Sky responded with a blank stare.
He chuckled, ‘That’s either a no or an intention to commit physical harm.’
‘You telepaths are perceptive,’ she said and slid herself into the recliner.
Dante lowered the helmet onto her head, clamping it around her skull. The machine hummed and she began to lose sensation of her body. She tried to lift her arms and legs but they would not respond. She was locked inside herself, caged with a rising heartbeat.
Memories flooded in; the suicides at her apartment block, the old brainbender, a kitchen knife separating her mother’s skin at the wrist, the crowded hospital, her father’s gift of a swarm…
Her conscious attention was dragged kicking and screaming along pathways as if she were but a passive visitor in someone else’s mind. Something was digging and shaking… she feared that at any moment it would slice a nerve and she would seethe with pain.
‘What’s wrong?’ someone asked.
‘We need a bigger drill,’ came the response.
There was a pause.
‘Do it.’
10:2
The gentle thrum of human speech returned to Sky’s ear. A soft glow. Cool air flowed through her nostrils, a neutral scent-without-a-scent, like the taste of water.
‘Sky?’
Dante’s face was close, his thick eyebrows raised high on his forehead. ‘You’ve got the most extraordinary security features, young lady.’ He released her helmet clamps. ‘They almost blocked our scan.’
The recliner rose until Sky was in a sitting position. Her head was heavy. She massaged her scalp. She realized she had a drip in one arm.
‘You lost a lot of fluids on your journey here,’ Dante explained.
‘How long was I out?’ She had difficulty forming the words, and her voice was too loud for comfort.
‘A couple of your Earth hours,’ said Dante. ‘You needed the shut-eye.’ He disconnected her drip and sprayed plaster over the tiny wound.
She stretched. ‘Please tell me you’re satisfied with the scan.’
He cocked his head as if he were unsure how to answer. ‘You’ve been busy since you arrived on Apollo.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘We’re not the type to judge—everyone has to make a living somehow. We did manage to access your intentions. You are telling the truth; you’re here for Geppetto. At least, that’s the truth as you see it. Your truth.’
‘But?’
‘You’ve had monumental programming. Your brain is stacked tighter than the average Earth-lubber, and that’s saying something.’
‘I’ve had therapeutic programming since ’36.’
Dante paused. ‘I see. I’m sorry to hear it.’
His attempt at an apology was no consolation, not when his type, telepaths, were the ones responsible for ’36.
Dante toyed with the hovering maya of Sky’s brain. ‘Even so, that doesn’t account for your neural structure, especially your security features. I was afraid we might fry you.’
Sky looked up. ‘And?’
‘We got there in the end,’ he smiled.
‘Does that mean I qualify for special-visitor status?’
Dante glanced at Olon Rhodes, but the Olon’s maya vanished. Dante opened his arms in a grand gesture. ‘We are honored, Sky Delilah Marion. You have shared your truth with us, now allow us to share our truth with you.’ The locks clacked and the lab door opened.
Dante led her out of the room and down the corridor.
‘You haven’t told me how I’m supposed to help you,’ Sky said.
‘True,’ he replied. He gave her nothing more.
The corridor ended in a wide metal door. Sky wondered what was waiting on the other side. ‘I’m no telepath, but I get the feeling not everyone will be as welcoming as you.’
‘The majority have spoken. Your intentions are pure, and we are, for the most part, satisfied.’
The majority? ‘You make decisions as a hive?’
Dante laughed. ‘You’ve been playing too many sims. We couldn’t achieve anything if we acted as one mind. We delegate functions like any human community, but some decisions are too important to leave to one person.’
At first, it warmed her to think most of the colony had approved of her entry, but then she became concerned over the ones who had not, the ones like the Olon.
The steel door opened to a wide cavern and a welcoming party of five soldiers, rifles slung across their chests, barrels pointed at the ground, forefingers resting beside their triggers. They had the grim stare of Olon Rhodes, as if they had been fashioned from the same printer.
‘No red carpet?’ asked Sky.
‘Give it time,’ Dante said and he led her across the cavern. Sky spotted the caterpillar train, sitting idle on the far end.
Uncle Jesse picked up an open internal network. < It doesn’t give you access to the outside world or nothin’, just the basics—doors and lights and signs. >
As Sky hopped across the cavern, she noticed that its center was hollow, like a giant donut. She looked down and froze; below her gaped an immense vertical tunnel, wide enough to accommodate a regular transport ship. A lattice of walkways and ladders ringed its walls.
Bad guys and their underground Moon bases, she thought. The sims that had babysat her in childhood were replete with brainbenders in their hidden offworld bases, ready to turn you into a loyal zombie slave the moment you granted them access to your mind. It was always the curious kid who fell for the brainbenders’ trap, or the desperate one. Now, here she was.
She followed Dante into a waiting elevator. Sky counted the levels as it descended; one, two, three… thirty-one, thirty-two… until the space opened without warning and she gasped at the sight.
It was a hollowed-out cave as wide as a sports stadium. It snaked in both directions for kilometers, its walls glistening with an artificial coating. At its base were dwellings and green fields and farms. As her elevator neared the ground, she could make out the details of the homes and the children who played as children everywhere did, albeit with more acrobatics in this reduced gravity.
There must be thousands of families, she thought, astounded at the feat of engineering.
‘I felt the same when I first laid eyes on the lava tube,’ Dante said. ‘Except then, it was just a dream.’
This is not the first time I’ve laid eyes on it, she told herself. Back at her apartment, when Sky had tapped into the old brainbender’s mind, she had seen the colony through Dante’s eyes.
She now wondered whether Dante had also seen her.
The air was fresh, crisp, with a touch of humidity; not quite rainforest but the closest thing to it that Sky had inhaled in a long time, and the best she had tasted on Apollo.
A light source shone from above, an oval-shaped glare attached to a rail that followed the contours of the ceiling. Sky found she could stare at this artificial sun with minimal discomfort.
The elevator came to rest at the floor of a hangar where a transport ship lay like a sleeping slug. Dante led her past a stream of overall-clad workers who stopped what they were doing and stared. Sky let her coiled hair hang over her face.
‘You know, I could do without the tour,’ she said. ‘I’d be happy to upload the cure and be on my way, if it’s all the same to you.’
Dante smiled but said nothing.
The hangar ended and a grocery market began, filled with stalls full of recognizable fruits and vegetables, but smaller, less vibrant. Hordes of telepaths cluttered the aisles. It looked like an ordinary market, yet there was something missing—the sound. The crowds went about their business without uttering a word, save for the occasional yelp of a child. It was unnatural.
The shoppers also stopped and stared. Sky could hear giggles and chuckles, as if there was a running joke going through the colony.
‘I can’t tell if they’re curious or they’d like to hurt me,’ Sky muttered.
As if in response, laughter sprouted from
some in the crowd.
‘They can’t read you, so they’re cautious,’ Dante explained as the shoppers parted. ‘You’ve none of the color and texture of a telepath. To us, you’re little more than the silhouette of a human being.’
‘You people sure know how to make an Earth guest feel comfortable.’
‘You’d prefer we lied?’
Dante hopped on board a waiting cable car, the sort of transport that still rolled on San Francisco’s streets for tourists.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Sky asked.
‘To the truth,’ he said.
The cable car began to move. Sky hopped on before it was out of reach. The car trundled down into the belly of the colony.
The passengers stared. She felt as if she were being examined under a microscope, the entire colony watching her every move. On Earth, one stranger had been enough to unnerve her. Here, she was under the glare of thousands.
Yet, despite all this, her body did not react with its usual panic. She was anxious, of course, but not debilitated. Perhaps she was getting better. Perhaps she was numb.
Dante swayed in and out of her space as the cable car rattled along the tracks. ‘Aren’t you at all curious to know what we’re thinking?’
‘Very,’ Sky said, staring out the window.
‘Why not find out? There’s always room on our network for another mind, another life.’
‘I couldn’t cope being bombarded with everyone’s thoughts. I have enough trouble dealing with the looks.’
‘We tune in and out as we please. It’s not much different to your Neuronet, except we can access each other’s minds. How do you isos cope being cut off from your kin?’
‘We value our privacy. Some more than others.’
‘Privacy from who? Not from your rulers; they can see everything you think and do. Privacy from each other, perhaps.’
The wheels of the vehicle clickety-clacked.
‘Privacy.’ Dante repeated the word with care, as if it could fall apart in less delicate hands. ‘Privacy needs a mask, and a mask always hides the truth.’
More telepath platitudes, Sky thought. As if being naked and exposed to the vicissitudes of human intention and emotional whim was a superior way to live. She’d had a taste of that in her work, but at least her clients had no ability to access her mind. Sky heard her heroes speak from those old sims: ‘Artificial telepathy is unnatural and—’
‘Breeds viruses. Yes, we’re familiar with Earth propaganda.’
‘Propaganda?’ What irked her was not that he had called it “propaganda” but that he thought her sufficiently gullible to be manipulated by simple media. In an era of viruses and brainbenders, it was an insult. The tittering of the passengers did not help.
‘You do know the real reason Earth outlawed telepathy, don’t you?’ Dante said.
Sky knew the colonies were rife with anti-Earth conspiracy theories. This should be a good one, she thought. ‘Tell me.’
‘Your neuroscanners can’t read telepaths.’
Once, she would have laughed at the suggestion. But her father had admitted as much that night at the hospital. Sky decided she would play dumb—there was no need to confirm the scanners’ security flaw. ‘The scanners can read any human thought-pattern, telepath or otherwise.’
‘Not so. Our brains are networked; our experiences intertwined. The scanners can’t tell where one telepath’s thought begins and another’s ends. Hell, sometimes neither can we. Scanners can’t read us, Ms. Marion. That’s why we’re free and you and your fellow Earth citizens are not.’
Sky feigned surprise.
Dante smirked. ‘We’re a kooky lot, aren’t we?’
She stifled a laugh. He wasn’t wrong.
His eyes lit up. ‘Sometimes we laugh when another mirrors our subjective experience, one which we had believed unique. The realization of a shared experience gives rise to a relief and joy. This is something our people can tap into at will.’ There were more giggles, as if the telepaths were on some cultish neurostim.
The cable car slowed. To Sky’s surprise, Dante leapt out and skipped across the colony floor toward a building, ran up its wall, pushed off, flipped and floated to the ground like a weightless parkour athlete. An impressive feat for a man at any age.
Sky waited until the cable car was stationary before she alighted. It had stopped in front of a building with a medical red cross above the entrance.
She followed Dante inside.
They ended up in a hospital ward filled with rows and rows of white-blanketed beds. A human lay in each bed, eyes shut, and still. The only sound was that of the shuffling feet of medical staff, and their echoes.
Tears streamed down Dante’s face. In a matter of moments, he had gone from upbeat to despondent.
Sky approached the nearest patient, a woman of her mother’s age. The medical maya displayed the patient’s illness: Tellinii/suicide virus.
Dante struggled to speak. ‘We haven’t had an infection like this in years.’
A nurse wheeled a stretcher past Sky. It had a body on it with the sheets drawn over its face. Dante reached out to touch the deceased as it passed. ‘My fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, waiting to die. And there is nothing I can do about it.’
Sky’s features twisted in confusion. ‘How can your colony be infected?’ The air was cold.
Dante wiped his tears with his palms. ‘You look surprised. Isn’t this what they warned you about on Earth? Telepaths riddled with neuroviruses. Something to scare the children.’
‘But you have the cure.’ Sky’s voice rebounded off the walls, weakened, then faded.
Dante shook his head, his eyes lost somewhere in the maze of infected, his features sunk as if under the weight of a heavier gravity.
10:3
When Sky staggered out of the hospital, she expected the air would be easier to breathe. It was anything but.
How could the telepaths have their own infected? That was impossible. Where was the cure? Sky’s world was crumbling.
Dante appeared at the hospital entrance.
Sky panted, doubled over, ‘My mother has less than four days to live.’
‘Your scan told me as much.’
‘If you don’t have the cure, who does?’
‘Geppetto,’ he said.
Geppetto. A name that held so much promise. ‘Where can I find him?’
‘It,’ he corrected her. ‘Geppetto is the program that created the Tellinii virus.’
She looked up, ‘And where can I find it?’
Dante studied her. ‘Earth.’
Earth?
What perverse worldview had settled in the minds of these people? To torture her like this? All those brains leeching from one another must rob them of their individual humanity.
‘But we have a million infected. We don’t have the cure,’ she said.
‘Earth governments used Geppetto to create the virus. If anyone’s got the cure, they do.’
He’s screwing with you, she thought. That’s what these people did; they weren’t called brainbenders for nothing.
‘It’s our truth, and the reality,’ he said.
‘This is ludicrous,’ she gasped. ‘If we had the cure, we would have used it.’
‘And so would we.’
Sky’s mind spun in a thousand directions. She had nothing to hold onto. ‘That makes no sense. Why would Earth withhold the cure when we have so many infected?’
‘Because if the cure became public, Earth would have to hand it over to the VOL. Earth governments are bound by intra-solar agreements to share all neurovirus remedies. Earth does not want to share the cure, because then it could not use the virus as a weapon against the VOL.’
‘What?’ she said, struggling to follow his logic.
Dante stared into the distance. ‘The Tellinii virus appeared about ten years ago. At first, only telepath colonies were infected, and folks assumed it was our own fault for linking. Some even blamed us for creating t
he virus. They called us unnatural, too. We lost two sister colonies to vigilante mobs.’ He paused, closing his eyes. ‘It was our kind who won the war. Not by force of arms, but by hacking. Telepaths hacked Earth networks and extracted military strategy and found weaknesses that gave us an edge. And when that wasn’t enough to win, telepaths carpet-hacked the Earth in ’36, putting an end to the war. More often than not, it’s ’paths who breach Earth’s firewalls and siphon its secrets. Without us, there would be no VOL. That’s why Earth wants to destroy us.’
It was a historical fact that telepath hackers were behind ’36. But for Dante to think that Earth had been wielding the Tellinii virus to eradicate telepaths beggared belief. Dante’s telepaths must be suffering from a shared psychosis, Sky thought, or a neurovirus that contaminated their ability to value evidence and instead delight in conspiracy. Sky was further unsettled when she noticed hundreds of people watching her from near and far, still and silent, as if under some sort of spell.
‘The powers-that-be have always sought to control the free flow of information,’ Dante said, ‘whether it is the written word, speech, and now—thought. To them, free data is a threat to order. To us, it is a defense against the inevitable abuse of power. We, telepaths, are what stands between Earth’s tyranny and solar freedom.’
And on he went, like some sort of revolutionary leader. She could see him giving the order to infect Earth; his zeal for utopia could kill millions.
He drew nearer. ‘You needn’t take my word for it. If you want to know the truth, if you want to see it for yourself, connect with us. We can’t hide anything from mind-kin. It’s the only way you can be certain.’
That’s what they want. They want your mind. They want to use you, to attack Earth again.
The weight of competing thoughts bore down on her, shouting to get attention, scrambling up the backs of the trampled ones who suffocated underneath their feet. The ground rose to hit her in the face. She must have fallen.
She found herself in the arms of Dante. Then she was sitting on a bench. Then a nurse took her vitals, and gave her water.
Sky tried to breathe, but it was not enough; it was as if the oxygen levels had dropped. ‘It’s the gravity. I haven’t acclimatized,’ she explained. She tried to stand, to find her balance again. She swayed, but did not fall.
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