Shelter (53 page)

    She's jealous, Roberta had thought incredulously. But Doe had indeed given her family, and after a while, Roberta had come to agree with her. FOP-hood was for children and the immature. Roberta was an adult now. She didn't need virtual friendships anymore.

    Which meant that she didn't need a job keeping an AI company, especially if it would cause friction with Doe. "Thanks," she told Zephyr, "but I don't think so."

    "Why not?" Zephyr asked with a frown. "You'd be good at it. You're a nice person. Nice to people, nice to machines. When you tell me to hush up the bots, you don't curse at them or anything. You treat them right. And they're not so different from kids, you know. One of my bots suggested you should apply for the job, as a matter offact."

    Roberta squinted, not sure she'd heard Zephyr properly. Zephyr often had that effect on her. "One of your—excuse me?"

    "One of my bots. Tikki-tavvy, you know, the spherical one with the purple polka dots? You told her how cute she was last week. And she's web-linked and she found out about the school when she was surfing the other day and she told me, 'Mommy, Berta would be good at that!'"

    Weird, Roberta thought. She'd never interacted with Tikki any more than she had with the rest of them. She wondered if Preston could be behind this somehow, but why would he be, especially after all this time? And if he was, why not contact Roberta directly? It didn't make any sense.

    "Thank you," she told Zephyr. "And thank, er, Tikki for me. But there's no way I'd get it. My early-ed degree is two years old at this point, and I don't have any actual experience teaching kids. I mean, children." Human children. Young human children, versus the grown infants who emerged from brainwiping.

    "Try it anyway. It can't hurt."

    "Well, I'll see," Roberta said. She had no intention of doing any such thing, and she expected Doe to applaud her decision when Roberta told her about the conversation over dinner.

    Instead, Doe shrugged and said, "Well, you could try. Zephyr's right; it can't hurt. It's not like you've found anything else."

    "I've only been looking for a few weeks, Doe! Give me a chance!" Doe shrugged again. "Let Papa Preston give you a chance, if you really think that's what's happening. A job's better than a nightgown, isn't it?"

    "But why would he be doing this? It doesn't make any sense. I'm probably wrong about that part."

    "You're looking for a sign that Papa Preston still cares about you," Doe said; Roberta flinched. "Look, Berta, who the hell knows why he does anything? He's not human anymore. If you want to know if he said something to Zephyr's bot, why don't you ask him?"

    "I didn't think you'd approve of my talking to him again."

    Doe snorted. "Oh, go ahead. It can't hurt to play with Ouija boards once in a while, as long as you don't take them too seriously. We'll log onto Prestonweb after dinner, see what he has to say."

    "It is lovely to see you again," he said, beaming out at them from their living room terminal. "I have thought of you often, Roberta. Thank you for visiting. You look very well. And who is this with you?"

    "Dorothea Murphy," Doe said drily. "I'm Berta's partner. Preston, did you tell one of Zephyr's bots to tell Zephyr to tell Roberta to apply for a job at the new MacroCorp school?"

    Preston's image blinked. "That is a very complicated theory. I would be happy to send Roberta a copy of the position announcement, however. And, Roberta, please visit me again. I would like to know how you are doing. I have missed you."

    "Thanks," Roberta said, fighting a pang of guilt. How could he have missed her? There were a lot of other FOPs in the world. The minute the terminal was off she said to Doe, "Did you notice that he didn't actually answer the question? He didn't say he didn't do it."

    "Ouija boards never say anything conclusive. You know that." Preston does, Roberta thought. "Look, go ahead and apply. What do you have to lose?"

    * * *

    Under the circumstances, she wasn't surprised when she got an interview, but she still didn't expect it to last longer than ten seconds. The interview was with actual people. There had to be a lot of early-ed majors looking for jobs, not to mention people with actual experience.

    The interview lasted much longer than ten seconds. MacroCorp put her through a battery of tests: personality tests, one-on-one interactions with kids, group interactions with kids, simulated crises where kids hurt themselves or fought or refused to cooperate. She enjoyed the tests and did well on them, but she was still stunned, two weeks later, when the executive director called to offer her the job. She'd never taught children before. It was MacroCorp's flagship school. This had to be Preston's doing, but why?

    "You did very well with the children," the executive director told her warmly, "and of all our applicants, you were the one who seemed most comfortable with Fred. That's important, as I'm sure you can appreciate."

    "Well, great," Roberta said, a bit weakly. Maybe former FOP-hood had been her most important qualification; she was good at talking to virtual entities. "But all I did was treat, ah, Fred like a person."

    "Exactly. We've discovered that isn't something we can take for granted."

    "Take it," Doe said flatly that evening. "The money's good. It's a good job. If you like it, you can use it to get another job someplace else. So it fell in your lap; so what? If you can get something real out of being a FOP, do it."

    I'm not a FOP anymore, Roberta thought resentfully. And the nightgown was real too. She knew Doe had had a hard day at work, but the implication that Roberta wouldn't have been able to get a good job on her own still stung. Roberta had worked her ass off to pay the college bills not covered by her scholarship. Maybe she'd never worked for a law firm, but that didn't make her incompetent. "I think I want to look for something else," she said.

    "Why?" Doe said impatiently. "It's a lucky break: take it! You might even like it. Take it, Roberta."

    She took it. She loved it. The skills she'd developed teaching wipe casualties transferred very well to teaching children; but for the kids, each acquired skill was either a genuine delight or simply unremarked, lost in the urge for growth. They hadn't lost anything yet, and they had everything to gain. Their energy, their openness and lack of fear, energized Roberta. Finally, she didn't dread getting up for work.

    She told Mitzi and Hugh, Doe's mother and stepfather, about it after her first week on the job. The school hadn't officially opened, but she and Fred were working with a few kids, whose parents weren't paying yet, to attract more cautious sorts. Roberta had expected to be nervous with all those upscale parents traipsing through the room, but for the most part, they were blessedly easy to tune out.

    "It's a great job," she announced over chicken satay. The locations of Saturday dinners rotated; this time it had been Roberta's turn to choose. After four years, it still amazed her that Doe's family included her even in such simple decision making. She'd picked an inexpensive Thai place within walking distance of the loft; it had great food, a funky decorating scheme running heavily to mirrors and fringed chandeliers, and coffee that would make hair grow on your teeth. After one of those coffees, Roberta was more than willing to talk about her new job. "The kids are so cute. Everything's amazing to them! And if Doe hadn't pushed me, I never would have applied for the job, so I have her to thank."

    "Me and Papa Preston," Doe said. "And remember, it's early days yet. You loved working with the brainwipe clients your first week there. And before that you were enthusiastic about making french fries, for about five minutes. And before that—what was the job before that?"

    Mitzi rolled her eyes. "Dorry, stop being such a grouch! Honestly, I think you're jealous. Berta, go on. Tell us more."

    Roberta, feeling as if she'd been punched in the stomach, just stared at Doe. Why was Doe doing this? Why was she putting Roberta down, especially in front of the family? But an answer came, immediate and unwelcome: She needs me to be dependent on her. And she thinks I'll only stay dependent if I feel inferior.

    Four years. She'd spent four years with someone who needed her to feel like shit. Why hadn't she seen it before?

    "You heard Mom," Doe said with a sigh. "Go on."

    Roberta took a deep breath. All right, she would. She wasn't going to buckle just to make Doe happy. She plunged in, trying to distract herself from her terrible epiphany. "Well, the other day I gave the kids scented crayons, the ones where the purple smells like grape and the red like cherry, you know, and they just thought that was the greatest, except that Cindy and Steven got into a fight about it, because Steven wanted the red one to smell like strawberry, not cherry, and Cindy said cinnamon was better than anything, and Steven said that cinnamon made his tongue hurt. And then they started inventing new flavors for the other colors. Orange should be pumpkin, Steven said, and Cindy said no, he was being stupid, that orange should be orange, and then Fred—good old Fred—piped up and said, 'I just made up a game. Usually all the crayons in the box are different because they're different colors, but what if they were all the same color and they were different smells instead? How many different smells could you come up with for a yellow crayon?' So Cindy said lemon and Steven said banana and Zillinth said squash, and everybody started teasing her. 'You like how squash smells? Squash is disgusting,' like that, even when Fred reminded them that squash is good for them. And I was just sitting there and thinking, The brainwipe clients would never have had this conversation, you know? If somebody gave them a box of scented crayons, they'd try to eat the crayons."

    "I don't know," Hugh said, smiling. "Sounds to me like any kid who wants a squash-scented crayon might need brainwiping."

    "Oh, stop," Mitzi said with a laugh. "Hugh, that's horrible. And I suppose you'd want the black ones to be licorice?"

    "Blackberry," Doe's stepsister Tracy said from across the table. "Definitely."

    "Vanilla," Hugh said.

    "No, Dad, white would be vanilla! How could black be vanilla?"

    "I beg to differ—white would be coconut. Black would be vanilla because vanilla beans are black."

    Mitzi shook her head. "You're all being very silly. You remind me of Dorry when she was little, fussing over her chocolate milk. Has she ever told you about that, Roberta?"

    "No," Roberta said; Doe, in fact, hardly ever talked about her childhood, although to all appearances it had been normal and pleasant. "She drank chocolate milk when she was a kid? She'll only drink skim now." The words were out of her mouth before she consciously registered how cruel they were, how much Doe would hate them.

    Doe glared at her, but Mitzi said cheerfully, "Oh, she loved chocolate milk. But it had to be exactly the right color brown, or it wouldn't taste right. If it was too light she'd make me put more in, and if I put too much in—well, that was a tragedy, because she'd have to add more milk to get it to the right color again. Although a few times I put too much chocolate syrup in on purpose, to trick her into drinking extra milk."

    "You fiend," Hugh said. "Now see, that's the good thing about this Fred character: he doesn't have hands to pour milk with, so he can't trick children that way."

    "No," Roberta said numbly, "the pouring's my job. Although I spend more time wiping up what the kids have poured, but that's okay. It's better than brainwipe rehab any day." What was she going to do? Would Doe agree to couples counseling? If Roberta lost Doe, she'd lose Hugh and Mitzi too.

    Mitzi, oblivious, leaned over and put her hand on Roberta's arm. "It's so good to see you laughing and talking about work, Berta. You never seemed that happy in your old jobs."

    "I wasn't," she said. As always, the gift of family, the simple fact that people cared about her enough to notice her moods, moved Roberta nearly to tears. She couldn't lose them. Maybe she was overreacting; maybe Doe didn't need her to feel inferior. Maybe it was just her imagination, and they could work things out.

    * * *

    They didn't talk during the walk home, and when they got there, Doe turned on the television and immersed herself in a symphony simulcast. Roberta knew that there'd be no talking to her until the concert ended: music was her drug, and if she could watch the musicians playing, so much the better. When the crashing started downstairs, Doe looked up, her face a mute mask of fury.

    "It's okay," Roberta said. "I'll go take care of it."

    So once again, as she did at least two or three times a week, she padded downstairs to Zephyr's apartment, the crashing getting louder as she descended the stairs. She couldn't imagine how Zephyr could even hear her knock on the door.

    "You again," Zephyr said cheerfully as she opened the door. Behind her, Roberta could glimpse a shining, screeching tangle of metal. "Let me guess. Your roomie has one of her migraines?"

    Roberta nodded. She'd concocted the migraine story early on, since it seemed easier than telling Zephyr how hideously rude she was for making so much noise. "Yeah. Look, I'm sorry, but can you tone it down a bit?"

    "You mean, can I have them tone it down?" Zephyr waved a hand behind her back and snapped her fmgers, whereupon the bots fell into a sudden, ringing silence, broken only by the occasional clatter as the metal settled. "There. Is that good enough?"

    "That's fine," Roberta said. "Thank you."

    "Your friend's never happy unless she has something to complain about, is she?"

    No, she isn't, Roberta thought, but I'm not going to discuss that with you. "Zephyr, we all live here. We have to be good neighbors. I'm sure you can find other times to rehearse your pieces."

    Zephyr frowned. "I'm not rehearsing—they are." She snapped her fmgers again, twice this time, and the bots began disassembling themselves from their chaotic knot and scuttling away into corners and under furniture. "They like to rehearse at night. I don't know why. I think they're becoming nocturnal. If I don't let them rehearse when they want to, the performances might suffer."