The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  [You mean when Ito leaves.]

  [Yes, that.]

  [Why is this place so much like Earth?] she asked, changing the subject. [The trees. The animals. Even the fjords,] she said. [It’s like Norway in the Himalayas.

  [And why was Chance on Earth, in 1851? That’s the year this place was created.]

  [He was there because of you, Dr Box.]

  [I didn’t even exist then.]

  [Your appearance was predicted.]

  [In the Fa:ing number.]

  [Yes.]

  [Which is a manifestation of the Möbius machine.]

  [Yes.]

  [Which didn’t exist until 1851.]

  [Correct.]

  [That’s circular.]

  [It is. Maybe the information did a big circle.]

  Box found Kitou on her bed, sitting primly, knees held together, hands clasped: a most un-Kitou pose.

  “I have a fever,” she complained.

  “You’re sick?”

  “Sick in my head.”

  Box knelt in front of her, and looked in her eyes.

  “Are you alright?”

  Kitou seemed stricken. “No,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “When I’m frightened, Dr Box, there’s a place I go. It’s dark, and safe, like a deep pool. From there, the world passes by.”

  “Oh, poor child.”

  “It’s not there anymore. Now there’s something... new.”

  “New, how? Is it the Thespian disease?”

  “No, it’s like all the love in the world. Like a mountain, falling through space. And it’s too much. It’s as if the love we feel is just a word, and this is the real thing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I feel great. That’s not the thing. It’s wonderful. But... also terrifying. It’s not a warm love, like I feel for my friends. Or the hot one I feel for my man. It doesn’t mean to hurt me, but it does mean to use me. What will become of me? How will it fit through me?”

  Box shuddered.

  “Are you scared now?” she asked.

  Kitou nodded.

  “And you have nowhere to go?”

  “There’s nowhere to hide from it. Nor do I want to.”

  She held up a hand, and examined it.

  “I could destroy worlds.”

  Box stood, and turned away.

  “I know you feel it too,” said Kitou.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Red Lady.”

  “No, that’s different. She’s a person.”

  “Is she made of love?”

  Box laughed. “No, she’s made of titanium.”

  “I pity our enemies.”

  Box glittered.

  “I don’t.”

  The next morning, Box was woken by the ship.

  [Go to the training room, now.]

  A bloodied stick was lying on the floor.

  “I killed Alis,” said Kitou.

  “What?”

  “I lost control. I tried to pull my stroke. I killed her.”

  “She’s alive,” said Marius. “Only just.”

  Box gathered her courage and looked. It was as bad as she could imagine.

  “Is there a surgeon?” she asked.

  “Not one who can get here in time.”

  “I can do it,” said Ito.

  Everyone turned.

  [I released him,] said the ship.

  “Do we have surgical equipment?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Amelia Chance. “Scalpels, antiseptics.”

  “Bring them, and a bathtub with ice.”

  Brin had joined the group, and as quickly left to do as Ito requested.

  “A knife,” he said. “Give me any knife.”

  Marius gave Ito a bone sword, and he sawed off Alis’s waist-length hair, close to the scalp. Kitou had crept up behind Box, and was peering over her shoulder.

  “Water and soap,” said Ito.

  They soon appeared, and he washed and shaved around the wound. Then the bath arrived, and the surgical gear.

  “Undress her and put her in the bath.”

  “Why the ice?” asked Marius.

  Ito washed his hands. “Controlled hypothermia,” he said. “I want to cool her down to 32° to 34°c, to reduce the impact of the swelling of the brain.” Then he deftly made a u-shaped incision, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind he could do this.

  Alis groaned.

  “Do we have a psi here?” he asked.

  Nim stepped forward. “Make her unconscious,” he said. “Be gentle but quick.”

  The Horu girl nodded, and in a few moments Alis stopped moving. He peeled back the scalp, to reveal a palm-sized depression in the back of her skull. “Plyers,” he said. Then he pulled out a section of bone. It came away with the snap of a tooth being pulled. In a few minutes, he had the all the splintered bone removed.

  “The dura mater is undamaged,” he said.

  “Is that good?” asked a small voice.

  It was Alis’s friend Viki, who’d appeared behind Box, beside Kitou, and was now peering over her other shoulder.

  “Yes,” said Ito.

  Then he sutured the scalp. No more than fifteen minutes had passed. “We’ll make a prosthesis,” he said. “An organic plug to go in the gap. Maybe a metal plate to protect it in combat. Nim?”

  The Horu girl looked up.

  “Wake her please.”

  “But...”

  “We must,” he said, gently.

  Nim nodded, then Alis groaned, and batted her eyes open.

  “What’s happening to me?” she said. “Why am I in this tub, before all these people.”

  She tried to cover her breasts, but her hands weren’t quite in her control.

  “You have an injury,” said Ito. She started to cry.

  “Alis?”

  “Prophet?”

  Ito smiled at her. “Show me your eyes, soldier.”

  She looked up at him. He nodded again.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said.

  “Marius?” he said.

  “Prophet?”

  “Dress her and keep her awake.”

  “Yes,” said Marius, starting to grin. Box had to admit she felt the same way. How could these people be so capable?

  “Give her no alcohol,” said Ito.

  “But prophet...”

  “I mean it.”

  Ito had finished, and was leaving.

  “I’ll be in my cell,” he said.

  The next morning, Kitou, Viki and Iris were missing.

  19 ∞ Badoop

  2065

  It began as a worm in his spine. It was achingly cold. It could be a real worm, for all he knew. He could feel tendrils of cold, making their way into his cerebrum.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.

  The physician had brown skin and almond-shaped eyes, with epicanthic folds like his.

  “Looking for patterns,” ze said. “The virus reprograms your DNA, but we’ve tested for that. Now I’m looking for patterns.”

  “Is my friend Alois infected?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is it transmitted?”

  “Too many questions. Now, relax.”

  Later they told him Alois had died. Totoro held his hands while he cried.

  “I’ve never had anyone die,” he said. He felt angry, and empty. It felt like the start of many deaths.

  “I’m told he died more than once,” said Totoro. “I know it doesn’t help you, but that’s the way with true adventurers. Their lives are currency, willingly spent.”

  “Yeah,” said Macro. “I get that. But he was my friend. I’m broken.”

  Three days later, he was still in a hospital bed. He’d recovered. He wanted to leave.

  Totoro agreed, and what Totoro said, happened. Macro dressed, and they stepped out into a slew of color and light, like stepping from a darkened cinema into a sunlit day, with the fresh sea air in their faces.

  Except it wasn’t
day, but a brightly lit night, and the space he was in was bewildering.

  “We’re in Olap 6,” said Totoro, over the hubbub of the tourists and street vendors. “It doesn’t orbit the dark star directly, but the water giant Olap, also called Nubeculae 2.”

  Olap 6 was a water sphere, like all the Magellanic worlds, but small, with a habitable space only five kilometers across. It had inverse gravity, like Praxis. Inside the skin of the sphere was a mesh; outside the mesh were the stars. You walked on the mesh, and gazed up at the center.

  If the prevailing architectural style of the thousand worlds was inspiring space and light, here it was organic spines, reaching up and curling in the middle, where they were connected by a riot of bridges, like overgrown crystals. Clearly, the designers had wanted to leave the observer giddy. It was like a painting of an impossible city. The blazing wheel of the Milky Way galaxy filled the ocean under their feet.

  “It doesn’t really blaze like that,” said Macro, recalling his postmortem excursion. It must be the lensing effect of the water.

  “Really?” asked Totoro.

  Macro colored. “Buy me a drink,” he said.

  They found a bar. This wasn’t the usual dive bar of Macro’s recent experience, like the Snake City Discothèque, or the literal dive bar he’d started in here, but a palace of intoxication. Macro was thrilled, despite his somber mood. There must’ve been ten thousand people in there. He badly wanted to be drunk. Totoro’s combat nano caused a commotion.

  “All these women want us,” he said. It was simple statement of fact. He wasn’t used to being stared at.

  Totoro found them a booth. “Stories have power,” he said, while dialing in some privacy. Now people could see them, but not understand. Macro felt like he was in a fishbowl.

  “May I show you my story?”

  “How? You haven’t got wetware.”

  Macro had wetware, but it was infuriatingly basic. It knew two languages: Pursang and Magøl. They were conversing in Pursang. Magøl he struggled with. It was all clicks and pops, for conversing in water.

  “There’s a way,” said Totoro.

  “How?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then open your mind.”

  “How?”

  “Stop thinking.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “Macro?”

  “Yes?”

  Then it hit him, the rush of Totoro’s life.

  No, not just Totoro’s. His worldspirit. Atwusk’niges, the vertical forest of Fluxor.

  [Macro,] she said. [I’ve been wanting to meet you.]

  He was a boy, climbing into the rainforest canopy, a half-day’s climb until he reached the heart of it all, the ancient ironwood tree, called Atwusk’niges.

  Some people believed that Atwusk’niges was the oldest tree in the world, a gift of the Xap to the humans. He didn’t know about any of that. He was only a boy. What he knew was that it was his tree, given into his care; a grave responsibility, and one he took seriously.

  He was Totoro, son of Akito; firstborn of Vanja, soon to be brother of Kitou, since his mother was gravid, and had already said it would be a girl; Totoro Gorgonza d Atwusk’niges, a citizen of the vertical forest of Fluxor, beneath the holy mountain Lhotse; this was his place in the great tree of life.

  The ironwood tree didn’t ask for his care. It was one of the great sentinels of Fluxor. Weight for weight, its wood was as hard as titanium. It had wisdom beyond his understanding. All it wanted was his love, and he gave it unstintingly.

  One day, the forest spoke to him. This was unheard of. The worldspirits spoke, but only the saplings, and only to their symbionts. Not the great trees of the forest, and certainly not to children.

  [Totoro,] she said. [I’ve been wanting to meet you.]

  It wasn’t a voice. It was a rustle; a whisper.

  It was sadness, and peace.

  [Totoro,] she said, [I’m nearing the end of my journey.]

  “Mother forest, what should I do?”

  [Take me to the stars,] she said. [I want to see what the fuss is about.]

  [Then, in the end, take me to Earth.]

  Macro’s eyes snapped open. He could still see the vertical drop into the Algoma’aa valley below. He could feel the cool autumn air in his lungs; smell the woodsmoke rising from his house; safe in the hearth of his family. It had taken his breath away, and it wasn’t coming back easily.

  “Macro?”

  He turned to look at himself, and blinked.

  “Totoro, I’m sorry. No, I’m not sorry. That was… I don’t know the words.”

  “Now we’re friends.”

  “Is it like that for you all the time?”

  “No, mainly in combat.”

  He was Totoro again.

  A young man now: about Macro’s age.

  He was on a battlefield. Macro had seen wars, in sims, and from the safety of orbit, but here was one in the furnace of its creation, and he was in the thick of it. He was standing knee deep in shit and mud. Blood, shit and mud. He was barely keeping a lid on it. People were dying around him. His worldspirit was howling in rage at the death of her fellows. Macro was frightened, but Totoro wasn’t, because Totoro was a holy warrior, and they don’t experience fear in the moment. It had something to do with the way their neurology was rewired by the symbiont Xap.

  Macro knew this to be a devilish bargain. Not being scared was like not feeling pain. A good party trick in a war, but no use in any other place.

  They were hopelessly outclassed. Even with the help of a suppressor field, they had no answer to the enemy’s unhuman physicality. Just as a mouse is no match for a man, no amount of pure fighting ability could bridge the gap between them and today’s opponent. They fought, and they died. That’s how it went, with the Badoop. Before today’s battle was over, the Badoop’d find a way to even the odds. They’d already gifted the Pursang a suppressor, in a place where one shouldn’t exist. Later, a burning spacecraft might crash and kill a few million of the enemy, until there was only an equal sample of each left.

  Usually, that was Totoro.

  He and his fellows had fought every lifeform you can imagine, and some you couldn’t. Beings made from the interstellar vacuum; aliens made of noise; creatures made of ideas. And always, the Badoop finding a way they could fight each other.

  The Pursang died bravely, but not stupidly. When they retreated, they retreated with purpose. When they spent their lives, it was on purchasing an improved chance of victory. More than once, they’d outsmarted or out-competed stronger opponents, by their understanding of the art of war, or by their ferocious commitment. They were formidable soldiers.

  But not invincible.

  On today’s battlefield, they were the mouse, and they were royally fucked.

  One by one, his comrades died. Some died easily. Most didn’t, not straight away. There’s a myth that people die as soon as a sword is stuck in. The human body is tough; it resists death, the human-Xap symbiosis even more so. Today, with a scuttling, insectile opponent, most of the Pursang deaths were from separation injuries.

  Like a scene from a sim where humans were being ripped up by monsters.

  Of course, none of it was real. If it was, the Magellanics would have run out of Pursang, centuries ago, and this thousand-year war would be over.

  So they fought, and died, over and again.

  “What the actual fuck?” said Macro.

  Totoro looked him in the eye.

  “Welcome to the mad, bad world of the Praesidium.”

  “Praesidium?”

  “Their official name.”

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  “You must understand.”

  “Those insects...”

  “Were worthy opponents.”

  “Did you win?”

  “We did.”

  “How?”

  “Our suppressor eventually degraded their equivalent of wetware. They lost th
e ability to co-ordinate. Then it was just a few million individuals.”

  “How did you kill them?”

  “We crushed them.”

  “Literally?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Granted.”

  “Was it... real?”

  “Yes. And no.”

  “This dirt on your nano...”

  “Is real dirt. Tomorrow, it could be my blood. Then I wouldn’t be so gossipy. Today we prevailed.”

  “But you won... virtually?”

  “It depends how you define virtual.”

  “But...”

  “Enough. It’s time for someone else to answer your questions. All of them. It’s time to see the Navigator.”

  “Sybil?”

  “No, the Navigator.”

  Scattered around the Olap 6 boundary sphere were railway termini, except that what they fired into space were long strings of liquids, like beads in a necklace. These luxurious conveyances bore no resemblance to the austere forms of travel Macro preferred. First the launcher got up a good head of speed, and Macro felt himself being pressed back in his chair, and then they were in zero-gravity. At the first world they reached, which was only a few thousand kilometers away, a drop fell away, and the rest of the train was re-accelerated in a slingshot action. This was repeated, for world after world, until what remained of the necklace was moving at interplanetary speed.

  Macro and Totoro relaxed, for a three-day train journey.

  Totoro described the Badoop.

  “We call them Badoop,” he said, “because of how their broadcast waveform sounds to our ears.”

  “Like... ‘badoop’?”

  “Yes. Like a synth, set on random. Sometimes, you almost start to understand it.”

  “And Praesidium?”

  “It means protector.”

  “What do they protect?”

  “All they consume.”

  “Like... civilizing conquerors?”

  “Exactly like that. Or like a plague. It depends on how you define freedom.”

  “Which name do they prefer?”

  “They don’t care. Or we don’t know if they care. Or if they know, we can’t make any sense of them.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “They last conquered Leo I.”

  “Last?”