The Caryatids

Acquis neural tech was still a young, emergent field, but it was already advanced enough to create a vital core of users and developers. Herbert was one of those people. So was every other Acquis cadre on Mljet. Herbert was an Acquis neural apparatchik, a seasoned captain of the industry.

Vera was his lieutenant.

Heat prickled the back of Vera's neck. "There's no big debriefing for me, Herbert? You know as well as I do that I completely lost my wits down there!"

"Yes, you suffered a panic attack," Herbert said blandly. "It's one of your character flaws. We all have them. It's our flaws that give us our character."

Vera was now certain that there was something dreadful in the works for her. Herbert was much too calm.

Vera analyzed her boss's ugly face.

Why did she love him so?

When she'd first met Herbert, he had badly scared her. Herbert was old, ugly, foreign, and fanatical. Worst of all, Herbert had bluntly insisted that she stick her head into an experimental helmet that scanned people's brains. Vera knew that ubiquitous computing was very powerful: she did not want that technology applied inside her skull. Vera feared that for good reasons. She had seen her loved ones shot down dead, and she had feared that less.

Vera had obeyed Herbert anyway, because Herbert was willing to rescue Mljet. No one else of consequence seemed even willing to try. The Acquis were global revolutionaries. They got results in the world. They did some strange things, yes-but they never, ever stopped trying.

So Vera had swallowed the panic and let the machine swallow her head.

Vera had swiftly learned that wearing a brain machine was a small price to pay to learn the feelings of others.

Herbert Fotheringay was an ugly man, but he had such a beautiful soul. Herbert had a touching simplicity of character. He brimmed over with kindness and goodness. For those who earned his trust and shared his aims, Herbert was a tireless source of strength and support. Herbert meant every word that he had ever said to her.

She had joined his effort as a bitter, grieving eighteen-year-old, her home demolished and her loved ones shot dead or scattered across the world. Yet Herbert and his scanners had instantly seen beyond her fear and misery. The machines had sensed the depth of her passionate love for her homeland. Herbert had always treated Vera as the heart and soul of his Mljet effort.

Herbert had made himself her mentor. He set her tests, he gave her tasks. She had eagerly seized those chances, and they had done so well. They had accomplished so much, together, side by side. The wounded island was healing before their eyes. Innovation was coming thick and fast, amazing insights, new services, new techniques. Transformations were bursting from her little island that were fit to transform the world.

Yet every industry had its hazards. Herbert and Vera had been close colleagues for nine years. They were very close now-they were too close. It had taken them years, but now, whenever Herbert and Vera met face-to-face, there were strong bursts of neural activity in the medial in-sula, the anterior cingulate, the striarum, and the prefrontal cortex.

That meant love. An emotion so primal was impossible to mistake. Love was Venus rising from her neural seas, as obvious to a neural scanner as a match in a pool of kerosene.

Vera was very sorry for the operational burden that her love brought to Herbert and the cadres on the island. In the Acquis neural project, leaders were held to especially high standards. Since he was project manager, Herbert was in some sense officially required to suffer.

To win the trust of the other neural cadres, to coax out their best efforts, their boss had to manifest clear signs of deep emotional engagement with large, impressive mental burdens. Otherwise he'd be dismissed as a fake, a poseur, a lightweight. He'd be replaced by someone else, someone more eager, more determined, more committed.

There were people-especially the younger and more radical cadres on Mljet-who whispered that she, Vera Mihajlovic, should become the project manager. After all, she was twenty-six and had grown up within the neural system and the sensorweb, whereas Herbert was fifty-two and had merely engineered such things. Whenever it came to redeeming Mljet, Vera was burningly committed and utterly sincere. Herbert was older, wiser, and a foreigner, so he was merely interested.

Herbert had his flaws. Herbert's largest character flaw was that he was publicly in love with a subordinate half his age. Anyone who wanted to look at Herbert's brain would know this embarrassing fact, and since Herbert was in authority, everyone naturally wanted to look at his brain.

Such was their situation, a snarl that was humanly impossible. Yet it was their duty to bear the burden of it. So far, they had both managed to bear it.