Shelter (17 page)

    "It is wonderful news!" Preston said, beaming from the television, and Meredith thought, If I really get out of here, maybe I can get away from him.

    "The real world will take some getting used to," her mother said with a laugh, when she came to visit later that day. Already the odd newness of the air had faded, become unnoticed background; Meredith yearned for more smells, more outside air, dirty air, windblown air. "Coming out of the hospital, you know ... even if you're just in a regular room, you're used to being taken care of, and then you're outside again and everything's so big, there's so much of it, and you have to do things yourself again. It can be a little overwhelming. It was like that for me when I came out of the hospital after being in that car accident before you were born, and that time I was only in bed for a week. After being in iso for two weeks, it was even more like that, and you've been here for three months, Merry."

    Preston's image nodded and said, "You will have to go slowly, Meredith, and be careful of your strength. Everything will tire you out at first, even good things."

    A lot you know about it, she thought scornfully. Preston, the sleepless cybernetic wonder. "I'll be just fine," she told them, and thought of Squeaky, released into a world so much larger than his previous one. Had he made the adjustment? Was he still alive somewhere, gathering nuts and chittering at passersby?

    The air became stranger and newer each day, newer until its newness faded and became old, and at last Meredith was allowed to leave the unit. The doctors and nurses, her mother and Jack Adam, a handful of classmates and neighbors and the inevitable ScoopNet film crew, all were waiting for her outside, smiling, holding flowers and balloons and a cake with candles on it, one for each day she'd been in the isolation unit. "We had to get an extra-large cake for all those candles," one of the doctors said with a smile, and everyone laughed, and then a group of lab technicians came by to meet the patient whose blood they'd been studying for three months. "You're much prettier than your antigens," one of them said shyly, and everyone laughed again. "You are more famous than I am now," Preston intoned from an overhead monitor, and Constance said, "My goodness, Merry! I don't think there'd be this much fuss if you'd gone to Mars and come back!"

    It was overwhelming. She cried at all the noises, the tastes and smells and sensations, people's arms hugging her, the whir of the cameras, the scent of Jack's aftershave and the lingering smell of the match when Constance lit the candles. She cried when the doctors told her that what they had learned about the viruses in her bloodstream would help them treat other people, even ones with different mutations. She cried when at last she was rolled, in a wheelchair, out the front door of the hospital to the waiting limo. Trees: there were trees, across the street, and the same wind that moved their leaves ruffied the hair on her forehead. The same sunshine that warmed the flowers along the sidewalk warmed her skin. That sprinkler, over there, was watering the grass but watering her soul at the same time, because she could see it and smell the moist earth and feel the dampness on the breeze. She was part of the world again, at last, and her regained connection to the universe made her weep with gratitude.

    During the ride home, Meredith drank in the sight of passing cars, people strolling along the sidewalk, traffic lights and baby strollers and buses and billboards and playgrounds. She promised herself that she would never let any of it become old. Never again would she take for granted her body's blessed ability to sense, to perceive and gather information, and never would she take for granted the other wondrous creatures of the world, with their equally blessed bodies. No more cages, and no more living as if she were inside a cage: not for herself and not for anyone else, if she could help it. She looked down at her hands and flexed them, feeling the muscles, ran her palms over the soft upholstery of the car and over the hard plastic buckle of her seat belt. All of it was equally remarkable. All of it made her cry.

    "You're tired," Constance said, looking at Meredith with a worried frown.

    ''I'm happy," Meredith said, and the tears came again, foolish tears, stupid tears, holy tears. "I'm so happy. And I'm scared too—that I'll forget how much there is to be happy for."

    Constance's face tightened. "I wish your father were here."

    "Of course I am here," said the car's speakers. "I will always be with you now."

    Constance ran a hand over her eyes. "Preston, that's not what I meant. I wish—I wish they hadn't had to translate you."

    "Me too," Meredith said.

    Preston started to sing. "Please don't be unhappy—"

    "Daddy, don't!"

    "Constance and Meredith, I am not unhappy. I like being on the Net."

    "Bully for you," Constance said. Meredith had never heard her sound bitter.

    * * *

    CV left most people with permanent aftereffects, and Meredith was no exception. The fever had burned her hair white, left her hair and nails brittle and her gums fragile, weakened her joints. She saw the dentist more often, ate a lot of gelatin, and went to physical therapy three times a week. The day after the ScoopNet interview, she overheard her mother complaining to Brenda, who had recently made a name for herself in the art world by throwing paint-soaked rags at her canvases and then rolling around on each one while wearing a long white shift. She sold the paintings and the dresses as pairs, and had recently expanded into upholstery and linens. She had come to the house for lunch to ask Constance's advice about opening her own home-furnishings store, but the conversation—drifting from the patio up into the second-floor spa, where Meredith was soaking in the Jacuzzi—soon turned to more personal topics.

    "Merry's interview was lovely," Brenda said. Meredith had ignored most of the rest of the conversation, about marketing and advertising and the most fashionable retail districts, but this line made her sit up slightly and scoot over to the side of the Jacuzzi nearest the window. "She was very appealing, very sympathetic."

    "I know," Constance said. "That's what Jack said too, not that we need to worry about it. MacroCorp stock is through the roof anyway, with this translation thing. Preston's putting a lot of pressure on me and Merry to get recording rigs, start storing memories. He says he wants our translations to be as complete as possible when the time comes. Plus, Jack says, it looks bad to the stockbrokers and consumers if Preston's wife and daughter aren't the first in line for the rigs. Gannon had planned a question about that for last night, but I made them take it out of the interview. Thank Gaia he didn't ask about it when Merry got off track!"

    Brenda cleared her throat. "What, ah, exactly is the legal status of your marriage now? If you can even answer the question." No kidding, Meredith thought. Preston could hear everything that happened on the property, since the house was so thoroughly wired, and Meredith was surprised that her mother had already been so frank.

    Constance laughed. "Damned if I know. None of us do. The lawyers are working it out. And don't worry about asking: it's not like the reporters haven't gotten there first. About all we know is that Preston's still alive in the sense of being a legal entity, an individual. It looks like translation results in automatic divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, but that's problematic too, because how the hell do you divide assets, especially if the embodied spouse didn't consent to the procedure?"

    "Did you consent to Preston's translation?"

    "They didn't tell me about it—it was so new and experimental, and I was still in iso then and they didn't know if I was going to get sick too, and they didn't want to give me something else to worry about. I didn't know anything until after it happened. But yes, of course, how could I not approve? It was the only thing they could do, and they did it, and it seems to have worked. Good for them. But now they have to figure out how to market it to everybody else, and that means figuring out the legal stuff—especially inheritance."

    "Uh-huh," Brenda said. "We're talking bundles for memory storage and translation both, I'm betting, not to mention, oh, some kind of continuing fee, in perpetuity, right? So all the individual's assets, and maybe the rest of the family's, get poured into this thing, and the spouse and kids always preecease and wind up leaving everything they have to the translation to pay the fees, and when the money runs out—what? The translation goes bye-bye? And say you and Merry get these rigs and Merry has kids; if she's translated when she dies, she can't leave them anything. Constance, it sounds like a pyramid scheme. Families aren't going to like it, not one bit."

    "You missed your calling," Constance said drily. "You should have been a lawyer. MacroCorp's wrestling with this stuff; they know they'll have to answer those questions to make it a viable service. Reasonable fees and solid trust planning look like the best way, so far: set up a self-sustaining trust so the family doesn't have to worry about it, make the amount of money required for the trust, oh, half the initial fee, and make the maintenance fee some portion of the interest, so there's still a return. And at least some of the translated will be able to work—Preston's still drawing a salary, because he's still running MacroCorp—or they can pay less for less time online, one day a week or one week a month, whatever. It will get worked out."

    "It would still be a fortune."

    "Sure. Preston and I don't have to worry about that, fortunately." "The first one's free?" Brenda said.

    "Well, yes. Preston's the test driver. And we're not exactly hurting, anyway."

    "Right. So what are you going to say when Fargo Gannon, or somebody else, asks you why you don't have a recording rig yet?"

    Constance sighed. ''I'm going to change the subject. I don't know what I think about it; I don't know how I feel about what happened to Preston. I don't know how I feel about the marriage, especially since I talk to him now more than I ever did when he was still embodied. It's all too new, Brenda. So I'm going to change the subject now. Actually, I'm going to ask you to change the subject, because my brain's turned to jelly. If I were wearing a recording rig now, there wouldn't be anything much to record, I can tell you."

    "No problem," Brenda said. "I'll change the subject. Have you heard that your daughter's starting a trend? Bunches of kids want white hair now, just like hers."

    "Trauma hair? They want trauma hair? Sweet mother, I hate it! She's fourteen, and she looks like she's ninety-seven! I keep asking her to dye it, but she won't."

    Brenda laughed. "I like it, actually. It's certainly better than green or purple or that iridescent sparkle that was so popular last year."

    "It makes her look too old."

    "No, it doesn't. You're only saying that because you almost lost her, and you don't want to think about her getting old and dying."

    "Right," Constance said, her voice brittle. "Didn't I ask you to change the subject? I was making a frivolous complaint about my daughter's hair. Can I go back to being frivolous, please? Will you let me do that? You're supposed to be my friend."

    "Constance, I'm sorry. Look, she's all right. You have a lot to be grateful for." There was a pause, the clinking of glasses, and then Brenda said gently, "Constance? She is all right, isn't she? I mean, she seems just fine, especially when you hear about the people with memory lapses. Some of them can't even remember who they were before they got sick. Merry certainly seems to know who she is."

    "Oh, that's not a problem. She's the same as she was, except more so: gonzo-Green. Because she was in that awful iso unit for so long, I guess. She was nuts about animals before she went in there, but that's the age. I didn't expect her to spend so much time at Temple once she got out, that's all. I guess it will wear off. She's only been home a little while, after all. Anyway, she's quieter now, more self-absorbed. I guess that's natural. She has to adjust to being back. But you're right: we were very lucky. The doctors say there probably won't be any more long-term side effects."

    "Probably? Then there might be?"

    "Too soon to tell." Constance's voice held the sure note of Something Not Being Said. "Brenda, let me get you some more lemonade. I'll just mix up a fresh batch in the kitchen, all right? Now about that store, I really think you should consider renting in that new space on Valencia Street. I know it's a bit seedy now, but the area's really coming up and it's going to be a very tony address, just mark my words .... "

    The words faded as the women walked inside, and Meredith sank back into the hot water. Was she all right? How had the virus changed her? If it could affect your memory, as Brenda had claimed, would she even know that she'd changed? The time before the virus seemed like such a dream that it was difficult for her to think clearly about what she had been like back then, how she might be different now.

    The phone next to the tub chirped. Short long short: Preston's ID. If she didn't answer now, he'd find some other way to get to her. "Hello, Meredith. I don't think you have changed since your illness."

    "I'm not sure you're the best judge, Daddy. How did you know I was listening?"

    "The audio pickup near the bathtub could hear the conversation, so that means you could too."

    "And how did you know I was in the bathtub?"

    "Because the security camera in the hallway outside saw you going into the bathroom, and didn't see you coming out, and the sound of running water came through the audio pickup."

    "Ducky," Meredith said. "Am I on Candid Camera now?"

    "No, Meredith. There is no camera in the bathroom, only audio pickup. Intruders entering through the bathroom window would have to use the hallway to get anywhere else, and the camera would record them there."

    "I feel so much better," Meredith said.

    "I am very glad." Irony was wasted on him.