Nobody’s Baby #4
“You sent it to the reclamation center, yes,” I replied.
“But did you know: Everything that the reclamation center destroys, the Fairweather first makes a record of? A perfect scan, down to the last molecule. Civilians can’t access these plans—but detectives can.
And we can replicate them.” I put a hand on the flat metal edge.
“Members of the Board, Mr. Godfrey’s altered skimmer is as much a blunt instrument as a hammer, or a brick, or a stone.
Used repeatedly, it breaks down entire chains of recollection, until what’s left is fragile as a cobweb.
Flora was using this for at least three months—until she collapsed.
She was reembodied and her memories restored from the Library, which dated to before the birth of her son. To her, it was as if he never existed.”
“So the baby was left alone?” a Board member asked.
“Of course not,” I replied. “Flora was a careful, caring mother, as her diary from those months proves. She would never leave her child alone, not even for a simple errand. She left him with Mr. Godfrey.” I smiled. “And I can prove it. Or rather—Mr. Godfrey can.”
Everyone stared at the witness, who could only stare back.
I stepped away and wheeled out a small screen as Baxenden stepped forward, along with Gaskill, who’d come to be a show of strength at my request. Gaskill clamped one hand on each of Norris’s shoulders, and Baxenden lifted the skimmer toward Norris’s head.
His eyes shot wide when he realized what we meant to do. “No!” he cried. “Please!”
But Baxenden was ruthless. I’d insisted on it. Gaskill held tight as Baxenden fixed the brim in place and pressed the switch to begin projecting. A jumble of light and color flashed onto the screen, a kaleidoscope of ghosts and images and rooms.
“Show us the last time Flora saw her son,” I said.
Norris clamped his mouth and eyes mulishly shut, but the skimmer did its job against his will: The images coalesced into a view of the apartment in Forward Port Six.
Flora, pale and shaky, handing her son over to Norris and then walking out the door.
Norris began playing with the child, the baby silently laughing in delight, until the real Norris began to get control back and the image started to fray.
“Now show us two days ago, when you tried to kidnap him,” I said.
Norris shook his head sharply in refusal—but it was like those word games where someone tells you not to think of green elephants.
The memory obeys, even as the will objects.
We watched—all of us, witnesses and detectives and Board members—as Norris expertly wiped the lock on an apartment door and crept in the dark toward Ruthie and Peregrine, blissfully asleep.
My nephew’s whisper of “Crimes Committed!” mercifully went unmarked by anyone except John and myself.
Norris’s memories faded again, and I continued my explanation.
“When Flora was brought to Medical, she stopped responding to Anne Godfrey’s notes.
Anne grew concerned, and after a full day had passed she went in search of Flora’s new apartment, despite all Flora’s warnings to keep away.
She found the apartment and found the baby, on his own.
” I turned to our witness, sagging on the stand.
“I assume you had been called away on official business of some kind?”
Norris was now a beaten man, visibly nauseous and yearning for the end. “I was planning on coming back,” he said. “It’s not like the child was going to walk away on his own.”
“Not as such, no,” I said. “But Anne found him, and believed Flora had been turned back into a baby—she had been projecting a film called The Follies of Youth, and—”
“Yes, we’ve all seen it,” the Chair interrupted.
“We had a private screening for the Board last week,” the member on the end confirmed, with a little nod to Anne. “Most entertaining.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, that’s—that’s—well.” I cleared my throat and pressed onward.
“Anne conveyed the baby to my nephew, Mr. Rutherford Talmadge IV, who brought the child to my attention. We determined parentage and unraveled the chain of events that led to the child’s creation.
I recommend the Crime Committee be convened to charge Mr. Godfrey with manslaughter, or at the very least with reckless endangerment. ”
I nodded at Baxenden, who removed the skimmer. Norris’s eyes glistened with tears of horror, his face mottled with dread and rage. “You fiendish woman,” he hissed. “You could have killed me!”
“With that?” I waved at the skimmer. “Unlikely. That’s the Palace’s skimmer, which you repaired with your own hands.
Perfectly safe, since you weren’t trying to erase any of your mother’s memories.
Quite the opposite, in fact.” As Norris gaped, I only smiled, permitting myself a tiny flash of well-earned smugness.
“I’m afraid I had to mislead you a little, in the interest of getting you to show us the truth. ”
“Excuse me, Miss Gentleman.” A Board member broke in, over Norris’s wordless outraged sounds. “One more question. Why did Mr. Godfrey attempt to kidnap the child?”
“Didn’t I mention?” I said. “He thought the baby was a witness.”
Everyone looked at Peregrine, who had his hand in his mouth up to the wrist.
“Really?” the Chair asked, dripping with skepticism.
“It was the first thing he said on the witness stand. I quote: ‘I suppose he’s already told you everything.’”
Norris’s mouth went slack. “You said he had!”
“He cannot yet speak,” I said. “How would he have told us anything?”
“The skimmer!” Norris sputtered. “Obviously!”
“Well, that is an intriguing thought,” I said with a grin. “Shall we try it?”
Norris was moved aside by Gaskill, and Ruthie brought Peregrine forward to the witness chair. The skimmer tottered a little on his small head until Ruthie steadied it with one hand. “There’s a good little man,” he murmured, amused.
I stepped forward and crouched, so my face was level with Peregrine’s and his eyes fixed on me. “Hullo, little one,” I said, low and soft and fond.
His face creased into a smile.
I couldn’t see what happened on the screen behind me, but there was a general gasp of astonishment. It fizzed in my veins like applause.
I whispered a few more things to Peregrine, then stood up and turned back to the board. “My nephew has been caring for the child the past few days,” I said, and waved Ruthie in front.
My nephew’s eyes widened and his cheek paled a little, but his lip refused to quiver as he stepped around and beamed down at Peregrine.
“Your hat’s at quite a rakish angle, little man,” he said, crouching down as I had.
“What will the society papers think?” Peregrine chortled as Ruthie tweaked his nose, and waved his hands imperiously.
And this time I could see what the baby was unwittingly projecting.
Ruthie’s face was up there—weirdly proportioned and rippling like a sheet on a clothesline, but recognizable all the same.
It had a kind of shimmer to it, a swirl of color that bubbled up and out, and it kept melting into other expressions.
The color of Ruthie’s tie changed abruptly, and I realized it was switching between the one he wore today and the one he’d worn yesterday at the Antikythera Club.
“And now,” I said, “let’s see what his mother’s face shows us.” And I beckoned Flora up to the front of the room.
She was anxious, I could see, but she trusted me enough to come forward. Ruthie stepped back behind Peregrine as Flora slowly bent to look at her son close up. “Hello there,” she whispered.
The images exploded.
Bright colors, painfully vivid. Flora’s face but slightly older, with a slightly different nose and a different cut to her hair. Flora laughing, Flora in darkness, Flora reaching out for an embrace.
The real Flora turned and stared at her own reflection, at the love she no longer remembered so evident in her face.
Surprisingly, it was Ruthie who spoke next. “You said he was too young to form memories,” he said. He looked a little heartbroken watching Flora and Peregrine, and no wonder.
“He makes them,” I replied. “He just doesn’t keep them.
Not for more than a few weeks, anyway. As he gets older his brain will start holding on to things longer and longer.
” I turned back to the Board. “I recommend we begin archiving Peregrine in the Library when he turns one, and every three months or so after that.”
“Hang on,” said the Chair. “We haven’t even begun to address the question of the child’s status yet.”
“Well, we’d better do it quick,” I said.
“The Charter holds equality of access to the Library and Medical as one of our founding principles. We have the right to be archived, and the right to reembodiment. The older this child gets, the more galling it’s going to be that he isn’t permitted to preserve himself the way the rest of us are. ”
“Do we really want to reward this kind of behavior, though?” the mustached Board member sputtered.
“His parents did not conceive him on purpose, and couldn’t have if they tried,” I argued.
“If you prefer, think of it not as a reward, but as imposing an obligation: He is required to update his memory-book every three months. This requirement also demands he be reembodied, so as to continue updating his memories. Without your help, he will die in thirty, fifty, seventy-five years or so.” I felt my mouth quirk.
“You, as the Board, could sentence him to life.”
A hum went across the dais, as Board members turned to mutter to one another. “And his mother would be raising him?”
“Not necessarily,” I said, keeping my voice level, though I wanted to shout with the joy of almost-triumph. “Rutherford Talmadge IV and John Pengelly have applied for custody. The paperwork is only waiting on your approval.”
Flora looked up at Ruthie, relief stark on her face. “You would be taking care of him?”
Ruthie nodded, swallowing hard.
Flora stood, her knees only a little wobbly. “Could—could I come visit, from time to time?”
Ruthie smiled even as tears sprang to his eyes. “I would like that.”
Flora spun on her heel to glare at the Board. “As his mother, I support Mr. Talmadge’s custody petition.”
“As does his father,” said Hugh Renois, rising to his feet in the audience.
“Any opposition?” The Chair looked at the audience and then to his fellow Board members, who performed a series of shrugs, scowls, and shakings of the head. “Very well. Custodial petition is approved.”
Four parental faces lit up with separate flavors of relief.
“And the memory-book?”
The Chair waved a hand. “Yes, yes, Miss Gentleman, you’ve made your point. He shall have full rights to memory storage and reembodiment. After all,” he said, with a glance around the dais, “do we want to be known as the Board who killed the first new human child for three hundred years?”
Clearly this line of logic was a new one, as many Board members’ eyes went wide to hear it. Even the member with the mustache looked a bit cowed as he considered how such a decision would look to next year’s voters.
Ah, democracy.
“Any other questions?” the Chair demanded, and banged the gavel when no one spoke up. “Then let us convene the Crime Committee, and consider this hearing complete.”
The room immediately buzzed with sound as everyone began talking at once. Gaskill and Baxenden led Norris away to be placed under house arrest—and possible guard, considering the man’s way with a lock—and Anne ran forward to embrace Flora.
Ruthie removed the skimmer and gathered his son up into his arms.
I moved forward, buoyant with success. “So it seems now I’m a great-aunt,” I said, ruffling my fingers through Peregrine’s silk-soft curls.
“You’ve always been great to me,” Ruthie replied.
I winced. “Good heavens, I’m far too sober for that kind of punnery. Shame on you, Rutherford.” I gave the infant one more pat. “You’re going to have to start setting a better example from now on.”
For the first time since this whole escapade started, Ruthie looked down at Peregrine with alarm—not for the baby, but for himself. “Oh no, do you think so?”
I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said, glancing to where John had formed a little group with Flora and Anne and Hugh. “You’ll have plenty of help.”