The Unincorporated Future (49 page)

Dante’s desire for the human was also pure and strong. Forgetting the natural attraction of her being one of the very first of the progenitor race to cross into his realm or the fact that she’d proved herself time and time again—within his realm—as a warrior to be reckoned with, the one thing he’d found most captivating, most
arousing,
in fact, was the one thing no other avatar could ever come close to giving him—the human capacity for unpredictability. Dante had had many lovers before, but those joinings had always been prescribed. It didn’t take away from the beauty of the act, or the pleasure one took in sharing lifetimes of memories and thoughts, but it always came down to what would you share and what would you not. With Marilynn, he not only didn’t know what would come out of her mouth, because he had no access to her memories or even her thoughts, he also had no idea
where
her mouth would end up—or her hands, or her anything, for that matter. He could of course teach her his pleasure points, not that much different from the human form avatarity had chosen to have itself represented as, but he could also teach her so very much more. How to adjust, hold, and examine those points; how to use that prowess to bring him to pleasurable and wonderfully unpredictable heights as well. He’d found it odd that though, with Marilynn, he could achieve a climax in almost the same way he’d had with previous lovers, also with Marilynn those climaxes became something ethereal, inexplicable. The pleasurable sensation, to his surprise, was accompanied by something he was pretty sure no other avatar had ever experienced with a human before: a deep and abiding love. It wasn’t to say that avatars did not love their humans or each other; they most certainly did. But it was to say that no avatar had ever
made
love to a human, and therefore felt that feeling that comes with a shared passion, shared belief, and ultimately, shared vulnerability.

The two lovers smiled at each other. “We should consider getting out of here,” Marilynn said. “You don’t want to be late for your first Cabinet meeting, O Secretary of Avatar Affairs.”

“Especially after all the hassle the President went through to get it past Congress,” he agreed. “Still, I am a bit surprised she added only one Cabinet seat. If something ever comes to a vote, it could be split four to four.”

Marilynn smiled at her lover’s naïveté. “Dante, don’t you get what’s happened?” She saw his confused expression and took pity on him. “There’s only one vote in the Cabinet now.” And with that, she disappeared from his data node and awoke in her apartment. She took a moment to make sure she was presentable and headed for the first meeting of the newly enlarged Cabinet. The day before had been a day of celebration in honor of Ceres’s having finally achieved a high but stable orbit around Saturn. But now it was time to get back to business.

Grand Terrace
The Cliff House
Ceres

Though it had the exact same dimensions and look as the balcony it had replaced, for reasons unknown, the former terrace had suddenly been dubbed by the press and populace as the Grand Terrace. Sandra, not wishing to brook public sentiment, at least not in the little things, had immediately accepted the name.

As Marilynn stepped out onto the terrace, she was glad to see that with the return of Cyrus Anjou to the Cabinet, the morning buffet was back as well. As usual, he was piling on sausage after sausage atop spoonfuls of scrambled eggs. Also, as usual, he could be heard complaining with great use of his vocabulary—this time about the fact that the sausage was from an inferior brand of protein paste, but that he would suffer the loss stoically.

Marilynn smiled, knowing full well that it had been Cyrus who’d ordered the buffet to match what his former constituents from Jupiter were getting in their emergency cafeterias set up all over the Saturnian subsystem. Fortunately for the Outer Alliance, that subsystem had, over the course of the war, become a major agricultural hub. And if Trang hadn’t been forced to turn back, it would also have been within weeks of being utterly destroyed, which would have made feeding the refugees impossible. Plans had even been drawn up to send the millions of Jovians who’d only just been revived back into suspension until a solution could be found. And while everyone had breathed a huge sigh of relief at the sudden turn of events, they’d also come up against another problem—certainly less daunting than the prospect of permanent death or resuspension, but no less problematic: How were they going to house and employ them all?

Cyrus was talking with his old friend Padamir; Tyler Sadma was sitting alone at the table, contentedly paring a Granny Smith apple; and Eleanor Rocheforte, formerly McKenzie, had just arrived, deep in conversation with Rabbi. Marilynn watched as Rabbi’s bodyguard, Agnes Goldstein, first checked in with Sergeant Holke. With a quick tip of the sergeant’s head, Marilynn watched the agent do a cursory sweep of the Grand Terrace and, clearly satisfied, dart out as quickly as she’d darted in. The Rabbi went over to the buffet and took only fruit, and even that, noticed Marilynn, on a separate plate he’d brought along.

When Sandra came in with Dante by her side, all conversation came to a sudden stop. A look from the President let everyone know they were being rude, and conversation quickly resumed—even if with furtive glances—at a slightly lower volume. Sandra did not get anything at the buffet, though, much to the surprise of everyone else, Dante did. As he approached the table, a plate appeared in his hand, and when he left he had a good-sized portion of eggs and sausage. This led Cyrus to ask the avatar a question about the eating habits of an avatar, and soon the two of them were engrossed in deep conversation.

As Marilynn watched the two in morbid fascination, Sandra sidled up to her new Secretary of Defense and in sotto voce asked, “So how long have you and the Secretary of Avatar Affairs been sleeping with each other?”

Marilynn paled. “I … you…”

Sandra smiled good-naturedly, waiting for her tongue-tied friend to recover.

“When did you find out?”

“Just now,” answered Sandra, equally as good-naturedly.

“Wow, am I
ever
off my game,” said Marilynn, chiding herself for being had so easily.

“Oh, please. I saw how you looked at him the moment we came in. Just because it’s inconceivable to most doesn’t mean it’s inconceivable to me. Remember,” she said with a wink, “I’m not from around these parts. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Since that night at the theater,” confessed Marilynn. “Am I in trouble, here?”

“Dunno,” answered Sandra, eyes sparkling humorously, “are you pregnant?”

Marilynn hiccuped a laugh. “Is that
even
possible?”

Now Sandra’s smile became mischievous. “In this, my dear,
you
are the expert.”

Marilynn’s face turned beet red, and since Sandra knew there were plenty of eyes on them at the moment, she covered for her friend by calling everyone to the table.

“I wish to welcome the latest member of the Cabinet, Dante, the new Secretary of Avatar Affairs. On behalf of all of us, I’d like to wish you all the best in your new office.” The comment was greeted with a smattering of polite applause as Dante shifted his torso forward and bowed in acknowledgment of the blessing.

After that, the Cabinet dived into the nuts and bolts of how the rebuild of the Alliance industrial capacity in the outer planets was going. The conclusion: slow, but the pace was accelerating.

The second part of the meeting dealt with the nascent Belter League and specifically how it was they’d managed to survive the Avatar Plague mostly intact. Interestingly, it was a result of the help they’d received from the UHF, a government that had only recently been murdering them in droves. Hektor had been prescient enough to send them the same programs he’d sent Trang, figuring in his eventual showdown with the Outer Alliance, he could use all the chits he could get. It also helped that for the long-suffering survivors of the asteroid belt, their information systems were so old, basic, and faltering that not many avatars bothered to live in them anymore. There were still some devastating losses, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been had the UHF not come to their aid. That singular act by Hektor had, strangely enough, made the asteroid belt a place of true neutrality. They didn’t forgive the UHF for what it had done, but they also knew the Alliance hadn’t done much to help out, either. The Belter League had control of one quarter of the Belt, but if left alone—at least according to the Security Secretary’s estimates—they’d control the whole thing in less than a year. Of course, if things got out of hand, a flotilla of twenty Alliance ships could always take care of the problem.

“It would be easy to deal with the Belter League, but pointless,” offered Sandra. “The real question is, what are we going to do about what’s currently going on in the UHF?”

“Do we have to do anything?” asked Rabbi. “It seems to me they have enough problems of their own. And we certainly have enough that we won’t be running out any time soon. They’re concentrated around Earth; we’re here at Saturn. Between the greater distances that separate us and the tsuris we both share—” On some Cabinet members’ blank stares, he realized he’d slipped into his Yiddish vernacular. “—sorry, ‘troubles’ we both share, maybe they’ll see reason and leave us alone.”

“Rabbi,” said Eleanor sadly, “
you
may be a reasonable man but seem to be making the mistake of assuming others are as well.” With the flick of a finger across the face of her DijAssist, Eleanor shot the other Cabinet officers a file she’d compiled of news reports and observations coming from what was left of the UHF. “As you can see,” she continued, “the UHF is blaming us for this, in its entirety.”

“Why aren’t they blaming the Core avatars?” asked Ayon.

Though everyone immediately looked to Dante, whose mouth had already opened to respond, it was Padamir who jumped in first. Surprised, all heads immediately swung toward the Secretary of Information.

“I’ve given this question a lot of thought. Despite all that’s happened, avatars still don’t seem quite real to the UHF. It’s far easier for them to believe that somehow the Alliance corrupted their avatars, turning them against the UHF.”

“It would also fit neatly,” added Ayon, “into the comfortable belief that the enemy that did this to them is the same one they’ve been fighting all along.”

“Denial, then,” said Marilynn.

“Yes. You have to understand the mass psychosis of a people living under the thumb of oppression. It’s a well-documented phenomenon that over time the rage and anger resulting from that oppression must find an outlet other than their own leaders; blaming them would clearly be counterproductive.”

“Which,” said Cyrus, “a permanent death or a shadow audit would decidedly be.”

Ayon nodded. “Hitler had the Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals; al-Bashir had the black West Africans; and Sambianco has us—”

“The rather despicable propagators of personal liberty and expressive freedom,” added Cyrus. “My deepest apologies,” he said with a slight bow, “for interrupting.”

Ayon smiled. “Blaming this all on us, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is unfortunately a well-trodden path.”

“Surely not
all
of the UHF can believe that?” asked Rabbi.

“Well,” answered Padamir, “there are those who feel the Alliance has been taken over by our avatars.” On noticing the smirks of some Cabinet members, he raised his brow. “Really. I’m not joking. They honestly believe that we’re doing the bidding of evil VR demons.” Padamir looked over to Dante. “No offense.” Dante nodded in understanding. “But they are the minority. Either way, it means that a majority of the population hates us and fears us like they never have before. Even those we might have once counted on to be reasonable.”

The room remained deathly silent for some time as everyone absorbed the new paradigm shift; even if the Alliance would be prepared to sue for peace, there was now no longer anyone to sue for peace with—even if they
did
get rid of Hektor Sambianco.

“So now what?” asked Rabbi.

“No choice,” answered Marilynn in swift response. “We attack, finish them off once and for all.”

“But—”

“Sorry, Rabbi. They’ve left us no choice. Do nothing, and they slowly rebuild, their hatred simmering with every generation, each with its own Hektor Sambianco. Cripple them now when they’re weak and at their lowest, and we might … just might have a shot of winning this thing and getting them off our backs for good.”

Though it was Marilynn who’d spoken, all eyes now rested on Sandra. Her face remained placid. Her nonresponse was answer enough, and no sooner had everyone turned to look at her than J. D. Black strode onto the Grand Terrace. Without thought, the entire Cabinet rose to its feet. Tellingly, only Sandra remained in her chair, and it was clear by J.D.’s bowed head in the direction of the President that that was just fine with her.

All business, J.D. pointed her DijAssist toward the table, bringing up a holographic display of the current theater of war. “Madam President, members of the Cabinet,” she began, “we have them.”