“And these hive minds may have been going along at their own level, completely unaware of us for . . . well, who knows? How long did we go along before we understood neurochemistry?
“I know we’re all used to thinking of ourselves as the top. Molecules make up cells, cells make up tissues, tissues make up organs, organs make up people, but people don’t make up anything bigger. Complexity stops with us. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that ain’t the case.”
“Do any of you understand what the hell this guy’s talking about?” Pauel asked. From the murmur of voices in the room, the question was being asked across more links than theirs. The speaker, as if expecting this, stepped back and put his hands in his pockets, waiting with an expression like sympathy, or else like pity.
“He’s saying there’s a war in heaven,” Marquez said.
“No, he isn’t,” Renz said. “This isn’t about angels. It’s minds. He’s talking about minds.”
The man stepped forward again, holding up his hands, palm out. The voice of the crowd quieted, calmed. The man nodded, smiling as if he was pleased with them all.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Some of you have already seen the hole in the model. I said levels of complexity can’t talk to each other. That’s not quite true. You do it every time you drink a glass of wine or go on antidepressants. We understand neurons. Not perfectly, maybe, but well enough to affect them.
“Well, the only theory that fits the kind of coordinated coincidences we’ve been seeing is this: something up there – one level of complexity up from us – is starting to figure out how to affect us.”
When Paasikivi interrupted the debriefing and told him, Renz didn’t immediately understand. He kept having visions of bombs going off in the doctor’s office, of men with guns. It was the only sense he could make of the words Anna’s in the hospital.
She’s had an attack.
Her room stank of disinfectant. The hum and rattle of the air purifier was almost loud enough to keep the noise of the place at bay. White noise, like the ocean. She managed a smile when she saw him.
“Hey,” she said. “Did you see? Salmon are extinct again.”
“You spend too much time on the net,” he said, keeping his voice gentle and teasing.
“Yeah, well. It’s not like you take me dancing anymore.”
He tried to smile at it. He wanted to. He saw the tears in her eyes, her stick-thin arms rising unsteadily to him. Bending down, he held her, smelled her hair, and wept. She hushed him and stroked the back of his neck, her shaking fingers against his skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when he could say anything. “I’m supposed to be here fluffing your pillows and stuff, not . . .”
“Not having any feelings of your own? Sweetie, don’t be stupid.”
He was able to laugh again, a little. He set her down and wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeve.
“What do the doctors say?” he asked.
“They think it’s under control again for now. We won’t know how much of the damage is permanent for another week or two. It was a mild one, sweet. It’s no big deal.”
He knew from the way she said it, from the look in her eyes, that It’s no big deal meant There’s worse than this coming. He took a deep breath and nodded.
“And what about you?” she asked. “I saw there was some kind of attack that got stopped in New York. Did they try a follow-up to the restaurant?”
“No, it wasn’t an attack,” he said. “It was something else. It’s really weird. They’ve got all the girls who were involved, but as far as anyone can tell there’s no connection between them at all. It was some kind of coincidence.”
“Girls?”
“Little ones. Maybe five, six years old.”
“Were they wired?”
“No, they were all duds. And they weren’t linked to any networks. They were just . . . people,” Renz said, looking at his hands. “I hate this, Anna. I really hate this. All of it.”
“Even the parts you like?”
The memory of exhilaration passed through him, of setting the coil, of fear and excitement and success. The feeling of being part of something bigger and more important than himself. The warmth of Anna’s body against him as they danced, or as they fucked.
“Especially the parts I like,” he said. “Those are godawful.”
“Poor sweetie,” she said. “I’m sorry, you know. I wouldn’t have it like this if I could help it. I keep telling my body to just calm down about it, but . . .”
She managed a shrug. It was painful to watch. Renz nodded.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be in depths of hell with anyone else,” he said.
“Now that was sweet,” she said. Then, tentatively, “Have you thought about going to the support group? A lot of the people in my group have husbands and wives in it. It seems like it helps them.”
“I’m not around enough. It wouldn’t do any good.”
“They’ve got counselors. You should at least talk to them.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to them. I’ve got leave coming up soon. I can soldier through until then.”
She laughed, looked away. The light caught her eyes just right – icicles.
“What?” he asked.
“Soldiering through. It’s just funny. You’ve got your war, honey, and I’ve got mine.”
“Except you’re the enemy too.”
“Yeah, it does have that war-between-the-states feel to it,” she said, and grinned. “There’s a guy in my group named Eric. You’d like him. He says it’s like having two people in the same body, one of them trying to live, the other one trying to kill the first one even if it means dying right along with.”
“The good him and the bad him,” he said.
“That’s a matter of perspective. I mean, his immune system thinks it’s being pretty heroic. Little white cells swimming around high-fiving each other. Hard to convince those guys to stop doing their jobs.”
Renz shook his head. Anna’s fingers found his, knitting with them. The air purifier let out a pop and then fell back to its normal grinding.
“Is everyone in your group that grim?”
“They haven’t gotten to a place where they divide children into wireds and duds, but yes, there’s a grimmish streak to them.”
“Sounds like Marquez’s kind of people.”
“And how is the group mind?” Anna asked.
“Pretty freaked about the New York thing.”
“So what exactly happened?”
He wasn’t supposed to tell her. He did.
“Something up there – one level of complexity up from us – is starting to figure out how to affect us,” the man said. “The question is what we’re going to do about it. And the answer is nothing. What we have to do is nothing. Go on with our work, the same as we always have. Let me explain why that’s critically important.
“So far, the anomalies all have the same structure. They’re essentially propaganda. We see the enemy approaching us in a friendly, maybe conciliatory manner. We start thinking of them as cute little girls and nice old women. Or else we’re flooded with death reports that remind us that people we care about may die. That we might.
“And maybe we take that into the field with us. In a struggle between two hive minds, that kind of weakening of the opposition would be a very good move. Imagine how easy it would be to win a fistfight if you could convince the other guy’s muscles that they really liked you. The whole thing would be over like that,” the man said, snapping.
“We all need to be aware. We all need to keep in mind what’s going on, but if we change our behavior, it wins. Let the other side get soft, that’s fine, but we can’t afford to. If this thing up there fails, it may give up the strategy. If we let it get a toehold – if what it’s doing works – there’s no reason to think it’ll ever stop.
“Now, there is some good news. Some of you already know this. There are chatter reports that these incidents are happening to ter
rorist brigades too, so maybe one of these things is on our side. If that’s the case, we just need to make sure the bad guys get soft before we do.”
Renz shook his head. His mind felt heavy, stuffed with cotton. Marquez touched his arm.
“You okay?”
“Why does he think there’s two?”
“What?”
The man was going on, saying something else. Renz leaned in to Marquez, whispering urgently.
“Two. Why does he think there are two of these things? If there’s only one, then it’s not a war. If this is . . . why would it be a fight and not a disease? Why couldn’t it be telling us that this isn’t supposed to be the way things are? Maybe the world’s like Anna.”
“What’s the difference?” Marquez asked.
“With a disease you try to get better,” Renz said. “With a war, you just want to win.”
“Now before we go on,” the man on the stage said, “there are a couple of things I want to make clear.”
He raised his hand, index finger raised to make his point, but the words – whatever they were – died before he spoke them. Renz’s link dropped, Pauel and Paasikivi and Thorn vanishing, Marquez only a body beside him and not someone in his mind. There was a half-second of dead silence as each agent in the room individually realized what was happening. In the breathless pause, Renz wondered if Anna was on the net and how quickly she would hear what had happened. He heard Marquez mutter shit before the first explosions.
Concussion pressed the breath out of him. The dull feeling that comes just after a car wreck filled him, and the world turned into a chaos of running people, shouted orders, the bright, acidic smell of explosives. Renz stumbled toward the exits at the side of the hall, but stopped before he reached them. It was where they’d expect people to go – where many of the agents were going. Marquez had vanished into the throng, and Renz reflexively tried to open the link to him. Smoke roiled at the high ceiling like storm cloud. Another more distant explosion came.
The auditorium was nearly empty now. A series of bombs had detonated on the right side of the hall – rows of seats were gone. The speaker lay quietly dead where he’d stood, body ripped by shrapnel. Fire spread as Renz watched. He wondered if the others were all right – Paasikivi and Thorn and Pauel. Maybe they’d been attacked too.
There were bodies in the wreckage. He went through quickly, the air was thickening. Dead. Dead. Dead. The first living person was man a little older than he was, lying on the stairs. Salt-and-pepper hair, dark skin, wide hands covered in blood.
“We have to get out,” Renz said. “Can you walk?”
The man looked at him, gaze unfocussed.
“There’s a fire,” Renz said. “It’s an attack. We have to get out.”
Something seemed to penetrate. The man nodded, and Renz took his arm, lifted him up. Together they staggered out. Someone behind them was yelling, calling for help.
“I’ll be back,” Renz called over his shoulder. “I’ll get this guy out and I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t know if it was true. Outside, the street looked like an anthill that a giant child had kicked over. Emergency vehicles, police, agents. Renz got his ward to an ambulance. The medic stopped him when he turned to go back.
“You stay here,” the medic said.
“There’s still people in there,” Renz said. “I have to go back. I’m fine, but I have to go back.”
“You’re not fine,” the medic said, and pulled him gently down. Renz shook his head, confused, until the medic pointed at his arm. A length of metal round as a dime and long as a pencil stuck out of his flesh. Blood had soaked his shirt.
“Oh,” Renz said. “I . . . I hadn’t noticed.”
The medic bent down, peering into his eyes.
“You’re in shock,” he said. “Stay here.”
Renz did as he was told. The shapes moving in the street seemed to lose their individuality – a great seething mass of flesh and metal, bricks and fire, moving first one way and then another. He saw it as a single organism, and then as people, working together. Both interpretations made sense.
Firemen appeared, their hoses blasting, and the air smelled suddenly of water. He tried to link to Marquez, but nothing came up. Someone bound his arm, and he let them. It was starting to hurt now, a dull, distant throbbing.
He caught sight of a girl as she slipped into a doorway. So far, no one else seemed to have noticed her. Renz pushed himself up with his good arm and walked to her.
But she wasn’t the same – not another ghost of Samara. This child was older, though only by a year or two. Her skin was deep olive, her hair and eyes black. Flames glittered in her eyes. Her coat was thick and bulky even though it was nearly summer. She looked at him and smiled. Her expression was beatific.
“We have to stop this,” he said. “It’s not war, it’s a sickness. It’s a fever. We’re all part of the same thing, and it’s dying. How are we going to make this stop?”
He was embarrassed to be crying in front of a stranger, much less a child. He couldn’t stop it. And it was stupid. Even in his shock, he knew that if there was something up there, some hive mind sick and dying in its bed, he could no more reach it by speaking to this girl than by shouting at the sky. Could no more talk it out of what was happening than he could save Anna by speaking to her blood.
Renz saw the girl before him shift inside her coat, and understood. An Arab girl in New York in a bulky coat. A second attack to take out the emergency services answering the first one.
“Please. We have to stop this,” Renz said. “You and me, we have to stop.” The girl shook her head in response. No, we don’t.
“God is great,” she said, happily. Like she was sharing a secret.
THE DEFENDERS
Colin P. Davies
New British writer Colin P. Davies is a building surveyor from Liverpool, England. His stories have appeared in Spectrum SF, Asimov’s Science Fiction, 3SF, Paradox, Elysian Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and he is at work on his first novel.
In the incisive and elegant little story that follows, one packed with enough ideas to fuel many another author’s eight-hundred-page novel, he shows us the price that sometimes has to be paid to maintain the status quo . . .
FINALLY, GRANDFATHER slowed the dinghy, and the retinue of iridescent wakefish skated away under a punishing noon sun.
Elisa leaned over the side and watched another wavering giant carcass pass below while Grandfather whistled a tune far older than Elisa’s thirteen years.
“That’s enough!” she said – then softer, “I’ve seen enough.”
“And do you still consider me wicked?” Grandfather pushed back his white cap and wiped a crumpled handkerchief across his brow. He stopped the engine. The gentle splashing faded along with the murmur of the power unit.
“I never did think you were wicked.”
Elisa scanned the horizon. From this far out in the Spherical Ocean, none of the archipelago was visible.
New Sicily was two hours to the west. She’d never traveled so far from Homeport, from people, before. The knowledge of isolation was like a hand squeezing her lungs – just her and Grandfather and an ocean a world wide.
She gazed again into the clear shallow water of the plateau, at the graveyard of great white bones. “How big is the battlefield?”
Grandfather held his arms wide so that his white shirt caught the breeze. “Vast. I watched from a prudent distance.”
“I can’t see the bodies of any demons. You said they’re as big as the defenders.”
“The winged demons are there – trust me. Look again . . . you may see their bronze spears.”
“I see only my children.” Elisa took off her brimmed grassweave hat and pulled her red hair back from her face. She touched a fingertip to her cheek, hoping for a tear, but found none. The sun burned on her scalp and she replaced the hat.
Grandfather shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “I think you st
retch the point a little too far.” He crouched forward and rummaged in a canvas bag, coming up with a pair of binoculars.
“Okay – maybe not children.”
“You’re a resource, Elisa, and I’m a creator. I don’t have feelings of guilt.”
“And yet you brought me out here.”
“You’re my granddaughter . . . I was coming here . . . and you asked.” With the binoculars, he examined the sky to the east. “Besides . . . I thought you might learn something.”
Elisa trailed her fingers in the water. The coolness surprised her, yet it seemed fitting for this place of the dead. She had come here looking for emotion, for a connection . . . or at least a reaction. But she was unmoved. Her heart was as cold as the ocean.
The monsters on the sea bed – those flying behemoths that had defended Homeport from the demons’ attack, that had battled in a sky dark with wings and flesh, with blood falling like rain – were a part of her, created from her. The house-sized skull, the ribs like rafters, cells of her cells. What had she expected to feel?
“Grandfather . . . you’re certain none survived?” She dried her fingers on her shorts.
He lowered the glasses. “When the spotters called, we sent out your litter. The demons fled, and no defenders returned to the labyrinth. Now only harvester fish inhabit the nest.”
“What if the demons return?”
“They will return, in time. But we will always have another litter.”
“But not mine.”
“You’ve done your duty. No one will ask you again.”
“I’m curious . . . How does it feel to create life only for it to be destroyed? To create with that very aim? Doesn’t it bother you?”
Grandfather sighed. “It has become a necessity. How else could we hold the demons back? It must be hard for you to understand.”
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