by Linda Nagata
As an historian, he was very conscious of the political shock waves the theft of the Bohr Maker might generate. At minimum, the historical record he was compiling would demonstrate to every citizen what a gauzy thing police security must always be. Beyond that, anything was possible. In a world where police Makers were no longer supreme, what law could be enforced? He could envision the Commonwealth crumbling around him, an outmoded fortress to be ripped apart molecule by molecule, opening the way to a new and unpredictable torrent of social change.
He touched the small control pad on his chest strap. The camera lens reared up on its tentacle, then the Dull Intelligence guided it around to focus on his face. He gazed at the glassy eye, then began to dictate.
“Phousita tells me I’ve been asleep three days. If that’s so, then I’ve commanded Arif’s body six days.” He hesitated at that statistic. For six days he’d kept the slave atrium in command mode. Without respite. Never letting Arif assert his own will. Actually denying him existence.
Six days.
“Love and Nature,” he whispered. “I would never have done that to the animals on Summer House.”
The camera stared blankly. His gaze cut away. He glanced at the cabin door, then wandered out to the living room in search of Phousita.
She emerged from the kitchen, carrying a tray that held a huge, steaming platter. A sweet, spicy odor filled the room. Nikko suddenly realized this body was very hungry. But Phousita had already known that. He felt a sudden flash of anger at the way she’d anticipated him.
She set the platter on a low table. “The ship’s kitchen has made food for you. Come eat. You must care for Arif’s body.”
“I had no choice, you know,” he told her defiantly. “It was the only way I could get you out of the Spill.”
She glanced at him, her gaze softly chiding. Even Phousita knew that it was possible to ride an animal without being in command mode; that it was possible to occupy an atrium only as an observer. “Please eat.”
He glared at her, stubborn as a child, refusing what he really wanted. “What happened to Sandor?” he demanded.
“He’s with me.” She knelt beside the table, across from the platter of food. Her hands lay palm up in her lap, one nested in the other. The tiny glands shone like drops of water.
“What do you mean he’s with you? Did they execute him?”
“Yes. But I contain him, like a seed.”
“His pattern?”
She nodded. “There is a way to reduce the information of a man into a long, knotted string.”
“Condensed data. Can you really do that?” Could one tiny cell contain all the information necessary to construct a human being? That was the myth he lived by. He swallowed hard. “Can you restore him?”
“I don’t know yet.” Her gaze shifted minutely, as if he’d touched a sore point. “Come eat. You must care for Arif’s body.”
Arif’s body. She wouldn’t let him forget it.
He sat down on the carpet. She’d brought him diced white meat laden with oils and spices, served in a papaya shell, with fruits all around. He picked up the chopsticks and began eating.
The flavor exploded in his mouth: luscious fats; protein-laden meat. As he ate he watched Phousita. She sat beside him, her eyes demurely downcast. But she would glance at him occasionally from under her long lashes, with an inquiring look, as if to ask Was the food good? Was everything all right?
He’d come to know her on the long ride up the elevator. She was a precious thing. So sweet. So pretty. Yet she made him nervous. He was afraid of her.
Not because she held the talents of Bohr’s Maker in her hands—though he might have to reevaluate his attitude there. She’d just shown him she could be a tyrant like any other individual, sending him into sleep for three days to teach him what it was like to be controlled.
Or had she only sought relief for Arif? The solace of sleep. Kindness glistened like water in her hands.
Yet he feared her. Because despite her pliable, inoffensive nature, she still held him to account for what he was doing to Arif.
He took another bite of chicken, but it didn’t taste so good anymore.
The situation couldn’t be helped, he told himself. It was him or Arif. He had nowhere else to go. If he tried to move through the net, Kirstin’s filters would trap him.
But Phousita was there with him, her sympathetic gaze grazing him like a soft ray of solar radiation, which felt warm and good in the moment, but would inevitably develop into a burn.
He laid the chopsticks down on the table. His belly felt mildly nauseous.
“Tuan?” Phousita asked in concern.
He stared at his hands. Arif’s hands. To be helpless was a horrible fate.
“Too much of my life I’ve used people,” he told her. “It’s an old habit. I excused myself on the grounds that I was a dying man. I had to do what was necessary to survive, you see?”
She only gazed at him. She didn’t even nod. But he knew she understood. She understood everything. She told him: “I’m making a home for you, tuan. Here in my head. You’ll be able to be yourself there.”
He nodded. She’d told him this before. She’d started a Commonwealth atrium growing in her head. He would inhabit it, and he would feel real. But he would not be real. He was dead. “How long until it’s ready?”
Her gaze slid away guiltily. “Several more days, I think.”
“Arif won’t be able to survive me that long, will he?”
“He will, Ghost-Nikko. If you let him go.”
Arif was being slowly crushed out of existence by Nikko’s dominating presence. Even if he survived, he would not be sane after such a long time as a prisoner in his own body.
Nikko let a shaky breath slide out of his lungs. Arif’s lungs. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let him go.”
He instructed the atrium to disengage command mode. Control slid away from him. It was a peculiar sensation. He’d half expected to feel divorced from this body, but no. Its physical presence continued unchanged. He felt everything as he had before. The input remained just the same. But he could no longer output his own will to the apparatus of this body. It no longer reflected his emotions. He could not speak or blink or scratch. It was a terrifying sensation.
He almost seized command mode back again. But he refrained. Arif had felt this way for days. For days. Love and Nature.
Disorder swept across him as he thought about it. So many days. How could he have done this to any man?
The body began to stir. Its heart began to race. Then all the muscles tensed at once and Arif screamed: a long, long roar of agony. Love and Nature.
Abruptly, he lunged at Phousita. He grabbed her by the hair, struck her viciously across the face, berating her savagely in a language Nikko did not understand.
Nikko plunged back into command mode. The body froze, its lungs heaving in exertion. “Listen to me!” Nikko bellowed, knowing that Arif would hear and understand him. “I am still here. I have not gone away.
“I am haunting you.
“Move against Phousita like that and I will enslave you again. And I will never let you go. Never.”
Phousita stared up at him from the floor, wide-eyed, a bruise darkening her cheek. “Please let him go, Ghost-Nikko.”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
She nodded. “Just please let him go.”
Despair was difficult to avoid. Nikko felt himself caught in a nebulous existence. He had no way to interact with the world. He was chained to Arif, yes. The slave atrium forced him to experience every move Arif made, every breath, every itch, every time he took a shit. Everything. Unremittingly.
But he couldn’t manifest as a fully-realized ghost—the stunted slave atrium didn’t allow for that.
He couldn’t divorce himself from Arif’s senses—the atrium wouldn’t permit that either.
He could not sleep—not even when Arif slept. Those were the worst times. He could see nothing then. Behind Arif
’s closed eyes the world was endlessly dark. All he could do was listen to Arif breathe, until the slow, drawing, hesitating grumble of air in and out of lungs he could not command threatened to drive him from the atrium.
But he couldn’t leave the atrium. There was no place to go but into the net, and that would be deadly. All the data Gates would be set to filter his pattern. Kirstin would pluck him out of the lightspeed transfer of data and erase him. Or worse, hold him in a prisoner plexus, jacketed by a program that would not let him write his own destination.
So he was trapped in a hyperconscious hell.
Arif was alone in the living room. Phousita had gone into the bathroom to shower. They’d been in the ship two weeks. Arif was much calmer now, calculating. He lounged on the carpet, his gaze locked on the smooth ceiling. Nikko experienced with him the sensations of his body. It was changing. Phousita must have touched him, because the livid yellow glow of his clown face had faded. His cheeks weren’t so prominent. His huge, hooked nose had begun to recede. Nikko was aware of all this. But he had no access to Arif’s thoughts.
“Can you hear me?” Arif said, in a gruff, unforgiving voice.
Phousita was out of the room.
“Can you hear me, Ghost-Nikko? When my first master sent ghosts to enslave me, they would talk to me sometimes. Can you?”
Nikko thought about it. After ceding control of this body he’d felt helpless. But the slave atrium must have functioned, at least in part, as a voyeur’s habitat. It would make sense to have equipped it with at least this level of communication. He explored the system, and shortly, found a voice link.
Like this? he asked.
“That’s right,” Arif said. “I can hear you.” He chuckled darkly. “Do you like this body?”
Nikko felt repulsed by the question. Not much, he growled.
“No? My master’s clients paid a lot to experience this body. But then, they were always fascinated with freaks.”
You’re beginning to heal, Nikko pointed out, in an effort to be friendly.
Arif overlooked it. “You being a freak yourself,” he said, “maybe it’s not so interesting to you.”
Nikko’s patience was never more than a veneer. What do you want, Arif?
“You owe me. I got you out of the Spill.”
Ha. I got you out.
“Then you are my new master.”
The accusation stung with truth. Nikko denied it anyway. No!
“I am not your slave?”
Of course not. He found the direction of this conversation excruciating. He didn’t want to think about where he was or what he had done to Arif. What he was still doing. Love and Nature. To be haunted by an unwanted ghost, to have your every action, your every move surveilled by someone you loathed. It was intolerable.
Arif chuckled. “You need me to survive, don’t you, Ghost-Nikko?”
Grudgingly, he admitted it. Yes.
“Then you owe me.”
In the equation of their relationship, Nikko knew he did owe something. What do you want from me?
“Teach me about your world. I want to know everything you know.”
Nikko reacted with open surprise. Do you?
“Of course, Ghost-Nikko. Even with such a fine master as you, I don’t enjoy being a slave.”
They started with the ship’s systems. Nikko withheld the command codes that would permit a change to be entered into the ship’s navigation system. But he taught Arif how to use the console to access the Commonwealth net. If you had a legal atrium, you wouldn’t need the console, Nikko told him.
“Then I could throw you out, couldn’t I?”
I’ll go as soon as Phousita’s ready to take me.
“Think of another plan, Ghost-man,” Arif warned. “She’s not for you. I won’t have you fuckin’ her in dreamland.”
Anger was a difficult emotion to maintain without the physical expression of a body. But Nikko managed it anyway. You’re the slave, Arif. Not me. I’ll leave you whenever I please.
“Not for Phousita. You won’t be curling up inside of her while I’m alive.”
Think you can stop it? You’re not her master.
“You say that? You don’t know her at all.”
It went on like that a lot. They were two rats gnawing at each other in an empty cage. It was horrible.
But it was better than the helpless isolation he might have had. And by teaching Arif, he bought himself access to the data net.
After the Congressional hearing, news of the Bohr Maker’s escape had gone public. It had become a favorite subject of talk shows. People claimed they were frightened, but most grinned when they said it, as if they were caught up in the giddy hysteria of an interactive horror flick and not dealing with reality at all. Maybe life in the Commonwealth was too secure.
Phousita sat with Arif, watching the shows in her quiet, patient way. She seemed tired most of the time. She didn’t say much, and she wouldn’t let Arif move on her in a sexual way—much to Nikko’s relief.
Days passed, and they drew nearer to Summer House. Arif began to look like a real man. As the goon’s mask faded, his true face emerged: a smooth, powerful visage, bisected by the harsh ridge of his nose, shadowed by heavy brows. A sparse black beard sprouted on his chin. Nikko convinced him to record the slow transition on the camera pack.
Phousita was changing too. Day by day she grew taller. Already her head reached Arif’s chest. Kirstin, Nikko thought, would be pleased at this surfeit of normalcy.
They were four days out of Summer House when Phousita made her announcement. She and Arif had just finished dinner. Now they were lounging on the soft carpets, watching an Asian medieval drama that was playing on the net. Arif had his head pillowed in her lap. She looked down at him, and spoke suddenly, without preamble. “My atrium is ready. I can take Ghost-Nikko from you now.”
Arif looked up at her. Nikko could feel the sudden tension in his body. “No.”
One word. Phousita’s lips started to tremble.
Arif raised his hand. His hard fingers pressed against her throat. “If you say the address, I’ll tear your tongue out,” he warned her. “Nikko is not going to have you.”
“But it’s best, Arif. It’s torture for him to be with you. He has no body. But he’ll be able to feel real if he’s with me.” She moved her hands toward his face. The glands on her palms glistened in the low light.
Arif sprang away from her with feral speed. “Don’t touch me with your spells,” he warned.
Her hands closed into fists. She crouched in front of him, a spark of anger in her eyes. Nikko watched it all, debating with himself. He wanted to slip into command mode; to scream at Phousita, demand that she tell him the address so he could come to her now. But that would enrage Arif.
Arif glared down at Phousita. “Stupid country girl. You think you don’t want me anymore. You’d rather be fucking Nikko. Or that dead boy I found for you in the river. New gods and heroes for your bed. Queen of witches. You’ll have to kill me first.”
Her anger burned like a black fire in her eyes. “Like I killed our children?”
He sprang into the air. His leg shot out. The ball of his foot struck her cheek a terrible blow. Her head snapped back and she crumpled to the carpet. “Queen of witches!” he screamed at her. “You killed all of us with your spells!”
Nikko tried to slip into command mode. Tried again, but he couldn’t find the proper path.
It was gone.
Arif seemed suddenly aware of his efforts. His body went still, his head cocked as if listening. “Ghost-Nikko?” he asked in a soft, dangerous voice. “Aren’t you going to stop me from beating her?”
Phousita lay motionless on the floor. Nikko tried again for command, but the mode no longer existed. Arif’s atrium had changed. Phousita had given him his freedom.
Arif realized this in the same moment as Nikko. His cheeks stretched as a grin spread across his face. “Ghost-Nikko, the Queen of witches has given me a rich man’s at
rium. Now I’m free—to throw you out. Go now. Or I will erase you.”
You bastard. You can’t go on treating her like this—
“Get out of my head!” Arif roared. “Get out now! Right now! Or I’ll wipe you out of existence.”
There was no sanctuary in the net. Kirstin would be waiting for him there. You goon-faced bastard!
“Go!”
He had no choice. He addressed himself to Fox, at Summer House—though he had no expectation of actually arriving there.
He downloaded.
Chapter
19
“Get up, Phousita! Get up!” Arif screamed. His voice seemed to come to her from the other side of distant mountains, muted thunder rolling in from over the horizon to fill the air above this forested valley with a gloom so thick it threatened to bow the treetops.
Phousita huddled between the knees of a monstrous tree, its surface roots enclosing her like walls. She was naked, soaked and shaking. Her own disembodied voice wailed far above her head, haunting the rain-soaked canopy. The treetops tossed in storm winds.
Too much! She’d tried to do too much. There were limits to everything, even the power of the evil sorcerer.
“Get up!” Arif’s distant, monstrous voice continued to demand. “Come back to me. Please. I need you.”
She’d tried to divide her attention between too many tasks. She’d set herself to healing Arif’s atrium and face. She’d set her own body back on its natural course of growth, enhancing it with an atrium of her own design that went far beyond the pattern laid down by the Commonwealth. She’d filled up the atrium with this forest world synthesized from her borrowed memories of Summer House—and then she’d set herself to reconstructing a ghost of Sandor from the knotted string of data that pretended to describe him.
It had been too much.
Sometimes in the Spill there would be only a handful of rice for the evening meal. Phousita would divide it. Everybody got a taste; nobody got enough to matter.