by Greg Bear
“Very strange,” she exclaimed, shaking her head in wonder. ”Most strange.”
“You were wonderful,” Wu said, awestruck.
“Thank you.” She smiled appreciatively.
Chapter Forty-six
He had buried his parachute and now lay down in the long, sweet-smelling dry yellow grass near the road. Hands over his eyes, he waited for a truck or car to come along, so he might hitch a ride back to Podlipki—or was it that base in Mongolia with only a number, 83?
Not that it mattered. The sun was warm, and except for a slight headache, Major Mirsky felt grand. He had fallen so far off course that he might take hours to reach the base, missing dinner, but also missing the political instruction. He would gladly trade kasha for a few hours alone to think.
At length a dusty, long black Volga came down the road and stopped beside him. The rear window rolled down and a bulky, beefy-faced man in a gray fedora stuck his head out, frowning at Mirsky.
“What are you doing here?” the man asked. He resembled Major General Sosnitsky, but he also looked a bit like poor Zhadov, who had died in the bore-hole massacre, wherever that was, and whenever.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Nadia,” he said. ”I need a ride—”
“And what did you have for a cake on your eleventh birthday?”
“Comrade, I don’t see—”
“It’s very important. What did you have?”
“Something with chocolate, I think.”
The man in the fedora nodded and opened the door. ”Get in,” he said.
Mirsky squeezed in beside him. The seat was wet with blood; the man’s three companions were corpses, all alike, all with their heads bloody and brains leaking. ”Do you know these people?”
“No, I don’t,” Mirsky said, laughing. ”We haven’t been introduced.”
“They are you, Comrade,” the man said, and the dream faded to grayness. Once again, he buried the parachute ...
He began to get suspicious. Finally, after he had been picked up for the seventh or eighth time—the car minus its corpses—and the man in the fedora asked him about his Komsomol days, Mirsky decided to ask some questions of his own.
“I know I’m not dreaming, Comrade. So where am I?”
“You have been very badly injured.”
“I don’t seem to remember that—”
“No, but you will. You were shot in the head and suffered severe trauma. Parts of your brain are missing. You will never remember your life in quite as much detail, and you will never be quite the same person again.”
“But I feel whole.”
“Yes,” the man in the fedora agreed. ”That is normal, but it’s an illusion. Together we’ve been exploring, finding out what you have left. There is quite a lot, actually—surprising, considering the damage—but you will never be quite the—”
“Yes, yes,” Mirsky interrupted. ”So will I die?”
“No, you are out of danger. Your head and brain are being repaired and you will live. But you have decisions to make.”
“What sort of decisions?”
“You can live with the missing portions left blank, or you can receive prosthetic neurological programming and artificial personality segments tailored to fit those remaining to you.”
“Now I’m really confused.”
The man pulled a picture book out of his satchel. When he opened it, the pages were filled with beautiful complex designs, some in garish color, others muted and metallic, still others stimulating tastes and bodily sensations. He took the book and read through it.
When he was finished, he asked, “Will I know what is mine and what is not?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“And without all these ... prostheses? What will I be?”
“A cripple. You will have memories,” the man explained, “though some will be difficult to recall clearly and others will have curious gaps. It will take you weeks to learn how to see again, and you will never see very well. You will never recover your sensations of smell or the sensation of touch on the left side of your body. Your mathematical reasoning abilities will be intact, but your speech will be impaired and may never return.”
Mirsky looked at the man’s face until it seemed to fade into the sky beyond the car’s side window. ”It doesn’t sound like much fun,” he said.
“It is your choice.”
”You’re in the library, aren’t you?”
“Not what you’re seeing,” the man said. ”I am a city function shaped to be acceptable to you in your present condition. Human medical authority is not available, so the city has taken it upon itself to repair you.”
“Okay,” Mirsky said. ”That’s enough for now. I want to have nothing but darkness.”
“Yes, that will come naturally after you give us your answer.”
“I mean, I wish to die.”
“That is not an option.”
“Okay, then yes.” He made the decision quickly so as not to have to consider all the possibilities, all the horrors.
“You consent to prosthetic programming?”
“I consent.”
The man ordered the car to stop and smiled. ”You may get out,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mirsky left the Volga and closed the door. ”Oh, one more thing,” the man said, leaning out the window. ”Did you have any plans to harm either Belozersky, Vielgorsky or Yazykov—particularly Vielgorsky?”
“No,” Mirsky said. ”They irritated me, and I would have rather done without all of them—except maybe Vielgorsky—but no, I didn’t plan to harm them.”
“Thank you,” the man said and rolled up the window.
“You’re welcome again,” Mirsky turned away from the road and it was night. He lay down in the grass and stared up at the blackness.
Chapter Forty-seven
“I’d like it dark, please,” Lanier said. The rooms darkened.
He sat upright on the illusory couch and mentally repeated what Patricia had said after the meeting. Alarms set off. Did she mean that the Axis City had known they were in the Stone since their arrival? How long had self-contained, self-powered Olmy been watching them?
As he mulled, he felt the ineffable tension in the lower part of his abdomen and realized that mentally he was as uninterested in sex as he could be, but his body was disregarding his brain.
The door voice announced, “Karen Farley is in the hallway and requests entrance.”
“Why?” he asked abruptly, angry at the convenience, the coincidence. “Wait—is she alone?”
“Yes.”
“Send ... let her in.” He stood and smoothed down the jumpsuit he had worn on the V/STOL, now cleaned and pressed. He had ignored the robe laid out for him on the elliptical bed in the single bedroom.
Karen had not. As the door irised open, the lights came up and she entered in a very similar robe, this one a golden beige rather than midnight blue. ”Pardon my comeuppance,” she said, smiling and lifting her hands as if to fend off a rebuff.
“What?”
“Is that the right phrase?”
“I don’t think so,’ Lanier said. ”What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been talking with Patricia,” she said, “or rather, she came to me, and I thought you’d like to know a few things.”
He indicated a chair opposite the couch. ”She and I had a conversation before the meeting, but it was more confusing than informative.”
“Heineman and Carrolson are together tonight,” Farley said, sitting. “Patricia didn’t tell me that—Lenore did. And before we left the Stone, I noticed Wu and Chang were sneaking away together.”
She smiled at him, a brisk, armored smile with a touch of puzzlement and irritation.
Lanier lifted his shoulders and clapped his hands together softly, then rubbed them. ”That’s normal,” he said.
“Yes. But I caught you when your guard was down, di
dn’t I? I mean—”
“I appreciate what you did.”
“I don’t know what to say.” She looked around the apartment curiously. “I’ve never really had a leech for you—”
“Letch,” he said, grinning.
“Oh, yes, my God. Letch. I haven’t. But you looked so lost. And I was feeling lost, too. Honest, you’re still the boss.”
“That’s not important,” he said. ”What did Patricia—“
“It is important,” Farley said flatly. ”I enjoyed you. I believe you enjoyed me. It was healthy too. I just wanted you to know I thought so and don’t resent you.”
Lanier said nothing for a moment, regarding her with his dark, falsely Amerindian eyes. ”I wish I spoke Chinese so we could really understand each other. I could learn ...”
That would be useful, but not necessary right away.
She smiled. ”I could teach you.”
“What did Patricia say?”
“She thinks we’re being used by somebody—Olmy or somebody else—to some end. Olmy has been talking to her a lot, and she’s even had some conversations with the Frant. She thinks there’s a lot of politics in the Axis City, and we can’t possibly know what any of it means. Not yet. Also, she says the data service in her apartment actually accesses less information than the ones in the third chamber city. She thinks they may be censored for us.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Lanier mused. ”Or rather, it might not be good—it might not mean anything. They might want to treat us gently, let us get accustomed slowly.”
“I told her I thought that, and she just smiled. She’s behaving strangely, Garry. She also said she has a way to get us all home. There was a real tinkle in her eye when she said that.”
Lanier did not correct her. ”She told me that, too. Did she elaborate?”
“Pardon? Oh, yes. She did. She said the corridor moves forward in time about one year every thousand kilometers. And she said it’s the most beautiful curve she’s ever conceived. Gar, they kidnapped her—she believes they kidnapped her because they were afraid we might interfere in the sixth chamber. Remember all the people all those Naderites in the second chamber being forced to move out, years after the third chamber exodus?”
He nodded.
“Patricia says she thinks they were forced out against their will, because the people on the Axis City wanted the Stone empty. No interference, no sabotage. That’s why she think we’re stuck in the middle of politics. There is still division between Naderites and Geshels.”
“Has it occurred to anybody that no matter what we’re told, these rooms are bugged?” Lanier asked. ”That means we shouldn’t be discussing these things here?”
“Where can we discuss them?” she asked innocently. “They could follow us anywhere they wanted and listen to us, maybe even read our minds. We’re children here, very ill-educated children.”
Lanier looked down at the milky translucent table between the couch and the chair. ”That makes sense. I really like the way this apartment is decorated.”
“Mine’s nice, too.”
“And how would they—the rooms, I presume know what we like?”
Her expression became conspiratorial. ”Right,” she said.
“I’ve asked the room voice and it just says, ‘The rooms are made to suit.’”
Lanier leaned forward on the couch. ”This whole place is incredible. Unbelievable. Are we dreaming, Karen?”
She shook her head solemly.
“All right, then. Is Patricia dreaming she’s found a way out, a way to go back to Earth?”
“Oh, she doesn’t want to go back to Earth the way it is now. She says she can take us ‘home,’ whatever she means. And she’s serious. She’ll explain later, she said.”
“You’re a physicist. Is what she says possible?”
“I’m just another child here, Garry. I don’t know.”
“What else did she say?”
“That’s it. And ...” She stood. “I’ll go.now. But I didn’t just ... Oh.” She clasped her arms around herself and looked at him.
“Not just to tell you what she said. To make sure you understood I wasn’t taking advantage.”
“I understand.”
“It’s just, like you say, healthy, though I’ve been worried—“
He hadn’t called it healthy; she had, but he found the transference acceptable.
“Don’t.”
“Okay,” Farley said..
He stood. ”In fact ...” His face flushed again. ”I feel just like a teenager when—when you’re here and we talk like this.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her face falling.
“No, that’s good. Until now, I’ve felt like a very old man, losing all my marbles. I would enjoy it if you stayed with me.”
She smiled, then abruptly frowned. ”I will enjoy that, and I will stay,” she said. “But it worries me about Patricia.”
“Yes?”
“She is now the only one of us sleeping alone.”
Chapter Forty-eight
Step by step, Patricia traced the progress of the curve through five dimensions, watching it unfold like some nightmare staircase, one part shadowing, one part a necessary negative of the primary curve. Her eyes were closed so tightly they hurt, and her face was convulsed into an expression between ecstasy and grief.
She had never known an intensity of thought like this, so deep an involvement in her inner calculations. It frightened her. Even when she opened her eyes to the twilight blueness of the ceiling and rolled over on her side, one hand reaching into the emptiness beyond the bed—even then, her finger traced a part of the curve, a projected and living snake in the air. Clenching her fist, she saw little spots of light gather along the path her finger had made. She closed her eyes again.
And immediately slept, dreaming the curve. She was still half-aware in her sleep, and she watched from a distant vantage point as her brain continued, though at a reduced level, the work she could not put a stop to.
Only a few hours later, she came instantly awake, realizing she needed to reexamine her seminal article—the one she had yet to write, which she had found in the third chamber library.
With some apprehension—the data service, in the four times she had resorted to it, had not always provided what she needed—she got out of the oval bed and donned her lavender robe, tying the belt as she walked through the dimly lit living room.
“Data, City Memory,” she said. An annillary sphere appeared before her, its bands glowing red and gold. Two circlets, one above the other and twice the diameter, followed, a replacement for the antiquated question mark.
“Access to article by Patricia Luisa Vasquez ... Oh, Lord, I’ve forgotten the exact title and date. Do you need them?”
Complicated picts flashed until she deactivated them and requested spoken language only. ”Do you wish to see a complete list of the short works of Patricia Luisa Vasquez?” the data service voice asked.
“Yes,” she said, again touched by the prickling spookiness of what she was doing.
Roman alphabet listings appeared before her as if on an extensive sheet of white paper. About midway through the list appeared, Theory of n-Spatial Geodesics as Applied to Newtonian Physics with a Special Discourse on Rho-Simplon Worm Lines.
“That’s it,” she said. ”Display.”
She reread the paper carefully and drummed the fingers of her free hand on the edge of the seat. ”It’s brilliant, she said grimly, “and it’s wrong.” It might have been an influential paper, but it was obvious to her now that it was an early and primitive work. ”Please display the list again.”
The service obliged and she picked out a later piece and requested that it be displayed.
The old and familiar symbol of the spiked ball appeared.
“Interdicted,” the voice said.
She chose another, feeling her anger rise. ”Interdicted.”
And another, toward the end of the list, written when she w
as—would be about eighty-eight. ”Interdicted.”
“Why are my papers interdicted?” she asked angrily.
The spiked ball was the only reply.
“Why is this service being censored?” She suddenly experienced the neck-itching realization she was no longer alone in the room.
“Olmy? Lights up.” The room brightened.
No answer.
She stood up and looked around slowly, her whole back tensing.
Then she saw the intruder, hovering near the ceiling, a gray baseball-sized roundness with a face in the middle. For a moment, she did nothing but return the face’s scrutiny. It seemed masculine, with small dark Asiatic eyes and a pug nose. Its expression was hardly menacing; if anything, it was intensely curious.
She backed up against the wall. The face did not move, but its eyes followed her closely.
“Who are you?” she asked. Symbols appeared around the room, incomprehensible to her. ”I don’t pict,” she said. “Please, what are you doing here?”
“True, I’m not supposed to be here,” the face said. It fell a couple of feet, the ball assuming the color of a rosy dawn. “But then, I’m just an icon myself. Please don’t be alarmed.”
“I am alarmed. You’re scaring me. Who are you?”
“I’m from City Memory. A rogue.”
“I don’t know you,” she said. ”Please go away.”
“I can’t possibly harm you. Irritate you, perhaps. I only need a few questions answered.”
The globe dropped and fleshed out like a vampire in an old horror movie to form a masculine body, clothed in loose white shirt and forest-green pants. The figure seemed to solidify. In her room now stood a small, delicate man appearing slightly younger than middle age, with long black hair and a weary, thin face. Patricia’s heart slowed and she moved a few inches out from the wall.
“I pride myself in my accomplishments,” the image said. “I have access to the very best records. Forgotten records, actually. There’s such an awful clutter in the lower levels of City Memory. And what I’ve found is the partially purged record of a court case ... Something serious, actually. Violation of flaw security. Bits and pieces of information pointed here. Subtle connections, I admit, but intriguing.”The figure seemed familiar, as if she had met him or seen him somewhere else.