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“Where have you been, Vasily Alexseyev? I sent word for you hours ago.”
“I do work you know, Mother,” Vasily sneered. “I take a personal hand in things down there.”
Mrs. Alexseyev bit her tongue. “That is your right, of course,” she said. “But you know very well things are afoot. Work must sometimes yield to higher duty. I’ve scheduled your fornicula for tomorrow. Once the galvanizer does his trifling business with the anode-and-cathode and signs off that all is in good order for the welding rites, we shall go from the chapel to a neutral site. It is an office suite in Arrondissment 8, the free-trade zone. There, in an examination room set up for the purpose, you will submit to inspection before the Chernow’s physician, with our own in attendance. By agreement, there will be no retinues.”
“No retinues! What if the Chernows arrive in arms?”
“It will be Allegra Chernow only, no one else. She is dangerous, but she won’t be armed. She has no reason to be. Then, she and I shall remain on opposing sides of the room as you are examined and tested.”
“‘Tested’ how?”
Something clanged in the butler’s pantry. Tapping footfalls resounded down the hall.
“The usual — a scan, a prod, a poke. Then I believe you will be given a graphic-tablet to peruse in another room, but in the presence of the two physicians. Something to . . . incite you.”
“Mother!”
Mrs. Alexseyev held up a hand to silence him. “It will done in a trice, I’m sure. The physicians are bound to confidentiality, at the price of their heads.”
“So I’m to be your stud, is that it?” Vasily huffed, averting his glance toward the hall in case the night-girl was eavesdropping.
“Don’t recite such silliness, Vasily. This is no play, and certainly no tragedy. Look out these windows. Look down upon what we own — what we are. You are doing an hour’s work — and a few seconds of embarrassment — for the reward of generations of continuity of all that lies down there. And more, too: for what you hold may be enlarged. A few rare drops in a cup to beget an even-greater Works. Think on that, Vasily Alexseyev. And think on this: what would your father have done?”
“I have thought of nothing else, as it happens,” Vasily said loftily. “I’ve been hard at work just today. Doing just as he did. Perhaps better.”
Something in her son’s tone puzzled Mrs. Alexseyev. She would not normally have followed up with an inquiry as to his “work,” having learned to insulate herself from daily heartbreak to the extent possible. But Vasily had a proud, almost crazed gleam in his eye.
“Indeed? You have set your hands to something directly in the Works?”
“Oh yes, certainly. That was my plan all along, you know, after I had completed the preliminary designs and models that the Works will build in the future. My prototypes and what-not.”
“Yes, and . . . ?”
“And I have set the future in motion just today. I have run a new utility program in the multicore.”
Mrs. Alexseyev stared. “A new . . . program . . .”
“Of my own design.”
“You ran this within the core system program, of course. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, no, of course not. How stupid would that be? I executed it in the multicore, directly. From the main console. Inchrises knew the commands.”
Mrs. Alexseyev sat back in her chair and put a hand to her breast. She looked flushed.
“Aren’t you proud of me, Mother? It’s just what Father did. Put his mark on things. A stamp, as it were.”
As she continued looking vacantly into space, there was a whirr in the house passive mechanicals, then a momentary dimming of the lights.
“What the deuce was that?” Vasily said. “Oddest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Mrs. Alexseyev looked ominously around. A sensor telltale on the ceiling above her pulsed ever so slightly.
“Dear Machinist,” she murmured, eyes darting skyward. “I tried to direct him. I tried to do what Arseny would have done. I had it all arranged. Now it’s all come to ruin.”
“What’s that, Mother?”
Mrs. Alexseyev arose, insensible, and stumbled from the room.
Vasily looked up at the pulsing sensor indicator. “Now, what on fouled Linnet would you be trying to tell me?”
The lights waned, flickered briefly, and went out. Vasily went to the pale starlit windows and looked down. Nothing. He couldn’t see anything at the Works except a few vague shadows upon the ground and tramway — workers, carts, lev-palanqs.
The Works had gone out.
“So much for your ‘supervisory genius,’ Inchrises,” he whispered. “It’s barely into the third shift. Couldn’t it have waited? I shall never sleep now, without a night-light.”
He heard Portia moving around in the entry hall, groping for the closet door.
“Is that you?” he said.
“No. Oligarch of the Archipelago. Go dunk yourself.”
“Where are you going?”
“To break my neck on the lif’, since the elevator tisn’t gonna take me down sof’.”
“I’m famished.”
“Too-rah-loo,” she answered amidst sounds of groping. “Don’t cut it off in the dark. Tisn’t likely, is it?”
A sliver of dark appeared and then disappeared as she left the flat.
“Bother,” Vasily said. “Good riddance.”
He looked out again, at the stars in the deepening gloom of night. Someone down below had organized the self-propelled carts and even the lone tour bus into a shuttle system. Vasily thought he could make out dark forms of third-shift workers streaming up from the fire exits, but the shadow of a service building interposed itself.
Rather than ruminate upon logistics — which others were already tasked to do in any event — Vasily removed himself cautiously and with arms outstretched as feelers to his own room. He lay awake for a time, projecting in his mind’s eye the course of his new program. It would seem to be nothing at first. Then it would oscillate for a time between infinitesimal growth and stasis. At some point, depending on the capacity of the multicore, it would explode, and the Works would begin again.
That was a happy thought, so he fell asleep.