“Was that you who spoke to me?” Kaeti asked.
“You don’t see anyone else around here, do you?” The cat sat down and began to lick one of its paws. “What I meant was that even though you must have a link, you’re wearing a protective garment as well, which seems an excess of caution. The link would summon—”
“I’ve closed all my channels,” she said. “I am not communing with the Net at the moment.”
The cat tilted its head and stared at her with its yellowish-green eyes. “Even so—”
“Have you seen any people near here?” Kaeti asked.
“People?”
“Beings that resemble me.”
The cat’s whiskers twitched. “No, I haven’t seen any people who resemble you.” The answer was ambiguous, but before Kaeti could say anything else, the cat bounded away and disappeared among the trees.
The cat could not be a wild creature, or it would not have been able to talk to her. She wondered for whom the net had made the creature, and whether the cat had been abandoned or had simply run away to live on its own.
Kaeti wandered down to the brook and dipped a cupped hand into the water, then drank. Nothing in the water could harm her; parts of her body had been repaired and replaced so often that she would have been nearly invulnerable to physical damage even without the microscopic organisms inside her that maintained and rejuvenated her.
How much of what I once was is left? she wondered, and that thought seemed a repetition of a question that had come to her many times before. Perhaps there was more of her in the net than remained inside herself; the net was the repository for all the fears, hopes, loves, and accomplishments she had forgotten.
A fragment of a conversation from long ago came to her then, spoken in a low voice that seemed familiar, although she could not recollect whom the speaker had been. “Believing in some sort of reincarnation never made any sense to me,” the voice was saying. “If you have to forget everything from your previous life in your next incarnation, then in effect you’re dead anyway.”
How many of her past selves were dead? How many others whom she still thought of as alive had died? Human beings had abolished physical death caused by disease and aging long ago, and the Net of minds continued to maintain and develop the biological implants and nanotechnology responsible for indefinitely expanded lives. But death was still present in her world. If one lived long enough, sooner or later an accident would happen, or a system on which one’s existence depended would temporarily fail. The statistics were inexorable, and calculable. If a certain finite number of people lived long enough, eventually some chance happening would kill them all.
She sat down by the brook, and was for a while unable to move. There was a difference between considering statistics on mortality with her channels open while resting in a secure environment that responded to her every mood, and in sitting out here in an open space with the channels to her link closed. She shivered again as feelings of fear and despair flowed into her. The temptation to open a channel so that her link could banish such disturbing emotions was strong.
Yet Kaeti resisted those impulses. She had come here to find what she had lost, what the minds might be keeping from her. She had come here to look for others like herself; that was part of her purpose. If she reached out to her link, she would lose that desire again, would give it up easily, would eventually allow the net to envelop her in its comforting cocoon of experiences and diversions. She had the sensation that this had happened before, that she had gone on this same sort of search earlier only to give it up in the end.
She glanced to her side and saw that the cat was sitting near her on the grassy bank. “Why are you out here?” she asked.
The cat replied, “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I don’t remember,” the cat said, “but I do have a picture of another in my mind, another two-legged one like you. I think that I had such a companion once.”
“Do you have a link?” Kaeti asked, suddenly wary. Her link would not violate the blocks she had put on her mental channels, but there was nothing to prevent the net from observing her through another linked being.
“Of course I don’t have a link. I’m a cat.”
“I knew a terrier with a link long ago.” That fragment had floated up from the pool of her memories unattached to anything else. “So it’s possible—”
“That wouldn’t make much sense, would it?” the cat interrupted. “The whole point of asking for a creature like me or like that terrier is to have a companion to pet and nurture and train and play with and enjoy that isn’t wild and feral, a creature with whom one can communicate through speech yet who isn’t at all like oneself. Give me a link, and you’ve basically admitted that I’m not that different from you, whatever I may look like, in which case you might as well have asked the net for a lover, a friend, or a child instead of a cat. My guess is that the relationship between that linked terrier and its person didn’t end happily.”
“No, it didn’t,” Kaeti admitted. “The person wanted a particular kind of comrade, one that offered unconditional love and devotion, and the dog couldn’t be like that once she was linked. She fell under the influence of the net, she learned that she could ask her own questions of her link directly instead of having to depend on her human being for answers. And when she realized that she had been deliberately created with certain limitations, that she would never be able to become entirely....”
Kaeti fell silent for a moment before continuing. “After that, the terrier resented what had been done to her, and then she didn’t want to have anything to do with her person anymore.” Kaeti felt a sudden conviction that she had been the one who had asked for the terrier, that she was the person who had been abandoned by that dog in the end.
The cat stared coldly at her, as if growing bored. “I don’t at all mind being alone,” the cat murmured, “but people do seem to get awfully lonely when they’re by themselves,” and then the creature left her, scurrying up the bank and into the tall grass until lost from view.
“That’s what it is,” Kaeti whispered. “I’ve grown lonely.” More was coming to her now, more of what she might have forgotten. She had felt in need of solitude, had wanted to withdraw from others for a time, but could not recall exactly why. There had been no discordant elements in her environment, nothing to disturb or upset her, nothing recalcitrant that she was unable to control. When communing with the net had not been enough company for her, she had summoned the images of those whom she had known and loved. But she had tired of that congenial environment, had soon been longing for the company of other people in the flesh, and then—
What had happened after that? Why did she still feel impelled to close the channels to her link instead of accessing those memories? Why was she out here relying on little more than her own senses and recollections, instead of using the net to help her find those she sought?
The answer came to her, and she was ready for the recollection this time, prepared to withstand the shock of remembering again. The net had searched and had been unable to find other people for her; she might be the last of her kind. She had closed herself off after hearing that, before she could verify the truth of that revelation.
But now, remembering what she had been told, Kaeti had the feeling that her link had been trying to tell her more, and that she might have closed her channels before hearing the rest. But what more could her link say to her? The net could not give her others like herself, people who were still alive, and if that were true, then there were no other people.
Unless, impossible as it seemed, there were people without links, people who lived as that gray cat did, with no net to teach and to guide them.
Somehow, she managed to steady herself and, as she grew calmer, even felt pride in being able to bring herself back into balance without the aid of her link. How many times had the net told her that she was alone, the last of her kind? How many times had she chosen
to forget that, and then to search for others?
“Kaeti,” a remembered voice said inside her, “you are being obstinate.” Another person had said that to her long ago, but she could not recall who had spoken the words.
The air was growing colder. A cool breeze brushed her face; her protective skin would maintain her body temperature, but there might be other dangers out here, ones for which she was not prepared. Severe storms, earthquakes, cataclysms of all kinds—even with the net’s protection, such disasters came often enough to take the lives of some. The numbers of human beings had been diminishing for a while; that much she still retained in her memory. The experiences of parenthood, of having genetic offspring of her own and serving as a mentor and nurturer to the young, lay far in her past; life had too many other pleasures and challenges to offer. So perhaps with fewer and fewer young ones to replace them, people had finally died out.
No, Kaeti thought; she would not have come out here, would not have begun her search, without some assurance from her link that the effort would not be futile.
The sky was darkening. She did not want to be out in the open when night came. As she was about to retreat to the tent, something glinted in the distance on the horizon.
She narrowed her eyes slightly. There it was again, a flash of light; she wondered if someone was signaling to her. There might be others out searching, also thinking they were alone and hoping to find companions.
She turned and hurried toward her tent. As she approached, the tent’s flaps opened to admit her. As she went inside, the flaps closed against the night. If others were out there, she preferred to seek them out during the daytime. Maybe they would come here; she tensed for a moment, afraid again. But the tent would warn her if anyone approached, and would activate a protective shield.
How helpless I am, Kaeti thought. She lay down on her bed of moss, brooding about her uselessness. She and those she had known had made no history of their own, nothing to match the accomplishments of their ancestors; history had long been a mere entertainment, only a source of details for their diversions.
She drifted, not fully conscious and yet not asleep. With her channels closed, silence enveloped her, a silence so complete that the only sounds she heard were her own breathing and her heartbeat and a soft but oddly soothing throbbing inside her ears.
“How did we come to be as we are?” A voice was coming to her from memory, and she realized that it belonged to the person she had known as Erlann. “When one looks back, it seems fairly obvious,” he continued. “First our ancestors created diversions that distracted them from reality. Once the technology became available, they developed even more sophisticated diversions that became far more pleasant than reality. By then, the actual world had become decidedly more unpleasant for many people, which of course tempted those who were able to do so to retreat from the world outside themselves even more.”
“I have always thought of the past as a more heroic age.” That was her own voice, objecting. “Humankind was embarking on great deeds and accomplishments. There was all of our solar system to explore, and after that—”
“That time was a heroic age only for the few,” Erlann said, “for those who were willing to risk their own lives and safety by leaving Earth. It was, however, a time of accomplishment for those who created and wove the earliest strands of what would become our net of minds, and for those who uncovered the secrets of life extension. But even they, in the end, surrendered to the experiences the net offered them. Even they turned inward at last.”
“All of them?” Kaeti asked.
“I asked the net that very question. Is there anyone who resisted the experiences the net offered in order to contend with reality? Were there human beings who chose not to live that vicarious existence? And my link informed me that the net could not recall any such people.”
“That’s an ambiguous answer,” Kaeti said. “They are not remembered. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t or do not exist.”
“But consider this,” Erlann continued. “Contemplate your own life, Kaeti. How often have you retreated? How often have you chosen to face what lay outside?”
How often have I? Kaeti asked herself as she rested inside her tent. She had left safety before, she had gone on other searches, but she had always retreated again, shedding her memories of the quest.
More was coming to her; that was the trouble with trying to rid herself of certain recollections. Echoes were left behind, troublesome fragments that drifted inside her and could not be connected into anything coherent. She had searched for other people, and somehow she sensed that at least one such search had been successful. But she had lost whomever she had found afterward, and had become a solitary again. She lived with the constant feeling of having misplaced familiar things.
A howl cut through the night. Kaeti sat up. She would be safe inside the tent, but her heart beat faster for a few moments before slowing again. She heard another howl, lower and softer this time, the sounds of an animal.
She got to her feet and crept toward the front of the tent; the flaps lifted as she stepped outside. The Moon was up, fat and yellow in the sky, and another memory came to her of the people who had gone there long ago and tunneled out dwelling places under the Lunar surface and observed the heavens with the great dishes of their telescopes. Where were those people now? Had they left to embark on a great voyage across space? Or had they retreated into the world that the net could create for them? Perhaps they had done both, closed themselves off in an interstellar vessel and then turned inward even as their ship carried them out into the universe. Whatever had happened, no people remained on the Moon now; of that she was certain. She had known it as soon as she caught sight of Earth’s dead satellite.
The gray cat was outside, prowling, visible in the moonlight. The animal howled again, then turned to the south. “Look over there,” the cat whispered.
She looked south and saw a patch of flickering light. A fire, she thought, and hurried away from the tent, picking up her pace until she was running. A thought came to her of another fire, of people huddled around the flames, seeking warmth and safety as their earliest ancestors had done. There might be such people out here; she would no longer be alone.
When Kaeti was still far from the fire and had slowed to a walk, she saw a dark two-legged shape moving toward her across the plain. She had not even considered any possible danger to herself, but suddenly sensed that she had nothing to fear from this apparition. She stopped and waited until the creature was only a few paces away from her, and knew that she was looking at another like herself.
“You are a person,” she said, “a man,” for she saw now that the other wore a beard on his face.
He made a sound that might have been a greeting, or only a sigh.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
The man was clothed in a garment that resembled her own protective skin, but his seemed looser, as though the garment did not quite fit him. He waved one arm in an arc, and then turned away; she realized that he wanted her to follow him.
She kept behind him as he led her toward the fire. A patch of land around the fire had been cleared of growth, and a hollow dug in the ground to hold the fire. Others sat around the fire, a person with long pale hair and another smaller one with hands stretched toward the flames; both of them wore the same kind of ill-fitting coverall as the man did. Kaeti kept her link closed, knowing already that she would not be able to speak to them through it, that these people had no links. How long had they been out here? How had they survived without being able to call on the net for food and shelter?
The bearded man went to the other two people, then squatted near them. Kaeti hesitated, then knelt on the other side of the fire. Objects were scattered over the ground, shiny pieces of metal, shards of what might have been pottery or plates, torn rags. Apparently they had sustained themselves by taking whatever they could find in abandoned sites, in the cities and parks and isolated refuges where people had
once lived. The three stared at the fire, keeping their heads bowed, refusing to look at her.
Kaeti said, “I thought that I might be all alone, that there was no one left, but my link—”
The man thrust out an arm, as if warding her off.
“I came out here to find others like myself,” she said in a gentler voice. But she could do nothing for them without opening a channel and calling out to her link. Steadying herself, Kaeti reached out through her link to the net—
—and remembered.
The three humanlike creatures and their fire vanished. Kaeti stood on a rocky ledge, holding out a hand to a shadowy form hiding in a cave. “Come with me,” Kaeti called out, even knowing that the woman could not understand her, that she would have to summon a vehicle to carry them both to safety.
The ledge disappeared—
—and she was standing in a windswept desert as dunes shifted before her like waves. The funnel of a dust storm was sweeping toward her and the five frightened people huddled nearby. Kaeti waved at them with her arms, trying to tell them with her gestures to come to her, so that she could protect them from the storm with the force field that her vehicle could project around them. The wind rose, blinding her for a moment with a veil of sand—
—and she was sitting with Erlann at the edge of a forest, watching as two men ran from them across a plain of tall grass. Occasionally the men turned, shook their spears in Kaeti’s direction, then hurried on their way.
Erlann said, “They’ll die if they stay out there.”
“I know,” Kaeti murmured.
“I think that this is the last time I’ll come looking for unchanged people with you.”
Unchanged people, she thought. The term was not entirely accurate. Some of the people she had discovered in the course of her earliest searches were unchanged, the last survivors of those who had never been linked to the net, but she had found no such people for a long while. The human beings she hunted for now were creatures who had been made as they were, playthings for those who had grown bored with simulated experiences, human beings who meant about as much to the people who had asked for them as did their talking dogs and cats and other pets. Their creators always tired of such pets in the end; unlike the people in simulated experiences, such beings usually became defiant, their earlier placidity overwritten by sullen resentment or even outright hostility. When they were abandoned, some of them would ask for links, and become a full part of the human community sustained by the net of minds, but others fled to untamed regions, becoming bewildered and lost. Those who ran away were usually those who had been so dominated by their creators that they had no sense of what they might become, no knowledge of the net of minds, no realization that they were anything other than beings entirely dependent on the linked people around them for their very existence. By the time Kaeti had found such people, their lives were controlled by fear and despair.
Dream of Venus and Other Science Fiction Stories Page 14