by Greg Egan
I threw my arms around De Groot, lifted her off her feet and spun around until I was giddy with joy. The guards looked on, grinning like children. Maybe it was a microscopic victory in the face of the invasion – but it still seemed like the first good thing that had happened for a very long time.
De Groot said gently, “That’s enough.” I stopped, and we disengaged. She said, “The plane lands at three a.m. Fifteen kilometers west of the airport.”
I caught my breath. “Does she know?”
De Groot shook her head. “I haven’t told her anything yet. She’s sleeping now; the fever’s still high, but it’s been stable for a while. And the doctors can’t say what the virus will do next – but they can carry a selection of drugs in the ambulance to cover the most likely emergencies.”
I said soberly, “Only one thing really worries me, now.”
“What?”
“Knowing Violet … when she finds out we’ve gone behind her back, she’ll probably refuse to leave – out of sheer stubbornness.”
De Groot gave me an odd look, as if she was trying to decide whether I was joking or not.
She said, “If you really believe that, then you don’t know Violet at all.”
Chapter 26
I told De Groot I’d catch some sleep and be back by 2:30. I wanted to bid Mosala bon voyage .
I went looking for Akili to tell ver the good news, but ve’d been discharged. I sent ver a message, then returned to the hotel, washed my face, changed my laser-singed shirt. My burns were numb, absent; the local anesthetic had magicked them away. I felt battered, but triumphant – and too wired to stand still, let alone sleep. It was almost eleven, but the shops were still open; I went out and bought myself another shoulder camera, then wandered the city, filming everything in sight. The last night of peace on Stateless? The mood on the streets was nothing like the atmosphere of siege among the physicists and journalists inside the hotel – but there was an edge of nervous anticipation, like Los Angeles during a quake risk alert (I’d been through one, a false alarm). When people met my gaze they seemed curious – even suspicious – but they showed no sign of hostility. It was as if they thought I might, conceivably, be a spy for the mercenaries – but if I was, that was merely an exotic trait which they had no intention of holding against me.
I stopped in the middle of a brightly lit square, and checked the news nets. Buzzo had given no press conference admitting his error – but with Mosala now showing symptoms, perhaps he’d take the risk of the extremists seriously, and reconsider. Coverage of the situation on Stateless stank, uniformly – but SeeNet would soon scoop everyone by announcing the real reasons for the occupation. And even with Mosala alive, the truth might come out badly for the pro-boycott alliance.
The air was humid, but cold. I stared up at the satellites which bridged the planet, and tried to make sense of the fact that I was standing on an artificial South Pacific island, on the eve of a war.
Was my whole life encoded in this moment – the memories I possessed, the circumstances I found myself in? Taking this much and no more as given … could I have reconstructed all the rest?
It didn’t feel that way. My childhood in Sydney was unimaginable, as remote and hypothetical as the Big Bang – and even the time I’d spent in the hold on the fishing boat, and the encounter with the robot at the airport, had receded like fragments of a dream.
I’d never had cholera. I possessed no internal organs.
The stars glinted icily.
At one in the morning, the streets were still crowded, shops and restaurants still trading. Nobody seemed as somber as they should have been; maybe they still believed that they were facing nothing more than the kind of harassment they’d survived before.
There was a group of young men standing around a fountain in the square, joking and laughing. I asked them if they thought the militia would attack the airport soon. I couldn’t imagine why else they’d be in such high spirits; maybe they’d be taking part, and were psyching themselves up for it.
They stared at me in disbelief. “Attack the airport? And get slaughtered?”
“It might be your only chance.”
They exchanged amused glances. One of them put a hand on my shoulder and said solicitously, “Everything’s going to be fine. Just keep an ear to the ground, and hang on tight.”
I wondered what kind of drugs they were on.
#
When I returned to the hospital, De Groot said, “Violet’s awake. She wants to talk to you.”
I went in alone. The room was dimly lit; a monitor near the head of the bed glowed with green and orange data. Mosala’s voice was weak, but she was lucid.
“Will you ride in the ambulance with me?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I want you to record everything. Just make good use of it, if you have to.”
“I will.” I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant – framing EnGeneUity for her death, if it came to that? I didn’t press her for details; I was weary of the politics of martyrdom.
“Karin said you went to the airport and petitioned the mercenaries on my behalf.” She searched my face. “Why?”
“I was returning a favor.”
She laughed softly. “What did I ever do to deserve that?”
“It’s a long story.” And I was no longer sure, myself, whether I’d been trying to repay Adelle Vunibobo, doing it all for technolibération , acting out of respect and admiration for Mosala, or hoping to impress Akili by “saving the Keystone” – even if the role was beginning to sound less like a revered creator than a kind of information-theoretic Typhoid Mary.
De Groot came in with news of the flight; everything was on schedule, and it was time to leave. Two medics joined us. I stood back, filming with the shoulder camera as Mosala was moved to a trolley, monitor and drug pumps still attached.
In the garage, on the way to the ambulance, I saw half a dozen balloon-tired vehicles being loaded with medical equipment, bandages, and drugs. Maybe they were moving supplies to other sites around the city, in case the hospital was captured. It was heartening to see that not everyone was taking the invasion lightly.
We rode through the city slowly, without the siren wailing. More people were on the streets than I’d ever seen by daylight. Mosala asked De Groot for a notepad, then put it on the mattress beside her, and turned onto her side so she could type. Whatever she was doing seemed to demand intense concentration – but she spoke to me, without looking away from the screen.
“You suggested that I appoint a successor, Andrew. Someone to make sure that the work was finished. Well, I’m arranging that now.”
I couldn’t see the point anymore, but I didn’t argue. A high-resolution scan in Cape Town would yield structures for all the viral proteins almost immediately – and precision drugs to block their actions could be designed and synthesized in a matter of hours. Proving the moderates wrong and then begging them for the cure was no longer any kind of shortcut.
Mosala glanced up at me, and spoke for the camera. “The software is working on ten canonical experiments. A full analysis of all of them, combined, will yield what used to be thought of as the ten parameters of total space – the details of the ten-dimensional geometry which underlies all the particles and forces. In modern terms … those ten experiments reveal, between them, exactly how the symmetry of pre-space is broken, for us. Exactly what it is that everything in this universe has in common.”
“I understand.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Let me finish. What’s running on the supercomputer network, right now, is just brute-force calculations. I wanted the software to leave the honors to me. Double-checking, pulling it all together … writing a paper which set out the results in a way which would make sense to anyone. But those things are trivial. I already know exactly what has to be done with the results, once they’re available. And—” She executed a flurry of keystrokes, scrutinized the effects, then put the notepad aside
. “All of it has just been automated. My mother gave me a pre-release Kaspar clonelet last week – and it’ll probably write up the results more smoothly than I ever could. So whether I’m alive, dead, or somewhere in between … by six a.m. on Friday, that paper will be written – and posted on the nets with toll-free, universal access. Copies will also be sent to every faculty member and every student of the Physics Departments of every university on the planet.” She flashed a smile of pure defiant glee. “What are the Anthrocosmologists going to do, now? Kill every physicist on the planet?” I glanced up at De Groot, who was tight-lipped and ashen. Mosala groaned. “Don’t look so damn morbid, you two. I’m just covering all contingencies.”
She closed her eyes; her breathing was ragged, but she was still smiling. I turned to the monitor; her temperature was 40.9 degrees.
We’d left the city behind; the windows of the ambulance showed nothing but our reflections. The ride was smooth, the engine all but silent. After a while, I thought I could hear the reef-rock itself, exhaling through a distant borehole – but then I realized that it was the whine of the approaching jet.
Mosala had lost consciousness, and no one tried to rouse her. We reached the rendezvous point, and I climbed out quickly to cover the landing – more because of the promise I’d made than out of any real vestige of professionalism. The plane descended vertically, just forty or fifty meters away from us, gray fuselage lit by nothing but moonlight, the VTOL engines blasting a fine caustic dust of limestone out of the matrix of the rock. I wanted to savor this moment of victory – but the sight of the sleek military craft landing in darkness in the middle of nowhere made my heart sink. I imagined it would be the same with the naval evacuation: the outside world was going to tip-toe in, gather up its own people, and leave. The anarchists could take what was coming to them.
The two men who descended first wore officer’s uniforms and side arms, but they might have been doctors. They took the medics aside and spoke in a huddle, their voices lost beneath the hum of the jets; air was still being forced through the stationary engines to keep them cool. Then a slender young man in rumpled civilian clothes emerged, looking haggard and disoriented. It took me a few seconds to recognize him; it was Mosala’s husband, Makompo.
De Groot met him; they embraced silently. I stayed back as she led him to the ambulance. I turned and looked away across the gray-and-silver reef-rock; threads of scattered trace minerals caught the moonlight, shining like the foam on an impossibly tranquil ocean. When I turned back, the soldiers were carrying Mosala, bound to a stretcher, up into the plane. Makompo and De Groot followed. I suddenly felt very tired.
De Groot came down the steps and approached me, shouting, “Are you coming with us? They say there’s plenty of room.”
I stared back at her. What was there to keep me here? My contract with SeeNet was to make a profile of Mosala, not to record the fall of Stateless. The invisible insect had forbidden me to join the flight – but would the mercenaries have any way of knowing, if I did? Stupid question: outdoors, military satellites could just about fingerprint people and lip-read their conversations, all in infrared. But would they shoot down the plane – undermining the whole PR exercise, and inviting retribution – just to punish one obscure journalist? No.
I said, “I wish I could. But there’s someone here I can’t leave behind.”
De Groot nodded, needing no further explanation, and shook my hand, smiling. “Good luck to both of you, then. I hope we’ll see you in Cape Town, soon.”
“So do I.”
The two medics were silent as we rode back to the hospital. I felt certain that they wanted to talk about the war – but not in front of a foreigner. I scanned through the footage I’d taken with the shoulder camera, not yet trusting the unfamiliar technology, then dispatched it to my console at home.
The city was more crowded than ever, though there were fewer people on their feet now. Most were camping out on the streets, with sleeping bags, folding chairs, portable stoves, and even some small tents. I didn’t know whether to feel encouraged by this, or depressed at the pathetic optimism it implied. Maybe the anarchists were prepared to make the best of it, if the city’s infrastructure was seized. And I’d still seen no evidence of panic, riots, or looting – so maybe Munroe was right, and their education in the origins and dynamics of these revered human cultural activities was enough to empower them with the ability to think through the consequences, and decline to take part.
But in the face of a billion dollars worth of military hardware, they were going to need a lot more than stoves, tents, and sociobiology to avoid being slaughtered.
Chapter 27
I was woken by the shelling. The rumbling sounded distant – but the bed was shaking. I dressed in seconds – then stood in the middle of the room, paralyzed by indecision. There were no basements here, no bomb shelters – so where was the safest place to be? Down on the ground floor? Or out on the street? I balked at the prospect of exposure – but would four or five stories over my head offer any real protection, or just a heavier pile of rubble?
It was just after six, barely light. I moved to the window cautiously, fighting down an absurd fear of snipers – as if anyone from either side would bother. Five columns of white smoke hung in the middle distance, funneling out from hidden apexes like languid tornadoes. I asked Sisyphus to scan the local nets for close-up vision; dozens of people had posted footage. Reef-rock was resilient and non-flammable – but the shells must have been spiked with some chemical agent tailored to inflict damage beyond the reach of mere heat and percussion … because the results looked less like shattered buildings than mine tailings dumped on empty lots. I couldn’t imagine anyone surviving inside – but the adjacent streets hadn’t fared much better, buried meters deep in chalk dust.
The people camped outside the hotel showed no sign that they’d been taken by surprise; half of them were already packed and moving, the rest were taking down their tents, rolling up blankets and sleeping bags, disassembling stoves. I could hear young children crying, and the mood of the crowd was visibly tense – but no one was being trampled underfoot. Yet. Looking further along the street, I could make out a slow, steady flow of people north, away from the heart of the city.
I’d been half expecting something deadly and silent – EnGeneUity were bioengineers, after all – but I should have known better. A rain of explosions, buildings reduced to dust, and a stream of refugees made far better pictures for ANARCHY COMES TO STATELESS. The mercenaries weren’t here to take control of the island with clinical efficiency; they were here to prove that all renegade societies were doomed to collapse into telegenic mayhem.
A shell went off somewhere east of the hotel, the closest yet. White powder rained down from the ceiling; one corner of the polymer window popped loose from its frame, and curled up like a dead leaf. I squatted on the floor, covering my head, cursing myself for not leaving with De Groot and Mosala – and cursing Akili for ignoring my messages. Why couldn’t I accept the fact that I meant nothing to ver? I’d been of some use in the struggle to protect Mosala from the heretic ACs – and I’d brought ver the news which supposedly revealed the truth behind Distress … but now that the great information plague was coming, I was irrelevant.
The door swung open. An elderly Fijian woman stepped into the room; the hotel staff wore no uniforms, but I thought I’d seen her before, working in the building. She announced curtly, “We’re evacuating the city. Take what you can carry.” The floor had stopped moving, but I rose to my feet unsteadily, unsure if I’d heard her correctly.
I’d already packed my clothes. I grabbed my suitcase, and followed her out into the corridor. My room was just past the stairs, and she was heading for the next door along. I gestured at the other half of the corridor – some twenty rooms. “Have you checked—?”
“No.” For a moment, she seemed reluctant to entrust me with the task, but then she relented. She held up her pass key and let my notepad clone its IR signa
ture.
I left my suitcase by the stairs. The first four rooms were empty. More shells were exploding all the time, now – most of them mercifully distant. I kept one eye on the screen as I waved my notepad at the locks; someone was collating all the damage reports and posting an annotated map of the city. So far, twenty-one buildings had been demolished – mainly apartment blocks. There was no question that if strategic targets had been chosen, they would have been hit; maybe the most valuable infrastructure was being spared – saved for the use of a puppet government to be installed by a second wave of invaders, who’d “rescue” the island from “anarchy”? Or maybe the aim was simply to level as many residential buildings as possible, in order to drive the greatest number of people out into the desert.
I found Lowell Parker – the Atlantica journalist I’d seen at Mosala’s media conference – crouched on the floor, shaking … much as the woman from the hotel had found me. He recovered quickly, and seemed to accept the news of the evacuation gratefully – as if all he’d been waiting for was word of a definite plan, even if it came from someone else who didn’t have a clue.
In the next ten or twelve rooms, I came across four more people – journalists or academics, probably, but no one I recognized – most of them already packed, just waiting to be told what to do. No one stopped to question the wisdom of the message I was passing on – and I badly wanted to get away from the bombing, myself – but the prospect of a million people pouring out of the city was beginning to fill me with dread. The greatest disasters of the last fifty years had all been among refugees fleeing war zones. Maybe it would be smarter to take my chances playing Russian roulette with the shells.
I knew the last room was a suite, the mirror image of Mosala and De Groot’s; the architectural symmetry of the building demanded it. The cloned pass key signature unlocked the door – but there was a chain keeping it from opening more than a crack.