by Greg Bear
Paulsen-Fuchs stood and tapped his watch meaningfully.
“Paul,” Bernard said, “is that why my news has been cut back? Why I didn’t hear about the Russian attack?”
Paulsen-Fuchs didn’t answer. “Is there anything you can do for Mr. Gogarty?” he asked.
“Not immediately. I-”
“Then we will leave you to your contemplation.”
“Wait a second, Paul. What in hell is going on? Mr. Gogarty would obviously like to spend much more time with me, and I with him. Why all the limitations?”
Gogarty glanced between them, acutely embarrassed.
“Security, Michael,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. “Little pitchers, you know.”
Bernard’s reaction was a sudden, short wry bark of a laugh, “Pleasant meeting with you, Professor Gogarty,” he said.
“And you,” Gogarty said. The viewing chamber sound was cut off and the two men departed. Bernard walked behind the lavatory curtain and urinated. The urine was reddish-purple.
You are not in charge of them? They command you?
—If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m quite mortal. What’s with my piss? It’s purple.
Phenyls and ketones being discharged. We must SPEND MORE TIME studying your hierarchic status.
“I’m low monkey,” he said aloud. “Very low monkey now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The fire crackled lustily and cast broad, dim tree-shadows across the historic old buildings of Fort Tejon. April Ulam stood facing away from the pit with arms wrapped around herself, her tattered gown rippling slightly in the chill evening breeze. Jerry poked the fire with a stick and looked at his twin. “So what did we see?”
“Hell,” John said firmly.
“We saw Los Angeles, gentlemen,” April said out of the gloom.
“I didn’t recognize anything,” John said. “Not even like Livermore, or the farm fields. I mean—”
“There wasn’t anything real there,” Jerry finished for him. “Just all…spinning.”
April advanced and pulled her gown away from her legs to sit on a log. “I think we should tell each other what we saw, as close as we can describe it. I’ll begin, if you wish.”
Jerry shrugged. John continued to stare into the fire.
“I think I recognized the outlines of the San Fernando valley. It’s been ten years since I last visited Los Angeles, but I remember coming over the hills, and there’s Bur-bank, and Glendale…I just don’t remember what they looked like, back then. Hazy air. It was hot, not like now.”
“The haze is still there,” Jerry said. “But it doesn’t look the same.”
“Purple haze,” John said, shaking his head and chuckling.
“Now if you agree that we saw the valley—”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Maybe that.”
“Then there was something in the valley, all spread out.”
“But not solid. Not made of solid stuff,” John said slowly.
“Agreed,” April said. “Energy, then?”
“Looked like a Jackson Pollock painting all spun around,” Jerry said.
“Or a Picasso,” John said.
“Gentlemen, I’d agree, and amend a little—it looked a great deal like a Max Ernst to me.”
“Don’t know about him,” Jerry said.
“Something spinning in the middle. A tornado.”
April nodded. “Yes. But what kind of tornado?”
John squinted and rubbed his eyes. “Spread out at the bottom, all kinds of spikes going out—like lightning, but not glowing. Like shadows of lightning.”
“Touching,” John said. “Then disappearing.”
“A tornado dancing, perhaps,” April suggested.
“Yeah,” the twins said.
“I saw trains of disks weaving in and out, under the tornado,” she continued. “Did you?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“And on the hills, lights moving, as if fireflies were crawling up to the skies.” She had her exalted look again, staring dreamily over the fire. John wrapped his hands around his head and continued shaking it.
“Not real” he said.
“No, indeed. Not real at all. But it must have some connection with what my son did.”
“Shit,” John said.
“No,” Jerry said. “I believe you.”
“If it started in La Jolla, and spread all over the country, then where is it oldest and most established?”
“La Jolla,” Jerry said, looking at her expectantly. “Maybe it got started at UCSD!”
April shook her head. “No, in La Jolla, where Vergil worked and lived. But all up and down the coast, it spread fast So maybe all the way down to San Diego, it has united, come together, and made this place its center.”
“Fuck it” John said.
April said, “We can’t get to La Jolla, not with this in the way. And I’ve come here to be with my son.”
“You’re crazier than shit” John said.
“I don’t know why you gentlemen were spared,” April said, “but it’s obvious why I’ve been.”
“Because you’re his mother,” Jerry said, laughing and nodding as if at a great deduction.
“Exactly,” April said. “So gentlemen, tomorrow we will drive back up and over the hill, and if you wish, you can join me, but I will go by myself if need be, and join my son.”
Jerry sobered. “April, that is crazy. What if that’s just something really dangerous, like a big electrical storm or a nuclear power plant gone haywire?”
“There ain’t any big nuclear power plants in LA,” John said. “But Jerry’s right. It’s just fucking crazy to talk about walking into that hell.”
“If my son is there, it will not hurt me,” April said.
Jerry poked the fire vigorously. “I’ll take you there,” he said. “But I won’t go in with you.”
John looked hard and seriously at his brother. “You’re both bugfuck.”
“Or I can walk,” April said, determined.
Jerry stood with his hands on his hips, staring resentfully at his brother and April Ulam as they walked toward the truck. Sweet purple-pink fog spilled out of the LA basin and drifted at tree-top level over Fort Tejon, filtering the morning light and leaving everything without shadow, ghostly.
“Hey!” John said. “Goddammit hey! Don’t just leave me here!” He ran after them.
The truck crested the hills on the deserted highway and they looked down into the maelstrom. It looked very little different in daylight.
“It’s like everything you’ve always dreamed, all rolled up at once,” Jerry said, driving intently.
“Not a bad description,” April said. “A tornado of dreams. Perhaps the dreams of everyone who’s been taken by the change.”
John clutched the dash with both hands and stared wide-eyed down the highway. “There’s about a mile of road left,” he said. “Then we got to stop.”
Jerry agreed with a curt nod. The truck slowed.
At less than ten miles an hour, they approached a curtain of dancing vertical streamers of fog. The curtain stretched for several dozen feet above the road and to each side, rippling around vague orange shapes that might have once been buildings.
“Jesus, Jesus,” John said.
“Stop,” April said. Jerry brought the truck to a halt. April looked at John sternly until he opened the cab door and stepped out to let her exit Jerry put the shift lever into neutral and set the brake, then got out on the other side.
“You gentlemen are missing loved ones, aren’t you?” April asked, smoothing her tattered gown. The maelstrom roared like a distant hurricane—roared, and hissed, and bellowed down a rain gutter.
John and Jerry nodded.
“If my Vergil’s in there, and I know that he is, then they must be, too. Or we can get to them from here.”
“That’s crazier than shit” John said. “My wife and my boy can’t be in there.”
“Why not? Are they dea
d?”
John stared at her.
“You know they aren’t I know my son is not dead.”
“You’re a witch,” Jerry said, less accusing than admiring.
“Some have said so. Vergil’s father said so before he left me. But you know, don’t you?”
John trembled. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Jerry stared at the curtain with a vague grin.
“Are they in there, John?” he asked his brother.
“I don’t know,” John said, sniffing and wiping his face with one arm.
April walked toward the curtain. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” she said. As she entered, she became scrambled like a bad television picture, and then vanished.
“Look at that!” John said, trembling.
“She’s right” Jerry said. “Don’t you feel it?”
“I don’t know!” John wailed. “Christ brother, I don’t know.”
“Let’s go find them,” Jerry said, taking his brother’s hand. He pulled gently. John resisted.
Jerry pulled again.
“All right,” John said quietly. “Together.”
Side by side, they walked down the few yards of highway and into the curtain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Her leg cramped on the eighty-second level. With a twist and a cry, she fell on the stairs and knocked her head against the railing. One knee caught a stair edge just below the patella. The flashlight and radio flew from her hands onto the concrete landing. The bottle of water wedged between two stairs and burst open, soaking her and dribbling away as she watched, paralyzed with pain. It seemed hours—but was probably only minutes—before she could even pull herself up to the landing. She lay on her back, eyes sandy from needing to weep and having no tears.
A knot on her forehead, one leg that just wouldn’t move right, little food and no water; scared, hurting, and with thirty more stories to go. The flashlight beam flickered and went out, leaving her in complete darkness. “Shit,” she said. Her mother had deplored that word even more than taking the name of God in vain. Since they were not a particularly religious family, that was a minor infraction, odious only when used in front of those it would offend. But saying “shit” was the ultimate, an acknowledgment of bad manners, bad upbringing, or simply surrendering to the lowest emotions.
Suzy tried to stand and fell down again, her knee ripe with new agony. “Shit, shit, SHIT!” she screamed. “Get better, oh please get better.” She tried to rub the knee but that only made it hurt worse.
She felt for the flashlight and found it. With a shake, it lit up again and she directed the beam around to reassure herself the brown and white sheets and filaments hadn’t overtaken her. She looked at the door to the eighty-second floor and knew she wouldn’t be able to climb stairs for some time, perhaps the rest of the day. She crawled to the door and glanced over her shoulder at the radio as she reached for the knob. The radio lay on the landing; it had come down hard when she fell. For a moment, she thought she might as well abandon it, but the radio meant something special to her. It was the only human thing she had left, the only thing that talked to her. She might be able to find another in the building, but she couldn’t chance silence. Trying to keep her injured knee straight, she crawled back for it.
Getting past the heavy fire door resulted in more misery and more bruises when it slammed on her arm, but she finally lay back on the carpet of the elevator lobby, staring up at the acoustic ceiling overhead. She rolled onto her stomach, alert for anything moving.
Stillness, quiet.
Slowly, trying to conserve her strength, she crawled out of the lobby and around a corner.
Beyond a glass partition, the entire floor was covered with drafting tables, white enamel legs on beige carpet, black lamps arranged like so many birds with adjustable necks. The glass door had already been propped open with a rubber wedge. Hobbling past the desk and couches, she leaned on the nearest table, eyes bright with exhaustion and pain. There were blueprints on the drafting table beside her. She was in an architect’s office. She looked at one drawing more closely. It laid out deck plans for a ship. So this was an office for people who designed ships. “What the hell do I care?” she asked herself.
She sat on a tall stool with locked casters. With one foot she labored for half a minute to unlock the casters, then rolled herself down an aisle between tables, using the table edges to push herself along.
Another long glass wall separated the drafting area from office cubicles. She stopped and stared. All the fear had gone now. She had run out of it. There might be more fear available the next morning, she thought, but for now she didn’t miss it She simply observed.
The cubicles were filled with things moving. They were so strange that for a time she hardly knew how to describe them to herself. Disks with snail feet crawled along the glass, their edges actually lighting up. Something fluid and shapeless, like a blob of wax a lava light bobbed around in another cubicle, straining on black ropes or cables that stretched and sparkled; the blob fluoresced green wherever it struck glass or furniture. In the last cubicle, a forest of scaled sticks, like chicken legs, bent and swayed in an impossible breeze.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “It doesn’t mean a thing. Nothing’s happening because it doesn’t make sense.”
She rolled away from the cubicles, up against the far windows. The rest of the floor seemed clear—no crumpled clothing. Seen from across the floor, the cubicles resembled aquariums filled with exotic sea creatures.
Maybe she was safe. Usually whatever was in an aquarium didn’t come out. She tried to convince herself she was safe, but it really didn’t matter. For the moment, there wasn’t anywhere else she could go.
Her knee was swelling, straining her jeans. She thought about cutting the jeans open, and then decided it was best simply to slide out of them. With a grunt, she let herself down from the stool and leaned back against a filing cabinet. Lifting her hips, balancing on one leg, she humped and bunched the jeans carefully past the swelling.
It wasn’t very ugly yet, just puffy and purpling under the kneecap. She poked it and felt faint, not from pain, but simply because she was drained. There was nothing left of Suzy McKenzie now. The old world had gone first, until nothing remained but buildings, which without people were like skeletons without flesh. New flesh was moving in to cover the skeletons. Soon the old Suzy McKenzie would be gone, too, leaving nothing but a quizzical shadow.
She turned her face north, around the edge of the cabinet and over a low credenza.
There was the new Manhattan, a tent city with skyscrapers for poles; a city made of toy blocks with the blocks rearranged under blankets. Glowing warm mellow brown and yellow in the sunset. Newer York, filled with empty clothes.
Old Suzy dropped back on the carpet, cradled her head in her arms and pushed her hauntingly empty jeans under her knee to elevate it “When I awake,” she told herself, “I will be a Wonder Woman, shiny and bright. And I will know what’s happening.”
Down deep, however, she understood she would wake up normal enough, and the world would be the same.
“Not a good deal,” she murmured.
In the dark, filaments grew silently over the carpet, reaching into the glass cubicles, subduing the buoyant creativity within.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
—I belong to nobody. I am not what I once was. I have no past. I am cut loose and there is really nowhere to go but where they wish to take me.
—I am separated from the outside world physically, and now mentally.
—My work is done here.
—I am waiting.
—I am waiting.
Truly, you WISH to journey among us, be among us?
—I do.
He stares at the red and green and blue on the VDT. The figures lose all meaning for the moment as if he is a newborn child. Then the screen, the table it rests on, the lavatory curtain beyond and the walls of the containment chamber are replaced by a silvery null.
&nbs
p; Michael Bernard is crossing an interface.
He is encoded.
No longer conscious of all the sensations of being in a body. No more automatic listenings and responses to the slide of muscles past one another, the bubbling of fluids in the abdomen, the push and roar of blood and pounding of the heart. He no longer balances, tenses or relaxes. It is like suddenly moving from the city into the heart of a quiet cave.
At first, thought itself is grainy, discontinuous. If such a thing can be, he visualizes himself at the very basement of the universe, where all the atoms and molecules combine and separate, making silent noises at each other like scuttling shellfish on the bottom of the sea. He is suspended in silent, jerking activity, unable to critique his situation or even to be sure what he is. Part of his faculties are temporarily cut off. Then—jerk! He can critique, evaluate. Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze. Jerk! Now, like a sluggish flow of gelatin circling and setting up in a cold bowl.
Bernard’s journey has not even begun yet He is still caught in the interface, not big, not small. There is part of him still relying on his universe-sized brain, still pushing thought along cells instead of within cells.
The suspension becomes a drawn-out unconsciousness, thought pulled like a thread to fit a tiny needle’s
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The small bursts upon him and his world is suddenly filled with action and simplicity. There is no light, but there is sound. It fills him in great sluggish waves, not heard but felt through his hundred cells. The cells pulse, separate, contract according to the rush of fluid. He is in his own blood. He can taste the presence of the cells making up his new being, and of cells not directly part of him. He can feel the rasping of microtubules propelling his cytoplasm. What is most remarkable, he can feel—indeed, it is the ground of all sensation-the cytoplasm itself.