Double Vision

by Tricia Sullivan

  When they send your coordinates, Machine Front add a warning:

  OLFACTORY SAMPLES BEING TAKEN BY ROBOT PROBE FOR ANALYSIS HERE. GROUND CREW ALREADY ON FULL FILTRATION. INFORMING WOULD ONLY COMPROMISE MORALE. KEEP CLASSIFIED.

  But it isn't the ground crew you're worried about: it's Gossamer. You've never lost contact with her involuntarily, until now. The Grid has somehow overridden Machine Front's neural controls of the indigene, and you're afraid it has something to do with this new smell.

  Serge's team will be well on their way to Gonzalez's coordinates by now. You scan the lattice of fibers that rises, tree-like, from the well system. The Research guys don't know precisely what lies under the surface - the ‘roots,’ as it were. You do know that the Grid's structure follows a familiar fractal pattern as it rises: branching, becoming thinner with height, carving space into intricate, lacy shapes more subtly than Earthly trees do. The solid ‘boles' that rise from the Grid's base eventually become filaments, then wisps, then nothing more substantial than odors on the wind.

  But the odors say it all. Machine Front has never figured out a way to understand the significance of the changing scent patterns that penetrate the Grid. The way you understand it is that all the insect guys got together and cobbled out a rough vocabulary and syntax for the scent language, only to find out there is a whole ‘nother level to the thing: the Grid also exudes psychotropes. Machine Front routinely samples the air, as its quality can be a predictor of what the golems will do next. Some of the odors stimulate the nervous system in specific ways, affecting golem and human alike while leaving indigenes like Gossamer - and Machine Front - unmoved.

  Meaning that delusions, hallucinations and assorted phobias/compulsions are a matter of course for ground staff in the Grid. Is it any wonder that the First Wave guys wanted to call it The Headf@*k?

  Yeah, you figure you've got a pretty good deal with Gossamer. Not that you don't have problems of your own to contend with. For example:

  You are so busy looking down at the Grid that you don't notice the grave balloon until Gossamer swerves to avoid it. Your gaze, focused on deciphering the weird mathematics of the Grid, suddenly goes arcing away and you see the smoky curve of the horizon punctuated by red lights like the EQ readings on a good stereo. You see the lines and a section of the chute that holds up the grave balloon you are about to collide with. Then Gossamer corrects course and you're able to steady your vision.

  It's an old grave balloon: you know this immediately because the corpse is male. The bauble floats in the sky with its sealed cargo, usually mauled or at least bloody but this time seemingly just locked in a pallid sleep. He reminds you a little of David Lee Roth but with short hair. You feel sad for him and a little smug, that this perfect body could be dead while yours remains, alive and flabby and barely used, mouth tasting of orchids, on Earth. You avoid looking at the identifier. Once you did and saw the guy's name and social security number: Leroy Jones 131-79-4247. You went through hell trying to imagine what his family would go through when they heard the news. The fast uplinks are reserved for your unit, espionage having highest priority. News of the dead comes much later - if ever. You felt awful, knowing and not being able to tell. So now you make sure you don't look at identities, but you're going to remember this guy's handsome face forever. You remember them all. You can't help it.

  You can hear Serge's team below. They may look like little ants, but they're loud. Serge's voice twangs along the subtle auditory pickups of Gossamer's body, and you dive towards her.

  ‘How many times I gotta tell you, Klaski? Huh? You wanna learn this the hard way?’

  Serge is prowling around the camp dragging a Hefty bag with handle ties, collecting people's Coke cans and Kit-Kat wrappers. Looks like she caught Klaski and Hendricks making friendship bracelets out of spearmint Wrigley's wrappers.

  ‘We wouldn't of dropped them, Captain, ma'am, honest,’ says Klaski. She's eighteen but looks about twelve: small, blonde, unfinished, with a protruding lower lip that pouts all too readily.

  ‘This shit's against regulations and you know it,’ Serge says. ‘You can sit watch tonight, and you -’ she turned to Hendricks, ’ - the next time we rendezvous with the machines, you can defog the trailbreak headlights.’

  Now that is a disgusting task. The trailbreaks kill the most golems, and messily so. The soldiers stay in the caravanserai where there are no windows. They belt out songs so they won't hear the golems screaming.There is no actual need to clean the blades of the trailbreaks and the treads of the caravanserai, because the gore is illusory and has no effect on the machines.

  Even so, the hulls of the machines are painted and textured so that specks of blood and gristle can pass unnoticed. The girls will cringe and look away if they see more obvious evidence of death, like an eyeball stuck to a hatch cover or a bone splinter protruding from a gun turret, and that stuff's terrible for morale. So Serge's proposed disciplinary measure goes against everything MF are trying to achieve. It's sheer pigheadedness.

  Hendricks's jaw drops. She's sitting Indian-style on the ground, her long back curling like an apostrophe. Her dark skin is so sweaty that it seems to shimmer in the flickering light.

  ‘But ma'am, isn't there a cleaning function on the trailbreak lights?’

  ‘Yes, there is, honey, but it's gonna be busted. You got something to say about it?’

  Hendricks shakes her head, not looking at Serge. Nevertheless Serge sniffs something she doesn't like.

  ‘You think you got it hard, Corporal Hendricks?’

  ‘No, ma'am, I don't.’

  ‘You think I'm some kind of racist?’

  ‘I never said nothing, ma'am.’

  ‘Because your girlfriend here has a worse job than you, Corporal.’ ‘Yes, ma'am.’

  Serge turns to the little blonde. 'This is your first time outside X, right, Klaski? You understand what it means to sit watch?’

  ‘Look out for the enemy, ma'am?’

  Serge snorts. ‘Hendricks, you want to enlighten Corporal Klaski?’

  Hendricks clears her throat. ’You got to . . .you got to sit out in the Grid while everybody's sleeping, and watch for golems.’

  ‘Oh-h,’said Klaski uncertainly.

  It doesn't sound that bad, does it?

  ‘But you're not in the enclosure, so you have to breathe whatever the Grid throws at you, and the suit filters can't clean up everything. At night it usually gives you stuff to make you hallucinate. You don't know what you're looking for anymore. And if a golem gets through to the enclosure, or steals equipment, it's your fault.’

  Klaski's frowning at her half-constructed friendship bracelet.

  ‘If the Grid is so powerful, why doesn't it just gas us to death?’ she said.

  Everyone's ears perked up. Good question. ‘Because,’ said Serge, ’the Grid's like a cat. It likes to play with its prey.’

  She makes as if to go, and then flings over her shoulder, 'And Klaski, when you're done crying you better pick up your Kleenex, the Grid loves them name-brand tissues.’

  If Klaski hadn't already been about to cry, she's crying now. Serge doesn't care. ’These kids aren't hard enough,’ she tells Lewis as Lewis brings Gossamer to the Grid for fuel. ’They haven't seen any real shit yet. Being nice don't do them no favors, that's for sure.’

  Lewis glances up and sees you. She smiles. ’Whey-hey. Look who's here.’

  ‘It's about time,’ snaps Serge. ’Juice it, Lewis.’

  Lewis attaches electrodes to Gossamer to recharge her batteries while the indigene feeds. Gossamer fixes her mouthparts to a nub on a branch of the Grid and begins drawing nectar, oblivious to Lewis's work. You can feel her body prickle as the Grid loads her with chemical energy.

  Lewis glances after Serge and murmurs, 'Next shift's gonna be a motherf@*ker.’ She pulls out a copy of Redbook from her thigh pouch as she activates the charge. When the juice hits Gossamer, you feel it as a blast of many-layered sound, not unlike aForeigner record
. Distantly, on Earth, you are conscious that your nose begins to run.

  You remember the last time you had to spy for Serge on a recovery mission. It was only her and Lewis then, and she abused the pants off Lewis, taking out her every anxiety on the tech. In the end they found the guy's body suspended in the well, dragged it out, and torched it with some special incendiaries Serge always carried. Then, with Gossamer's help, Serge hunted down five golems that had sprung from the corpse and killed them, too. By the time it was all done Lewis looked five years older and you were eight pounds heavier back on Earth.

  This time Lewis is playing it cool. She hasn't bitten her nails down yet or broken out in hives; she just checks over Gossamer while Serge looks at your recordings and then addresses the group.

  ‘Now, Gossamer has sighted Gonzalez in this area,’ she tells her guys, pacing from one end of a Grid-branch to the other as she speaks. She steadies herself by occasionally grabbing a vinelike side shoot like a subway straphanger. She's at ease in the webbing; the others are not. They huddle on the lumpy foundation beside a patch of thin well, looking intimidated. Serge says, ’Her physical condition would appear to be good, but we don't know about her state of mind. My guess is, she's snapped by now. This is why I'm so strict with you puppies. I don't want to waste precious time hunting after your ass to bring you back to X so you can get drugged up and shipped home. And I don't want to see you get killed and then I get to deal with your golems. I need you guys alive. Comprende?’

  ‘Yes, ma'am.' They all say it, but Klaski says it with rote church-lips.

  ‘Klaski, you are a big risk to me right now. You want to go back and sit in the truck? Because we can arrange that.’

  ‘No, ma'am!’ Klaski looks offended, as if she can't imagine why Serge is picking on her.

  ‘You gonna insure you aren't a liability to this unit?’

  ‘Yes, ma'am. I will insure it.’ But her tone doesn't satisfy Serge.

  Serge waits until Klaski looks at her. She superglues her gaze to Klaski's for a good few seconds. Then, apparently mollified by the submission in Klaski's milk-pale eyes, she resumes pacing and giving orders.

  ‘The fact that Dr. G's kept her helmet on this long is a good sign. Use your Swatch to maintain your fix on it. Don't be surprised if the signal jumps around, though. The Grid plays games with stuff like this. If in doubt about which way to go, check with Machine Front. Or me. If you spot Gonzalez, what do you do, Hendricks?’

  ‘Tell Machine Front immediately.’

  ‘That's right. Do not take action on your own. If necessary, run away from Gonzalez until you have instructions. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, ma'am.’

  ‘I don't want any heroes. And don't let me hear you whining that Dante makes all the decisions. That's what he's there for. To have the information, and to use it to save your butt. I'm not interested in independent thought at this juncture.’

  Independent thought. You find yourself wondering about that while Gossamer finishes recharging and the guys yawn and down their rations and Klaski says a bunch of hailmarys under her breath. Is independent thought really possible in the Grid, where every breath you take, every move you make is machine-monitored, machine-directed?

  ‘Ma'am?’ whispers Lewis to Serge. ’What about the Max? Are we looking for that, too?’

  Serge shrugs. ’We are the only unit capable of moving off-road, so I guess we got some kind of shot at finding it if we get close enough to the mines. But that's not our primary objective. Our objective is to get Gonzalez out of here and find out what went down at the mines. She gave the distress call but didn't self-immolate’ - and she really pronounces it that way, with the emphasis on the first syllable - ‘and if we can get her alive, then I'm a happy groundhog day because the Front has to get to the bottom of the event up there. If in the process of getting Dr.G we can find out what's going on up in N-Ridge, or locate the missing artillery, then that's a added bonus. However, I am fully intending to leave the big stuff up to the Big Guys, and that means our convoy. They're gonna be a few days behind us most of the time and they can deal with whatever we might find in the way of hardware. We stay mobile and stay alive. That's our job.’

  The others are eavesdropping. Serge raises her voice to address them all.

  ‘Any ideas you guys had about going home and leaving this one to Machine Front, you can forget about them. This is our last mission before the Third Wave arrives, and we are gonna make it a good one. And I don't mean that like just for show. We blow this task and the whole easterbunny will have been for nothing. If we give up control now and let the golems get to X, then theThird Wave will be landing in the middle of the enemy camp and on that basis they might as well not even come.’

  After she says that, it's not really a party atmosphere in the camp.

  There are no days or nights here; not as such. You've never actually seen the sun. There are only periods of light and darkness that come with no regularity, so MF has scheduled sleep cycles, and Serge's guys are getting ready to start one. It's tempting to drop the nex, go get an RC and some Doritos in the real world, and come back; but you have no way of knowing how much time will pass if you do. Time in the Grid. Yarks, it's enough to drive you crazy. Once you pulled an all-nighter, glued to the action, only to finally come off the nex to grab a few hours'sleep in the Dataplex reception couch when nothing seemed to be happening. When you went back, a month had passed and nobody even remembered the outcome of the mission. Other times, a sleep cycle in the Grid has lasted you weeks back home. You kept puttering through your routine, checking in with Gossamer every day to find that no time at all had passed, so you'd go home again. There's just never been any way of predicting it.

  They finish their rations and shove the packaging into belt-mounted recycling units the size and shape of flashlights. Serge has erected a temporary enclosure, which houses the equipment they've been carrying. She sits in there, oblivous beneath headphones, brooding over the latest from MF, while her guys wind down for the night.

  ‘She takes herself way too seriously,’ says Klaski to Hendricks as Hendricks starts brushing her teeth with a battery-powered Snoopy. Klaski's face twisted, trying to imitate Serge's accent. ‘‘It'll be Milwaukee in a beer keg for y‘all if you don't pick up them goddamn wrappers.’’

  ‘Shh!' bubbles Hendricks through a mouthful of Aquafresh.

  ‘She can't hear.’Klaski rolls her eyes.

  ‘No, the Gossamer,’ hisses Hendricks, jerking her head in your direction. ’It might be recording.’

  You're not recording.

  ‘It's not recording,’ says Lewis mildly, flipping to Top 10 Tips for Better Nails.

  Klaski goes on, ’I bet she's a lesbo. I bet she's just frustrated because she wants you, Hendricks.’

  ‘She's not,’ says Hendricks seriously. ’You can say a lot of things about the Captain but she ain't no dyke.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Lewis asks, no longer pretending not to be interested.

  ‘Because I know, that's all,’ answers Hendricks in a low voice, not looking at the others.

  Klaski's like, ‘How do you know? Come on. Give!’

  ‘Look, it's really private. I can't tell you.’

  ‘Serge has a private life? Oh come on, just give us a hint.’

  ‘I can't. I told you, it's confidential. Professional code of ethics. I can't talk about it.’

  ‘Aha!’ Klaski crows, slapping her knee. ’She's actually a cyborg. I saw it on The Bionic Woman. Except Serge doesn't look like a stewardess.’

  ‘Maybe she's really a man,’ says Lewis with a chortle, rolling her eyes, and Klaski says, ’Ewww! Then again . . .hey,you used to work at the clinic at X, didn't you, Hendricks? That's why you can't tell us.’

  ‘She's a woman, OK? Now drop it.’

  ‘Then it must've been VD. Or birth control?’

  ‘Who needs birth control here?’ says Lewis, a faint note of derision in her voice. ’There's like two and a half men on the e
ntire planet.’

  ‘I know, doesn't it suck?’ says Klaski.

  Serge appears from around the far side of the enclosure and looks at them significantly.

  Lewis stands up. ’Let's just get some sleep, how about.’

  They don't have tents or vehicles. They have colored lamps like headlights that attach to the Grid with what looks and sounds like velcro. Each guy stands under her light like they're taking a shower, and it beams down on her, then solidifies like shrink-wrap. By the time it's all finished, the guys look like helpless little packages, action figures in factory molds.The ‘light’ builds up until each guy is a waxy lump, not particuarly human to look at.

  Except Klaski, who sits watch, alone.

  ‘It sounds like Rice Krispies,’ she says of the Grid. And her hair does stand on end.

  She stays awake for two hours, answering the alert-noises that her Swatch gives off to prevent her from falling asleep. You wish there was a way you could read a book or something. There's nothing to do but look at the Grid doing its snake-dance, charming you with its endless shifts and slithers. Following its motion is like following a weird train of thought, one that never quite lets you remember where you've come from, so that you always have a subtle sense of having just missed some kind of possible meaning.

  Whatever drugs the Grid uses to play spin-the-bottle with the heads of the human colonists, they can't affect Gossamer. Therefore, it's not a chemical state, this place you find yourself. It's a mental Grid-state, a result of hanging out inside this ontological Juicemaster. You're slipping into a place beyond words. You're losing awareness of even your own breath. You melt into a nasty hypnosis that's like a bass line: it carries you on its alien heart beat.

  Still, in spite of all this, you're more with it than Klaski, who stopped trembling forty minutes ago and has been in REM for eleven minutes plus even though her eyes are still half-open.

  Therefore you see them before she does.

  They creep out of the well so big-eyed that they remind you of insects.They also move quickly, as if they live according to a different timescale. But their motor acts are sketchy, cartoonish: they lack precision. They're dressed in maladapted scraps of larger people's clothes: trophies, presumably. They're all female.