Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  “Ela?”

  She started at the sound of Virgil’s voice, emanating from her farsights. Then she answered softly, “I’m here.”

  His image appeared onscreen. She could see candlelight behind him, and the dusky blue of the twilight sky. His LOVs gleamed blue-green across his forehead, casting a wan light that emphasized the gaunt lines of his face. “Thuyen has dysentery,” he said. “She’ll be taken out tonight.”

  Ela nodded, unsurprised. Unless something changed, it was only a matter of days for all of them. She could see their future in Virgil’s face, as the hard outlines of his skull emerged from beneath his thinning skin. He looked as if he were melting away. They all looked that way. Ela could feel her own teeth loosening in her gums. When Thuyen was gone, only nineteen Roi Nuoc would remain on the reservation. Each one of them was determined to stay, but they could not hold out forever.

  Virgil looked uneasy with her silence. “Ky and I will take Thuyen to the research station.”

  “You’ll talk to Nash again?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Maybe there will be some vitamins you can steal.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  The link closed. Voices floated up the stairwell from the lower rooms; smoke from the flash grill on the landing thickened the air. No matter what the UN finally decided, Ela knew they truly had become a tribe, sharing what fish they could catch. There was nothing else but fish.

  She leaned on the parapet, her folded arms resting on the lip of the trough. The ocean was a dusky blue even darker than the sky. Lights gleamed on the IBC barges, and in merry outline on the observational blimps anchored up and down the coast. Closer, colder, was the light of the globes in the trough. Their chill blue-green glow brightened as night descended. They were aware of her. Ela watched the closest globe migrate toward her, producing a petite swirl and distortion of water behind it as it moved. The familiar sense of recognition and greeting touched her. Mother Tiger stirred, and all around the edge of Ela’s screen a crust of blue-green ice began to build.

  “We must hold out as long as we can,” she whispered into the nascent cognitive circle. They must survive until the UN made its decision. The lawyer had promised it would not be much longer. He’d been more positive lately about their chances. He thought that maybe the remaining Roi Nuoc would be allowed to negotiate to keep their Lovs … but at the same time he warned that no matter what, she and Virgil and Ky would face prosecution in an international court.

  The uncoupling of their fates from that of the children had come as a relief to her. She did not want to give up, but it was easier to believe in a future for the children alone. To hope for their reprieve.

  “We have to survive until the decision,” she whispered.

  Then relief supplies would be flown in, even over the objections of the IBC, and their society would go on for a while longer.

  Mother Tiger stalked the base of her screen, while the blue-green field expanded. Ela felt herself falling forward along a slow arc, deeper and deeper into the mesmerizing pull of the LOVs.

  “Survival depends on our supply of food and medicine. We have no way to get medicine … and the only food left is fish.”

  The tiger sat, twitching its tail, waiting for her to find the path she wished to walk.

  “We can survive on fish. For awhile, anyway. We could … if there was enough.”

  “Fish are abundant,” Mother Tiger said, its low voice soft and warm and soothing as candle light.

  “We are not so good at hunting them,” Ela conceded. In fact, they were getting worse. “We have no energy to go after them, and nothing to replace our damaged nets.” She smiled wistfully. “It would be easy if the fish swam to us! If they swam into pens or ponds. If we had them in ponds, like before the flood, then it would be easy to take them. How could we get them into ponds? How could we get them to swim to us? This is silly, right? But I heard whales can be driven to beach themselves. It’s a brain infection, or something. A virus or bacteria that drives them to do it?”

  Mother Tiger said, “That is a dominant theory.”

  Ela nodded. “Everything we do—everything any creature does—depends on brain chemistry, on the electrochemical interactions in our brains. And we know how to affect that. Yes, I mean the LOVs. They link to neural tissue. Could they form a symbiosis with a fish brain? Probably not. But a symbiosis is not really what we need. We want to drive the fish to our pens, to our nets. Could the LOVs do that? Suppose they could. Then they would be a parasite that controls the behavior of its host. We could send them out to hunt for us, the way we might have sent out the men of the village to hunt for meat.

  “But how could LOVs ‘catch’ fish? We know it’s the other way around. Fish eat LOVs. They are shining, glimmering prey, and they don’t survive in the fish stomach. LOVs find new hosts only when we move them. We are voluntary hosts. Transplanting the LOVs is part of our role in the symbiosis. But fish won’t volunteer. So how to get the LOVs to the fish? They might be shot at the fish, attaching when they hit. But they are so tiny and light they could not go far. Perhaps they should have a way of moving, some sort of flagellum. A chain of LOVs could form a flagellum. Like a delicate sea snake. It wouldn’t have to swim long distances. Mostly it would drift, until a victim drew near, probably wanting to eat the shiny tendril. Then it could whip into action, driving its leading segment into the fish’s head. Then the LOVs could use their chemical factories, driving the fish toward the hormones leaking from the Sea Palace …”

  Her voice trailed off as the sound of light footfalls reached her, drawing nearer as someone mounted the stairs. “Ela?” It was Oanh’s voice. “Your farsights wouldn’t accept a link.”

  Ela turned, the blue-green field of her awareness burning away like a dream image. Had it been a dream?

  “I would not have bothered you,” Oanh said. “But we are ready to eat.”

  “I’ll come. In a minute.”

  Oanh nodded, her eyes black pits beneath the light of her LOVs. “Are you all right?”

  It could not have been a dream. Ela had imagined a new kind of LOV, a predator. There had never been predatory LOVs before.

  Ela looked back at the globe, moving away now along the trough.

  What have I done?

  “Ela?”

  Surely it would come to nothing. Idle speculation, that’s all it had been. LOVs did not behave in the way she had imagined.

  She forced herself to look at Oanh. She forced herself to smile. “I’m all right,” she said. “Just fine. Let’s eat now … while we can.”

  ALL through the next day Ela loitered about the Palace, anxiously watching for signs that her musings were being made real. She didn’t see any evidence of it. She didn’t really expect to … after all, she had been engaged in a cognitive circle with a globe on the parapet. It would have limited communication with globes in the water … right? She comforted herself with this thought until near noon when a spider came down the stairs, walked through the great hall of the Sea Palace, and disappeared into the water. Did it carry her globe? There was no way to tell.

  She schooled herself to be calm.

  Two more days passed. Perhaps her scheme had been forgotten. Perhaps it had been mistranslated or misunderstood. Perhaps it would require a hundred years of experimentation to get right, or perhaps it was unworkable on some basic level. Perhaps there weren’t enough fish left for the LOVs to have a fair chance of finding them. By the end of the third day she began to relax, convinced nothing would come of her ill-considered session.

  Then on the fourth day, catfish began congregating in the shallow water around the Sea Palace’s foundation.

  Ela was sitting on the stairs just outside the arched entrance, working with Oanh to repair a net, when she noticed the dark, barbelled shapes of the fish chasing one another in water only a few inches deep. One of them broke the surface with a frothy ruffle. Oanh looked up from her work, her eyes going wide as she saw the fish. Fou
r or five large catfish at least, stirring up swirls of mud at the foot of the algae-coated stairs. It took only a few seconds to get the net over them and haul them up. Ela eyed their glossy black bodies wrapped up in the net’s white filaments. Then she looked at Oanh, and without saying a word, she removed her farsights, toggled their power switch, and slipped them into her pants pocket.

  Oanh considered this. Then she too slipped her farsights off and put them away.

  Ela crouched to examine their catch. The catfish lay limp and glossy within the net. She turned one over without unwrapping it, and there it was: a pale filament, trailing from a point on its head just behind the eye. Fear squeezed her by the neck. Oanh sensed it. She leaned over to look, and Ela felt the flood of her sharp concern. “What is that?” Oanh asked. “Do you know? You do.”

  Ela nodded. “It’s a chain of LOVs.”

  Oanh bent closer to examine it. Then she whispered to Ela, “You expected this.” It was not a question. “Did you design it?”

  Ela let her gaze stray to the other dark, shining lumps of hijacked protein wrapped up in the net’s white mesh. “I guess so.”

  “It’s … clever,” Oanh said tentatively, as if testing Ela’s opinion on whether it was clever or not.

  Ela said, “It was a mistake.”

  “How? The fish are here. That is what you planned?”

  “Yes.”

  “The LOVs forced them here?”

  “That was the design.”

  “It’s clever.”

  “Yes. I guess so.”

  But would it stop there? Ela knew it would not. The LOVs were never static.

  Oanh embraced a thoughtful silence as they removed the fish from the net. Each one trailed a LOV filament. Some had two. Ela pinched them off. She started to toss them into the water, but then she thought better of it and threw them under the archway, where they would dry out and die. She didn’t want to send evidence of their experience back into the wild population.

  By the time the net was empty, more catfish were circling in the shallows. A circuit of the second floor revealed them nuzzling all around the base of the Sea Palace. Ela sat down behind the parapet, thinking, Maybe this isn’t so bad. But she couldn’t believe it. What would happen when the UN scientists discovered what was going on?

  Delighted cries arose from below as the remaining Roi Nuoc discovered their good fortune. The fishing party that followed went on all afternoon, with fish after fish gutted alive and tossed over flash grills to be cooked almost before they had stopped wriggling. Everyone ate their fill and still, hundreds more catfish nosed about the base of the Sea Palace, like black tassels on the hem of a white dress. No one mentioned the LOV filaments.

  But they must have noticed.

  Perhaps Mother Tiger had counseled everyone to silence.

  Oanh was wearing her farsights again as Ela descended the stairs. Smoke from the grills had reddened her eyes, and she looked less happy than the others. “Are you going?” she asked, as she followed Ela outside.

  “Yes.” She touched her stomach. “I’m so full I’m going to be sick. I need to lie down where it’s quiet.” Ela untied her little canoe from its mooring. “If Virgil comes back from the research station, tell him where I’ve gone.”

  Several seconds passed as Oanh studied Ela’s face … reading the telltales? “Why are you still not wearing your farsights?”

  Ela’s hand jumped as if to touch the missing frame. “Oh. My eyes are tired. I-I have a headache.”

  “The UN decision will be announced tomorrow.”

  Ela turned, fear and hope spilling through her mind in equal measure. “You’ve heard this?”

  Oanh nodded somberly. “Mother Tiger shares your concerns.”

  Ela nodded, and slid into the canoe. The late-afternoon rains began as she paddled back to Virgil’s platform. A heavy downpour, that set the water boiling. She stopped once to bail her canoe. She stopped again just a few feet from the platform when she spied a small object floating in the water. It was hard to make out amid the pounding, splashing drops of rain, but it was dark in color, and it moved against the current like an animal, swimming. A rat. She stiffened. Her lip curled in distaste, and she gripped the paddle harder, but the rat didn’t seem aware of her. All its energy was focused on reaching the platform. After a minute, it bumped up against one of the pilings. Its tiny paws scrabbled at the shiny reef of LOVs and somehow it found purchase there. It climbed up, and out of the water.

  “Scat,” Ela said softly. “Go away.”

  The rat turned to look at her. It was a large rat, its wet fur black and bedraggled except at the head where lighter hair reflected a greenish cast from the water. A blue-green cast. Almost luminous.

  Ela’s eyes widened. Slowly, slowly, she let her paddle slide into the water, nudging her canoe closer. The rat watched her, its dead black eyes following her every movement. Now she could see it easily: the rat’s head was covered in a helmet of LOVs that encircled its eyes and cranium, and descended halfway down its snout. Ela felt the skin on her neck tighten.

  Did I do this?

  The prow of the canoe nudged the piling, bringing her eye to eye with the rat. A dank sweat covered her skin. Her heart pounded harder than the rain, while the rat’s LOVs glittered. Ela could see the flash and glitter of her own LOVs bright in the corner of her vision.

  Abruptly, a sensation of hunger flooded her. The rat was hungry. She knew this. She could feel its hunger.

  Kin.

  She felt its weak call on her support.

  Kin.

  As if having LOVs made it more than a rat.

  Her revulsion must have been coded into the millisecond flash of her own LOVs because the rat suddenly turned, scrambling frantically up the piling. Ela reacted with equal speed. She raised the paddle and swung hard, clipping the rat across the spine. It fell into the water. She hit it again, driving it under the surface. Out of sight.

  chapter

  37

  FOR MANY DAYS, Virgil had spent most of his waking hours working with Ky to evacuate sick and injured children. The most common afflictions were dysentery and small wounds gone septic in the filthy conditions. There was no predicting where the next case would strike—only the certainty that it would. Virgil felt like a seer with myopia, able to see disaster looming in the future, but never knowing where it would fall.

  When disease did erupt, it hit hard and fast. Malnutrition had eaten away at the Roi Nuoc’s physical reserves, so that twelve hours of fever could reduce a child to a shell of fragile skin and delicate bone, life escaping bit by bit with every fiery exhalation.

  And still none ever volunteered to leave the reservation. They knew it meant losing their LOVs, and most preferred to take their chances, even when their fever left them no chance at all. Some would go so far as to shed their farsights and disappear into half-drowned orchards infested with snakes that had gathered in the trees to escape the floodwater. Virgil and Ky were forced to become hunters. Their presence was feared. When they arrived to fetch the ill and the injured to the research station, stricken children looked upon them as if they were angels of death.

  So when Virgil returned to the Sea Palace and Oanh told him of how Ela had refused to wear her farsights all afternoon and then had left, complaining of headache and nausea, Virgil suspected the worst. He stood on the steps of the palace, eyes closed, breathing deeply to stave off panic. Why now? he thought. Why now?

  The UN had promised a decision on relief supplies within twenty-four hours, but if Ela had contracted dysentery, she might not last that long. He would have to bring her in for treatment now, tonight …

  And she would be arrested, or she would join the disappeared. In either case he would not see her again.

  Not now, he thought. Not this soon.

  They were supposed to have one more day.

  He waved off Oanh’s offer of help and bounded onto the back of the flying saucer, cursing its maddening, slow pace as it glided throu
gh the rain-pummeled darkness. He looked ahead to the platform, searching with his farsights for warm candlelight, but the only light came from the eerie glow of LOVs in the shower walls.

  After what seemed an hour, the flying saucer bumped up against the deck. Only the rain moved, in wild, dancing splashes. He forced himself to patience, tying up the saucer and settling it against the water before he went into the hut.

  Ela was there, wrapped up in their thin blanket, watching him—though he could not have been more than a glimmer of LOVs to her eyes, for she still was not wearing her farsights. He looked at her with nightvision, but even so her image was dim, blurred. This night was very dark, lit only by their LOVs. He could see well enough to know she did not smile.

  He peeled off his wet shirt and left it by the door, then he dropped to his knees beside her. With his wet hands he felt her cheeks, her forehead.

  Her skin was cool.

  “Ela? Oanh thought you might be sick.”

  “I’m not sick.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. Not like Ela’s voice at all. “What time is it in New York?” she asked. “Has the UN made its decision yet?”

  “Not yet. Ela, what’s wrong?”

  “Lie down with me, Virgil. Please. This one more time.”

  HE WAS awakened in the morning by an emergency call from Nash. In the gray predawn light, Ela watched him as he picked up his farsights and slipped them on, her face with the same flat, hopeless expression she’d had last night. He wondered if she had slept at all.

  Nash’s tonsure of thinning hair was rumpled and his eyes were shadowed with fatigue, but his face looked curiously animated. “Virgil. Come to the station now. I don’t want to say more.”

  Virgil sensed a trap. “What’s up?” he asked lightly. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Something you need to see. I won’t say more. Come in now. This may change your mind about everything.”

  Ela had slipped out the back of the hut to relieve herself. When she returned he told her what Nash had said. She nodded. “I’ll go with you.”