Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  They poled between the other platforms, eyeing the rain catchment systems, some with basins obviously full. “We could try again,” Virgil said.

  Ky shook his head. “We can’t risk crushing the boat. Let’s find Lien. There will be water when we get back to the Sea Palace.”

  IT TOOK twenty minutes more to reach the mangrove stand where Lien had built her platform. They called out as they approached. But the helicopters had returned with another load of chemical spray; if anyone answered their hails, it was impossible to hear over the droning engines.

  The platform itself was hidden within the tangle of trees. They tied the boat to a trunk, then climbed out onto a six-inch-wide plank of LOVs. Rings of LOVs anchored the plank to the roots and trunks, so it didn’t slide as they stepped on it.

  Ky went first, while Virgil followed close behind along a path that wound through trees draped in gleaming webs of LOVs, with here and there a globe suspended in the mesh.

  By the time they drew near the center of the stand, the helicopters began to move away. As the noise level dropped Ky again tried calling out, but still there was no answer. He stopped on the path, looking back at Virgil with uncertain eyes. “I was here last night and all was well. I left around midnight.”

  Virgil set his hand on Ky’s shoulder, but he said nothing. There was nothing to say. Silence crept out from under every leaf; it steamed into the air with the evaporation of water. Even here in the shade the heat was dizzying. Virgil wiped sweat from his forehead. “Let’s not record this.”

  Ky stiffened. He stared ahead into the canopy, where flies buzzed. Then he fumbled with his farsights, pulling them off and toggling the power switch. Virgil did the same.

  They discovered Lien and her three companions a few minutes later.

  They had made a platform of many levels, each one anchored with rings around the trunks and limbs. They lay together, side by side on the lowest level beneath several healthy globes suspended in a webbed canopy. Virgil felt a sick sense of déj→ vu wash over him as he watched flies crawl in and out of Lien’s open mouth. Her eyes stared upward through the transparent lens of farsights in power-down mode. All four of them wore farsights. The haggard expressions on their exhausted faces reminded him too much of Gabrielle.

  Ky crouched at their feet, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth as he studied their faces. “I was here just last night. They were fine. They were happy.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Is this what happened to your friend, Gabrielle?”

  Virgil nodded, as Ky’s grief resonated against his own. “It looks the same, if this is a cognitive circle …”

  “It is. They did them all the time. For hours on end. Mother Tiger used to interrupt them. That’s one reason they gave up their farsights. Lien especially. She didn’t need them anymore. She was a natural philosopher. She didn’t need Mother Tiger’s help to understand the LOVs, and anyway, she didn’t …”

  His voice trailed off as he looked again at the four bodies, their helmets of LOVs dull gray in the sunlight. Virgil felt the rush of his sudden, terrible suspicion. “Ky? What is it?” He knelt beside him. “What were you going to say about Lien?”

  Ky turned to him, and Virgil felt overwhelmed by his pain, his fury at some unspoken betrayal. “The other reason she gave up her farsights,” he whispered. “She didn’t trust the ROSA anymore.”

  “Mother Tiger … ?” Virgil was incredulous. But Ky’s suspicion had gotten inside him. His hand moved to touch the bulge of his farsights, switched off and safely tucked into his thigh pocket. The ROSA could not observe them. Virgil looked again at Lien’s tortured face, and at last he saw the anomaly that had alarmed Ky. “If they didn’t need farsights, why are they wearing them?”

  “There is one we could ask.”

  “Ky …”

  “Think about it!” Ky insisted, in a low, urgent whisper. “They must have been talking to the ROSA last night after I left. There is no other reason for them to wear farsights. But Mother Tiger said nothing about it.”

  “Come on, Ky. How could Mother Tiger have harmed them? Why?”

  Ky raised his hand. “Be careful what you say.” He nodded at a peeper ball drifting just within the tangle of mangrove trunks.

  “It’s the IBC,” Virgil said. “We should leave. They’ll be here soon.”

  Ky’s gaze followed the peeper’s flight. He gave a slight shake of his head. “The enemy is not always easy to recognize.”

  Virgil looked again at the peeper. What was Ky saying? That the peeper might not belong to the IBC? Then who … ?

  He turned to Ky, and mouthed the words Mother Tiger?

  Ky shrugged. “The LOVs did not do this,” he said, still speaking in whispers. “Not directly. I won’t believe it. Lien had too much experience. She’d done hundreds of cognitive circles. She knew how to control her own trance.” Then Ky tapped his temple, the universal symbol for farsights. “But if she was wearing farsights, who was in control?”

  Virgil shook his head, unwilling to believe any of this. “Her farsights are powered down.”

  “When farsights are stolen, the resident ROSA will switch them off, no? As a matter of security. And consider this—I left here near midnight. How many hours have passed since then? Not enough for them to die. Not unless they were led, deliberately down into a terrified state, a hellish trance they could not break.”

  Virgil felt a fresh sweat break out across his chest. He could not take his eyes away from the peeper ball hovering among the globes. “Don’t say any more.” He started to rise. “We have to get back. All the Roi Nuoc are dependent on—”

  “They are safe, I think. For now. Because they are still Roi Nuoc.”

  Of course they should be safe. Mother Tiger’s whole existence had been written around them. “But Lien …”

  “Didn’t I say it myself this morning? She and her companions had evolved beyond us. Her purposes and Mother Tiger’s were no longer the same. Perhaps Lien had some plan Mother Tiger did not approve of. I know she wanted to persuade the rest of us to follow her, and leave the ROSA behind.”

  Ky leaned forward, reaching beneath the web of suspended globes to lift away Lien’s farsights and close her staring eyes. Then he touched the dying LOVs on her companions’ heads—and froze, his lips parted, his eyes wide in wonder. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Virgil. “Can you hear their souls?”

  Virgil felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  Ky settled back on his heels, gazing up at the canopy of suspended globes. “Can you feel this sense of warning, or is it only my mind slipping away?” He touched the LOVs on his forehead. “Tell me you can hear them, Virgil.”

  Virgil looked up. His heartbeat quickened. He brushed his hair back from his forehead—and then he did hear something. Murmured voices inside his head, their words inaudible but their meaning clear all the same: Run fast! Run fast!

  It was a mantra that pulled Panwar’s ghost up out of an old, old well of memory, speaking words he had never spoken in life: Our machines have almost caught us up. We need to change, before they leave us behind forever.

  Ky’s hand on his arm brought him back from the dark, blood-drenched utility tunnel. Back to the present. “Do you hear them?” Ky insisted.

  Virgil nodded. “It’s the globes. E-3 remembered Gabrielle. It’s the same.”

  “It’s a message. You understand? We cannot fail.”

  chapter

  39

  SPIDERS WERE SUMMONED to the ocean room.

  Wet blankets had been hung across the doorway to keep the pestilence out. Ela crouched beside the barrier, peeking past the edge of a blanket at the spider waiting on the other side. In her hands she held a spare pair of farsights left behind by a Roi Nuoc evacuated from the reservation. Her own screen winked blue-green as Mother Tiger translated her instructions. After a minute the spider raised the brittle wands of two adjacent legs, lifting the spare farsights from her hand. Then it waddled awkwardly away on its six remai
ning limbs, climbing the stairs to the Palace roof.

  Ela glanced over at Ninh, crouched on the other side of the blanket-draped doorway, instructing another spider to carry another pair of farsights to a post outside the Sea Palace. They had four sentries now, to warn them of the approach of the IBC. She let the blanket fall back into place.

  How much longer?

  In the lower field of her farsights two small windows looked out on the progress of Virgil and Ky. She could see what they saw and hear their conversation. She was not the only one watching. An outcry of fear and consternation had swirled through the ocean room when Ky’s weight on the abandoned platform sent it sliding into the water. Now, anxious murmurs followed them along the path that wound through the mangrove. Silence fell when Ky paused to call to Lien. Ela strained to hear a response, but only the buzzing flies answered. Virgil shifted. His hand swept in a blur across the field of his farsights. “Let’s not record this,” he said softly.

  Seconds later, both windows closed.

  Ela traded a glance with Ninh. There was no need to say what they both knew: Lien would have responded if she could.

  “What can we do now?” Ninh asked.

  “I don’t know. Watch? Wait?” She touched the LOVs on her forehead. Counting herself and Ninh, only thirteen of the Roi Nuoc remained. If Virgil and Ky made it back, they would be fifteen.

  Ninh said, “We have money. There has to be something we can do.”

  “Hire our own army, then.”

  “No. We would all die.”

  “Ninh is right,” Mother Tiger said, speaking through both their farsights. “This would never be approved.”

  “Approved by who?” Ela asked.

  The ROSA said, “By me.”

  Ela felt a chill touch her neck. She wondered if the UN would find it necessary to eliminate Mother Tiger too.

  She started pacing, making circuit after circuit of the room, trailing her fingers against the damp wall. The Roi Nuoc had gathered in a loose cluster at the center of the room. They sat cross-legged, each carrying on a separate conversation as they busied themselves with Mother Tiger or with interviews or propaganda. In the windowless room the only light came from gleaming pillars of living LOVs. The blue-green wavelength stole the color from their skin, giving them the faded look of old film, of poorly preserved photos shot in black and white. Their voices sounded distant, almost lost within the low, reverberant rumble of storm waves pounding the prow of the Sea Palace. The typhoon that had generated these swells was stalled over the Eastern Sea where it fed on the warm, shallow water, building up its strength.

  Ela whispered to Mother Tiger, opening new windows within the field of her farsights.

  Through a spider-sentry on the roof she watched another overflight of helicopters. A foaming breaker boomed against the Palace, throwing a fan of spray across the roof.

  Another spider-sentry stood watch on the dike behind the Palace, looking inland through air heavy with mists and glints of refracted, rainbow light. Beneath it, at the foot of the dike, two ruined skaters floated amid a raft of gray foam gathered at the water’s edge. Their joints had collapsed so that their legs splayed in a star pattern. Their buoyant float pads held them on the surface, but they sagged at the center so that their globes were submerged. In the strange light their blue-green color was lost, and they looked a sickly gray. A fish picked at one of them.

  Ela felt her hands begin to tremble. Until now, only newly forming LOVs had been affected by the IBC’s chemical rain. But these were mature skaters. A mutagen should not have been able to cripple them … which meant a second poison had been released, one that was toxic to existing LOVs.

  “Virgil!” she whispered urgently. “Ky. Come back now!”

  “Their farsights remain off,” Mother Tiger told her. “They cannot be reached.”

  “The IBC has used a new poison.”

  “Yes. An analysis of light refracted by the air drops indicates at least three different toxins.”

  “Mature LOVs are dying.”

  “Yes.”

  A noise like popcorn bursting, or like muffled firecrackers, erupted from outside. Ela hurried to the curtain of wet blankets and peeked past the edge to the arch of daylight at the outer doorway. A spider was crouched at the intersection of sun and shade. Peeper balls drifted around it like glinting soap bubbles. One had been waiting by the curtain, poised for just such an opportunity. It slipped through as Ela held the blanket open a crack.

  She cursed and dropped back, swatting furiously at the peeper, but it glided up, out of reach. She let it go, knowing there were many others already ensconced in the dark corners of the ceiling.

  The popping noise grew louder, more frequent. Ela scanned the windows along the lower field of her farsights until she found the view from the spider-sentry poised at the main door. It showed the flying saucer drifting over the stairs, bouncing and jerking as its hull popped in a scatter shot of tiny white explosions. Its pressure cells were bursting open, one after another, throwing tiny splinters of glass and plasma into the air.

  Ela bowed her head, running her fingers through her hair as she fought a surging panic. She froze as a link icon popped up in her field of view. It was a simple symbol, a circle surrounding three letters: IBC. Mother Tiger had long ago been instructed to filter all but the highest-priority links. “Open it,” Ela murmured, her words swallowed up by the low rumble of waves.

  The symbol expanded. It held for several seconds, then Daniel Simkin appeared, leaning on a podium with a map of the local coastline behind him. He was addressing a news conference:

  “… an agreement reached with the United Nations has allowed us to operate freely within the infested territories since dawn. An evacuation of all remaining civilians is being arranged as I speak. I will not underplay the crisis we are facing. Three months of political stonewalling and corruption has allowed the evolution of the worst biological disaster in human history and the imminent approach of Typhoon Corazon threatens to spread the infestation far beyond its present boundaries. That cannot be allowed. In the hours remaining to us before the storm arrives, the IBC will be releasing a series of viruses specifically targeted at LOV physiology. None of these viruses—I repeat, none of these viruses—can harm any other life-form. There is no reason for concern on this point. We have chosen this multipronged strategy to counter the well-known fact of the LOV’s adaptability. Any single scheme would leave a remnant population of resistant LOVs. But no LOV will be immune to every virus in our arsenal. By sundown, this crisis will have reached its long-overdue conclusion.”

  Ela tipped her head back. Fast, shallow breaths rushed past her lips. “Break the link.” She looked around the ocean room, at twelve faces, all reflecting the shock she felt. Her hand knotted into a fist. “Where is Virgil?”

  “Still no word,” Mother Tiger said.

  “The IBC will be coming soon.” She started pacing again, her fingers trailing against the wall. The Sea Palace had roots running deep into the mud. Nutrients flowed up through insulated channels to feed the pillars of gleaming LOVs that gave them light, and to feed the LOVs in the walls that recycled their air.

  The air was still fresh; the light unwavering though poisons swirled in the outside air. Spider-sentries were collapsing. Their skewed viewpoints showed living pipes turning sickly gray. Droves of flies buzzed the walls. On the roof, the globes in the troughs had begun to dissolve, but in the cool, dark shelter of the ocean room the air was fresh.

  Clean.

  Ela froze in mid-stride, staring inward at the germ of an idea. “Oanh!”

  Her shout echoed against the walls, breaking cognitive circles that had just begun to re-form in the wake of Simkin’s news conference. “Ninh. Phan. Everyone. Come.” She glanced at the dark ceiling, where peeper balls hid among the shadows. She didn’t dare express her idea aloud. “Let us all sit together.”

  Recognizing her excitement, her need for secrecy, they came together without questions,
joining their separate circles into a loose cluster. Ela sat facing them; her fingers began to tap. Mother Tiger guessed at the words she was spelling, and wrote them out in quick sentences:

  ♦ Lovs are dying everywhere but here. Ocean room sheltered. Lovs here are protected from pestilence. They are unharmed.

  Ela raised her left hand to her forehead, touching the symbiotic LOVs implanted there.

  ♦ Can we shelter our own Lovs?

  ♦ Remember: What we call a Lov is only a shell around one end of a cluster of neural asterids. The first asterids developed by Summer Goforth had no shell. They lived entirely within the brain of their host. Could we re-create that design?

  The proposal stirred a chorus of thoughtful sighs, though no one spoke a coherent word aloud. They were all aware of the peeper balls.

  Ela waited for some responding message to write itself out across her screen, but none came. She looked from one puzzled face to the next until finally Ninh held up his hand, palm out, and wiggled his fingers.

  No fingerpads.

  Ela winced. Of course. The Roi Nuoc did not have fingerpads so how could they type?

  Well, on a virtual grid of course. She tapped out the proposal and within a few minutes Mother Tiger was recording their awkward finger movements, assembling the letters they “touched” into brief messages—while rearranging the virtual keys every few seconds to slow anyone trying to decrypt their words. A conversation began.

  The LOVs must be redesigned, yet they could not do it themselves. No one knew how. They could only detail the problem for the LOVs to explore. Questions and answers were traded through the interface of Mother Tiger and the concept evolved as teams of LOVs created competing solutions. Ela could not follow even the coarsest details. To her it only felt as if their circle was converging.