Madlands

by K. W. Jeter

“What can I say.” She raised her hands apart as she looked down at herself in the costume. “These things happen. I wasn’t even responsible for this one—I just found myself like this. It’s gotten completely out of control around here.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “It’s all Identrope. All his plans are coming to a head. But something’s wrong, something he didn’t expect. There was some kind of an explosion—”

  I nodded. “I was there when it happened.”

  “—that sent things all crazy. The explosion didn’t just happen where you could see it and feel it. It happened underneath reality. Identrope’s reality. This whole place—” Eastern gestured at the phony cavern and the amusement park beyond it. “This is some ‘pink reality’ out of Identrope’s subconscious. Some wish-fulfillment dreamland, kid stuff. But it’s already falling apart.” She grabbed a piece of the nearest fake rock and broke it off. The substance crumbled in her fingers like loose sand. “Identrope’s loading up toward his ‘white reality’—when that happens, this place will get washed away in the flood. All the Madlands will.”

  “What else?” I touched her arm. “All that stuff you were digging into. Tell me.”

  “I got through.” She smiled, the old Eastern showing behind Snow White. “He thought he could keep things from me. All his little secrets. But he couldn’t. That’s the problem with being just short of omniscient, omnipotent—you forget other people can do things, too.” She brought her face close to mine “Identrope thought that all of his data banks—the memory of this ultimate brain he’s building—he thought all that was locked away tight, couldn’t be penetrated. Because he’d been able to turn the wires leading in there into a simulation of a human nervous system, with the crystalline structure of the wires themselves acting as synapses under his control. But he forgot something. Metals aren’t always crystalline. There’s at least one that’s liquid at normal handling temperatures.”

  “Mercury.”

  “That’s right. It’s a liquid, thus no crystalline structure. And thus no way for Identrope to bring it under synaptic control. I had complete access to the New Moon Corporation’s laboratories—it was no problem for them to whip me up a set of thin capillary tubes filled with liquid mercury. They’re a bitch to work with, but I didn’t need to use very long lengths of the stuff. Just enough to climb up into the web with, get close to Identrope’s headquarters, and substitute the mercury capillary with one of the wires right at the back of his machines. The hardest part was drilling a hole through the fiberboard wall. Once I was hooked up, it was a cinch. Identrope has so much confidence in that metal-synapse defense, there’s no security layers beyond it, not even a user password needed. I could read everything he had in there.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Get this. The New Moon Corporation is a front. For Identrope.”

  I laughed. “That figures.”

  “He’d been using it for some time now, to carry out his operations outside the Madlands. It’s a blind front; none of the directors of the corporation, including that Harrison guy, knew they were actually working for Identrope all along. Then they all got ambitious, and started coming up with things on their own initiative. That’s how they came up with that whole notion of assassinating Identrope. Harrison and the rest of the directors had been fed that line about the satellite out in the junkyard being some ancient communications device. That was a lie, too. But like good little entrepreneurial capitalists, they figured it was an opportunity too good to be missed, to put themselves way out in front of the Canal Ultime network in generating broadcast revenues. And they weren’t going to sit around waiting for their marching orders to come filtering down from above. That’s just not the kind of people they are. So they started their own plans into motion, and those just happened to include knocking off their secret employer, Identrope.”

  “Wait a minute. If the thing the New Moon technicians were working on out in the junkyard isn’t a communications satellite . . . then what is it?” The bleak thought appeared in my head that the line I’d fed Rasty Mike and the Stone Units, that the satellite was a weapons system left over from the long-ago war, might actually be true. And the thing had been launched already, according to the news broadcast I’d seen.

  “It’s Identrope,” said Eastern. “Or at least it’s part of him. The satellite’s not an ancient artifact at all. Identrope created it and had it planted out there. It’s a control mechanism for the brain he’s been building out of the web. The thing is analogous to the nonconscious sections of the human brain that regulate the electrochemical traffic of the nervous system. It’s the last piece of Identrope’s construct, the keystone of the whole white-reality project. It had to be kept distant from the rest of the network until Identrope had finished, and the web/brain was ready for it. A premature insertion of the satellite and its encoded programming would overload the network, burn it out to idiocy.”

  “And the web’s ready now?”

  Eastern shook her head. “I don’t know. The satellite was launched ahead of schedule—it’s heading for the web right now. I saw Identrope when he heard that the satellite had gone up. He’s gone into a frenzy, trying to rush the last of the preparations into place. And that was before the explosion. Now there’s no way of telling what condition Identrope and the web are in.”

  I shrugged. “Too bad for him if it isn’t. And if it is—screw him. He can jerk himself off all he wants to, playing God in his own little pocket universe.”

  “You don’t understand, Trayne. The white reality has no limits. If it happens—when it happens—it consumes all other reality. Identrope doesn’t just achieve omniscience and omnipotence in the Madlands; he achieves omnipresence beyond it as well. The brain he’s constructed from the web will achieve a flash-point critical mass. He won’t be God just here.” Her voice lowered, tightening under this sure knowledge. “He’ll be God everywhere.”

  That was it. Now I knew, what I’d known all along, in some hidden place of my heart and mind. Why I’d wanted to kill Identrope. Not the New Moon Corporation’s money, or any small thing like that.

  I’d run my own show for so long, even when I’d been working for the old Identrope. I couldn’t change now.

  Through the shabby walls of the cavern, a muffled voice boomed. My heart tripped when I thought it might have already happened, the grand conjunction between the segments of Identrope’s new being.

  “Listen!” Eastern grabbed my arm. “Come on—this way.”

  She led me out through the ride’s backstage service door. We stepped out into the middle of the milling crowd, all of them craning their necks to look into the sky. The burning dirigible was directly overhead; the dancing light from the flames beat hot against the people’s faces.

  The voice shouted from P.A. speakers on top of tall metal poles. “The grand finale! It’s showtime, folks!”

  Fireworks went off beyond the dirigible, big burning chrysanthemums that turned the lifted, gape-mouthed faces to chemical reds and greens.

  Against the crowd’s cries of pleasure, Eastern shouted into my ear as she pointed. “There it is! That’s the satellite!”

  A speck of light showed in the distance. It bloomed into sprays of fire, an array of jets slowing it down for a majestic approach toward the web.

  The crowd saw it and moaned happily as one, transfixed by the satellite’s glory. It came on across the sky, like the final kiss of heaven.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE crowd went wild.

  The ecstasy of the masses—a surge of people from behind knocked me off my feet. By the time I managed to climb upright, elbowing and tugging at the dense pack around me, Eastern had been swept away from me by the human current. I caught a glimpse of her Snow White costume, one of the puff sleeves torn, as she roundhoused somebody in front of her. Then the crowd buffeted me in the opposite direction, and I lost sight of her.

  I couldn’t shout to her—the crowd’s roaring and the thudding bombardment
of the fireworks overhead filled the air tight. The appearance of the majestically approaching satellite, its size magnified by its continuous jets of flame and colored sparks, had driven the crowd to a new pitch of frenzy. They didn’t know what was happening, what the significance of this new apparition was, but they could tell that a great moment was upon them. Identrope’s broadcasts had pumped them up for the Second Coming—maybe this was it, salvation written in skyrockets. Big sections of the crowd had started jumping up and down en masse, reaching up to the nearing satellite with their hands. A baby pinwheeled in the air, tossed by its enraptured mother.

  The burning dirigible’s flames were nearly swallowed up in the bursts of fireworks. The combined light brought the web dangling beneath into stark contrast, the interlinked strands black against the radiance. A network of diamond-outlined shadows overlaid the crowd’s upturned faces and waving arms.

  Another silhouette fell across me. I turned away from the satellite that all other eyes were fastened upon, and looked toward the perimeter of the amusement park. There, beyond the roller coaster and carousel, the bottom trailing edge of Identrope’s web was fastened down, holding the burning dirigible and his headquarters underneath in place. Flares trailing down from the fireworks showed the forms of Identrope’s faithful disciples who’d already been wired into his network.

  One of the human shapes moved. I shoved away the arms in my face so I could see better. And saw that it was Snow White. Eastern, climbing up the web.

  I fought my way through the crowd, counter to their jammed flow. A couple of mindless faces I had to put down with the slash of my forearm. I could see Eastern climbing higher into the web as I dived into the pack of bodies, driving the wedge of one shoulder between them.

  The crowd thinned as I got toward the back of it. I shoved the last of the crowd aside, the feeble or the latecomers, and ran for the bottom of the web.

  Back in the pseudo-L.A. I remembered, Identrope’s web had been fastened to the ground with heavy-duty steel cables and huge masses of concrete. In this world’s rearrangements, some kind of cheap carnival mentality had prevailed: the web was nailed down with nothing more than wooden circus-tent pegs driven into raw dirt. As I stumbled closer, a gust of wind hit the dirigible overhead; the web’s lines tautened, and one of the pegs popped free, the others near it tugging loose.

  I raised my hands and grabbed one of the web’s horizontal strands. Above me, I could see the wind whipping the full skirt of Eastern’s Snow White getup. “Eastern!” I climbed a couple of strands as I shouted. “What’re you doing?”

  The wind tore away my words, but I saw that she had heard me. She looked back down at me. “I’m going to him.” She grabbed the next strand and pulled herself up.

  “What?” The web bucked as another pair of the wooden tent pegs snapped free from the ground. My foot slipped on the strand I stood on; I threw my arms around a horizontal and clung to it.

  The whip-snap motion of the web had torn loose one of Identrope’s wired disciples. The body ripped free of the neural wiring and feed tubes, and came tumbling down the web. One arm struck Eastern a glancing blow, knocking her back until she was able to clutch another strand. She looked dazed, breathless.

  I started climbing again, working against the yawing back-and-forth drive of the web. As I got higher, closer to the middle of the web, the movement grew more extreme, the flexure unrestrained.

  Another wave of fireworks went off, dazzling behind the flames. The dark rectangle of Identrope’s headquarters building swayed beneath the dirigible’s fire-rippled belly.

  I’d managed to climb just beneath Eastern. I reached up and grabbed her white-stockinged ankle The contact snapped her to attention; she kicked my hand away.

  The web gave a deep lurch, the strands swaying like a billowing sail. The burning dirigible seemed to leap closer to the bursts of fireworks. I looked down and saw that the last of the anchoring tent pegs had ripped loose. The bottom edge of the web flapped uncontrolled as the earth fell away.

  More of Identrope’s disciples tore free from their tubes and wires as the web’s motion grew wilder. I clung tighter to the strands I’d gathered against my chest.

  “Eastern!” I shouted past the fireworks’ booming explosions. “Don’t move! Just try to hang on!”

  “Screw that—” She grabbed another strand and pulled herself up.

  I kept up with her, climbing a few feet below. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

  “Don’t you see?” She looked down at me, reflected fire in the center of her eyes. “It’s happening now—the satellite! The last piece! Look!” She took one hand away and pointed.

  I looked, but heard it before I saw it. The hissing of its rocket panoply had swelled to a roar as it approached. The satellite’s conjunction with the web was only a few meters away.

  Another firework burst hit the web square on, just below the headquarters building. Multicolored sparks tore a gaping hole through the strands. Disciples with hair aflame plummeted past us.

  I’d pressed my face against one of my upraised arms, but the glare of the explosion had still been enough to blind me for a few seconds. I could still hear Eastern’s voice shouting down to me.

  “I know what it’s like! He showed me! The white reality—I can have it, with him!”

  She’d made her choice. The only offer that counted more than the world. And greater than the world—her own soul. “Now—”

  A current like electricity, but singing up through my arms to my skull with the voices of angels, crackled in the strand I held. The web’s interstices grew white with no heat; every loop glowed with the lashing of a submolecular life.

  I looked over my shoulder, a luminous wind clawing my face. The satellite, the last component of Identrope’s brain construct, had hit the web. The network strained with the impact, fire streaming through the open spaces. The interlaced neural fibers sizzled with the encoded program-stream fired through them.

  A new wind, harder and fiercer than the one before, stormed around us, drawing the web out nearly horizontal from the burning dirigible. Eastern arched her back, arms locked straight from her grip on the strands, teeth clenched in ecstatic rictus. A light, slower and colder than the fireworks, swept across the web. I raised a hand against it, the radiance pulsing white through the bones.

  Identrope came striding over the web.

  Gravity and the storm bent around him The only sign of the physical world’s touch was his grey hair streaming mane-like in the wind, the tails of his preacher’s black suit dancing. His grim, triumphant face had studied thunder, had eaten the darkness between each star’s atoms.

  He towered over me, the lance of his gaze pinning me to the strands. “You—” Syllable of wrath, basalt voice. “I did not expect to see you again. You have surprised me, Trayne. You won’t again.” He turned away, dismissing me with a raised hand. “Now there are no more surprises. There is only Me.”

  The strand under my feet snapped, the ends whipping against my legs as I fell partway through the web. The distant earth wheeled dizzying below me. I clutched the other strands tighter in my hands, fighting to pull myself up.

  Wind stung my eyes, but I could see Identrope walking over to where Eastern lay in the glowing net. He reached his hand down to her.

  “I knew you would come.” He took the hand she raised, and pulled her toward him. His bride. “What I showed you before was nothing, only the slightest brush of my fingertips. Now you will have everything. See all, and be all.” He wrapped her in his embrace. “Worlds without end . . .”

  Their burning became too bright for mortal eyes. My gaze was fire inside my skull as I watched, two figures becoming one inside a small sun’s heart. I could just see the two faces, Eastern’s raised to Identrope’s, as they kissed. The white flame grew at that touch, transforming flesh to light.

  Then a black spark. As though she had bitten his lip, and darkness had leaked out.

  The coronal light reddened
, hurtling down the spectrum. I could see Identrope pushing himself away from her, his face spasmed in pain. A convulsive thrust of his arms sent her falling back.

  The web bucked, nearly throwing me, the strands cutting across my scarred palms. I lost sight of everything except stars spinning overhead.

  In my hands, the electric singing of the web turned discordant, the spiraling notes of Identrope’s cry. The light in the wires surged and jangled, the dark kiss corroding the thin chains.

  The strand slipped from my grasp. I fell, arms flailing behind me for any hold—

  And was caught. Eastern gathered me to her breast. One arm hugged me tight, her other hand gripping the black-burning web.

  She brought her face close to mine, as though she would give me that kiss as well. But she whispered in my ear instead.

  “He didn’t know . . .” Her lips grazed the coiled skin.

  “He wasn’t there yet . . . not all the way.” Wind battered against us, but I could hear each word. “But he knew everything then . . . when I kissed him. Became part of him. But then it was too late.”

  “Too late . . .” I spoke through clenched teeth, the earth tilting below us. “Too late for what?”

  “He didn’t know. Why I had come to him.” Her voice became a wire piercing my skull. “He didn’t know I had become infected . . .”

  I turned my face against the storm to look at her, and saw that it was true. Under her skin, translucent soft glass, I saw the shapes of other things moving, becoming. She was deep in the processes of the n-formation disease.

  Only one more word. “Why?”

  “The only way.” Eastern smiled, a thread of blood inscribed on her chin. “I let myself become infected . . . I did it on purpose. I took on the diseased bodies I found, until I was diseased. And then I could infect him. I became part of him—his heart, his brain.” She closed her eyes. “I killed him.”

  I saw it was true. The web, the great thing Identrope had become, twisted about itself, the strands infused with rotting life, shapes unbridled. The connected wires ripped apart, stitches in a corpse of air.