by Linda Nagata
Ela dropped over the side of the boat, letting her weight carry her slowly down through the blue water. At thirty-five feet she found the bottom … and a robotic drone found her. The meter-long robo-sub eased silently out of the murk, moving with fishlike sinuousness. Button cameras studded its prow, while two racks of steel harpoons were mounted on either side. Ela froze, staring at the device, afraid to move, afraid some jerk on the platform was looking back at her through the cameras, just waiting to launch a harpoon if she so much as twitched a finger. She understood now why the fisherfolk stayed away.
The standoff continued for two or three minutes, and then Ela’s patience gave way. The rebreather pack would let her stay there all day, but the captain had given her only half an hour. She did not believe he would spend much time looking for her if she failed to appear.
So she dug her fingers into the muddy bottom and pushed off, gliding slowly backwards. The robo-sub followed her—but it didn’t shoot. She took encouragement from that. Checking her compass, she determined the direction of the fish farm, and with a slow kick of her fins, she set off to find it. The robo-sub kept pace, but it did not try to stop her.
In less than a minute a dark shadow loomed in the murk, resolving into a wide-gauge mesh wall, rising from the ocean floor all the way up to the bright blue surface. It marked a boundary of terrible contrast. Beyond the mesh she could see a seemingly endless school of meter-long fish swimming counterclockwise along the barrier, moving with machine efficiency through the middle depths. Outside the mesh there was nothing.
She started to swim closer, but her presence startled the school. It broke up, the fish spilling inward to escape her predator shape. The robo-sub responded, slipping in front of her to block her advance.
It was time to go anyway. She headed for the surface, feeling only a little worried when she discovered that Cameron Quang was not there. She inflated her buoyancy vest and drifted a few meters outside the mesh. After several minutes her worry grew more intense. She was a long way from the dock on the distant platform. She could probably swim that far … if the patrolling robo-subs would let her.
Several more minutes passed. She listened to wavelets slap against her rebreather pack and wondered why she had chosen to devote herself to a journalism career when she could have been telling fortunes or dealing in stocks or … or … teaching Thai at some university in Australia. Yeah.
After another minute she tapped her fingers, sending a link request to her job broker, Joanie Liu.
Joanie surprised her by picking up right away. She looked flustered, which was even more unusual. “Ela? So glad you checked in. How did you know to call? I have a gentleman on-link who is interested in the story you’re doing. I advise you to talk to him. Very influential. It could mean an important job for you.”
“I’m stranded at sea,” Ela said.
Joanie rolled her eyes. “Ela, why must you be so difficult? This is no time for you to be particular.” She did not wait for a reply. Her image dissolved, coming together again as the image of a handsome, crisply dressed Asian businessman, perhaps thirty years old. There was something calculating in the set of his eyes, as if he were in the habit of evaluating everything he saw in terms of its investment potential. Kathang confirmed it. This one sees without a veil—when he is not looking at himself.
The businessman’s smooth lips turned in a ghost of a smile as if he had overheard. “Ms. Suvanatat,” he said. “Lately of Bangkok? I am Ky Xuan Nguyen. Your broker …” He frowned. “What is her name?”
Ela was sure he knew her name perfectly well. “Joanie Liu,” she said in a timid voice.
“Ms. Liu, yes. She has given you poor advice. The Coastal Society is not an organization you want to deal with.”
Ela felt suddenly cold. Her gaze shifted to Kathang’s little salamander image. She tapped a code and nodded, setting the ROSA to stalking Nguyen’s profile. A wavelet splashed in her mouth. She spit the salt water out, and said, “I’m only preparing an article, Mr. Nguyen.”
“A propaganda piece.”
She didn’t dare to contradict him. Hadn’t she thought the same thing?
He asked: “Do you know why the public waters here are barren?”
It was obvious wasn’t it? And still it sounded like an accusation that she did not want to make. “T-too many … people.”
“That is the shallow answer. I’m sure you don’t feel we should exterminate the people so the fish might make a comeback. Of course not. The deeper reason these waters remain barren is because groups like the Coastal Society have sponsored international regulations banning fertilization in the open ocean. Boosting the level of dissolved nutrients in these waters would boost the population of plankton, with repercussions all the way up the food chain. But international law forbids this, with the result that independent fisherfolk starve, while commercial farms thrive producing protein that only the rich can afford.”
Kathang returned, to whisper a report into Ela’s water-filled ear: “Ky Xuan Nguyen is the third-ranking officer in a regional advertising firm known as Middle Nature. A graduate of Harvard Business School …” Ela’s eyes widened as she listened. She could not imagine why such a man cared about fish.
“Ms. Suvanatat?” Nguyen prodded. “Have you learned enough about me to give an answer?”
Ela felt her cheeks heat, despite the cool water. Softly: “I’ve only been charged with showing what is, Mr. Nguyen.”
“That would be hunger.”
The Coastal Society would not want to hear that side of the story, but Ela nodded anyway. It didn’t matter: The link with Nguyen had already closed.
Cameron Quang returned with the boat a few minutes later. He helped her aboard, but he did not make any jokes about poaching. He looked frightened, like a man who has been shown his tomb, with the date of death tentatively chalked on the wall. “You want to go ashore now?” he asked quietly, his Southern-American drawl much faded. Ela set the rebreather pack down on the deck and nodded, wondering if he had been talking to Nguyen too.
SHE could not get Ky Xuan Nguyen out of her mind. What did he want from her? She had accepted the Coastal Society contract. She had already spent their money. She had to do the article. She had to make it acceptable to them, and still she brooded over what Nguyen had said about shallow answers.
At least the panoramas and the underwater scenes were done. The next requirement of the article was a critical look at “an illegal shoreline settlement.” That meant a night spent at a squatters’ village, gathering a profile of life on the coast.
She packed her equipment, cramming everything but the rebreather into her backpack. She would have to take it all with her. The balance of her fee would be forfeit if the diving equipment was not returned, and she did not trust Cameron to hold it.
The captain’s face took on an expression of acute concentration as he worked his way past a final shore-guard of inner tubes, swimming children, and tiny canoes. The shore itself was a mudflat, slick and glistening and utterly bare of debris. As the boat approached, throngs of tiny, bright-eyed children spilled out of a shantytown built on poles above the high-water mark. Dressed in T-shirts and faded shorts, they ran back and forth at the water’s edge, leaving faint, wet impressions where their feet touched, their motion intense and intermittent, like sand crabs.
As Ela prepared to leave the boat, she pretended a confidence she did not feel. She’d explored alone before and knew that strangers were usually welcomed by villagers as a potential source of money, food, information—even entertainment. Still, one could never be sure.
She hefted her backpack onto her right shoulder, the dive pack onto her left. When the water was three feet deep, the captain threw a rope to some boys who had been working a small hand net. They held the boat, while Ela slipped over the side. She still wore the sleeveless vest of her wet suit, but she had pulled on a pair of shorts and a long-sleeve shirt to protect herself from the sun.
She hesitated beside the boat
, looking up at the captain, wondering if he would come back for her tomorrow. She had held on to part of his fee to ensure his return, but it was a minuscule sum. Not nearly enough to buy loyalty. “Tomorrow,” she muttered. Then she waded ashore onto land that had not existed a year ago.
The muddy coast of the Mekong Delta fought a continuous battle with the sea. Each rainy season, alluvial deposits were laid down in the annual flood, extending the coastline by up to two hundred feet … until the rising sea crawled over the new land, chewing at it, filling the rivers with salt. Massive sea dikes guarded much of the coast, but nothing protected this strand. That had not stopped people from settling here. The ramshackle village boasted hundreds of homes, all built on poles above the steaming mud. Some had walls of black-plastic greenhouse cloth. Others had half-height rails of mismatched timber or broken pieces of old government signs. There wasn’t much point in building something more permanent, Ela decided as she walked between the shanties. At best, these people could stay there only through the dry season. When the Mekong flooded again, they would have to move on.
Several older women stared at her as she went by. They refused to smile, or return her greeting. It was not an unusual reaction, given their age, and Ela refused to let herself become discouraged. After a few minutes she spotted a new mark: a young woman, sitting cross-legged on a platform, working at a snarled knot of fishing line while a little boy whispered in her ear. His furtive glance darted to Ela, then he slipped behind a crate. The young woman smiled.
It was the best opening Ela had seen. “Chào,” she said, hurrying forward. Then she expended her full arsenal of Vietnamese. “Tên tôi là Ela Suvanatat. Xin lôi, cô tên là gì.” What is your name?
The woman returned Ela’s greeting, giving her name as Phuong. Her black hair was tied in a neat ponytail and she wore a double layer of faded T-shirts, the outer one short-sleeved, the inner one long. Her trousers were loose-cut, gray-black.
Ela produced a wireless speaker from an outside pocket of her backpack. Then she tapped her fingers, directing Kathang to translate. “May we talk?” she whispered. A flurry of stiff, metallic Vietnamese poured from the little box.
Phuong raised a hand to her face to hide a laugh. “I speak English,” she said, a giggle in her voice. “Also some French.”
Ela blushed. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask.
AT THE center of the roofless platform a pile of plastic crates defined a little room where four young children clustered around a flowscreen powered by a car battery. An animated turtle demonstrated how to draw an X in the romanized Vietnamese alphabet, while the kids stared wide-eyed at Ela as she sat with Phuong on a chiêu, a plastic reed mat.
“I’m doing an article for a global magazine,” Ela explained as she produced two Cokes from her backpack and a bag of colorful rice crackers. At a nod from Phuong, she gave the crackers to the kids. “It’s supposed to be about how the fishing was spoiled here.”
Phuong nodded. “There are not many fish.”
“I want to tell about why people live here anyway.”
“There is no other place to go.” The kids whispered over the shapes and colors of the rice crackers. “My husband and I, we come from a village close to Cambodia. We both went to satellite school in the afternoons and earned high marks, but there was no work there. So we decided to go to Can Tho. It’s said there are jobs sometimes at the factories. But at Can Tho the authorities laughed at us. ‘No work,’ they said.” Phuong’s mind seemed far away. “Have you been to Can Tho?”
Ela nodded, knowing herself to be only a step away from this woman’s plight.
Phuong sighed. “In Can Tho houses are built over the water of the canals. Laborers sleep between the trees that line the levees. Trucks run down the levee roads, and they don’t slow for straying children. All the other land belongs to the farmers, and of course they must protect it, I understand that. But we walked for three days and nights without rest before we found a bit of roadside where no one tried to stop us from lying down. So we came here. This is new land, laid down this season by the river. No one owns it.”
Ela looked out across the mudflat. Here and there sprigs of riotous green sprouted against the wet, gray soil: mangrove seedlings and salt-tolerant sedges. New land. Yet it would all be drowned when the monsoon returned. Phuong would know that.
Ela sighed, and thanked her. She asked if she might stay the night on the platform, and Phuong agreed. Then Ela sat for a time in silence, watching the hundreds of little boats out on the water, knowing she could not produce the article the Coastal Society wanted.
She finished the last warm sip of her Coca-Cola, then she put in a link request to her agency. Joanie’s image immediately filled the screen. “Ela! I expected to hear from you sooner than this. What did Mr. Nguyen say?”
Ela shook her head. “I can’t do the article, Joanie. At least, not the way the Coastal Society wants it done.”
Joanie looked puzzled. Then she looked angry. “Ela, what are you thinking? You agreed to a contract. You can’t afford not to do it.”
“Just get me something else, okay? Trash work if you have to, but I won’t do an article aimed at making these people into bad guys. It’s not their fault the ocean has been stripped.”
Joanie’s face went cold and stony. “Did Mr. Nguyen put you up to this?”
Ela did not want to admit he had frightened her. “He suggested I take a deeper look at things—and he was right.”
Joanie leaned forward, her angry face looming in Ela’s farsights. “Then Mr. Nguyen had better put his money where his mouth is. I will call him. And I will see that he foots the bill.”
chapter
5
DETECTIVE KANAHA DECIDED that both Virgil and Panwar qualified as biohazards. So he arrested them, confiscated their farsights, then left them where they were, posting two officers outside the suite door. He did agree to remove Gabrielle’s remains—encased in double plastic, with the handlers wearing environment suits. A trio of cindies was sent in to attend to the residue.
Virgil stayed in his office, curled on the couch, listening to the robots vacuum and scrub, their limbs clicking and ratcheting as they crawled over the chair. Aerostat cameras hovered in every room, even the bathroom, watching everything. Virgil wondered what would happen if he plucked a LOV from his brow and flushed it down the toilet. He laughed. The plumbing had probably been switched off.
He fell asleep before the cindies finished. He knew it only when he awoke, his mind switching from sleep to wakefulness with no transition phase and no memory of dreams. Ever since he’d had the LOVs he’d awakened like this. It made him wonder what went on in his head when he wasn’t there.
He reached for his farsights, then remembered: Kanaha had taken them. The detective would not be able to get anything out of them, of course. Iris would erase any data stored in the farsights as soon as it detected a stranger handling them. The ROSA would sever contact, biding on its anonymous server until Virgil called it out once again. Everything the ROSA handled, from mail to voice-links to research, was anonymous and encrypted. The police could not track its location unless Virgil gave it away, and even then, they could not decrypt the data it contained. Iris, at least, would never be a witness against him.
He sat up on the couch, feeling a hundred years old.
What time was it, anyway?
Whatever time it was, he should call his parents.
No farsights of course.
The realization came as a relief. The thought of facing his parents, of explaining to them why he had blown his existence … it gave him a sick feeling, and he could not bring himself to do it.
In truth he rarely felt comfortable talking about himself or his beliefs, his motivations. He knew too well that his world—an emergent world arising from the intricate, unpredictable, remorseless dance of physical laws and quantum chance—was utterly different from the world perceived by almost anyone he might pass randomly on the street.
&
nbsp; He had spent his life gazing at life—he thought of it as Life, boldly set with a capital letter, and in his mind this Life encompassed not just those organic assemblages that were living things, but also the environment that contained them, the laws of complexity that gave them existence, the information systems that let them think and grow and reproduce, and the perpetual war they fought against entropy so that something could exist, instead of a homogeneous nothing. He had looked into all these aspects and what he had seen—evidenced everywhere, apparent in everything—was the common origin of all things.
Life had emerged from the plasmas of creation because life was allowed by the physical constants of the Universe. The interplay of elemental particles had led to simple atoms that became stars that in the explosive forge of supernovas created atoms more complex that led to molecules evolving into organisms that thought. Every step along the way, at every level of definition, from quantum particles to nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, astrophysics, neurology, climate, psychology, genetics, evolution, ecology, and faith, it was all one: an utterly integrated, self-contained system.
A poignantly beautiful system.
But grim, austere, and ugly, too. Virgil would never deny that. In this world so much could be lost so easily to ruthless chance. He had always known it. Now, with Gabrielle’s loss, he felt the precarious nature of his own existence. It made him afraid, but it made him defiant too. He knew that tragedy could demand no revision of his belief. It could elicit no angry protestations that he had been deceived or betrayed by an unseen god, because no promises had ever been made. Like the old bumper stickers used to say, shit was a thing that happened. One had to live with it, or die.
And still this was an alien philosophy on the street, where dualism lived on—the ancient idea that mind and matter were independent elements, separated from one another by a spark of the immortal. Dualism had died decades ago in the minds of most neurobiologists, but on the street it was still easy to strike offense with the proposition that the mind could be explained purely by the organization and symbol processing within the brain, with no need to call upon the magic forces of some hypothetical soul.