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"I believe they're stunned. Aren't we?"
"I am, at least. I would think they'd be more concerned for the mass, the
flock, than the individual."
He chuckled. "I can't explain it. Maybe it's just that being stunned can bring
out deep responses.
This feels to me to have come from someplace nobody knew."
"Because no society has faced anything remotely like this before."
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"Maybe in the Old Testament. I never finished reading it. The size of
War and Peace
."
He allowed himself a small grin. "It might fancy a comparison with Jehovah."
"That stilted tone is its way of imitating our ancient voice of authority?"
"I meant more than it merely using a tactic.
Perhaps the way to get a grasp of matters is that it may be playing a role,
but primarily for itself. It transcends any notion we might have of being
self-
involved."
"Or it could be adopting a mode that worked before. Maybe it thinks of us as a
species it knows about. Or a genera. Order. Kingdom that's the highest
biological class, isn't it?"
He was lost in thought. "So it may well have a policy, then based solely
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upon its classifying of us
regarding what to do if we fail to comply."
"I hope it won't come to that."
Kingsley's face seemed to sharpen harshly, his chin drawing down in derision.
"Note the tone of address it uses."
"Yeah, that's an order, all right."
"One we must obey," Channing said. They both turned in surprise. She had
slipped through the door without their noticing.
"What?" Benjamin demanded. "Why?"
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"Something I can't explain, but from what I just saw& " Her voice drained away
and she seemed lost in thought.
"I cannot imagine that we would subject people to such a thing," Kingsley said
with crisp dignity.
"I can't imagine we won't," Channing said, her voice so serene and mild and
certain that it sent a chill through Benjamin.
253
PART FIVE
A THINKING THING
254
JUNE
In her purse lurked her neuroses writ small.
Survivalist provisions like chocolate bars and breath mints, nail polish and
Kleenexes, Chap Sticks and thread and a palm computer and a wrinkled notebook
and assorted pens: yellow, blue, black. She also had taken lately to hoarding:
unpaired gloves, broken eyeglass frames, bits of tape and twine. Peering in,
she felt as if she gazed into her unconscious, where dark objects conspired
with painful memories. She had retreated to ever-larger purses roughly at the
time she was diagnosed.
Before she had used briefcases or book bags, the businesslike approach of a
woman who no longer announced that she carried her house on her back.
Yet she still associated purses with her mother's generation: solid, sure, but
also awkwardly dressed and uptight, clunky and a bit out of it. The purse's
shadowy collective unconscious now prompted her with fragments of her past
selves. It reeked of pruderies and fears, anxieties hidden from the world but
carried everywhere, like a Freudian fanny-pack.
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255
She used this bulky brown satchel to keep herself afloat at the Center. She
could hide her medication and carry it with her, and when a nurse came to
administer the more difficult injections, she could use Benjamin's spacious
office, with its little
"executive alcoves" for deal-making away from the main room of walnut desk and
Big Screen Comm
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Center. When Benjamin or Kingsley the only people who took much notice of
her, luckily, in the hubbub protested that she should be home working, she
quoted Einstein: "Only a monomaniac gets anything done."
"All too true," Kingsley said somberly, his luminous eyes looming over his
slender, lined face.
"You're& looking well."
She had an urge to laugh at his obvious struggle to find a remotely plausible
compliment, but suppressed it. "You're a dear, dear liar." She kissed him
lightly, a satisfying soft smack.
To her surprise, this flustered him. To smooth matters over, she went with him
for a coffee and deliberately chose one of the high-octane variety named Kaff.
He looked troubled most of the time now, but her choice made him frown
further.
"Should you be, well "
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