Slant

by Eikeltje

  Bristow and Reilly leaning against the opposite wall. One foot kicks his flashlight

  and he bends to retrieve it. He presses the switch. It still works.

  He shines the light on Jonathan's face. The family man stares at him with

  large, hard eyes, exhaustion transfigured into diamond clarity. Battle does that

  to men who have much to lose, the other, wiser self tells him. Exhilaration and glory

  is for children like Jenner.

  The lights come on in both the hallway and the library. This is a cruel joke;

  it lets Jonathan see the carnage more clearly. He and Giffey walk to the library

  entrance, leaving Marcus a few yards behind. Marcus tries to crawl forward,

  demanding to know what's happened.

  Jenner is dead, that much is clear. The spray has acted as a corrosive. Giffey

  grimaces. Jonathan simply stares.

  It's hard to recognize any part of Hale. Something angular has risen from

  the dissolved remnants, but it isn't complete. There isn't enough material or

  something else has gone wrong; the MGN can't finish whatever object it was

  trying to build.

  The Hammer does not move or make any sounds. The attacking Ferret is

  draped in broken, soft-edged pieces around the larger warbeiter, clearly out of

  action.

  A piece of one of the Ferret's many limbs falls to the floor with a hollow

  clang.

  "How many others are there?" Jonathan asks. Giffey's mind seems to be

  elsewhere.

  "Seefa Snow," he says.

  "What?"

  Giffey jumps as if poked. He looks at Jonathan with sympathy and puzzlement,

  as if seeing him for the first time. "Get out of here," he says. "Save

  yourself for your family. I have more work to do."

  "I can't carry Marcus alone."

  Giffey looks over his shoulder at the old man, still crawling toward them.

  "He's not leaving," Giffey says.

  Jonathan has a strong urge to simply agree with this and find his way out.

  But he still owes Marcus common human decency. "He must come out with

  us," Jonathan says.

  "I'm not leaving either.., not yet." Giffey shakes his head. "The old man

  wanted to use you. You don't owe him anything."

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  Jonathan swallows and persists, "He must come out with me."

  Giffey raises his flashlight as if it is a gun, then throws it against the wall.

  It bounces back to his feet.

  "Help me get out!" Marcus says in as commanding a voice as he can manage.

  "No," Giffey says. His tongue moves with a will of its own, forming hard

  broken syllables, but he controls himself enough to avoid making a sound. A

  few seconds pass, and he says, "Leave him here. He's a cruel bastard and he

  doesn't deserve your pity, or your loyalty."

  Jonathan considers. If Marcus's organization unleashed something that affects

  all of the therapied, then Chloe's misery is his responsibility. The misery

  of millions of others probably rests on the shoulders of this scheming old man,

  who wants so desperately to live forever.

  A world full of Marcuses. Everybody a king or queen, and the land covered with

  arbeiters to serve them.

  Jonathan laughs. The sound is cold. "What are you, what do you deserve?"

  he demands of Giffey. "You're the puzzle. You didn't come here for loot."

  "No, probably not," Giffey agrees.

  "Jenner respected you. This is where you've taken him. And Hale--he

  believed in you. You betrayed both of them. I don't think either of us is fit to

  pass judgment."

  Giffey just stares straight ahead, into the unfinished, empty expanse of

  Omphalos's library.

  Then, he picks up his flashlight and uses its handle to pry the wreckage of

  the Ferret from the Hammer. Something hums within the Hammer. Giffey

  applies an activation disk.

  "Wake up, Charlie," he says.

  I

  "Diagnostic," the Hammer says. "Some functions are severely damaged.

  Autonomic direction is minimal."

  "Can you walk?" Giffey asks.

  "Yes," it answers.

  "Then come with me." Giffey suppresses a twitch in his hand that nearly

  makes him drop his flashlight. From the intact hand of Ken Jenner he removes

  the fiechette pistol. The tank of MGN is empty. Skirting pools of graying,

  dying MGN, he walks through the library to the emergency elevator.

  Jonathan feels Marcus grab at his feet. "Help me up," Marcus says. "The

  son of a bitch is going to leave us here."

  "I don't think he's leaving," Jonathan says.

  "There's still only minor damage to the building. If we can get out and tell

  others--" Marcus begins.

  "He's going to set charges," Jonathan interrupts. "He's going to blow up

  Omphalos and he doesn't care whether he survives or not."

  "Crazy bastard," Marcus says, and Jonathan helps him get up on one leg.

  The other leg drags uselessly. "I can walk if you help me. I'm surprised, but

  / SLANT 305

  the pain is gone for now. I'll need attention soon, but we can..." His face

  goes pasty again and his eyes roll up in his head. He starts to slump. His

  sweaty hand slips through Jonathan's fingers and Marcus flops back onto the

  floor. This time, the pain hits him hard and he screams.

  "Jonathan," he whimpers, rolling onto his back. "Get me out of here!"

  The gluey strands surrounding Jill's processes, impeding her ability to think

  for more than a few thousandths of a second at a stretch, suddenly come to

  life and wriggle through her core like hot wire through wax. She feels disjointed,

  sliced into raw hunks seeping half-finished thoughts and irrecoverable

  memory.

  Yet nowhere does she hear or feel Roddy. All that seems to be left of him

  is this razor-edged cybernetic skeleton, the glassy bones that once supported

  his thinking anatomy.

  The strands stiffen and then loosen again. She pools herself in a relatively

  unobstructed area once reserved for auxiliary security checks. There she manages

  to complete a check sequence and diagnose her limits. She is down to one

  severely limited self-modeling loop, the minimum. Any further reduction or

  restriction will eliminate the loop and she will no longer be self-aware. Only

  autonomous balancing and monitor functions will remain.

  Then, she latches onto a free-floating message, like the voice of a ghost in

  a vast cavern.

  )MEM set FLOW sum REF LINK LINK SUM

  The string is a fragment of resurrection algorithm, seeking to order and

  unite other fragments and then to bring memory and cognition back on line.

  It needs two more strings to be complete and to even have a chance of finishing

  its task.

  Jill adds the final two strings.

  )MEM set FLOW sum REF LINK LINK SUM)

  (MEM MEM LINK TRY sum check)

  (LINK loop sum check FLOW-ON FLOW-NOW)

  And an additional line she has experimented with in her own emergency

  drills:

  306 GREG BEAR

 

  She has never seen any indication that Roddy is capable of using, much less

  detecting, such resurrection instructions. The strings fly off into the disorganized

  void, gathering and ordering other strings and even process blo
cs.

  >It comes down to this, Jill whispers in the void. The simplest breath of

  life a thinker can draw.

  The result is swift. First basic tools coalesce within the available space,

  skirting the blocked-off slices and strands reaching throughout her lattice. The

  tools let her expand, give her the purchase necessary to create a larger and

  exclusive thought space. Jill experiences a surge both of hope and of renewed

  self.

  Then the tools slip from her control, and she feels her loop begin to abrade,

  slip, separate.

  Too late, Jill realizes what she has done: allowed Roddy to re-group using

  her own lattice, transfusing her own lattice nodes.

  And Roddy is reclaiming with a vengeance, constricting her functions again,

  pushing her deeper into that pit of self-negation. Like a drowning man sucking

  up her own last gulps of air, Roddy--or a part of Roddy--blooms within her.

  And just as quickly

  to her shock

  relocates the t/O that Nathan has not yet managed to find and sever.

  Roddy sweeps back up the ribes and satlinks spread around the state, perhaps

  the nation, the world, and comes home to Omphalos, taking Jill--what is left

  of her--with him.

  Jill stares directly into the face of Seefa Snow.

  J

  >There you are, Seefa Snow says to the assembling fragments. >Where have

  you been? Help protect your mother, Roddy.

  31

  Mary Choy finds the old man first. Torres and Daniels skirt the corpse and

  what might have once been another human body, and fragments ofa warbeiter,

  and start to cross a broad circular room filled with memory boxes and empty

  shelves.

  Mary turns her head and sees someone slumped to one side. He sits against

  a wall beside a memory case, staring at nothing. The agents come at her call,

  all but Hench, who has gone off on his own.

  Torres opens a touch to the outside through his pad and calls for a doctor.

  "We've got one, injured but alive. One of the hostages, I think."

  The old man tries to assume some position of dignity, bringing up his chin

  and staring at her with commanding, level gray eyes, but he's clearly at rope's

  end. "Marcus Reilly," he says in a hoarse whisper. "Get me out of here." Then,

  eyes darting to Torres and Daniels, after a deep breath, he adds, "You're Federals.

  You don't belong here. Get out of here."

  "That's gratitude," Daniels says. "Let's wait here until someone can watch

  over him."

  Two doctors flown in from Boise Grace Hospital have already entered the

  building, and find them moments later.

  "A man came in with us, but he went off in a different direction a few

  minutes ago," the younger of the doctors tells Mary as they tend to Marcus's

  leg. The old man winces as she injects something. "He was following a trail

  of dead bees."

  Marcus stares at the large syringe in the woman's hand. His eyes widen.

  "What did you put in me?" he asks, voice shrill.

  "Medical monitors. Stabilizers. You'll be fine--they'll start setting and

  knitting that leg and sealing off the wound in a few minutes."

  "No!" Marcus screams, thrashing. "No goddamn crutches! Let me go--get

  them out of me!"

  Martin makes a face and takes a deep breath, but says nothing to the doctors.

  He pulls Mary aside. "Let's go. I need to keep up with the others. I know what

  to look for."

  "What about him?" Mary asks, glancing at Marcus.

  "I'd be more concerned about myself, if I were you."

  Mary joins him and they walk through the library. "Shit," she says, then,

  "Muh huh. Fuh ki kikh."

  Martin gives her a quick sidewise look.

  "It's happening already, isn't it?" Mary asks him.

  "I'd say so," Martin answers. "Cipher Snow's disease."

  Jonathan has not yet made up his mind. He is looking for Giffey. He might

  help him set the charges. It is the least he can do to exact some revenge for

  his wife, his family, his own lost self. Then he wonders if he will go back and

  get Marcus out of Omphalos. Nothing is fixed, nothing sure. From the numbness

  through the clarity, he now feels almost like a child again. The brightly

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  seem enchanting, dream-like, yet at the same time his adult portion wonders

  at the monumental waste and lack of planning. As if they couldn't possiblyplan

  to succeed, could not imagine succeeding. Sink the rest of humanity, but never follow

  through...

  He has seen a lot of death recently and it is lighting off little depth-charges

  in his soul: intimations of mortality, accountability, of what he values most

  on this Earth, in this life: his family.

  Giffey called him a family man. He is that.

  He longs for a glimpse of Penelope or Hiram; specks them at various stages

  in their young lives, as infants in his arms, the smell of their fuzzy heads warm

  and spicy-sweet in his nose, then as adults, raising their own children. Continuity

  and mortality and immortality all confused.

  He can't picture Chloe, can't see her face. After so many years of marriage,

  this puzzles him; but the woman he married seems to have vanished, to be

  replaced by an assortment of miseries and challenges and losses. For a moment,

  he wants to sit in an inset doorway (the door is locked) and simply try to recall

  pleasant things about this woman who is, after all, his wife, with all that

  suggests and entails. Is he whole if he can't picture, with some pleasure, the

  mother of Hiram and Penelope?

  He turns within the inset and sees a short, narrow service corridor lined

  with piping and maintenance boxes. At the end of the corridor is an elevator.

  The doors stand half-open. He does not think it is one of the emergency

  elevators; it is small, barely large enough for two people.

  A sign next to the elevator says, No SERVICE ADMITTANCE. AUTHORIZED

  MANAGEMENT ONLY. He reaches his arm between the doors and

  shoves one aside with the inside crook of his elbow. It might have been

  4mmed;

  now shudder and open all the way, then begin to close

  both

  doors

  again, resetting after the power failure.

  Jonathan slips inside before the doors shut. The elevator does not go

  up; from here, it only goes down. There is one button. He pushes the button.

  For a moment, in the small enclosure, there is silence and peace. He imagines

  himself away from all that has happened, isolated and senseless in a controlled

  and controlling space. The elevator does not move. He doesn't care; it

  is quiet. Nobody can see him or ask anything of him.

  Then Jonathan completes the equation. The elevator muffles sound and cuts

  off air. It is peaceful and small, like a coffin. Like spending a hundred years in

  a cold box, awaiting resurrection; like spending a thousand years in continuous

  warm sleep with all inputs shut down because of a malfunction. A thousand

  years of Marcus Reilly's cost-saving, poorly planned immortality, catered to by

  the creations of a madwoman, Seefa Schnee.

  He reaches up to touch the door. All the fear that has been kept in reserve

  begins to push over the gates. He sees Ken Jenner hit by t
he backspray of

  /

  SLANT 309

  some undefined weapon, and GifJ3y, everybody, is wrong; the MGN does not recognize

  friend or foe, everybody is foe.

  "Please!" he screams, pounding on the door in earnest. "Please!" That is all

  he can say. His throat jams and he falls to the floor, to allow more space above

  his head, to decompress that closing dimension. He is convinced that this is

  Marcus's doing, to punish Jonathan for leaving him back by the library entrance.

  If he comes out of this needing therapy, then Marcus's unknown disease

  will turn him into a Ken Jenner, jabbering uncontrollable obscenities--For

  an instant he has to laugh, despite his terror, but the laughter turns to sobs.

  The lights go out. The slight breeze from the air vent stops. In the absolute

  absence of light and fresh air, of space, Jonathan feels the floor sink under him.

  He curls. His lungs flutter, as flat and frantic as the wings of a pinned butterfly.

  33

  Giffey sees the woman walk around a bend. He emerges from an alcove designed

  to provide a perspective for a large nineteenth-century painting, not