Rifters 4 - Blindsight

by Peter Watts

  *

  We fled like frightened children with brave faces. We left a base camp behind: Jack, still miraculously functional in its vestibule; a tunnel into the haunted mansion; forlorn magnetometers left to die in the faint hope they might not. Crude pyronometers and thermographs, antique radiation-proof devices that measured the world through the flex and stretch of metal tabs and etched their findings on rolls of plastic. Glow-globes and diving bells and guide ropes strung one to another. We left it all behind, and promised to return in thirty-six hours if we lived so long.

  Inside each of us, infinitesimal lacerations were turning our cells to mush. Plasma membranes sprang countless leaks. Overwhelmed repair enzymes clung desperately to shredded genes and barely delayed the inevitable. Anxious to avoid the rush, patches of my intestinal lining began flaking away before the rest of the body had a chance to die.

  By the time we docked with Theseus both Michelle and I were feeling nauseous. (The rest of the Gang, oddly, was not; I had no idea how that was possible.) The others would be presenting the same symptoms within minutes. Without intervention we would all be vomiting our guts out for the following two days. Then the body would pretend to recover; for perhaps a week we would feel no pain and have no future. We would walk and talk and move like any living thing, and perhaps convince ourselves that we were immortal after all.

  Then we would collapse into ourselves, rotted from the inside out. We would bleed from our eyes and mouths and assholes, and if any God was merciful we would die before splitting open like rotten fruit.

  But of course Theseus, our redeemer, would save us from such a fate. We filed from the shuttle into a great balloon that Sarasti had erected to capture our personal effects; we shed our contaminated space suits and clothing and emerged naked into the spine. We passed single-file through the drum, the Flying Dead in formation. Jukka Sarasti—discreetly distant on the turning floor—leapt up in our wake and disappeared aft, to feed our radioactive cast-offs into the decompiler.

  Into the crypt. Our coffins lay open across the rear bulkhead. We sank gratefully and wordlessly into their embrace. Bates coughed blood as the lids came down.

  My bones hummed as the Captain began to shut me off. I went to sleep a dead man. I had only theory and the assurances of fellow machinery that I would ever be born again.

  *

  Keeton, come forth.

  I woke up ravenous. Faint voices drifted forward from the drum. I floated in my pod for a few moments, eyes closed, savoring absences: no pain, no nausea. No terrifying subliminal sense of one's own body sloughing incrementally to mush. Weakness, and hunger; otherwise I felt fine.

  I opened my eyes.

  Something like an arm. Grey and glistening, far too— too attenuate to be human. No hand at its tip. Too many joints, a limb broken in a dozen places. It extended from a body barely visible over the lip of the pod, a suggestion of dark bulk and other limbs in disjoint motion. It hovered motionless before me, as if startled in the midst of some shameful act.

  By the time I had breath enough to cry out, it had whipped back out of sight.

  I erupted from the pod, eyes everywhere. Now they saw nothing: an empty crypt, a naked note-taker. The mirrored bulkhead reflected vacant pods to either side. I called up ConSensus: all systems nominal.

  It didn't reflect, I remembered. The mirror didn't show it.

  I headed aft, heart still pounding. The drum opened around me, Szpindel and the Gang conversing in low tones aft. Szpindel glanced up and waved a trembling hand in greeting.

  "You need to check me out," I called. My voice wasn't nearly so steady as I'd hoped.

  "Admitting you have a problem is the first step," Szpindel called back. "Just don't expect miracles." He turned back to the Gang; James on top, they sat in a diagnostic couch staring at some test pattern shimmering on the rear bulkhead.

  I grabbed the tip of a stairway and pulled myself down. Coriolis pushed me sideways like a flag in the breeze. "I'm either hallucinating or there's something on board."

  "You're hallucinating."

  "I'm serious."

  "So am I. Take a number. Wait your turn."

  He was serious. Once I forced myself to calm down and read the signs, I could see he wasn't even surprised.

  "Guess you're pretty hungry after all that exhausting lying around, eh?" Szpindel waved at the galley. "Eat something. Be with you in a few minutes."

  I forced myself to work up my latest synopsis while I ate, but that only took half a mind; the other still shivered in residual thrall to fight-flight. I tried to distract it by tapping the BioMed feed.

  "It was real," James was saying. "We all saw it."

  No. Couldn't have been.

  Szpindel cleared his throat. "Try this one."

  The feed showed what she saw: a small black triangle on a white background. In the next instant it shattered into a dozen identical copies, and a dozen dozen. The proliferating brood rotated around the center screen, geometric primitives ballroom-dancing in precise formation, each sprouting smaller triangles from its tips, fractalizing, rotating, evolving into an infinite, intricate tilework...

  A sketchpad, I realized. An interactive eyewitness reconstruction, without the verbiage. Susan's own pattern-matching wetware reacted to what she saw— no, there were more of them; no, the orientation's wrong; yes, that's it, but bigger— and Szpindel's machine picked those reactions right out of her head and amended the display in realtime. It was a big step up from that half-assed workaround called language. The easily-impressed might have even called it mind-reading.

  It wasn't, though. It was all just feedback and correlation. It doesn't take a telepath to turn one set of patterns into another. Fortunately.

  "That's it! That's it!" Susan cried.

  The triangles had iterated out of existence. Now the display was full of interlocking asymmetrical pentagrams, a spiderweb of fish scales.

  "Don't tell us that's random noise," she said triumphantly.

  "No," Szpindel said, "It's a Klüver constant."

  "A—"

  "It's a hallucination, Suze."

  "Of course. But something planted it in our head, right? And—"

  "It was in your head all along. It was in your head the day you were born."

  "No."

  "It's an artefact of deep brain structure. Even congenitally blind people see them sometimes."

  "None of us have seen them before. Ever."

  "I believe you. But there's no information there, eh? That wasn't Rorschach talking, it was just—interference. Like everything else."

  "But it was so vivid! Not that flickering corner-of-your-eye stuff we saw everywhere. This was solid. It was realer than real."

  "That's how you can tell it wasn't. Since you don't actually see it, there's no messy eyeball optics to limit resolution."

  "Oh," James said, and then, softly: "Shit."

  "Yeah. Sorry." And then, "Any time you're ready."

  I looked up; Szpindel was waving me over. James rose from her chair, but it was Michelle who gave him a quick disconsolate squeeze and Sascha who grumbled past me on her way to their tent.

  By the time I reached him Szpindel had unfolded the couch into a half-cot. "Lie down."

  I did. "I wasn't talking about back in Rorschach, you know. I meant here. I saw something right now. When I woke up."

  "Raise your left hand," he said. Then: "Just your left, eh?"

  I lowered my right, winced at the pinprick. "That's a bit primitive."

  He eyed the blood-filled cuvette between his thumb and forefinger: a shivering ruby teardrop the size of a fingernail. "Wet sample's still best for some things."

  "Aren't the pods supposed to do everything?"

  Szpindel nodded. "Call it a quality-control test. Keep the ship on its toes." He dropped the sample onto the nearest countertop. The teardrop flattened and burst; the surface drank my blood as if parched. Szpindel smacked his lips. "Elevated cholinesterase inhibitors in the ret. Yum."<
br />
  For all I knew, my blood results actually did taste good to the man. Szpindel didn't just read results; he felt them, smelled and saw and experienced each datum like drops of citrus on the tongue. The whole BioMed subdrum was but a part of the Szpindel prosthesis: an extended body with dozens of different sensory modes, forced to talk to a brain that knew only five.

  No wonder he'd bonded with Michelle. He was almost synesthesiac himself.

  "You spent a bit longer in there than the rest of us," he remarked.

  "That's significant?"

  A jerking shrug. "Maybe your organs got a bit more cooked than ours. Maybe you just got a delicate constitution. Your pod would've caught anything—imminent, so I figure—ah."

  "What?"

  "Some cells along your brainpan going into overdrive. More in your bladder and kidney."

  "Tumors?"

  "What you expect? Rorschach's no rejuve spa."

  "But the pod—"

  Szpindel grimaced; his idea of a reassuring smile. "Repairs ninety-nine point nine percent of the damage, sure. By the time you get to the last zero-point-one, you're into diminishing returns. These're small, commissar. Chances are your own body'll take care of 'em. If not, we know where they live."

  "The ones in my brain. Could they be causing—"

  "Not a chance." He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. "Course, cancer's not all that thing did to us."

  "What I saw. Up in the crypt. It had these multijointed arms from a central mass. Big as a person, maybe."

  Szpindel nodded. "Get used to it."

  "The others are seeing these things?"

  "I doubt it. Everyone has a different take, like—" his twitching face conveyed Dare I say it? "—Rorschach blots."

  "I was expecting hallucinations in the field," I admitted, "but up here?"

  "TMS effects—" Szpindel snapped his fingers— "they're sticky, eh? Neurons get kicked into one state, take a while to come unstuck. You never got a TAT? Well-adjusted boy like you?"

  "Once or twice," I said. "Maybe."

  "Same principle."

  "So I'm going to keep seeing this stuff."

  "Party line is they fade over time. Week or two you're back to normal. But out here, with that thing..." He shrugged. "Too many variables. Not the least of which is, I assume we'll keep going back until Sarasti says otherwise."

  "But they're basically magnetic effects."

  "Probably. Although I'm not betting on anything where that fucker's concerned."

  "Could something else be causing them?" I asked. "Something on this ship?"

  "Like what?'

  "I don't know. Leakage in Theseus' magnetic shielding, maybe."

  "Not normally. Course, we've all got little implanted networks in our heads, eh? And you've got a whole hemisphere of prosthetics up there, who knows what kind of side-effects those might let you in for. Why? Rorschach not a good enough reason for you?"

  I saw them before, I might have said.

  And then Szpindel would say Oh, when? Where?

  And maybe I'd reply When I was spying on your private life, and any chance of noninvasive observation would be flushed down to the atoms.

  "It's probably nothing. I've just been—jumpy lately. Thought I saw something weird in the spinal bundle, back before we landed on Rorschach. Just for a second, you know, and it disappeared as soon as I focused on it."

  "Multijointed arms with a central mass?"

  "God no. Just a flicker, really. If it was anything at all, it was probably just Amanda's rubber ball floating around up there."

  "Probably." Szpindel seemed almost amused. "Couldn't hurt to check for leakage in the shielding, though. Just in case. Not like we need something else making us see things, eh?"

  I shook my head at remembered nightmares. "How are the others?"

  "Gang's fine, if a bit disappointed. Haven't seen the Major." He shrugged. "Maybe she's avoiding me."

  "It hit her pretty hard."

  "No worse than the rest of us, really. She might not even remember it."

  "How—how could she possibly believe she didn't even exist?"

  Szpindel shook his head. "Didn't believe it. Knew it. For a fact."

  "But how—"

  "Charge gauge on your car, right? Sometimes the contacts corrode. Readout freezes on empty, so you think it's empty. What else you supposed to think? Not like you can go in and count the electrons."

  "You're saying the brain's got some kind of existence gauge?"

  "Brain's got all kinds of gauges. You can know you're blind even when you're not; you can know you can see, even when you're blind. And yeah, you can know you don't exist even when you do. It's a long list, commissar. Cotard's, Anton's, Damascus Disease. Just for starters."

  He hadn't said blindsight.

  "What was it like?" I asked.

  "Like?" Although he knew exactly what I meant.

  "Did your arm— move by itself? When it reached for that battery?"

  "Oh. Nah. You're still in control, you just—you get a feeling, is all. A sense of where to reach. One part of the brain playing charades with another, eh?" He gestured at the couch. "Get off. Seen enough of your ugly guts for now. And send up Bates if you can find where she's hiding. Probably back at Fab building a bigger army."

  The misgivings glinted off him like sunlight. "You have a problem with her," I said.

  He started to deny it, then remembered who he was talking to. "Not personally. Just—human node running mechanical infantry. Electronic reflexes slaved to meat reflexes. You tell me where the weak spot is."

  "Down in Rorschach, I'd have to say all the links are pretty weak."

  "Not talking about Rorschach," Szpindel said. "We go there. What stops them from coming here?"

  "Them."

  "Maybe they haven't arrived yet," he admitted. "But when they do, I'm betting we'll be going up against something bigger than anaerobic microbes." When I didn't answer he continued, his voice lowered. "And anyway, Mission Control didn't know shit about Rorschach. They thought they were sending us some place where drones could do all the heavy lifting. But they just hate not being in command, eh? Can't admit the grunts're smarter than the generals. So our defenses get compromised for political appearances—not like that's any kinda news—and I'm no jarhead but it strikes me as real bad strategy."

  I remembered Amanda Bates, midwifing the birth of her troops. I'm more of a safety precaution....

  "Amanda—" I began.

  "Like Mandy fine. Nice mammal. But if we're cruising into a combat situation I don't want my ass covered by some network held back by its weakest link."

  "If you're going to be surrounded by a swarm of killer robots, maybe—"

  "Yeah, people keep saying that. Can't trust the machines. Luddites love to go on about computer malfunctions, and how many accidental wars we might have prevented because a human had the final say. But funny thing, commissar; nobody talks about how many intentional wars got started for the same reason. You're still writing those postcards to posterity?"

  I nodded, and didn't wince inwardly. It was just Szpindel.

  "Well, feel free to stick this conversation in your next one. For all the good it'll do."

  *

  Imagine you are a prisoner of war.

  You've got to admit you saw it coming. You've been crashing tech and seeding biosols for a solid eighteen months; that's a good run by anyone's standards. Realist saboteurs do not, as a rule, enjoy long careers. Everyone gets caught eventually.

  It wasn't always thus. There was a day you might have even hoped for a peaceful retirement. But then they brought the vampires back from the Pleistocene and Great Grieving Ganga did that ever turn the balance of power upside down. Those fuckers are always ten steps ahead. It only makes sense; after all, hunting people is what bloodsuckers evolved to do.

  There's this line from an early pop-dyn textbook, really old, maybe even TwenCen. It's something of a mantra—maybe prayer would be a better word—among t
hose in your profession. Predators run for their dinner, it goes. Prey run for their lives. The moral is supposed to be that on average, the hunted escape the hunters because they're more motivated.

  Maybe that was true when it all just came down to who ran faster. Doesn't seem to hold when the strategy involves tactical foresight and double-reverse mind fucks, though. The vampires win every time.

  And now you're caught, and while it may have been vampires that set the trap, it was regular turncoat baseline humans who pulled the trigger. For six hours now you've been geckoed to the wall of some unnamed unlisted underground detention facility, watching as some of those selfsame humans played games with your boyfriend and co-conspirator. These are not your average games. They involve pliers, and glowing wires, and body parts that were not designed to detach. You wish, by now, that your lover were dead, like the two others in your cell whose parts are scattered about the room. But they're not letting that happen. They're having too much fun.

  That's what it all comes down to. This is not an interrogation; there are less invasive ways to get more reliable answers. These are simply a few more sadistic thugs with Authority, killing time and other things, and you can only cry and squeeze your eyes tight and whimper like an animal even though they haven't laid a hand on you yet. You can only wish they hadn't saved you for last, because you know what that means.

  But suddenly your tormentors stop in mid-game and cock their heads as if listening to some collective inner voice. Presumably it tells them to take you off the wall, bring you into the next room, and sit you down at one of two gel-padded chairs on opposite sides of a smart desk, because this is what they do—far more gently than you'd expect—before retiring. You can also assume that whoever has given these instructions is both powerful and displeased, because all the arrogant sadistic cockiness has drained from their faces in the space of a heartbeat.

  You sit and wait. The table glows with soft, cryptic symbols that would be of no earthly interest to you even if you could understand them, even if they contained the very secret of the vampires themselves. Some small part of you wonders if this latest development might be cause for hope; the rest of you doesn't dare believe it. You hate yourself for caring about your own survival when chunks of your friends and allies are still warm on the other side of the wall.