''I'd know," Meredith said. "I just want to know. Please."
"It won't make you happy," Fred said.
"Do you think I think it will make me happy?" She stood up and said, ''I'm going into the master bedroom. I'm going to watch it there. Is anyone else coming?"
"Merry," Constance said, "don't you think you've been through enough for one day? Let it rest."
"It won't rest. That's the one thing it will never do, whether I watch or not. When Raji died I didn't watch the whole thing. I ran out of the room before—before the end. Not watching it didn't help. Please, let me have this."
"I suppose," Constance said tightly, "that there's not much we can do to stop you. But I don't want to see it, and Roberta doesn't, either. We'll be here when you're done."
* * *
She came back into the living room two hours later, when Fred was trouncing Henry at their fifth game of checkers. Constance had spent most of the time on the phone with Jack and other MacroCorp PR people, planning ways to control the inevitable media frenzy about Meredith's return. Roberta had played fetch with one of the bots, and watched a nature show about anteaters, and talked to Fred, who wanted to know what she'd done after the KinderkAIr disaster. When she told him about the shelters, he said, ''I'm glad you were able to help people, Roberta."
"I don't know if I helped them or not, Fred. I tried. Like I tried with Nicholas."
"Nicholas is better off now," Meredith said quietly, and Roberta jumped. She hadn't heard Meredith come back into the room. Meredith looked gray, exhausted.
"Sit down," Constance said. "Oh, honey, I told you not to."
"I'm glad I did," Meredith said. "I'm glad. Now I know." She didn't sit down. She still stared straight ahead, as if she were staring into another country. "I'm glad he was wiped. I'm glad he can smile now, and sit on ponies, and make friends."
None of them said anything. Roberta scarcely dared breathe. Well then. Fred and Preston and I could have obeyed the law after all, and none of this would have happened. But Meredith wouldn't have been glad, then, either. Was it worth it? I'll never know.
Meredith blinked, her gaze returning to the people around her, and said quietly, "Well. Now what?"
* * *
The purgatory of probation ended at the scheduled time; Roberta, immensely grateful to have escaped gene therapy, still did volunteer work at the shelter, but also took a job Constance found for her in a framing shop. She enjoyed working with her hands, and the job paid well enough, amazingly, for her to keep the loft; the customers forked over premium rates to have people frame their treasures, even though bots probably could have done a better and faster job. Roberta and Meredith and Constance had lunch once a month—an arrangement eerily reminiscent of the old days with Doe—and Constance often called Roberta to go to museums, or to go to the park with Theo. He was a splendid boy, smart and kind and sunny, and Roberta understood why Meredith had shut Constance out during the Nicholas years. Theo had made Meredith feel like a failure.
Roberta liked Constance, and she gradually began to feel like a friend, rather than like a charity case. But she also felt as if she were living in suspended animation, as if life were flatter, duller, than it had been during the KinderkAIr days. It wasn't easy to make new friends, not with her history; it occurred to her that Constance and Meredith probably felt the same way. Roberta saw Hugh sometimes, and casually dated a woman who worked as a medical researcher at UCSF, but they weren't her center. There was too much that had happened to her that they could never understand. Constance and Meredith and Roberta, Preston and Henry and Fred, had become kin by virtue of shared history. It was the last thing she would ever have expected, and it was, she realized, Preston's ultimate gift to her. He had given her family after all.
Meredith moved back into the house on Filbert Street. Fred wanted to stay there too, but since he was technically a slave and couldn't be a full citizen, everyone knew the arrangement would be temporary. Meredith offered Henry Nicholas's bedroom, but when the weather was good he still preferred to sleep outdoors, coming inside for showers and meals. Fred had begun to let him win at checkers sometimes. Preston offered Henry a job as a janitor at MacroCorp, but Henry panicked whenever he saw uniformed security personnel, so soon he gave up the effort. He did lawn work for Meredith and her neighbors, weeding and watering; he painted houses, washed windows, helped people haul trash and groceries up and down the Filbert Street steps. Meredith adopted the kittens. She took in a stray puppy. She started going to Temple again.
It was all surprisingly peaceful. The MacroCorp PR people kept the fuss about Meredith's return to a minimum, mainly by slapping restraining orders on ScoopNet and most of the more reputable news agencies before any of them even knew that Meredith was back. Even with the restraining orders, a few networks managed to acquire photographs of Meredith's mutilated face. Meredith, with a shrug, said she was used to it. She ignored the inevitable speculation; Zephyr remained blessedly silent, and the rest of them refused comment. Life went on.
The farewell to Kevin's body, on Stinson Beach, was small: immediate family, plus Roberta and Henry. Matt said a simple prayer, and then everyone took a handful of ashes and tossed them into the Pacific. Roberta took two: one for herself, although she had never known Kevin, and one for Fred, who had known and loved him.
One day, six months after the funeral, Roberta showed up at Filbert Street for the monthly lunch. Fred had been teaching himself fancier cooking than the kids at KinderkAIr would ever have tolerated; he'd made gazpacho and poached salmon.
"Yum," Roberta said, seating herself between Henry and Constance.
"Where's Merry?"
"In the other room," Constance said. "She has a surprise for you."
"Here I am," Meredith said, and Roberta turned around and saw that her face was smooth again, most of the scars gone. The cosmetic surgery she'd had done in Europe remained; she still didn't look like the old Meredith, but she also didn't look like someone who'd taken a machete to her face.
"Wow," Roberta said. "Wow. That looks so much better ... that's great, Merry. I mean it. Congratulations."
She wondered what had prompted the change. She didn't need to wait long to find out. Constance smiled and said, "Well, we've been planning a trip."
* * *
In the end, they all went, because Henry refused to be separated from Fred. A MacroCorp jet flew them to Los Cabos, where Zephyr spent several days outfitting Fred with a new body, an elegant, swaying bot that looked something like a cross between a giraffe and a helicopter. MacroCorp could have done it too, but Zephyr said she wanted it to be her gift. "Anyway," she said, "I wanted to see Meredith with her new face. And I wanted to hear the snooty bitch of the Western world thanking me for saving her kid."
"Would that be me?" Constance said. "Thank you, Zephyr."
"You never approved of my art, huh? Not highbrow enough? You owe me one now, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"I know it," Zephyr said smugly. "So, you like Fred's body?"
"Yes, dear. It's lovely."
"I can fly," Fred said, hovering a few inches off the ground.
"You're Peter Pan," Constance said lightly.
Fred rose a few feet and circled them, tentatively. "Henry? Are you scared of me now, because I'm a bot? I don't want you to be afraid."
Henry, wide-eyed, reached out and poked Fred's metallic body with a finger. "No, Fred. Henry got used to bots, playing checkers."
"That's good, Henry. Roberta, Meredith, do you think Nicholas will be scared of me?"
"I doubt it," Meredith said. "He likes bots. He's in Africa now. There are AIs all over the place. Fred will fit right in." Fred would probably stay in Africa, or perhaps go to Canada or come back to Mexico. He deserved to be a citizen somewhere. Henry was determined to stay with him, and Roberta supposed that was fitting; Fred could only be truly happy with someone to care for. But she'd miss them.
* * *
Sonia and Ahmed's house, in Malindi, looked out over the Indian Ocean. There was a courtyard, tiled and cool, through which a group of children raced, chattering in some liquid language, probably Swahili, that Roberta couldn't identify. She felt strange, stiff and hot, embarrassed to be here.
"We get a lot of visitors," Sonia said. "He's used to strangers." She called out to the children in that musical tongue, and Nicholas—taller and thinner now, sun-darkened—separated himself from the flock. Roberta saw that he walked with a slight limp, and that his right arm trembled slightly.
"Nicky," Sonia said, "come here. Come meet our friends."
"Hello," he said. His English was accented, slurred by his speech defect. "Mommy said you're from America, where she and Daddy used to live. I've never been there. I want to go someday."
Sonia squeezed his shoulder. "Someday you will. Nicky, this is Meredith, and this is her mother, Constance. Your father and I knew them a long time ago, back in the United States."
"Before I was born," Nicholas said. He seemed slightly baffled, as if wondering why he was being introduced to these strange people; one of the children behind him shouted, caught up in the game, and he cast a longing glance back at his friends.
"Nicky," Sonia chided gently, and Nicholas returned, reluctant, to the strange visitors. "Yes, we knew them before you were born. They've been looking forward to meeting you. We've told them all about you. These are their friends, Henry and Roberta. And the AI's name is Fred."
Suddenly, shading his eyes against the sunlight, Nicholas relaxed into a smile, his longing for the game gone somewhere else. "Those are good names. I like those names. I have a cat named Roberta, and my dog's name is Fred."
Susan Palwick - Shelter
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