Chapter Thirty-Four

 

After three separate occasions where Olmy wrapped himself in his isolating net of lights, Patricia decided there was something faintly unsavory about Talsit. Perhaps it was addictive—whatever it was.

They had been flying for at least three days—perhaps as many as five—and while Olmy and the Frant were unfailingly polite and answered her questions with seeming sincerity, they were not exactly voluble. She spent much of her time sleeping fitfully, dreaming about Paul. She often touched his last letter, still in the breast pocket of her jumpsuit. Once she awoke screaming and saw the Frant jerk spasmodically in its berth. Olmy had half fallen from his couch and was staring at her with evident alarm.

"Sorry," she said, looking between them guiltily.

"Quite all right," Olmy said. "We wish we could help. We could, actually, but. . .”

He didn't finish. A few minutes later, when her heart had stopped racing and she realized she couldn't remember what had made her scream, she asked Olmy what he meant by saying they could help.

"Talsit," he said. "Smooths the memory, rearranges priorities without dulling memory. Blocks subconscious access to certain disturbing memories. After Talsit, such memories can only be opened by direct conscious will."

"Oh," Patricia said. "Why can't I have some of this Talsit?"

Olmy smiled and shook his head. "You're pure," he said "I'd be reprimanded if I brought you into our culture before our scholars had a chance to study you."

"Sounds like I'm a specimen," Patricia said.

The Frant again made that sound of amplified teeth-grinding. Olmy looked at it reproachfully and swung down from his berth. "You are, of course," Olmy said. "What would you like to eat?"

"I'm not hungry," Patricia said, lying back in her couch. "I'm frightened, and I'm bored, and I'm having bad dreams."

The Frant peered down at her, its large brown eyes unblinking. It held out one hand, spread its four slender fingers and curled them again. "Please," it said, its voice like a badly tuned calliope. "I cannot help."

"A Frant always wishes to help," Olmy explained. "If it cannot help, it feels pain. I'm afraid you're quite a trial to my Frant."

"Your Frant? You own him?"

"It. No, I don't own him. For the time of our assignment, we are duty-wed. Rather like social symbionts. I share its thoughts and it shares mine."

Patricia smiled at the Frant. "I'm okay," she said.

"You are lying," the Frant judged.

"You're right." Patricia reached up hesitantly and touched the Frant's arm. The skin was smooth and warm but not resilient. She withdrew her fingers. "I'm not afraid of you, either of you," she said. "Did you drug me?"

"No!" Olmy answered, shaking his head vigorously. "You must not be interfered with."

"This is so strange. I don't even feel it's real, but I'm not afraid."

"Perhaps that is well," the Frant said solicitously. "Until such time as you awake, we are a dream."

After that exchange, they did not speak for hours. Patricia lay facing the window, noting that the corridor had changed its character yet again. Now it was covered with lines resembling densely clustered freeways. As they spiraled around the plasma tube, one turn every fifteen or twenty minutes, she saw that the entire floor was covered with the designs, whatever they signified. There didn't seem to be anything moving, but across a distance of more than twenty kilometers, she couldn't be sure.

The aircraft's spiral course was hypnotic. With a start, she realized she had been staring at a new phenomenon for several minutes without conscious awareness. The dense-packed patterns on the floor of the corridor now crawled with moving lights. Strung along the "freeway" lanes were lines of red and intense white beads. Lances of light swung up in arcs above the patterns and illuminated the edges of low-flying disks. Girdling walls at least two or three kilometers high broke the flow at regular intervals of about ten kilometers.

"We are nearing Axis City," Olmy said.

"What's all this?" Patricia asked, pointing.

"Metered traffic between domestic gates," Olmy said.

"What are gates?"

"You called them wells when you discovered the first and second bands. They lead to spaces beyond the Way—the corridor."

Patricia frowned. "People go between the wells, enter and leave the corridor?"

"Yes," Olmy said. "The Axis City regulates the flow along a billion kilometers."

"But the wells—the gates—they can't possibly open into our universe, not in present time."

"They don't," Olmy said. "Now please, hold your questions until after we arrive. Too much information could reduce your purity."

"Excuse me," Patricia said with false contrition.

"However, you must not miss this," Olmy said. "Please look straight ahead, at the wall over your couch."

She stared at the smooth white surface. Olmy made a few quick clicking noises and the surface rippled like a disturbed pool. The ripples spread wide into a broad rectangle and solidified. The rectangle became black, then filled with colorful snow. The snow attracted her eyes and the rectangular frame blurred, passing from her notice.

She might have been flying through the corridor alone. All around, the glowing, pulsing lights traveled their complex paths along the floor. Ahead, a dark circle was strung on the singularity, stretching from one side of the plasma tube to the other. Interrupted by the circle, the plasma tube changed color from white to a vivid oceanic blue.

"The Axis City lies beyond that barrier," Olmy said nearby. "We'll be given clearance soon, and pass through."

She turned her head and the illusion dissipated.

"No, no, please," Olmy said. "Keep watching." His tone and expression were almost little-boy eager, proud. She faced the rectangle of snow again.

The barrier filled her view. It was a somber dark gray-brown, shot through with radiating pulses of red. Where the singularity intersected it, the barrier glowed like molten lava.

Voices began speaking words she couldn't understand, and Olmy responded in kind. "We've been acknowledged," he explained to her. "Keep watching."

Directly ahead, a section of the barrier bubbled toward them and dissolved in a scatter of red pulses. They passed through.

Her first impression was that they were suddenly underwater. The plasma tube had ballooned out in all directions, widening by several kilometers and glowing the oceanic blue she had seen around the circular barrier. The floor of the corridor was still visible on all sides but reduced in definition and overlaid by the plasma's new color.

Directly ahead, two broad cubes were strung in succession along the pale thread of the singularity. Each of the visible faces of the cubes were marked with a broad horizontal cleft; the front of the foremost cube welcomed the singularity through a large hemispheric dimple, marked by glimmering spokes. At the center of the indentation was a red hole, and there the singularity was engulfed.

Beyond the cubes—and several times as broad—was a cylinder, rotating around its central axis, the line of the singularity. Its outer surface sparkled with thousands of lights; the side facing her was dark but for a series of five radiating arrays of beacons.

Next in line after the cylinder, three curved vanes stretched outward to the structure's maximum radius, perhaps ten kilometers. The vanes seemed to touch or support the plasma tube, making it glow blue-white around the outermost edge of each vane. Whatever else was beyond the cylinder was effectively blocked from view.

"Home," Olmy said behind her. She turned and looked at him, blinking. "The first segments are navigation and power stations, all automatic. The rotating cylinder is Axis Nader. We can't see them from this perspective, but beyond lie Central City, Axis Thoreau and Axis Euclid."

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"We'll enter a dock in Axis Nader."

"How large is the city?"

"Do you mean, how extensive, or how many people?"

"Both, I suppose."

"It stretches forty kilometers down the Way, and it has a population of about ninety million—twenty million corporeal, embodied; seventy million stored in City Memory."

"Oh." She turned back to the screen and watched in silence as the craft moved inward, past the doubled cubes and along the dark side of the rotating cylinder.

"I suppose, in your time, you would have called Axis City a necropolis, a city of the dead," Olmy continued. "But the distinction isn't so precise for us. I, for example, have died twice performing my duty to the Nexus."

"They revived you?" Patricia asked.

"They made me over again," he replied.

She did not turn away from the screen, even though her back prickled.

 

The Presiding Minister had advised Olmy to report to Ser Oligand Toller immediately upon his arrival. Toller, advocate for Tees van Hamphuis, the President of the Hexamon Nexus, was a radical Geshel who had chosen to maintain a completely human appearance. That the appearance bore no relation to his natal design—it had been adapted for maximum leadership qualities—did not mitigate the unusual conservatism; most radical Geshels, including the President, had chosen neomorph shapes, which bore little relation to natural human forms.

What Olmy had to say, the P.M. judged, would be of extreme interest to the President. The President himself was unavailable, involved in a long-term conference on the problem of the impending Jart offensive; Toller was a kind of unofficial replacement.

This did not please the Naderites, or even the members of van Hamphuis's immediate staff. Toller was not an easy man to deal with. Olmy had met the advocate once before, and had not liked him at all, though he had gained a healthy respect for his abilities.

Toller kept his office in the most desirable professional wedge of Central City, no more than a few minutes tracting and just a few seconds shaft ascent from the Nexus Chambers in the precinct's core. Once Olmy had made arrangements for Patricia's quarters, but before he had had a chance to confer with his own advocate, he went to Toller's office.

Toller had decorated the small rectangular space in the most simple and adaptable Geshel style. Decoration was spare; the major texture theme was platinum and steel, and the overall effect was harsh and unyielding.

The President's advocate was not pleased with the news Olmy brought.

"The P.M. had no suspicion of this when you alone were sent?" Toller picted. The symbols that flashed between the two men came from pictor torques around their necks, devices which generated and projected the graphicspeak that had developed over the centuries in the Thistledown and in the Axis City.

"His information was highly equivocated," Olmy said. "All he knew was that the Thistledown had been reoccupied."

Toller picted an unpleasant image of a roiling nest of snake-like creatures. "This is extraordinary news, Ser Olmy. Coming from anyone else, I would find it difficult to believe. . . . But then, you've brought one of them back with you, haven't you?"

"Her name is Patricia Luisa Vasquez."

"A genuine. . . ancestor?"

Olmy nodded.

"Why did you bring her back? As evidence?"

"I could not leave her; she was close to discovering how to modify sixth chamber machinery."

Toller raised his eyebrows and picted four orange circles of surprise. "What is this woman?"

"A young mathematician," Olmy said, "highly regarded by her superiors.”

"And you did nothing else to correct this situation you found on the Thistledown?"

"The situation is highly unstable there; they will not be able to organize for some time, and I thought it best to consult with the President and the Nexus."

"I'll inform the President, but you're aware we have our own major difficulties now. This conference. . . it could determine the whole course of the Axis City. And there's been considerable unrest and speculation among the Naderites—especially the Korzenowski faction. If they learn of this. . .” The picted nest of serpent-like creatures glowed a furious orange-red. "Seclude this woman and keep your information to your immediate superiors."

"She is secluded, and of course, I perform my duties as instructed," Olmy said. "She will have to have an advocate assigned to her, however."

"If we can avoid that, we should." Toller regarded him with obvious suspicion and unease.

"It is law. All noncitizens in the city, without defined legal status, must be assigned an advocate immediately."

"There's no need for you to quote city law to me," Toller said. "I'll find an advocate and assign—"

"I've already assigned one," Olmy interrupted.

Toller's expression changed to deep distaste. "Who?"

"Ser Suli Ram Kikura."

"I'm not acquainted with her." By the time he had finished the statement, Toller had a complete file on Kikura on hand, ready to be picted and interpreted. He scanned the file rapidly, shifting to implant logic, and found nothing he could criticize. "She seems acceptable. She will be sworn to keep Hexamon secrets."

"She has that clearance already."

"We're sitting on political chaos as it is," Toller said. "What you've done is bring back a lit fuse for Axis City's bomb. All, of course, in the name of duty."

"You will inform the President immediately?" Olmy asked, picting a sidebar request for permission to return to his work.

"As soon as possible," Toller replied. "You'll prepare a full report for us, of course."

"It is prepared," Olmy said. "I can transfer it now."

Toller nodded, and Olmy touched his torque. High-speed transfer of the report was accomplished in less than three seconds. Toller touched his own torque in acknowledgment of receipt.

 

Suli Ram Kikura lived in the outer layers of Central City, in one of three million tightly packed units reserved for single young corporeals of middle social and job standing. Her rooms were smaller than they appeared; the reality of spaciousness was far less important to her than it seemed to be to Olmy, who kept more primitive and larger quarters in Axis Nader. But part of what attracted her to Olmy was his age and differing attitudes, and his habit of, every now and then, giving her something truly interesting to work on.

"This is the biggest challenge I've ever faced," Suli Ram Kikura picted at Olmy.

"I couldn't think of anyone more capable," he replied. They floated facing each other in the subdued light of her quarters' central space, surrounded by picted spheres on which were projected various interesting and relaxing textures. They had just made love, as they almost always made love, without enhancement and using nothing more complicated than the quarters' traction fields.

Olmy gestured at the spheres and made a face.

"Simplicity?" Ram Kikura asked.

"Simplicity, please," he affirmed. She dimmed the lights on everything but themselves and erased the spheres from the decor.

They had first met when he had inquired into the licensing process for creating a child. He had been interested mostly in a personality meld between himself and someone unspecified. This had been thirty years ago, when Ram Kikura was just beginning her practice. She had advised him on the procedures. Permission was easy enough to obtain for a corporeal homorph of his standing. But he had not carried it to the point of making a formal request. She had gathered that Olmy was more interested in the theory than the practice.

One thing had led to another. She had pursued him—with some elegance and no small persistence—and he had acquiesced, allowing himself to be seduced in a hidden corner of Central City's forested, zero-g Wald.

Olmy's work often took him far afield for years at a time, and what they had together, to most observers, would have seemed transitory, an on-and-off thing. Indeed, she had had relationships since, none permanent, even though it was once again the fashion to have relationships for ten years or longer.

Whenever Olmy had returned, she had somehow managed to be free of commitments. They never pressured each other. What existed between them was a relaxed, but by no means trivial sensation of comfort and a high level of mutual interest. Each genuinely enjoyed hearing about the other's work and wondering where future tasks would take them. They were, after all, corporeal and usefully employed; theirs was a position of considerable privilege. Of the ninety million citizens in the Axis City, corporeal or in City Memory, only fifteen million had important work to do, and of those, only three million worked more than a tenth of their living hours.

"You seem to enjoy the task already," Olmy said.

"It's my perverse nature. This is by far the oddest thing I've found you associated with. . . . It's positively momentous."

"It could be of staggering importance," he said out loud, his tone mock-sepulchral.

"No more picting?"

"No, let's think and talk this through slowly."

"Fine," she said. "You wish me to be her advocate. How much of an advocate do you think she'll need?"

"You can imagine," Olmy said. "She's a complete innocent. She'll need complete social and psychological adjusting. She'll need protection. When her status is revealed—which is inevitable, I think, whatever the President and Presiding Minister wish—there will be a sensation."

"You're putting it mildly," she said. She ordered wine brought to them, and three static-controlled liquid spheres drifted into their light. She handed Olmy a straw and they sipped. "You've seen Earth yourself?"

He nodded. "I went down the bore hole with the Frant on my second day in the Thistledown. I didn't think remotes would convince me quite as much as seeing with my own eyes."

"Old-fashioned Olmy," Ram Kikura said, smiling. "I'm afraid I would have done the same thing. And did you see the Death?"

"Yes," he said, staring up into the darkness. He rubbed two fingers along the black fuzz dividing his three bands of hair. "Only by remote at first—there was a battle in the bore hole and I couldn't possibly have gotten through. But after the fighting stopped, I took the ship out and saw."

Ram Kikura touched his hand. "How did you feel?"

"Have you ever wanted to cry?"

She looked at him carefully, trying to gauge how serious he was. "No," she said.

"Well, I wanted to. And I've wanted to many times since, thinking about it. I tried to purge the feeling with Talsit on the way back—quite a few sessions. But Talsit couldn't cure all of it. I could feel our beginnings. . . a smudged, dirty, dead and dying world." He told her about Patricia's grief. Ram Kikura turned away in distaste.

"We cannot release as she did," he said. "It isn't in us anymore, and perhaps that's something else we've lost."

"Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status."

"There are orthodox Naderites who still have the capacity," he said. "They find grief a noble sentiment. Sometimes I envy them."

"You were organically conceived and born. You had the capacity at one time. You knew what it was like. Why did you give it up?"

"To fit in," Olmy said.

"You wished to conform?"

"For higher motives, yes."

Ram Kikura shuddered. "Our visitor is going to think us all very strange, you know."

"It's her privilege," Olmy said.