by Tony Daniel
Every local region in the grist matrix had a ghost town. On Triton, for obscure reasons, the local place of ghosts was known as Shepardsville. And it was in Shepardsville that the grist invader was hiding.
To get to Shepardsville, you must first undo the effects of “compactification” of the three drop dimensions among the virtuality’s eleven. These three dimensions were “smaller” than the other eight in that the information-theory laws that define them were not as complex as those that make up the other eight dimensions. Going to Shepardsville was somewhat like the experience Alice had when she ate the side of the mushroom that made her smaller.
Shepardsville smelled of smoking coals, witches’ brew, and a complex mixture of incenses from every culture that had ever burnt the stuff. It was sickening, and at the same time, intoxicating. A free convert had to take measures against the smell, or he might become trapped, wandering about in a mental haze of illusion and foreboding, and never be able to find his way back out.
The call came early in the morning after the dance that Theory’s search programs had hit pay dirt. Theory took with him stalwart Monitor from the weather station and twenty-two other free-convert soldiers of the Third Sky and Light for the intercept. They tried not to create too much disturbance as they marched through the “streets” of Shepardsville, following the homing probe subroutine that had pinpointed their culprit. Theory had ordered camouflage uniforms, which consisted of a coating of innocuous data. These wouldn’t fool anyone up close, but at a distance, they had proved effective. Theory allowed himself to see nothing at first, but gradually the “smells” congealed and formed images about him, and Shepardsville laid itself out around him as a vast, seething ruin, half-alive, half in the ultimate state of decay.
They found the lair of the invader represented as a smoking hole in a brick wall with vile emissions of noxious gas billowing from it.
Theory turned to Major Monitor. “I’m taking half the soldiers and going in. We’ll drive her out, and you gun her down.”
Monitor nodded and looked down at his hands. A submachine gun materialized. It was not, of course, a rifle, but an “h-weapon,” an uncertainty collapsing function. Theh was for Heisenberg. The h-rifle made it logically impossible for the affected entity to carry information. It died. Just as if it had been hit with a bullet to the brain.
Theory armed himself with an h-pistol. He had always formed his in the shape of an old Colt service revolver from the American Civil War. But he gave it eleven shots, each with a different dimensional orientation.
Theory pulled a bandanna over his nose and led his eleven men into the stink hole. The passage down was mazelike, and Theory assigned a detail to mark their way so that they could get out without getting lost. The deeper he got into the maze, the greater the stench. Finally, he rounded a corner—and there she was.
Oh yes, it washer, all right. He had suspected as much.
His actions of the night before, deceiving Jennifer Fieldguide. The kiss.
It had all been a way of avoiding thinking about what had been.
About the woman who broke his heart with her cold logic.
“Hello, Theory,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“Hello, Constants,” Theory replied. “I had a feeling it was you they sent.”
Constants looked the same as when she and Theory had been lovers, back in OCS. Someone had taken Occam’s razor to her programming, and she was a sleek sight to behold. Jet-black hair and skin, with white markings that emphasized the fine curves of her body.
Theory went for his pistol.
“Uh-uh,” said Constants. “Look before you leap.”
Theory looked. There, standing in front of Constants, his skin a matte black, was a little boy. He was almost hidden against the background of Constants’s lower torso. In Constants’s right hand was a scythe, and she had it to the convert child’s throat.
“Theory,” said Constants, “I’d like to introduce you to your son.”
Twelve
from
First Constitutional Congress of
the Cloudships of the Outer System
April 2, 3013 (e-standard)
a transcript
C. Lebedev: To continue, then, Mr. Chairman . . . freedom . . . serve another without . . . ah, here we are. All thinking entities are people. Not only do we, as a people, affirm this freedom of thought, we are also inalterably and unconditionally opposed to those who would deny it to us. We declare our right as a government of the people to fight and defend ourselves, to educate our young in the principles of freedom, and to establish conditions of justice and security within our society that ensure the continuation and propagation of our freedom. Thinking must be protected and nourished. It is what defines us as a species, whatever form its particular instantiation may take, be it biological, physical, or by some other means as yet to be discovered or defined. Thinking precedes both existence and essence, and plurality is inextricably bound to its nature. The one has no meaning without the many. It is requisite upon our republican democracy to preserve and protect the plurality, as well as the freedom, of thought. They are the same. Any law or entity that arrogates the right to oppose plurality we find abominable, and we will oppose it as a people with all our hearts, minds, and strength. Any thinking individual, no matter how misguided or mistaken, shall have the right to think and express his, her, or its thoughts so long as that expression does not take the form of coercion. These are the principles upon which our government shall be based, and we, the people, do hereby establish them by the means that follow . . . er, that’s it. The next part is Section Two, Mr. Chairman.
C. Mencken: Very well. Chair recognizes Cloudship Ahab.
C. Ahab: Mr. Chairman and honorable ships, I have seen this document in its entirety, and I must say to you that it is gravely flawed.
C. Mencken: Please confine yourself to discussion of the preamble, Cloudship Ahab.
C. Ahab: I shall, Mr. Chairman. Gravely flawed, I say, beginning with this so-called preamble. Right of anybody to think anything they damned well please? Why, the very thing contradicts itself. If anyone can think anything, then how the hell could these so-called “framers” know that freedomis the basic principle? In this life, it is the forceful who are above the weak, the strong-minded are over the meek. You may not like it, but there it is. Where in this document is there one word aboutcharacter ? About will? No, sir, I do not find it! What the people need is strong medicine, not this weak tonic, this sop and placebo. We may not like the inner system, but there is a strong mind there, and we must respect that strength. As a matter of fact, we should not be debating whether or not to oppose that mind, but how we might join with it in common cause, for the betterment of the species. The strong must lead the weak. This is the law of survival to which we should bow—to which we must bow. Survival of the fittest. And the truth—however unpalatable it may be to minds of a narrower perspective—is thatwe and Amés are the strongest. It is only a matter of time until we win in the war for survival, which is above all other wars, and from which we cannot escape. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
C. Mencken: All right. What? Yes, er . . . the chair recognizes Cloudship Mark Twain.
C. Mark Twain: Well, Ahab has a pretty good point there, but I’m not so sure it is the one he intended to make. Now consider this survival of the fittest thing for a moment. If we take that as a given, then what in the world makes him think that we might band with another in common cause? Either we’re inalterably at one another’s throats, or we’re not, according to Old Ahab’s logic.
C. Ahab: Who are you calling old?
C. Mark Twain: I believe that you and I started out in the asteroid belt together, old boy. Used to be friends, as I recall, until you started taking yourself so goddamn seriously. I got a right to calling you old if I call myself the same, and I assure you, sir, I am ancient!
C. Ahab: Mr. Chairman!
C. Mencken: Please confine yourself to the matter
under consideration, Cloudship Mark Twain. And that is not either your age or Ahab’s. Believe me, you’re both a couple of young cubs to me.
C. Mark Twain: Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Chairman, and I will do as you say. Now, it seems to me that by the good Cloudship Ahab’s logic, it’s all a big fight to see who is the biggest dog, and it’s going to come down to us and Amés in the end scrapping it out until one or the other of us gets hold of a throat and bites. In that case, we might consider that a pack can bring down the feistiest lone wolf. If I were Ahab, I would consider getting together all those weaker dogs and ganging up on the other big dog, then, when he’s all through and done for, why then I’d take out the littler dogs one by one. That, it seems to me, is where this survival of the fittest nonsense should lead us. But take a look at nature. It’s full of competition, certainly, but there is also a fair degree of cooperation, as well. Back when I was a biological human, I was mighty glad that my mitochondria cooperated with my DNA, for example, though the two of them started out as separate creatures. But that is enough for that line of argument, my friends and neighbors, for we are human beings, and we have moved beyond and above mere survival. Surviving is justone of the things we do. Maybe old survival itself saw its own limitations, so it bred itself a better alternative. At least that’s what I think on my good days. Let us make this a good day, friends, and vote to adopt this preamble.
Chamber Left: Hear, hear!
C. Mencken: Thank you, Cloudship Mark Twain. Chair recognizes Cloudship al-Farghani.
Thirteen
Leo knew the kid must be bored and scared at the same time, and she was still feeling acute, unconscious pangs of separation from her family, if he was reading the signs right. He wished there was more he could do for Aubry.
And now there was Jill—this amazing creature come out of the blue. She was a gorgeous thing—all shapely muscle and bone. Her hair was black, and her eyes were a dark blue, more like deep space than like Earth’s sky. She had a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks that almost might appear to be whiskers in some light.
And there was that little tremble to Jill, as if her heart were beating much faster than a normal human’s, and that somewhere under her woman’s skin the jill ferret lurked in its den, waiting until biting was needed.
“So, you’re looking for somebody named Alethea.”
“Somebody or something.”
“Something? What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. She used to be a woman, but now she’s scattered.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I don’t know much more myself. But I’m going to find her.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to do?”
“Find her and save her.”
“Why?”
“I promised that I would.”
“Where do you think she is, then?” said Leo. “Maybe I can help.”
“That’s why I saved you. Tod said he thought you could help.”
“He told you that?”
“He wouldn’t let me take him to safety after we fought our way out of the DI sweepers. He told me to go back and find the changeling girl and the leprechaun. That they would know the answer to the question I wanted answered.”
“He did, did he?” Leo scratched his head. “I don’t know any answers.”
“Yes,” said Jill. “I asked him about that afterward.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he got the times mixed up.”
“What?”
“That was all he said. ‘Sorry, I got the times mixed up.’ What do you suppose he meant by that?”
“Maybe I will know the answer to your question someday. In the future, I mean.”
“Not much good for now.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“I need to find Alethea.”
“But what is so important about this Alethea?”
“Something bad is happening. Something maybe worse than any fighting. The rats who are my friends—sometimes they tell a horrible story. About things in the grist that hunt them and catch them. Pull them out of their bodies. The ones that get caught are being taken somewhere. I think that someone is after all the algorithms that own themselves, and I think that someone isAmés or somebody who works for him. There are stories of a camp on Mars.”
“Noctis Labyrinthus,” said Leo.
“Yes. The rats tell me tales they have heard. Experiments are being done. Torture. Mass executions of everything smart that doesn’t look like one of you Earth monkeys. I think Alethea may be there.”
“That is a bad place.”
“I have to get her out.”
“I don’t think evenyou can do that.”
“Maybe not me,” Jill said. She grinned her ferret smile. Her teethwere smaller and pointier than a normal woman’s. “But maybe me and an army.”
“Do you have an army?”
Jill didn’t answer. Her grin became even more unsettling.
“I think Amés wants to be a lot more than Director,” Leo said. “I think he wants to play every instrument in the orchestra, too. To tell you the truth, I’m sure he believes he can do it better than the rest of us. He doesn’t want to rule the human race, he wants tobecome it. Own it. Like it was his body.”
“I have seen animals act like Amés,” Jill replied. “It is usually, I think, when they realize somehow, somewhere inside them, that they are going to die.”
“Well, I’m an animal; I know that I’m going to die, and I don’t want to rule all of creation,” Leo said. Jill turned her eyes on him, and he could see them sparkling in the wan light. Talk about animals, Leo thought.
“You are a man,” Jill said. “Amés is a boy.”
“I suppose.”
“You and I will see about that,” she said. “I would like to make love to you.”
“Wha . . . what?”
“Have sex.” She scratched her head. “What is the word?”
“Fuck?” said Leo.
“Yes, fuck. But the other.”
“Make love?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you, Jill?”
“Older than you. Older than you think.”
“You don’t look it—”
“This body is two and a half e-years old, if that’s what you mean.”
“Two and a half? I don’t understand.”
“If you make love to me, I will explain.”
“I . . . I would like you to explain.” Leo was flabbergasted. He had never been so blatantly propositioned before.
“Maybe we should do it somewhere away from Aubry,” Jill said.
“That’s a damn good idea.”
“Even though I really don’t understand why.”
“Well, maybe that’s something I can explain to you one of these days,” replied Leo. “Let’s go that way.”
Leo grasped a handful of fibers and pulled himself back into the jungle of the transmitter. Jill followed behind. After they had gone a good ways in, he felt a tug on his leg. Jill was pulling his boots off, using her hold on a particularly thick rope of fibers for resistance. She seemed to move very easily in zero gee. He undressed himself, tumbling around a couple of times like a sky diver in flight, and when he looked again at Jill, she was naked.
He reached for her hands and pulled her toward him, and as they came together, Jill became a ball of fury, grasping at him and kissing his neck and shoulders. She held tight about his waist. Leo had made love in free fall before, but never like this. Before, it had always been a languid affair, with both parties feeling a bit awkward, and careful that any movement did not send them careening about.
Jill was having none of that.
She bit him gently on the ear, and Leo felt himself growing hard against her torso. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up—not too forcefully, but strongly enough. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she sucked on it for all she was worth.
For a moment, they came apart, and wer
e floating there, connected only by this French kiss.
Then Leo pulled them closer together and began turning her around, her head down, in relation to him. They fit together perfectly—Leo was barely taller than Jill—and with a slight bend of her waist, her mouth was to him, and she took him between her lips. Their motion translated into a spin, and soon they were doing a slow barrel roll as they pleased one another.
They did this for a time, then Leo felt Jill’s muscles contract as she had an orgasm. She gasped, and he came out of her mouth.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “I didn’t—”
“What was that?” Jill whispered.
“What was what?”
“The way I just felt. What was that?”
For a moment, Leo had no idea what she was talking about, and then he realized that she had never experienced an orgasm before.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It is perfectly natural. It’s what I was trying to do to you.”
“Well, you did it,” Jill said. “Do it again.”
And so he did. Finally, Leo knew he could take no more himself without coming. He gently pulled her back around to him, face-to-face. They kissed again, and Jill held tightly to him.
“Can I go inside you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I think you had better.”
There was a bit of fumbling, and Leo had to grab hold of a sticky tendril to keep himself still long enough so that he could find the right position. Then he did, and he slid inside her easily.
After that, all Leo could remember was images. Jill turned into the animal that he had suspected she still was inside. After a couple of his own thrusts, she moved herself up and down his body in a frenzy, clawing into his back to keep them from coming apart. Their motion set them moving through the dangling fibers, getting tangled among them as they went. After a while, they could not have separated if they wanted, so wrapped up were they in the pulp.
They returned quietly through the mass of fibers to join the others. They parted the last curtain to find Aubry wide-awake. But Aubry, intuitive kid that she was, said nothing. She couldn’t resist giving them a little smile. Leo fell asleep, floating beside the others. He might have imagined it, but as he drifted off, he was sure he could smell a musky odor about him, clinging to his skin. A wild-animal smell that was also, somehow, the smell of home. He liked that. Leo hadn’t had a real home for an awfully long time.