by Greg Egan
“Do you like that?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated. “Can I kiss you?”
“Not a good idea, I think. Just relax.” Ve brushed my cheek with vis cool fingers, then ran the back of vis hand down the center of my chest, toward my bandaged abdomen.
I was shivering. “Does your leg still hurt?”
“Sometimes. Relax. ” Ve kneaded my shoulders.
“Have you ever done this … with a non-asex before?”
“Yes.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.” Akili laughed softly. “You should see your face. Look – if you come, it’s not the end of the world. She did. So I’m not going to throw you out in disgust.” Ve slid a hand over my hip. “It might be better if you did; you might loosen up.”
I shuddered at vis touch, but my erection was slowly subsiding. I stroked the smooth unmarked skin where a nipple might have been, searching for scar tissue with my fingertips, finding nothing. Akili stretched lazily. I began massaging the side of vis neck, again.
I said, “I’m lost. I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know where we’re heading.”
“Nowhere. We can stop if you want to. We can always just talk. Or we can talk without stopping. It’s called freedom – you’ll get used to it, eventually.”
“This is very strange.” Our eyes remained locked together, and Akili seemed happy enough – but I still felt I should have been hunting for some way to make everything a thousand times more intense.
I said, “I know why this feels wrong. Physical pleasure without sex—” I hesitated.
“Go on.”
“Physical pleasure, without sex, is generally classified as—”
“What?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
Ve thumped me in the ribs. “Spit it out.”
“ Infantile. ”
Akili sighed. “Okay. Exorcism time. Repeat after me: Uncle Sigmund, I renounce you as a charlatan, a bully, and a fabricator of data. A corrupter of language, a destroyer of lives.”
I complied – then I wrapped my arms around ver tightly, and we lay there with our legs entwined, heads on each other’s shoulders, gently stroking each other’s backs. The whole futile sexual charge I’d felt since the fishing boat was finally lifting; all the pleasure came from the warmth of vis body, the unfamiliar contours of vis flesh, the texture of vis skin, the sense of vis presence.
And I still found ver as beautiful as ever. I still cared about ver as much as ever.
Was this what I’d always been looking for? Asexual love?
It was a disquieting notion – but I thought it through calmly.
Maybe all my life I’d unconsciously swallowed the Edenite lie: that everything in the perfect, harmonious modern emotional relationship somehow flowed magically out of beneficent nature. Monogamy, equality, honesty, respect, tenderness, selflessness – it was all pure instinct, pure sexual biology, taking its unfettered course – despite the fact that all those criteria of perfection had changed radically from century to century, from culture to culture. The Edenites proclaimed that anyone who fell short of the glowing ideal was either willfully fighting Mother Gaia – or had been corrupted by a traumatic upbringing, media manipulation, or the deeply unnatural power structures of modern society.
In fact, the ancient reproductive drives had been hemmed in by civilizing forces, inhibited by cultural strictures – and pressed into service to create social cohesion in countless different ways – but they hadn’t actually changed in tens of thousands of years, and they contradicted current mores, or were silent, just as often as they supported them. Gina’s unfaithfulness had hardly been a crime against biology … and whatever I’d done to drive her away had been a failure of purely conscious effort – a lack of attentiveness that any Stone Age ancestor would have found second nature. Virtually everything which modern humans valued in relationships – over and above the act of sex itself, and some degree of protectiveness toward their partners and offspring – arose by a separate force of will. There was a massive shell of moral and social constructs wrapped around the tiny core of instinctive behavior – and the pearl bore little resemblance to the grit.
I had no wish to abandon either – but if what I’d failed at so badly, again and again, had been reconciling the two —
If the choice came down to biology or civilization —
I knew, now, which I valued the most.
And asex could still be close. Asex could still touch.
After a while, we climbed into the sleeping bag to keep warm. I was still numb with despair at the tragedy of Stateless, Mosala’s senseless half-murder, the ruins of my career. But Akili kissed me on the forehead, and tried vis best to unknot my aching back and shoulders – and I did the same for ver, in the hope that it might make vis fear of the great information plague, which I still did not believe was coming, in some small way easier to bear.
#
I woke, confused, to the sound of Akili breathing beside me. The tent was bathed in gray and blue light, shadowless as noon; I looked up and saw the disk of the moon overhead, a white spotlight penetrating the weave of the roof, rainbow-fringed by diffraction.
I thought: Akili met me outside the airport. Ve could have infected me with the engineered cholera then, knowing that I’d carry it to Mosala.
And when the weapon misfired, ve’d produced the antidote – to gain my trust, in the hope that ve could use me a second time … but then the moderates had unwittingly kidnapped us both, and there’d been no need to strike at Mosala again.
It was sheer paranoia. I closed my eyes. Why would an extremist pretend to believe in the information plague? And if the belief was genuine, why kill Buzzo when the Aleph moment had been proved inevitable? Either way, with Mosala back in Cape Town – and her work proceeding, with or without her – what use could I be to the extremists?
I disentangled myself, and climbed out of the sleeping bag. Akili woke while I was dressing, and muttered sleepily, “The latrine tent glows red. You can’t miss it.”
“I won’t be long.”
I walked aimlessly, trying to clear my head. It was earlier than I’d imagined, barely after nine, but shockingly cold. Lights still showed from most of the tents, but the alleys between them were deserted.
Akili as an extremist assassin made no sense – why would ve have struggled to get us off the fishing boat? – but the doubt I’d felt on waking still cast a shadow over everything – as if my mistrust itself was as much of a disaster as any possibility that I could be right. How could we have been through so much together – only for me to wake beside ver, wondering if it had all been a lie?
I reached the southern edge of the camp. These people must have been the last wave of refugees to head north, because there was nothing in sight but bare reef-rock, stretching to the horizon.
I hesitated, and almost turned back. But pacing the alleys made me feel like a spy – and I wasn’t ready to return to Akili’s tent, to the warmth of vis body, to the hope ve seemed to offer. Half an hour before, I’d seriously considered migrating to total asex – tearing out my genitals and several vital pieces of gray matter – as the panacea for all my woes. I needed to take a long walk, alone.
I headed out into the moonlit desert.
Whorls of trace minerals glittered everywhere; now that I’d seen a few of these hieroglyphs deciphered, the ground appeared transformed, dense with meaning – although for all I knew, most of the patterns could still have been nothing but random decoration.
The abandoned city was either in darkness, or hidden from view by the slope of the ground; I could see no hint of light on the southern horizon. I pictured a fresh swarm of the invisible insects scurrying out from their nest at the center … but I knew I’d be no safer back in the camp – and the things only killed for the spectacle of it, for the panic they instilled. Alone, I was less of a target than ever.
I thought I felt the ground shudder – a
tremor so slight that I doubted it immediately. Was there still shelling going on? I’d imagined everyone leaving the city to the mercenaries – but maybe a few dissenters had ignored the evacuation plan … or maybe the militia had remained, in hiding, and the real confrontation had finally begun. That was a dismal prospect; they didn’t stand a chance.
It happened again. I couldn’t judge the direction of the blast – I’d heard no sound at all, just felt the vibration. I turned a full circle, scanning the horizon for smoke. Maybe they were shelling the camps, now. The white plumes over the city in the morning had been visible for kilometers – but shells meant for tents on bare rock would carry different charges, with different effects.
I kept walking south, hoping that the city would come into view – along with some sign that the pyrotechnic action was still confined there. And I tried to imagine myself living through the war – emerging unscathed, but cozily familiar with all the myriad technologies of death … offering – to the nets who didn’t care what I’d faked – footage complete with my own now-expert commentary on “the characteristic sound of a Chinese-made Vigilance missile meeting its target,” or “the unmistakable visual signature of a Peacetech forty-millimeter shell exploding over open ground.”
I felt a wave of resignation sweep over me. I’d swallowed too many dreams in the last three days: technolibération , an end to the gene patent laws … personal happiness, asexual bliss. It was time to wake up. The ordinary madness of the world had finally reached Stateless – so why not stand back, regain some perspective, and try to scrape some kind of a living out of it? The invasion was no greater tragedy than ten thousand other bloody conquests before it – and it had always been inevitable. War had come, one way or another, to every known human culture.
I whispered aloud, without much conviction, “Screw every known human culture.”
The ground roared, and threw me.
The reef-rock was soft, but I hit it face-down, bloodying my nose, maybe breaking it. Winded and astonished, I raised myself onto my hands and knees, but the ground still hadn’t stopped shaking, I didn’t trust myself to stand. I looked around for some evidence of a nearby impact – but there was no glow, no smoke, no crater, nothing.
Was this the new terror? After invisible robots – invisible bombs?
I knelt, waited, then climbed to my feet unsteadily. The reef-rock was still reverberating; I paced in a drunken circle, searching the horizon, still refusing to believe that there could be no other sign of the blast.
The air had been silent, though. It was the rock which had carried the noise. An underground detonation?
Or undersea, beneath the island?
And no detonation at all—
The ground convulsed again. I landed badly, twisting one arm – but panic washed out everything, dulling the pain into insignificance. I clawed at the ground, trying to find the strength to deny every instinct which screamed at me to stay down, not to risk moving – when I knew that if I didn’t stand – and then sprint faster across the shuddering dead coral than I’d ever moved in my life – I was lost.
The mercenaries had killed off the lithophiles which gave the reef-rock its buoyancy. That was why they’d driven us out of the city: only the center of the island would hold. Beyond the support of the guyot, the overhang was sinking.
I turned to try to see what had happened to the camp. Blue and orange squares gazed back at me blankly; most of the tents were still standing. I could see no one moving out across the desert yet – it was too soon – but there was no question of going back to warn them. Not even Akili. Inland divers would surely understand what was happening, faster than I had. There was nothing I could do now but try to save myself.
I climbed to my feet and broke into a run. I covered about ten meters before the ground shifted, slamming me down. I got up, took three steps, twisted an ankle, fell again. There was a constant tortured cracking sound filling my head now, conducted through my body from reef-rock to bone, resonating from living mineral to living mineral – the underworld reaching up to me, sharing its disintegration.
I started crawling forward on my hands and knees, screaming wordlessly, almost paralyzed by a vision of the ocean rushing over the sinking reefs, sweeping up bodies, propelling them inland, dashing them against the splintering ground. I glanced back and saw nothing but the placid tent village, still uselessly intact – but the whole island was roaring in my skull, the deluge could only be minutes away.
I stood again, ran for whole seconds despite the swaying stars, then landed heavily, splitting my stitches. Warm blood soaked the bandages. I rested, covering my ears, daring to wonder for the first time if it would be better to stop and wait to die. How far was I from the guyot? How far would the ocean reach in, even if I made it to solid ground? I groped at my notepad pocket, as if I could get a GPS fix, check a few maps, come to some kind of decision. I rolled onto my back and started laughing. The stars jittered into time-lapse trails.
I stood up, glanced over my shoulder – and saw someone running across the rock behind me. I dropped to my hands and knees, half voluntarily, but kept my eyes on the figure. Ve was dark-skinned and slender – but it wasn’t Akili, the hair was too long. I strained my eyes. It was a teenage girl. Her face caught the moonlight, her eyes wide with fear, but her mouth set in determination. Then the ground heaved, and we both fell. I heard her cry out in pain.
I waited – but she didn’t get up.
I started crawling back toward her. If she was injured, all I’d be able to do was sit with her until the ocean took us both – but I couldn’t keep going and leave her.
When I reached her, she was lying on her side with her legs jack-knifed, massaging one calf, muttering angrily. I crouched beside her and shouted, “Do you think you can stand?”
She shook her head. “We’d better sit it out here! We’ll be safe here!”
I stared at her. “Don’t you know what’s happening? They’ve killed the lithophiles!”
“No! They’ve been reprogrammed – they’re actively swallowing gas. Just killing them would be too slow – give too much warning!”
This was surreal. I couldn’t focus on her; the ground was juddering too hard. “We can’t stay here! Don’t you understand? We’ll drown!”
She shook her head again. For an instant, contradictory blurs of motion canceled; she was smiling up at me, as if I was a child afraid of a thunderstorm. “Don’t worry! We’ll be fine!”
What did she think would happen, when the ocean came screaming in? We’d just … hold each other up? One million drowning refugees would all link hands and tread water together?
Stateless had driven its children insane.
A fine moist spray rained down on us. I crouched and covered my head, picturing deep water rushing into the depressurized rock, blasting fissures all the way to the surface. And when I looked up, there it was: in the distance, a geyser fountained straight into the sky, a terrible silver thread in the moonlight. It was some hundred meters away – to the south – meaning that the path to the guyot was already undermined, and there was no hope of escape.
I lay down heavily beside the girl. She shouted at me, “Why were you running in the wrong direction? Did you lose your way?”
I reached over and gripped her shoulder, hoping to see her face more clearly. We gazed at each other in mutual incomprehension. She yelled, “I was on scout duty. I should have stopped you at the edge of the camp, but I thought you’d just go a little way, I thought you just wanted a better view for your camera.”
The shoulder camera was still packed in my wallet; I hadn’t even thought of using it, turning it back on the camp as it was flooded, broadcasting the genocide to the world.
The gentle rain grew heavier for a second or two – but then subsided. I looked south, and caught sight of the geyser collapsing.
Then, for the first time, I noticed my hands trembling.
The ground had quietened.
Meaning what? The stretc
h of rock we lay on had broken free of its surroundings, like an iceberg birthed screaming from a glacial sheet, and was floating in relative tranquility now – before the water rushed in around the edges?
My ears rang, my body was quivering – but I glanced up at the sky, and the stars were rock-steady. Or vice versa.
And then the girl gave me a shaken, queasy, adrenaline-drunk grin, her eyes shining with tears of relief. She believed that the ordeal was over. And I’d been warned not to think I knew better. I stared back at her wonderingly, my heart still pounding with terror, my chest constricted with hope and disbelief. I found myself emitting long, gasping sobs.
When I’d regained my voice, I asked, “Why aren’t we dead? The overhang can’t float without the lithophiles. Why aren’t we drowning?”
She rose and sat cross-legged, massaging her bruised calf, distracted for a moment. Then she looked at me, took the measure of my misunderstanding, shook her head, and patiently explained.
“No one touched the lithophiles in the overhang. The militia sent divers to the edge of the guyot, and pumped in primer to make the lithophiles degas the reef-rock just above the basalt. Water flooded in – and the surface rock at the center is heavier than water.”
She smiled sunnily. “I look at it this way. We’ve lost a city. But we’ve gained a lagoon.”
PART FOUR
Chapter 29
The camp was in jubilant disarray. There were thousands of people out in the moonlight, checking each other for injuries, raising collapsed tents, celebrating victory, mourning the city – or soberly reminding anyone who’d listen that the war might not be over. No one knew for certain what forces, what weapons, might have been concealed far from the city, safe from the devastation of the center’s collapse – or what might yet crawl out of the lagoon.