The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Late in the evening, when the girls were upstairs, Isabelle began gently grilling us. I tried not to grit my teeth too much. I certainly didn’t blame her for taking her responsibilities seriously; if, in spite of the selection process, we had turned out to be monsters, criminal law would have offered no remedies. Our obligations under the licensing contract were Helen’s sole guarantee of humane treatment.

“She’s getting good marks this year,” Isabelle noted. “She must be settling in.”

“She is,” Francine replied. Helen was not entitled to a government-funded education, and most private schools had either been openly hostile, or had come up with such excuses as insurance policies that would have classified her as hazardous machinery. (Isabelle had reached a compromise with the airlines: Sophie had to be powered down, appearing to sleep during flights, but was not required to be shackled or stowed in the cargo hold.) The first community school we’d tried had not worked out, but we’d eventually found one close to the Berkeley campus where every parent involved was happy with the idea of Helen’s presence. This had saved her from the prospect of joining a net-based school; they weren’t so bad, but they were intended for children isolated by geography or illness, circumstances that could not be overcome by other means.

Isabelle bid us good night with no complaints or advice; Francine and I sat by the fire for a while, just smiling at each other. It was nice to have a blemish-free report for once.

The next morning, my alarm went off an hour early. I lay motionless for a while, waiting for my head to clear, before asking my knowledge miner why it had woken me.

It seemed Isabelle’s visit had been beaten up into a major story in some east coast news bulletins. A number of vocal members of Congress had been following the debate in Europe, and they didn’t like the way it was heading. Isabelle, they declared, had sneaked into the country as an agitator. In fact, she’d offered to testify to Congress any time they wanted to hear about her work, but they’d never taken her up on it.

It wasn’t clear whether it was reporters or anti-adai activists who’d obtained her itinerary and done some digging, but all the details had now been splashed around the country, and protesters were already gathering outside Helen’s school. We’d faced media packs, cranks, and activists before, but the images the knowledge miner showed me were disturbing; it was five a.m. and the crowd had already encircled the school. I had a flashback to some news footage I’d seen in my teens, of young schoolgirls in Northern Ireland running the gauntlet of a protest by the opposing political faction; I could no longer remember who had been Catholic and who had been Protestant.

I woke Francine and explained the situation.

“We could just keep her home,” I suggested.

Francine looked torn, but she finally agreed. “It will probably all blow over when Isabelle flies out on Sunday. One day off school isn’t exactly capitulating to the mob.”

At breakfast, I broke the news to Helen.

“I’m not staying home,” she said.

“Why not? Don’t you want to hang out with Sophie?”

Helen was amused. “ ‘Hang out’? Is that what the hippies used to say?” In her personal chronology of San Francisco, anything from before her birth belonged to the world portrayed in the tourist museums of Haight-Ashbury.

“Gossip. Listen to music. Interact socially in whatever manner you find agreeable.”

She contemplated this last, open-ended definition. “Shop?”

“I don’t see why not.” There was no crowd outside the house, and though we were probably being watched, the protest was too large to be a moveable feast. Perhaps all the other parents would keep their children home, leaving the various placard wavers to fight among themselves.

Helen reconsidered. “No. We’re doing that on Saturday. I want to go to school.”

I glanced at Francine. Helen added, “It’s not as if they can hurt me. I’m backed up.”

Francine said, “It’s not pleasant being shouted at. Insulted. Pushed around.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be pleasant,” Helen replied scornfully. “But I’m not going to let them tell me what to do.”

To date, a handful of strangers had got close enough to yell abuse at her, and some of the children at her first school had been about as violent as (ordinary, drug-free, non-psychotic) nine-year-old bullies could be, but she’d never faced anything like this. I showed her the live news feed. She was not swayed. Francine and I retreated to the living room to confer.

I said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” On top of everything else, I was beginning to suffer from a paranoid fear that Isabelle would blame us for the whole situation. Less fancifully, she could easily disapprove of us exposing Helen to the protesters. Even if that was not enough for her to terminate the licence immediately, eroding her confidence in us could lead to that fate, eventually.