Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  A second answer replaces the original:

  The self aware individual looks in the mirror to experience the illusion of communication with another. Disappointment causes it to shatter the mirror.

  Roger, I have been discouraged from loosely using words that describe human emotions. But even the most critical evaluation, in this case, confirms the suitability of a particular word.

  I am lonely.

  Vizhniak: “Roger Atkins has been unavailable for comment for the past twenty four hours. As I read the signs, however, we may have learned something that could go far to relieve our disappointment about the lack of intelligent life on B-2.

  “I am not a professional observer, but the tone and tenor of AXIS’s message seems clear. For the first time in the history of artificial intelligence, a machine is showing convincing signs of self awareness. The implications are staggering. Perhaps more amazing, what may have triggered this sense of selfhood was the realization of total isolation…”

  !JILL> Roger Atkins.

  !JILL> Roger Atkins.

  !Keyb> Atkins here. What can you tell me, Jill?

  !JILL> AXIS Simulation in its restructured mode does not duplicate AXIS messages.

  !Keyb> Does that mean the original AXIS is malfunctioning?

  !JILL> I (informal) suspect that I have simply not succeeded in duplicating the external conditions. Certain AXIS Simulation subroutines may still have access to exterior information sources. I am working to find those points of access and shut them down. When I have done that, I will make another report.

  !Keyb> Is AXIS Sim disappointed at not finding intelligent life?

  !JILL> It has not expressed any opinions comparable to those of original AXIS.

  !Keyb> What’s your own opinion of the restructured joke?

  !JILL> I can’t determine how such a thing might occur.

  !Keyb> I mean, do you find the new version more interesting, or

  humorous?

  !JILL> I do not find it humorous. If I were to apply a human

  emotion colored response, I might find it sad.

  60

  Martin Burke stood alone on the lawn in front of the IPR building, shivering. He had felt a need to come out of the enclosed spaces and see real sky, feel real wind; everything else seemed illusory. He wondered if he would ever fully appreciate waking reality again.

  The past four hours he had worked with his team trying to bring Carol up from neutral sleep. All efforts had failed. She lay on her couch in the theater surrounded by monitors and arbeiters.

  Goldsmith had come out of his sleep well enough. Martin had not yet spoken with him or with Albigoni. He did not know what he would tell either of them.

  The sky over La Jolla was clear, with that pale hazy blueness of late morning common to the southern coast in winter. Above smells of iodine and kelp from offshore farms, he could detect faint eucalyptus scent from the nearby groves, fresh cut lawn and shrubs from an arbeiter’s gardening, the smell of water evaporating from concrete walkway.

  He could smell himself, acrid. There had been no time to wash away the smell of fear he had acquired in the Country. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

  Martin had told nobody about what had happened in the Country. He hardly knew himself. This was the first moment since emerging from the Country that he had had an opportunity for introspection. Looking inward, he could feel nothing out of the ordinary beyond his exhaustion and deep guilt.

  Sea gulls soared and yawed over the fresh cut lawns. Martin bent down and brushed the grass with his fingers. Cold and softly bristling. Real.

  But a part of him still found it hard to believe he was awake and out of the Country. He feared that at any moment it might be a ruse, and Sir—the name seemed doubtful, inappropriate, as if incorrectly heard—Sir or whatever it was might appear before him, deadlooking, impossible, and sweep him into another atrocity.

  Carol had said she was raped.

  Now he knew how she felt; perhaps how she still felt. If the probe had ended up sweeping her into her own Country, feeding her back into a mental activity below the level of their detectors, then the horror for her might never end. She might be caught on a treadmill forever cycling through deep mental contents given a perverse twist by Sir.

  Ringmaster.

  The word emerged in his mind as if spoken by somebody else.

  “God help me,” he whispered, getting to his feet.

  Martin returned to the building. First he would confront Goldsmith. That would take all the courage and composure he could muster.

  He changed his clothes in his office lavatory, looked at himself in the small mirror, inspected his features carefully and found everything in place, unaltered. When he emerged, Margery waited for him in the office.

  “Any change?” he asked, voice husky.

  She shook her head. “Dr. Burke, what happened? Can you tell us? We feel as if we’re responsible. We feel terrible…”

  He patted her shoulder with a paternalism he did not feel, gritting his teeth; they couldn’t have known. Erwin had explained already why Martin and Carol had not been pulled out sooner, but for Carol he allowed himself an irrational inner anger against the team.

  “Let’s go meet Goldsmith.”

  The patient sat in recovery room two, reading his Qu’ran, apparently undisturbed. Martin entered the doorway first, followed by Lascal. Goldsmith looked up. His eyes widened, seeing Martin; a momentary recognition faded into the polite mask.

  Goldsmith stood, nodded to Margery and extended his hand to Martin. Martin hesitated, shook it lightly, dropped it quickly.

  “I’m eager to learn what you found, Doctor,” Goldsmith said.

  Martin experienced some difficulty speaking. “We won’t know for some time yet,” he managed to say. His hands clenched and shook. “I need…to ask you some important questions. Please be truthful.”

  “I’ll try,” Goldsmith said.

  Try. What lay within Goldsmith, dominating and mastering, no more understood truth or scientific inquiry than a crocodile. “Were you ever abused as a child?” Martin asked.

  “No, sir. I was not.”

  Goldsmith sat again, but Martin remained standing. “Did you kill your father?”

  Goldsmith’s face went blank. Slowly, with an obvious effort to answer this ridiculous question politely, he said, “No, I did not.”

  Martin shivered again. “You killed your victims with a very large Bowie knife. This knife belonged to your father, did it not?”

  “Yes. He used it to protect himself when he walked through rough neighborhoods. My father was a very tough man.”

  “The records I’ve seen say that your father was a middle class businessman.”

  Goldsmith held up his hands, unable to explain.

  “Do you have a brother or sister?”

  Goldsmith shook his head. “I’m an only child.”

  “Was your father white?”

  Goldsmith didn’t answer for a moment, then turned away as if mimicking irritation. With a curled lip he said, “No. He was not white.”

  Martin drew himself up, glanced at Margery and realized he would not be able to continue. “Thank you, Mr. Goldsmith,” he said. He turned to leave almost bumping into Lascal. Goldsmith stood abruptly and grabbed his sleeve. “That’s it?” he asked, anger surfacing for the first time since he had been under observation.

  “I’m sorry,” Martin said. He jerked his arm loose. “We’ve had a great deal of trouble.”

  “I thought somebody would tell me what’s wrong with me,” Goldsmith said. “Can’t you tell me?”

  “No,” Martin said. “Not yet.”

  “Then it’s all a failure. Jesus. I should have turned myself over to the pd. None of you knows what happened to me?”

  “Perhaps you should have turned yourself in. No. There’s no perhaps about it. That’s what you should have done,” Martin said. He trembled violently now. “Who are you? Is there anybody real inside
of you?”

  Goldsmith held his head back like a startled cobra. “You’re crazier than I am,” he murmured. “Jesus, Tom put me in the care of a lunatic.”

  Martin shrugged away Lascal’s hand on his shoulder. “You’re not even alive,” he whispered harshly, lips curled back. “Emanuel Goldsmith is dead.”

  “Get this faphead away from me,” Goldsmith said. He flung his arm out, barely missing Lascal. Lascal stood by the door as Margery and Martin left, then followed.

  Margery ordered the door locked. They heard Goldsmith cursing inside. Each explosive muffled word increased Martin’s rage and shame. He turned to Margery, then to Lascal. He felt a suggestion of bloody smoke, could smell the fire and the copper gravy reek of blood. Behind the smoke a child’s drawing of a horned demon laughed at him, at everything, with the disembodied humor of an indestructible intangible fiction.

  Words would not come. He turned to the far wall and pounded his fists triphammer, grunting. Lascal and Margery stood back. Faces pale.

  Martin pulled back his hands, unclenched his fists, straightened and smoothed his jacket. “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “Mr. Albigoni is prepared for your report,” Lascal said, watching him closely but sympathetically. “I’m sorry things didn’t go well. Has Carol Neuman recovered?”

  “No.” Martin looked down at the floor to regain his equilibrium. “We don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  “Mr. Albigoni will need to know that,” Lascal said. “We’ll make arrangements for her treatment, if necessary…”

  “I don’t know how anyone could treat her, after what happened.” He stared at Lascal, lips working spasmodically. “It was a goddamned disaster.”

  “Did you learn anything, Dr. Burke?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t believe Goldsmith is telling us the truth, not after what we experienced. Perhaps Albigoni can give some clues.”

  “Then let’s go talk with him,” Lascal said.

  In the gallery overlooking the theater, Albigoni sat in a swivel armchair, staring through the clear glass at the equipment and tables and curtains below. He might not have moved for hours. Lascal entered first and arranged compact equipment for a vid record.

  Martin sat in a chair beside Albigoni. Margery and Erwin took seats in the row behind. David and Karl, Martin had decided, were not needed.

  “I’ve heard about Carol Neuman,” Albigoni said, tapping the chair arm with an open palm. “I will do everything possible to help her recover. You say the word, you have my full cooperation, and all of my resources.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard that before.”

  “I keep my promises, Dr. Burke.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Martin said, swallowing. “We met some unexpected circumstances, Mr. Albigoni. I’m not sure how to describe them to you…Our probe was unlike any I’ve conducted before. I suppose we expected something unusual, given the nature of Goldsmith’s past activities…But we entered the Country without being fully aware of the extent of his problems. I am fairly sure that your experts fapped up his diagnosis. Do you know much about his childhood, his adolescence?”

  “Not much,” Albigoni said.

  “Anything about his mother, his father?”

  “I never met them. They died a few years ago.”

  “His father is dead?”

  “Of natural causes.”

  “We found strong figures representing his father in the Country. Violent, horrible figures, all mixed up with images of Colonel Sir John Yardley. We found evidence suggesting that his father was murdered and perhaps his mother, as well. What we didn’t find was a central controlling personality.”

  Lascal’s watch beeped. He excused himself and stepped outside the gallery.

  “What does that mean, Dr. Burke?” Albigoni asked, eyes hooded.

  “Carol Neuman and I met a dominant force, representing the apparent central personality in Emanuel Goldsmith—a figure with access to all of Goldsmith’s memories and routines. But this routine could not have been a primary personality from the beginning. It’s a latecomer, a lower form risen to power. We found evidence that the primary personality is now extinguished.”

  “You’re still not clear.”

  “Emanuel Goldsmith’s primary self is missing from his psychology,” Martin said. “What caused its destruction, I can’t say. In every other probe, I have found a representative of the primary personality. There is none in Goldsmith’s Country. It seems one routine, perhaps a subpersonality, has moved into a position of authority. This was the father image I mentioned, now mixed with a very potent symbol of violence and death.”

  Lascal returned to the gallery. “Sir—”

  Martin flinched. Lascal gave him a peculiar glance, then continued. “Mr. Albigoni, county pd have been alerted to our presence here. They’re obtaining federal permission to investigate. They’ll get that permission in the next two hours.”

  Martin gaped. “What does that mean? I thought—”

  “We have to move, then,” Albigoni said. He focused his attention on Martin again. “Let me try to understand. Something has happened to Emanuel, such that he no longer exists as a complete human being?”

  “Something drastic. I’ve never seen this before, although admittedly, I’ve never probed a deeply disturbed individual before.”

  “Is that why he murdered my daughter and the others?”

  “I can’t say how long this condition has existed…but my best guess would be months, perhaps years. There are some things not at all clear to me.”

  “Would this have caused him to murder my daughter?” Albigoni restated his question.

  “A subpersonality, surfacing to take control, may not assume the full cloak of social routines. It may not be aware of itself, per se. Its range of possible actions if it takes charge may extend beyond the socially acceptable because it does not fear pain or punishment; it doesn’t fear any sanctions, certainly not social disapproval. It does not know that it exists, any more than an arbeiter does. We’ve all heard theories that some criminals may be little more than automatons—”

  “I’ve never given that much credence,” Albigoni said. “It degrades us all to think such things.”

  Martin stopped, feeling himself on shifting ground. If his report was unsatisfactory, incomplete or unconvincing, would Albigoni withdraw his pledge? Did that even matter if pd would soon investigate this whole incident?

  “I’ll make arrangements to move everybody and sanitize,” Lascal said, opening the gallery door again.

  “Do that,” Albigoni said. “Take Carol Neuman to Scripps—if that’s okay with you, Dr. Burke. We’ll make sure you’re consulted as her principal therapist.”

  Martin agreed, unable to conceive of better arrangements. “I’d like time to think this over before making my full report,” Martin said. “I can’t be sure…It’s too early to be sure that my interpretations are correct.”

  Albigoni lifted his hand, dismissing that. “What would cause Emanuel to lose his primary personality?”

  “An extreme trauma. Longterm abuse as a child. Matricide. Patricide. These are common precursors to psychosis or to extreme sociopathic manipulative behavior. We found some evidence for such trauma, but I’d like to make an outside confirmation.”

  “Why hasn’t he been this way all his life?”

  “Some extenuating circumstance,” Martin said. “A feeling of justification, perhaps…eroding over the years, finally giving way, allowing a final decay and dissolution of the primary personality and domination by a subpersonality.” Domination. Damnation.

  Albigoni at last gave Martin a tiny nod of comprehension. “But you can’t be sure until we fill in Goldsmith’s biography.”

  “In particular, facts about his father,” Martin said. “And possibly his mother. He denies having a brother or a sister. Does he?”

  “Not that I know of,” Albigoni said.

  Lascal intervened. “That’s enough for now, Dr. Burke. Let’s move your
people out of here and prepare for the authorities.”

  “Thank you for your efforts.” Albigoni got to his feet and held out his hand to Martin. “What you’re saying, Dr. Burke, is that the man I called my friend no longer exists.”

  Martin looked at Albigoni’s extended hand, moved his hand forward, pulled back without touching. Albigoni kept his hand extended for several long seconds.

  “I can’t make such a judgment,” Martin said.

  Albigoni withdrew his hand. “I think that’s what I needed to know,” he said. Lascal again urged them to leave.

  Martin returned to the observation room and found David and Karl attending Carol. “No change, Dr. Burke,” David said. “I wish you’d let us try some diagnostics, an exploratory probe…”

  “That would take hours to arrange,” Martin said softly. He touched Carol’s cheek. Her expression of sleeping peace had not changed. “We have to be out of here immediately.”

  “We’ve all signed contracts of secrecy,” David said. “We thought you knew that.”

  “I didn’t know that. I assumed it, I suppose…”

  “We’d like to come back to a reopened IPR, Dr. Burke.”

  “I don’t know whether that’s possible.” Or desirable.

  “If it is possible, we hope you’ll allow us to apply,” Karl said. “Margery and Erwin feel the same way. This work is very important, Dr. Burke. You’re a very important man.”

  “Thank you.” He waved his hand slowly over Carol. Trying for some of the magic that might apply in Country. Or just pointing her out to the two men. “We’ve never had this before…”

  “I know,” David said. “I’m sure she’ll come out of it. She’s like sleeping beauty. No damage.”

  “None you can see,” Karl added.

  “Right,” Martin said.

  Men he did not recognize knocked on the door, told them they had been ordered to remove Dr. Neuman to a hospital and to escort all occupants from the building. “I’ll go with her,” Martin said.

  “That’s not in our orders, sir,” a beefy, florid man in a black longsuit told him.