Rollback

"Hello, Ms. Hashimoto," Don said. "It’s Donald Halifax."

Her voice became slightly cold. They had, after all, butted heads repeatedly during his many attempts to reach McGavin back in the spring. "Yes, Mr. Halifax?"

"Don’t worry. I’m not calling about the rollback. And, in fact, it’s not me who’s calling at all. I just dialed the phone for my wife, Sarah. She’d like to speak to Mr. McGavin about the Dracon message."

"Ah," said Ms. Hashimoto. "That would be fine. Please hold. I’ll put you through."

Don covered the mouthpiece and spoke to Sarah. "She’s putting the call through."

Sarah motioned for him to give her the phone, but he held up a hand, palm out. After a moment, the familiar Bostonian accent came on. "Cody McGavin speaking."

"Mr. McGavin," said Don, with great relish, "please hold for Dr. Sarah Halifax." He then counted silently to ten before handing the handset to Sarah, who was gri

"Hello, Mr. McGavin," Sarah said.

Don moved close enough so that he could hear both sides of the conversation. It wasn’t hard, given that the handset had automatically pumped up its volume when Sarah had taken it. "Sarah, how are you?" McGavin said.

"I’m fine. And I’ve got big news. I’ve decrypted the Dracon message."

Don could practically hear McGavin jumping up and down. "Wonderful! What does it say?"

"I— I don’t want to say over the phone."

"Oh, come on, Sarah—"

"No, no. You never know who’s eavesdropping."

"God, all right. We’ll fly you down here again, and—"

"Um, could you come here? I’m not really feeling up to flying these days."

Don could hear McGavin blowing out air. "It’s our a

"All right," said Sarah. "How about Friday, then?"

"Well, I could. But can’t you just email me the decryption key, so I can look at the message here?"

"No. I’m not prepared to divulge it."

"What?"

"The message was intended for me alone," Sarah said.

There was a long pause. Don could only imagine the incredulous look that must be on McGavin’s face.

"Sarah, is, um, is Don still there? Maybe I could have a word with him…"

"I’m not senile, Mr. McGavin. What I’m saying is absolutely true. If you want to know what the message says, you’re going to have to come here."

"Oh, all right, but—"

"And don’t tell anyone that I’ve found the decryption key. You have to promise to keep this secret, at least until you get here."

"All right. Let me get the details of where you are…"

After she got off the phone, Don looked around. "Gunter does such a good job of keeping the place clean, I guess there’s not much we have to do to get ready for McGavin’s visit."

"There is one thing," Sarah said. "I want you to take the Dracon survey."

Don was surprised. "Why?"

She didn’t quite meet his eyes. "We’ll be talking a lot with McGavin about it. You should be up to speed on it."

"I’ll read it over."

"No, don’t just do that." She sounded emphatic. "Actually fill it out."

He raised his eyebrows. "If you like."

"I do. Go get your datacom; you can download a copy from the official response website."

He nodded. It was hardly as though he had anything better to do. "All right."

Once he’d loaded the survey, he lay down on the couch and started working through the questions. It took almost two hours, but finally he called out, "Done!"

Sarah made her way slowly into the living room, and he handed her the datacom.

"Now what?" he said.

She looked at the device. "Save as ‘Answers Don,’" she said to it. "Run Flaxseed.

Load Answers Don. Load and unlock Answers Sarah Revised — passphrase ‘Aeolus 14 umbra.’ Execute."

"What are you doing?" Don said, sitting up. "What’s ‘Flaxseed’?"

"It’s a program an ethics prof designed years ago, when we were studying the million-plus sets of survey responses that were uploaded to our website. It measures the degree of agreement between respondents. See, comparing survey responses is a bit tricky. Many of the eighty-four questions have four or five possible answers, or use graduated scales, so you can’t just look for exact matches — two answers that are different might only be subtly different. A person who chooses ‘A’ might be thinking along the same lines as someone who chose ‘B,’ while someone who picked ‘C’ clearly has a different mind-set."

"Ah," said Don. He gestured at the datacom Sarah was holding. "And?"

She glanced down at the display, then looked back up at him, a smile on her face. "I knew there was a reason I married you."

Chapter 39

"Cody McGavin arrives tomorrow," Sarah said, "and there’s something we should discuss before he gets here."

They were sitting at the dining-room table, drinking coffee. "Yes?" Don said.

"It’s just that I won’t be able to do what the aliens want," she said.

He made his voice soft. "I know."

Light was streaming in through the window. Don could see Gunter outside, raking leaves.

"So," she continued, "I’ve got to find somebody else to do it, if we’re going to do it at all."

He considered this. "You could use that Flaxseed program to see who else of the original respondents had replies close to yours."

She nodded. "I did that. Of the thousand sets of responses we sent, there were only two that were really close to mine. But God knows who they belonged to."

"Didn’t you keep records?"

"It was an anonymous survey. Professional pollsters told us we’d get much more honest answers that way. Besides, even if we had asked for names, we wouldn’t have been able to keep them. The website was at U of T, remember, and you know what Canadian privacy laws are like."

"Ah." He took a sip of coffee.

"Of course, each participant got to chose a login name and a password, which we told them to keep secure. But even if we had the names, it might not have done any good."

"Why not?"

"As I said before, McGavin was probably right, back at his office, when he said that most advanced races would likely be very long-lived. Indeed, since the Dracons apparently have ring-shaped chromosomes, they might in fact have always lived a very long time, since they’d have avoided one of our principal causes of aging.

Anyway, although it probably never even occurred to them that anyone they were replying to might be dead a mere thirty-eight years later, probably half of those who originally filled out the survey have passed on by now."

"I suppose that’s true," he said.

"But," said Sarah, looking sideways at him, "you and I had very similar answers."

"So you said."

"So, maybe, I mean, if you wanted to…"

"What?"

"You could do it. You could look after the Dracon children."

Don felt his eyebrows going up. "Me?"

"Well, you and Gunter, I suppose." She smiled. "I mean, he’s a Mozo; he’s designed to look after the elderly, but taking care of alien children can’t be much more difficult than looking after a crazy old bat like me."

Don’s head was swimming. "I — I don’t know what to say."

"Well, think about it," she said. "Because you’re definitely my first choice."

Months ago, when Sarah and Don were contemplating rolling back, Carl had said they’d have to do more babysitting — but that seemed to have fallen by the wayside when Sarah’s rejuvenation had failed. But tonight Carl and Angela had dropped Percy and Cassie off at the house on Betty A