Rollback

Don felt his stomach knotting. "He’s — he’s gone, isn’t he?"

The man nodded.

"No way to bring him back?"

"I’m sorry, no. It’s a total wipe."

"But—" And then Don got it. It had taken him longer than it had taken Gunter, but he got it. The only — the only person who had been with Sarah when she’d unlocked the Dracon message had been Gunter. This technician hadn’t come here to give the Mozo a tune-up. He’d come to tap into Gunter’s memories, to steal the decryption key for McGavin. The rich man had wanted to control everything — and with the decryption key he could, taking over the creating of the Dracon children himself and cutting Don right out of the process.

"Get out," Don said to the roboticist.

"Excuse me?"

Don was furious. "Get the hell out of my house."

"Mr. Halifax, I—"

"Do you think I don’t know what you were sent here to do? Get out."

"Honestly, Mr. Halifax—"

"Now!"

Albert looked frightened; Don was physically twenty years younger than him and six inches taller. He grabbed his aluminum case and hurried up the stairs, while Don gingerly helped Gunter get back on his feet.

Don knew what must have happened. After he’d called McGavin to tell him that Sarah had passed on, McGavin had thought back to the last time he’d seen Sarah, and, in replaying it in his mind, he must have realized that Gunter would have seen Sarah apply the decryption key, and so probably knew what it was.

Don was livid as he told his phone to call McGavin. After two rings, a voice he knew answered. "McGavin Robotics. Office of the president."

"Hello, Ms. Hashimoto. It’s Donald Halifax. I’d like to speak to Mr. McGavin."

"I’m sorry, but he’s not available right now."

Don spoke with controlled rage. "Please take a message. Tell him I need to hear back from him today."

"I can’t commit to when Mr. McGavin might return any given call, and—"

"Just give him the message," Don said.

Don’s phone rang two hours later. "Hi, Don. Ms. Hashimoto said you called—"

"If you ever try a stunt like that again, I swear I’ll cut you completely out," Don said. "Jesus, we thought we could trust you!"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Don’t play games. I know what you were trying to do with Gunter."

"I’m not—"

"Don’t deny it."

"I think you should take a deep breath, Don. I know you’ve been through a lot—"

"You’re damn right I have. They say people aren’t really gone, so long as we remember them. But now one of those who remembered Sarah perfectly is gone."

Silence.

"Damn it, Cody! We can’t do this if I can’t trust you."

"That robot is mine," McGavin said. "He’s on loan from my company — so everything in his memories is my property."

"There’s nothing in his memories now," snapped Don.

"I — I know," said McGavin. "I’m sorry. If I’d thought for one second that he’d—"

Silence for a time, then: "No robot has ever done that before."

"You could take a lesson from him," said Don, sharply. "A lesson in loyalty."

McGavin’s tone grew stiff; doubtless he was almost never spoken to like this.

"Well, since the Mozo was loaned to Sarah, to help her, maybe I should—"

Don felt his pulse racing. "No, please — don’t take him back. I…"

McGavin still sounded angry. "What?"

Don shrugged a little, although there was no way McGavin could see it. "He’s family."

A long pause, then an audible intake of breath. "All right," said McGavin. "If it’ll make things right between us, you can keep him."

Silence.

"Are we okay, Don?"

Don was still furious. If he’d really been twenty-six, he might have continued fighting.

But he wasn’t; he knew when to back down. "Yeah."

"All right." McGavin’s tone slowly regained its warmth. "Because we’re making good initial progress on the artificial womb, but, God, it’s tough. Every part has to be machined from scratch, and there are technologies involved my engineers have never seen before…"

Don looked around the living room. The mantel now had dozens of sympathy cards on it, each one dutifully printed out and folded by Gunter. Don lamented the death of paper mail, but he supposed sending streams of data that could be reconstituted by the recipient was appropriate under the circumstances.

One of the sympathy cards was propped up by the trophy the IAU had given Sarah.

Another was leaning against Don and Sarah’s wedding photo in a way that covered the image of Don. He walked over to the mantel, moved that card, and looked at Sarah as she had been, and at himself, back when he’d been in his twenties the first time around.

There were flowers, too, both real and virtual. A vase of roses sat on the little table between the couch and the La-Z-Boy; a projection of pink carnations hovered above the coffee table. He remembered how much Sarah had enjoyed planting flowers in her youth, how she still gardened well into her seventies, how she’d once described the Very Large Array as looking like God’s flower bed.

As he looked at the cards some more, Don became conscious of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and beheld the round blue face of Gunter.