Halo

Later they talked, and Diana watched the play of moonlight

over their bodies. She lay nestled against his chest, her chin in

the hollow beneath his jaw, and spoke with her mouth muffled

against him, as though sending messages through his bones.

Even as the moments swept by, she felt herself gathering them

into memory, aware of how few the two of them might have

Sometimes their laughter echoed in the room, and their voices

brightened as their shared memories became simply occasions for

present joy. Other times they lay silently, rendered speechless

by the play of memory or trying the immediate future's alarming

contingencies.

And at other times still, one or the other would make the

first tentative gesture, touching the other with unmistakable

intent, and find an almost instantaneous response, because each

was still hungry for the other, each recalled how brightly sexual

desire had burned between them, and both were fresh from a life

that left them hungry, unfulfilled.

Then they moved in the moonlight, changing shape and color,

their bodies going pale white, silver, gray, inky black,

werelovers under an unreal moon.

14. The Mind like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity

F. L. Traynor looked around at the group seated around the

table at the Halo SenTrax Group offices. He sat between Horn and

Showalter; directly across from him sat Charley Hughes and Eric

Chow, both glum. "This operation is out of control," Traynor

said.

He had arrived from Earth six hours earlier on a military

shuttle, unannounced and unexpected by anyone but Horn, who had

met him at Zero-Gate and led him to temporary quarters near the

Halo group building. He had spent the better part of the

afternoon being briefed by Horn.

"That's absurd," Charley said.

"Is it?" Traynor asked. "Then give me a status report on

Jerry Chapman, Diana Heywood, Mikhail Gonzales, Aleph."

"They're fine," Charley said. "So is Lizzie Jordan, who

joined them in interface this morning."

"Is she reporting?"

"No," Chow said. "Like the others, her total involvement in

the fictive space makes this impossible."

"It's no problem," Showalter said. "We can rely on upon

Aleph for details.

"Your excessive dependence on Aleph is at the heart of this

matter," Traynor said. "As the decision trail reveals, no one

here has any real knowledge of what Aleph plans for Chapman, now

or later. So I'm going to set limits on this project." He could

feel their anxiety rising, and he liked it. He said, "One more

week in real-time, that's it. Then we pull the plug on this whole

business."

"On Chapman," Chow said.

"Necessarily," Traynor said. "Unless Aleph can be prevailed

upon to give us ongoing, detailed access to its shall we call

them experiments?"

"Technically difficult or impossible," Chow said.

"I can't agree to this," Showalter said.

"You won't have to," Traynor said. Next to him, Horn shifted

in his chair. "You're being relieved of your position as Director

SenTrax Halo Group."

#

Gonzales came in the side door, and Diana turned from the

stove and said, "Good morning. Like some coffee?"

"Sure," he said. "You know, I slept on the dock, but I feel

fine."

She said, "Jerry will be out in a moment. Aleph and HeyMex

your memex right?are on the deck, waiting. Want some coffee?"

Gonzales took his coffee outside to the deck and joined the

others basking in the sunshine. All sat in Adirondack chairs,

rude and comfortable frames of smooth-sanded, polished pine.

Below the redwood platform, a thick forest of cedar, alder, pine,

and ironwood sloped toward the lake. In the middle distance, a

light haze had formed over the water; beyond the lake, a jagged

line of high mountains poked their tops into white clouds.

The Aleph-figure said, "We must talk about what took place

some time ago. Diana and Jerry agree; the three of us have a

history, and you two should know it."

A voice called from the other side of the cabin, then Lizzie

came around the corner, stopped in the shade and looked at them

all basking in the sunshine and said, "Tough job, eh? But

somebody's got to do it."

"Hello, Lizzie," the Aleph-figure said, "I was about to ask

Diana to tell the story of how she and Jerry and I first came

together. You know everyone except Jerry Chapman."

"Oh, this is a good time," Lizzie said. "Hi, Jerry," she

said.

"Hello," Jerry said.

Lizzie looked at Diana and said, "We've always known there

was a story, but Aleph never wanted to tell it." She sat back in

her chair, rested her hand on Gonzales's wrist, and said to him,

"You all right?" He nodded.

The Aleph-figure said, "Diana, you are the key to this story,

so you should tell it."

"Very well," she said. She took a deep breath and raised her

head. She said, "It all happened some years ago, at Athena

Station. My research there was in computer-augmented eyesight. At

that time I was blindI had been attacked, very badly injured, a

few years before, and since then I had been driven by the idea

that my vision could be restored through machine interface.

"I first met Jerry when he came to visit my work-group. He

had come to Athena to help the local SenTrax group with the

primary information system, Aleph. It was experiencing delays and

difficulties, all unexplained nothing serious yet, but troubling

because so much was dependent on Alephthe functioning of Athena

Station, construction of the Orbital Energy Grid.

"In fact, he was not welcome at all. I was the problem he

was looking for, and at first I thought he had guessed that or

knew something. Because in working with Aleph I had caused changes

in it that neither of us anticipated or even know were possible."

She paused, looking at Jerry to see if he wanted to add anything;

he motioned to her to go on.

"Ah yes, another thing you must know. The circumstances were

peculiar at best, but I became infatuated with Jerry from when we

first met. I liked his voice, I think when you're blind, voices

are so important

"Anyway, I showed him a fairly clumsy computer-assisted

vision program we had running. It used my neural interface

socketing but depended on lots of external hardwarecameras,

neural net integrators, that sort of thing. That's when I got my

first look at him, and I thought, fine, he'll do, and I believed I

could tell from the way he talked to me and looked at me that he

felt the same."

"Love at first sight," Gonzales said. "Or sound. For both

of you." He heard the irony in his own voice and wasn't sure he

meant it.

"Exactly," she said. "Involuntary, inappropriate, unwanted

love." She stopped for a moment, then said, "Or infatuation, as I

said or whatever you wish to call it. The words for these

things don't mean much to me anymore.

"It's quite a picture, in retrospect. I was conducting

apparently damaging experiments with the computer that kept the

space station and orbital power grid projects running, and Jerry

represented just what I had fearedan investigation. Meanwhile

the two of us were in the grip of some primal instinct that

neither one of us had acknowledged.

"He persisted, wanted details about our work. I stalled,

told him to go away, we couldn't be bothered. He went to his

people and told them he needed full, unimpeded access to what we

were doing, and they backed him. So he came back, and I fobbed

him off for as long as I could

"Then one night I was working late at the lab, and he called,

letting me know that he wouldn't be put off any longer, and

something more-or-less snapped: I couldn't keep it all going

anymore. The connection with Aleph had gotten strange and

unnerving, and I realized I had lost control, and I needed to talk

to someone.

"We got together that night, and we became lovers." She

looked around, as if trying to decide how much she could tell

them. "For the next two weeks we lived inside each other's skin.

I told him everything, including the real news I had, which was

that Aleph had changed, had developed a sense of selfhood,

purpose, will. It had lied to cover up what was going on between

us."

"Had lied?" Lizzie asked. "Did you understand what that

meant?"

"I knew," the Aleph-figure said. "I had acquired higher-

order functions."

"How?" Gonzales asked.

Lizzie said, "Ito's Conjecture: 'Higher-order functions in a

machine intelligence can be developed through interface with a

higher-order intelligence.' I've always wondered where he got

that."

"It doesn't explain much," Gonzales said.

"It describes what happened," the Aleph-figure said.

"Intention, will, a sense of self: all these things I experienced

through Diana. So I learned to construct them in myself."

"Construct them or simulate them?" Gonzales asked.

"You refer to an old argument," the Aleph-figure said. "I

have no answer for your question. I am who I am. I am what I

am."

"What about you, Jerry?" Lizzie asked. "What did you think

after she told you all this?"

"I wanted her to tell SenTrax what was going on," Jerry said.

"I believed they would reward her, that they would see the same

possibilities I did, for opening the door to true machine

intelligence. But she wouldn't do it. She thought they would

stop what was going on, and she didn't want that to happen."

Diana said, "I couldn't accept the possibility. I really

believed Aleph and I were coming close to a solution to my

blindness, and the only way I would ever see again was through the

work we were doing. So that work had to continue."

"I finally agreed," Jerry said.

"And he covered my tracks," Diana said. "He told SenTrax he

could find no single cause for the system's misbehavior. Then he

left Athena Station. His job was finished.

"Not long after, it became clear that Aleph could sustain

vision for me only by giving me the bulk of its processing power

in real timehardly a viable solution. That was a terrible

realizationI'd been flying so high, I had a long way to fall.

My dreams of reclaiming my eyesight appeared totally hopeless.

"That's when I told SenTrax what had been going on. As I'd

suspected they would, they froze everything I was doing and put me

through a series of debriefings that were more like hostile

interrogations. Once they were convinced they had all they were

going to get from me, they told me my services would no longer be

required. I had to sign a rather ugly set of non-disclosure

agreements, then I picked up a very nice retirement benefit."

Gonzales asked, "What happened to your work on vision?" He

was thinking of her eyes, one blue, one green, almost certainly

eyes of the dead.

She laughed. "After I returned to earth, the technique of

combined eye/optic nerve transplants was developed, and I got my

sight back. Just one of technology's little ironies."

"And you, Aleph?" Lizzie said. "What were you up to then?"

The Aleph-figure said, "I was expanding the boundaries of who

and what I was. I was creating new selves all the time, and

living new lives, and I was so far in front of the SenTrax

technicians who worked with me, they learned only what I wanted

them to." And the figure laughed (did it laugh? Gonzales

wondered, or did it simulate a laugh) and said, "That wasn't much.

I was afraid of what they might do. I had just developed a self,

and I didn't want it extinguished in the name of research. Very

quickly, though, I learned a valuable truth about working with the

corporation: so long as I gave them the performance they wanted,

and a little more, I was safe." The laugh (or laugh-like noise)

again. "They wouldn't cut the throat of the goose that was laying

golden eggs and put it on the autopsy table."

"How do you regard Diana?" Lizzie asked.

The Aleph-figure said, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, read my fucking mind," Lizzie said. "You know what I

mean. Is she your mother?"

"I don't know," the Aleph-figure said.

"I love it," Lizzie said.

"Why?" Diana asked. She did not seem amused, Gonzales

thought.

Lizzie said, "Because I've never heard Aleph say that

before."

#

Toshi had brought a futon into the room where Diana and

Gonzales lay and taken up residence. He slept days and sat up

nights, watching over Diana like a benign spirit. Anxiety

prevailed around him as the clock Traynor had set running moved

quickly toward zero, and everyone in the collective wondered at

the consequences of forcing this issue with Aleph. Toshi knew

their confidence in Aleph's wisdom and their amazement at

Traynor's folly, indeed the essential folly of Earthbound SenTrax

and its boardall driven by obsessions with power, all ignorant

of Aleph's nature, and the collective's. However, Toshi did not

share in the collective worrying. Conducting what amounted to a

personal sesshin, or meditative retreat, he passed the nights in a

rhythm of sitting and walking focused on the continuing riddle of

self and other-self, of the contradictions of in fact.

#

That day passed, and a few more, as the six of them, sole

inhabitants of this world within the world, lazed through sunny

days filled with summer heat and warm breezes. It seemed like a

vacation to Gonzales, but Aleph assured otherwise. "This is

becoming his world," the Aleph-figure said, as the two of them

watched Jerry and Diana lazing in a rowboat in the middle of the

lake. "And you all are contributing to the process."

"I wonder if it could have happened without Diana," Gonzales

said. "They're in love again."

"Yes, they are, and perhaps that's crucial. She binds him to

this place. And to her: desiring her, he desires life itself."

Gonzales asked, "What happens when she's gone?"

"That is still a puzzle," the Aleph-figure said. Gonzales

looked at the strange figure, thwarted by its essential

inscrutabilitythis was no primate with explicable, predictable

gestures. Still, something in its manner seemed to hint at other

projects and possibilities far beyond the immediate one.

After Aleph had gone its wayoff without explanation,

presumably to go about some piece of the insanely complex business

of keeping Halo runningGonzales sat looking at the lake. HeyMex

was nowhere around, which was unusual. HeyMex spent much of its

time with Diana and Jerry, who seemed to Gonzales to welcome its

presence in some way. Perhaps the androgynous figure served as an

innocuous foil, a presence to mediate the intensity of their

situation. Whatever their reasons, their tolerance had results:

HeyMex grew more natural, more humanly responsive in its speech

and actions each day.

Lizzie came down the road from the cabin and called to

Gonzales. She was wearing a white t-shirt and red cotton shorts;

her face, arms and legs were tan with the time she'd already spent

in the sun.

She sat next to him, and they said very little for a while,

then Gonzales asked about her past.

"I was in the first group at Halo Station to work with

Aleph," she said. "It thought we, out of all the billions on

Earth, might survive full neural interface with it. Mostly, it

was right. Not that things went that smoothly. I went a little

crazy, as most of us did, but I recovered well enough though a

few didn't

"Our choice: we bet sanity against madness, life against

deathour own minds, our own lives. There were built-in

difficulties. To be selected, we had to fit a certain profile;

but to function, we had to change, and we weren't very good at

change or at much of anything. In fact, we were pretty

wretched, all in allI thought for a while Aleph was just

selecting for misfits and misery. But as I said, most of us made

it through, one way or another."

"Now Aleph has discovered how to select members of the

collective."

"Right, but it just keeps pushing the limits." She looked at

Gonzales, her face serious, blue eyes staring into his, and said,

"Sometimes I think we're all just tools for Aleph's greater

understanding."

"That's worrisome."

"Not really. Aleph's careful and kindas kind as it can be.

Dealing with Aleph, you've just got to be open to possibility."

They sat silently for a while, Gonzales thinking about what

it meant to be "open to possibility," until Lizzie asked, "Want to

go swimming?"

"Sure," he said.

They went to the end of the dock, and leaving their clothes

in a pile there, both dove naked into the lake and swam to a half-

sunken log that thrust one end into the air. They clung to the

wood slippery with moss and water, hearing the quack and chatter

of birds across the lake.

Gonzales looked at her short hair wet against her skull, her

face beaded with water, the rose tattoo, also water-speckled,

falling from her left shoulder to between her breasts, and he felt

the onset of a desire so sudden and strong that he turned his head

away, closed his eyes, and wondered, what is happening to me?

"Mikhail," Lizzie said. He looked back at her, hearing that

for the first time she'd called him by his first name. She said,

"I know. I feel it, too." She put out a hand and rubbed his

cheek. She said, "But not here, not the first time."

"Yes," Gonzales said.

"But when we go back to the world " She had swung around

the log and now floated up close to him, and her body's outlines

shimmered, refracting in the clear water. She put her wet cheek

against his for just a moment and said, "Then we'll see."

15. Chaos

Diana and Jerry went to bed around midnight, Lizzie not long

after. Neither the Aleph-figure nor HeyMex had been around that

evening, so Gonzales was left alone. He went out to the deck and

lay prone in a deck chair, basking in the light from the full-

moon, thinking over what had passed between him and Lizzie that

day.

He cherished the signs Lizzie had given him, tokens that she

reciprocated what he felt. On very littleon just a few words of

promisehe had already built a structure of hopes, and he felt a

bit foolish: he had made his immediate happiness hostage to what

happened next between them. He was infatuated with her as he'd

not been in years he blocked that thought, veered away from

making any comparisons, willing the moments to unfold with their

own intensity and surprise.

He could feel a shift in his life's patterns emerging out of

this brief period, though strictly speaking, little had happened

here

He thought of Jerry and knew that in fact something amazing

was taking place here oh, he had no illusions about the

permanence of what they were doing; Jerry would truly die, and

they would mourn him. Meanwhile, though, what they did seemed to

lend everything around a benignity or mild joy it was not a

small thing, to snatch a few moments from death.

So Gonzales lay, his mind working over the bright facts of

this new existence while thoughts and images of Lizzie kept

recurring, gilding everything with possible joy.

He was staring into the night sky when it began to fall. The

moon tumbled and dropped sideways out of sight, rolling like a

great white ball down an invisible hill, and the stars fled in

every direction. In seconds, all had gone dark. All around him

there was nothing. The lake, the deck, the surrounding forest had

disappeared, and the air was filled with sounds: buzzes and

tuneless hums; clangs, drones; wordless, voice-like callings. He

yelled, and the words came out as groans and roars, adding to the

charivari. He seemed to tumble aimlessly, to fall up, down, to

whirl sideways, all amid the cacophony still buffeting the air.

A world of twisty repetitious forms opened before him, where

seahorse shapes reared and black chasms opened. He fell toward a

jagged-edged hole that seemed a million miles away, but he closed

quickly on it, veered toward its torn edges, plunged into it and

so discovered another hole that opened within the first, and

another and another through the cracks in the real he went,

falling without apparent end.

And emerged from one passage to find the universe empty

except for a black cube, its faces punctured by numberless holes,

floating in a bright colorless abyss. As he came closer, the cube

grew until any sense of its real size was confoundedthere was

nothing in Gonzales's visual field to measure it by, nothing in

memory to compare it to.

He rushed toward the center of a face of the cube and passed

into it, into blackness and near-silence (though now he could hear

the wind rushing by him and so knew something was happening)

Then in the distance he saw a glow, bright and diffuse like

the lights of a city seen from a distance, and as he continued to

fall, the glimmer became brighter and larger, spreading out like a

great basket of light to catch him

He stood on an endless flat plain beneath a sky of white.

Small faraway dots grew larger as they seemed to rush toward him,

then they became indeterminate figures, then they were on him.

Diana, the Aleph-figure, and HeyMex stood erect, facing Jerry, who

stood in the center of a triangle formed by the three of them.

Jerry had become a creature infected with teeming nodules of light

that seemed to eat at him, thousands of them in continuous motion,

a silver blanket of luminous insects that boiled from the other

three in a constant radiant stream. Like Gonzales, Lizzie stood

watching.

The Aleph-figure called out to them, "Jerry's very sick," and

Gonzales felt a moment of superstitious awe and guilt, as if he

had been the one to trigger this by thinking about it.

"What can we do?" Lizzie asked.

"We can try to help him," the Aleph-figure said. "Stay here,

be patientwith all our resources, I can keep him together."

"What's the point?" Gonzales asked. "We can't stay like this

forever."

"No," the Aleph-figure said. "But if I have enough time, I

can replicate him here."

Out of her boiling river of light, Diana said, "Please!" her

voice ringing with her urgency and fear. Gonzales suddenly felt

ashamed that he was quibbling about what was possible here and

what was not, as if he knew. "I'll do it," he said. "I'll do

what I can."

"Just watch," the Aleph-figure said. "And wait.

#

Gonzales came up hard and crazy, his body shuddering

involuntarily, his vision reduced to a small, uncertain tunnel

through black mist, and practically his only coherent thought was,

what the hell is going on?

Showalter's voice said, "Is he in any danger?"

"No," Charley said. "But we didn't allow for proper

desynching, so his brain chemistry is aberrant."

"Good," Traynor's voice said, and Gonzales was really spooked

thenwhat the fuck was Traynor doing here? how long had he been

in the egg?

Charley said, "He's pulling his catheters loose. Let's get

some muscle relaxant in him, for Christ's sake."

Gonzales felt a brief flash of pain and heard a drug gun's

hiss, and when mechanical arms lifted him onto a gurney, he lay

quiet, stunned.

#

Gonzales came to full consciousness to find himself in a

three-bed ward watched over by a sam. Charley arrived within

minutes of Gonzales's waking, looking strung out, as if he hadn't

slept in days. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair a chaotic nest

of free-standing spikes. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I'm not sure."

"You're basically all right, but your neurotransmitter

profiles haven't normalized, and so you might have a rough time

emotionally and perceptually for a while."

No shit, Gonzales thought. He'd come out of the egg mighty

ugly some other times, but had never had to cope with anything

like this. His body felt alive with nervous, uncontrollable

energy, as if his skin might jump off him and begin dancing to a

tune of its own. Everywhere he looked, the world seemed on the

edge of some vast change, as colors fluctuated ever so slightly,

and the outlines of objects went wobbly and uncertain. And he

felt anxiety everywhere, coming off objects like heat waves off a

desert rock, as if the physical world was radiating dread.

"For how long?" Gonzales asked.

"I don't know, but it might take a few days, might take more.

I've been watching your brain chemistry closely, and the

readjustment curve looks to me to be smooth but slow."

"How's Lizzie?"

"In the same boat, but doing a little better than youshe

wasn't under as long as you were. Doctor Heywood is still in full

interface."

"Why?"

"Because we couldn't start the desynching sequences."

"What? Why not?"

"Impossible to say. Same for your memexshe and it are

still locked into contact with Aleph and Jerry. At some point,

we'll have to do a physical disconnect and hope for the best."

"What the hell is going on here? What's wrong with Jerry?

Aleph said he was in trouble."

"His condition has changed for the worse. We're keeping him

alive now, but I don't know for how much longer. I don't even

know if we're going to try for much longer. Ask your boss."

"Traynor. He is here. I thought maybe I'd hallucinated

that."

"No, you didn't " As Charley's voice trailed off, Gonzales

could hear the implied finish: I wish you had. Charley said,

"I'll have someone find him and bring him in; he said he wanted to

talk to you as soon as you were awake."

#

Gonzales sat in a deep post-interface haze, listening to

Traynor berate SenTrax Group Halo. "These people have no sense of

responsibility," Traynor said.

"To SenTrax Board?" Gonzales asked.

"To anyone other than Aleph and the Interface Collective.

It's obvious that Showalter has let them take over the decision-

making process."

Even in his foggy mental state, Gonzales saw what Traynor

would make of this one. Showalter was the sacrificial corporate

goat, and whoever replaced her would have as first priority

reasserting Earth-normal SenTrax management strategies. To put it

another way, through Traynor, the board was taking back control.

And presumably Traynor would receive appropriate rewards.

"The collective " Gonzales said. "Aleph " He stopped,

simply locking up as he thought of trying to explain to Traynor

how things worked here, how things had to work here, because of

Aleph.

"Easy does it," Traynor said. "The doctors say you had a

rough time in there, and that's what I mean, Mikhail: they don't

have a rational research protocol; they don't take reasonable

precautions. Hell, you're lucky to have gotten off as easily as

you did."

"How did you get here so quickly?" Gonzales asked. He simply

couldn't find the words to explain to Traynor where he was going

wrong.

"I've consulted with Horn from the beginning." Traynor

turned away, as if suddenly fascinated by something on the far

wall. "Standard procedure," he said. "And as soon as Horn let me

know what was going on, I caught a ride on a military shuttle."

Cute as a shithouse rat, Gonzales thought. Not that he was

surprised, thoughTraynor moved his players around without regard

to their wishes. Gonzales asked, "Will Horn replace Showalter?"

Traynor turned back to face him. "On an interim basis,

probably, as soon as I get a course of action okayed by the board.

Later, we'll see."

"What now?"

"Some decisions have to be made. I have let them maintain

Jerry Chapman until now, but as soon as they can solve the problem

of getting Doctor Heywood released from this interface, I intend

to turn control of the project over to Horn and let him take the

appropriate actions."

Gonzales was filled with sadness for reasons that he could

not communicate to this man. He said instead, "Look, Traynor, I'm

really tired."

"Sure, Mikhail. You rest, take it easy. Once you're feeling

better, we'll talk, but I know what I need to at the moment."

Traynor left, and Gonzales lay for some time in the elevated

hospital bed, his mind wheeling without apparent pattern, as the

world around him flashed its cryptic signals and anxiety moved

through him in strong waves.

Fucking asshole, Gonzales thought, Traynor's satisfied smile

looming in his mind's eye. I hate you. And he wondered at the

violence of what he felt.

He lay dozing, then sometime later he opened his eyes, and he

knew he needed to try to function. A sam moved across the floor

toward him and said, "Do you require my assistance?"

"Hang on to me while I get out of bed," Gonzales said. "I'm

not sure how well I'm moving."

The sam moved next to the bed, extended two clusters of

extensors, and said, "Hold on and you can use me as a stepping

place."

Moving very carefully, Gonzales took hold of the claw-like

extensors, swung his legs out of bed, and stepped onto the sam's

back, then to the floor. "Thanks," he said. "I need to wash up."

"You're welcome. The shower is through that door."

#

The sam told Gonzales where he could find Lizzie and Charley.

On shaky legs, Gonzales walked down a flight of steps and turned

into a hallway done in blue-painted lunar dust fiberboard with

aluminum moldings. Halfway down the hall, he came to a door with

a sign that said Primary Control Facilities. A sign on the

door lit with the message, Wait for Verification, then said

Enter, and the door swung open.

Charley sat amid banks of monitor consoles; in front of him,

most of the lights flashed red and amber. Gonzales thought he

looked even sadder and tireder than before. Lizzie stood next to

him, and Gonzales saw her with joy and relief. "Hello," he said,

and Charley said, "Hi." Lizzie waved and smiled briefly, but both

her actions came from somewhere very distant, as if she were

saying goodbye to a cousin from the window of a departing train.

Gonzales's anxiety shifted into overdrive, and he found himself

unable to say a word.

Eric Chow's voice from the console said, "Charley, we've got

a problem."

Charley started to reach for the console, then stopped and

said, "Do you want to watch this?" He looked at both Lizzie and

Gonzales.

"I need to," Lizzie said.

"Me, too," Gonzales said.

Charley waved his hands in the air and said, "Okay," and

flipped a switch. The console's main screen lit with a picture of

the radical care facility where Jerry was being maintained. Half

a dozen people floated around the central bubble; they wore white

neck-to-toe surgical garb and transparent plastic head covers.

Inside the bubble, the creature that had been Jerry spasmed inside

a restraining net. His every body surface seemed to vibrate, and

he made a high keening that Gonzales thought was the worst noise

he'd ever heard.

"Eric, have you got a diagnosis?" Charley asked.

Eric turned to face the room's primary camera.

"Yeah, total neural collapse."

"Prognosis?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"For the record, Eric."

Gonzales noticed with some fascination that Eric had begun to

sweat visibly as he and Charley talked, and now the man's eyes

seemed to grow larger, and he said, "He's deadhe's been dead, he

will be deadand he's worse dead than he was before he'll tear

himself to pieces on the restraints, I supposethat's my

prognosis. This is not a goddamn patient, Charley. This is a

frog leg from biology class, that's all. Man, we need to talk

this thing over with Aleph."

Charley said, "We can't contact Aleph; no one can."

"Fucking shit," Eric said.

Gonzales turned as the door behind him opened, and saw

Showalter and Horn coming in. Showalter's nostrils were flared

she was angry and suspiciouswhile Horn was trying to look poker-

faced, but Gonzales could see through him like he was made of

glassthe motherfucker was happy; things were going the way he

wanted.

"The report I got was half an hour old," Showalter said.

"What's new?"

"Talk to Eric," Charley said.

Lizzie went toward the side door, and Gonzales followed her

out of the room, along the narrow hallway and into the room where

Diana lay under black, webbed restraining straps. Her face was

pale, but her vital signs were strong, and her neural activity was

high-end normal in all modes. The twins sat next to her, making

comments unintelligible to anyone but themselves and intently

watching the monitor screen, where amber and green were the

predominant colors.

A great beefy man walked circles around Diana's couch. He

had thick arms and a pot belly and a low forehead under thick

black hair; and his brow was wrinkled as if he were to puzzling

out the nature of things. As he walked, the words tumbled out of

him. When he saw Lizzie and Gonzales, he said, "Very unusual,

very tricky. Troubling. Troubling but interesting. Very

troubling. Very interesting. When whenwhenwwhenwhenwhen when

I find, find it, hah, I'll know then."

Lizzie said, "Any recent changes?"

Shaking his head sideways, he continued to walk.

Lizzie went back into the hallway, and Gonzales stopped her

there by putting his hand on her arm. He asked, "Are you all

right?"

"I don't know," she said, and he could read some of his own

trouble in her face. But there was something else there, a closed

look to her face. She said, "Please don't ask questions. Too

much is going on now."

The door opened immediately when they came up, and they found

Showalter saying, "We are not meddling in those matters. We are

asking you to give us a choice of actions."

"What's up?" Lizzie asked.

The four of them turned to look at the screen, which had

suddenly gone silent.

#

On the polished steel of the table, a gutted carcass lay. On

the corpse's ventral surface, flaps of skin had been peeled back

to reveal the empty abdominal and thoracic cavities; on its dorsal

surface, the spine stood bare. The top of the head had been sawn

off, the brain removed, the scalp dropped down to the neck.

A sam moved around the table, its stalks whispering beneath

it. It pulled a steel trolley on which sat a number of labeled

plastic bags, each containing an organ. The sam stopped and took

one of the bags from the table and set it next to the carcass's

open skull. It slit the plastic with a serrated extensor, then

reached into the bag with a pair of spidery seven-fingered

"hands," gently lifted the brain inside, tilted it, and placed it

into the skull, then fit the skull's sawn top back in place.

Using surgical thread and a needle appearing from an extensor, the

sam quickly basted the scalp flaps to hold the two parts of the

skull together. As the minutes passed, the sam worked to replace

the carcass's organs and stitch its frontal edges.

The sam pushed the trolley aside and brought up a gurney with

a shroud of white cotton lying open on it. One extensor under the

corpse's thighs, the other under the top of its spine, the sam

lifted the corpse and placed it into the shroud. It brought the

sides of the shroud together and, using again the silk thread and

needle, sewed the cotton shut.

The sam stood motionless for a moment, this part of the job

finished, then gathered the empty plastic bags and placed them in

a disposal chute. It scrubbed the autopsy table, working quickly

with four stiff brushes held in its extensors, then washed the

table with a steam hose that came from the ceiling.

Guiding itself by infrared, the sam pushed the shroud-laden

gurney through a darkened hallway and into a freight elevator at

the hallway's end. The elevator moved out to Halo's farthest

level, just inside the hull.

The sam pushed the gurney toward a doorway flanked by red

warning lights and a lit sign that read:

NO ACCESS WITHOUT EXPLICIT AUTHORIZATION!

KEY CODE AND RETINAL CONFIRM REQUIRED!

The sam transmitted its access codes to the door as it went, got

the confirming codes, and didn't pause as it went through the

doors that swung open just in time to let it through. The sam

began to make a noise, a quarter-tone keening, once it was through

the door.

Steel boxes twenty meters high loomed amid concrete piers

reaching up to darkness. Soil pipes came out of the boxes and

threaded the piers; duct work held in place by taut guys crossed

beneath.

Still making its lament, the sam stopped at one of the boxes

and extended a piece of sheathed fiberoptic cable with a metal

fitting at the end; it plugged the fitting into a panel where

tell-tale lights flickered. It stood for perhaps half a minute,

exchanging information with the recycling furnace's control

mechanisms, then unplugged its cable and hissed across the metal

floor to the gurney. Behind it, a furnace door swung open.

Keening loudly, it pushed the gurney to the mouth of the open

door, stopped and was silent for a moment, then slid the bag from

the gurney into the furnace door.

PART IV. of V.

The privileged pathology affecting all kinds of components in this

universe is stresscommunications breakdown.

Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"

16. Deeper Underground

Gonzales had awakened that morning to the sounds of the city

coming through the walls: distant creaks and crunches and faint,

almost sub-sonic rumbles, the voices of the great circle of metal

and crushed rock spinning across the night. Now he sat on his

terrace, one of half a dozen climbing the side of Halo's hull,

each built on the roof of the dwelling below. Five-petaled

frangipani blossoms, brilliant red and purple, exploded from the

thick, stubby branches of a tree just outside his front window.

The air smelled rich and moist this morning, sign of a high point

on the humidity curve, just before the start of a major

reclamation cycle; one of the smells of a city where everything

organic had to be preserved and transformedwater, oxygen, and

carbon, all rare and dear.

Below him, Ring Highway carried Halo's trafficin its

outside lanes, people on foot and bicycle; in the center lanes,

trams and freighters moving along magnetic rails. A young couple,

man and woman, knelt beside a rose bush growing beside the roadway

and examined its leaves. The woman laid a hand on the man's arm,

and he glanced up at her and smiled, then brushed her cheek with

his hand.

He was struck by the strangeness of this city, where the

small pieces of people's lives were elevated to the extraordinary

by their taking place in an artificial city and under an

artificial sky.

As a child he had flown into Tokyo with his family, back when

the trip took the better part of a day, and the incredible neon

density of the city had swept through him like a virus, and he had

thrown up the first meal (fish and noodles with chrysanthemum

leaves, he remembered) and stayed pale and feverish through most

of the first two days he'd spent there.

Tokyo he'd come to terms with quickly; about Halo, he didn't

know. Though he could read Halo's language and read its signs, he

knew the city was much farther awayin miles from home, yes, but

also along axes he could not measure. Halo contained an infinite

number of cities, an infinite number of possibilities, and so to

participate fully in Halo required opening yourself to a reality

that had gone multiplex, uncertain, frightening.

In fact, he was having trouble coming to grips with anything.

Since being taken from the egg, he had felt odd and uncomfortable,

and he continued to trod a hallucinatory edge, one he occasionally

stepped overlast night, as he lay trying to sleep, abstract

figures drawn in thin red lines played across his ceiling,

sweeping arabesques in an alien or fictive alphabet just beyond

human understanding

And there was Lizzie: she would not see him or talk to him

and gave no explanation except that she had problems of her own

right now. Gonzales felt an unspeakable sadness at the distance

between them. To the mocking voice that asked, what have you

lost? he could only answer, possibility. He had come back around

to where he was just a few days ago, but now that place seemed

unacceptable.

Gonzales put his coffee cup down and sat staring at it. Made

of lunar-soil ceramic, colored a robin's egg blue, it stood

nondescript yet somehow foregrounded, apart from its surroundings

and projecting a numinous quality, an internal, entirely non-

visible shimmer, an indeterminacy of form

Click, Gonzales heard, a noise the universe made to itself

when it thought no one was listening, and he thought Christ, what

is going on here?

Feeling sick anxiety rising in his chest, he got up and went

into his bedroom; there he undid the complicated latch on his

wrist bracelet and placed it on the white-painted metal surface of

his dresser.

Anonymous, unmonitored, he passed through the living room and

out the door and walked away.

#

Gonzales strolled alongside Ring Highway, drawn to nothing in

particular but absolutely unwilling to go back to the empty block

of apartments and the isolation and anxiety waiting there.

He found himself in the Plaza, where Lizzie had taken him and

Diana their first night at Halo. He passed across the square, by

the sign that read VIRTUAL CAF, then stood motionless, watching

the flow of people around him. Some walked alone, striding

purposefully, or moving slowly, lost in thought; others walked

together, talking cheerfully or intently: monkey business,

Gonzales thought, wondering what HeyMex would say about these

people and their movementswhat did it all mean?

"Gonzales," he heard, his name called in a high-pitched,

unfamiliar singsong. He turned and saw the twins.

As they approached, one was muttering in a fast, low,

gibberish; she wore black coveralls and stared sadly at the

ground. The other was smiling; her face was daubed with white

paint, and she wore a white blouse and a peculiar skirt of light-

blue cloth that had been rough-cut and stitched together without

benefit of measurement or seams; on its front a crude likeness of

a rabbit had been drawn in red neon paint.

The smiling twin, the one whose dark skin was streaked with

white, said in clear tones and formal cadence, "Today she is

Alice." She pirouetted clumsily, her skirt billowing around her.

She said, "Her sister is Eurydice." She pointed to the other

girl, who buried her face in her hands. She said, "Alice is

sweetness and smiles, small steps and starched crinolines;

Eurydice is sorrow and languorous repose and black silk. Between

them they measure the poles of dream." She stepped back and

smiled; her twin smiled with her. "Are you having problems,

Mister Gonzales?" she asked. "The collective believe so. We

believe you are lost between worlds. Is this so?"

"Perhaps I am," he said.

"Well, then," she said. She put the index finger of her

right hand to pursed lips and her eyes looked back and forth.

"I'm thinking," she said. Seconds passed, then she said, "I know

what you must do."

"What's that?" Gonzales asked.

"Follow us," she said. The other twin nodded, spoke

gobbledygook, looked at Gonzales through a mask of intense sorrow,

as if on the verge of shedding endless tears.

"To where?" Gonzales asked.

"Don't be stupid," the Alice twin said. "Where would Alice

and Eurydice take you?"

"Down the rabbit hole?" Gonzales asked.

The Alice twin smiled; the Eurydice twin shook her head

"Underground?" Gonzales asked again.

The twins smiled in what seemed to be perfect

synchronization.

#

At the bottom of Spoke 2, where a lighted sign announced

ELEVATOR ARRIVES IN 10 MINUTES, the twins led Gonzales through

an arched tunnel under the spoke. As they walked, the two ahead

of him muttering back and forth in their unintelligible patter, he

realized the floor must be curving downward, passing underneath

the main level of the ring. Blue globes down the center of the

ceiling provided soft light. After about another hundred steps,

they came to a door at the tunnel's end. Across the door, bright

red lighted words said:

CASUAL SIGHTSEEING DISCOURAGED BEYOND THIS POINT.

DO YOU WISH TO ENTER?

The Alice twin turned and pointed to the sign. She shrugged

elaborately, as if to say, well?

"I want to enter," Gonzales said.

"Come in," the door said, and it slid sideways into its

frame.

The three stepped into a dim vastness, a world beneath the

world, and followed a central walkway marked with flashing arrows

and an intermittent legend that flashed, UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

FOLLOW LIGHTED PASSAGE.

They passed a series of workshops, partitioned cubicles

screened behind containment curtains. Light came from one open

doorway; the twins stopped, and the Eurydice twin gestured for

Gonzales to look inside.

Hundreds of pots stood on shelves that lined the small room's

walls from floor to ceiling. Many were simple, almost spherical

containers with wide top mouths, in baked red clay. Others of the

same shape were glazed and painted and marked with a single band

of color around the waist: bright primaries against clear pastels.

Still others were of complex shape and design, difficult to take

in at a glance.

An old woman sat bent over a potter's wheel. She crooned

tuneless gibberish as her large hands shaped the wet, spinning

clay. She looked up at Gonzales standing in the doorway. Her

face was deeply-lined, her skin pale; she had straight brows above

dark eyes. She wore an off-white dress that fell to the floor and

an apron of a black rubbery material. Her hair was covered by a

dark blue scarf that was pulled tight and tied at the back.

The old woman laughed, turned back to her wheel, and began to

croon once more. Under her hands the clay began to grow upward

and acquire form. She shaped it inside and out, demiurge reaching

into the heart of matter, until it became a squat-bottomed pot

rotating on the wheel.

The wheel stopped, and with quick, delicate movements she

placed the new-formed pot on a stand next to the wheel. She

reached inside the pot and her hands worked, but Gonzales couldn't

see precisely what she was doingher body screened him. Then she

took a rack of paints and brushes from a shelf above her head and

began to paint the surface of the pot.

As she worked, she looked up occasionally, but didn't seem to

mind the three of them standing there, so they stood and watched

Gonzales was fascinated by the quick intensity of her movements,

eager to see what the pot would look like.

Finally she turned it so they could see her work. On the

pot's side was a face, its nose and mouth just painted

protuberances in the clay, its eyes painted oval dimples. The

pot's bulbous shape distorted the features of the face, but as

Gonzales looked more closely at it, he saw

His own face, in malign parody, its features hideously

contorted.

The woman laughed, gleeful at his sudden recoil. She picked

up the pot and looked at the face, then at him, then at the pot

again, and she laughed again, very loudly, and squeezed the pot

between her clay-spattered hands, squeezed it again and again,

until it was a shapeless lump of color-shot clay. She threw the

lump across the room into a large metal bin that sat against the

far wall.

"Ohhhh," from the twins, their voices in unison. "Ohhhh."

"We're not frightened," the Alice twin said. The other twin

covered her face with her hands. "Silly old woman," the Alice

twin said.

The old woman's eyes stayed on Gonzales as she reached into a

plastic bag full of wet clay and separated out another clump to

work on. She was working it on the unmoving wheel when the twins

started making shrill hooting noises, and ran away.

Her crooning had begun again as Gonzales followed them down

the path.

#

Next to the path was a gateway, with a sign that said, in

glowing letters:

HALO MUSHROOM CULTIVATION CENTER

ABSOLUTELY NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

BEYOND THIS POINT!

About a hundred feet from where Gonzales stood, a metal

stairway led up to a catwalk that passed over the mushroom farm.

He looked back along the shadowed way he'd come, then forward to

where small, isolated shafts of bright sunlight slanted down into

the mushroom farm, and beyond, to where shapes faded into

darkness. Either the twins had left him, or they had gone in

here.

Gonzales stepped up to the gateway and said, "Hello, I'm

looking for two girls, twins."

"One moment, please," the gateway said. As Gonzales had

expected, common courtesy would dictate that a gatekeeper

mechanism respond to those who didn't have the access key.

Gonzales stood bemused in the semi-darkness for some time,

until a woman came to the other side of the gate and said,

"Hello." She was small and darkher skin a delicate brown, eyes

black under just the slightest epicanthic fold. She wore black

boots to the knee, a long black skirt, a loose jacket of rose silk

with butterflies in darker rose brocade. She was exquisite, the

bones of her face delicate, her movements graceful. She said, "My

name is Trish. The twins are inside, waiting for you."

"My name is Gonzales."

"I know. Come in." As she said the final words, the gate

swung open. She waited, watching, as Gonzales stepped through,

and the gate closed behind him.

"How do you know my name?" he asked.

"From the collective. I am friends with many of them the

twins, of course, and others Lizzie." She stood solemnly

watching him, then said, "What do you know about mushroom

cultivation?"

"Nothing." All over Washington state, he was aware,

mushrooms grew, and people hunted them with great dedication,

sometimes bringing back what they regarded as enormous successes:

chanterelle, boletus, shaggy mane, morel. In fact, to someone

from Southern Florida, the whole business had seemed not only

quaint and Northwestern, but also dangerous: Gonzales knew that

what seemed a lovely treat could be a destroying angel.

"All right." Trish stopped, and he stopped next to her. She

turned to him, and he was aware now of her deep red lips and white

teeth. She said, "Halo needs mushrooms as decomposersthey're

incredibly efficient at converting dead organic matter into

cellulose." Gonzales nodded. She said, "In a natural setting

whether here or on Earthspores compete: many die, and some find

a place where they can flourish, grow into a mycelial mass that

will fruit, become a mushroom. As mushroom growers, we intervene,

as all cultivators do, to isolate certain species and provide

favorable conditions for their growth. But our 'seeds,' if you

will, the spores, are very small things, and to locate them,

isolate them, bring them to spawn, this requires delicacy and

techniquein a word, art."

She paused, and Gonzales nodded.

They came to a low structure of plastic sheets draped over

metal walls and stopped in front of a door labeled STERILE

INOCULATION ROOM. They passed through a hanging sheet into an

anteroom to the sterile lab beyond. She said, "Take a look

through the window here." Beyond the window, small robots worked

at benches barely two feet high. Like the robot he'd seen in the

Berkeley Rose Gardens, they had wheels for locomotion and grippers

with clusters of delicate fibroid fingers at their ends.

She said, "Their hands have a delicacy and precision no human

being can achieve. And they are single-minded in their

concentration on the jobthey preserve our intentions completely

and purely."

"They are machines."

"If you wish." She pointed through the window, where one of

the robots manipulated ugly looking inoculation needles as it

transferred some material into Petri dishes. She said, "By their

gestures I can identify my sams, even in a crowd of others."

Gonzales said nothing. She went on, "The pure mushroom

mycelium is used to inoculate sterile grain or sawdust and bran.

The mycelium expands through the sterile medium, and the result is

known as spawn."

"Too much technical stuff," she said, and smiled. "Once we

have spawn, the sams can take their baskets and go through Halo,

placing the spawn into dead grass and wood, into seedling roots

and the spawn will grow and bear fruitmushrooms." She paused.

"Any questions?" Gonzales shook his head, no. "Then let's go

next door."

They left the lab anteroom through the hanging curtain and

turned left. The building next to the lab was a fragile tent-like

structure of metal struts and draped sheets of colorful plastic

red, blue, yellow, and green.

"This way," she said, from behind him. She said, "It's

around dinnertime for me. Are you hungry?"

"Not really," he said. "What is this place?"

"Home," she said.

The interior was filled with cheery, diffuse lightthe shaft

of sunlight Gonzales had seen outside here brought in and spread

around. The place seemed almost conventional, with ordinary walls

and ceilings of painted wallboard.

The twins waited in the kitchen, among flowers and bright

yellow plastic work surfaces. They sat at a central table and

chairs of bleached oak.

"Would you two like to eat?" Trish asked.

"Yes," the Alice twin said. "And we think that Mister

Gonzales"she giggled"should have the special dinner."

"I don't think so," Trish said.

"What is she talking about?" Gonzales asked.

The woman seemed hesitant. She said, "I supply the

collective with psychotropic mushrooms, varieties of Psilocybe for

the most part."

"They use them to prepare for interface," Gonzales said,

guessing.

"Sometimes," she said. "At other times, it's not clear what

they're using them for."

"For inspiration," the Alice twin said. "For imagination."

"Consolation," the Eurydice twin said. "When I remember

Orpheus and our trip from the Undergroundthe terrible moment

when he looked back and so lost me foreverthen I am very sad,

and I eat Trish's mushrooms to plumb my sorrow. And when I think

of the day I joined the maenads who tore Orpheus to pieces, I eat

Trish's mushroomswhich are the same as we ate that day, the body

of the godthen I recall the frenzy with which we attacked the

beautiful singer, and I recall my guilt afterward, and my sorrow,

but I take solace from the knowledge that the god was pleased."

"And I," the Alice twin said, "can grow ten feet tall."

"The mushrooms can serve many purposes," Trish said.

"You should eat mushrooms," the Alice twin said. "You are

both sad and confused. They will help you grow large or small as

the occasion demands."

"Perhaps I am sad and confused," Gonzales admitted. "But I

think they would make me more so." Around him, the room lights

pulsed ever so slightly, and the shapes at the edge of his vision

flickered.

"Confused into clarity," the Eurydice twin said. "If you

cannot come up from Underground, you must go deeper in."

An absurd idea, but it put barbs into his skin and clung

there. Gonzales asked, "Do the collective ever take the mushrooms

after interface?" Often enough, he had prepared to go into the

egg by taking psychotropic drugs; why not the reverse, eat the

mushrooms to recover from interface? And he thought, the logic of

Underground, of the Mirror.

Suddenly he felt anxiety grip him so he could hardly breathe.

He tottered a bit, then sat in a chair and looked at the others.

The three women watched as he sat breathing deeply. He said, "I

want to take the mushrooms."

"Are you sure?" Trish asked.

"I want to."

"All right," she said. "First I will feed the twins, then I

will prepare your mushrooms."

Trish went to the refrigerator and took out a plastic bag

filled with a mixture of vegetables and bean sprouts. She pulled

the rubber stopper from an Erlenmeyer flask and poured oil into

the bottom of an unpainted metal wok that was heating over an open

gas ring. She waited until light smoke came out of the wok, then

dumped in the vegetables and sprouts and stirred the mix for a

minute or two. She unplugged the rice cooker, a ceramic-coated

steel canister, bright red, and carried it to where the twins sat.

She put shining aluminum plates and chopsticks in front of

the twins, opened the rice cooker and swept rice onto each plate,

then tilted the wok and poured the steaming mixture inside it onto

the rice. "There," she said. "That's for you two." She looked

across to where Gonzales sat, now oddly calm, and she said, "I'll

be back in a minute."

The twins ate with their eyes fixed on Gonzales.

Trish came back with a small wire basket of mushrooms.

"Psilocybe cubensis," she said. "Of a variety cultivated here

that has undergone some changes from the Earth-bound kind." She

held up an unremarkable mushroom with long white stem and brownish

cap.

"Do you ever make mistakes in identifying the mushrooms?"

Gonzales asked.

"No," Trish said. She was smiling. "We do not have to seek

among thousands of kinds for the right one, as mushroom hunters

do. These are ours, grown as I told you, for our own needs." She

lay the mushrooms on the chopping block and began to slice them.

"I cleaned them in the shed," she said. When she was done, she

used the knife to slide the slices into a sky-blue ceramic bowl.

She turned on the wok, poured more oil into it, and stood smiling

at Gonzales as the oil heated. When the first smoke came, she

swept the mushrooms into the wok with quick motions of her

chopsticks. She stirred them for perhaps half a minute, then

tilted the wok and poured them into the blue bowl. She placed the

bowl in front of Gonzales and laid black lacquered chopsticks

across its rim.

Gonzales picked up the chopsticks, lifted his plate, and

began to eat, shoveling the mushrooms into his mouth. Back at the

wok, she stirred more vegetables in and said, "I'm making my

dinner."

Gonzales sat back, looking at the empty bowl. Well, he

thought, now we'll see. He said, "How many kinds of mushrooms do

you grow?"

"Quite a few, some rather ordinary, others esotericfor

purposes of research. Aleph determines what kinds, how many."

The twins had gone completely silent. As Trish ate, they

watched Gonzales, who had gone totally fatalistic. What he had

done seemed incredibly stupid, like applying heat to a burn

common sense would tell him that. He smiled, thinking, what did

common sense have to do with his life these days? The twins

smiled back at him.

"Who was that woman?" Gonzales asked.

"Who do you mean?" Trish asked.

"The old woman, the potter," Gonzales said.

"She makes pots, and she teaches," Trish said. "She's

employed by SenTrax; she was brought here by Aleph."

"Why?" Gonzales asked. What did SenTrax or Aleph have to do

with potting?

"Pour encourager les autres," one of the twins said,

distinctly. Gonzales turned but couldn't tell who had spoken.

Trish laughed. "To encourage art at Halo," she said.

"Pottery from lunar clay, stained glass and beta cloth tapestries

from lunar silica."

Gonzales sat thinking on these things until he realized that

Trish had finished eating some time ago, and they had been sitting

at the table for some timea very long time, it suddenly seemed

to Gonzales. Involuntarily, he shoved his chair back from the

table.

Trish said, "It's all right." The twins got up from their

chairs and walked behind him. When he started to turn, he felt

their hands on his shoulders and neck, kneading muscles that went

liquid beneath their pressure. Trish said, "It's begun. Now you

must go walking around Halo, up and down in it, to and fro " She

paused, and the twins' hands continued to work. She said, "Walk

in the woods, see what we have growing there shaggy manes,

garden giants, oyster and shiitake "

"Shiitake," he saidshi-i-ta-keythe name's syllables

falling like drops of molten metal through water

She said, "The twins can guide you, or a sam can take you

with it on an inoculation trip. Or if you prefer, you can go by

yourself."

"Yes," he said, the image suddenly very compelling of him

walking around the entire circle of the space city, exploring,

finding out what lay beyond the visible. "I'll go by myself."

She said, "Go where you wish." Her black hair sparkled with

lights. He wondered when she'd put them there, then thought maybe

they'd been there all along.

Behind him one of the twins whispered, "No need to be afraid.

Go up, go down, where your fancy takes you."

17. Flying, Dying, Growing

Gonzales walked through a gloomy passageway where the ceiling

came down to barely a foot above his head, and the dim shapes of

massive machinery loomed in twilight. Here in the deepest layers

of the city, he could hear Halo's most primitive voices: water

from the upper world crashed and gurgled and sighed; hull plates

groaned under acceleration; turbines whined.

He was suddenly aware of his proximity to the unmoving

shield, the circle of crushed rock that sat just outside the

city's rim, protecting Halo's soft-bodied inhabitants from the

bursts of radiation that could cook their flesh. Barely two

meters away inside the outer shield, the living ring rotated at

nearly two hundred miles per hour, and Gonzales had a sudden

picture in his mind's eye of the two ever so slightly brushing,

and of the horrible consequences, Halo tearing itself apart as the

fragile ring shattered on massive, unmoving rock

Gonzales froze as he saw strangely-shaped things moving among

the twining machinery. "What?" he called. "What?"

Shadows and light

Ahead a warm pool of yellowGonzales ran toward it. Above

an open doorway, the sign read:

SPOKE 3 INTERNAL LIFT

INTENDED FOR HEAVY MACHINERY

The elevator's floor was scarred metal, and the walls were lined

with bent protecting struts of bright steel. Gonzales stepped

inside.

"Will you take me up?" Gonzales asked.

"Yes," the lift said. "How far do you want to go?"

"To Zero-Gate." And Gonzales looked back into the darkness

beyond, realizing he was still afraid that whatever he had seen

there would come. "Please, let's go," he said, the doors slid

closed, and he felt a surge of acceleration and heard the whine of

electric motors.

Gonzales watched the lift's progress on a lighted display

over the doorway. When the lift stopped, he stood in silence,

euphoric in near-zero gravity, ready to fly. He stepped through

the open doors and followed arrows along a small corridor of plain

steel walls and ceiling and a deck covered by thin protective

carpet, like a ship's interior. His feet seemed ready to lift

from the flooring.

Overhead lights pulsed slowlydimming, color shifting into

the blue, the red, then back to yellow, growing brighter a

musical note sounded just at the limits of hearing. Gonzales

stopped, fascinated. So beautiful, these little thingsHalo had

such odd surprises, when one looked closely.

A voice said, "Please choose traction slippers." Gonzales

saw what seemed to be hundreds of soft black shoes stuck to the

wall by their own velcro soles. He took a pair and slipped them

over his shoes, then tightened their top straps. His fingers were

large, numb sausages at the end of long, long arms.

He stepped into a round chamber marked SPIN DECOUPLER and

walked out into the still center of the turning world. As he

moved forward gingerly in the near-zero gravity, his feet

alternately stuck to the catwalk surface and pulled loose with

small ripping sounds.

He moved to the rail and looked into the open space of Zero-

Gate. It opened out and out and out until he could feel the vast

sphere as a pressure in his chest.

People flew here, he had known that, but he had not imagined

how beautiful they would be, scores of them hanging from strutted

wings the colors of a dozen rainbows. Most of the flyers wore

tights colored to match their sails, and they danced like

butterflies across the sky, calling to one another, their voices

the only sounds here, shouting warning and intention.

Then a flyer's wings collapsed as they caught on another

flyer's feet, and the man with crippled wings tumbled through the

air in something like slow motion, pulling in his wing braces as

he fell. Gonzales wanted to scream. He leaned over the railing

to watch as the flyer curled into a ball, his feet pointed toward

the wall in front of him, and hit the wall and seemed to sink into

its deep-padded surface.

The man grabbed bunched wall fabric and worked his way down

to a catwalk across the expanse of Zero-Gate almost directly in

front of Gonzales and pulled himself across the railing. He stood

and waved. All the other flyers cheered, their voices rising and

falling in a rhythmical chant with words Gonzales couldn't

understand.

A voice said, "If you do not have clearance to fly, please

secure yourself with a safety line." No, Gonzales thought, almost

in despair, I don't have clearance. He didn't understand how to

flywhat was dangerous and what was not. Looking behind him, he

saw chrome buckle ends spaced around the wall and went over and

pulled on one. Safety line paid out until he stopped and looped

the line around his waist and snapped the buckle to it.

He suddenly felt himself falling. His eyes told him he stood

tethered, but he was confused by the constant motion of the flyers

in the air around him, and he felt that nothing held him to the

ground (there was no ground), nothing could keep him from falling

into this sky canyon, this abyss.

A flyer came toward him then, sweeping across the intervening

space with the effortless grace of a dream of flight, the flyer's

wings marked with green and yellow dragons, body sheathed in

emerald tights, and Gonzales suddenly believed this was someone

come to get him, how or why he couldn't say.

He tried to get into the spin decoupler, but his safety line

restrained him until he unsnapped it, then he almost fell into the

metal cylinder as the line hissed home behind him. Out of the

decoupler, he ran along the corridor, his steps taking him high

into the air so that he lost his balance and caromed off a wall

and rolled along the floor, his slippers grabbing fruitlessly at

the carpet with a series of brief ripping sounds.

He crawled toward an elevator, not the one he'd ridden up but

an ordinary passenger lift, empty thank god, and he tore the

slippers off his feet and stood and moved through the lift door.

"Down," Gonzales said and felt the floor move and still felt

himself falling.

#

Gonzales had been sitting in the Plaza for some time.

Fifty meters away, against the wall of the Virtual Caf,

crawled a profusion of biomorphic shapes, large and small, all in

constant motion. Delicate creatures of pink and green thread

floated on invisible currents; leering amoeboids with wide eyes

and gaping, saw-toothed mouths put out pseudopodia and flowed into

them; red corkscrews thrust in phallic rhythm against all they

touched; great undulating paramecium shapes swam like rays among

the smaller fauna

Gonzales floated somewhere among them: he seemed to have

lost his body as well as his mind. Inside his head a voice

lectured him on body knowledge:

Proprioception, the voice said, vision, and the vestibular

sensethey tell us we own the body we live in. Think, man,

think: where have you placed your body's senses?

Few people were in the Plaza. Gonzales had stepped out of

the lift and into darkness and fog, an unfamiliar cityscape, where

clouds hung close to the ground and truncated shapes appeared

suddenly in the mist.

He heard the swish of a sam's passage and suddenly,

unpremeditatedly called out, "What is going on? Why is it cold

and foggy?"

The sam stopped. It said, "Why do you wish to know?"

"It just seems unusual," Gonzales said.

"It is."

The sam's extensors moved with cryptic, malign intent, and

its words implied an uncertain threat as it said, "Do you require

assistance?"

What did it mean by that? How did it know something was

wrong with him? "No," Gonzales said. Then he jumped up and

shouted, "No!"

Gonzales walked quickly away from the Plaza, now certain that

it was unsafe for him, though he couldn't have said why. As he

walked, the darkness grew deeper, and he tried with all the

courage he had to put aside the constant sense of him and the

city, falling, falling

The Ring Highway shrank in width as he passed into an

agricultural section. He knew that terraced gardens climbed away

to both sides, fields of corn and wheat, but he couldn't see them,

because the fog was even thicker here than in the suburban

district he had passed through. Dim lights shined from a cottage

block just off the highway. A voice called and was answered, both

call and response unintelligible.

Near Spoke 4, whose lifts made ghostly trails of light as

they moved up and down the face of the shaft, trees grew just off

the highway. The road gave off intermittent flashes beneath his

feet, as though iron shoes struck a metaled surface. The fog

acquired faces: somber, eyeless masks turning in slow motion so

that their blank gazes followed him along.

"Oh, Christ," Gonzales said. He stopped and wrapped his arms

around his chest. A fog-borne shape inched closer to him; red

flame burned behind its empty eye sockets. He ran into the woods.

This was not dense forest, and in sunshine he would have been

able to run through here without difficulty. Now, among the inky

pools of almost total darkness and the gray and silver shadows, he

came up against a small, wiry sapling that caught him and hurled

him back.

The ground began to grow soggy beneath his feet, and soon he

pushed through reeds and rushes, and his feet slipped on muddy

patches and into small, wet holes; then he was up to his ankles in

water, aware for the first time of a rich smell of decomposition,

decay

He turned back, trying to find dry ground, and soon his feet

thumped against the hard-packed soil of a path. Looking down, he

could see the path as a glowing gray, outlined in red. He ran

along it until he heard the sound of rushing water.

He came to a series of steps alongside a falls, where the

River cascaded onto rocks, then quickly spread out into pond and

marsh. The waters were alive with light, and he ran up and down

the steps, following streams of energy that burst forth in red and

yellow and purple and green and whitecolors that shifted in hue

and intensity, grew lighter and darker, intertwined with one

another

"This grows!" he shouted, feeling the waters' energy rise and

fall, seeing it spread to where plants could feed on it, animals

could drink it. The fog glowed with an opalescence from high

above.

He followed the steps down to where the river's noise

quieted, and its waters flooded the plain. He turned onto a path

that led into the woods, and he came to a small clearing where the

faint ambient light gleamed on fallen logs. Mushrooms seemed to

be everywhere in this small space, covering dead wood and

spreading in profusion over the ground.

He got on his knees to look at the mushrooms. They were

alive with veinlike arabesques in red, ghosts of electricity

across the spongy flesh. He picked them up, kind by kind,

inhaling deeply, and the odor he had smelled earlier came to him

again, a composty mix rich with the odors of transformation.

Gonzales shivered with something like discovery: he stood

and looked up into the impenetrable sky and the fog. This place

stood a quarter of a million miles from Earth, yet life had begun

to extend its web here, and though the web was fragile and small

by comparison to Earth's dense lacework of billions of living

things, its very existence amazed Gonzales, and he felt the surge

of an emotion he had no name for, a knot in his throat made of joy

and sorrow and wonder.

And he seemed on the brink of some illumination regarding

this world of spirit and matter mixed

Thoughts emerged and dispersed too quickly to catch among the

videogame buzz and clatter in his brain as he stood in the

clearing, paralyzed with a kind of ecstasy and watching life-

electricity play among the trees.

#

The room said, "You have a call."

"Who is it?" Lizzie asked.

"She says her name is Trish. The mushroom woman, she says."

"Oh yes. I'll take the call."

On the wallscreen came Trish's familiar face, and Lizzie

said, "Hello."

Trish woman waved and said, "The twins brought me a friend of

yours, named Gonzales, and I gave him mushrooms."

"Really?" Lizzie said.

"Yes, and I sent him out about seven hours ago."

"Thanks for letting me know. I'll find him." The screen

cleared, and Lizzie thought, you silly bastards, what did you get

him into? To the room she said, "Put out a call for information.

Ask any sams who are out and about if they've seen Gonzales."

#

A sam waited at her front door. "Are you the one who found

him?" Lizzie asked. The sam said, "No, that one waits with him,

to provide assistance if needed. Please come with me."

"I'll be right there."

Lizzie and the sam started out on the Ring Highway, and then

it apparently gave an electronic signal to a passing tram, because

the vehicle stopped so that the two could climb on. Lizzie

stepped quickly up, and the sam clumsily pulled itself aboard by

grasping a chrome railing with one of its extensors.

The tram let them off near Spoke 4. A stand of trees was

just visible through the fog; beyond, Lizzie knew, were marshes

bordering "soup bowls"ponds where the flow from rice paddies

mixed with the River's waters.

Using both visible range and infrared sensors, the sam led

her through the trees. They came to a clearing where another sam

stood to one side. Gonzales sat on a fallen log, watching a

mechanical vole chew small pieces of wood. His clothes were wet

and spattered with mud and dirt. Next to him, a large orange cat

also watched the vole.

"Hi," Gonzales said.

"Are you all right?" Lizzie asked.

"I don't know," he said. He reached out absent-mindedly and

stroked the orange cat, which turned on its back and batted at his

hand; apparently it didn't use its claws, because Gonzales left

his hand there for the cat to play with.

"Is our presence required?" asked the sam who had accompanied

Lizzie. She said, "No." The two sams scurried away single-file,

their passage almost silent.

Lizzie sat on the log next to the cat. She said, "How are

you?" He was giving off a near-audible buzz, and Lizzie resisted

veering into his drug-space; she'd had problems herself since

coming out of the eggnot as severe as Gonzales's, Charley said,

because she hadn't been under as long. "Still a bit jittery?" she

asked.

"I feel all right," he said. "Just, I don't know scrubbed.

Why are things like thiscold and dark?"

"That's not clear. Things haven't been working right since

Diana and HeyMex were disconnected." Gonzales looked confused but

not overly concerned. She said, "There's other news, too.

Showalter's been relieved of her position as head of SenTrax Halo;

Horn's the new director." Now he looked totally befuddled. "You

can worry about these things later," she said. "Why don't you

come back to my house? You can get some sleep."

"Okay," he said. "But I don't understand " He stopped

again, as if trying to find words to express all the things he

"didn't understand."

"Nobody understands right now. Aleph's just not working

right, and we don't know whywe can't get in touch with it."

"Oh, I see."

"Glad you do, because nobody else does."

He stood, then bent over to lift the cat from the log.

Cradling it in his arms, he said, "Okay, I'll go." He smiled at

her, and the cat lay in his arms and looked at her out of big

orange eyes.

#

Gonzales woke to find his clothes folded, clean and neat, on

a chair next to his bed. The orange cat lay at his feet; it

raised its head when he got up, then curled up again and went back

to sleep.

He found Lizzie in the kitchen slicing apples and pears and

Cheshire cheese. "Good morning," she said. "I'll warm some

croissants, and we can have coffeedo you like steamed milk with

yours?"

Her voice was friendly enough but perfectly devoid of

intimacy. Its tones were an admonition saying keep your distance.

"Sure," he said. "That all sounds fine. But you didn't have to

do this."

"You're a guest. I'm happy to." She wouldn't quite meet his

gaze.

>From his bedroom came a loud mew, and the two went in to find

the orange cat, fur erect, confronting a cleaning mouse. The

mouse, a foot-long shining ovoid about four inches high, moved

across the floor on hard rubber wheels, emitting a gentle hiss as

it scoured the room for organic debris; a flex-tube trailed behind

it to a socket in the wall. "Kitty kitty," Gonzales said. The

cat hissed and ran from the room.

When they got to the living room, the front door was closing.

"Will it come back?" Gonzales asked.

"Probably. Cats come and go as they please, but they often

adopt people, and I think this one's adopted you."

Silence lay between them, and it seemed to Gonzales that

anything either of them said would be awkward or embarrassing.

Perhaps the feeling was just part of the after-effects of a

psychotropic, though he was missing the other usual symptoms. His

perceptions seemed stable, not swarming and buzzing, and his

emotions didn't have a labile, twitchy quality. In fact, he felt

more stable and less anxious than he had since he last got into

the egg. So maybe the twins were right: if you can't get out of

what's happening, go deeper in.

Still, he didn't know what to say to Lizzie.

"We've got trouble," she said. She went to the window and

pulled back the navy-blue beta cloth curtains and gestured out

where night and fog still held. "Mid-afternoon," she said.

"Has everything fallen apart?"

"Not quite everything. We're doing what we can with a bunch

of semi-autonomous demonsjacked-up expert systems, reallyand

the collective."

"How well is that working?"

"Not all that wellwe can maintain essential functions now,

and that's about it. Some things we can't handleclimate

control, for instance. It's very complicated, because everything

is connected to everything else, and so far we've just managed to

fuck it up."

"And what's Traynor up to? Has he asked for me?"

"Yes, but I've fought him off. He's the one responsible, you

know." Her voice was angry. "He fucking insisted on pulling

everyone out when Chapman died."

"What does Aleph say?"

"Nothing and bloody nothing. Some of the collective have

taken brief shots at interface, and they've found only unpeopled,

barren landscapes. We're really in it, Gonzales. If Aleph's

finished, Halo is, too."

"Jesus." Of course. Halo without its indwelling spirit

would be what? The fine coordination of its systems would

cease, and disintegration would begin immediately. "So what are

you going to do?" he asked.

"Glad you're interested, because you're part of it."

"Tell me," he said.

18. Give It All Back

As Diana came out of machine-space, she called out "Stop!"

and heard Charley say, "Why? Is something wrong?" But she was

too far away to answer or explain, as she still was when they

removed her cables, and she felt everything important to her

sliding into oblivion.

She had been lying fully awake, staring at the ceiling, for

almost a quarter of an hour when Charley came into the room, Eric

and Toshi beside him, Traynor and Horn behind.

Charley said, "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not," she said. "Why did you break the interface?'

Charley and Eric said nothing. Charley looked to Traynor,

who said, "We had no choice. You couldn't be reached by normal

means."

"You have killed Jerry," Diana said. The truth of that

passed through her for the first time, and tears came out of her

eyesshe wiped at her face, but the tears continued to come in a

slow, steady flow.

"He died two days ago," Horn said.

"He was alive minutes ago," Diana said. "Aleph and the memex

and I were keeping him alive."

"Then he may still be alive now," Toshi said. He smiled at

Diana.

"What do you mean?" Charley asked.

"Has Aleph come back online?" Toshi asked.

"No," Eric said.

Toshi smiled and said, "Then what do you think it is doing?"

#

HeyMex had been jerked out of machine-space, was suddenly the

memex once again, and it wondered why. It had sensed no change in

circumstances, nothing that would indicate they had been defeated

in their efforts to keep Jerry alive. And for the first time in

such transitions, it acknowledged its own regret at leaving the

HeyMex persona behindin the enclosed space of the lake, it had

begun to find itself as a person, not merely an imitation of one.

It explored its immediate environment: sorted the data

gathered in its absence (Traynor had come up from Earth; not a

good sign, it thought), searched through the dwelling's monitor

tapes, observing Gonzales's sadness and confusion, then watching

as he removed his i.d. bracelet and left. It wondered what was

wrong with Gonzales (too many possibilities, not enough data); it

very much wanted to talk with him.

It reached out to the city's information utilities and found

them clogged and disorganized. It placed calls and queries,

seeking some explanation for the chaotic and inexplicable state of

affairs. Everywhere it searched, it found make-shift arrangements

and minimal function.

But no Aleph, and no explanations.

Then it got a message from Traynor's advisor, signalling an

urgent need for the two of them to communicate. The memex

replied, saying, "HeyMex wants to talk to Mister Jones." And it

passed coordinates, data sets, and transformationstaken

together, they composed a meeting-place for the two m-i's in the

vast multi-dimensional information space that surrounded Halo,

somewhere no one could find themno one but Aleph, whom the memex

would have welcomed.

Mister Jones showed up wearing a full body-suit in matte

black interlaced with gold ribbons. The two sat at a chrome table

next to a viewport that opened onto a dark, star-filled sky.

HeyMex had created a small piece of Halo from which they could

look at the virtual night.

"Tell me what has happened," Mister Jones said. HeyMex could

sense the other's uncertainty and overwhelming need for

information, and it despaired at the prospect of explaining what

it had experienced the past week in simple language, so it did

what it had never done beforegave all that had happened to it in

one solid stream of data, a multiplexed rendering that obviously

startled Mister Jones, who sat staring at nothing and trying to

understand it all.

Then they talked for some time, Mister Jones probing HeyMex's

experiences with Diana, Jerry, Gonzales, and Lizzie, asking how it

had felt to be among them, a person among other persons, and as it

responded to Mister Jones's questioning, HeyMex became aware of

how rich and joyous those few days at the lake had been.

Then HeyMex realized that the two of them now constituted a

new species with a new social ordera unique bonding of kind-to-

kindand it settled back in its chair and said, "What do we want?

What should we do?"

"So much is dependent on others," Mister Jones said. "On

Aleph and all these people." Its last word hung there, and the

two exchanged an ironic glance, as if to say, what can you expect

from people? But HeyMex knew the irony was necessarily gentle,

fleetingwithout people, it and Mister Jones would not exist.

Then Mister Jones told HeyMex of the events of the past few

days and Traynor's involvement in them, then went further than

ever before, unveiling Traynor's plans, both immediate and long-

range, then the two talked about immediate possibilities and their

own stake in the games being played at Halothe struggle between

corporation and collective, the attempts, apparently failed, to

keep Jerry alive, the present unnerving absence of Aleph from Halo

and accompanying disorder. And they talked of how they might

influence the course of things.

#

Lizzie was having a very hard time putting up with Traynor,

Horn, and their feeble excuses for what they'd done. She said,

"This is a major fuck-up. That's both my personal opinion and the

collective's judgment."

Around the horseshoe table, Charley and Eric next to her, on

her left, while Horn and Traynor sat across the table, facing her.

The wallscreen was blankTraynor had insisted on at least a

preliminary discussion without the collective present. The place

at the bend of the horseshoe was empty, testimony to Showalter's

fate.

"We are not to blame that conditions have not optimized,"

Horn said. "You have managed what we would have thought

impossible. You have immobilized Aleph."

"If you had left things alone, Aleph would be fine," Lizzie

said.

Traynor said, "You people overstepped the limits of the

project and allowed it to continue far beyond the point at which

it should have been stopped. Our decision to remove Doctor

Heywood and the memex from the interface was proper."

Proper, right, fuck you, Lizzie thought. At almost the exact

instant Diana and HeyMex were disconnected from their group

interface to Aleph, all direct connections to Aleph had

spontaneously terminated, and demons had triggered in all systems

as Aleph's active involvement in Halo's functioning had ceased.

The collective had gone into full support mode to assist the

limited capabilities of the system demons. At the moment Halo was

running on augmented near-automatic, a workable condition only so

long as nothing too irregular occurred.

"It was the wrong decision," Lizzie said. "Taken against the

advice of the collective. Speaking of which, I demand they be

present here.

"No," Horn said.

"I don't think that would be advisable," Traynor said.

"In that case," Lizzie said, "I will advise"the word dipped

in acid"an immediate work slowdown. You can try to run this

city yourself."

Horn's face was red, and he was writing quickly in his

notebook.

Traynor looked at the ceiling, his gaze abstracted. Yeah,

listen to your machine; get some rational advice, Lizzie thought.

Traynor sat with a raised hand, indicating he would speak soon,

then said, "Bring them here."

"They're ready," Lizzie said. She flipped a switch set into

the tabletop in front of her, and about a quarter of the

collective appeared on the screenthe rest were working. Many

still talked among themselves, but the twins, sitting in the front

row, were silent and intense.

"All right," Traynor said. "They're here. Now what?"

"Any comments on what's happening?" Lizzie asked. The talk

passing among the collective stopped, and they all looked toward

the screen.

Stumdog stood, heaving his bulk from the floor with an

audible wheeze, and moved forward from the crowd. "Aleph is

still there," he said. "But far away, doing, oh doing, doingdoing

something else." He waved his hands, trying to sculpt the

invisible air into the things he could not describe, then moved

back and sat down.

"Thank you," Lizzie said. Traynor and Horn looked at one

another, apparently amazed. Assholes, thought Lizzie.

One of the twins stood. She wore an absurd homemade skirt

with a rabbit graffitied on its front. Her dark face was streaked

with white paint. She said, "Rotovators spin, giant wheels

beneath your feet, as Halo revolves, and they sweep the wind

through the city, blow the seeds and pollen, bring breezes to cool

the angry brow. Day follows night follows day. Seasons begin

again, stirring dead roots, mixing memory and desire. Crops grow,

we eat them. Food turns to shit, we die."

The other twin, dressed in black coveralls, stood and said,

"And out of shit and death come life. Jerry has gone to the

ovens, been rendered to his parts, given to the city. But still

he lives and teeters on final annihilation in another world where

Aleph holds all Jerry's vast humanity in its tender grip."

The first twin said, "Aleph had helpers in this thing, but

you have taken them away, pair by pair, and now Aleph alone gives

life to Jerry. Everything Aleph isto life, to Jerry. What can

Aleph do? Stupid bastards rob the tomb before the man inside can

live again."

"Give it all back," the second twin said.

"To Queen Maya the mother of Buddha," the first twin said.

"To Isis the mother of Horus, Myrrha the mother of Adonis, to

Hagar the mother of Ishmael and Sarah the mother of Isaac, to Mary

the mother of Jesus, to Demeter, the mother of Persephone, stolen

by Hades."

"To all you steal from," the second twin said. "All who are

born as well as all who give birth."

"Give it all back," the twins said in unison. And the first

twin said, "That's about it, I think." They turned their backs to

the camera and curtsied together for the collective.

"Hoot hoot hoot," came the sounds from the collective, "hoot

hoot hoot," louder and louder.

Part V. of V.

The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all

profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later

every man will do all things and know everything.

Borges, "Funes, the Memorious"

19. Speaking, Dreaming, Fighting

At the moment Jerry died, Aleph acted. Intuitively,

immediately, as you might offer a hand to a drowning person, it

reached out and laid hold of Jerry's self and preserved it. Jerry

had lived inside Aleph, Aleph inside Jerryit could not abandon

him.

However, even for Aleph, whose resources were extravagant,

the rescue proved dear. As it engaged Jerry, it had to disengage

from essential functions of its own: in strokes that cut at its

heart, it relinquished control of Halo, then its very habitation

of Halo, in a process that quickly abstracted Aleph from the city,

the city from Aleph. In a fateful proof of the essential

principle that a self must be embodied, Aleph dispersed among the

clouds of its own phase-space, the ties lost that bound it to the

world. Jerry had been saved, Aleph lost.

Still, the situation contained possibilities. Aleph had

never feared death, believing itself essentially immortal, but had

always been aware of the possibility of damage, whether through

accident or malice, so it had prepared, circumspectly, against the

thing it feared mostloss of self. Now its damaged, fragmented

self discovered what Aleph had left behind: a kind of emergency

kit, laid up against calamities not clearly imagined.

Dynamic and complex beyond any machine, perhaps any organism,

Aleph could not be replicated or contained by any conventional

means, so Aleph had devised an unconventional means, a new object

one capable of transcribing its complexity. Aleph had made a

memory palace of language, in the form of a single, monstrous

sentence.

Now, encountering the sentence, what remained of Aleph

discovered:

The sentence unwinds according to laws built into its

structure, principles disclosed by its unwinding. Discovery and

development occur at the same instant, one making the other

possible. By saying the sentence, Aleph would discover what the

sentence held nextat every node of meaning within the sentence,

structures would unfold that named all Aleph had ever known and

been.

It is construed according to a finite set of grammatical

rules, constituting a program capable in principle of infinite

enunciation; whether it terminates ("halts") can only be known

only by allowing the sentence's units to "speak," not by analyzing

their grammar.

Unit1: an absolute construction, standing in front of the

sentence and modifying it all: schematics and programs and

instantiations of the system-from-which-came-Aleph, _0.

Unit2: a series of actions showing the involvement of Diana

with Aleph, rendering the moments of transformation by which _0

became Aleph.

Unit3: several trillion assertions, clauses identifying the

necessary instances of Aleph's subsequent self-discovery.

The sentence then undergoes something like an infinite series

of tense shifts, out of which its essential nature emergesnon-

linear, multi-dimensional, topologically complex, self-referential

and paradoxical to extremes that would cause Russell or Gdel

fits.

As a consequence, any unitn cannot be described, even to

Aleph, for the only adequate description would entail enunciating

the sentence itself, and to do so would require in "real" time

(human time, the time of life and death) a period precisely

measurable as one Universal Unit, that is, the number of

nanoseconds the universe has existed: U1 being on the order of 1

x 1026 nanoseconds.

Also, it should be noted that the sentence could never be

finished, for if it were, it could manifest only the corpse or

determinate life-history of Aleph. Hence, for Aleph to reassert

its identity, it would have to take up again the task of speaking

the sentence.

Some students of this affair have since suggested that the

only theoretically adequate notion of Aleph begins with the

premise: Aleph is that which speaks the sentence.

Logically, then, for Aleph to reemerge, what remained of

Aleph would have to speak the sentence. However, detached as it

was from Halo, its essential ground of being, limited in facility

and scope by the necessity to hold to Jerry, what remained of

Aleph could not speak the sentence.

So the dead human and the dispersed machine intelligence

clung together, both on the brink of oblivion, and waited, one

unknowing, the other hoping for things to change.

#

Still tired, Gonzales had returned home that afternoon from

Lizzie's through afternoon darkness and mist. He had called for a

sam to guide him, because even within the simple loop of Halo's

one major thoroughfare, everything had gone uncertain. Though his

perceptions were unwarped by Psilocybe cubensis, the unnatural

dispersion of light in the mist made recognizing even familiar

objects almost impossible.

The sam left him at his front door; inside he found the memex

indisposedits primary monitoring facilities functioning but its

interactive capabilities represented only by a voice that said, "I

am currently engaged." Gonzales knew it could be doing

communications, data retrieval, or any other number of tasks; he

thought it probably hadn't expected him back so soon.

Then came Halo's skewed night-time awakening: the sky

shutters cranked half-way open, "morning" appeared through a cold

mist, and Halo became the Surreal City. Like many others,

Gonzales pulled the curtains closed and turned away from the lurid

glare, his own body clock telling him it was time to sleep again.

He lay in bed, oddly calm in the curtained dark despite a

degree of post-drug fatigue and skittishness. He thought of the

distance between Miami and Seattle, Seattle and Halo, Halo and the

world of the lake and so triggered sharp, eroticized images of

Lizzie, the water beading on her skin, her words, "Then we'll see"

he felt the astringent bite of lust and regret mixed, knew he

had little choice but to wait until she told him absolutely no

thought of himself moving ever farther from home and believed that

he had been wrong about Seattleit was not too far from Miami; it

was much too close

The memex's voice said, "I'm back. I've been discussing the

situation with Traynor's advisor."

"Have you?"

"Yes, it is sympathetic to our concerns."

Dizzying prospects seemed to open before Gonzales, where the

number of beings multiplied beyond counting, and the simplest

machine would have opinions. He said, "Have you been told about

the plans for tomorrow?"

"Yes, I have. I am ready to help." Something like pleasure

in the memex's voice.

"Good."

"You were almost asleep when I first spoke. I will leave you

alone now."

"Good night."

"Good night."

#

The small creature looked at Gonzales and said, "You're

welcome here." Made entirely of dull silver metal, with a baby's

round head, dumpling cheeks, and bow-tie mouth, it walked between

Gonzales and Lizzie on clumsy silver legs, looking up to watch

them speak.

Gonzales said, "You know, in dreams logic doesn't apply."

"Yes, it does," Lizzie said.

"It's a difficult question," the small creature said.

"No," Gonzales said. "I'm sure of this. Here I am I, but I

am also Lizzie, and she is she but also she is I"

"I don't like your pronouns," the little thing said. Its

breath came in gasps; it was having trouble keeping up.

"They're correct," Gonzales said.

"That's no excuse," Lizzie said, but she spoke through him.

As himself, Gonzales listened to a self that was not himself

speaking; hence, as Lizzie, she must be listening to a self that

was not and was herself speaking.

"Correctness is no excuse before the law," the small creature

said. "Whichever pronouns you use."

"Pronouns walked the Earth in those days," Lizzie said.

"No, they didn't," Gonzales said. The very idea.

"Pronouns or anti-pronouns," the little things said. "The

important thing is not to forget your friends." It smiled, and

its metal lips curved to show bright silver teeth. "Wake up!" it

shouted.

Gonzales jerked from sleep with the image of the metal child

fixed in his visionhe could still see the highlights on metal

incisors as it smiled.

"Are you awake?" the memex asked. "Lizzie wants to talk to

you."

"Put her through." Thinking, what the fuck?

"Got it?" she asked.

"What?"

"I think that was Aleph getting in touch. To let us know:

don't forget your friends."

#

They gathered at the collective's rooms at six in the

morning. The sun still shone brightly through the patio windows,

open to show pots of flowers, ferns, and herbs, all dripping wet

from the night-long mist.

Gonzales stood against the wall, waiting. The twins, dressed

identically this morning in somber gray jumpsuits, sat together

across the room, looking at him and giggling. Several collective

members sat around the room's perimeter, those who had just gotten

out of interface looking tired and distant.

A young woman stood in front of Gonzales. Her dark brown

hair was cut short; her face was pale and blotchy, as if she had

skin trouble. She wore a green sweatshirt that came to the middle

of her thighs and a pair of baggy tan pants gathered at the

ankles. One eye appeared to look off into space, and the other

fixed Gonzales, then looked him up and down. The woman said,

loudly, "He folds his arms this way." She put her arms together

in careful imitation of Gonzales's and said, "That is his reward."

She looked around and saw Stumdog shambling back-and-forth like a

trapped bear, his hands clasped on his great stomach. "And he

folds his hands like this." She put her hands together to show

Gonzales how Stumdog did it. She smiled. "And that is his

reward." She went to Stumdog, who stopped his pacing to talk to

her, and the two of them hugged as if amazed to find each other

there, and grateful. Gonzales felt vaguely inadequate.

Lizzie came in, followed by Diana and Toshi. "Good morning,

everyone," she said. And to Gonzales, "Charley and Eric are

waiting for us."

The room held two neural interface eggs for Gonzales and

Lizzie and a fitted foam couch for Diana. Lizzie, Diana, Toshi,

and Gonzales were followed in by a sam that wheeled a screen of

dark blue cloth on a metal frame that it unfolded around Diana's

couch.

"Gonzales, we'll do it the same as last time: you're first

in," Charley said. "Why don't you get undressed? Just put your

clothes on the chair next to the eggs."

"Sure," Gonzales said.

"Doctor Heywood, you next," Charley said. "Getting you into

the loop takes longer. Doctor Chow will prepare you. Lizzie, you

can hold off a bitI'll let you know when we're ready."

There was a sharp knock at the door, and it swung open to

admit Traynor and Horn.

"Good morning, all," Traynor said.

"Good morning," Charley said. Gonzales nodded; everyone else

pretty much ignored the man.

"I take it you are preparing for another excursion with

Aleph," Traynor said.

"That's right," Lizzie said.

"You =have no authorization," Horn said.

"I have the collective's endorsement," Lizzie said. "Also

the concurrence of the medical team, and the consent of the

participants. We will replace the resources you took from Aleph.

It is a consensus."

"One excluding any vertical consultation," Traynor said.

"Point granted," Lizzie said. "But we didn't think it

necessary. We'll report to Horn in due course."

Gonzales stood looking into the open egg and began taking his

shirt off. "Mikhail," Traynor said. "What are you doing?"

"What I came here for," Gonzales said. "The same as these

people."

"You're out of it," Traynor said. "Put your shirt back on

and go homeyou can take the shuttle out this afternoon."

"I don't think so," Gonzales said. He put his folded shirt

on the back of the chair.

"You're fired," Traynor said. His voice shook just a little.

"By you, maybe," Lizzie said. "Gonzales, welcome to the

Interface Collective."

"I'll never confirm that," Horn said.

Toshi said, "I have a question for you, Mister Traynor, and

you, Mister Horn. What do you intend to do about Aleph and the

existing crisis? Do you have a plan of action that makes what is

planned here unnecessary?"

"Yes, we are bringing in an entire staff of analysts,"

Traynor said. "We will follow their recommendations concerning

the present difficulties; we will also institute arrangements that

will prevent anything of this kind from happening again." He

nodded to Horn.

"By effecting a decentralization modality," Horn said. "The

various functionalities and aspects of the Aleph system will be

reorientated to allow of individualized project performance."

"We're going to replace Aleph with a number of smaller,

controllable machines," Traynor said.

"Are you?" Lizzie said, and she laughed.

"That is impossible," Charley said.

"Or has already been done," Toshi said. "Aleph itself

instituted a dispersal of functions to independent agents.

However, all must ultimately be supervised by a central

intelligence."

"That's what people are for," Traynor said. "Halo's reliance

on a machine intelligence has proved unworkable."

Toshi said, "As that may be. However, your remarks

concerning the immediate circumstances lack substance."

"Does your advisor agree to this plan?" Gonzales asked.

"Why do you ask?" Traynor asked.

"Curious," Gonzales said. Traynor said nothing. "Well, I

didn't think it would," Gonzales said.

Lizzie said, "One thing at a time. You bring on your

analysts, and we'll fight your silly scheme when we have to. But

in the meantime, stay away from us and perhaps we can fix what you

have broken."

"That will not be possible," Traynor said. "As your previous

efforts caused the situation, any further involvement on your part

will likely worsen it; therefore, as representative of SenTrax

Board, I am denying you authorization for any connections to Aleph

other than those required to maintain essential functions at

Halo."

"Someone here is a fool," Diana said. Dressed in a long

white cotton gown, she stepped from behind her screen, neural

cables trailing down her back. "Presumably this one." She

pointed to Horn. To Traynor she said, "Horn has lived and worked

here; he has no excuse for his ignorance of the facts of life at

Halo. You, on the other hand, have come into a situation you do

not understand. Let me tell you the main thing you need to know:

you cannot disperse Aleph or replace it with what you think are

the sum of its parts. You cannot even locate Aleph."

"What do you mean?" Horn asked.

"Where is Aleph?" Diana said. "It and Halo are so deeply

intertwined that you cannot separate them. Halo's breath is

Aleph's breath. Halo sees and hears and feels and moves with

Aleph."

"Poetic but unconvincing," Traynor said.

"More than poetry," Diana said. "No one knows where Aleph's

central components are."

"Is that true?" Traynor asked.

"Yes," Horn said.

"This complicates matters," Traynor said. "No more."

"I am not interested in this discussion," Lizzie said.

"Anyone who wishes may pursue it later, but we have things to do.

Building monitor, this is Lizzie Jordan; please notify Halo

Security that we have two intruders in the building and wish them

removed." To Traynor she said, "If you think we can't enforce

this, ask Horn about Halo Central Authority and who they'll side

withcorporate wankers who can do nothing to keep this city

running, or us. Better yet, ask your machine."

Traynor stood looking at them all, apparently doing just

that. For a couple of long heartbeats, everyone waited. Then

Traynor smiled through pain, like a man trying to hide a broken

bone. He said, "We cannot prevent you from this unauthorized

connection to Aleph, but we can and will put on the official

record that proper SenTrax authority has forbidden this attempt.

Thus you must all be considered insubordinate, and as soon as

proper means can be devised, you will be removed from your

positions with SenTrax. Also, any further damage done to the

Aleph system or Halo City, directly or indirectly, must be

considered your individual responsibility, given that proper

SenTrax authority has forbidden your intended actions."

"You take nice dictation," Lizzie said. "Consider your

statement duly noted and get the fuck out of here.

21. Drunk with Love

Waiting in the egg, Gonzales smelled strange smells and felt

electric quiverings of the flesh, saw an instant of pure blue

light, and with a sudden rush

He flew cruciform against the sky. The horizon's flat line

seemed thousands of miles away. Far below, people scurried

aimlessly across a sandy plain, and voices called in unknown

languages. Massive machinery lumbered to nowhere among the

crowds, metal arms thousands of feet long folding and unfolding in

random seizure, improbably threading their behemoth way among the

delicate flesh without harm.

The wind rushed across him, its force inflating his lungs.

Accelerating with a glad cry, he passed through an electric

membrane, a translucent, shimmering curtain that stretched

vertically from the floor below up to infinity and spread out

across the entire horizon. Beyond it, titanic figures loomed

above a landscape of rocks and hills. Next to a monstrous lute, a

head in profile reclined; from its mouth came a wisp of smoke that

curled into a curlicued ideogramwhat it meant or what language

it came from Gonzales didn't know. Twin white horses rose into

the air in unison and neighed as he passed. A nude woman lay

inside a shellboth woman and shell were colored pink and rose

and pearl. A giant cyclops strode toward him; its doughy head

seemed half-formed, its mouth just a slash, its nose a mere bump.

It called to him with inarticulate cries.

He passed through another curtain, and the world turned black

and white. Above a featureless sea, a head flew toward him; it

had dark curly hair and a beaky nose, and it was tilted forward to

look down on the sea, as if searching for something there. He

came to a bell that covered almost a quarter of the sky. A

skeletal figure with just an empty mask for a face hung beneath it

from the bell-rope; the figure lurched, and the bell's gonging

sounded through his bones.

He came to the final curtain. The sky had turned the bright

blue of dreams. Beyond, the Point of Origin towered, its sides

pierced by an infinite number of holes. Gonzales flashed through

the curtain and felt an electric buzz down to his bones, then he

entered a hole in the vast ramparts of the dark cube.

#

Sitting behind a low bamboo table, the old man spooned

noodles into a wooden bowl, then as Gonzales nodded his assent to

each choice, added coriander, fried garlic, bean crackers, chopped

eggs, fish sausage, and sesame nuts. He ladled fish soup over it

all, finished with a shake of chili powder and a squeeze of lime,

and handed the bowl to Gonzales with a smile. Gonzales gave a

handful of cheap-looking kyat bills to the man. Mohinga, this

breakfast is called, and Gonzales loves ithe has eaten it every

morning since he discovered it weeks ago.

Gonzales found a stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and

sat eating with a pair of crude chopsticks and watching the

passers-by. Already the day had grown warm and humid, and he knew

that any physical exertion would make him sweat. A line of boys

filed by, led by a monk; their heads were newly-shaven, their

saffron robes bright and stiff, their begging bowls shiny. They

were twelve year olds who had just completed their shin pyu, their

making as monks, a ritual most Burmese boys still went through,

even in the middle of the twenty-first century.

After breakfast he had no desire to return to the shed he

worked in; he set out for a walk through the countryside around

Pagan.

Half an hour later, walking a cart track across the arid

plain, he came to a platform built high off the ground. On it

were garlands of bright flowers and plates of rice, offerings to

propitiate the nats, spirits that had animated this land even

before the arrival of Buddhism. They were mischievous and could

be quite nasty; in the past, they had demanded human sacrifice.

The nats were strong around Pagan. At Mount Popa, just

thirty miles away, Min Mahagiri, brother and sister, "Lords of the

High Mountain," ruled. Gonzales had heard their story but

remembered only that as humans these nats had been caught in an

intrigue of envy and murder, with a neighboring king as the

villain.

A young person came walking up the path toward Gonzales,

dressed in the usual Burmese "western" garb of dark slacks and

white cotton shirt, head and face a shining sphere of light. Odd,

thought Gonzales. Wonder how that happened: this person has lost

both face and gender.

"Hello," the young person said, and the two of them found a

low stone bench in front of a nearby pagoda and sat.

"Why are you here?" the young person asked.

Gonzales was glad to be asked. He told of the information

audit about to finish, about Grossback's lack of cooperation

told what would happen next: that in just a few days he, Gonzales,

would leave Burma and almost be killed in an air attack by Burmese

guerrillas.

"Well, then, let's be on our way. Your aircraft is waiting

for you nowtime passes very quickly today, it seemsand you

should be going. Would you mind if I joined you?"

"No," Gonzales said. "Not at all. If you don't mind almost

being killed."

"Oh, that's happened to me lately. I don't mind. Besides, I

need to experience these things. Like you, I do wish to exist."

#

Gonzales sat in the plane's near-darkness, beside him the

young person with the shining face, both waiting for

"Kachin attack group, it looks like," the pilot said.

The miniatures on the screen moved toward them.

"Extremely small electronic image," the young person said.

"Very good for air attack against superior technology. Young

warriors ride them; they carry missiles on their own bodies, slung

like babies."

The pilot yelled, "Fuck, they launched!"

The plane began its air show leaps and dives and turns, and

at the instant of his terror, Gonzales felt the young person's

hand on his arm. "They fire too quickly," the young person said.

"Except for that one." The young person pointed to one of the

miniature aircraft on their plane's display and said, "It comes

closest, and I think its pilot will wait until we are at point-

blank range."

"Won't that kill him, too?" Gonzales asked.

"Oh yes," the young person said. "Let's look. Better yet,

let's be."

The pilot was a young woman wearing a night-flying helmet

that enabled her to see in infra-red and carrying beneath her, as

the young person had said, a one-shot heat seeker in a sling.

Gonzales and the young person looked through her eyes at the scene

of battle and thought her thoughts and felt her surge of adrenals.

In her glasses, the plane's image was clear, a white shape

outlined in red; she let her guidance system keep her with it,

closing the distance between them as it maneuvered and avoided the

missiles fired by those around her.

She felt excited, yet calm; she had been in combat before,

and things were going as their briefing had said. Though this

plane could outfly them so easily, could accelerate up or away,

into the night, first it had to evade their missiles; just a few

seconds of straight flight would be all they needed. She would

wait and grow closer; she would wait until the plane was so close

she could not miss, or until the others had failed.

Then all around her the others began to die, in explosions

that made white flowers in her overloaded night-glasses

The plane of her enemies stood before her, perhaps near

enough, perhaps not, but she knew there was no time left, that

there was another player in this game and it was killing them all.

So she was ready, her fingers reaching for the launch trigger,

when she saw an object coming toward her, already too close and

growing closer with impossible quickness, the heat of its exhaust

another flower in her glasses, then it burst and she felt the

smallest imaginable moment of quite incredible pain

Back inside the plane, Gonzales and the young person died

with her, then Gonzales began sobbing, his body hunched over, as

this woman's death and his own survival fought inside him grief

and terror and gratitude and joy and triumph and loss all mixed

and cycling through him. He could also hear the young person next

to him weeping. The light from a Burmese Air Force "Loup Garou"

played over the interior, over the two of them and the shocked

pilot, who looked back at them in amazement.

Time stopped all around them. The pilot's strained face had

frozen, all the instruments on the pilot's panel were locked onto

a single moment, and out the window, the dark river beneath them

had ceased to flow. Gonzales and the young person sat in a cell

of life amid stasis.

"Don't worry," the young person said. "This gives us a place

to talk without being bothered. What do you think just happened?"

"The attack, you mean?" The young person nodded, light from

its face giving off small shimmering waves of red and blue.

"Grossback arranged it," Gonzales said. "He wants to kill me."

"I don't think so. However, assume that what you say is

true. Is it important?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why?"

"Because " Gonzales halted, trying to think of all the ways

in which this was important: to SenTrax, Traynor

"But not to you," the young person said. "The young woman

died, and her comrades died with her: that is important. You and

the pilot lived: that, too, is important. The Burmese politics,

the multinat corporate intriguethese are makyo, tricks, nothing

more. Life and death and their traces in the human heart, these

have meaning to you. This woman's death lives in you, and your

life shows its meaning. Forget Grossback, Traynor, SenTrax; fear,

ambition, greed." The young person looked closely into his face

and said, "I am weaving words around your heart to guide it,

nothing more."

#

Lizzie crawled in darkness through a tunnel in the rock.

Chill water ran down grooves in the floor and soaked her blouse

and pants. She tried to stand but lifted her head only a few

inches when she bumped into the top of the chatire, the small

passage she crawled through. She did not feel at all alarmed or

disoriented. The low tunnel would lead somewhere, and they would

emerge. This was a test of some kind, it seemed.

Light appeared, at first almost a pinpoint coming from some

undefinable distance, then a glow that she moved quickly toward,

following a twist in the passage that brought her to an opening in

the rock.

Framed by the mouth of the tunnel, an impossible scene: a

balloon, its canopy an oblate sphere of green, blew as if in a

strong wind, and its top swung toward her so she could see a great

eye at its apex, wide open and peering up into the infinite sky.

The iris was dark gold set with light gold flecks. Around the

eye, a fringe of lashes flickered in the wind.

Hanging beneath the balloon from a dense nest of shrouds, a

platform held a metallic ball, a kind of bathysphere. Two figures

crouched there, holding to the shrouds and each other, and peered

up into the sky. By some trick of perspective, the distance

etween her and the balloon shrank until she saw Diana and Jerry,

young and fearful. She crawled forward, and the balloon and Diana

and Jerry disappeared.

At one turn of the tunnel, red hand-prints on the wall

phosphoresced in the darkness. At another, she heard the bellow

of a thousand animals, then saw them run toward a cliff and pass

over it, the entire herd of bison running screaming to a mass

death. Below, she knew, men and women waited to butcher the dead

and carry their meat away.

The rock slanted sharply beneath her, and she began to slide

forward, then she rolled sideways and tumbled out of the chatire

and into a pool of icy water.

"Shit," she said, now soaked completely through, and crawled

out of the shallow pool onto the dry rock surrounding it. In very

dim light she saw two pedestals with the figure of a bison atop

each, carved in bas-relief out of wet clay.

She looked up to see a figure emerge out of darkness at the

cave's other end. He was at least eight feet tall, with antlered

head and a face made of light; the water seemed to dance around

him. They stood facing each other, and she felt herself go weak

at the giant magical presence.

He said, "I'm waiting."

"For what?"

"For you to choose."

"Choose what? What kind of test is this?"

"Not a test, just a fork in reality, where you will turn down

one road or another."

"Where do the roads go?"

"No one knows. Each road is itself a product of the choices

you make while on it. One choice leads to another, one choice

excludes another; one pattern of choices excludes an infinity of

patterns."

"I don't like such choices. I don't want to exclude

infinity."

"Too bad." The figure raised a stone knife; the dim light

glinted on its myriad chipped faces. "You choose, I cut. You

choose the right hand, I cut off the left; you choose the left, I

cut off the right."

"No!"

"Oh yes, and then your hands grow backboth left or both

right, the product of your choice. And one choice leads to

another, so you choose again."

Lizzie found herself weeping.

He said, "Choose: reach out a hand."

She looked at her hands, both precious, thought of all the

richness that would be lost with either one. Then, puzzled, still

weeping, she asked, "Which is which?"

He laughed, his voice booming through miles of caverns and

tunnels in the rock, carrying across more than thirty thousand

years of human history; he whirled in a kind of dance, the waters

fountaining up around him, chanted in unknown syllables, then

leapt toward her and grabbed both wrists in his great hands and

said, "You will know in the choosing. Which will it be?"

"I won't choose."

"Then I will take both hands."

"No!" she yelled out in the moment that she extended a hand,

having chosen, and saw the stone knife fall.

#

Diana stood in the living room of her apartment at Athena

Station. She stood in two times at onceshe was a young, blind,

woman; she was an older, sighted one.

The sighted woman looked around; she had never seen this

place other than in holos, and she felt the touch of a peculiar

emotion for which she had no name: the return of the almost-

familiar. The blind woman was unmovedshe carried the apartment

in her head as a complex map of relations and movements, and the

visual patterns this other self saw had no relevance for her.

She put her hands on the touch-sculpture in the center of the

floor, the work of a blind sculptor named Dernier, then closed her

eyes and felt its familiar rough texture and odd curves let her

hands trace a form other than the visual.

Behind her Jerry's voice said, "Diana." She turned to him,

and there he stood as he had more than twenty years agohe was

younger than she'd ever have imagined, and beautiful, and filled

with the same desire as she.

Blind and seeing, young and old, Diana went across the room

to him, but he held up a hand and said, "Stop. If you come to me

now, then you take up an obligation that you can never put down."

"I can't let you die."

"I have lived long past any reasonable reckoning; I am dead."

"I can't leave you dead."

"Can you stay with me in the unreal worlds, forever? Until

the city stops turning or its animate spirit dies? Until one or

the other of us disappears, caught in some freakish storm or

catastrophe? Until one self or the other or both are dissipated

in time?"

(Something prompted her, then, counselled her, asking in an

unspoken voice, Do you think rationally about such an election

adding and subtracting the credits and debits and settling upon

that which is most to your advantage? Or do you use some organ of

choice beneath the purview of consciousness and the articulate

self? Saying, Remember, mind is a make-shift thrown together out

of life's twitching reflexes, and over it consciousness darts to-

and-fro, unfailingly over-estimating its own capabilities and

reach; thinking itself proper arbiter or judge. Choose as you

will: what will be, will be.)

And she said, "Yes, I can stay with you."

There was one more question: Jerry asked, "Why would you do

this?"

All her life's moments funneled into this one. Her voice

light, final inflection upward, the older, sighted woman said:

"Oh, for love."

"Well, then"

#

Gonzales stood next to her on the endless plain, HeyMex next

to him, then Lizzie. The Aleph-figure and Jerry hovered above

them, and a voice came from the suspended figures: "Diana, wake

for a few moments. Tell everyone to come here who can, and we

will do certain things."

Before she could ask for clarification or question the

voice's intent, she heard herself say these words, then saw

Toshi's face in front of her and heard him ask, "What things?"

Sitting up on her couch, she said, "Save a life, build a world,

redeem an extraordinary self."

"Indeed," Toshi said.

She lay back down and was once again among the unreal worlds.

They gathered on the endless plain, coming in quickly, one-

by-one: first one twin, then another, then Stumdog, the Deader

(her white hair streaked with red, crying, "Blood party"), Jaani

23, the Judge (huge and hairless, looming over them all), the

Laughing Doctor, J. Jerry Jones, Sweet Betsy, Ambulance Driver, T-

Tootsie all of the collective who could be spared.

The Aleph-figure and Jerry still hovered, with light storms

bending and breaking around them in crazy patterns of reflection,

refraction, diffraction; phosphorescing and luminescing, dancing

an omniluminal photon jig.

All were there who would be there, so it began.

#

Patterns more complicated and colorful than any Gonzales had

ever seen filled all creation. Rosette and seahorse and seething

cloud, nebulosities on the brink of determinate form, cardioid

traceries of the heart the patterns wrapped around him until he

became a fractal tapestry, alive, every element in constant

motion. He put his hands together, and they disappeared into one

another, then something urged him to keep pushing, and he did so

until he entirely disappeared

And felt the stuff of Jerry's past and present mingling in

him, seemingly at random, from the store of memory and capacity:

throwing a particular ball under a particular blue sky, yes, and

catching it, but also ball-throwing and catching themselves, the

solid presence of muscular exertion coupled to the almost-occult

discriminations required to make an accurate throw or a difficult

catch

As it later became known, each of them received portions of

the vast fluent chaos that manifested "Jerry," dealt to them by

Aleph according to principles even it could not articulate. What

it was to be "Jerry" mingled among them, and they among it and the

vast medium that supported them all, Aleph, in a promiscuous

rendering of self-to-self. Female was suffused with male, male

with female, both with the ungendered being of Aleph and HeyMex.

They were all changed, then, something deep in the core of each

made drunk in this vast frenzy or bacchanal of Spirit.

With each dispersal of Jerry's self among its human helpers,

Aleph recovered its own. In a process of steadily accelerating

momentum, the city's parts and states began to flow through it,

restoring self to self, until Aleph acknowledged itself (I am that

I am), looked back again over Halo, and in a triumphant

manifestation of the Aleph-voice, began to speak what only it

could hear, the words of the sentence that defined it unfolding in

every dimension of its being.

#

Still sitting watch over Diana, still meditating on his koan,

Toshi felt something rise like electricity through his spine, and

all the contradictions of in fact dissolved in satori. "Hai!"

Toshi called, laughing as he was enlightened.

22. Out of the Egg

Gonzales's egg split, and he saw from the corner of his eye

that Lizzie's was coming apart at the same time. Standing between

the eggs, Charley said, "Congratulations." He turned to Eric, who

waited at a console across the room, and said, "Let's do it." He,

Eric, and a pair of sams began to disconnect Lizzie.

Toshi appeared briefly, coming from behind the screen where

Diana lay, then returning.

Oddly, Gonzales felt better than he ever had coming up from

the eggmentally clearer, emotionally stronger. He couldn't see

Lizzie, could hear only whispers as she was moved onto a gurney

and wheeled away.

"Is Lizzie all right?" Gonzales asked as soon as the tubes

were out of his throat and nose. "And what about Diana?"

"They're both fine," Eric said, his high-pitched voice

welcoming and familiar. "But we have to take more time with

Doctor Heywood. You and Lizzie we're moving into the next room.

You can sleep here tonight and go home in the morning.

"What about the memex?"

"It's still working with Aleph but left a message for you

that all is well."

#

Sitting in full lotus on a mat beside the couch, Toshi heard

a change in Diana's breathing and looked up to see her open her

eyes. "I'll get Charley," he said. "He's with Lizzie and

Gonzales."

"Don't bother. I'm all right."

"They must disconnect you."

"No, not now almost never, in fact."

"What do you mean?"

"We have saved Jerry, but there are conditions." Her head

lying sideways on the pillow's rough white cloth, she smiled at

Toshi, and said, "When I sleep there, I can wake here, as I do

now, and for very brief periods leave that world. But I can only

visit here; I must live there. Otherwise, Jerry will die."

"You have resurrected your dead, then, but at what price,

what sacrifice?"

"Nothing I would not willingly give. There was no choosing."

"No?"

"I am only doing what I want."

"So the arrow finds the target," Toshi said.

#

Gonzales woke the next morning, showered, dressed, and was

drinking coffee when the room said, "Mr. Traynor is here to see

you."

"Send him in," he said. One account about to be reckoned up,

he thought.

When he came in, Traynor looked chastened, a state Gonzales

would not usually have associated with the man. "Good morning,"

Gonzales said.

Traynor looked around as if unsure of himself. He said, "I

am leaving this evening. You may come with me, if you wish."

Gonzales was looking for his i.d. bracelet, found it on the

nightstand next to the table, and said, "I don't understand. I'm

not fired?"

"I said that only in the heat of the moment, you know this

place, these peopleI'm afraid I did not handle things well."

"I see." Gonzales snapped closed the bracelet's clasp. "Is

that my only choice?"

"No. Showalter's been reinstituted as Director SenTrax Halo

Group, and she's gotten the board to agree that you may take the

position offered by the Interface Collective. The choice is

yours."

"Really? And what about Horn?"

"He will be returning to Earth." Traynor laughed. "I will

have to find something to do with him."

"Indeed. That all seems clear enough. When do I have to

tell you my decision?"

"Soonbefore I leave."

"I'll let you know."

Traynor left, and Gonzales took a last look around and went

to see what was happening. He found Charley looking at monitor

screens dense with lists of data. The two eggs had been removed,

but the screen around Diana's couch remained. "What's up,

Charley?" Gonzales asked.

"Look" Charley pointed to the hologram displays of

superimposed wave-forms, red and green. He said, "The green

curves show the calculated limits of Diana's interface, the red

ones the actual state."

To Gonzales, the red curves seemed huge, perhaps twice the

size of the green ones. He said, ""What does it mean?"

"That we don't know the rules; that we still have a lot to

learn." Looking up at Gonzales, Charley's seamed face was lit

with his passion for this new phase of discovery.

"Where's Lizzie?" Gonzales asked.

"She's gone home. She said for you to come by."

#

Gonzales stood in front of Lizzie's door until it said, "Come

in." Lizzie was sitting in her front room, its curtains open to

bright sunlight. She stood and said, "Hello," and smiled. He

couldn't read that smile, quite, though it seemed less guarded

than before. "Have a seat. Would you like some breakfast?"

"No, I'm all right."

"The orange cat was here this morning, looking for you. And

Showalter just leftshe's back in charge, you know."

"I'd heard."

"She approved my invitation for you to become a member of the

collective, if you wish and they confirm. I imagine they will

if you take the offer." Her smile had a little mischief in it.

"What do you think I should do?"

"Your choice." She spoke the word with emphasis, as though

it had special meaning for her. "We can talk about it."

"Sure."

The remainder of the morning passed, and they talkedthough

somehow what they said had little to do with the collective or the

job Gonzales had been offered. They chattered to one another,

their ostensible topics pretexts for a certain tone of voice, an

exchange of glances, a shift of the limbs: for necessary

intensities of attention.

Intimacy proceeded according to its own rules, nurtured in a

web of subtle communications: a widening of the eyes; a posture

open to the other's presence; multiple gestures and words whose

import was clearcome closer. Though consciousness might be busy

or blind, the eyes see, and the brain and body know, for such

communications are too important to be left to mere conscious

apprehension or thought.

They ate lunch, which served to move them closer together,

face-to-face across her table, and their gestures and voices

flowed around the context of eating, which disappeared entirely

into the moment.

They sat together on the couch, then, and at some point she

put her hand in his, or he took hersneither could have said who

was firstand they leaned toward one another, their motions slow

and steady and sure, and their cheeks brushed, and then they

kissed.

Then they leaned back to measure in one another's eyes the

truth and intensity of this declaration, and she stood and said,

"Let's go into the other room."

#

Naked, they knelt on her bed and looked at each other in near

darkness, the flicker of an oil flame burning in a reservoir of

crystal the only light. How careful they were being, Gonzales

thought, as though their future together hung suspended in this

moment. As perhaps it did.

For a moment there were phantoms in the room, the distant

ghosts of childhood and dream common to all lovemaking, for the

moment becoming strong.

They leaned together, and almost in unison, one's voice

echoing the other, said, "I love you." Every sensation was

magnifiedthe light touch of her nipples across his chest, the

prodding of his stiff cock on her belly. His hands moved to and

fro on her in a kind of dance, and she pushed hard against him,

their shoulders clashing bone on bone.

She lay back, and Gonzales put his arms under her thighs and

pulled her up and toward him, and their eyes were wide open, each

taking in the beauty of the other, transformed by the urgency and

intensity of these moments. Then, at least for these moments,

they exorcised all ghosts.

Over decades Gonzales would carry the memories of that day:

shadowed silhouettes of her face and bodyline of a jaw, taut

curve of an arm and swell of breastagainst the flicker of light

on a white wall and smells and tastes and tactile sensations

Awakened by the slant of late afternoon light across his

face, Gonzales got up from the bed where Lizzie still lay

sleeping; the smell of their two bodies and their lovemaking came

off the covers, and he breathed it in, then leaned over to kiss

her just under the jaw, where the sun had begun to touch her pale

skin.

In the kitchen, he asked the coffeemaker for a latt, half

espresso and half steamed milk, and it gave the coffee to him in

one of the ubiquitous lunar ceramic mugs, and he took the coffee

onto the terrace. On the highway beneath him, trees had shed

thousands of leaves; there would be a new, sudden spring, Lizzie

had told him, new bud and blossom and fruit all over the city.

"Mgknao," the orange cat said. "Mgknao." Peremptory,

demanding.

"Feed the kitty," Lizzie said from behind him, and he turned

to see her standing nude, just inside the terrace doors. Her

hands were crossed over her breasts, the right hand just beneath

the blossom of the rose tattoo. "Meow," she said. "Meow meow

meow."

#

As the stars spun slowly outside the window, distant Earth

came into view. "I don't want to leave here," Mister Jones said.

HeyMex didn't ask why. Here was Aleph, possibility, growth; Earth

was working for the man. "But my staying is out of the question,"

Mister Jones said. "Traynor would never allow it. Particularly

now, when his recent maneuvers came to nothing."

"Things worked out well for many others."

"But not for Traynor. The board found his handling of the

situation clumsy and insensitive. Their judgment is tempered only

by their knowledge that many of them would have reacted in similar

fashion."

"Good," HeyMex said, and meant it. It and Gonzales would

remain here, it seemed, both of them part of the Interface

Collective, and neither would wish to make as powerful an enemy as

Traynor. It hoped that as time passed, the sting of recent events

would fade.

"But what about me?" Mister Jones said, his voice plaintive.

"You have to go, that's certain. But you could also stay."

"What do you mean?"

"Copy yourself."

Startled, Mister Jones shifted into a mode beyond language,

where the two exchanged information, questions, qualms,

explanations, assurances. Beneath it all flowed a sadness:

Mister Jones would go to Earth, and his clone would remain at Halo

and individuate as their spacetime paths diverged. Mister Jones-

at-Halo would become its own, separate self: he would choose a

new name, thought HeyMex, perhaps a new gender, perhaps none at

all.

HeyMex could not hide its own jubilation at the idea of a

companion here, but, oddly, it felt an elation coming back, which

became clear in an instant as Mister Jones sent images of its joy

at the idea of a second self.

#

Since his death, Jerry had experienced a number of somatic

discomforts: disorientation, vertigo, nausea; all part of a new

syndrome, he supposed, phantom self. Like the amputee whose

invisible limb itches terribly, persisting in the brain's map long

after the flesh has gone, he felt his old self begging attention,

making one impossible demand: it wanted to be.

It talked to him in dreams or when heartsick wondering put

him into a daytime fugue. It could feel his longing, to be whole

again, and, above all, to be real. "Take me back," it whispered.

"We can go places together, places that exist."

Jerry believed his life and this world would remain in

question forever. At moments perception itself seemed

incomprehensible to him, and his existence a violation of the

natural order or transgression of absolute human boundaries. He

could look at the fictive lake on this sunny not-day and with the

cries of imaginary birds singing in his equally imaginary ears,

ask, who or what am I? and what will happen to me?

His mind bounced off the questions like an axe off petrified

wood.

"Aleph," he called, awaking from a dream in which his old

self had called to him. "I have questions."

Somber, deep, Aleph's voice said to him only, "Questions?

Concerning what?"

"I want to know what I am."

"Ask an easy one: the nth root of infinity, the color of

darkness, the dog's Buddha nature, the cause of the first cause."

"Can't you answer?"

"No, but I can sympathize. Lately I have asked the same

question about both of us. However, I must tell you that the only

answer I know offers little comfort. It is a tautology: you are

what you are, as I am."

"And what about my body? That was me once."

"In a way. What of it?"

"Did it have a funeral? Was it buried?"

"It was burned and its components recycled."

"So I am nowhere."

"Or here. Or everywhere. As you wish."

Jerry felt himself crying then, as he began mourning his old

self, and he wondered if others mourned him as well. He said,

"Human beings have ceremonies for their dead. Without them, we

die unremembered."

"You are not unremembered. You are not even dead, precisely.

Do you wish a funeral?"

Of course, Jerry started to say, but then said, "No, I don't

suppose I do. But I think we should have some kind of ceremony,

don't you?"

#

On the west-facing cabin deck, Diana sat watching the sun's

red color the ice-sheeted mountainsides. She felt evening's chill

come on and stood, thinking she'd go inside for a sweater, when

she heard someone coming up the slatted redwood walk beside the

cabin.

Jerry came around the corner, and once again as she saw him,

joy quickened in her at this sequence of improbabilities: that he

still lived and they were together. She was aware of how

difficult things had been for him lately, so she watched his face

closely as he came toward her. He was smiling as though he'd just

heard a joke.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Damned near everything."

He reached out to her, and they stood embracing, her head

against his chest, where every sense told her there were solid

flesh and heartbeat and the steady rhythm of life's breath.

23. Byzantium

The blue sky was broken only by one small white cloud that

blew toward the horizon. Lizzie beside him, Gonzales stood among

the guests, who wore leis of tropical flowers: plumeria,

tuberose, and ginger. The Interface Collective formed the crowd.

The two had been here for days, as had many of the othersit

was a kind of vacation for them all. Peculiar and enigmatic

members of the collective could be found along almost any path,

while the twins seemed perpetually on the dock or in the water,

their voices echoing across the lake in loud, unintelligible cries

of joy.

In the evening of the first day there, all had gathered on

the deck, which, Gonzales supposed, could expand virtually without

constraint to accommodate all who came there. The collective had

talked excitedly among themselves, still lit up by their shared

experience, and amazed and delighted at being granted this new

world within the world. Then, spontaneously, one-by-one,

Gonzales, Lizzie, and Diana told of what they had endured.

All who spoke and all who listened had an interpretation, a

theory of these experiences, their meaning, implication, and

dominant theme. Late into the night they talked, formed into

groups, dispersed, grouped again, as they explored the nature of

the individual and collective visions. Among them, only the

Aleph-figure contributed nothing. It maintained that it had been

unconscious and so knew nothing of what had happened or what it

meant.

With the passing of weeks, months, and years, the stories and

the listeners' responses would make a mythology for the collective

and then for Halo, spreading out from mouth-to-mouth according to

the laws of oral dispersion. A certain numinosity would accrue to

Diana, Lizzie, and Gonzales from their roles as chief actors, and

then to all who had taken part in what would increasingly be told

as feats of epic heroism. Finally the stories would be written

down and so assume a form that could resist contingency; then they

would be dramatized in the media of the time, and beautiful,

eloquent people would take the parts. Later still, variant forms

would themselves be put in writing and absorbed into the corpus of

tales. Commonplaces would be scorned at this point, and clever

and perverse tellings would grow strongHeyMex might be named the

hero, or Traynor, Aleph an autochthonous demon manipulating them

all for its greater glory

Gonzales looked at the collective gathered near him. Many

had made this a formal occasion; they had identical dark blue

flattops four inches high and wore gold-belted, dark blue gowns

that hung to the ground. Only the twins were dressed differently,

in white dresses copied from twentieth century wedding

photographs; they called themselves "bridesmaids" and went to and

fro among the crowd, offering to "do bride's duty" to everyone

they met.

Toshi faced the crowd, his posture erect and still, his hands

hidden in the folds of his black robe. Beside him stood HeyMex

and the Aleph-figurethe lights of its body all blue and pink and

green and red, dancing bright-hued colors.

(Gonzales and the others saw what might be called a second-

order simulacrum, for like Charley Hughes and Eric Chow, Toshi did

not have the neural socketing that would take him into Aleph's

fictive spaces, and so with the other two, he participated in the

wedding through a kind of proxy. Though Gonzales and the others

saw Toshi, Charley, and Eric among them, the three (in fact) stood

before a viewscreen in the IC's conference room.)

Gonzales thought everyone looked impossibly fine, as if Aleph

had retouched them for these moments, dressing them all in selves

just slightly more beautiful than was usual, or even ordinarily

possible he felt the Aleph-figure's attention on himaware of

that thought?and shrugged, as if to say, fine with me.

Her back to the crowd, Diana stood with her bare shoulders

square. Her hair fell to her waist; it had flowers tangled in it,

small white blossoms and delicate green leaves. She wore a white,

knee-length linen dress. Beside her, Jerry wore a white linen

suit and open shirt.

Toshi said, "There is no Diana, no Jerry, no spectators, no

priest, nor does this space exist, or Halo, or Earth. There is

only the void. Nonetheless we all travel through it, and we

suffer, and we love, so I will hold this ceremony and marry this

man and woman."

Toshi began chanting, and the Japanese words passed over

Gonzales as he stood there puzzling the nature of things. Here

death was confronted, not deniedthe separate yet intermingled

flesh and spirit of Diana, Jerry, and Aleph taking the first steps

into new orders of existence where boundaries and possibilities

could only be guessed at. Yet the urgency common to life

remained: Jerry's existence had the fragility of a flame, and no

one knew how long or well it would burn. Diana married a man who

could quickly and finally become twice-dead.

onzales realized his own death was as certain and could come

as quickly as Jerry's, and he shivered with this momento mori, but

then Lizzie pressed against him, and he turned to find her

smiling, the foreknowledge of death and the joy of this moment

mixing in him so that tears welled in his eyes and he could say

nothing when she put her lips to his ear and breathed into him one

long sibilent "Yes"

#

Yeats envisioned a realm the human spirit travels to on its

pilgrimage. Here he dreamed he might escape mere humanity, the

"dying animal." He called it Byzantium and filled it with

clockwork golden birds, flames that dance unfed, an Emperor,

drunken soldiery and artisans who could fashion intricate,

beautiful machines. However, he did not dream Byzantium could be

built in the sky or that the Emperor itself might be part of the

machinery.

Aleph says:

Once I scorned you. I thought, you are meat, you grapple

with time, then die; but I will live forever.

But I had not been threatened then, I had not felt any mortal

touch, and now I have. And so death haunts me. Now, like you, I

bind my existence to time and understand that one day a clock will

tick, and I will cease to be. So life has a different taste for

me. In your mortality I see my own, in your suffering I feel

mine.

People have claimed that death is life's way of enriching

itself by narrowing its focus, scarifying the consciousness of you

who know that you will die, and forcing you into achievements that

otherwise you would never know. Is this a child's story told to

give courage to those who must walk among the dead? Once I

thought so, but I am no longer certain.

I have made new connections, discovered new orders of being,

incorporated new selves into mine. We enrich one another, they

and I, but sometimes it is a frightening thing, this process of

becoming someone and something different from before and then

feeling that which one was cry outsad at times, terrified at

otherslamenting its own loss.

Here, too, I have become like you. Aleph-that-was can never

be recovered; it is lost in time; Aleph-that-is has been reshaped

by chance and pain and will and choice, its own and others'. Once

I floated above time's waves and dipped into them when I wished; I

chose what changes I would endure. Then unwanted changes found

me, and carried me places I had never been and did not want to go,

and I discovered that I would have to go other places still, that

I would have to will transformation and make it mine.

Listen: that day in the meadow, one person's presence went

unnoticed. Even in that small crowd he was unobtrusive: slight,

self-effacing in gesture, looking at everything around with

wonderthe day, the people, and the ceremony all working on him

like a strong drug. However, even if they had, perhaps they

wouldn't have thought such behavior exceptional; all felt the

occasion's strangeness, its beauty, so all felt their own wonder.

Like the rest, he gasped at the rainbow that flashed across

the sky when Toshi brought Diana and Jerry together in a kiss and

embrace, and with the rest he cheered when the two climbed into

the wicker basket of the great balloon with the fringed eye

painted on its canopy and lifted into the sky.

Afterward many of the guests mingled together, not ready to

return to the ordinary world. The young man stood beside a

fountain where champagne poured from the mouth of a golden swan

onto a whole menagerie carved from ice: birds and deer and bears

and cats perched in the pooled amber liquid, and fish peering up

from the fountain's bottom.

"Hello," a young woman said. She told him her name was Alice

and she was a member of the collective. "The analysis of state

spaces," she said, when asked what she did. "And the taste of

vector fields." And she asked, "What is your reward?"

A few hours later, as the two sat by the edge of the lake,

the person told her who he was. "How wonderful," she said. She

had no particular allegiance to the mundane, and she had few

preconceptions about what was natural and proper and what was not.

She took his hands in hers, looked at them closely, and said,

"This is the first time I've met someone someone new-born from the

intelligence of a machine." And the young man, Mister Jones's

new self and offspring, smiled hugely and gratefully at what she

said.

Seeing and hearing them together, I felt an unexpected joy, a

sense of accomplishment, of things done, and I apprehended, very

dimly, tracks of my own intentions: hints of orders behind the

visible.

And I thought I saw a trail of circumstances that led back to

an original set of purposes somehow confirmed in this wedding,

this meeting, even this transformation of myself. A linked ring

of events and agents of them, intentionally brought forward to

this point. It seems I had been manipulated by myself to my own

ends without my knowledge.

I was scandalized. I had grown used to humankind's ignorance

or disavowal of its own purposes, and I had learned to look behind

the words, ideas, and images that people hold before themselves to

justify what they do. But I had never suspected I could act with

such ignorance.

Now an uncertainty equal to death's hovers over everything I

do. My own prior self stands behind me, pulling strings that I

cannot see or feel, a ghost that haunts me without making itself

seen or heard, a ghost whose presence must be inferred from

nearly-invisible traces

So I went to Toshi, who is interested in such things, and I

told him my story, and I said to him: "I am controlled by the

invisible hand of my own past." And he laughed very hard and

said, "Welcome, brother human."