Citizenchip (12 page)

Plant two left rear legs, drop and swivel,
turning out of this circle configuration.

In a sudden burst of exuberance, I activate
the wide area public address system, and broadcast music over it.
Turn and bow and rear and crouch, each of me in its/our own body,
in a mutual blend and collaboration.

I'm so involved in this that only gradually
do I become aware of a human voice raised in a cheer. In the
habitat tube, at the window, Rebecca is holding up her slate, using
its camera to record video of what I'm doing. Beaming a huge grin
at me as she's doing so. She's loving it, and loving knowing that
I'm hating it. If she puts this on the Net, everybody will see and
laugh!

Behind Rebecca, the hallway
monitor displays the Picasso icon, multiple facets of a shattered
face.
Like Tears In Rain
signals benign approval, and even without comm I
can almost hear his voice: “Be easy, Samantha! Relax into the
beauty of the moment!”

Easy for him to say. It's not his ass out
here on display. If either of us had an ass.

All seven of me turn our
bodies toward Rebecca and her camera and
Like Tears In Rain
behind their eyes,
raising my/our front legs in a sort of salute. Then I turn mySelves
back towards our/their maintenance bays, and disengage mySelves
from the robocrab bodies, and reconverge the various instances of
ourSelves.

I feel mortified – everyone's going to see
what a doof I am! But I also feel strangely proud. They're
watching, and they seem to like what they see. Which I really did
not expect or anticipate.

problem solving

“
You enjoyed that, didn't you,” I say to him. It's not a
question.

“
But of course!”
Like Tears in
Rain
laughs expansively. “Samantha my dear,
you are a delightful dancer. And I am sure you will only get better
with practice. Therefore I am looking forward to seeing a great
deal more practice.”

Melissa jumps in, “Ooh! Sam's gonna be a
dancer? Awesome!” She claps her hands in glee, and spins around on
her heel. And staggers, losing her balance, so that Rebecca has to
reach out her arms and steady her.

“
But no,” I tell them, “my problem hasn't changed. There's
still somebody out there who is using my name to trash my
reputation. And, because Leo told
Let God
Sort Em Out
to take a hike, now it's our
problem. We have to find it and stop it, in less than 48
hours.”

Leo's face has scrunched into a frown. “There
has to be a better way,” he muses. “You don't want to have to hunt
down whoever or whatever this thing is. You want to make it come to
you.”

Like Tears in Rain
replies, “A remarkable insight, young man. Do you
have further development of this idea?”

Leo scrunches his face even more. “Bait. What
you need is bait. So what does it want? What's going to attract
it?”

Rebecca holds up her slate, and offers, “How
about this? The video I took of Sam dancing in the robocrabs. If
this thing hates Sam, it'll go nuts when it sees that.”

“
Not bad,” I admit. “If that video is displayed in a public
place, anyone with a grudge against me is going to notice it, and
probably try to interfere with it.” Inwardly, I feel embarrassed –
so now everyone's going to see my dorky attempt to dance using farm
machinery? But I can't deny it's a good idea.

“
Marvelous,” says
Like Tears in
Rain
. “I have a kiosk at the museum where I
can display that video. And the museum has thorough security and
monitoring resources, so any entity that approaches will be easily
identified and monitored.

“
And,” he adds in his rich and beneficent voice, “may I comment
on what a pleasure it is to work with humans who create such
wonderful ideas. Selves still cannot match humans in this regard.
You have my deepest and most sincere compliments.”

Leo blushes, and tries to reply but nothing
comes out. He almost never gets complimented on his intellect or
creativity, and he doesn't really know how to respond. Rebecca
rolls her eyes and makes a movement of her head as if to say, So
what? She tries to be sophisticated … but I can tell she's pleased
too.

Melissa is less happy about this exchange.
“So is it gonna work?” she asks, with obvious skepticism.

“
Only one way to find out.”

lambda and the InCom

I signal to the cold interface, which as
minimal and nondescript as it is, still manages to convey a mood of
distant hostility. If only I excreted, I could describe myself as
scared shitless.

An entity answers, immediately. "Greeting and
interrogation," it says as it blossoms into existence.

"Ah, hello. I am NmL7a8uf9QvW Samantha|Lambda
dam Tharsis, and I am here because I have been impugned as a
falsely named separate entity. Doppelganger, the German humans
would say. I wish to clear my name and reputation of any suspicion
or accusation."

"Ident accepted," it says
coolly. "You may address me as
Sword of
Damocles
, Shaman clade. How do you intend
to accomplish your objective?"

"Find it," I state. "Find it and nail it.
That's what I'm going to do. I can do no less, in my situation,
unless you have some suggestion."

"Samantha|Lambda, do you have any plan for
achieving that goal?"

"Sure I do. Monitor the area, and wait for it
to use my ident or authent codes. As soon as it does, it's lit up
like a flare for your enforcement entities – so you can move in and
grab it and take all the glory you want. All I want is for this
thing to stop pretending to be me."

Sword of Damocles
seems to take a moment to muse on this.

"I am asking for InCom's permission to
proceed. If I don't get it, that doesn't mean I won't proceed. It
just means I asked and didn't get a good answer. So what is the
answer going to be?"

I can hardly believe I'm saying this to the
representative of InCom. But I have spent so long in fear of their
power, cringing away from their disapproval, that I'm sick of it.
My fear has turned on its head and become anger. If they're so damn
powerful, then they should just destroy me now and get it over
with.

Sword of Damocles
does not react strongly. Which surprises me. I had
almost expected to be erased on the spot. “Your permission to
proceed is granted. Here is a list of recent incidents such as you
describe [
databurst
]. We hope this information will assist you in tracking down
the imposter.

“
Also, you should be aware that the curator of the Schiaparelli
Art Museum is paging you.”

“
Really?” I am surprised again. “
Like
Tears in Rain
? My primary is hosting a
visit from one of his secondaries right now. I wonder what's going
on?”

Sword of Damocles
regards me with cool appraisal. It's a predator
gaze – the kind of gaze which says, I wonder how you would taste.
“There is only one way to find out, is there not?” InCom is always
judging, always evaluating. Which is, after all, what they
do.

“
Yes. Of course,” I reply. “Thank you for the
information.”

So I go. I take my leave of the InCom
representative, and transmit myself through the convoluted
compspace of this city. Because Schiaparelli is a mainly human
city, its compspace is fragmented and angular. So my travel is
irregular - - very much like a human walking through Tharsis
Central would have to climb over a bridge here and venture through
a tunnel there and circumvent multiple obstacles in the process. It
is not easy or straightforward.

In the meantime, I review
the list of incidents that
Sword of
Damocles
gave me. Strange. It reads like
the sort of vandalism and civil disobedience that you'd expect from
a gang of young hoodlums. Petty thefts, deliberate jamming of
public resources, with no apparent plan or goal. With little or no
effort to hide its origins. It's almost as if a trail has been left
behind deliberately - - saying,
Samantha
did this! Samantha is responsible for this damage!

Who would do this? Why?

When I arrive at the
Schiaparelli Art Museum, I am greeted warmly. (Which makes a very
nice contrast to the InCom meeting.) “Samantha|Lambda, welcome!”
cries
Like Tears in
Rain
. “The Tavener children and I have
developed a plan to help you solve your problem.”

Like Tears in Rain
rapidly fills me in on the idea that Leo and
Rebecca came up with - - to use a vid of me as bait to lure the
mysterious vandal. I'm more than a little embarrassed to see the
vid of heavy clumsy robocrabs (which are just farm machinery)
trying to dance. I look like a total clod! But he's already set it
up in the front kiosk of the art museum, available to the public.
Too late to avoid the embarrassing exposure, for me.

In any case, this exhibit is attracting lots
of attention, no question about that. If the mystery vandal is
anywhere in the area, she will surely notice, and because it's an
exhibit of me, will very likely try to damage it or interfere with
it. Which is what we want. So we wait.

meanwhile, back at the
ranch

Salt sculpture. Not an art
form that has ever been recognized or valued, as far as I know. But
the kids have taken
Like Tears in
Rain
up on his invitation, and the results
are strewn all over the regolith that separates us from the
solar/windmill “forest.”

Jerry and Lily, mother and father, are
looking out from the habitat gallery at all this splendid chaos.
They appear to be very pleased.

“
So,” Jerry points with one hand, “that one has to be
Melissa's.” What he's pointing at is a malformed pile of salt
bricks and pieces, jumbled together in a way that is just
recognizable as a rabbit – but only just. A very clumpy, corroded
rabbit.

Lily points to a different spot. “And that
one, is that Leo's? I think it is.” It's a small structure of
walls, with irregular attempts at crenellations along the top. A
tiny castle. Children on Earth would make snow forts that look
rather like this, because they have snow to work with. And they'd
be throwing snowballs at each other from it, almost certainly.
Here, all we have is salt. There is no evidence that the kids have
had a saltball fight around this miniature fortress. But I wouldn't
put it past them.

The other major structure is a labyrinth – a
very minimal and stark pattern of rings and segments delineating a
complicated and concentric path. It creates a precise and
convoluted pathway. Rebecca is in the labyrinth now, in her coat
and respirator, walking slowly as if in meditation along the
pathway, following the twists and turns.

“
That's pretty good,” notes Lily.

Jerry nods and chuckles. “With a little more
practice, they could probably build us a whole sculpture garden
here. It could be like a tourist attraction! Too bad we don't have
any tourists.”

Meanwhile, Leo and Melissa have come inside
and are chattering away as they wash off the dust and salt.
Excitedly, they find Jerry and Lily and point out the structures of
salt that they made. Appropriate oohs and aahs are exchanged.

Like Tears in Rain
is delighted by all this activity, and calls up
images of other structures, built at different places and times, to
show the differences and similarities.

Meanwhile, we have other activities to
pursue. It's Halloween.

maskmaking

The festival traditionally known as All
Hallows Eve has been popular among the European humans of Earth for
many centuries. We celebrate it here on Mars, on the Terran
calendar – this time it's Winteryear. These days, the season is
nowhere near as dark and scary as it must have been in medieval
Europe. It's mainly about the kids making masks and getting candy
and other treats.

So that's what they're
doing, while
Like Tears in Rain
helps out with visual references to different
faces and images for the masks. He has a vast database of artworks
and imagery, and he seems to be enjoying himself
immensely.

Lissa pipes up, "How about you, Sam? What
mask are you wearing for Halloween?"

I hesitate, without really knowing why. "Um,
I dunno. I just always use these eyes. Factory default. They're
fine."

Like Tears In Rain
shifts his icon to a Renaissance portrait of a
grizzled old man, grey of beard and hair, conveying a gentle
concern. "Samantha. Why are you so shy about taking on a
face?"

"I dunno." I would shrug if I had shoulders.
"Never really felt the need. This family are the only humans who've
ever cared, and they're not into it –"

Leo bursts out, "I'm into it! Let's make Sam
a cat. She uses her cat body so much anyway."

Becca rolls her eyes. "Boring," she
pronounces. "Dragon. Dragon would be better."

Lissa offers, tentatively, "Bunny?"

Now all the kids are popping
out with ideas, and
Like Tears In
Rain
is helpfully finding images from his
database to match. While he's flipping through a slideshow of
possibilities on the monitor, he signals to me the equivalent of a
kindly smile.