“Oh,” I said. “Oh, that’s—that’s—well.” I cleared my throat and pressed onward. “Anne conveyed the baby to my nephew, Mr. Rutherford Talmadge IV, who brought thechild to my attention. We determined parentage and unraveled the chain of events that led to the child’s creation. I recommend the Crime Committee be convened to charge Mr. Godfrey with manslaughter, or at the very least with reckless endangerment.”
I nodded at Baxenden, who removed the skimmer. Norris’s eyes glistened with tears of horror, his face mottled with dread and rage. “You fiendish woman,” he hissed. “You could have killed me!”
“With that?” I waved at the skimmer. “Unlikely. That’s the Palace’s skimmer, which you repaired with your own hands. Perfectly safe, since you weren’t trying to erase any of your mother’s memories. Quite the opposite, in fact.” As Norris gaped, I only smiled, permitting myself a tiny flash of well-earned smugness. “I’m afraid I had to mislead you a little, in the interest of getting you to show us the truth.”
“Excuse me, Miss Gentleman.” A Board member broke in, over Norris’s wordless outraged sounds. “One more question. Why did Mr. Godfrey attempt to kidnap the child?”
“Didn’t I mention?” I said. “He thought the baby was a witness.”
Everyone looked at Peregrine, who had his hand in his mouth up to the wrist.
“Really?” the Chair asked, dripping with skepticism.
“It was the first thing he said on the witness stand. I quote: ‘I suppose he’s already told you everything.’”
Norris’s mouth went slack. “You said he had!”
“He cannot yet speak,” I said. “How would he have told us anything?”
“The skimmer!” Norris sputtered. “Obviously!”
“Well, that is an intriguing thought,” I said with a grin. “Shall we try it?”
Norris was moved aside by Gaskill, and Ruthie brought Peregrine forward to the witness chair. The skimmer tottered a little on his small head until Ruthie steadied it with one hand. “There’s a good little man,” he murmured, amused.
I stepped forward and crouched, so my face was level with Peregrine’s and his eyes fixed on me. “Hullo, little one,” I said, low and soft and fond.
His face creased into a smile.
I couldn’t see what happened on the screen behind me, but there was a general gasp of astonishment. It fizzed in my veins like applause.
I whispered a few more things to Peregrine, then stood up and turned back to the board. “My nephew has been caring for the child the past few days,” I said, and waved Ruthie in front.
My nephew’s eyes widened and his cheek paled a little, but his lip refused to quiver as he stepped around and beamed down at Peregrine. “Your hat’s at quite a rakish angle, little man,” he said, crouching down as I had. “Whatwill the society papers think?” Peregrine chortled as Ruthie tweaked his nose, and waved his hands imperiously.
And this time I could see what the baby was unwittingly projecting. Ruthie’s face was up there—weirdly proportioned and rippling like a sheet on a clothesline, but recognizable all the same. It had a kind of shimmer to it, a swirl of color that bubbled up and out, and it kept melting into other expressions. The color of Ruthie’s tie changed abruptly, and I realized it was switching between the one he wore today and the one he’d worn yesterday at the Antikythera Club.
“And now,” I said, “let’s see what his mother’s face shows us.” And I beckoned Flora up to the front of the room.
She was anxious, I could see, but she trusted me enough to come forward. Ruthie stepped back behind Peregrine as Flora slowly bent to look at her son close up. “Hello there,” she whispered.
The images exploded.
Bright colors, painfully vivid. Flora’s face but slightly older, with a slightly different nose and a different cut to her hair. Flora laughing, Flora in darkness, Flora reaching out for an embrace.
The real Flora turned and stared at her own reflection, at the love she no longer remembered so evident in her face.
Surprisingly, it was Ruthie who spoke next. “You said he was too young to form memories,” he said. He looked a little heartbroken watching Flora and Peregrine, and no wonder.
“He makes them,” I replied. “He just doesn’t keep them. Not for more than a few weeks, anyway. As he gets older his brain will start holding on to things longer and longer.” I turned back to the Board. “I recommend we begin archiving Peregrine in the Library when he turns one, and every three months or so after that.”
“Hang on,” said the Chair. “We haven’t even begun to address the question of the child’s status yet.”
“Well, we’d better do it quick,” I said. “The Charter holds equality of access to the Library and Medical as one of our founding principles. We have the right to be archived, and the right to reembodiment. The older this child gets, the more galling it’s going to be that he isn’t permitted to preserve himself the way the rest of us are.”
“Do we really want to reward this kind of behavior, though?” the mustached Board member sputtered.
“His parents did not conceive him on purpose, and couldn’t have if they tried,” I argued. “If you prefer, think of it not as a reward, but as imposing an obligation: He isrequiredto update his memory-book every three months. This requirement also demands he be reembodied, so as to continue updating his memories. Without your help, he will die in thirty, fifty, seventy-five years or so.” I felt my mouth quirk. “You, as the Board, could sentence him to life.”
