“I could try to get the ring for you,” Arcadio said. “I’m not sure LeMarque would give it to me. He wears it everywhere, even in the shower. I might have to try hurting him, and that would only last as long as my failsafe held out. But I’m willing to try, for you.”
The ring. Right. Javier watched his daughter as she flew between the skyscrapers. He wondered what her name was. Xavier must have named her, all by himself. How long had he let her stay an infant? He must have grown her so quickly, for her to be this size. He had watched her take her first step. He had taught her how to jump. It was so unfair, that his son should have these firsts with her, when he and Amy could not. Did they speak Spanish, together? Where did they sleep? Were there gardens for them, on the other side of the world? Did she know the names of trees?
“I don’t know what you intend to do with the information on that ring. I’m not sure how long it might take, or what expertise you might need. But I think what you should be asking yourself is whether or not it’s truly worth it.”
Arcadio reached over and tapped the video. Javier made a little sound in the back of his throat. Arcadio chuckled, and pulled something else up. “It’s just a picture. See?”
He turned the reader around, again. There were Xavier and the little girl, walking and laughing and eating ice-cream crepes with a human adult. The human was laughing, too.
The human was Powell.
14: Runs in the Family
“Name?”
“Arcadio Javier Corcovado.”
The existence of a last name was new to Javier. He’d never had one, until he took Amy’s that day at the seastead, and it wasn't like he ever carried any identifying documents with him But apparently Arcadio had been signing everything with the name of the forest where he was born.
“Generation?”
“Second.”
“Original make and model?”
“Lionheart, ECO-1502.”
“Occupation?”
“I was a guard at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.”
The customs agent speaking to Javier was not a vN. Rather it looked like a spider: multiple camera eyes on its face, six rotor legs on heavy rubber casters with two gripper claws at its front, a bulky abdomen that could be flipped open and used to carry either cargo or a human pilot on its back. It was all white, save for its Mechanese flag logo: a large red circle on a white ground with tiny gear-teeth. It was pouring him tea with one three-pronged claw, and handing him an earthenware tray of vN treats with the other.
“WELCOME TO INTERZONE,” the sign above it read.
The Interzone was not so much a “zone” as a room. The white and red theme extended here, too: white leather smart sofas that inched along the floor to corral crawling iterations, red silk pillows that warmed or cooled on contact depending on which side you flipped up, dazzling speckled lilies and voluptuous orchids in tiny glass vials. Javier heard the sound of running water somewhere in the room, but couldn’t place where it was coming from.
“Would you like to continue working in corrections?” the customs spider asked, as Javier took his tea and mochi.
“No,” Javier said. “I’d like to go back to my original design parameters. I want to be a gardener.”
The spider expressed emotion by slumping most of its gleaming white weight to one side. It spun its right claw in the air.
“Aww…” it said. “That’s so nice to hear.”
“Thank you.”
“I find it so comforting to go back to original programming,” the spider said. “We’re so lucky to know our place in the world. I think humans spend so much time trying to figure out who they are, and they get hurt in the process. It’s nice to already know all the answers to those types of questions.”
“Absolutely,” Javier said.
“Were you unhappy in Washington?”
Javier pretended to have a difficult time answering. He waited a good few seconds, and then said: “It was difficult to see how the humans treated each other, in that environment.”
“There are plenty of humans in Mecha,” the spider said. “Will you have a problem with them?”
The spider was reading not only his affect, but also his temperature, his gait, and the density of his bones. This last was the most crucial element in his identification. As vN memory accumulated, the graphene coral in their bones grew heavier and more tightly packed. By virtue of being older, Arcadio should have had heavier bones than Javier. They were only a few months apart in age, but it was enough to make a difference. Javier’s only hope was that he had somehow generated more memories, that he’d had a fuller life. As ways of measuring up to his father went, it wasn’t too bad.
“I don’t think so,” Javier said. “I don’t think the human visitors here will be the same types of people as the ones I met at the penitentiary.”