The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  It would make her a rich woman—a hundred rich women—back in human space. And it would open the universe. She hadn’t committed herself yet, but there was no way she was going to turn down the offer. The chance to see a thousand stars. No, she would not pass it by.

  When she got old, too, they could create another Abigail from their recording, burn her new memories into it, and destroy her old body.

  I’m going to see the stars, she thought. I’m going to live forever. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel elated, wondered at the sudden sense of melancholy that ran through her like the precursor of tears.

  Garble jumped into her lap, offered his belly to be scratched. The spiders had recorded him, too. They had been glad to restore him to his unaltered state when she made the request. She stroked his stomach and buried her face in his fur.

  “Pretty little cat,” she told him. “I thought you were dead.”

  Trojan Horse

  It’s all inside my head,” Elin said wonderingly. It was trite. A chimney swift flew overhead, and she could feel its passage through her mind. A firefly landed on her knee. It pulsed cold fire, then spread its wings and was gone, and that was a part of her too.

  “Please try not to talk too much.” The wetware tech tightened a cinch on the table, adjusted a bone inductor. His red-and-green facepaint loomed over her, receded. “This will go much faster if you cooperate.”

  Elin’s head felt light and airy. It was huge. It contained all of Magritte, from the uppermost terrace down to the trellis farms that circled the inner lake. Even the blue-and-white Earth that hovered just over one rock wall. They were all within her. They were all, she realized, only a model, the picture her mind assembled from sensory input. The exterior universe—the real universe—lay beyond.

  “I feel giddy.”

  “Contrast high.” The tech’s voice was neutral, disinterested. “This is a very different mode of perception from what you’re used to—you’re stoned on the novelty.”

  A catwalk leading into the nearest farm rattled within Elin’s mind as a woman in agricultural blues strode by, gourd-collecting bag swinging from her hip. It was night outside the crater, but biological day within, and the agtechs had activated tiers of arc lights at the cores of the farms. Filtered by greenery, the light was soft and watery.

  “I could live like this forever.”

  “Believe me, you’d get bored.” A rose petal fell on her cheek, and the tech brushed it off. He turned to face the two lawyers standing silently nearby. “Are the legal preliminaries over now?”

  The lawyer in orangeface nodded. The one in purple said, “Can’t her original personality be restored at all?”

  Drawing a briefcase from his pocket, the wetware tech threw up a holographic diagram between himself and the witnesses. The air filled with intricate three-dimensional tracery, red-and-green lines interweaving and intermeshing.

  “We’ve mapped the subject’s current personality.” He reached out to touch several junctions. “You will note that here, here, and here, we have what are laughingly referred to as impossible emotional syllogisms. Any one of these renders the subject incapable of survival.”

  A thin waterfall dropped from the dome condensers to a misty pool at the topmost terrace, a bright razor-slash through reality. It meandered to the edge of the next terrace, and fell again.

  “A straight yes or no answer will suffice.”

  The tech frowned. “In theory, yes. In practical terms it’s hopeless. Remember, her personality was never recorded. The accident almost completely randomized her emotional structure—technically she’s not even human. Given a decade or two of extremely delicate memory probing, we could maybe construct a facsimile. But it would only resemble the original: it could never be the primary Elin Donnelly.”

  Elin could dimly make out the equipment for five more waterfalls, but they were not in operation at the moment. She wondered why.

  The attorney made a rude noise. “Well then, go ahead and do it. I wash my hands of this whole mess.”

  The tech bent over Elin to reposition a bone inductor. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he promised. “Just pretend that you’re at the dentist’s, having your teeth replaced.”

  She ceased to exist.

  ***

  The new Elin Donnelly gawked at everything she passed by-the desk workers in their open-air offices, a blacksnake sunning itself by the path, the stone stairways cut into the terrace walls. Coming off the topmost of these stairs, into a stand of sapling no higher than she, she stumbled and almost fell. Her companion caught her and roughly set her back on her feet.

  “Try to pay attention,” the lawyer said, frowning under her loops of purple facepaint. “We have a lot of detail work to go over.”

  Elin smiled vaguely. They broke out of the saplings into a meadow, and butterflies scattered at their approach. Her gaze went from them to a small cave in the cliffs ahead, then up to the stars, as jumpy and random as their flight.

  “—so you’ll be stuck on the Moon for a full lunation—almost a month—if you want to collect your settlement. I.G. Feuchtwaren willcarry your expenses until then, drawing against their final liability.Got that?”

  And then—suddenly, jarringly—Elin could focus again. She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I—okay.”

  “Good.” The attorney canceled her wetware, yanking the skull plugs and briskly wrapping them around her briefcase. “Then let’s have a drink—it’s been a long day.”

  They had arrived at the cave. “Hey, Hans!” the lawyer shouted. “Give us some service here, will you?”

  A small man with the roguish face of a comic-opera troll popped into the open, work terminal in hand. “One minute,” he said. “I’m on the direct flex time—got to wrap up what I’m working on first.”

  “Okay.” The lawyer dropped to the grass and began toweling her lace. Elin watched, fascinated, as a new pattern of fine red-and-black lines, permanently tattooed into the skin, emerged from under the paint.

  “Hey!” Elin said. “You’re a Jesuit.”

  “You expected IGF to ship you a lawyer from Earth orbit?” She stuck out a hand. “Donna Landis, S.J. I’m the client-overseer for the Star Maker project, but I’m also available for spiritual guidance. Mass is at nine Sunday mornings.”

  Elin leaned back against the cliff. Grapevines rustled under her weight. Already she missed the blissed-out feeling of a few minutes before. “Actually, I’m an agnostic.”

  “You were. Things may have changed.” Landis folded the towel into one pocket, unfolded a mirror from another. “Speaking of which, how do you like your new look?”

  Elin studied her reflection. Blue paint surrounded her eyes, narrowing to a point at the bridge of her nose, swooping down in a long curve to the outside. It was as if she were peering through a large blue moth, or a pair of hawk wings. There was something magical about it, something glamorous. Something very unlike her.

  “I feel like a raccoon,” she said. “This idiot mask.”

  “Best get used to it. You’ll be wearing it a lot.”

  “But what’s the point?” Elin demanded. She was surprised by her own irritation. “So I’ve got a new personality; it’s still me in here. I don’t feel any weird compulsion to run amok with a knife or walk out an airlock without a suit. Nothing to warn the citizenry about, certainly.”

  “Listen,” Landis said. “Right now you’re like a puppy tripping over its own paws because they’re too big for it. You’re a stranger to yourself—you’re going to feel angry when you don’t expect to, get sentimental over surprising things. You can’t control your emotions until you learn what they are. And until then, the rest of us deserve—”

  “What’ll you have?” Hans was back, his forehead smudged black where he had incompletely wiped off his facepaint.

  “A little warning. Oh, I don’t know, Hans. Whatever you have on tap.”

  “That’ll be Chanty. And you?” he asked Elin.

/>   “What’s good?”

  He laughed. “There’s no such thing as a good lunar wine. The air’s too moist. And even if it weren’t, it takes a good century to develop an adequate vineyard. But the Chanty is your basic drinkable glug.”

  “I’ll take that, then.”

  “Good. And I’ll bring a mug for your friend, too.”

  “My friend?” She turned and saw a giant striding through the trees, towering over them, pushing them apart with two enormous hands. For a dizzy instant, she goggled in disbelief, and then the man shrank to human stature as she remembered the size of the saplings.

  He grinned, joined them. “Hi. Remember me?”

  He was a tall man, built like a spacejack, lean and angular. An untidy mass of black curls framed a face that was not quite handsome, but carried an intense freight of will.

  “I’m afraid…”

  “Tory Shostokovich. I reprogrammed you.”

  She studied his face carefully. Those eyes. They were fierce almost to the point of mania, but there was sadness there, too, and—she might be making this up—a hint of pleading, like a little boy who wants something so desperately he dare not ask for it. She could lose herself in analyzing the nuances of those eyes. “Yes,” she said at last, “I see it now—the resemblance.”

  “I’m pleased.” He nodded to the Jesuit. “Father Landis.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “You don’t seem your usual morose self, Shostokovich. Is anything wrong?”

  “No, it’s just a special kind of morning.” He smiled at some private joke, returned his attention to Elin. “I thought I’d drop by and get acquainted with my former patient.” He glanced down at the ground, fleetingly shy, and then his eyes were bright and audacious again.

  How charming, Elin thought. She hoped he wasn’t too shy. And then had to glance away herself, the thought was so unlike her. “So you’re a wetware surgeon,” she said inanely.

  Hans reappeared to distribute mugs of wine, then retreated to the cave’s mouth. He sat down, workboard in lap, and patched in the skull-plugs. His face went stiff as the wetware took hold.

  “Actually,” Tony said, “I very rarely work as a wetsurgeon. An accident like yours is rare, you know—maybe once, twice a year. Mostly I work in wetware development. Currently I’m on the Star Maker project.”

  “I’ve heard that name before. Just what is it, anyway?”

  Tory didn’t answer immediately. He stared down into the lake, a cool breeze from above ruffling his curls. Elin caught her breath. I hardly know this man, she thought wildly. He pointed to the island in the center of the lake, a thin stony finger that was originally the crater’sthrust cone.

  “God lives on that island,” he said.

  Elin laughed. “Think how different human history would be if He’d had a sense of direction!” And then wanted to bite her tongue as she realized that he was not joking.

  “Typical,” Landis said, glowering at Tory. “Only an atheist would call her that.”

  “What do you call her, then?”

  “A victim of technology.” She swigged down a mouthful of wine. “Jeez, that’s vile stuff.”

  “Uh, guys?” Elin said. “I’m not getting much of an answer.”

  Tory rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. “Mea culpa. Well, let megive you a little background. Most people think of wetware as beingsoftware for people. But that’s too simplistic, because with machines, you start out blank—with a clean slate—and with people, there’s some ten million years of mental programming already crammed into their heads.

  “So to date we’ve been working with the natural wetware. Wecounterfeit surface traits—patience, alertness, creativity—and package them like so many boxes of bonemeal. But the human mind isvast and unmapped, and it’s time to move into the interior, to do some basic research.

  “And that’s the Star Maker project. It’s an exploration of the basic substructural programming of the mind. We’ve redefined the overstructure programs into an integrated system we believe will be capable of essence-programming, and in one-to-one congruence with the inherent substructure of the universe.”

  “What jargonistic rot!” Landis gestured at Elin’s stoneware mug. “Drink up. The Star Maker is a piece of experimental theology that IGF dreamed up. As Tory said, it’s basic research into the nature of the mind. The Vatican Synod is providing funding so we can keep an eye on it.”

  “Nipping heresy in the bud,” Tory said sourly.

  “That’s a good part of it. IGF is trying to create a set of wetware that will reshape a human mind into the popular notion of God. Bad theology, but there it is. They want to computer-model the infinite. Anyway, the specs were drawn up, and it was tried out on—what was the name of the test subject?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tory said quickly.

  “Coral something-or-other.”

  Only half-listening by now, Elin unobtrusively studied Tory. He sat, legs wide, staring into the mug of Chanty. There were hard lines on his face, etched by who-knew-what experiences? I don’t believe in love at first sight, Elin thought. Then again, who knew what she might believe in anymore? It was a chilling thought, and she retreated from it.

  “So did this Coral become God?”

  “Patience. Anyway, the volunteer was plugged in, wiped, reprogrammed, and interviewed. Nothing useful.”

  Tory raised a finger in objection. “In one hour we learned more about the structure and composition of the universe than in all of the history of science to date.”

  “It was deranged gibberish.” She tapped Elin’s knee. “We interviewed her, and then canceled the wetware. And what do you think happened?

  “I’ve never been big on rhetorical questions.” She didn’t take her eyes off Tory.

  “She didn’t come down. She was stuck there.”

  “Stuck?”

  Tory plucked a blade of grass, let it fall. “What happened was thatwe had rewired her to absolute consciousness. She was not only aware of all her mental functions, she was in control of them—right down to the involuntary reflexes. Which also put her in charge of her own metaprogrammer.”

  “Metaprograrnmer is just a buzzword for a bundle of functions by which the brain is able to make changes in itself,” Landis threw in.

  “Yeah. What we didn’t take into account, though, was that she’d like being God. When we began deprogramming her, she simply overrode our instructions and reprogrammed herself back up.”

  “The poor woman,” Elin said, in part because she knew it was expected of her. And yet—what a glorious experience, to be God! Something within her thrilled to it. It would almost be worth the price.

  “Which leaves us with a woman who thinks she’s God,” Landis said. “I’m just glad we were able to hush it up. If word got out to some of those religious illiterates back on Earth—”

  “Listen,” Tory said. “I didn’t really come here to talk shop. I wantedto invite my former patient on the grand tour of the Steam Grommet Works.”

  Elin looked at him at him blankly. “Steam…”

  He swept an arm to take in all of Magritte, the green pillars and grey cliffs alike, and there was something proprietary in his gesture.

  Landis eyed him suspiciously. “You two might need a chaperone,” she said. “I think I’ll tag along to keep you out of trouble.”

  Elin smiled sweetly. “Fuck off,” she said.

  ***

  A full growth of ivy covered Tory’s geodesic trellis hut. He led the way in, stooping to touch a keyout by the doorway. “Something classical?”

  “Please.” And as he gently began removing her jumpsuit, the holotape sprang into being, surrounding them with rich reds and cobalt blues that coalesced into stained glass patterns in the air. Elin pulled back a bit and clapped her hands. “It’s Chartres,” she cried, delighted. “The cathedral at Chartres!”

  “Mmmm.” Tory teased her down onto the grass floor.

  The north rose window swelled to fill the hut and slowl
y revolved overhead. It was all angels and doves, kings and prophets, with gold lilies surrounding the central rosette. Deep and powerful, infused with gloomy light, it lap-dissolved into the lancet of Sainte Anne.

  One by one, the hundred and seventy-six windows of Chartres appeared in turn, wheeling about them, slow and stately at first, then more quickly. The holotape panned down the north transept to the choir, to the apse, and then up into the ambulatory. Swiftly then, it cut to the wounded Christ and the Beasts of Revelation set within the dark spaces of the west rose. The outer circle—the instruments of the Passion—closed about them.

  Elin gasped.

  The tape proceeded down the nave, window by window, still brightening, pausing at the Vendôme chapel and moving on. Until finally the oldest window, the Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière, fairly blazed in a frenzy of raw glory. A breeze rattled the ivy, and two leaves fell through the hologram to tap against their skin and slide to the ground.

  The Belle Verrière held for a moment longer then faded again, the light darkening, and the colors ran and were washed away by a noiseless gust of rain.

  Elin let herself melt into the grass, drained and lazy, not caring if she never moved again. Beside her Tory chuckled, playfully tickled her ribs. “Do you love me? Hey? Tell me you love me.”

  “Stop!” She grabbed his arms and bit him in the side—a small nipping bite, more threat than harm—ran a tongue across his left nipple. “Hey, listen, I hit the sack with you a half hour after we met. What do you want?”

  “Want?” He broke her hold, rolled over on top of her, pinioning her wrists above her head. “I want you to know”—and suddenly he was absolutely serious, his eyes unblinking and glittery-hard—“that I love you. Without doubt or qualification. I love you more than words could ever express.”

  “Tory,” she said. “Things like that take time.” The wind had died down. Not a blade of grass stirred.

  “No, they don’t.” It was embarrassing looking into those eyes; she refused to look away. “I feel it. I know it. I love every way, shape, and part of you. I love you beyond time and barrier and possibility. We were meant to be lovers, fated for it, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that could ever keep us apart.” His voice was low and steady. Elin couldn’t tellwhether she was thrilled or scared out of her wits.