gig; he could have been at an end-of-summer court party at a residential center just three blocks away. But he had the energy for neither.

Besides, Jessica needed the company. Her left foot was sheathed in an air cast and propped on an ottoman. Inside the cast was a freshly broken ankle, painful trophy of yesterday’s spill down a shopping center escalator. And Loi was in Brussels for the debut of a commissioned sculpture at the Alianti Gallery.

So they cuddled together wordlessly, snacking at crackers and cheese, sipping at a fruity Piesporter that one of Loi’s lovers had sent as congratulations. When the news was over, the screen returned to its normal cycling display, now a Brinwell animate of faces in a flickering fire.

“Aargh,” she said. “Switch off.”

The screen blacked, and Jessica sighed relievedly.

“Do you want to watch something else?” Christopher asked, kissing the top of her head. “We have that new Mojembe film in the capture queue.”

“Loi wanted to see that most,” she murmured.

“That’s right,” Christopher remembered. “No point in paying for two showings. Well—what about Loi’s Hearkentime? It’s a good lazy-evening kind of timesculpt, and I’ve only done it once.”

“Are you bored with me?”

He kissed her head again. “Heavens, no. I just didn’t want you to be bored.”

“I like cuddling,” she said. “Mobius and me. We just kind of gravitate to warm places and cuddly people.”

“McCutcheon Heat Friction, Ltd.,” he said in an affected voice. “You’ve come to the right place, ma’am. No client too female or too furry.”

“What if they’re female and furry?”

“There’s a surcharge.”

She chuckled and snuggled closer. “Chris?”

“What?”

“Can you get into the library from here?”

“The Memphis library?”

“Um-hmm.”

“No,” he said. “There are no external ports to the system. For security. I wish there were. Some days I’d like to be able to work at home like a normal person.”

“If you could work at home, you two’d have stayed in San Francisco, and then I’d never have met you.”

“True. I’ll try to remember that the next time I trudge off to work feeling like a tradesman instead of a professional.”

“What was that you were doing this morning?” He had spent three hours in Loi’s office after breakfast.

“Logs and mail and such,” he said. “Documentation. That’s different. Different system. Why?”

“I was just wondering if you could look me up.”

“Hmm?”

“In the library. I was just wondering what it said about me.”

“Oh,” he said. “No. I can’t do that from here.”

She twisted her neck to look up at him. “Can you do it Monday? When you go in?”

He looked down into her eyes curiously. “I could. Why does it matter? What made you think of this?”

“I don’t know,” she said, turning away from his scrutiny and resting her cheek on his chest. “I guess I just wondered what they’d know about me, when they’re living out there wherever. Do you think I’m in it?”

“Everyone’s in it.”

“What do you think it says?”

Discomfort stirred McCutcheon’s emotions. “Well—your birth will be in the Vital Records stack, linked to your parents and your brother, at least.”

“That’s all?”

“Could be worse—it could have your death, too,” he said. She did not laugh, and he quickly added, “Seriously, if any of your relatives is chosen, as far out as third cousins, there’ll be at least a short biography and a still picture.”

“Have all the selections been named?”

“About half of them by now, I think. It’s hard to find out.”

She shook her head, a quiver against him. “I guess it doesn’t matter. The only one in my family with an option is my uncle— my mother’s brother. And there isn’t any way that they’ll take him. He doesn’t know how to do anything. All he’s got is a head full of dreams.”

His answer sounded patronizing even to his own ears. “It’s a huge library, Jessie. You might be in it a dozen times. A sound-off in the New York Times—your Clean Teeth Club Award for sixth grade—anything.”

“Loi will be in it. They’ll probably have a whole set of her sculpts.”

“I suppose they’ll have a few.”

Jessica started to cry. She was a quiet crier, not even troubling to wipe away the tears that tracked down her cheeks and dampened his shirt. “I just know I’m not in it. And they’ll never even know I was here.”

“I know you’re here.”

He meant the words to be comforting, but they only cut deeper.

“It’s not fair,” she said fiercely. “Everyone ought to be able to go. Or no one should go.”

“Slow down, Jessie,” he said. “There’s no way that everyone could go. We couldn’t even get everyone as far as the Moon. It’s a seventy-five-year project just to build five ships the size of Angleton or Freeport. Everybody calls Memphis a city in space. It’s just a little town, about to become the ultimate one-stoplight rural Hicksville.”

She straightened up and pulled away from him, sending an indignant Mobius to the floor. “I don’t really want to go,” she said in a little voice. “I just don’t want to be forgotten.”

He reached out and touched her cheek tenderly. “Who knows us in Bangladesh, or even Boston? What does it matter if a few people on a one-way trip don’t have stories to tell about Jessica Alexis Cichuan or Christopher McCutcheon?”

Eyes cast downward, she folded her hands in her lap. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “But I don’t have to like it.”

Christopher smiled and tugged at her hands. “Come here.”

She returned to his embrace with a sigh of sadness and gratitude. “I just want to count for something,” she whispered.

“You count here, with us. With me.”

This time she accepted the comfort of his words. “You count with me, too.”

“One, two, three, four—”

She pinched him, and laughed when he yelped. They settled in comfortably together again like two pieces of molding clay, holding hands, Christopher planting soft kisses wherever he could reach without dislodging their position.

“Maybe we could watch a skinner,” he said presently. “What was the one you liked? Tantric Fusion?’”

“I don’t need to,” she said.

“My apologies, ma’am.”

“But I think I’d like to make love.”

He smiled. “My pleasure, ma’am. Comfort the crippled, I say. They’re so grateful—”

“But I might change my mind if you don’t shut up.”

“Shutting up, ma’am.”

Fingertips lightly grazed bare skin where it could be found, teased and combed hair. Lips met in soft kisses, not yet fired by the impatience of passion. Hands played, locked together. A thumb rubbed the center of a palm. Teeth nibbled an earlobe, the nape of a neck. Their bodies in harmony, riding the rising curve that would soon take them upstairs to the big bed—

“Christopher.”

“Mmm.”

“Will you make a baby with me?”

He felt his body suddenly go rigid, his connection with her break. Children had never been an issue with Loi, ten years past fertility. And they were not supposed to be an issue with Jessie yet. “Now?”

“We could,” she said. “I ovulated yesterday.”

“What happened to your implant?” It almost sounded like an accusation.

“It ran out last month, or went bad,” she said, and snuggled closer. “I didn’t notice until it was too late to replace it.”

Christopher’s emotions were screaming protest, his body recoiling from contact with her. Oh, no, they said, oh, no, you’re not going to turn me into a father for the price of a cuddle-fuck. He did not have time to analyze those responses, so he made an effort to subdue them. “You never talked about wanting a baby now.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “I’d love to have someone to take care of. I think we’d be terrific parents.”

“That’s a family decision,” he said, still desperately trying to back away from her proposition. “We can’t make it for Loi.”

“Let’s call her, then. We could call her.”

“Jessie, that’s a fifteen-year contract.”

She finally sat up, pulled away from him. “I didn’t ask you for a contract—”

“There’s an implied contract the minute we’re naked together with you fertile.”

“—I just asked you to make a baby with me.”

“That’s not something you ask in the middle of a cuddle that’s heating up. It’s something you talk about when the sun’s up and your head’s clear.”

“You don’t want to,” she said accusingly. “All these excuses just mean you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to,” he said plaintively. “Not this way. Not now. And I don’t understand why you do.”

“A woman who hasn’t had a baby doesn’t count.”

“You’re just taking a hormonal hit—”

“No, I’m not,” she said, struggling to her feet. “I’m not a machine. Even if you wish I was. That’s what you want me to be. A nothing. A fuck-pillow.”

That Jessie, soft-voiced and smiling Jessie, would use such language revealed the depth of the betrayal she felt. “Jessie—”

“No. I don’t want to hear it. I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Jess—”

“And don’t even think about following me. Sleep in your own damned bed.”

It was only after she was gone that, replaying the conversation in his head, he began to wonder if it had been woven from a single thread, if the dead men in Antarctica and the hyperlibrary and the cuddling and the baby they weren’t making that night were somehow all of one piece.

If he said he understood why they were, he would have been lying. But he knew that it was so all the same, and there was no shortage of time alone that night to wonder on it.

The Memphis hyper could be accessed from Christopher’s entry terminal, or even, in a limited way, from an ordinary graphics station—just as DIANNA could be accessed by a lowly DBS phone in a pinch. But it was best accessed from a hyper booth, with its desk-sized flat-table display, wraparound sound, digital holo tank, and full voice command.

The only hyper booths in the complex which were on the Memphis net were those belonging to the Testing Section, on the first floor of Building 16. There were twenty of them, and they were almost always busy. Besides Testing’s own staff of verifiers, the booths served a parade of outsiders recruited to test the hands-off interface or wring out the stacks in their particular specialty.

Only the fact that it was a Sunday gave Christopher hope of catching a booth free. Had he waited until Monday, he would have had to settle for using his entry terminal. But waiting did not seem like a good idea. Saturday night’s chill had persisted into Sunday, with Jessie vanishing without explanation soon after rising. He stayed in the house and spied on her, monitoring her skimmer’s locator and Jessie’s family subaccount long enough to follow her to LifeCare and see a health services charge appear.

Then guilt took over, and he left himself, partly to avoid being there when Jessie returned, as least until he had satisfied the one request he could cheerfully accommodate. He took the tram in and walked to Building 16 from the stop, risking the bright poison sun after three days of the gray clouds, wind, and soaking rains of Tropical Storm Jennifer.

“Staff. Any booths open?” he asked, waggling his identification badge at the scheduler.

“Sure,” the woman said without looking up. “Three of them. Take your pick.”

He settled in 11, waited until the door glided shut, and asked for Biographical.

“Ready.”

“Find Jessica Alexis Cichuan.”

The hyper’s response was ordinarily instantaneous, but the table remained black for a long two seconds. Then the system chirped and the results came up:

“Huh,” Christopher said in surprise. “She changed her name. Find English equivalents, Juanita, Inez.”

“Huh,” Christopher said again. A butterfly named Joan Agnes. No wonder— “Return. More.”

“Visual.”

Frowning, Christopher opened the door and walked back down the corridor to the Testing desk. “Are all the bio stacks up?” he asked.

“For what population?”

“Contemporary.”

The woman turned to her terminal. “They’re all up.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless they’re lying to me. Problem?”

“I guess not,” Christopher said uncertainly. He retreated back to booth 11 and cocooned himself there with his doubts. Briefly, he considered looking up Jessie’s parents, but decided not to. It’ll be hard enough pretending I don’t know one family secret. He heard himself telling Jessie, “They know your name and when and where you were born. Sorry, that’s it.” No comfort there. Better to say nothing. Better to lie—

“Find Loi Lindholm.”

The full expanse of the table was filled by the response. There was a still photo, life size, flattering. From San Francisco, maybe two years ago—about the time I met her, he thought. Before she cut her hair short. Before the cheek tattoo. There was a lengthy biography, with her apprenticeship to Rolf Dannenberg highlighted. There was a list of Loi’s major sculpts, a partial list of her clients, an exhibition record. And there were thirty or more bullets noting where more information was available. A rich thread.

Looking at the picture, Christopher realized belatedly that while living in San Francisco, where self-definition by dress and demeanor were survival arts, Loi had stood out by being defiantly conventional. But since coming to Houston, as conservative a major city as remained in the United States, she had taken pains to be anything but conventional. The raked haircut. The hammered silver collar. The tattoo, a delicate thing of ink and silicone. The open trine, her young man on one arm, her young woman on the other.

Playing to her audience. Playing the iconoclast artist. Playing the Lady From the West. Give them a show. But looking at the picture, he also realized how much he preferred the way she had looked then to the way she looked now, and how little say he had had about the changes.

That was an unhappy thought, and he had had enough of those for one weekend.

“Clear,” he said, and the table blanked.

He tried to think about Jessie and what he could do. There were mechanisms for correcting errors, but this was not an error. Jessie had done nothing to earn her any larger place in the archives of her species. It was not a slight. It was the truth, but one she was poorly equipped to either overlook or accept.

It had not been a trivial request. She would not forget. It might be a few weeks before she would ask again, but she would ask again. It’s not fair, she had said. I don’t want to be forgotten.

But she would be. And Loi would not. Loi lived through her creations. A trick of transcendence, the artist creating the art, the art re-creating the artist.

Jessie would find no comfort in that. But if she looked, she would find a great deal of company. Within their circle of friends there were two, perhaps three, who would merit a longer notice in the hyper. The rest, himself included, were merely part of the census. This many born this day, that many died.

A lie invited—but he had no ammunition with which to lie. He racked his memory for details she had offered in conversation these last few months, and then gave up, knowing that to be caught in a lie would be worse than telling the truth. He would tell her matter-of-factly, and show her a dump of his own entry so that she would know she was not alone. Loi was an exception, was exceptional. As was William McCutcheon.

If it was painful, well, he knew what that felt like. He would help her grow through it. Pain was a pointed lesson in living, a reality check for the beclouded.

“Find Christopher Thomas McCutcheon.”

The entry was as it had been the first time he looked himself up in the hyper. He earned one extra line for being staff, one extra line for having had both donor and host mothers, lost one for having been content with his name, but otherwise it was a copy of Jessie’s, simple, short, and shallow.

He was pleased.

But only for a moment.

Then, perversely, he began to think about what was missing from the display. He had earned two degrees, in Salem’s grueling general studies program and Stanford’s comparatively easy Information Sciences. He had won a Hastings Award at sixteen, a songwriting contest at nineteen. He had signed a marriage contract and dissolved it. He had written an essay for the Oregonian, played guitar on KSFO’s Tunnel Visions. And more. A whole life, not just a moment of birth and a diagram of blood relations.

But there it was:

“Print and clear,” Christopher said.

He took the dump and left the booth, wondering what was wrong. He had expected it to be brief. He had seen it before. What he didn’t expect was that, this time, he would care.