Adam Roberts - Stone(2002)

by Anonymous Author

  Rain continued falling, intensifying from the glittery drizzle that had been in the air when I stabbed Enkida and growing to the momentum of a proper storm. Drops gathered and swarmed over the flesh of the headless corpse, dribbling across her skin. Her flesh now looked lifeless as putty. I leant back, presenting my face to the heavens, letting the myriad fingertip-like touches of the raindrops play me like an instrument. I was crying, the heavens were crying.

  The storm grew, growled thunder, and then started to recede. I may have sat there for an hour. Possibly, it was only a few minutes.

  Then the rain stopped, and a rare break in the clouds sent a shiver of bright yellow sunlight dashing through the trees. It passed, warm, over my upturned face and was gone. I might even have slept, I was so tired. But I was recalled to myself by itches and stabs of pain in my legs, and I shook myself, and wiped the knife blade on some wet leaves from the tree under which I was sitting. Then I went over to examine the head.

  The dotTech had done a clever thing. This is how smart it is, the nanotechnology: it had realised that the head was severed from the body and it had closed down the blood and lymph vessels to preserve the precious blood in Enkida's brain where it would keep her alive, feeding a small quantity of oxygen to it that the machines themselves absorbed through the skin. But of course it would not be able to keep her alive indefinitely, separated from her body as she now was.

  When I returned to the head it was pulling itself through the grass and the mud, using its tongue. Or, rather, at first I thought it was using its tongue, although I was struck by how long and pale the tongue seemed to be. I had not remembered seeing her tongue being so lengthy, although (of course) lengthened tongues are a common enough fashion adaptation in the t'T. But when I picked the head up and examined it more closely I realised that it was not a tongue; it was a strange protrusion, made (I think) out of a protein-stiffened extrusion of mucus. The dotTech is smart; it is intelligent. Problem solving.

  It hoped to drag the head back to the headless body, and there to reposition severed head with severed neck. So it had resolved to reunite head and body. It could not organise the headless body, because such co-ordinated muscular action could only be marshalled from the brain stem. But once both were together again then the nano-machines could work their trillion-fold excellence, reconnect the muscles and skin, reanimate the nerve tissue. If I had left the scene, then Enkida would probably have been up and walking around in a matter of days.

  'No,' I said to the severed head. 'No, I think not.'

  I picked the head up by its ear. I would have picked it up by its hair, except that Enkida had cut her hair too short to allow purchase. The tongue slathered about in the air as I walked away from the corpse, making little whickering noises. 'No,' I said.

  The tongue withdrew inside Enkida's head like a beast into its lair.

  I walked for a little way holding the severed head, but soon enough I had to stop because I was crying so hard my shoulders were lurching and I lost my grip. The head rolled in the leaf mulch. I fell down, I think. My legs were hurting. I can't remember much of it. It has a dream-like quality in my memory.

  But I got to my feet, and picked up the head again. Whilst part of me was going through some kind of crisis, another part of me was coolly calculating how long the dotTech-assisted head would survive without a body. Probably no more than a few hours. The nano-machines could perhaps process a little oxygen out of the air and keep the brain aerated, if only at a very basic level; but it could not gather nutrients, process waste, do all the things that a body can do. Then I thought that if I buried it in the ground it would be even harder for the dotTech to access the necessary oxygen, and the head would die that much sooner. And moreover, besides anything else, burying it in mud would make it harder for the thing to move over the ground back to its body.

  I was carrying the head again by its ear. Showers of rain were scurrying through and back through the forest, as if the rainstorm were chasing itself. I could hear myself panting, very loud in my own ears.

  'Don't,' said the head, in a tiny, hissing little voice. 'Please, don't.'

  I was so surprised I dropped the head again. It took me a little time to work out what the dotTech must have done; it had managed to draw in air, into the cul-de-sac of its throat and into the cheeks too; now it was helping Enkida expel that air over her tongue and through her lips to form words. Without lungs as bellows or soundbox it was tinny and barely audible; the rushing and drumming of the rain almost drowned it out, but I heard it well enough.

  'Felo,' it said. 'Don't.'

  The head was lying on its left cheek on the grass.

  'I can't talk to you,' I said, my voice high-pitched and worried. I backed away, and had to stop myself. Then I squatted down. 'I can't be talking to you.'

  'Take me back,' hissed the head, its eyes open and staring at me. 'Not too late.'

  'Not talking to you,' I said, burying my face in the crook of my arm. 'You stop talking now.'

  'Put me back,' said the head, 'with.' Then it stopped, and I peeked a look at it. It was gathering air again into its cheeks, ready to speak some more.

  'No,' I said.

  'Put me back with,' it said, its eyes unblinking, 'my body, then I can be made right again.' 'No,' I said.

  It hissed something else, but incoherently. Then its lips were still.

  Rain hushing down.

  I sat and stared at the now motionless head for a long time. I do not know how long. Then I stood up, fevered and active, and broke off a living branch from a tree. Using that I dug a hole in the grass-bristled mud. When I had finished and gone over to get the head I became suddenly convinced that the hole was not deep enough, so I went back over and made it deeper, shovelling the sloppy dirt out in hurried gestures. Then I finally climbed out, and went over to the head. I tried to steel myself to pick it up again, but in the end I couldn't. Perhaps I am a coward. I used my foot, and started nudging the head towards the hole, as if I were playing a game of football. I was expecting it to say something, but it was silent. Finally I toppled it over the lip of the hole and in it fell, face down. Then, quickly, quickly, I kicked dirt in after it, over it, covering it and hiding it away. Burying and hiding it away.

  I made a poor job of it, probably; but I was very agitated. If only I could have your calmness and self-possession, stone! If only! In the event I started running almost before I had finished burying the thing, sprinting madly through the forest, veering away from treetrunks as they loomed up before me, skidding and bolting.

  Of course, with my legs so ill and sick, I slipped over. For a while I lay, shivering in the mud. I may have been shivering, or crying, I am not sure I remember.

  Then we come to a strange part in my own story, dear stone. I am not sure, indeed, that I could tell another person this part face-to-face. I am not proud of it. But you, stone; I can tell it to you. You understand the necessity of hardness in this world; you understand how it is only the boundary we establish around ourselves that fixes who we are. I imagine you, picked up by a large calloused hand, wiry hairs growing out of the backs of the fingers, the palm as creased as a map of star-routes through fast-space. I imagine the hand fitting you into a sling, the sling spinning and releasing you. I imagine you in free flight, and then thudding into flesh. Would you fret that you had been an instrument of death?

  After I had lain on the ground for a while, I began to calm a little. The image of the head, wriggling slowly across the mud, flipping out its elongated tongue, kept intruding on my thoughts. I couldn't stop it. 'It's buried now,' I told myself. Then I thought to myself that I couldn't leave the body simply lying there. Enkida and I had not travelled far from the port-town, only a few hours walking; others might come that way and see the body.

  I clambered to my feet and tried to orient myself. But it was hard to see which direction I should go. The trees all looked the same. The rain was coming down, getting in my eyes. I trailed from trunk to trunk, becoming increasing
ly desperate and alarmed. Finally I started running zigger-zagger, grabbing trunks and branches as I passed to swing myself around. In this miserable and agitated state I stumbled over the headless body inadvertently and sprawled in the mud.

  The corpse had not moved. I dragged myself up, muddy and chattering my teeth (although not with the cold, because the rain was perfectly warm). For a while I only looked at the thing. Then I started to think, and this is what I thought:

  I thought that my body was sick, possibly dying. I thought that my legs were raddled with infection and parasite infestation. I thought how miserable Iwas, how tired and run-down and above all I thought that if I only had some dotTech in my body, simple dotTech like any other citizen of the realms of t'T then I would feel better. My body would heal; I would regain my strength; I would be able to disguise myself.

  Then I thought: that body, headless as it is, is filled with Enkida's dotTech. Trillions of nano-machines still patrolling her bloodstream. What were they doing? There was nothing they could do. They were waiting, most likely, for the head to be reattached so that they could join in the enormous task of helping Enkida recover herself. But the head would never be attached. 'It's rotting in the dirt,' I said aloud, to try and stop my teeth from skittering together. 'It's rotting in the dirt.'

  So this is what I thought to myself: I should use the dotTech. I would only need a small population; it is in the operational parameters of nano-machines that from a certain base population the dotTech grows and self-replicates, drawing raw materials from its host. At this time, it is not unknown for people to start craving peculiar foods; as it had been with myself in jail, when the AI was building itself in my brain. I might eat dirt, for there are metals in that; or raw meat, bark, anything. But in a short time I would have my own population of nano-machines. The tiny machines that had serviced Enkida's body would service mine.

  I took out my knife (I am not proud that I did this), went over to the corpse and started cutting pieces of meat from the bones. The meat was raw, but I was too tired and the air was too full of falling water for me to try and light a fire. I ate it uncooked, whole strands slipping down my throat like raw eel. I was hungry, but this was not a meal I could relish. I tried drinking the blood too, knowing that the greatest accumulation of dotTech would be found there, but I had no container and the fluid slipped through my fingers as if it had a mind of its own. Which, in a sense, it did have – although how or why then dotTech would move the blood through my fingers to fall to the mud I don't know.

  I very quickly grew tired, or sick, of this meal. So I stopped. I reasoned with myself that I had devoured enough dotTech to rebuild my own population. Then I left the cut-up body and walked through the trees until Iwas out of sight of it. I curled myself around the base of a tree and fell asleep.

  Stone, I was exhausted. Believe me I was. I don't know how long I slept. I woke, feeling ill and still tired, but resolved that I could not afford to let the body lie in the open any longer.

  I had lost my branch, the one I had used to dig the hole for the head. There were some boughs lying around but they were mostly rotten; so I was forced to tear off a fresh limb - not an easy thing. I stripped it of its greasy twigs (with more difficulty) and eventually began carving a shallow trench out of the mud. I intended a deep grave, but I quickly became very tired. I stopped and considered for a while; it hardly needed to escape detection forever. In a week or two I would leave this world, probably never to return. (No, I decided, looking at the headless body in the mud: certainly never to return). I would be long gone.

  So in the end I did little more than scrape out a shallow dent in the earth, bundle the body in, and pack the mud over the top with my hands. At the end of the process I was left with a very obvious hump in the ground, but I was too tired and dispirited to do any more. I staggered off through the trees.

  I had to consider what to do next. Things were becoming intolerable. Now that I had disposed of Enkida, it occurred to me to wonder how many other people might have heard the rumours she had heard; how widespread the news of my escape was. Perhaps 'police' were scouring the cities of Rain at that very moment.

  I couldn't decide between hiding out in the forest for a long time – months, maybe – until the fuss died down; or making a run for it, going back to an elevator and getting back into orbit. Heading off straight away. The risk of apprehension would be greater in the elevator, or the orbital, but if I could only get away then I would be much safer. I could travel to a place not so barbarous and primitive – where I would not be prey to these illnesses and these parasites.

  I slept again, and woke feeling powerfully nauseous. But of course I had eaten little, except for the one meal of human flesh, for what seemed a very long time. I started in what I hoped was a southerly direction, intending to get some proper food in the port, and then maybe, discretely, try to determine whether 'police' were looking for me. I felt so sick in my stomach. I kept having flashbacks to the head, talking to me. 'It's not too late.' I thought: I'll get back to the port and things will be better.

  I don't know what I was thinking, to be honest with you.

  I know I stopped after an hour, and started vomiting. Matter streamed from my mouth, burning my tongue; my torso clenched and clenched as if being squeezed by some powerful exterior force – horrible feeling. But I just kept vomiting. Fluid was coming out of my nose, weeping from my eyes, piss was spurting intermittently. Even in the midst of this misery I knew what was happening. It was too reminiscent of my execution.

  The dotTech was leaving my body.

  After what seemed an age and an age of this heaving, spewing misery I found myself lying in a puddle of my own foul stuff, shivering and weeping to myself. Everything seemed hopeless. If I could have simply willed myself out of existence at that moment, I would have done so.

  I lay there, and nothing changed. Nothing ever changes. After a while, just to shift myself out of the stink, I pulled myself up and dragged myself over to one of the trees. I settled myself, somehow, with my back to the trunk, and sat for a very long while.

  There was nothing. The space between the trees was a slick palette of colours bleeding into one another; the black of the mud, the grey of my spent fluids, the green of grass and fresh leaf, the whisky-hued brown of decaying leaves. Water hurried through the air around me in swiftly marching gusts. There were periods of quiet when it was impossible to tell the difference between the slow dribble of a perfect raindrop down the bark and the inching forward of a beetle. Then there would be a fanfare of thunder and the air would fill with water galloping downwards, shaking everything and slapping my body.

  I may have slept. My head seemed empty.

  It seemed clear (as I thought, when the power of thought started to return to my head) that the dotTech had abandoned me. Refused to take to me. I could not imagine why this had happened. I thought of two possibilities. Perhaps whatever programme my executioner had installed in my original population to make them desert still lurked, residually, in my body somewhere. But that didn't make sense, because the programme was itself a dotTech thing. There was no dotTech in me, so there was no place where the programme could have hidden itself. Then I thought that perhaps the dotTech itself had decided not to be part of me. It is a strange thing, nanotechnology, and we humans have hardly fathomed it. But it is an intelligent force, or at least pseudo-intelligent. It has to be; it has to solve problems, work out the best way of proceeding, interpret its environment in order best to be able to help its host. Perhaps Enkida's dotTech knew that I had murdered her, and was simply refusing to help her killer. Maybe it was making an ethical choice. I dozed again. I felt weak, drained.

  It was when I awoke that I began to hear the voices.

  5th

  Stone,

  Voices in my head. It was the same voice, tracked several times over. It was my AI.

  'You're dead, though,' I said, feeling feverish. Part of me knew that this was another hallucination, and was worried at
the thought that more visions might afflict me – that Enkida might clamber out of the ground and accuse me with a screech and a pointing finger. I was ill.

  OK, OK, said the AI, or whatever my brain was inventing for itself. You are in no good shape, you know that?

  You died, I subvocalised, having to focus hard to get the words to form in my mind. Travelling faster than light destroyed you.

  The seeds of several AIs were planted in the jail, said this AI. It sounded exactly like my last AI; the same uncanny triple voice that was actually one voice, the same sardonic manner. Did you think your employers would waste so good an opportunity?

  My employers, I thought to myself. I had almost forgotten about them.

  You killed somebody, said the AI.

  I had almost believed, in my scattered way, that the AI was real, and not a phantom voice; but this statement threw me the other way. 'How can you know I did such a thing?' I said aloud, my voice querulous.

  I can see it in your memories.

  You can't access my memories, I said, certain that I was right about this. Unless I vocalise them.

  There's a body over there, under that heap.

  You can't know that, I said again, panicky. I think, deep inside me, I was worried that my guilt was somehow a matter of general knowledge.

  If I can't know it, said the AI, reasonably enough, then how come I know it?

  This was a poser. I closed my eyes and began singing a song to myself to try and drown out the AI's voice, but it simply waited until I stopped.

  Have you forgotten the deal you made? itsaid, when there had been silence for a little while. When you agreed to the escape, when you were still in the jail?