Glasshouse

"Merge the—there are more?"

"So I'm told." She shrugs. "They're introducing us in small stages, so that we know who our neighbors are before we get linked into a large community and everything goes to pieces."

"Isn't that a bit of a pessimistic attitude?" I ask.

"Maybe so." She flashes me a rare grin. "But it's a realistic one."

I think I'm going to like Janis, her ironic sense of humor notwithstanding: I feel comfortable around her. We're going to work well together. "And the other stuff? The restricted archive? The computer?"

She waves it off. "All you need to know is, once a week Fiore comes and we unlock the closed room and leave him alone in it for an hour ortwo. If he wants to take any papers away, we log them and nag him until he brings them back."

"Anyone else?"

"Well." She looks thoughtful. "If the Bishop shows up, you give him access to all areas." She pulls a face. "And don't ask me about the computer, nobody told me much about how to use it, and I don't really understand the thing, but if you want to tinker with it during a slack period, be my guest. Just remember everything is logged." She catches my eye. "Everything," she repeats, with quiet emphasis.

My pulse quickens. "On the computer? Or off it?"

"Book withdrawals," she says. "Possibly even what pages people look at. You notice they're all hardcovers? You'd be surprised how small even the dark age technés could make a tracking device. You could build them into book spines, able to sense which pages the reader was opening the book to. All without violating protocol."

"But protocol—" I stop. The television doesn't look very complex, technically, but is it? Really? What goes into a machine like that? There must be either cameras or a really complex rendering system . . .

"The dark ages weren't just dark, they were fast. We're talking about the period when our ancestors went from needing an abacus to add two numbers together to building the first emotional machines. They went from witch doctors with poisonous chemicals—who couldn't even reattach a cleanly severed limb—to tissue regeneration, full control of the proteome and genome, and growing body parts to order. From using rockets to get into orbit to the first tethered lift systems. And they did all that in less than three gigs, ninety old-time years."

She pauses for a sip of tea. "It is very easy for us moderns to underestimate the dark age orthos. But it's a habit you'll shed after you've been here for a while, and to give them their due, the clergy—the experimenters—have been here longer than the rest of us. Even Harshaw, and he works for them." She pronounces his name with distaste, and I wonder what he's done to offend her.

"You think they've got more of a handle on this than we do?" I ask, intrigued.

"Damn right." (Yes, she says "damn": she's obviously getting into the spirit of things, speaking in the archaic slang the real old-timers would have used.) "I think there's more going on here than meets the eye. They've made a lot more progress toward stabilizing this society than you'd expect for just five megs of runtime." Her eyes flicker sharply toward a corner of the room right above the door, and I follow the direction of her gaze. "In part it's because they can see everything, hear everything, including this. In part."

"But surely that's not all?"

She smiles at me enigmatically. "Break's over, kid. Time to go back to work."

I get home late, bone-tired from filing returned books and standing behind a counter for hours. I have a gnawing sense of apprehension as I walk in the door. The lights are on in the living room and I can hear the television. I head for the kitchen first to get something to eat, and that's where I am when Sam finds me.

"Where've you been?" he demands.

"Work." I attack a tin of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread tiredly.

"Oh." Pause. "So what are you doing?"

He's put the butter in the refrigerator so it's as hard as a rock. "Training to be the new city librarian. Three days a week at present, but it's an eleven-hour day."

"Oh."

He bends over to put a dirty plate in the washing machine. I manage to stop him just in time—it's full of clean stuff. "No, you need to unload it first, okay?"

"Huh." He looks irritated. "So the city needs a new librarian?"

"Yes." I don't owe him any explanations, do I? Do I?

"Do you know Janis?"

"Janis—" He looks thoughtful. "No. I didn't even know we had a library."

"She's leaving in a couple of months, and they need someone to replace her."

He begins to remove plates from the bottom tray in the washing machine and stack them on the work-top. "She doesn't like the job? If it's so bad, why are you taking it?"

"It's not that." I finally get the soup out of the can and into a saucepan on the red-glowing burner. "She's leaving because she's pregnant." I turn round to watch him. He's focusing on the dishwasher, pointedly ignoring me. Still sulking, I suspect.

"Pregnant? Huh." He sounds a little surprised. "Why would anyone want to have a baby in—"

"We're fertile, Sam."

I manage to catch the plates he was unloading just in time. I straighten up, about half a meter from his nose, and he's too flustered to avoid my gaze.

"We're fertile ?"

"That's what Janis says, and judging by her state, I think she's probably got the evidence to prove it." I scowl at him for a moment, then turn back to the soup pan. "Got a bowl for me?"

"Ye-yes." The poor guy sounds genuinely shaken. I don't blame him—I've had a few hours to think about it, and I'm still getting used to the idea. "I'll just find one—"

"Think about it. We signed up to join the study knowing it would run for a hundred megs, yes? Fu

"But I, I—I mean, you could have—" Sam holds a soup bowl in front of himself as if it's some kind of shield, and he's trying to keep me at bay.

I glare at him. "Don't say it."

"I—" He swallows. "Here, take it."

I take the bowl.

"I think I know what you thought I was going to say and you're right and I take it back even though I didn't say it. All right?" He says it very fast, ru

"You didn't say it."

I put the bowl down very carefully, because there really is no need to throw it at his head, and also because, once I calm down a fraction, I realize that in point of fact he's right, and he didn't say that if I'd fucked him the other night and become pregnant it would have been all my own fault. Smart Sam.

"It takes two to hold a grudge match." I lick my lips. "Sam, I'm very sorry about the other night." What comes next is hard to force out. "I shouldn't have taken advantage of you. I've been going through a bad patch, but that's no excuse. I'm not—I've never been—particularly good at self-restraint, but it won't happen again." And if it does, you won't get an apology like this, that's for sure. "Much as I like you, you're not big on poly and this, this shit—" My shoulders are shaking.

"You don't have to apologize," he says, and takes a step forward. Before I know what's happening he's hugging me, and it really is good to feel his arms around me. "It's my fault, too. I should have more self-control and I knew all along you were getting interested in me, and I shouldn't have put myself in a position where you might have thought—"