by Linda Nagata
“Yes. I suppose she would.”
Sandor could almost feel the heat rising off Fox’s head as his fine brain mulled this bit of information. “You don’t object, do you?” Sandor pressed. “You’re not on the cops’ side in this?”
Fox looked startled. “No. Of course not. She can do what she likes with it. It’s her business. In fact, it could benefit—” He caught himself. His cheeks reddened.
“What, Dad?”
“Sometimes I think I’ve run too many equations in my life,” he said. “Everything that enters my mind seems to emerge in terms of costs and benefits. I don’t intend it that way. It just happens. But I’ll say it outright. If Phousita takes Bohr’s Maker back to Earth, that’ll be one more distraction to pull the cops off our tails. And if she manages to keep her freedom and her life, then the status quo will have to change. Every new House that grows from the propagules will look hopelessly conservative next to the society she could create.”
“Will you help her, then?”
“I’ll take it up with the Board,” Fox said.
Sandor frowned at him. That was a Fox stock response.
“Well, it shouldn’t be a problem convincing them,” Fox said defensively. “Assuming, of course, that any of us live.”
They were silent for a while. Then Sandor asked tentatively, “Dad? Nikko didn’t know any more about this than I did, right?”
Fox stared at his hands for a long moment. “Secrecy was so important,” he muttered. “Until a few days ago, only a handful of us knew.”
“Nikko never would have gone after Bohr’s Maker if you’d let him in on your plans. But you didn’t trust him, did you?”
“Nikko had his own agenda. I—” His voice broke off. He bowed his head into a framework of fingers made clawlike by tension. “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he muttered. “Nikko would have gone after the Bohr Maker anyway. He wanted to live. He didn’t want to be reduced to code. He went after the Bohr Maker—and he forced us to act.”
Sandor found it hard to be angry. He’d paid in plenty for Nikko’s adventurism. But he’d found Phousita too. “Where is she?” he asked Fox.
The old man nodded, his mood dark and heavy, as if he sensed he would soon lose his son again. “I’ll take you to her.”
She was stretched out on the floor of a transit bubble, in the comatose state Fox had described. Sandor kissed her and called her name until she smiled. A moment later her eyelids fluttered open.
Phousita stretched and looked around, to find herself in an expanded transit bubble, one that was tall enough to stand in, long enough to walk five or six paces. Sandor gazed at her questioningly. She turned her hands palm up and shrugged. “You were right,” she said. “I have learned to move on.” The glands on her palms glistened in the cold blue light. She reached out to touch Sandor’s face, relishing the sense of his reality. Not everything had been left behind.
He pressed her palm against his cheek. “I heard you were under a long time. I’m so glad you came back.”
“It was hard. Sandor? I want to go home.”
“I know. I told Fox. The House will help you.” He kissed her hand. “I’m going with you.”
She smiled. She already knew that, but it was good to hear. “I’ve been exploring the House.”
“Then you know it’s coming apart. I can’t believe it. Fox never even hinted that anything like this was possible. I knew the biogenesis function was a way to replicate the House, but I never thought— Well, it’s my home. It’s been my home. And it’s about to tear itself apart. That’s staggering. It’s like I’m a ghost inside a dream world. Sometimes I wonder if any of this is real.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. She could taste reality in every molecule that crossed the thresholds of her body. Sometimes, it was all too real.
“The funny thing is,” Sandor went on, “I’m not afraid. We can’t stop what’s happening. We just have to ride with it. I just wish Nikko was here.”
Chapter
28
“Something big is happening in there.”
Kirstin stood on the bridge of the Galapagos, studying the young officer who’d made this statement. He’d just returned from the city—or what was left of it—and fear showed in his eyes. “The House is dissolving. The forest is dying. Things are just . . . vanishing, being sucked up by the walls.” His eyes were wide with horror. “Even the people. We encountered a group of children. We tried to get them to come with us, but they ran away. I know we should have let them go, but—everything’s falling apart in there! So we pursued. They couldn’t outrun us. So they just stepped into a wall and disappeared.”
He shook his head in grim disbelief. “They never came out again. The wall hardened behind them. Then the passage started to close. The walls pressed in on us from both sides. So we fled. We ran. And the corridor sealed behind us.
“Everything was changing. Connecting passages that had existed only a few minutes before were gone. We didn’t know where we were, or where we were going. But it was obvious that we were being driven, with no option to turn, or go back, until finally we entered a huge cavern. Half a klick high but no more than a hundred meters wide. We met some other patrols there. Their experiences were the same as ours.
“Together we moved through the hallway. Tremors shook the floor every few minutes. A few civilians began to show up, looking dazed and scared. None of them were corporate citizens. They were all here on visas. We escorted them. Not that we could have offered them any protection against the sheer power of this place. It could have closed in at any time and crushed us so easily. But it let us go. I’m convinced of that. We were being forced out.
“The hallway eventually brought us to the elevator. It was the first recognizable feature we’d seen in hours. And it was working, praise the Holy Mother. We came up the tether without further incident.”
His breathing was harsh and labored, and he paused in an obvious effort to gather his composure. When he spoke again, his gaze fixed on Kirstin. “I don’t know if we can go back. This place doesn’t want us. It’s like a monster, out of control.”
Kirstin retired for an hour to a small cabin aboard the Galapagos. She turned the lights down low and sat in darkness for several minutes, considering her career. It would be over if she could not somehow retrieve Summer House from the brink. She shuddered to think of the political consequences if she were forced to use the nuclear missiles carried in the armory of Galapagos. But use them she would, if it came to that.
Ongoing footage of the debacle on Summer House was still being transmitted to the newsfeeds, though the pictures seemed to be coming from robotic cameras now. She watched them for a while, trying to understand what was happening. Why had the House reacted so powerfully when wrongdoing had to be limited to only a few, albeit powerful, corporate citizens? Summer House was a graduated democracy. It made no sense.
Unless . . . could one of her assumptions be wrong?
Her heart began to beat in powerful strokes. She’d come here in pursuit of the Bohr Maker. It had eluded her for months. But in the end it had been destroyed by the Galapagos’s missiles, in a firestorm worse than the one that had consumed Leander . . . or at least that’s what she’d been told. She hadn’t checked the records herself. Maybe it was time she did.
She called up the video record of the missile strike on a wall display, then frowned at the lousy image. The police cruiser had been standing off nearly a hundred kilometers when it fired at the absurd little vessel. The magnification resulted in a slightly blurred image. And the passengers were in shadow. Still, she could make out two tiny figures floating at the end of a tether. And there was no mistaking Nikko’s spidery frame.
The Galapagos fired its missile. It was moving almost too fast to follow. But obviously Nikko knew it was coming. Kirstin watched him bound to the prow of the ship, detach the tether that held his two human companions, and fling them toward the station’s arc. She watched him jump.
Seconds later, the missile reached its target and the little ship evaporated in a fireball. But the passengers were already far away. The video didn’t follow them as they fell toward the station.
Kirstin couldn’t be certain they’d made contact. But a chill ran through her just the same. In a sudden gestalt vision she imagined the Maker taking up residence in the organic neural network that controlled the House. If the Maker could transform a pathetic prostitute like Phousita into a witch capable of eluding the best efforts of the police to capture her, what could it do in the vastly larger and more complex neural system that regulated the physiology of Summer House? What better explanation for the sudden, disastrous demise of a thriving corporate entity?
But had it really happened?
She might never know. Every effort by her staff to penetrate the shield of defensive Makers that guarded the hidden portions of the House had failed. She could make no detailed assessment of the situation. But the mere possibility that the Maker had colonized the neural structure of the House was enough to ignite in her an instinctive terror.
Her thoughts turned to the remaining missiles in the Galapagos’s armory. Nobody would be able to tell truth from rumor if the House were to vanish in a fireball of its own.
Sterilization was a word the police rarely used. It didn’t sit well with the civilian population. But they understood its necessity.
Kirstin reviewed the video once again, watching Nikko with a sense of grudging admiration as he deliberately dove into the abyss. Who else but Nikko would arrange for ten thousand innocent lives to share his funeral pyre?
But Kirstin was moving ahead of the game. It was not too late. She might still be able to convince some corporate citizens to abandon their lost cause before the police strike. She could at least try. Such a show of magnanimity under extreme circumstances would be good for her image. The Congressional inquiry that would inevitably follow this affair would be blunted if she could show she’d taken every possible step to save lives, if she could show that in the end the citizens of Summer House had decided their own fate.
She summoned the commander of the Galapagos to her quarters. Beryl arrived, looking tired, worried, and older than a Commonwealth citizen should. Kirstin had felt that way only a few minutes ago. Now that she understood the situation though, her vitality had returned. She looked forward to the next few hours. “Recall any of our people who are still in the city,” she instructed. “The Galapagos will disengage from the docks within half an hour. You will take the ship at least a hundred klicks off the city and you will wait there, with your remaining complement of missiles poised to fire.”
“What have you found?” Beryl asked, her expression carefully neutral. But Kirstin could almost scent her sudden fear.
“I have evidence that the House neural systems have been colonized by Bohr’s Maker.”
In reality the evidence was no more than speculation, but she needed to be sure of Beryl’s unhesitating cooperation. It was not every day a police commander was asked to destroy an entire city.
Her old friend was quick to point this out. “If you’re considering sterilization, we’re required to seek Congressional approval.”
“I’ve already applied informally, and the response was favorable. But you know how slow the committee works. We might not be able to wait for an official sanction. There may be no time.”
Nobody knew the committee better than Kirstin. The Congressional representatives would never have the spine to order the necessary job done. After the fact, though—that was different. When the deed was complete and there was nothing left to fear, the committee would cooperate. It would be in their interests to shore up the good name of the Commonwealth police.
Still, the commander hesitated.
So Kirstin leaned. “Even if the formal approval fails to come through, we are first sworn to protect the Commonwealth, and only secondly, to uphold the letter of the law. If you believe as I do, you won’t hesitate to risk a reprimand in the interest of the state.” For a moment she thought she’d been too heavy-handed. But no. The circumstance called for extreme professions of faith.
“All right,” Beryl said slowly. “You’ll be with me anyway. You can give the final order.”
Kirstin charmed her with a slight, indulgent smile. “I’ll give the final order,” she agreed. “But I won’t be with you. I’m going down into the city to see if I can persuade any of the inhabitants to come out. We’ll hold off as long as we can. There are thousands of human lives at stake, after all.”
Beryl’s brow furrowed with doubt. “But we’ve tried persuasion. No one’s responded. You could be trapped in the House.”
Kirstin shrugged. “This corpse is disposable. I’ll stay until we’re forced to launch the missiles. Then I’ll upload a ghost.”
Her old friend nodded slowly. “As you say then, Kirstin. But damn, this is a bad end.”
Chapter
29
Nikko had been taken in by dreamtime for a long, uncertain era. The House nourished him, and he began to heal, at least partially. He sensed Phousita’s presence in the darkness, a fleeting awareness, no more, nothing he could pin down. He dreamed of Sandor. Strength seemed to be returning to his fingers, his hands, his arms. Or maybe that was just part of the dream.
Then change set upon him. He felt the darkness grip him with a determined tide. He began to see occasional lights: nebulous blurs of electric blue that flowed past him, always too far away to touch.
Then ahead, the darkness finally began to ease. Blackness became a dark gray that rapidly lightened to blazing white. Firm ground congealed under his feet. The tide pulled away from him. His kisheer shivered and peeled away from his face. He felt the light touch of air against his skin. He breathed it in: it was supercold and terribly thin. Immediately, he knew that something was wrong.
He tried to look. The light wounded his dark-adjusted eyes. He squinted against it, to see where he’d emerged.
Astonishment took him. He gazed at a vast, utterly empty hall. The nearest walls stood at least fifty meters apart. They rose in parallel, like the faces of a deep chasm, until far overhead they finally curved together to form a rounded ceiling. Even in the easy gravity of Summer House, he didn’t think he could throw a ball far enough to touch that roof.
The hallway was long too. He couldn’t see either end. It curved away at an impressive distance on both sides.
The walls were smooth, a fleshy brown surface marbled with black. Light came from oblong, glowing panels set high overhead. His eyes were adjusting now, and he realized the brightness he’d perceived was only an artifact of his night-adjusted vision. The empty hallway was dimly lit. And even as he watched, the light slowly faded.
His camera snaked over his shoulder, dutifully recording the scene. Nikko’s gaze fixed on it a moment while his heart boomed in deep, frightened beats. There was something familiar about this hallway.
Then he remembered. It was only a few days ago. He’d seen a holographic simulation running in Fox’s apartment. The House had consumed all its inner structures while dividing itself into hundreds of discrete cells designed to part along the open channels that separated them.
He felt as if he’d been transported into that simulation. This hall was a channel between groups of cells. When the process reached its conclusion, this great chasm would peel open to the void.
He spun around and threw himself at the wall from which he’d just emerged. No longer was it soft and pliant. The camera reared back, recording his hands as they scrabbled in panic at the rapidly hardening surface. He pounded his fists against the wall, leaving small indentations. “Take me back!” he screamed. “Take me back.”
His voice echoed through the cavern, startling him.
“Fox!” he cried. “Hear me.”
But how could Fox hear him? Nikko had no atrium. His voice could not get beyond these walls.
He stood, shoulders heaving. He’d become an invisible man. Without the atrium,
Summer House could not recognize him. And if Summer House didn’t know him, then Fox wouldn’t even be aware that he was here. . . .
A sense of estrangement washed over him. He felt as if the pleniverse had cast him out, locked him somewhere outside itself in dreadful isolation.
The camera slowly drifted across his field of view. He glanced up at it. The lens was focused on him. The Dull Intelligence must have tired of the view of the darkening hall. He stared at it, an icy fury running through his veins. His hands twitched, blue fingers knocking against his thigh as he fought an irrational urge to tear the tentacle out of the camera body!
Suddenly, his hands went still.
The camera. The camera could send transmissions into the House plexus . . . if the plexus still existed . . . could he communicate with Fox?
He reached for the chest panel. He couldn’t remember Fox’s address. That had been lost along with the atrium. It didn’t matter. He coded the transmission emergency priority, continuous feed. The camera hovered in front of his face, sending his image out in real time to whoever chose to receive it. “Fox,” he said. “It’s Nikko.”
A tremor shook the great hall. The floor buckled under his feet, tossing him to his hands and knees. The walls groaned. The ground subsided. Or perhaps the ceiling rose, he couldn’t be sure, but the lofty space grew even taller.
The walls were changing too. The black marbling was expanding. He touched a vein of it on the wall behind him. It was smooth and very, very hard.
In the simulation it had taken only a few seconds before the House was ready to divide. In reality he should have more time. But how much? Surely when the wall became all black, fission would not be far behind.
Startled, Phousita opened her eyes. “Nikko?” she whispered. Sandor gazed at her, his eyes wide. He’d picked up the transmission too.