fields, packing in hot dishes in church basements, hunting prairie dogs on the rez with angry young Oglala Sioux, handing down tools while politically significant people ranted at him from under pickup trucks with transmission problems.
But the place was emptying out, and no one could really deny that. A vast region in the center of the country had dropped below the six-people-per-square-miie standard that the 19th century had defined as “frontier.” And a frontier required tenacity, imagination, and a willingness to take risks, or so Bernal portrayed it. He reconstructed Muriel’s vision as he talked with people. African elephants were under extreme environmental pressure on their native continent, but their genes might run free on the northern plains of North America. He worked out pricing schemes to give them water, migration routes that would silhouette them against the sky for compelling images, roles for American Indians, whites, and more recent Hispanic and Orthodox Jewish immigrants as hunters, herders, trainers, and nomads. Every time a light went on in someone’s eyes, or two seemingly unrelated incentives came into alignment, Bernal felt joy. He was a man with a job suited to talents he hadn’t known he possessed.
But Muriel had known. She had hired him almost out of his hospital bed and given him a new life.
Muriel Inglis had made her money the old-fashioned way: she divorced it. Actually, that was unfair, Bernal thought. She’d divorced two, but the last husband, Tommy, had died of a heart attack on the golf course before their divorce actually became final. There was a plaque to him in the clubhouse.
At any rate, in her late fifties, Muriel had found herself with an astounding amount of money and some odd ideas of how best to spend it. She already had an Italianate mansion in the nice section of the town she had grown up in, her daughter was grown and out of the house, and she’d made her requisite donations to the art museum and local artistic hip-hop troupe. Some women might just have bought another house or gotten a lot of cosmetic work done.
Instead, Muriel funded lunatic projects that would have been unable to get money any other way: urban reforestations and wild animal reintroductions in depopulating rust belt cities, negative sculptures carved into the bedrock surrounding defunct ICBM silos, the reintroduction of nomadic cultures to the Maghreb, and intelligent planetary probes, like the one Madeline Ungaro was working on right here in Cheriton.
Because of Bernal’s history, Muriel had kept him largely away from Ungaro and her Al-based exploration vehicle. At first, that had been fine with him. It had the same aura of dramatic uselessness as her other projects, but seemed much more specialized and constrained. It was the only one that couldn’t be easily put on a tourist brochure. Bernal didn’t do much more with Ungaro than manage financing disbursements, pay the lease on the lab, and make sure all the paperwork was in order. But recently, as he realized that he had created an entirely new life for himself, the interests of his old one seemed to reassert themselves, and he began to wonder if there really was a functional AI growing in a warehouse on the outskirts of Cheriton.
Now that Muriel had asked to meet him there, he wondered what Muriel hadn’t been telling him about that particular project.
4
Bernal pounded on the featureless metal door, hearing the thump sound through Ungaro’s lab. He’d already given up on the doorbell. A red LED blinked in the black rectangle of a card reader next to the loading dock door. Muriel might have had the card to open it, but Bernal had no idea where he’d look for it.
The marked parking spot in front was empty. He didn’t see any sign of the Mercedes Muriel had stolen, either.
Ungaro’s lab was at the end of a brick warehouse converted to light industrial and inventory uses, divided into units, each with a loading dock and an office
But the place was emptying out, and no one could really deny that. A vast region in the center of the country had dropped below the six-people-per-square-miie standard that the 19th century had defined as “frontier.” And a frontier required tenacity, imagination, and a willingness to take risks, or so Bernal portrayed it. He reconstructed Muriel’s vision as he talked with people. African elephants were under extreme environmental pressure on their native continent, but their genes might run free on the northern plains of North America. He worked out pricing schemes to give them water, migration routes that would silhouette them against the sky for compelling images, roles for American Indians, whites, and more recent Hispanic and Orthodox Jewish immigrants as hunters, herders, trainers, and nomads. Every time a light went on in someone’s eyes, or two seemingly unrelated incentives came into alignment, Bernal felt joy. He was a man with a job suited to talents he hadn’t known he possessed.
But Muriel had known. She had hired him almost out of his hospital bed and given him a new life.
Muriel Inglis had made her money the old-fashioned way: she divorced it. Actually, that was unfair, Bernal thought. She’d divorced two, but the last husband, Tommy, had died of a heart attack on the golf course before their divorce actually became final. There was a plaque to him in the clubhouse.
At any rate, in her late fifties, Muriel had found herself with an astounding amount of money and some odd ideas of how best to spend it. She already had an Italianate mansion in the nice section of the town she had grown up in, her daughter was grown and out of the house, and she’d made her requisite donations to the art museum and local artistic hip-hop troupe. Some women might just have bought another house or gotten a lot of cosmetic work done.
Instead, Muriel funded lunatic projects that would have been unable to get money any other way: urban reforestations and wild animal reintroductions in depopulating rust belt cities, negative sculptures carved into the bedrock surrounding defunct ICBM silos, the reintroduction of nomadic cultures to the Maghreb, and intelligent planetary probes, like the one Madeline Ungaro was working on right here in Cheriton.
Because of Bernal’s history, Muriel had kept him largely away from Ungaro and her Al-based exploration vehicle. At first, that had been fine with him. It had the same aura of dramatic uselessness as her other projects, but seemed much more specialized and constrained. It was the only one that couldn’t be easily put on a tourist brochure. Bernal didn’t do much more with Ungaro than manage financing disbursements, pay the lease on the lab, and make sure all the paperwork was in order. But recently, as he realized that he had created an entirely new life for himself, the interests of his old one seemed to reassert themselves, and he began to wonder if there really was a functional AI growing in a warehouse on the outskirts of Cheriton.
Now that Muriel had asked to meet him there, he wondered what Muriel hadn’t been telling him about that particular project.
4
Bernal pounded on the featureless metal door, hearing the thump sound through Ungaro’s lab. He’d already given up on the doorbell. A red LED blinked in the black rectangle of a card reader next to the loading dock door. Muriel might have had the card to open it, but Bernal had no idea where he’d look for it.
The marked parking spot in front was empty. He didn’t see any sign of the Mercedes Muriel had stolen, either.
Ungaro’s lab was at the end of a brick warehouse converted to light industrial and inventory uses, divided into units, each with a loading dock and an office
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