Starplex

"They said it was an accident. Said they'd misinterpreted. When we came face-to-face with the Waldahudinfor the first time, Saul was carrying a holographic camera unit. He didn't aim it at the pigs, of course — no one could be that stupid. He was just holding it at his side, and then, with a flick of his thumb, he turned it on." Keith sighed, long and loud. "They said it looked like a traditional Waldahud hand weapon — same basic shape. They thought Saul was readying a weapon to fire on them. One of the pigs was carrying a sidearm, and he shot Saul. Right in the face. His head exploded next to me. I — I got splattered with… with…" Keith looked away, and was quiet for a long moment.

"They killed him. The best friend I ever had, they killed him." He stared at the ground, plucked a few four-leaf clovers, looked at them for a moment, then threw them away.

They were quiet for several moments. Crickets chirped, and birds sang. Finally, Glass said, "That must be difficult to carry around with you."

Keith said nothing.

"Does Rissa know?"

"She does, yes. We were already married at that point; she'd come to Silvanus to try to fathom why it didn't have any native life, despite apparently having conditions that should have given rise to it, according to our evolutionary models. But I rarely talk about what happened with Saul — not with her, or with anyone else. I don't believe in burdening those around me with my suffering. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with."

"So you keep it inside."

Keith shrugged. "I try for a certain stoicism — a certain emotional restraint."

"Commendable," said Glass.

Keith was surprised. "You think so?"

"It's the way I feel, too. I know it's unusual, though. Most people live, if you'll pardon me my humor, transparent lives." Glass gestured at his own see-through body. "Their private self is their public self Why are you different?"

Keith shrugged. "I don't know. I've always been this way." He paused again, thinking for a long time. Then: "When I was about nine or so, there was a bully in my neighborhood. Some big oaf, probably thirteen or fourteen. He used to pick up kids and drop them into this thombush in the park.

Well, everyone would kick and scream and cry while he was doing this, and he seemed to feed off that. One day, he came after me — grabbed me when I was playing catch, or something like that. He picked me up, carried me over to the bush, and dumped me in.

I didn't struggle. There was no point; he was twice as big as me, and there was no way I could get away. And I didn't scream or cry, either. He dumped me in, and I simply got myself out. I had a few scrapes and cuts from it, but I didn't say anything. He just looked at me for about ten seconds, then said, 'Lansing, you've got balls.' And he never touched me again."

"So this internalizing is a survival mechanism?" asked Glass.

Keith shrugged. "It's enduring what you have to endure."

"But you don't know where it came from?"

"No," said Keith. Then, a moment later, "Well, actually, yes. I suppose I do. My parents were both quite argumentative, and had short fuses. You'd never know when one of them was going to blow up over something. Publicly, privately, it didn't make any difference. You couldn't even make polite conversation without risking an explosion from one of them. We'd have family dinners together every night, but I always was silent, hoping we could just get through it, just once, without it being unpleasant, without one of them storming away from the table, or yelling, or saying something nasty."

Keith paused again. "In fairness, there were other issues in my parents' relationship that I didn't understand when I was a child.

They'd started as a two-career family, but automation kept eliminating more and more jobs as the years went by — this was back before they outlawed true artificial intelligence. The Canadian government changed the tax laws so that second income earners in a family were taxed at a hundred-and-ten-percent rate. It was a move designed to spread out what work there was amongst the most families. Dad had been making less than mom, so he was the one who stopped working. I'm sure that had a lot to do with his anger. But all I knew was that my parents were taking out their anger and frustration on everyone around them, and even as a kid, I vowed never to do that."

Glass was rapt. "Amazing," he said. "It all makes sense."

"What does?" asked Keith.

"You."

Chapter XIII

Keith's mind was reeling. So many discoveries, so much happening. He drummed his fingers on his bridge workstation for a moment, thinking.

And then: "Okay, people, what now?"