Griffin's Egg

"What did I really learn?  That people will play whatever role you put them in.  They'll do it without knowing that that's what they're doing.  Take a minority, tell them they're special, and make them guards--they'll start playing Guard."

"So what's the answer?  How do we keep from getting caught up in the roles we play?"

"Damned if I know, Weil.  Damned if I know."

Ekatarina had moved her niche to the far end of a new tu

"Hey!  You've restored--"  He stopped.  If radio reception had been restored, he'd have known.  It would have been the talk of the Center.  Which meant that radio contact had never really been completely broken.  It was simply being controlled by the CMP.

Ekatarina looked up at him.  She'd been crying, but she'd stopped.  "The Swiss Orbitals are gone!" she whispered.  "They hit them with everything from softbombs to brilliant pebbles.  They dusted the shipyards."

The scope of all those deaths obscured what she was saying for a second.  He sank down beside her.  "But that means--"

"There's no spacecraft that can reach us, yes.  Unless there's a ship in transit, we're stranded here."

He took her in his arms.  She was cold and shivering.  Her skin felt clammy and mottled with gooseflesh.  "How long has it been since you've had  any sleep?" he asked sharply.

"I can't--"

"You're wired, aren't you?"

"I can't afford to sleep.  Not now.  Later."

"Ekatarina.  The energy you get from wire isn't free.  It's only borrowed from your body.  When you come down, it all comes due.  If you wire yourself up too tightly, you'll crash yourself right into a coma."

"I haven't been--"  She stalled, and a confused, uncertain look entered her eyes. "Maybe you're right.  I could probably use a little rest."

The CMP came to life.  "Cadre Nine is building a radio receiver.  Ezumi gave them the go-ahead."

"Shit!"  Ekatarina sat bolt upright.  "Can we stop it?"

"Moving against a universally popular project would cost you credibility you ca

"Okay, so how can we minimize the--"

"Ekatarina," Gunther said.  "Sleep, remember?"

"In a sec, babe."  She patted the futon.  "You just lie down and wait for me.  I'll have this wrapped up before you can nod off."  She kissed him gently, lingeringly.  "All right?"

"Yeah, sure."  He lay down and closed his eyes, just for a second.

When he awoke, it was time to go on shift, and Ekatarina was gone.

It was only the fifth day since Vladivostok.  But everything was so utterly changed that times before then seemed like memories of another world.  In a previous life I was Gunther Weil, he thought.  I lived and worked and had a few laughs.  Life was pretty good then.

He was still looking for Sally Chang, though with dwindling hope.  Now, whenever he talked to suits he'd ask if they needed his help.  Increasingly, they did not.

The third-level chapel was a shallow bowl facing the terrace wall.  Tiger lilies grew about the chancel area at the bottom, and turquoise lizards skittered over the rock.  The children were playing with a ball in the chancel.  Gunther stood at the top, chatting with a sad-voiced Ryohei Iomato.

The children put away the ball and began to dance.  They were playing London Bridge.  Gunther watched them with a smile.  From above they were so many spots of color, a flower unfolding and closing in on itself.  Slowly, the smile faded.  They were dancing too well.  Not one of the children moved out of step, lost her place, or walked away sulking.  Their expressions were intense, self-absorbed, inhuman.  Gunther had to turn away.

"The CMP controls them," Iomato said.  "I don't have much to do, really.  I go through the vids and pick out games for them to play, songs to sing, little exercises to keep them healthy.  Sometimes I have them draw."

"My God, how can you stand it?"

Iomato sighed.  "My old man was an alcoholic.  He had a pretty rough life, and at some point he started drinking to blot out the pain.  You know what?"

"It didn't work."

"Yah.  Made him even more miserable.  So then he had twice the reason to get drunk.  He kept on trying, though, I've got to give him that.  He wasn't the sort of man to give up on something he believed in just because it wasn't working the way it should."

Gunther said nothing.

"I think that memory is the only thing keeping me from just taking off my helmet and joining them."

The Corporate Video Center was a narrow run of offices in the farthest tu

It was u

He doused a last light and stepped into the gloomy hall.  Two suits with interwoven H-and-A logos loomed up out of the shadows.  He jumped in shock.  The suits did not move.  He laughed wryly at himself, and pushed past.  They were empty, of course--there were no Hyundai Aerospace components among the unafflicted.  Someone had simply left these suits here in temporary storage before the madness.

The suits grabbed him.

"Hey!"  He shouted in terror as they seized him by the arms and lifted him off his feet.  One of them hooked the peecee from his harness and snapped it off.  Before he knew what was happening he'd been swept down a  short flight of stairs and through a doorway.

"Mr. Weil."

He was in a high-ceilinged room carved into the rock to hold air-handling equipment that hadn't been constructed yet.  A high string of temporary work lamps provided dim light.  To the far side of the room a suit sat behind a desk, flanked by two more, standing.  They all wore Hyundai Aerospace suits.  There was no way he could identify them.

The suits that had brought him in crossed their arms.

"What's going on here?" Gunther asked.  "Who are you?"

"You are the last person we'd tell that to."  He couldn't tell which one had spoken.  The voice came over his radio, made sexless and impersonal by an electronic filter.  "Mr. Weil, you stand accused of crimes against your fellow citizens.  Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"What?"  Gunther looked at the suits before him and to either side.  They were perfectly identical, indistinguishable from each other, and he was suddenly afraid of what the people within might feel free to do, armored as they were in anonymity.  "Listen, you've got no right to do this.  There's a governmental structure in place, if you've got any complaints against me."

"Not everyone is pleased with Izmailova's government," the judge said.

"But she controls the CMP, and we could not run Bootstrap without the CMP controlling the flicks," a second added.

"We simply have to work around her."  Perhaps it was the judge; perhaps it was yet another of the suits.  Gunther couldn't tell.

"Do you wish to speak on your own behalf?"

"What exactly am I charged with?" Gunther asked desperately.  "Okay, maybe I've done something wrong, I'll entertain that possibility.  But maybe you just don't understand my situation.  Have you considered that?"