Factoring Humanity

If the previous encounters had felt somewhat voyeuristic, this one was particularly so. Heather had never met McGregor, but she knew him as a presence in the media, as a face on her living-room wall.

McGregor was thinking about a fight he’d had last night with his wife; he was also warring with himself over what to do about the discovery that his teenage son was smoking pot, trying to decide how indignant he could be about it when he himself had used marijuana during college. He also thought briefly about his contract negotiations — Heather was surprised to learn he made far less than she’d always assumed he did.

Fascinating.

But what was the next step?

So far, she’d connected with other minds in the present. She could access what they were experiencing at this very instant.

But surely there must be some way to access their memories, too — not just what they happened to be thinking of at any given moment, but a way, somehow, to ply their memories, search their pasts.

She had tried talking to the individuals she was visiting, but that had not worked.

And she’d tried controlling their actions. But that had failed, too.

So there was no reason to think this would work, no reason to expect that she could leaf through memories.

But she had to try. She had to know.

What would Greg McGregor have a memory of?

He was a newscaster; he’d remember famous events.

And he’d know famous people!

Six degrees of separation.

Six degrees, tops.

What would be the logical connection, a step closer to Kyle? Who would McGregor know that would be a way station on the path to her husband?

The prime minister! Kyle didn’t know her, but the chain leading down from her to him was obvious.

Heather knew precisely what Susan Cowles looked like, of course. She’d seen her on TV a million times.

She concentrated on her. Hard.

The Right Honourable Susan M. Cowles.

Canada’s second woman prime minister.

The Dominionatrix, as Time had dubbed her.

Susan Cowles — in profile.

Susan Cowles — head-on.

Susan Cowles — from a distance.

Susan Cowles — close up.

Surely Greg McGregor must have met her, or at least have a mental image of her.

But no — it apparently needed to be more than that. The jump from the woman in Saskatchewan to Greg McGregor had required a precise match, his perspective and hers coinciding exactly.

Well, there was no way to know what Susan Cowles was doing at this very moment, unless, of course, she happened to be on the Parliamentary channel. But even if she was, McGregor wasn’t watching that.

But perhaps the match didn’t have to be in real time. Perhaps if two people simply shared the same memory, a jump could be made. There were some things everyone had seen. The Hindenburg crash. The Zapruder film. The Challenger and Atlantis explosions. The Eiffel Tower toppling over.

And surely everyone in Canada had to share certain memories of Susan Cowles. She was the first prime minister since Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act; she did it for four days, to quell the Longueil riots — the very thing the Hosek inquiry was now investigating. There wasn’t a person in Canada who didn’t have a precise memory of Susan Cowles uttering these words as she began one hundred hours of martial law: “The true north may be strong, but it won’t be free again until I say so.” Surely McGregor must have that same image in his mind, surely -

Yes! Yes, yes, yes! She’d accessed it: McGregor’s own memory of that same speech.

Heather concentrated on the speech, concentrated on the prime minister, defocused her mind, tried to force a Necker swap, and then -

— and then, there she was, inside the mind of The Right Honourable Susan M. Cowles!

She had found it — found the way to step from mind to mind. Access a memory depicting the desired person, force the person in the memory from the background into the foreground, and then -

Violà!

She was on the trail now, on her way to Kyle.

Still, what an experience! A brush with history. Heather had been to the Federal Parliament chambers once, thirty years ago, on a high-school trip. They hadn’t changed much — ornate, classy, dark wood, ineffably British.

And Cowles was fascinating! And, Heather had to admit, she was also a bit of a personal hero. It was amazing to see through her eyes, and -

Oh, my goodness!

Heather suddenly realized it wasn’t just personal privacy that was compromised by access to psychospace — it was national security as well. Without even thinking about it, she suddenly knew — knew — that despite prevailing public opinion to the contrary, Canada was going to oppose the United States in the upcoming UN vote on Colombian war-crimes trials.

Heather cleared her mind, pushing the state secrets aside. This isn’t where she needed to be right now, anyway. It was just a step on the road.