The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “I hate days like this,” Thorn said, cutting into a steak. In that window, Renz watched the blood well up around the knife and wondered what it smelled like. “The nights, however, go a long way toward making up for it.”

  Marquez had turned and was walking now, people on the streets around him that would have been a crowd anywhere else. Paasikivi pushed her coffee cup away, stood and glanced back into the bookstore. In Paris, Pauel’s waitress—a young woman with unlikely red hairbrought him his eggs Benedict and poured him a cup of coffee. Thorn lifted a fork of bleeding steak to his mouth. The train slid up to the platform, the doors opening with a hiss and a smell of fumes and ozone.

  “All I really want …” Renz began, and then let the sentence die.

  The girl came out of the bathroom in Pauel’s Parisian diner at the same moment Renz saw her sitting in the back of his half-full subway car. Paasikivi caught sight of her near the music department, looking over the shoulder of a man who was carrying her—he might have been her father. Thorn, looking out the restaurant window saw her on the street. Marquez saw her staring at him from the back seat of a taxi.

  In all four windows and before him in the flesh, the same girl or near enough, was staring at him. Pale skin, dark eyes, shoulder-length hair that rounded in at the neck. Samara Hamze. The dead girl. The dud.

  As one, the five girls raised a hand and waved. Renz’s throat closed with fear.

  Thorn’s voice, deceptively calm, said, “Well that’s odd.”

  “Pull back,” Paasikivi snapped, “all of you get out of there.”

  “I’m on a moving train,” Renz said.

  “Then get to a different car.”

  The others were already in motion. Walking quietly, quickly, efficiently away from the visitations toward what they each hoped might be safety. He heard Paasikivi talking to an off-cell link, calling in the alert. Renz moved to the shaking doors at the front of the car, but paused and turned, his eyes on the girl at the back. There were differences. This girl had a longer face, eyes that made him think of Asia. The woman beside her—the girl’s mother, he guessed—saw him staring and glared back, pulling the girl close to her.

  “Renz!” Paasikivi said, and he realized it hadn’t been the first time she’d said it.

  “Sorry. I’m here. What?”

  “The transit police will be waiting for you at the next station. We’re evacuating the train, but before we start that, I want you out of there.”

  “This isn’t an attack,” Renz said, unsure how he knew it. The mother’s glare, the protective curve of her body around her child. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not an attack.”

  “Renz,” Marquez said. “Don’t get heroic.”

  “No, guys, really,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  He stood and walked down the trembling car. Mother and child watched him approach. The mother’s expression changed from fierce to frightened and then back to a different, more sincere fierceness. Renz smiled, trying to seem friendly, and squatted in front of them. He took out his CATC agent’s ID and handed it to the mother. The darkness outside the windows gave way to the sudden blurred pillars of a station.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I’m afraid you and your girl are going to have to come with me.”

  The doors hissed open. The police rushed in.

  “I don’t like where this is going,” Marquez said.

  “Some of you may have heard of the singularity,” the man on the stage said. “It’s one of those things that people keep saying is just about to happen, but then seems like it never does. The singularity was supposed to be when technology became so complex and so networked, that it woke up. Became conscious. It was supposed to happen in the 1990s and then about once every five years since then. There’s a bunch of really bad movies about it.

  “But remember what I said before. Levels can’t communicate. So, what if something did wake up—some network with humans as part of it and computers as part of it. Planes, trains, and automobiles as part of it. This girl is like an individual human cell—a neuron, a heart cell. That man over there is another one. This community is like an organ or a tissue; even before we were linked, there’ve been constant communications and interactions between people. What if conscious structures rose out of that. Maybe they got a boost when we started massive networking, or maybe they were always there. Call them hive minds. We might never know, just like our cells aren’t aware that they’re part of us.

  “And these hive minds may have been going along at their own level, completely unaware of us for … well, who knows? How long did we go along before we understood neurochemistry?

  “I know we’re all used to thinking of ourselves as the top. Molecules make up cells, cells make up tissues, tissues make up organs, organs I make up people, but people don’t make up anything bigger. Complexity stops with us. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that ain’t the case.”

  “Do any of you understand what the hell this guy’s talking about?” Pauel asked. From the murmur of voices in the room, the question was being asked across more links than theirs. The speaker, as if expecting this, stepped back and put his hands in his pockets, waiting with an expression like sympathy, or else like pity.

  “He’s saying there’s a war in heaven,” Marquez said.

  “No, he isn’t,” Renz said. “This isn’t about angels. It’s minds. He’s talking about minds.”

  The man stepped forward again, holding up his hands, palm out. The voice of the crowd quieted, calmed. The man nodded, smiling as if he was pleased with them all.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Some of you have already seen the hole in the model. I said levels of complexity can’t talk to each other. That’s not quite true. You do it every time you drink a glass of wine or go on antidepressants. We understand neurons. Not perfectly, maybe, but well enough to affect them.

  “Well, the only theory that fits the kind of coordinated coincidences we’ve been seeing is this: something up there—one level of complexity up from us—is starting to figure out how to affect us.”

  When Paasikivi interrupted the debriefing and told him, Renz didn’t immediately understand. He kept having visions of bombs going off in the doctor’s office, of men with guns. It was the only sense he could make of the words Anna’s in the hospital.

  She’s had an attack.

  Her room stank of disinfectant. The hum and rattle of the air purifier was almost loud enough to keep the noise of the place at bay. White noise, like the ocean. She managed a smile when she saw him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Did you see? Salmon are extinct again.”

  “You spend too much time on the net,” he said, keeping his voice gentle and teasing.

  “Yeah, well. It’s not like you take me dancing anymore.”

  He tried to smile at it. He wanted to. He saw the tears in her eyes, her stick-thin arms rising unsteadily to him. Bending down, he held her, smelled her hair, and wept. She hushed him and stoked the back of his neck, her shaking fingers against his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, when he could say anything. “I’m supposed to be here fluffing your pillows and stuff, not …”

  “Not having any feelings of your own? Sweetie, don’t be stupid.”

  He was able to laugh again, a little. He set her down and wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeve.

  “What do the doctors say?” he asked.

  “They think it’s under control again for now. We won’t know how much of the damage is permanent for another week or two. It was a mild one, sweet. It’s no big deal.”

  He knew from the way she said it, from the look in her eyes, that It’s no big deal meant There’s worse than this coming. He took a deep breath and nodded.

  “And what about you?” she asked. “I saw there was some kind of attack that got stopped in New York. Did they trv a follow-up to the restaurant?”

  “No, it wasn’t an attack,” he said. “It was something else. It’s really weird. They’v
e got all the girls who were involved, but as far as anyone can tell there’s no connection between them at all. It was some kind of coincidence.”

  “Girls?”

  “Little ones. Maybe five, six years old.”

  “Were they wired?”

  “No, they were all duds. And they weren’t linked to any networks. They were just … people,” Renz said, looking at his hands. “I hate this, Anna. I really hate this. All of it.”

  “Even the parts you like?”

  The memory of exhilaration passed through him, of setting the coil, of fear and excitement and success. The feeling of being part of something bigger and more important than himself. The warmth of Anna’s body against him as they danced, or as they fucked.

  “Especially the parts I like,” he said. “Those are godawful.”

  “Poor sweetie,” she said. “I’m sorry, you know. I wouldn’t have it like this if I could help it. I keep telling my body to just calm down about it, but …”

  She managed a shrug. It was painful to watch. Renz nodded.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to be in depths of hell with anyone else,” he said.

  “Now that was sweet,” she said. Then, tentatively, “Have you thought about going to the support group? A lot of the people in my group have husbands and wives in it. It seems like it helps them.”

  “I’m not around enough. It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “They’ve got counselors. You should at least talk to them.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to them. I’ve got leave coming up soon. I can soldier through until then.”

  She laughed, looked away. The light caught her eyes just right—icicles.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Soldiering through. It’s just funny. You’ve got your war, honey, and I’ve got mine.”

  “Except you’re the enemy too.”

  “Yeah, it does have that war-between-the-states feel to it,” she said, and grinned. “There’s a guy in my group named Eric. You’d like him. He says it’s like having two people in the same body, one of them trying to live, the other one trying to kill the first one even if it means dying right along with.”

  “The good him and the bad him,” he said.

  “That’s a matter of perspective. I mean, his immune system thinks it’s being pretty heroic. Little white cells swimming around high-fiving each other. Hard to convince those guys to stop doing their jobs.”

  Renz shook his head. Anna’s fingers found his, knitting with them. The air purifier let out a pop and then fell back to its normal grinding.

  “Is everyone in your group that grim?”

  “They haven’t gotten to a place where they divide children into wireds and duds, but yes, there’s a grimmish streak to them.”

  “Sounds like Marquez’s kind of people.”

  “And how is the group mind?” Anna asked.

  “Pretty freaked about the New York thing.”

  “So what exactly happened?”

  He wasn’t supposed to tell her. He did.

  “Something up there—one level of complexity up from us—is starting to figure out how affect us,” the man said. “The question is what we’re going to do about it. And the answer is nothing. What we have to do is nothing. Go on with our work, the same as we always have. Let me explain why that’s critically important.

  “So far, the anomalies all have the same structure. They’re essentially propaganda. We see the enemy approaching us in a friendly, maybe conciliatory manner. We start thinking of them as cute little girls and nice old women. Or else we’re flooded with death reports that remind us that people we care about may die. That we might.

  “And maybe we take that into the field with us. In a struggle between two hive minds, that kind of weakening of the opposition would be a very good move. Imagine how easy it would be to win a fistfight if you could convince the other guy’s muscles that they really liked you. The whole thing would be over like that,” the man said, snapping.

  “We all need to be aware. We all need to keep in mind what’s going on, but if we change our behavior, it wins. Let the other side get soft, that’s fine, but we can’t afford to. If this thing up there fails, it may give up the strategy. If we let it get a toehold—if what it’s doing works—there’s no reason to think it’ll ever stop.

  “Now, there is some good news. Some of you already know this. There are chatter reports that these incidents are happening to terrorist brigades too, so maybe one of these things is on our side. If that’s the case, we just need to make sure the bad guys get soft before we do.”

  Renz shook his head. His mind felt heavy, stuffed with cotton. Marquez touched his arm.

  “You okay?”

  “Why does he think there’s two?”

  “What?”

  The man was going on, saying something else. Renz leaned in to Marquez, whispering urgently.

  “Two. Why does he think there are two of these things? If there’s only one, then it’s not a war. If this is … why would it be a fight and not a disease? Why couldn’t it be telling us that this isn’t supposed to be the way things are? Maybe the world’s like Anna.”

  “What’s the difference?” Marquez asked.

  “With a disease you try to get better,” Renz said. “With a war, you just want to win.”

  “Now before we go on,” the man on the stage said, “there are a couple of things I want to make clear.”

  He raised his hand, index finger raised to make his point, but the words—whatever they were—died before he spoke them. Renz’s link dropped, Pauel and Paasikivi and Thorn vanishing, Marquez only a body beside him and not someone in his mind. There was a half-second of dead silence as each agent in the room individually realized what was happening. In the breathless pause, Renz wondered if Anna was on the net and how quickly she would hear what had happened. He heard Marquez mutter shit before the first explosions.

  Concussion pressed the breath out of him. The dull feeling that comes just after a car wreck filled him, and the world turned into a chaos of running people, shouted orders, the bright, acidic smell of explosives. Renz stumbled toward the exits at the side of the hall, but stopped before he reached them. It was where they’d expect people to go—where many of the agents were going. Marquez had vanished into the throng, and Renz reflexively tried to open the link to him. Smoke roiled at the high ceiling like storm cloud. Another more distant explosion came.

  The auditorium was nearly empty now. A series of bombs had detonated on the right side of the hall—rows of seats were gone. The speaker lay quietly dead where he’d stood, body ripped by shrapnel. Fire spread as Renz watched. He wondered if the others were all right—Paasikivi and Thorn and Pauel. Maybe they’d been attacked too.

  There were bodies in the wreckage. He went through quickly, the air was thickening. Dead. Dead. Dead. The first living person was man a little older than he was, lying on the stairs. Salt-and-pepper hair, dark skin, wide hands covered in blood.

  “We have to get out,” Renz said. “Can you walk?”

  The man looked at him, gaze unfocussed.

  “There’s a fire,” Renz said. “It’s an attack. We have to get out.”

  Something seemed to penetrate. The man nodded, and Renz took his arm, lifted him up. Together they staggered out. Someone behind them was yelling, calling for help.

  “I’ll be back,” Renz called over his shoulder. “I’ll get this guy out and I’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t know if it was true. Outside, the street looked like an anthill that a giant child had kicked over. Emergency vehicles, police, agents. Renz got his ward to an ambulance. The medic stopped him when he turned to go back.

  “You stay here,” the medic said.

  “There’s still people in there,” Renz said. “I have to go back. I’m fine, but I have to go back.”

  “You’re not fine,” the medic said, and pulled him gently down. Renz shook his head, confused, until the medic pointed at his arm. A length of m
etal round as a dime and long as a pencil stuck out of his flesh. Blood had soaked his shirt.

  “Oh,” Renz said. “I … I hadn’t noticed.”

  The medic bent down, peering into his eyes.

  “You’re in shock,” he said. “Stay here.”

  Renz did as he was told. The shapes moving in the street seemed to lose their individuality—a great seething mass of flesh and metal, bricks and fire, moving first one way and then another. He saw it as a single organism, and then as people, working together. Both interpretations made sense.

  Firemen appeared, their hoses blasting, and the air smelled suddenly of water. He tried to link to Marquez, but nothing came up. Someone bound his arm, and he let them. It was starting to hurt now, a dull, distant throbbing.

  He caught sight of a girl as she slipped into a doorway. So far, no one else seemed to have noticed her. Renz pushed himself up with his good arm and walked to her.

  But she wasn’t the same—not another ghost of Samara. This child was older, though only by a year or two. Her skin was deep olive, her hair and eyes black. Flames glittered in her eyes. Her coat was thick and bulky even though it was nearly summer. She looked at him and smiled. Her expression was beatific.

  “We have to stop this,” he said. “It’s not war, it’s a sickness. It’s a fever. We’re all part of the same thing, and it’s dying. How are we going to make this stop?”

  He was embarrassed to be crying in front of a stranger, much less a child. He couldn’t stop it. And it was stupid. Even in his shock, he knew that if there was something up there, some hive mind sick and dying in its bed, he could no more reach it by speaking to this girl than by shouting at the sky. Could no more talk it out of what was happening than he could save Anna by speaking to her blood.

  Renz saw the girl before him shift inside her coat, and understood. An Arab girl in New York in a bulky coat. A second attack to take out the emergency services answering the first one.