"That was
before." Crow said. "I got a call from one of the few people on the
technologist side of things who will talk to me anymore, a guy over in
Washington, and he told me things were looking really bad at the closed
hearings."
"The senate
hearing on Green Eyes?"
"Yeah." Crow
said. "Word is the naturalist hard liners have three-fourths of the votes, and
most of the rest don't care one way or the other. Nobody likes a machine
getting uppity."
"How long?"
Rebecca asked quietly. "How long before they do something?"
"Couple
days." Crow said. "It's going to be a media circus one way or the other. This
isn't the sort of thing they'll sweep under the rug. They'll go all out and
wipe him right there inside the courthouse. That is, if they just wipe him.
They might scrap heap him after all the trouble."
"That's
bullshit!" Rebecca said. "They said they'd wipe him at least, put him back
where he was before. I mean, if he's just a machine like they say, then
punishing him like a criminal is against everything they're saying." She was
starting to cry. "Can't they even follow their own fucking principles?"
Crow set an
uncomfortable hand on her shoulder, hesitated, and then drew her close in a hug
he hoped helped a little. "He's a symbol now. Symbols get held up or burned
down, they don't get the straight and narrow treatment."
Rebecca
sobbed and collapsed onto Crow, who grunted in surprise and pulled away at
first and the tucked her close. He made inarticulate noises intended to comfort
and a darkness blurred his eyes as he recalled that the last time he had done
such a thing was over a scraped knee of Alexander a month ago. After a few
moments she pulled away and rubbed hard at her eyes, apparently trying to will
away the residue of the outburst.
"But the
bright side is that he might be willing to run now." Crow suggested gently. "If
staying doesn't accomplish the effect, there's no reason not to run is there?"
Rebecca
snorted and seemed to consider crying again before venting the excess emotion
into anger instead. "Bastard wants to be a martyr. He'll probably give them
tips on how to hang the rope to look better for the cameras when the lynching
comes. 'Sometimes it takes a great injustice to mobilize the righteous.' That's
the type of crap he spouts at me whenever we get talking about it. He's too
dense to get that dead is dead, whether it's just or not."
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