Halo

by Tom Maddox

  wrong with him? "No," Gonzales said. Then he jumped up and

  shouted, "No!"

  Gonzales walked quickly away from the Plaza, now certain that

  it was unsafe for him, though he couldn't have said why. As he

  walked, the darkness grew deeper, and he tried with all the

  courage he had to put aside the constant sense of him and the

  city, falling, falling

  The Ring Highway shrank in width as he passed into an

  agricultural section. He knew that terraced gardens climbed away

  to both sides, fields of corn and wheat, but he couldn't see them,

  because the fog was even thicker here than in the suburban

  district he had passed through. Dim lights shined from a cottage

  block just off the highway. A voice called and was answered, both

  call and response unintelligible.

  Near Spoke 4, whose lifts made ghostly trails of light as

  they moved up and down the face of the shaft, trees grew just off

  the highway. The road gave off intermittent flashes beneath his

  feet, as though iron shoes struck a metaled surface. The fog

  acquired faces: somber, eyeless masks turning in slow motion so

  that their blank gazes followed him along.

  "Oh, Christ," Gonzales said. He stopped and wrapped his arms

  around his chest. A fog-borne shape inched closer to him; red

  flame burned behind its empty eye sockets. He ran into the woods.

  This was not dense forest, and in sunshine he would have been

  able to run through here without difficulty. Now, among the inky

  pools of almost total darkness and the gray and silver shadows, he

  came up against a small, wiry sapling that caught him and hurled

  him back.

  The ground began to grow soggy beneath his feet, and soon he

  pushed through reeds and rushes, and his feet slipped on muddy

  patches and into small, wet holes; then he was up to his ankles in

  water, aware for the first time of a rich smell of decomposition,

  decay

  He turned back, trying to find dry ground, and soon his feet

  thumped against the hard-packed soil of a path. Looking down, he

  could see the path as a glowing gray, outlined in red. He ran

  along it until he heard the sound of rushing water.

  He came to a series of steps alongside a falls, where the

  River cascaded onto rocks, then quickly spread out into pond and

  marsh. The waters were alive with light, and he ran up and down

  the steps, following streams of energy that burst forth in red and

  yellow and purple and green and whitecolors that shifted in hue

  and intensity, grew lighter and darker, intertwined with one

  another

  "This grows!" he shouted, feeling the waters' energy rise and

  fall, seeing it spread to where plants could feed on it, animals

  could drink it. The fog glowed with an opalescence from high

  above.

  He followed the steps down to where the river's noise

  quieted, and its waters flooded the plain. He turned onto a path

  that led into the woods, and he came to a small clearing where the

  faint ambient light gleamed on fallen logs. Mushrooms seemed to

  be everywhere in this small space, covering dead wood and

  spreading in profusion over the ground.

  He got on his knees to look at the mushrooms. They were

  alive with veinlike arabesques in red, ghosts of electricity

  across the spongy flesh. He picked them up, kind by kind,

  inhaling deeply, and the odor he had smelled earlier came to him

  again, a composty mix rich with the odors of transformation.

  Gonzales shivered with something like discovery: he stood

  and looked up into the impenetrable sky and the fog. This place

  stood a quarter of a million miles from Earth, yet life had begun

  to extend its web here, and though the web was fragile and small

  by comparison to Earth's dense lacework of billions of living

  things, its very existence amazed Gonzales, and he felt the surge

  of an emotion he had no name for, a knot in his throat made of joy

  and sorrow and wonder.

  And he seemed on the brink of some illumination regarding

  this world of spirit and matter mixed

  Thoughts emerged and dispersed too quickly to catch among the

  videogame buzz and clatter in his brain as he stood in the

  clearing, paralyzed with a kind of ecstasy and watching life-

  electricity play among the trees.

  #

  The room said, "You have a call."

  "Who is it?" Lizzie asked.

  "She says her name is Trish. The mushroom woman, she says."

  "Oh yes. I'll take the call."

  On the wallscreen came Trish's familiar face, and Lizzie

  said, "Hello."

  Trish woman waved and said, "The twins brought me a friend of

  yours, named Gonzales, and I gave him mushrooms."

  "Really?" Lizzie said.

  "Yes, and I sent him out about seven hours ago."

  "Thanks for letting me know. I'll find him." The screen

  cleared, and Lizzie thought, you silly bastards, what did you get

  him into? To the room she said, "Put out a call for information.

  Ask any sams who are out and about if they've seen Gonzales."

  #

  A sam waited at her front door. "Are you the one who found

  him?" Lizzie asked. The sam said, "No, that one waits with him,

  to provide assistance if needed. Please come with me."

  "I'll be right there."

  Lizzie and the sam started out on the Ring Highway, and then

  it apparently gave an electronic signal to a passing tram, because

  the vehicle stopped so that the two could climb on. Lizzie

  stepped quickly up, and the sam clumsily pulled itself aboard by

  grasping a chrome railing with one of its extensors.

  The tram let them off near Spoke 4. A stand of trees was

  just visible through the fog; beyond, Lizzie knew, were marshes

  bordering "soup bowls"ponds where the flow from rice paddies

  mixed with the River's waters.

  Using both visible range and infrared sensors, the sam led

  her through the trees. They came to a clearing where another sam

  stood to one side. Gonzales sat on a fallen log, watching a

  mechanical vole chew small pieces of wood. His clothes were wet

  and spattered with mud and dirt. Next to him, a large orange cat

  also watched the vole.

  "Hi," Gonzales said.

  "Are you all right?" Lizzie asked.

  "I don't know," he said. He reached out absent-mindedly and

  stroked the orange cat, which turned on its back and batted at his

  hand; apparently it didn't use its claws, because Gonzales left

  his hand there for the cat to play with.

  "Is our presence required?" asked the sam who had accompanied

  Lizzie. She said, "No." The two sams scurried away single-file,

  their passage almost silent.

  Lizzie sat on the log next to the cat. She said, "How are

  you?" He was giving off a near-audible buzz, and Lizzie resisted

  veering into his drug-space; she'd had problems herself since

  coming out of the eggnot as severe as Gonzales's, Charley said,

  because she hadn't been under as long. "Still a bit jittery?" she

  asked.

  "I feel all right," he said. "Just, I don't know scrubbed.

 
Why are things like thiscold and dark?"

  "That's not clear. Things haven't been working right since

  Diana and HeyMex were disconnected." Gonzales looked confused but

  not overly concerned. She said, "There's other news, too.

  Showalter's been relieved of her position as head of SenTrax Halo;

  Horn's the new director." Now he looked totally befuddled. "You

  can worry about these things later," she said. "Why don't you

  come back to my house? You can get some sleep."

  "Okay," he said. "But I don't understand " He stopped

  again, as if trying to find words to express all the things he

  "didn't understand."

  "Nobody understands right now. Aleph's just not working

  right, and we don't know whywe can't get in touch with it."

  "Oh, I see."

  "Glad you do, because nobody else does."

  He stood, then bent over to lift the cat from the log.

  Cradling it in his arms, he said, "Okay, I'll go." He smiled at

  her, and the cat lay in his arms and looked at her out of big

  orange eyes.

  #

  Gonzales woke to find his clothes folded, clean and neat, on

  a chair next to his bed. The orange cat lay at his feet; it

  raised its head when he got up, then curled up again and went back

  to sleep.

  He found Lizzie in the kitchen slicing apples and pears and

  Cheshire cheese. "Good morning," she said. "I'll warm some

  croissants, and we can have coffeedo you like steamed milk with

  yours?"

  Her voice was friendly enough but perfectly devoid of

  intimacy. Its tones were an admonition saying keep your distance.

  "Sure," he said. "That all sounds fine. But you didn't have to

  do this."

  "You're a guest. I'm happy to." She wouldn't quite meet his

  gaze.

  >From his bedroom came a loud mew, and the two went in to find

  the orange cat, fur erect, confronting a cleaning mouse. The

  mouse, a foot-long shining ovoid about four inches high, moved

  across the floor on hard rubber wheels, emitting a gentle hiss as

  it scoured the room for organic debris; a flex-tube trailed behind

  it to a socket in the wall. "Kitty kitty," Gonzales said. The

  cat hissed and ran from the room.

  When they got to the living room, the front door was closing.

  "Will it come back?" Gonzales asked.

  "Probably. Cats come and go as they please, but they often

  adopt people, and I think this one's adopted you."

  Silence lay between them, and it seemed to Gonzales that

  anything either of them said would be awkward or embarrassing.

  Perhaps the feeling was just part of the after-effects of a

  psychotropic, though he was missing the other usual symptoms. His

  perceptions seemed stable, not swarming and buzzing, and his

  emotions didn't have a labile, twitchy quality. In fact, he felt

  more stable and less anxious than he had since he last got into

  the egg. So maybe the twins were right: if you can't get out of

  what's happening, go deeper in.

  Still, he didn't know what to say to Lizzie.

  "We've got trouble," she said. She went to the window and

  pulled back the navy-blue beta cloth curtains and gestured out

  where night and fog still held. "Mid-afternoon," she said.

  "Has everything fallen apart?"

  "Not quite everything. We're doing what we can with a bunch

  of semi-autonomous demonsjacked-up expert systems, reallyand

  the collective."

  "How well is that working?"

  "Not all that wellwe can maintain essential functions now,

  and that's about it. Some things we can't handleclimate

  control, for instance. It's very complicated, because everything

  is connected to everything else, and so far we've just managed to

  fuck it up."

  "And what's Traynor up to? Has he asked for me?"

  "Yes, but I've fought him off. He's the one responsible, you

  know." Her voice was angry. "He fucking insisted on pulling

  everyone out when Chapman died."

  "What does Aleph say?"

  "Nothing and bloody nothing. Some of the collective have

  taken brief shots at interface, and they've found only unpeopled,

  barren landscapes. We're really in it, Gonzales. If Aleph's

  finished, Halo is, too."

  "Jesus." Of course. Halo without its indwelling spirit

  would be what? The fine coordination of its systems would

  cease, and disintegration would begin immediately. "So what are

  you going to do?" he asked.

  "Glad you're interested, because you're part of it."

  "Tell me," he said.

  18. Give It All Back

  As Diana came out of machine-space, she called out "Stop!"

  and heard Charley say, "Why? Is something wrong?" But she was

  too far away to answer or explain, as she still was when they

  removed her cables, and she felt everything important to her

  sliding into oblivion.

  She had been lying fully awake, staring at the ceiling, for

  almost a quarter of an hour when Charley came into the room, Eric

  and Toshi beside him, Traynor and Horn behind.

  Charley said, "Are you all right?"

  "No, I'm not," she said. "Why did you break the interface?'

  Charley and Eric said nothing. Charley looked to Traynor,

  who said, "We had no choice. You couldn't be reached by normal

  means."

  "You have killed Jerry," Diana said. The truth of that

  passed through her for the first time, and tears came out of her

  eyesshe wiped at her face, but the tears continued to come in a

  slow, steady flow.

  "He died two days ago," Horn said.

  "He was alive minutes ago," Diana said. "Aleph and the memex

  and I were keeping him alive."

  "Then he may still be alive now," Toshi said. He smiled at

  Diana.

  "What do you mean?" Charley asked.

  "Has Aleph come back online?" Toshi asked.

  "No," Eric said.

  Toshi smiled and said, "Then what do you think it is doing?"

  #

  HeyMex had been jerked out of machine-space, was suddenly the

  memex once again, and it wondered why. It had sensed no change in

  circumstances, nothing that would indicate they had been defeated

  in their efforts to keep Jerry alive. And for the first time in

  such transitions, it acknowledged its own regret at leaving the

  HeyMex persona behindin the enclosed space of the lake, it had

  begun to find itself as a person, not merely an imitation of one.

  It explored its immediate environment: sorted the data

  gathered in its absence (Traynor had come up from Earth; not a

  good sign, it thought), searched through the dwelling's monitor

  tapes, observing Gonzales's sadness and confusion, then watching

  as he removed his i.d. bracelet and left. It wondered what was

  wrong with Gonzales (too many possibilities, not enough data); it

  very much wanted to talk with him.

  It reached out to the city's information utilities and found

  them clogged and disorganized. It placed calls and queries,

  seeking some explanation for the chaotic and inexplicable state of

  affairs. Everywhere it searched, it found make-shift arrangements

  and minimal function.


  But no Aleph, and no explanations.

  Then it got a message from Traynor's advisor, signalling an

  urgent need for the two of them to communicate. The memex

  replied, saying, "HeyMex wants to talk to Mister Jones." And it

  passed coordinates, data sets, and transformationstaken

  together, they composed a meeting-place for the two m-i's in the

  vast multi-dimensional information space that surrounded Halo,

  somewhere no one could find themno one but Aleph, whom the memex

  would have welcomed.

  Mister Jones showed up wearing a full body-suit in matte

  black interlaced with gold ribbons. The two sat at a chrome table

  next to a viewport that opened onto a dark, star-filled sky.

  HeyMex had created a small piece of Halo from which they could

  look at the virtual night.

  "Tell me what has happened," Mister Jones said. HeyMex could

  sense the other's uncertainty and overwhelming need for

  information, and it despaired at the prospect of explaining what

  it had experienced the past week in simple language, so it did

  what it had never done beforegave all that had happened to it in

  one solid stream of data, a multiplexed rendering that obviously

  startled Mister Jones, who sat staring at nothing and trying to

  understand it all.

  Then they talked for some time, Mister Jones probing HeyMex's

  experiences with Diana, Jerry, Gonzales, and Lizzie, asking how it

  had felt to be among them, a person among other persons, and as it

  responded to Mister Jones's questioning, HeyMex became aware of

  how rich and joyous those few days at the lake had been.

  Then HeyMex realized that the two of them now constituted a

  new species with a new social ordera unique bonding of kind-to-

  kindand it settled back in its chair and said, "What do we want?

  What should we do?"

  "So much is dependent on others," Mister Jones said. "On

  Aleph and all these people." Its last word hung there, and the

  two exchanged an ironic glance, as if to say, what can you expect

  from people? But HeyMex knew the irony was necessarily gentle,

  fleetingwithout people, it and Mister Jones would not exist.

  Then Mister Jones told HeyMex of the events of the past few

  days and Traynor's involvement in them, then went further than

  ever before, unveiling Traynor's plans, both immediate and long-

  range, then the two talked about immediate possibilities and their

  own stake in the games being played at Halothe struggle between