70 - Act Normally

The dining room at the Cameron house was crammed full of people for Terry’s coming home party.  Too bad most of the people there he couldn’t stand, overdressed in a place that was much too warm. Other than that it was quite a pleasant morning tea.

The women were all present, decorative, beautifully dressed and completely silent reflections of their menfolk.  Their Keepers, drawn by a discretely raised hand... some had been with the elderly ladies they escorted that the twist of a head or a raised eyebrow was enough to bring him in close so she could whisper in his ear what she wished to say.

Keepers were obvious just from the positions they took at the elbows of those for whom they spoke, but every one of them wore his chain of office over his morning coat.  Most women didn’t wear the key to that chain openly on her wrist or throat, though it would have been perfectly acceptable.  After all, the woman was truly the one in charge of her Keeper who spoke for her.

They looked like peacock snakes basking in the heat of the room his mother had decorated a generation ago when his father achieved Technician Second Class.  It had white neo-silk panels on the walls, edged with a tiny gilt border, the raw silk had grey highlights in its depths that echoed the white stone tiles on the floor, while the white and gold carpet kept things warm underfoot.  It had to reflect the glory of the family, of course.

Mirrors hung over the fireplace and were set in place between the floor to ceiling windows looking out over the tiny garden that was full of earthan planets, carefully tended inside the walls.  The walls, of course, were the walls of the neighbours’ gardens in the whole row and everyone pretended there was a vast estate on the other side of those garden walls.  Gerry had had a gazebo built in the bottom of the garden where the horse was parked in its niche until needed.

“Terry... do come and tell us about how it was being the only man on the moon!”  That was Reg, a friend whom he’d gone to school with, and who had somehow managed to escape maturity even though he’d grown taller.

“It was quiet, I assure you,” Terry managed, over his tea cup.  He put a smile on his face even when he wanted to rip all of this protocol off and run screaming along the back mews all the way out to where Xanadu stopped and fell away to the sand below.  “I read my books and wrote my letters.  I saw the couriers come and go from there, to here, and then on to there again.”

“But to interact with the modern people of the corps!  How exciting!”

He had to blink at Reg’s burbling.  Is he trying to make me say something subversive? If so, he was doing a horrid job.   

“I love the cut of your coat, Reginald. So smart.  You must have a new tailor, hmmm?”

“Oh, yes, an illiterate I’ve found all by myself!  Well, my man found him really.  Down in Low Town.  You must come with me and get a new wardrobe done before you go back up into the wilds of the moon.”

“Indeed.  Excuse me, Reg.  I’ll only be a moment.”

“Sure!”

It was as though his seed had opened up vast possibilities in his head that he had never considered before.  Before, he’d been like Reg, and like Jim and Harry... When had that all changed?  It had certainly been before he’d found out about Gerry’s little problems with Prime.  He closed the door of his private restroom and stood looking at himself in the mirror.  He hadn’t needed to use the facilities, but the excuse afforded him some privacy.

His seed blinked suddenly, the icon in the corner of his awareness.  Unthinking he tried again to access his code and his programs began unfolding as they had on the moon.  He smiled, astonished and then fell to his knees as Prime’s security spiked into his brain.  The pain was as if someone had heated an ice pick and driven it into his head through his eyes.

He managed not to cry out, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes as if to hold them in place, frantically shutting down, hiding, cancelling requests, pulling his awareness away from his code as hard as he could, like pouring a bucket of ice water onto his own head.  He touched the cold water tap on, with one flailing hand and splashed actual water over his head, soaking his cravat and his coat.

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh endarkened hell.  You asshole, you sinsuka!  You gibreet!”  He clenched his teeth and dragged himself up to standing, by the edge of the basin. “I am going to find out how to get at my data without your gibreet programs turning my head into mush!” The hammered metal flowers all around his basin cut into his hands he held on so tightly, until his balance came back and he could catch his breath. “Someone tried to contact my programs.  Someone I wanted to talk to.”

He straightened slowly and shook out his hands, ran them through his hair.  His cravat was ruined but he could change that... and his coat... before he had to go back down to the party.  Act normally.  You are only capable of learning so much.  You’re a Tech Second Class.  Deep breath. Pretend you are mildly ill, perhaps too much sherry last night.  Act normally.