Chapter 25

“Congratulations, Aimee Keiko Saito. I was certain you would have risen very quickly because of your brilliance as well as your dedication to the system. You have been Regional Engineer here for, what, five years now?”

“Six,” Aimee corrected him distractedly, ignoring his compliment. Even though Solomon was an old friend, I was the one she was staring at. And it didn’t look like she was admiring my manly physique. “Who is this person?” she demanded.

Oops. Now this was an awkward situation. He couldn’t very well admit I was a relative from the distant past, or she would know he had perfected the TDM and not told the Zaibatsu. Yet I knew he didn’t like to lie. I was curious to know how he would handle this. As to be expected with someone of his Boy Scout personality, the answer was: not well.

“Who? Oh, uh, Barnaby? Uh, well, that is...”

“Solomon!” she demanded sharply. Boy, no wonder he hadn’t spoken to her in many years! Was she always this bossy? “You aren’t experimenting with cloning, are you? You know that’s forbidden.”

“Cloning! Of course not!” he denied hotly, deeply offended. “And not because it’s forbidden, but because I agree it’s totally unethical.”

She must have believed him, because she looked a tiny bit relieved.

“Very well. Then please tell me who this – this seeming non-person is?”

“This what?” he asked with astonishment.

“Hey, lady!” I butted in. “I know you’re some big shot official, but watch who you’re calling a non-person, will you?”

She blinked hard. I don’t think she was used to being spoken to like that.

“I’m sorry,” she said, obviously more of an automatic response than a sincere regret at offending me. “It’s just that you have no electronic register.”

“He doesn’t?” Solomon asked in surprise. “How do you know?”

“I have detection devices in my office, of course,” she retorted. “When you entered my office without my permission, your neural pattern, which is not programmed as an acceptable presence, set off a silent alarm that flashes in my apartment, which of course is not far from here. So it didn’t take me long to respond to the alarm.”

“And you ... take it upon yourself to respond to such situations?” Solomon asked curiously, trying to ask the question delicately. If I got the implication, Aimee was certainly intelligent enough to have understood his intent.

“It’s not just because I’m a woman that I prefer to look after my own affairs,” she said defensively. “As a senior level official, as well as being a Regional Engineer, I am of course expected to be able to handle crisis situations completely on my own authority. As a Level 3, you should certainly understand such responsibility.”

“Of course,” he murmured, not wanting to contradict her. But even I was sure none of the Presidents – in fact, probably no other Regional Engineers – would do anything but have an alarm go off in the nearest Security Force office and let them take care of it. “You know, I thought I seemed to recognize your features in your son’s holo,” he said, carefully changing the subject. “He’s a beautiful boy, just like his mother.”

“I have never known you to be a flatterer, Solomon Smith,” she said quietly.

“And I hope to never be one,” he responded sincerely.

They gazed at each other for a moment, and I could see some old thoughts and feelings being dredged up on both sides. Abruptly, the Regional Engineer threw it all aside and got back to business.

“I will accept your assertion that this man is not a clone,” she told Solomon, still virtually ignoring me. “So then, why did he not register on my neural pattern scanning devices? I’m certain your identity would have been revealed had I taken the time to look before rushing here. Even an E-term would register, yet this man is invisible to all of my electronic devices.”

“Invisible!” Solomon exclaimed, as though having just made a great discovery. “Of course,” he said out loud, although obviously talking to himself.

“Why ‘of course’? What is going on here, Solomon Barnaby Smith?” she demanded again.

“He is ... an experiment of another type,” Solomon said, hedging on the truth.

“Another experiment? With a human?” she asked, halfway between a clinical scientific question and being totally appalled at the possibilities.

Naturally, Solomon was getting himself deeper and deeper with her. He wasn’t good at lying, and she was far too intelligent to be misled by some sort of muddled half explanation. So he resorted to the old bureaucratic dodge – the ‘need to know’ theory.

“It has to do with my work. I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you.”

“Ah, of course, your current project at the Institute,” she nodded excitedly, coming to the obvious conclusion. “Then it must be at or nearing a successful conclusion. When will you be announcing your progress?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t really discuss that either. Not now. Perhaps at another time.”

She now looked at me in amazement, knowing I must be either from her past or future, and certainly wondering which. But she respected Solomon’s implication that everything was top secret, and kept her questions to herself. After all, it seemed to be a hallmark of this repressive society. Still, she couldn’t help but say wistfully:

“There is so much I would like to know, so many questions I would ask of you. The both of you. After all, Solomon Barnaby Smith, although not one nearly as eminent as you, I’m still a scientist, you know. Will you be allowed to speak with me soon?”

“I would love to speak with you again soon. On many subjects. Perhaps you will allow me to come and visit you in a more official capacity in the near future?”

“Yes, of course. Which begs the question of what you are doing here, in my office, without notification. In the middle of the night. And wearing such ridiculous clothing – why are you wearing lab suits? How could such a visit possibly be related to your work?”

We both looked down at the skin-tight latex garments we wore. I’m sure they looked just as ridiculous as they felt. I looked at Solomon, and he looked at me. For all of his genius, he obviously couldn’t think of one single reasonable answer. In fact, probably nothing that wouldn’t be totally ludicrous. So he took the only possible approach he could have in responding to her.

“It has to do with my work, Aimee Keiko Saito. My most important project. But I ask your indulgence once again that you trust me, and not ask me anything further at this time.”

“Trust you!” she said with surprise. “Solomon Smith, how mysterious you are making all of this! Of course I trust you, but I think we must arrange a meeting for you to explain all of this to me – at least, what you are allowed to explain. And soon.”

“I assure you, that would be my pleasure, Aimee Saito. But for now we should leave. I think we have created enough disturbance to you for now.”

‘Disturbed’ pretty much summed up the look on her face. She clearly wanted to believe all of this somehow had to do with Solomon’s official work. No matter how bizarre all of this must be to her, I’m sure she was still light years away from suspecting Solomon was a member of the Revos. Somehow, she was desperately trying to justify his invasion of her office in the middle of the night, accompanied by a visitor not of their world, as directly connected to his work at the Institute. It probably wasn’t working.

Fortunately for us, her attachment to Solomon, in spite of their current rift, proved strong enough to allow us to escape without further questioning. Although she couldn’t resolve it, at least she managed to put it aside. For the moment. In fact, she didn’t say another word as we quietly exited her office – through the door – and started to make our way back to the storage room via the conventional route.

As soon as we closed the door, I asked Solomon what she meant by my being ‘invisible’. I hadn’t thought it would be smart to ask her directly.

“I should have thought of it before,” Solomon chided himself. “You’ve never had a neural scan, as has every single citizen in our society, so you are in essence ‘invisible’ to all electronic devices of the society. Of course, you’ve never done anything that required you to trigger a scanner. Every time you’ve entered a building or room with a recognition plate, you’ve been with one of us. You’ve never had to travel on public vehicles, and naturally you’ve never had to buy anything. None of which you could do even if you wanted to, but it’s good to know ahead of time so we don’t create a disturbance by trying any of those things in public. Of course, all of that may be more than made up for by knowing you won’t be setting off any alarms on any of the security systems.”

“Does that include the MS building?”

“I don’t know,” Solomon said as we turned a corner and headed down a hallway for the jump tubes. “If they all work on neural scans, then probably not. But they may have some more archaic security devices, such as motion or heat sensors. In which case, you would be just as detectable as any of us.”

“And if they do have some of those old-fashioned sensors, they’d probably be hooked up to some pretty deadly defense system, wouldn’t they?”

“Probably,” Solomon agreed.

Now, that was a cheerful thought. As I followed him up the jump tube, I could only hope I would never have the chance to find out. And speaking of grim thoughts...