Shelter (13 page)

    Meredith's flesh crawled. Her father had never sounded so pompous when he still had a body. The MacroCorp people had assured her and her mother that this really was Preston Walford, the wealthiest entity on the planet, and not just a clever AI simulation. "You have to expect some awkwardness while he acclimates to his new environment," the techs had said. Meredith supposed that was right, because if the MacroCorp techs had wanted to fool people, they'd have designed a simulation that sounded more natural. But she still couldn't think of the image as anything more than a very, very good program.

    "They're only interested in me because of you," she told the monitor. "Because you're the first translation."

    "Yes, Meredith. I know that. I also know that you are a powerful human-interest story all by yourself."

    Meaning that I'm still human, she thought, but she couldn't say that. And I'm not a story. I'm your daughter. She couldn't say that, either. "Because I survived CV," she said.

    "Of course, Meredith. That is exactly right."

    "What about the people who don't, Daddy? What about the ones who die from the virus and can't afford to be translated? What about all the people who've already died? What am I supposed to say when the reporter asks me about them?"

    The smooth forehead on the screen didn't even wrinkle. "He will not, Meredith. That is not in the script. What is in the script—what the PR people and I have approved—is the truth, and that is what you will tell him. You will tell him that your heart, and your mother's and mine, goes out to the bereaved families and loved ones. You will tell him that MacroCorp is working on affordable translation for everyone, so that no one will ever have to die again."

    You did die. You did. You don't have a heart anymore. She looked away. His steady gray gaze was giving her a headache. She'd never been able to talk to him this much when he still had a body: as CEO of MacroCorp, he'd always been traveling on business, always consumed by the affairs of his byzantine conglomerate. Now he was up and awake everywhere, hardwired, able to speak to her from any appliance in the house with a Net connection, which meant virtually all of them. It was still his house, whether he had a body or not. "Go away, Daddy. I want to think."

    "Of course," he said, and the image faded. But she knew he was still there, still watching her. He'd be watching her for the rest of her life. Sweet Gaia, I wish you'd really died, she thought.

    There was a knock on her door. "Honey?" her mother called. "Are you talking to your dad?"

    "Not anymore," Meredith said. "Come in, Mom."

    Constance opened the door and stepped inside, carrying a breakfast tray. Before the CV, a serving bot would have brought it. Before the CV, everything had been different. "Did he talk to you about the interview?"

    Did it talk to me, you mean. She swallowed, envying her mother, who seemed to have far less trouble with the translation than Meredith did.

    "Yes. He told me I had to do it."

    "Are you doing it?"

    "Of course," Meredith said wearily. She had to do the interview. She'd known that even before she'd opened her eyes that morning to fmd Preston's face on her monitor, patiently waiting for her to wake up. She was Preston's only heir, his continuation in flesh and blood and DNA, and the media were fascinated by her. Not for the first time, she wished passionately for siblings, for company in the tiny country of her kin.

    So she dutifully sat on a couch in the solarium, ordinarily her mother's painting studio, and thanked everyone who had thought of her. She had been greatly moved by their generosity, she said, and she only hoped that they would be as kind to the many, many children, and adults, who were still in isolation. "Isolation patients need your love and prayers," she said, clasping her hands tightly on her lap, "and their families need your emotional and practical support."

    Her responses had been written by her father and the PR people, of course. She felt like a puppet, some awkward marionette; even sitting down, she was acutely conscious of being too tall, too gawky. She'd been bony before her illness and was emaciated now; a shock of hair, bleached white by illness, fell across her forehead. She thought it made her look like a horse, but her mother woudn't let her cut it. She was too pale, even with the on-camera makeup, and her eyes were too big, although Constance had always said that their color—a misty gray-green—was beautiful. Constance said her eyes were her best feature. Constance said she shouldn't worry about what she looked like. Meredith thought Constance should be the one doing the interview.

    Fargo Gannon, ScoopNet's top interviewer, simpered and said, "Yes, this is a terrible time for anyone with an ill relative or friend, and you must feel immensely grateful to have been spared."

    "I certainly am," Meredith recited, "and I want to thank the wonderful doctors and nurses who took care of me. And I want to let everyone who's mourning now, everyone who's lost someone or is afraid of losing someone, know that my thoughts and my family's are with you." She felt her eyes watering, more from the lights than from emotion. Well, if they thought she was crying, good. They'd probably like that.

    Gannon nodded solemnly. "And of course, MacroCorp is working on affordable translation, so that more people can join your father."

    "That's right," she said. She was supposed to say, "Soon no one who doesn't want to will have to die." She couldn't say that. She couldn't. She gave Gannon a thin smile and nodded, the signal for the next question.

    Gannon grinned back. "So, Meredith, how does it feel to have a cyberdad?"

    Meredith froze. That wasn't in the script. Why was he breaking script? How could he do that? Because she had? Would her parents blame her?

    Defiance overtook her. You will tell him the truth, Preston had said. All right, she would. "Well, you know, he wasn't here much before. He was always away on business. So in some ways, he spends more time with us now, because he can multitask. He doesn't have to divide his life between work and his family. I can talk to him as much as I want, but I can't hug him."

    To her utter humiliation, her voice broke. She saw Gannon grimace in what might have been real sympathy, saw the camera tech look at him and raise an eyebrow. Evidently the tech hadn't expected spontaneity, either.

    And then Constance Walford, all sculpted cheekbones and designer clothes, rushed into the room and swept her daughter into an embrace that felt more like a full-body block. "Of course," Constance said in her best PR voice, looking straight into the camera and clutching Meredith's shoulders, "there are adjustments the family has to make. No one's saying this isn't a difficult transition. But we're just so thankful still to have Preston with us, and we're so thankful that he's free from pain and that soon, thanks to MacroCorp's pioneering research, everyone else will have access to translation too." She squeezed Meredith's shoulders; Meredith winced, and hoped it didn't show on camera.

    "Of course," Gannon said soothingly. "Meredith, thank you for being so honest with us. Can I ask some more questions about your own illness now?"

    He was back on script. Fargo Gannon was no fool. ScoopNet was powerful, but not as powerful as MacroCorp; Gannon knew not to push too hard. "Sure," Meredith said. She felt miserable.

    "Aside from the physical presence of your father"—Meredith felt Constance's hands clench once more on her shoulders—"what have you lost to CV?" Constance's hold relaxed; they were back on safe ground.

    Meredith swallowed, knowing that her mother was already furious with her, knowing that she didn't dare break script again and answer this question honestly, although she wanted to. Constance had delivered her own instructions about this section of the interview. "Merry, dear heart, please, please don't talk about the animals, or everyone's going to start sending us pets. I know you miss them terribly, and we'll get you some more when you're stronger, but not yet, all right?" Meredith hadn't yet been able to tell her mother that she didn't know if she wanted any more pets; Constance was allergic to dogs and cats, and other animals had to be kept in cages, and cages reminded Merry too much of being in isolation.

    She couldn't tell ScoopNet that she'd lost not just her father, but her finches and her gerbils; she couldn't beg the viewing audience to stop sending her stuffed animals, because they only reminded her of the live ones who were gone. Her father was supposed to be more important to her than her pets. Never mind that before the CV, she'd only seen him once every few months, at best; never mind that she'd cared for the animals every day, fed them and cleaned their cages and given them medicine when they were sick.

    She'd made enough trouble for herself already. She had to stick to her lines now. So, her mother's hands still resting on her shoulders, she said dully, "I've lost all the experiences I would have had if I hadn't been in isolation. And I'll never know what they might have been. I've lost three months of my life."

    Gannon nodded. "And what, if anything, have you gained?"

    That one would have been easy even without the script. Meredith looked straight at the camera. "I've gotten the sky back, and fresh air, and the trees in the Presidio and sunlight on the Bay, and they mean more to me than they ever could have meant before. I've learned not to take anything for granted." I've learned how important it is to have a body.

    "Cut!" someone said in the background, and then, "That was great, honey. Great job!"

    "Thank you," Meredith said, and shrugged away from her mother's grasp. "Can I go now, please?"

    Constance shook her head. "Merry—"

    "Mom, I need to go lie down. I'm feeling sick again." The ScoopNet crew cringed—good, let them be scared of contagion, it served them right—but Constance shook her head.

    "Don't worry, guys. She can't give you anything: it's run its course. It's just—all the excitement." But she laid a hand on Meredith's forehead, anyway. "You don't feel hot, honey. I'm sure you're okay, but do you want to take something?"

    "No, Mom! I want to go to my room!" Meredith reddened as soon as she'd said it. It sounded like she was sending herself away for bad behavior. Well, maybe she was; let Constance think she was. It might make things easier later. "May I go now, please?"

    "Of course," Constance said, and Meredith fled, upstairs and away. If she pulled the covers over her head and stayed there for a few hours, maybe Constance wouldn't lecture her too badly when she came back out.

    But her bedroom had been the wrong choice, as she should have known it would be. There was her father's face on the monitor. The forehead was wrinkled, this time; the image was weeping. "I should have spent more time at home when I was still embodied, Meredith. I can see that now. Oh, Merry, I am so sorry. I did not pay enough attention to you, my only child .... "

    "No," she said. "You didn't. And you can't make up for it. And paying too much attention now won't help, Daddy, and you can't really cry any more than you can hug me or hold Mommy's hand, so stop faking. Go away." She wondered if this scene was being broadcast as MacroCorp's latest PR move: Preston Walford Apologizes. She didn't care. She reached out and turned off the monitor, and then plucked a towel off the floor and threw that over the monitor too, for good measure. Then she collapsed, trembling, onto her bed. She wanted to run out of the house, into the welcoming shade of the Presidio, where there were no electronics, but she couldn't, not yet. ScoopNet was still in the house. She didn't want them following her.

    They'll be following you for the rest of your life, came the mocking thought. Just like Daddy will.

    She wondered if the animals had felt this way: hemmed in, stared at, forced to perform. Had all of them been as desperate to get out of their cages as she was, now, to get out of this house? I'm sorry, she told them. I'm so sorry for locking you up like that.

    She saw the irony: Meredith Walford Apologizes. But this wasn't on the Net. This was in her skull; this was real, and she meant it. I thought I was helping you, she told them silently. I wanted to give you good lives. I'd let you free if I could, if you were still here. I'd let you all run away, the way Squeaky did.

    * * *

    Two days before she entered iso, before everything changed, Meredith had been summoned into the solarium by her mother's hollering. Awakened from a nap, Meredith had jogged dazedly downstairs to find Constance cursing and chasing Meredith's pet squirrel, who scampered among paints and brushes. "The goddamn thing ate my painting. It got out of its cage and ate my painting. Meredith, don't just stand there—and don't you dare laugh!"

    Meredith swallowed a fit of giggles, which would only hurt Squeaky's case with her mother. "Okay, Squeaky," she said, cautiously approaching him, "come on now, sweetie. You've had your fun. Time to go back inside." She wished she had food; the squirrel was watching her, merrily flicking his tail, but showed no inclination to obey her summons. He had just gnawed a hole in one of Constance's most ambitious canvases, and he couldn't possibly understand the trouble he'd gotten himself into.

    Meredith's menagerie had long been a source of tension between her and Constance. The house had held, at one time or another, ant colonies, terraria for snakes and turtles, a steadily reproducing supply of mice for the snakes (who obligingly kept the mouse population in check), gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, canaries, parakeets, parrots, finches, tropical fish, and finally, Squeaky, whom Meredith had found, neonatal and nearly dead, under a tree in the Presidio. She'd taken him home and hand-fed him, although Constance liked him even less than the other animals. Constance craved order and artifice, the specialties of her husband's empire. She had never shared Meredith's resolute preference for living creatures, which might have been why Constance and Preston had produced only one heir to the MacroCorp fortune.

    MacroCorp, a vast, multinational conglomerate of software and entertainment companies, had gained its supremacy by providing what Preston called "the ideal image, the promise of perfection." MacroCorp companies produced computer games, home-entertainment and security software, utility maintenance bots for both home and industrial uses, and CuteBots, adorable pudgy robots who made endlessly patient playmates and companions. MacroCorp researchers were at the forefront both of the embryonic field of wetware—where they were developing feedback mechanisms to help control pain and addiction—and AI, which Preston called "the quest for the beautiful being." MacroCorp AIs would be purely benign, CuteBots writ large. "All of our products are designed to help people," Preston always said. "That's our sine qua non, our guiding principle. I will only follow, and endorse, ethical business practices." Preston had pledged that MacroCorp would never manufacture weapons, that it would always be a responsible environmental steward, that it would tithe 10 percent of its annual profits to the alleviation of pain and suffering. MacroCaritas, the conglomerate's charitable foundation, was one of the world's largest philanthropic organizations; even Preston's critics acknowledged its role in medical research and disaster relief

    Meredith had known since early childhood that Preston did, indeed, have many critics. They said his generosity was an act belied by his personal wealth, that his seeming compassion masked calculating cynicism, and that his refusal to do business with defense contractors or unethical employers or environmentally destructive mining companies was a mere PR ploy. MacroCorp probably cut deals with such companies on the sly, the critics said, and if it didn't, they were just plain stupid to ignore such important business segments. And given global interconnection—Preston's own mantra—bombs and sweatshops and strip mines couldn't easily be separated from books or basketballs or schools, anyway. The same raw materials went into products designed to enlighten and products designed to destroy; could MacroCorp ensure that neither its suppliers nor its customers did business with the companies MacroCorp itself made such a point of boycotting?