Kalifornia

by Marc Laidlaw

  He was afraid to try, for fear of finding himself paralyzed. His limbs were under control now—his control. He pushed himself to a sitting position. The High Priestess extended a firm, horny hand to help him to his feet.

  Kali lay in a sprawl of fabric and machinery, her little head thrown back, mouth and eyes slightly open, like any other child who has fallen asleep on her feet. He backed away from her, afraid she would wake and take control of him again. He had never known such a horrible sensation. In a life on the wires, he had felt almost every sensation it was possible to feel through polynerves, but never anything like that lack of self-control. Normally livewire sensations caused no movement of the limbs; they were isolated from one’s motor activities by a current that inhibited medullary reticular formation neurons to suppress muscle signals.*As in REM sleep, you dreamed of running, but your legs never moved. But Kali had made him move. She had dreamed him into doing whatever she wanted, while he was awake and struggling for control.

  “She’ll sleep for a while,” the High Priestess said. “In the meantime, before she gets up, put this on. It interrupts her control of your wires.”

  She gave him a soft plastic object, contoured to fit behind one ear, and helped him fit it into place.

  “Shouldn’t you pull her out of that thing?” he asked, getting to his feet.

  The woman in black, apparently unruffled by Kali’s takeover, nodded and bent over the robot. She drew apart the robes, unsnapped a panel in the chest, opened the metal ribcage on silent hinges. Kali lay cradled within, her tiny arms and legs fit snug inside motor-amp devices, a rubber socket patched to her groin. As the High Priestess pulled out the jacks, Sandy gasped and bent closer.

  “She—what is that?”

  “Peripheral control cable.”

  He sighed. “I thought for a minute that ‘she’ was a ‘he.’ ”

  “A common mistake. You never saw her before, then? Not even in the design stage?”

  He shook his head. “No, my father never—”

  Sandy broke off, staring sideways at the High Priestess. She lifted Kali out of the robot and laid her down in the cradle, covering her with a black blanket.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  She chuckled, nodding. “Men are not allowed to gaze upon the Daughters of Kali. At least, that’s the law. But I wrote the law, so what the hell.”

  She lifted her veil. In the dim room, it took him a moment to be sure of what he saw, though he had already begun to suspect as much.

  Her face was pale, worn, but full of strength and character. It reminded him of Poppy, though sharpened and tempered by experience to an inner hardness that Poppy lacked, and never would have wanted. It wasn’t Poppy’s face, of course.

  It was his mother’s.

  He put out a hand, not quite daring to touch her.

  “Hello, Santiago.” She caught his hand and pressed it to her cheek. It was superficially a tender gesture, but her dark eyes remained cold and dry. This was not a role she felt comfortable with. “I never expected to see you again.”

  ***

  There was one rerun that Sandy never relived, though the master was an infinite loop forever playing in the back of his mind.

  When he was seventeen . . .

  With the Figueroa show at the peak of its popularity, the scenarists had gone scraping the bottom of the dramatic barrel for situations, mining myth and legend and pulp magazines. There was no setting or circumstance they wouldn’t consider.

  The family had dealt with almost every issue a family could face and still remain popular. Birth. Incest. Celibacy. Drugs. Asceticism. Schizophrenia. Holism. Failure. Success. Crime. Punishment. War. Peace. Gluttony. Bulimia. Basic human nature was ransacked daily for sitcom possibilities. Alfredo and Marjorie had decided to create the little Calafia to provide a few new situations; but the technology was still uncertain, an R&D dream. That was something for the future. While the family’s creative consultants brainstormed, the Figueroas decided to take a vacation.

  They enjoyed improv. Actually, it was what they did best. No matter how elaborately contrived the scenarios, they tried to avoid scripts, knowing that the best situations developed with the fluidity of reality and couldn’t be forced or faked. Even so, they rarely invented a day from scratch, improvising everything from breakfast to dessert. Now they had the chance to create an entire month’s adventure.

  Marjorie suggested the moon.

  Mars was more scenic, but it took a week to get there; the moon was a short hop away. Holo-brochures touted its world-class hotels, cosmopolitan population, great ethnic food, duty-free shopping, and low-grav recreation. It was all hype.

  From the moment they landed, Sandy’s disappointment knew no bounds—unlike the lunar living space. It was like a giant hamster warren, a habimall without exit doors. They could have been almost anywhere on Earth; even the reduced gravity, which was supposed to keep husbands from tiring while wives shopped, only succeeded in making everyone constipated. There was no hint of otherworldliness. The potentially awesome views from their hotel were spoiled by the sprawl of tektite-processing plants and Bova-Burger restaurants that surrounded the moonmall. Within three days, they exhausted the mall’s possibilities. Sandy felt like a prisoner inside a vast J. C. Sears, a waking nightmare rendered even more awful by the unshakable conviction that at any moment he might float away.

  Marjorie suggested a moonwalk. She hired a guide. Inside a day they were all dressed up in vacuum suits, riding out of town on an open-vac stumbler, an off-road vehicle named for its awkward manner of shifting between fat tires and hydraulic legs. It took hours to get into wilderness; man had been on the moon for nearly eighty years, after all—plenty of time to mess it up. What little “virgin” lunar surface remained was strictly in the form of limited preserves.

  Once the industrial tracts fell behind, nothing marred the scenery except the treadmarks of lunebuggies, which scarred every slope and eroded every once-sharp crest in sight. No rain would ever fall to soften those tracks, no wind would ever blur them; they were etched forever in the surface of the moon, along with the usual graffiti, unless some tidy meteor might happen along and wipe them out.

  Finally the Figueroas dismounted, entering a mare that could legally be traversed only on foot. At last, Sandy thought, they had found some peace and isolation, beyond the crowded malls and factories.

  Still, it was a busy weekend. Small cars were dropping all around them, and other, more practiced campers—moon residents anticipating the rush—had already grabbed the best spots. Wherever they went, someone had gotten there ahead of them. And so they pressed on, Ferdinand and Miranda bounding ahead, Alfredo and Marjorie strolling close together. Neither Poppy nor Sandy could pretend much enthusiasm. Sandy kept thinking that the moon looked better from earth, and the earth did too. He tried to appreciate the rare view of his home among the stars, but adsats for soft drinks and sexual aids kept eclipsing North America. He always remembered a board that floated past, advertising the premiere of a local epic: FRIDAY NOON MEANS FEAR FOR LUNA!

  They finally made camp in the hollow of Ubehebe III, a tiny crater that provided at least the illusion of lunar wilderness, if one discounted the litter cluttered at the bottom. Sandy went to sleep wishing they had stayed at home.

  He woke to the sound of screaming.

  It wasn’t a sound in the usual sense. It carried only through the speakers in his helmet, and through his polynerves.

  Disoriented at first, thinking it merely another complication in his insecure dreams, he didn’t rise immediately. He found himself moving with another body, looking through other eyes, feeling thunder all around and through him. He started up with a shock, but this was no dream. He had tapped into his mother’s wires and was feeling what she felt.

  Marjorie huddled in a dark, narrow place, a thin wedge of stars above her. The whole moon seemed to be shaking. She put out her hands and touched rock on both sides. A cloud of black blotted out the stars, and a cr
ushing weight closed down on her—squeezing Sandy out of her body, sending him bounding up the side of the crater, screaming.

  His father reached the top of the bowl ahead of him, shouting for his wife. The guide meanwhile leaped aboard the little flying wedge that carried their luggage and rocketed out of the crater to a nearby scarp of steep lunar rock. Rocks were still sliding down when Sandy first sighted the place.

  Avalanche.

  Like one in a dream, a floating nightmare, he tried to run but his panic pushed him too hard. He fell, tumbled in dust, came up screaming. His speakers carried sounds of wailing, the cries of his brother and sisters, Alfredo’s shouting—but nothing from his mother. Marjorie’s wires were dead. Cut off.

  Afterward, they guessed she had gone for a solitary walk, sneaking past the guide, who’d warned them never to travel alone. She’d been deep in a narrow rock defile when some tremor—perhaps of her own making—had set off the rock-slide that buried her. There was never the slightest hope of recovering the body. They planted a marker and held a funeral in that spot. The last episode of the Figueroa show was broadcast live from the foot of that talus slope, relayed to earth.

  The Figueroas had faced everything they could face as a broadcast family. The death of pets and relatives.

  But this death destroyed them—as an entertainment commodity, as a public institution, as a family.

  Sandy still remembered feeling her die. He had never doubted that she lay buried beneath those rocks. He had been there, inside of her, in her wires, when it happened. He had tried to take comfort in the fact that her death was instantaneous, probably painless, though that was no real comfort at all.

  He had felt all kinds of doubt in the last three years. Doubt of himself, doubt of humanity, doubt of the worth of the universe.

  But he had never doubted his mother’s death.

  Now there was no doubt that she lived.

  ***

  “It was a special effect,” she said. “When we set off the avalanche, I was already miles away.”

  “We?”

  “I had help. I couldn’t have done that myself.”

  “Who?”

  She blushed. “Your father was unfaithful to me, Sandy. He’d had a mistress—that Seer slut, you know—for years before I found anyone who . . . well . . . understood me.”

  “But why? Why did you want us to think you were dead?”

  “I had my reasons. I needed secrecy to continue my real work. Alf never dared to dream as I did. To him, Kali would be only a granddaughter. He couldn’t—wouldn’t see the possibilities. He was dragging me down, and using all of you to do it.”

  Sandy shook his head. He was numb. He felt as if he were still controlled by something outside of himself, as if even now Kali had some power over him. He looked over at the baby. Asleep, she looked purely angelic.

  “Amazing, isn’t she?” said Marjorie Figueroa. “A marvel of programming. Growing fast, too.”

  “You . . . you did it for her sake? You were planning back then to kidnap her?”

  “Santiago, there’s too much to explain. And I’m not going to tell it to you anyway. You shouldn’t be involved in this.”

  He wondered that he felt no urge to embrace her, no need to weep or rejoice. Instead he found a coldness in his heart, matching the coldness he knew must be in hers. This was his inheritance.

  “I’m already involved,” he said. “We’re all in it. This was cruelest to Poppy. She tried to kill herself because of it. No tricks that time, no false broadcasts—she almost died. She may never recover from that.”

  Marjorie’s head fell forward. “I heard about Poppy. I’m sorry. I tried to let her know that the baby was all right. I was trying to warn her away from that man, Clarence Starko. She should never have trusted him. He was the one who betrayed her.”

  “Clarry?”

  “I bought him off myself. I used him to arrange the kidnapping.”

  “And—and Poppy knew?”

  “I tried to tell her. I thought it would help if she knew something of the truth—though not all. Not nearly this much. How did you find me?”

  “With Clarry’s help. We tracked you from the original recording of the station wagon.”

  She looked puzzled. “That image should have been altered. I was told it had been.”

  “My God, who’s working with you? That tape was changed when the police had it.”

  She turned away from him. “You shouldn’t be here. Who else knows about this?”

  He shrugged, knowing that he shouldn’t tell her.

  “You’re not doing something foolish like broadcasting live, are you?”

  “Only to Clarry,” he said. “Not even Dad knows I’m here.”

  “Good. Because it’s dangerous to be here. If anyone knew you’d found me, there would be trouble. I don’t think I could protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  She looked back at the sleeping baby, then took Sandy by the arm. “Come with me. I don’t know what she hears. Her wires never sleep, you see. She’s constantly picking up things. You’d better pretend she’s still controlling you.”

  They went into the corridor, surprising several Daughters who were watching the door. Sandy tried making his voice squeaky and small again, in imitation of Kali.

  “Get away from there!” he said. “I see everything you do.”

  They scurried away. His mother, veiled and playing High Priestess again, led him through a large room with a stage at one end and row upon row of seats. A few Daughters sat frozen in their seats, watching mother and son pass. She took him up a narrow flight of stairs and into a tiny room with a window at one end. A candle in a glass jar sat flickering on the ledge. Sandy peered through the window and looked down on the huge chamber through which they had just passed.

  “What is this place?” he asked. “An old church?”

  “It was a movie theater. You wouldn’t remember those. Here, it’s time for the midnight show.”

  She flipped a switch on a black metal box, and a flood of light poured through the window. The far wall of the temple grew startlingly bright.

  “Electricity is strictly forbidden in the temple; the Daughters think this light is generated by the power of Kali’s spirit. Actually we have a hidden power line coming into the building. I need it to run the computer I’m using to program Kali. She has an incredible mind. Her human brain is merged with something of the machine. It’s part polymatter, like the nerves. She’s an amazing creature. The Daughters don’t yet realize how amazing. They’re easily impressed.”

  She stepped into the path of the light and began to make flickering gestures with her hands. Enormous shadows danced across the white screen, cowing the worshipers. Marjorie selected several bizarre, intricate figures cut from paper and mounted on thin sticks; with these she enacted a puppet show that was projected into the temple. As the shadows danced, she chuckled, but Sandy took little amusement from the performance. Finally, as if disgusted with herself, she shut off the light and leaned heavily against the projector stand, shaking her head.

  “My poor Daughters,” she said. “They’re tragic cases, most of them. Brutalized as children, emotionally retarded . . . I give them shelter and kindness and something to believe in. I set up what I thought would be a suitable environment for Kali, you see. A goddess needs worshipers.”

  “Do you worship her?” he said.

  She gave him a look of weary irony. “You think I should say no, but don’t all grandmothers idolize their grandchildren? It’s more than that, in my case. Kali is my life now. She is worthy of worship—or soon will be.”

  “Worship? She’s just a baby.”

  “Just a baby? I’m afraid not. She’s a potent tool. She has the body of a child, yes, but she has the powers of a goddess and the heart of a network executive.”

  “The nets . . . are they behind this?”

  “You already know too much, Santiago. Believe me, everything you learn puts you in gr
eater danger.”

  He nodded, thinking he was beginning to understand. “She can control people, so she’s one step ahead of the usual wire technology. She’ll grow up believing she’s a goddess, that she deserves her power by divine right.”

  “She does deserve it!”

  “But she’s a baby.”

  “She doesn’t think of herself that way. In many respects, her mind already surpasses those of most adults.”

  “Does that give her the right to control them? I can’t believe this was your idea. Did you come up with it, or did the nets approach you? Did they decide you were the best one to bring it off? They wouldn’t dare approach Father with it, would they? Only you were ruthless enough to donate—sacrifice—your own flesh and blood for this. . . .”

  She straightened and pulled the veil back over her face.

  “I could throw you to the Daughters,” she said. “They would tear you to pieces if I asked them.”

  “Go ahead. You already tore me up once, mother. On the moon. I wish you had died then. That was easier to swallow than this whole scheme.”

  “You never should have known about it,” she said. “This knowledge was not meant for children.”

  “I would have learned eventually, wouldn’t I? When Kali appeared? When she came to control us? How is that supposed to happen? Will she come creeping into our dreams, taking over gradually?”

  Marjorie didn’t answer. She seemed to be shaking, perhaps with anger. But Sandy’s fury was at least the equal of her own. He started toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “I’m leaving.”

  He stalked out of the little room and down the stairs, pushing his way through the Daughters as he made his way back to the room where Kali slept. Behind him he heard his mother screaming: “Stop him! Stop him!”

  They tried to block his way, but he made the baby voice again and they cleared out. Opening the door to the nursery, he saw the baby lying in her cradle. As he picked her up, her eyes flickered open.