Absorption (22 page)

There was silence for a few moments. Williams started to speak, but Brett interrupted. “What have I done to my brain?”

Williams replied, “Maybe nothing.”

Brett remained wound up. “In which case my job is to try and bully this world into appeasing our fears – in a way that may cost them millions of lives. Failing that I help conquer them.”

Williams picked up the obsidian knight from the chessboard on his desk, toying with it. “So you’re also worried that the nanomachines aren’t deluding you.”

Brett wouldn’t have put it that way, but found it hard to argue. “It’s not just the horrible things I saw on Roundhouse, and the fact that I’ve spent much of the last ten years trying to prove the hive mind is a threat. Senator Peterson and the upper echelons of the Space Force would have had to know I was barking up the wrong tree – and not merely declined to inform me, but used my misinformation for their own purposes.”

Williams hesitated. “How badly do you want to know? I would hate for you to feel I had entrapped you into violating security regulations.”

That sounded promising. “Very badly.”

Williams unclipped his belt computer. He told it, “Direct line to Joyce.”

A few moments later he said, “Joyce? Got a minute?”

Belt computers didn’t have the range to reach the ship directly. Williams had to have a booster nearby.

Quiet stretched, but Williams seemed expectant, so Brett waited patiently. The silence wasn’t awkward, Brett felt a bit calmer. After about five minutes Joyce’s voice seemed to originate somewhere behind Williams’ desk. “Always glad to talk to you, but this is a busy day. Can it wait?”

Williams replied, “Brett and I can call back if we absolutely have to.”

Joyce sounded more interested. “Barr talked to Brett this morning. He seemed unhappy he couldn’t be more helpful. I guess it’s a good thing ship to ground communications are recorded and monitored, so temptation wasn’t too strong, huh?”

Brett had forgotten about that. Had Barr told her Brett’s question?

“I guess so. You said you’re busy.”

“Right.”

“I remember you used to like going out in a vacuum suit and communing with infinity.”

“I still do. I’ll be directly overhead in about three hours. Maybe I’ll go outside and wave to you. I’ll have earned a break by then.”

Was Joyce going through the ship’s radio? She had to be, she probably didn’t have her own in her cabin. It was presumably monitored too, but it was a pity Williams didn’t try and glean some kind of hint from her.

Instead Williams wound up the conversation. “I’m sure you will. Talk to you some other time.”

Williams glanced down at the box in his hands. “Three hours. Plenty of time to set up the tight beam laser receiver.”

Brett blinked, than grinned. “Nobody appreciates a devious mind more than me. Setting this up in advance shows a lot of foresight on your part. So she puts on a spacesuit and takes a little spacewalk? I take it she carries a little laser transmitter. How does she aim it?”

“It has maneuvering jets. She just lets it float free. Computers are amazing. We can wait until then, but I feel like we already know the answer.”

Brett found he agreed. “Me too. I really appreciate this. Mind if I ask you something else?”

“Go ahead.”

“When we met, and the first few times we worked together, you seemed hostile to the military in general and me in particular.”

Williams nodded. “Sorry about that. It was just – I should have been delighted to be made Ambassador, but the Senator made such a big deal about not trusting me, and wanting me to clear things through you. Also, I was nervous about being on the ground and risking infection from the micromachines, although they took another look at my tests and said what they called my neurosis wouldn’t get in the way. I know Dr. Casey and he said he could help me, so it was kind of a shock discovering he was being shuttled back up.”

Brett remembered being told to guide Williams. He had never wondered what Williams had been told about him. Brett said slowly, “So one of the diplomats has a phobia about the planet he’s negotiating with, while the other is famous for his lack of diplomacy. You could almost wonder if someone wanted us to fail.”

Williams replied, “The thought had occurred to me. That would also explain why we weren’t told certain things that might have made you a tiny bit more flexible, and perhaps deliberately set at loggerheads.”

It fit perfectly. There was plenty not to like here, but Brett grinned again. “So let’s look on the bright side. Normally, if you want to screw your superiors, you have to stick your nose out and do something wrong. We can do it by just following orders and working together.”

Brett stood up and leaned across the rosewood desk. “Let’s start over. Normally I’m a surly type. I do everything I can for the Space Force, but specialize in puncturing group think, which gives me the occasional opportunity to take superiors down a notch while doing exactly what I’ve been told. I’m so contrary that on this occasion I’d like us to be friends.”

Brett extended a hand and Williams took it. His grip was unexpectedly firm. Brett reseated himself.

“So Ambassador, what important things would you have told me if I weren’t so full of myself, and so ready to dismiss your knowledge and experience?”

“The Oceanian government may fall.”

Brett blinked. War had already started, after all they had been through? A surprise invasion? Somehow the Ambassadors tone did not quite fit such a disaster. He asked Williams, “Oceania is a parliamentary democracy, right?”

The other nodded, “Exactly.”

Not a monumental catastrophe. The largest coalition of politicians had lost some support. A different party would lead. Hopefully that would be a good thing.

Brett grinned. “Sounds like it should really stir things up. I guess people have finally realized that their government has to negotiate more seriously if they want the blockade lifted.”

A moment after he spoke, Brett recalled what he had just learned. Were his own governments’ demands really so reasonable?

Williams spoke shortly. “People are angry at their government for not speaking with the Federalist Worlds firmly enough.”

This time Brett’s grin felt stretched and artificial. “No problem. We were already prepared to get one government to be more reasonable, so what’s one more? Between the two of us we’ll kick ass.”

Williams almost managed to smile. “You’re good at keeping up team spirit in a tight spot.”

Dinner was done. Ariel’s cook had disposed of the dishes and left. A basket of sticky pastries remained on the table in front of them for desert.

Ariel bit into one. When she had finished chewing Brett pointed out, “There’s icing on your nose.”

Instead of picking up a napkin, she stuck out her tongue, and curved it as far upward towards her nose as possible. Her pink tongue stretched and wiggled, but got nowhere near the target. Brett was in no hurry, and he waited several minutes before pointing out, “That’s not going to work.”

She replied, “It may not clean my nose, but it does get your attention!”

Brett laughed and nibbled on a pastry before speaking. “Sorry about acting so strangely the other day.”

“I know you have a lot on your mind. Want to talk about it?”

Reluctantly Brett shook his head. “I can’t.”

Ariel smiled. “In that case, all I can do is distract you.”

She took his hand, but didn’t lead him to the bedroom as he had expected. It was the black and white room with the computers, cables, and couches.

He said, “I might take a break from learning today. Maybe we could get some exercise.”

Ariel smiled. “I like that idea, but let’s do a new kind of exercise. Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be a woman?”

Brett leaned back and thought, then gave a serious answer to her silly question. “I seem to recall being more interested in how certain women felt about me.”

“So you never wondered exactly how it felt to be the woman you touched?”

Brett replied, “Now that you mention it I wouldn’t mind knowing. I’m still not sure the question means anything though. I can’t know how it feels to be someone else, because when I’m someone else the person who knows how it feels isn’t ‘I.’”

Ariel shook her head from side to side. “You do realize that makes no sense.”

He answered. “How could it? Your question didn’t make sense, and you know it. Quit trying to stall until it’s too dark to go outside and move your cute little behind. I’m going to start gaining a lot of weight after all this eating if we don’t at least go for a walk.”

Ariel’s smile was smaller now, but more mysterious. “I said a new kind of exercise, and I meant it. My question isn’t meaningless in principle. We could have a brain transplant.”

“Yeah, right. I do hope there won’t be complications when we cut the spinal cord. Anyway, that wouldn’t help. I wouldn’t know how your body felt to you, just how my brain reacted to the signals from your nervous system.”

“Perhaps the nanotechnology could intercept signals from my nervous system, and transmit them to your brain, while canceling out the signals from your body.”

This sounded like a peculiar idea to Brett, but Ariel would scarcely bring it up if she didn’t know how to do it. He asked, “And how does exercise fit into this?”

She said, “You wouldn’t really know what it was like unless you could move and explore, would you?”

Brett stared at the frosting still dotting the tip of her nose. “Wouldn’t that feel really strange for you, having your body controlled by someone else?”

She had an answer for that too. “I would be connected to your body in the same fashion.”

There had to be problems with this. He answered slowly, “Would that even work? I mean, are your nerves and spinal cord so similar to mine that our brains would even understand each other’s body?”

She put her hands on his shoulders, lightly touching his neck with one finger from either side. “Those are very analytical questions Brett. So OK, various parts of my brain will communicate directly with various parts of your brain. Yes there will be slight delays in feeling and moving, but our brains compensate for that sort of thing automatically, so you don’t really notice unless you try to move very fast.”

Ariel removed her hands and backed up, standing just out of reach. Then she continued, “Instead you should be asking about the potential for enriching our relationship and deepening our mutual understanding.”

Brett nodded. “So we wouldn’t just be practicing a rather odd kink for the fun of it. Alrighty, then. I’m surprised I’ve never heard about this wondrous technique. There must be scads written about it.”

“Well … it’s illegal.”

He grinned. “I don’t suppose there are any drawbacks you haven’t mentioned yet? I mean, there’s no good reason for that law, is there?”

She inhaled and sat on one of the couches. “Well, people are real careful about anything involving both sex and nannies. A long time ago people used them for direct stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain – but that was hundreds of years ago when the technology was very new.”

“Nobody does that now?”

Ariel responded, “Your box and your cap both have safeguards against it – even if you could get someone to write illegal software to do it.”

Brett nodded. “So the body switching is less illegal?”

“You could put it that way. As much as I admire your respect for Oceanian law, I don’t think we’re perfect. If you really want to do everything my government says, please start with something more substantial.”

Before Brett could ask what she meant by that, she stood up and started walking. Brett noticed she hadn’t taken off her high heeled shoes, as she usually did when she got home. She moved gracefully, but walking on the thick carpet with them must have been difficult. It gave her hips a rather nice sway.

She said, “I think you’re just nervous about having to walk in high heeled shoes. Don’t worry, I would never ask a man to do that.”

She sat down again and started to pull off her shoes. Lifting her dress out of the way as she did so showed her thighs, but only a brief glimpse of her panties.

Then she said, “There, all gone. Nothing to be frightened of.”

Brett grinned. “I was just getting ready to change my mind, but I don’t want to make it too easy. Wouldn’t want to take all the challenge out of leading me around by the nose.”

Ariel pulled her dress down and sighed. “I always wanted to be able to lead you by the nose.”

Despite the flippant words, her disappointment seemed genuine. Brett said, “Tell you what. Explain straight out the other reasons this is illegal and I’ll probably go along.”

She leaned forward hopefully. “Mostly minor injuries. People losing their balance, then making it worse by trying to catch themselves wrong. But we’ll be careful, won’t we?”

Brett considered asking about the injuries that weren’t minor, or why the other people hadn’t bothered to be careful. On the other hand, balance was a lot in Judo, and here lay a challenge that not many practitioners could have faced. He asked, “Have you ever done this before?”