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There was a moment of silence. Then Luciente spoke. “We thank the council. Though we will never know where or who, we know some part of Jackrabbit lives.”
After they had returned to the sun slanting bright over the fields, the huts, the yellow hump of the brooder, she asked Luciente, “What was that? I don’t understand.”
“What? … Oh, the decision.” Luciente swayed slightly. “Very rarely that is done. When somebody dies young who was unusually talented, as a kind of living memorial their exact genetic mix is given to a new baby. You never know where. Nobody knows. Records are not kept. We know nurture counts more heavily than genetics once you’ve weeded out the negative genes, but still it is a memorial. It eases the mind strangely to know that a baby Jackrabbit will again be born somewhere, nine months from now.”
“I suppose …”
“I am too weary to send more, Co
She felt herself slowly sinking into her bed. A nurse was sitting beside her and as soon as her eyelids fluttered, the nurse called out. “She’s coming around. Quick, tell Dr. Morgan. He’s sleeping down the hall.”
Her ability to stay in the future amazed her. They had been trying to rouse her since the evening before. This time, locked into Luciente, she had not even felt them. She watched the fuss through narrowed eyes. They were scared. She could feel Dr. Morgan’s fear whining like a saw blade cutting wood. What they had stuffed into her head was experimental and they did not want a death.
Morgan and Redding muttered long, and Argent, when he dropped by late in the morning, looked glum and edgy. He eyed her, questioned the nurses briskly, frowned and frowned. Redding paced and muttered and then went in with a hypodermic and a local anaesthetic and changed the medication the dialysis bag was leaking into her.
“That ought to settle it,” Redding said cheerfully, but he frowned at her skull as if he would like to take it all apart.
A new watchfulness surrounded her. She was sorry to see that Tina and Sybil were genuinely frightened. Tina nagged her to eat and buzzed between window and door like an angry fly. When Tina was in the day room, Co
“All right! You were unconscious for twelve hours! How can that be all right?”
“Sybil, don’t worry! Please. The only thing wrong with me is what they got stuck in my head. And I’m doing what I can to get it out Believe me.”
“They’re frightened.” Sybil’s eyes were somber. “They put off the implants scheduled for Monday, until they figure out what’s happening to you.”
“Good! That’s my first victory. Tina was scheduled for Monday.” With Luciente’s help, she might be able to scare them again. What else could she do? It was the only way she could see to struggle.
SEVENTEEN
Every day for a week she tried to summon Luciente, but without success. Once she felt herself slipping into that other future, till she drew back with horror. Why couldn’t she call Luciente? Since they had implanted the dialytrode, she had not been able to reach over on her own, not to the right future, the one she wanted.
She was more lightly doped and time blurred by less dimly. Tina was caught trying to slip out of the ward in a laundry cart, and put into seclusion for two days. When Tina was let out, dizzy and twitching with drugs, Co
“I only got four days. I’m scheduled for Monday.”
In the orange and beige patient lounge, Alice sat in front of the TV, smiling in a slack way. She watched whatever moved in front of her. Co
The next Monday, after they had wheeled out Captain Cream and Tina to be implanted, she cast herself on her bed and flung herself toward Luciente, she did not care how. The going over was rocky. For a time the ward dimmed and yet she did not arrive in the future. She passed out. It was more like fainting than falling asleep. But at last she stood with Luciente’s hands on her shoulders in a small clearing. Outcroppings of gray‑green stone. Pine needles lay everywhere, drifted against the rocks. Luciente wore a brown and green jumpsuit uniform.
“Where are we?”
“Near the front,” Luciente said. “We’ve gone up.”
“Is that why I couldn’t reach you?”
“Communing’s been harder. Something is interfering. Probability static? Temporal vectors are only primitively grasped … . I tried to reach you before we shipped out, but since then I’ve been too jammed.”
“Where’s your ke
“Back at the foco. We take them off for fear we’ll use them without thinking. They can home on the frequencies. We use these for locator‑talkers.” Luciente touched a small netted egg around her neck. “I myself, I confess, I feel naked without my ke
“Suppose it got lost?”
“I’d lose two‑thirds of my memory … . Marigold at Treefrog had an accident in which both left arm and ke
Bee came pacing along a trail toward them, carrying a piece of equipment on his back. He looked larger than ever here, and unusually alert. His smile still spoke of luxurious calm and su
“It’s begi
Both Bee and Luciente giggled without malice and petted her, exclaiming how stiff and bristly the half‑inch hair felt. She did not mind their teasing because it carried affection and besides, she knew how fu
Bee clucked over the plug in her scalp. “This can’t be good. What have they in there?”
“Something to control me. A machine.”
Bee looked wasted with sadness, that expression from the begi
She laughed shortly, disentangling herself. “How can I?”
“Can I give you tactics?” Bee turned her chin back toward him. “There’s always a thing you can deny an oppressor, if only your allegiance. Your belief. Your cooping. Often even with vastly unequal power, you can find or force an opening to fight back. In your time many without power found ways to fight. Till that became a power.”
“But you’re still fighting. It isn’t over yet!”
“How is it ever over?” Luciente waved a hand. “In time the sun goes nova. Big bang. What else? We renew, regenerate. Or die.”
“But you don’t seem to believe really in more–not more people, more things, or even more money.”
Luciente leaned against a pine, her fingers playing with the ridged bark. “Someday the gross repair will be done. The oceans will be balanced, the rivers flow clean, the wetlands and the forests flourish. There’ll be no more enemies. No Them and Us. We can quarrel joyously with each other about important matters of idea and art. The vestiges of old ways will fade. I can’t know that time–any more than you can ultimately know us. We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”