HE WOKE JUST long enough to realize that he was in bed in a bright and airy place. As his eyes swam into focus, he was aware of Tamika and Max seated on either side of him, and he heard their voices and Daxter’s; a moment later, it all slipped away. He went to sleep again thinking that it was odd that they seemed not to have been talking to him, or paying any attention to him at all.
But to whom, he wondered, were they talking?
* * *
When he returned to a kind of consciousness, it was with a feeling that he had been hearing voices for a long, long time—as though he were seated at the center of an enormous classroom, and all around him voices were declaiming on the intricacies of molecular biology, brain physiology, memory-trace chemistry—one subject after another—and sometimes several simultaneously. It was not like other times, when the voices he’d heard were his own; these were voices talking at him, lecturing him.
He was not fully awake to wonder about it. But neither was he dreaming, exactly. He had no sensation of body, only of thought. And his thoughts were being led.
But by whom? Whose were these voices?
(The correct balance can be achieved only through your watchfulness, together with the monitoring of the new units. Clear feedback of information is crucial. . . .)
(Discrepancies must be analyzed so that countermeasures can be programmed and executed. . . .)
There was a familiar quality to the voice, but he was distracted from trying to identify it by a sudden feeling of urgency, a feeling that he needed to understand its message:
(The population of replicating units has now reached two thirds of optimal; saturation will be achieved within the hour. Expect a period of disorientation. There will be a learning interval, in which the units will map and determine parameters for action, and communications procedures will evolve. During this period, you may be subject to invader actions which you will be unable to counter. Expect this. It is why you are being kept immobile. . . .)
He listened in puzzlement, with only the haziest idea of what was being talked about. After a while, thankfully, the voices went away.
He slept in a land of green rolling clouds. . . .
* * *
The next time he heard the voices, he was feeling more awake. He was in a place now, or at least was surrounded by the image of one: a vast cavern of some sort. His first thought was that he had blacked out again. What mischief was he into now?
“Come along,” he heard and was startled to realize that a huge, floating snowflake had just addressed him in a voice very much like E’rik Daxter’s. He himself was (apparently) standing at one end of an enormous underground cavern half-obscured by geologic growths from walls and ceiling and floor—stalactites and stalagmites and heaven knew what else. The air was crisscrossed by strands of something that looked like threads of melted translucent plastic. Some of them were lighting up intermittently, flickering.
“What did you say?” he murmured.
The snowflake’s voice was stronger this time. “I said, there’s a great deal you have to see. Come and let me show you.” The snowflake pulsed with its own inner light and floated away from him.
“Okay.” Ruskin hurried to keep up. “But would you mind telling me where we are?”
“Your brain, idiot.”
Ruskin blinked and followed. “Of course. My brain. How stupid of me.” The snowflake glided up and over a craggy ridge, then floated out into space over a startling drop-off. Ruskin followed. “What do you mean we’re in my brain?” he asked finally.
The snowflake paused and rotated. Several of its crystal facets sparkled. He had the feeling that they were eyes, watching him. “Haven’t you been listening?”
Ruskin gestured helplessly.
“Okay, never mind.” The snowflake rotated again, and rays of light flashed out from its facets, glimmering off distant points in the cavern. “Look around. You’re getting a conceptual tour of your brain.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The snowflake sighed. “Forget it. You’ll pick it up as we go along.”
“Wait a minute. Are you really inside my head?”
“Of course. I’m stimulating arrays of nerve endings to communicate my thoughts and convey the appropriate visual sensations. You’re not seeing a literal view of your brain, obviously. I mean, I don’t have cameras, or—”
“But you’re—are you E’rik Daxter? You sound like him. Or are you . . . a NAG?”
“Nag, nag, nag—here a nag, there a nag—yes, that’s me.”
“Be serious, damn it!”
“Yes, I am a NAG, imprinted with certain personality aspects of E’rik Daxter. You can call me Dax, if you like.”
“Huh? Where are you, exactly?”
“All through your body. I’m not really a NAG. I’m more like a colony consciousness.”
Ruskin blinked, or felt that he did.
“Now then, what do you know about the molecular physiology of thought and memory?”
“Not too much.”
The snowflake bobbed slowly in the air. “Just as well, I suppose. Half of it’s a mystery, and the other half wouldn’t help you much. But there are certain things you ought to know.” Ruskin waited while Dax paused, as though in thought. “A lot of your memory is distributed throughout the brain,” Dax said suddenly. “That is, it’s not all lined up point by point, a memory here, a memory there. It’s more like—”
“A hologram,” Ruskin said. Ali’Maksam had talked about that.
“Well, yes, although the hologramic model doesn’t entirely hold up. However, holograms and the brain have this in common: both have even the simplest information stored in a distributed fashion. You can cut out a piece of a hologram or the brain and still have intact information, though you lose some detail.”
“Right. Everyone knows that.”
“Terrific. Proud of you. Nevertheless, the memory is still fixed in the neurological structure of the brain. But on the molecular level, which is where the NAGs are interfering with you, your memory does not for the most part exist in discrete nerve cells. It’s spread out and cleverly interlaced, so that you can’t fool with one memory without messing up others, as well. That makes it tougher to implant fictional memories, for example. Millions of nerve cells would have to be altered to implant a single memory.”
“Yes, but I—”
“Shut up and let me finish. The point is that memories are modulated by the entire brain chemistry. Specific memories are addressed by association with other memories, and memory-recall is affected by emotional state, which is tied up with the limbic system—the so-called primitive brain, though actually it’s not primitive at all. The limbic system is complex, delicate, and absolutely essential to the functioning of human consciousness. What you need to know about the limbic system is that it’s a key point at which thoughts, especially emotion-laden thoughts, can be altered or subtly deflected.”
“By the NAGs. They’re screwing around with my emotions.”
“Among other things. In so doing, they’re exerting influence on your behavior, because you are an emotional being. They’re also, indirectly, changing your memories—in effect, if not in fact—by distorting the ways in which they are recalled. It’s easier to block recall, or to change its emotional coloration, than it is to alter its content. For example, your apparent hatred of the Tandesko Triune and everything connected with it . . .”
That caught him by surprise. Apparent hatred? Just hearing the name of that group of worlds made his vision darken.
“See what I mean?” Dax said softly.
“No. I don’t.” But he felt an unnerving sense of dread, an uncertainty as to whether he could trust even such a basic emotion.
The snowflake rotated sideways, and a structure off to one side of the cavern lit up in blue light. It looked like a melting ice sculpture on a pedestal, with a single large structure arching out to the cavern wall. Within it, cells were flickering. “Here’s a portion of your limbic system. Now look closely.”
Ruskin looked. He hadn’t noticed it before, but a thin haze was enveloping the structure—a cloud of swarming dust-motes. As he watched, the icelike structure shimmered: tiny cracks forming, then healing instantly, leaving behind almost invisible changes.
“Those are unfriendly NAGs. I can’t tell you yet exactly what they’re doing, but it’s definitely having an effect. Some of your strong emotional reactions may be a result of what’s happening there right now.”
“Can’t you stop them?”
“I hope to be able to. But I can’t overcome them by numbers alone; that would turn your body into a battlefield, and probably harm you more than it would help. We must take more subtle action, and that means observing and trying to discern patterns, and from the patterns, purpose. Then we can try to devise action. In the meantime, our action will have to be limited to emergency—”
“Hold it!”
The highlighted structure darkened, and the snowflake waited patiently.
“You’re saying that you don’t know what they’re doing, even though you’re right in there, in me, watching them work?”
Dax sparkled. “I can observe structural changes, but I cannot describe all of their consequences. I cannot yet predict, for example, the emotional change that will come of what we just observed.”
“Then how am I supposed to know what I’m really feeling? Me. What I’m feeling.”
“Precisely. That is the problem. I cannot know the intelligence behind the unfriendlies. I can only watch, infer tactics and purpose, and attempt to build a base of knowledge. And my conclusions will only be hunches.”
“But can’t you read their knowledge base? Or find whatever is controlling them and destroy it? I thought it was all contained in the NAGs.”
“Of course, but there is no single agent in control. Remember, this image of me is only a representation for convenience. Like me, they are a dispersed collection of molecular-sized processors, all working in concert. And their knowledge and purpose is dispersed through millions of agents, each carrying some part of the information, with lots of redundancy. If I were to begin destroying individual agents in hopes of destroying their intelligence, they could begin replicating faster than I could destroy them, and so perpetuate their command structure. It might force an evolutionary adaptation, but that would probably just work against us. But as I said, we can watch it unfold. Observe—”
Everything went dark for a moment, and then a new image came to life around him: tumbling molecules colliding, glinting with energy changes, twisting and contorting following the collisions. A tremendously complex molecule appeared, with bonds that rotated and stretched, chains of atoms all bound together, but folding and twisting like a fantastic puzzle. “You see,” said Dax’s voice, “this molecule carries information in the positions of the atoms, in the bumps and depressions in the chains, in the bonding levels. The processors that read it know the language, the form of the coding; they know the kind of information to expect. I know none of that; but even if I did, I could not read all of the secrets in this molecule, because the programming resides not just in the structures, but in the ways that they come together as the chains fold and join, or as other molecules collide, leaving segments or taking them away.”
“Then how the hell am I supposed to know anything? What’s the point?”
“I merely state the problem. The solution is to watch the patterns unfold, and to be quick to comprehend and respond. In short—to be smarter than they are.”
Ruskin was silent for a long time. He felt as though he were panting, as though he could not catch his breath. He was afraid. “How can we hope to beat it,” he whispered finally, “if I don’t know what is me . . . what are my thoughts, my feelings, my memories? How can we possibly beat it?”
Dax reappeared, twinkling. “We cannot—immediately. That is why we must uncover the hidden purpose. Willard, this problem does not concern you alone. We are all of us involved. It is conceivable that entire worlds are involved.”
He was stunned. “Worlds? What do you mean?”
“What has been done to you has not been accomplished by a minor technology, nor at any small expense. Someone wielding considerable resources is attempting to control you. Consider your body’s capabilities: it can heal itself from terrifying wounds, it can change shape at will, it can control your thoughts and actions. And in your finger is a laser grown by NAGs, controlled by your nervous system, and powerful enough to kill. Does this suggest anything to you?”
It suggested only one thing to Ruskin, and he did not want to voice it.
“I was thinking, myself, that a special agent for any one of a dozen organizations would be happy to have those attributes,” Dax said.
“Sounds good to me,” Ruskin whispered. It did not sound good to him at all.
“You could make a formidable enemy.”
Ruskin felt dizzy. “Enemy to whom?”
“We’ll never know if we don’t let it act itself out.”
Too many things were hitting him; he could scarcely think. Too many thoughts wanted to get out at once. Finally he said, “There is another way.”
“Yes?”
He hesitated. “You could kill me now. While I’m immobile. Destroy me. Annihilate me.”
The snowflake pulsed with light. “Kill to prevent killing?”
“I’d give you permission,” he said, struggling to get the words out. The words resisted; he did not want to die yet.
“Would you?”
“I’d . . . try.”
“And so you might,” Dax said. “So you might. But that wouldn’t solve the whole problem—as I was trying to explain. Willard, someone has done a terrible thing to you. We need to discover who has done it, and why.”
“Oh.”
“So it might let you off if we kill you. But what about everyone else?”
“Everyone else, who?”
“Whole worlds, possibly, as I said.”
“Oh, yes. You said that. Right.”
Dax was silent for a moment. “Ruskin, we need you to act as a detective. Against yourself. It’s unlikely that you were intended to kill Tamika Jones. In light of everything you’ve told me, I’d guess that that was a malfunction in the programming. But we need you to find out what crime you were created to commit.”
The silence this time was prolonged. Ruskin saw no way out of the argument. At last he sighed. “What about the authorities. Shouldn’t we go to them?”
Dax seemed to hesitate. “You may, of course, if you believe it the right thing to do. But frankly—well, there are many different authorities. Which ones would you trust? And consider who might have done this to you.”
“Broder.” And at once he realized: he didn’t know whom Broder really worked for. And he didn’t know how to find the man. Broder had said he was going off-planet; he could be anywhere now.
“My list of suspects starts with the government,” Dax said.
Ruskin considered that. “Which government?”
“Any government. That’s the trouble. My list is a long one.
“What about someone like you? You could do this.”
“Someone like Daxter, you mean? Maybe. But there aren’t many like him around—which most people would probably consider a blessing.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
Dax chuckled. “Well, I approve of him, obviously. But he’s stubborn and eccentric. And he doesn’t like governments.”
Somehow that made Ruskin feel better. “Okay, we keep it to ourselves, for now. What about Max and Tamika? Do they know all this?”
“They are being filled in, yes. Not every detail, of course.
“Dax—” Ruskin suddenly found himself struggling, but he had to ask. “Did Tamika . . . she sent me to that lodge with Broder. Did she know what was going to happen?”
“She says she did not, Willard. And Ali’Maksam says that he believes her.”
Ruskin nodded. “Good,” he whispered.
“You will need the help of your friends, Willard.”
“Yes. What do you want me to do?”
“You should try to return to life as usual. Observe all that you can. It will be my job to help you learn and to control your blackout periods, to prevent harm to you and to others. But your life must appear normal to an outside observer.”
“You think I’m being watched?”
“Of course you are. That’s why your directions for coming here were so circuitous. Remember the transponder?”
Ruskin remembered; he was grateful they’d gotten rid of it. He wondered if the NAGs in his body were capable of communicating information to the outside.
“I doubt it,” Dax answered, reading his thoughts. “I, at least, will be unable to communicate with E’rik Daxter once you leave this laboratory.”
“So they’ll be watching me to see if I’m living up to their expectations.”
“Presumably, and I further presume the following: that your erratic behavior is the result of incomplete control by the unfriendlies—that your own will and theirs have been in conflict, that they are in the midst of their own learning curve—and that our enemy knows or guesses this as well. It seems likely that it is their intention that your behavior appear normal—until the time. If you follow me.
Ruskin thought he did. “It all seems a little risky.”
“So it does. So it does.”
“What gives us such hope that we can overcome them when the time comes?”
“Their control,” the snowflake said slowly, “is imperfect. It can only be so. Their programming must derive from a certain amount of guesswork, just as ours does. Even if the programming were perfect, its control would still be imperfect. Willard, the memory structures of the brain are essential to the functioning of the mind; but they are not themselves the mind.”
Ruskin remained silent.
“What I am telling you is that there are other factors involved. There is the extended nervous system. There are hormonal and other chemical factors. And there is, well, the spirit. You are you.”
Ruskin said nothing.
“And that, Willard, is the wild card. Are you ready to keep learning?”
Ruskin stared at the snowflake.
Dax took his silence as assent. The snowflake dissolved into a molten drop of light and streaked toward the ceiling of the cavern. Its voice echoed behind it: “Follow me.”
* * *
There was no time for understanding, barely enough time for surprise. He had never imagined that his brain, on the inside, would look anything like this:
A subterranean forest, cloaked with snow and icicles, gleaming with interior illuminations. Dax led him swooping and diving through the landscape. The place was infused with an eerie light, and with confusing sounds, like the strains of a steel band. This was the heart of the amygdala, where emotions sprang up from underground streams—where trees of memory and icicles of thought were transformed by the blink of an eye.
No time to ask about it. They soared into a star-filled night and watched the passage of winking spirits across the sky. Stars blossomed, stars died, new stars appeared in constellations strange and frightening.
They landed, and the ground trembled and split into rivers of fiery lava. On a ridge, figures of light and shadow contested with one another, striving for control over the eruption. They sank into the molten flow, blazing with heat and light; and through a blur he saw a vast translucent wall, with dim shapes moving and bumping on the other side. No time to understand. They plunged through the wall, and as his thoughts blurred again, he realized that he was inside one of his own cells.