Halo

by Tom Maddox

  Light appeared, at first almost a pinpoint coming from some

  undefinable distance, then a glow that she moved quickly toward,

  following a twist in the passage that brought her to an opening in

  the rock.

  Framed by the mouth of the tunnel, an impossible scene: a

  balloon, its canopy an oblate sphere of green, blew as if in a

  strong wind, and its top swung toward her so she could see a great

  eye at its apex, wide open and peering up into the infinite sky.

  The iris was dark gold set with light gold flecks. Around the

  eye, a fringe of lashes flickered in the wind.

  Hanging beneath the balloon from a dense nest of shrouds, a

  platform held a metallic ball, a kind of bathysphere. Two figures

  crouched there, holding to the shrouds and each other, and peered

  up into the sky. By some trick of perspective, the distance

  etween her and the balloon shrank until she saw Diana and Jerry,

  young and fearful. She crawled forward, and the balloon and Diana

  and Jerry disappeared.

  At one turn of the tunnel, red hand-prints on the wall

  phosphoresced in the darkness. At another, she heard the bellow

  of a thousand animals, then saw them run toward a cliff and pass

  over it, the entire herd of bison running screaming to a mass

  death. Below, she knew, men and women waited to butcher the dead

  and carry their meat away.

  The rock slanted sharply beneath her, and she began to slide

  forward, then she rolled sideways and tumbled out of the chatire

  and into a pool of icy water.

  "Shit," she said, now soaked completely through, and crawled

  out of the shallow pool onto the dry rock surrounding it. In very

  dim light she saw two pedestals with the figure of a bison atop

  each, carved in bas-relief out of wet clay.

  She looked up to see a figure emerge out of darkness at the

  cave's other end. He was at least eight feet tall, with antlered

  head and a face made of light; the water seemed to dance around

  him. They stood facing each other, and she felt herself go weak

  at the giant magical presence.

  He said, "I'm waiting."

  "For what?"

  "For you to choose."

  "Choose what? What kind of test is this?"

  "Not a test, just a fork in reality, where you will turn down

  one road or another."

  "Where do the roads go?"

  "No one knows. Each road is itself a product of the choices

  you make while on it. One choice leads to another, one choice

  excludes another; one pattern of choices excludes an infinity of

  patterns."

  "I don't like such choices. I don't want to exclude

  infinity."

  "Too bad." The figure raised a stone knife; the dim light

  glinted on its myriad chipped faces. "You choose, I cut. You

  choose the right hand, I cut off the left; you choose the left, I

  cut off the right."

  "No!"

  "Oh yes, and then your hands grow backboth left or both

  right, the product of your choice. And one choice leads to

  another, so you choose again."

  Lizzie found herself weeping.

  He said, "Choose: reach out a hand."

  She looked at her hands, both precious, thought of all the

  richness that would be lost with either one. Then, puzzled, still

  weeping, she asked, "Which is which?"

  He laughed, his voice booming through miles of caverns and

  tunnels in the rock, carrying across more than thirty thousand

  years of human history; he whirled in a kind of dance, the waters

  fountaining up around him, chanted in unknown syllables, then

  leapt toward her and grabbed both wrists in his great hands and

  said, "You will know in the choosing. Which will it be?"

  "I won't choose."

  "Then I will take both hands."

  "No!" she yelled out in the moment that she extended a hand,

  having chosen, and saw the stone knife fall.

  #

  Diana stood in the living room of her apartment at Athena

  Station. She stood in two times at onceshe was a young, blind,

  woman; she was an older, sighted one.

  The sighted woman looked around; she had never seen this

  place other than in holos, and she felt the touch of a peculiar

  emotion for which she had no name: the return of the almost-

  familiar. The blind woman was unmovedshe carried the apartment

  in her head as a complex map of relations and movements, and the

  visual patterns this other self saw had no relevance for her.

  She put her hands on the touch-sculpture in the center of the

  floor, the work of a blind sculptor named Dernier, then closed her

  eyes and felt its familiar rough texture and odd curves let her

  hands trace a form other than the visual.

  Behind her Jerry's voice said, "Diana." She turned to him,

  and there he stood as he had more than twenty years agohe was

  younger than she'd ever have imagined, and beautiful, and filled

  with the same desire as she.

  Blind and seeing, young and old, Diana went across the room

  to him, but he held up a hand and said, "Stop. If you come to me

  now, then you take up an obligation that you can never put down."

  "I can't let you die."

  "I have lived long past any reasonable reckoning; I am dead."

  "I can't leave you dead."

  "Can you stay with me in the unreal worlds, forever? Until

  the city stops turning or its animate spirit dies? Until one or

  the other of us disappears, caught in some freakish storm or

  catastrophe? Until one self or the other or both are dissipated

  in time?"

  (Something prompted her, then, counselled her, asking in an

  unspoken voice, Do you think rationally about such an election

  adding and subtracting the credits and debits and settling upon

  that which is most to your advantage? Or do you use some organ of

  choice beneath the purview of consciousness and the articulate

  self? Saying, Remember, mind is a make-shift thrown together out

  of life's twitching reflexes, and over it consciousness darts to-

  and-fro, unfailingly over-estimating its own capabilities and

  reach; thinking itself proper arbiter or judge. Choose as you

  will: what will be, will be.)

  And she said, "Yes, I can stay with you."

  There was one more question: Jerry asked, "Why would you do

  this?"

  All her life's moments funneled into this one. Her voice

  light, final inflection upward, the older, sighted woman said:

  "Oh, for love."

  "Well, then"

  #

  Gonzales stood next to her on the endless plain, HeyMex next

  to him, then Lizzie. The Aleph-figure and Jerry hovered above

  them, and a voice came from the suspended figures: "Diana, wake

  for a few moments. Tell everyone to come here who can, and we

  will do certain things."

  Before she could ask for clarification or question the

  voice's intent, she heard herself say these words, then saw

  Toshi's face in front of her and heard him ask, "What things?"

  Sitting up on her couch, she said, "Save a life, build a world,

  redeem an extraordinary self."

  "Indeed," Toshi said.

>   She lay back down and was once again among the unreal worlds.

  They gathered on the endless plain, coming in quickly, one-

  by-one: first one twin, then another, then Stumdog, the Deader

  (her white hair streaked with red, crying, "Blood party"), Jaani

  23, the Judge (huge and hairless, looming over them all), the

  Laughing Doctor, J. Jerry Jones, Sweet Betsy, Ambulance Driver, T-

  Tootsie all of the collective who could be spared.

  The Aleph-figure and Jerry still hovered, with light storms

  bending and breaking around them in crazy patterns of reflection,

  refraction, diffraction; phosphorescing and luminescing, dancing

  an omniluminal photon jig.

  All were there who would be there, so it began.

  #

  Patterns more complicated and colorful than any Gonzales had

  ever seen filled all creation. Rosette and seahorse and seething

  cloud, nebulosities on the brink of determinate form, cardioid

  traceries of the heart the patterns wrapped around him until he

  became a fractal tapestry, alive, every element in constant

  motion. He put his hands together, and they disappeared into one

  another, then something urged him to keep pushing, and he did so

  until he entirely disappeared

  And felt the stuff of Jerry's past and present mingling in

  him, seemingly at random, from the store of memory and capacity:

  throwing a particular ball under a particular blue sky, yes, and

  catching it, but also ball-throwing and catching themselves, the

  solid presence of muscular exertion coupled to the almost-occult

  discriminations required to make an accurate throw or a difficult

  catch

  As it later became known, each of them received portions of

  the vast fluent chaos that manifested "Jerry," dealt to them by

  Aleph according to principles even it could not articulate. What

  it was to be "Jerry" mingled among them, and they among it and the

  vast medium that supported them all, Aleph, in a promiscuous

  rendering of self-to-self. Female was suffused with male, male

  with female, both with the ungendered being of Aleph and HeyMex.

  They were all changed, then, something deep in the core of each

  made drunk in this vast frenzy or bacchanal of Spirit.

  With each dispersal of Jerry's self among its human helpers,

  Aleph recovered its own. In a process of steadily accelerating

  momentum, the city's parts and states began to flow through it,

  restoring self to self, until Aleph acknowledged itself (I am that

  I am), looked back again over Halo, and in a triumphant

  manifestation of the Aleph-voice, began to speak what only it

  could hear, the words of the sentence that defined it unfolding in

  every dimension of its being.

  #

  Still sitting watch over Diana, still meditating on his koan,

  Toshi felt something rise like electricity through his spine, and

  all the contradictions of in fact dissolved in satori. "Hai!"

  Toshi called, laughing as he was enlightened.

  22. Out of the Egg

  Gonzales's egg split, and he saw from the corner of his eye

  that Lizzie's was coming apart at the same time. Standing between

  the eggs, Charley said, "Congratulations." He turned to Eric, who

  waited at a console across the room, and said, "Let's do it." He,

  Eric, and a pair of sams began to disconnect Lizzie.

  Toshi appeared briefly, coming from behind the screen where

  Diana lay, then returning.

  Oddly, Gonzales felt better than he ever had coming up from

  the eggmentally clearer, emotionally stronger. He couldn't see

  Lizzie, could hear only whispers as she was moved onto a gurney

  and wheeled away.

  "Is Lizzie all right?" Gonzales asked as soon as the tubes

  were out of his throat and nose. "And what about Diana?"

  "They're both fine," Eric said, his high-pitched voice

  welcoming and familiar. "But we have to take more time with

  Doctor Heywood. You and Lizzie we're moving into the next room.

  You can sleep here tonight and go home in the morning.

  "What about the memex?"

  "It's still working with Aleph but left a message for you

  that all is well."

  #

  Sitting in full lotus on a mat beside the couch, Toshi heard

  a change in Diana's breathing and looked up to see her open her

  eyes. "I'll get Charley," he said. "He's with Lizzie and

  Gonzales."

  "Don't bother. I'm all right."

  "They must disconnect you."

  "No, not now almost never, in fact."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We have saved Jerry, but there are conditions." Her head

  lying sideways on the pillow's rough white cloth, she smiled at

  Toshi, and said, "When I sleep there, I can wake here, as I do

  now, and for very brief periods leave that world. But I can only

  visit here; I must live there. Otherwise, Jerry will die."

  "You have resurrected your dead, then, but at what price,

  what sacrifice?"

  "Nothing I would not willingly give. There was no choosing."

  "No?"

  "I am only doing what I want."

  "So the arrow finds the target," Toshi said.

  #

  Gonzales woke the next morning, showered, dressed, and was

  drinking coffee when the room said, "Mr. Traynor is here to see

  you."

  "Send him in," he said. One account about to be reckoned up,

  he thought.

  When he came in, Traynor looked chastened, a state Gonzales

  would not usually have associated with the man. "Good morning,"

  Gonzales said.

  Traynor looked around as if unsure of himself. He said, "I

  am leaving this evening. You may come with me, if you wish."

  Gonzales was looking for his i.d. bracelet, found it on the

  nightstand next to the table, and said, "I don't understand. I'm

  not fired?"

  "I said that only in the heat of the moment, you know this

  place, these peopleI'm afraid I did not handle things well."

  "I see." Gonzales snapped closed the bracelet's clasp. "Is

  that my only choice?"

  "No. Showalter's been reinstituted as Director SenTrax Halo

  Group, and she's gotten the board to agree that you may take the

  position offered by the Interface Collective. The choice is

  yours."

  "Really? And what about Horn?"

  "He will be returning to Earth." Traynor laughed. "I will

  have to find something to do with him."

  "Indeed. That all seems clear enough. When do I have to

  tell you my decision?"

  "Soonbefore I leave."

  "I'll let you know."

  Traynor left, and Gonzales took a last look around and went

  to see what was happening. He found Charley looking at monitor

  screens dense with lists of data. The two eggs had been removed,

  but the screen around Diana's couch remained. "What's up,

  Charley?" Gonzales asked.

  "Look" Charley pointed to the hologram displays of

  superimposed wave-forms, red and green. He said, "The green

  curves show the calculated limits of Diana's interface, the red

  ones the actual state."

  To Gonzales, the red curves seemed huge, perhaps twice the

  s
ize of the green ones. He said, ""What does it mean?"

  "That we don't know the rules; that we still have a lot to

  learn." Looking up at Gonzales, Charley's seamed face was lit

  with his passion for this new phase of discovery.

  "Where's Lizzie?" Gonzales asked.

  "She's gone home. She said for you to come by."

  #

  Gonzales stood in front of Lizzie's door until it said, "Come

  in." Lizzie was sitting in her front room, its curtains open to

  bright sunlight. She stood and said, "Hello," and smiled. He

  couldn't read that smile, quite, though it seemed less guarded

  than before. "Have a seat. Would you like some breakfast?"

  "No, I'm all right."

  "The orange cat was here this morning, looking for you. And

  Showalter just leftshe's back in charge, you know."

  "I'd heard."

  "She approved my invitation for you to become a member of the

  collective, if you wish and they confirm. I imagine they will

  if you take the offer." Her smile had a little mischief in it.

  "What do you think I should do?"

  "Your choice." She spoke the word with emphasis, as though

  it had special meaning for her. "We can talk about it."

  "Sure."

  The remainder of the morning passed, and they talkedthough

  somehow what they said had little to do with the collective or the

  job Gonzales had been offered. They chattered to one another,

  their ostensible topics pretexts for a certain tone of voice, an

  exchange of glances, a shift of the limbs: for necessary

  intensities of attention.

  Intimacy proceeded according to its own rules, nurtured in a

  web of subtle communications: a widening of the eyes; a posture

  open to the other's presence; multiple gestures and words whose

  import was clearcome closer. Though consciousness might be busy

  or blind, the eyes see, and the brain and body know, for such

  communications are too important to be left to mere conscious

  apprehension or thought.

  They ate lunch, which served to move them closer together,

  face-to-face across her table, and their gestures and voices

  flowed around the context of eating, which disappeared entirely

  into the moment.

  They sat together on the couch, then, and at some point she

  put her hand in his, or he took hersneither could have said who

  was firstand they leaned toward one another, their motions slow

  and steady and sure, and their cheeks brushed, and then they