Join (14 page)

“God, you're beautiful,” Josette says. “You must have had men lining up. I was never nearly that beautiful.”

Leap gives a half smile and turns away, aware that Josette is still watching her.

After a few more minutes, Josette says, “How the hell could you be my son?” Leap isn't offended. It's a common refrain.

Josette steps into the kitchen
slowly. The arthritis is not as bad this morning, and she's dressed for walking, but she's still moving slowly. “I've changed my mind,” she says.

Leap One is making breakfast. Leap Four is down; Two and Three are both working. Josette's nurse had the night off and is running errands this morning. She'll be back this afternoon.

Leap One asks, “About what?”

“May I have some coffee?”

Leap says, “Okay,” and reaches over to switch on the espresso machine.

“No, dammit, not about coffee,” says Josette, following Leap's train of thought. “I just want some coffee. I've changed my mind about everything else.”

Leap says, “Okay.”

Josette sits at the table. “You know, for a long time, I thought I could just think of you as a married couple with very eerie telepathy. Good boy. He found himself a real peach, I could think, on my more moon-addled evenings. Then he came along, the tall one. And then the cute one joined you. I can't think of you as married anymore. I have to see you for what you are. You're my son, but also you're something else. I have to understand that. I need to accept. And I need to change my mind.”

Understanding suddenly, Leap takes a deep breath. He moves his pan off the burner and turns to her. “Mom, what are you talking about?”

Josette's look is searching. Her eyes narrow as she concentrates on Leap. Finally, she says, “No, no. It's too weird.” Then “Would you make eggs for me too?”

Leap goes to the refrigerator for eggs. He doesn't pursue the subject.

So because he hasn't pursued it, it isn't until the next evening—when Leap One is in his study and Josette knocks on the door—that he knows she's really going to ask about it.

He opens the door. She's dressed in her powder-blue Armani suit, the one she'd wear to board meetings. She looks utterly miserable. “I've made up my mind,” she says, frowning. “I want to join.”

They talk about it. It's clear to Leap that Josette is scared, and it's hard for him to know how to tease the fear apart from the desire.

“The caduceus is an extremely sensitive instrument,” he says at one point, “that depends on consent. The consciousness of both individuals has to be committed to the join to enable the connection. It only works if you really want it to work. You can't fool it.”

She rolls her eyes. “You're such a schoolteacher,” she says. “You always have been. I know all that. I'm not stupid. I'm just scared, is all.”

Leap says, “Fear can be managed”—an expression Josette uses.

Josette grunts affirmatively. She's sitting on the love seat across from Leap One's recliner. Her body is upright, rigid. In the old days, she used to sprawl on the love seat, pull up her legs, and lie across one arm. That was before the arthritis thickened in her joints.

“You've never wanted to before,” Leap says. “Why now?”

His mother shoots him an angry look, attempting to push him back, silence him.

“At this point,” Leap says, “it may be hard for you to find someone who wants to join.”

“I know. But I want to try.”

Join can be a capricious
technology. Under certain conditions, it's reliable and safe—a change dependably situated between beneficial and miraculous. But step outside that range of conditions, and things become complicated very quickly.

For many years, there were broad restrictions on how joins could be performed and who could join. Vitalcorp was clear on the ingredients that created the greatest possibility of success—among them, the ages of increased opportunity. Joins with solos between sixteen and twenty-five years old and between forty-four and fifty-four were almost always successful. When Join initially rolled out, only people in those age groups were allowed to use it. Certain kinds of psychological issues could also increase risk, though usually not beyond manageable tolerances and, in those age groups, not significantly. A very small percentage of the population was just not suited for Join and possibly never would be.

Over time, the Directorate reduced the requirements for join approval. The first to go were most age restrictions. Agencies developed more sophisticated measures of likely success than a blanket prohibition on certain ages. The technology improved, and many early obstacles became negotiable. Still, an upper limit, fifty-nine years old, remained for a long time—primarily to reduce the risk of attempting a join with a mind suffering from undiagnosed illnesses, such as certain kinds dementia.

A medical specialty in prejoin risk developed. A profession. A certification. Soon, the cost of a join included the licensing fees paid to the Directorate and large supplemental fees for medical clearance paid to a CJA, a certified join adviser. The advisers were expert in guiding join candidates through the paperwork and medical examinations required to characterize risk and mitigate liability. Eventually, the remaining age limit became avoidable with adequate precharacterization. A certified join adviser would meet both candidates, review every aspect of the application, and issue a recommendation that could be used to apply for an exception to the age rule. And then a black market for CJA services emerged.

There have been several well-publicized, successful joins of drives over seventy years old. One thing they have in common is a person or a join wanting to help an elderly solo avoid death. Leap is pretty sure that another thing many of them have in common is a large payment. Well, Josette can afford it.

Josette asks Leap to talk with her attorney, Mark Pearsun. She's heard (Leap never knows where she hears this kind of thing) that there's a CJA whom Pearsun has had some business with who might be able to help her. One who specializes in gray areas. Leap and Josette discuss it. Assuming the adviser will clear her, Josette's challenge won't be with legal considerations; it'll be finding a join she's interested in. She must act quickly. Join decisions should never be made quickly. Which goes without saying, so they don't discuss it.

From the other side of
his small maple desk, Mark Pearsun is leaning back and watching Leap One closely. Late fifties, with thick sandy-blond hair cut shapelessly short and untidy bangs pulled to the left across a broad forehead, Mark has surprisingly monochromatic gray eyes and is regularly unshaven. Leap has seen him only in his office, in a rumpled dress shirt that's always half tucked into expensive slacks. He's been Josette's attorney for over twenty years.

“You don't mind if I call you Ian?” he asks.

Leap has heard variations of the question; all joins have. Mark Pearsun knows it's the cliché used most often to characterize clueless solos. Mark dislikes joins. Leap One smiles.

“You know I don't approve of this,” Mark says.

“Mark, you basically work for me now.”

“No, I work for the trust.”

“My trust.”

Mark sits forward in his big rolling chair and puts his elbows on the small desk. “This is very disappointing to me. Up to this point, your mother has been an example for me. What she did, the way she thought, have helped me to think about things.”

“I know, Mark, but—”

Mark holds out his hand as if tamping down Leap's sentence. “Just let me finish. She helped me make a decision, about eight years ago, not to join.”

Leap digests that. “I didn't know.”

“Yeah. I don't imagine she would have told you. You know I've been married twice?”

“Yes.”

“Well, about eight years ago, I thought about getting married again. But my girlfriend wanted to join. Now, the way I was raised, well, my father was a Fundamental Individualist before anyone knew what that meant. My sister and I, we both always believed we'd lead natural lives.”

Leap bridles at the term, but manages to suppress it. “Natural life” is a term one uses carefully around joins. Individualists consider a join a manufactured being.

“I never wanted more than what I was born for,” Mark says. “My years are my own, not borrowed or stitched together—”

Leap cuts him off. “Mark, you're my mom's attorney, not my pastor. I'm sorry you chose to listen to my mother instead of making up your own mind when it was important for you to do that. Now I'm trying to respect her wishes.
Her
wishes.”

Mark's stubbornness is one reason Josette has kept working with him, so Leap isn't surprised when Mark continues.

“She told me, when she was in her right mind,” he says, “that she would be ready to go when her body gave out.”

Leap says, “She's still in her right mind. She told me, yesterday, that she wanted me to ask you to help. Can you help, Mark?”

“What about the risks?”

“It's legal now.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, that's why we need the name of a good CJA.”

Pearsun stands and walks around Leap to his office window. “And if I don't give you a name?”

“I don't know. Maybe I'd go to the darknet.”

“Do even you know how to find the darknet?”

“I've never tried.”

Mark puts his hands in his pockets and leans back on the windowsill. As executor of Leap's trust, Mark Pearsun would be an important part of Leap's life if Josette died.

“She should just leave me the money,” Leap says. “The trust is a mistake.”

“I told her the same thing,” Mark says. “But you know her. She wants the money to go to Ian, not Leap. She's not sure she knows you.”

“She said that?”

“Yeah.”

Leap could say,
I am Ian
, but his argument is with Josette, not Mark. He says, “My mother once told me you were comfortably amoral.”

Mark laughs. “She's said that to me. One of my charms, alongside very thorough research. I try not to be offended. But this isn't about morality. I'm solo today because I listened to your mother. I can't believe she wants this.”

“That sounds like you're trying to do the right thing. She wants you to do what she asked.”

“You're wrong. I'm not trying to do the right thing. I'm the kind of attorney who does what my clients pay me to do. But your mother wouldn't ask for this.”

“Mark, you could just send me the name of an adviser. I'm here because you wanted to meet. Have you gotten what you needed to get off your chest?”

Mark becomes still. He watches Leap One, appraising him, then growls, “I'm gonna find a
pencil
and write it down on a piece of paper.”