Prev Next

It was midmorning and the traffic was well below its daytime peak, but it didn't matter-he wasn't headed downtown.

When Diana was certain that he had run out of excuses she repeated her last question, richly salted with seething impatience.

"An address way out east," he told her. "It's not a million miles away from the alleys, but it's not gang turf. Above the ground it still looks derelict, but the word is that some heavy gantzing's been done underneath by way of excavation. The hole's been set up for use as a black-box drop site, supposedly untraceable. Nothing's authentically untraceable, but no one's had a reason yet to send hooks into this one. Harriet's boys tipped her off that something was on, though, and she dug up some background on it, working back from the cowboy contractors who did the gantzing."

"I thought the idea of gantzing was to raise buildings up," Diana objected, "not to dig holes."

"The neobacteria that cement walls together are only part of the gantzing set," Madoc told her wearily. "You have to have others that can unstick things, else you wouldn't be able to shape the product. Moleminers use the unstickers to burrow through solid rock. It's not the ideal way to dig out a permanent cellar or tunnel but it does the trick-and you can use the cementers to harden the walls and ceilings, making sure they'll bear the load. Anyway, that's not the point. Even moonlight labor has to be paid for. The title deeds to the property are locked up tight, but there's a trail leading back from the people who worked on it to one of the people Damon told me to ask about: the one who can't be located in San Diego, Surinder Nahal."

"You think these underground workings might be where Silas Arnett's being held? The Praill girl too?"

"Maybe. Maybe it's something else entirely. All I know is that I need to take a look, and there aren't any spy eyes I can use. The Old Lady dug up some information about the security they installed, but being gantzers rather than silicon men it's mostly solid. Not much of a challenge to a man of my talents, but I guess they didn't want to bring in state-of-the-art stuff because putting a top-quality electronic fence around a supposedly derelict building would look suspicious in itself."

"So we're going to break in and look around?" Diana said, stressing the we we to make sure that he understood that she had no intention of waiting in the car. to make sure that he understood that she had no intention of waiting in the car.

"If we can."

"Suppose we we get into trouble? Is anybody going to come looking for us? Will anyone know where to look?" get into trouble? Is anybody going to come looking for us? Will anyone know where to look?"

"It's not that kind of deal, Di-but if we were were to vanish from human ken, the Old Lady would put two and two together. She'd tell Damon." to vanish from human ken, the Old Lady would put two and two together. She'd tell Damon."

"Damon? Not the police."

"He's the man who's paying us-and one of the things he's paying for is discretion."

"What else have you found out?"

"Like I said," Madoc retorted obstinately, "one of the things he's paying for is discretion."

"If he'd been discreet enough not to use my body in his porno-tapes, I wouldn't be here," Diana said, "but he did and I am. When he talked to me he said it was no big secret, but that was probably a lie. Is Is Damon really Conrad Helier, like the last notice said?" Damon really Conrad Helier, like the last notice said?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Madoc said. "I knew him when he was barely starting to shave and I nursed him practically day by day from his first fight to his last. Believe me, I've seen enough of him over the last ten years to know that he isn't a hundred and thirty-seven years old trying to pass for twenty-six. He's exactly what he appears to be-and that includes the fact that he's Damon Hart and not Damon Helier anymore. If Operator one-oh-one wants some lunatic to take a shot at Damon, it's not because anyone thinks he's an enemy of mankind unworthy of immortality-it's because Operator one-oh-one now thinks Damon may be dangerous to him him. Maybe he knows that the Old Lady and I have been sniffing around-maybe he thinks that I'm getting too close for comfort."

"If he thinks that that," Diana pointed out, suffering a sudden attack of logic, "we're probably riding straight into a trap."

"Do you want to get out?" Madoc asked. "If you do, better do it now. The badlands start at the end of the street."

"I'm sticking to you like gantzing glue," she told him stiffly. She didn't believe what he'd said about the Operator getting spooked because he and the Old Lady had got too close. Neither did he-but he'd had to say something, to cover up the fact that he hadn't the slightest idea why anyone would draw Damon into the game and then make a show of setting him up for target practice.

As they passed from the well-tended streets into an unreclaimed district Madoc slowed down slightly and checked for signs of pursuit-but when he found none he speeded up again. If Damon hadn't sent an e-mail canceling the instruction that Madoc should meet him at the airport Madoc would have been in a quandary about whether to delay the adventure, but since Damon had decided to stay away for a while longer Madoc felt that the whole burden of action was on his shoulders, and that he had to press on as quickly as possible.

"I'm here because I care, you know," Diana said defensively. "I walked out on Damon because he hurt me, but it was as much for his good as for mine-to make him see what's happening to him. I still love him."

"I'd never have guessed," Madoc muttered, with savage irony.

"You don't understand," she said flatly.

"That's a matter of opinion. I should have left you tied and gagged at my place. If I had any sense . . ."

"If you had any sense, Maddie," she told him, "you'd have a nice safe job with PicoCon-an honest job, with prospects. There's no real profit in living on the edge, you know. It might be more fun, but it won't take you anywhere in the long run. The day of the buccaneers is long gone."

This new argumentative tack was even more irritating than the one she'd set aside. "Did Damon tell you that?" Madoc said acidly. "Did you consider the possibility that he might have been trying to convince himself? There's always always scope for buccaneers. Rumor has it that the best and boldest of the old ones are still alive, if not exactly kicking. Adam Zimmerman never died, so they say-and if Conrad Helier didn't, my bet is that he's sleeping right next door." He realized, belatedly, that he had been so concerned to score the debating point-off Damon rather than Diana-that he had let discretion slip a little. scope for buccaneers. Rumor has it that the best and boldest of the old ones are still alive, if not exactly kicking. Adam Zimmerman never died, so they say-and if Conrad Helier didn't, my bet is that he's sleeping right next door." He realized, belatedly, that he had been so concerned to score the debating point-off Damon rather than Diana-that he had let discretion slip a little.

Diana didn't seem to realize that she'd just got a partial answer to her question about what else he'd found out while digging on Damon's behalf. "Who's Adam Zimmerman?" she asked, attacking the more basic question.

"The guy who set up the Ahasuerus Foundation. Known in his own day-or shortly thereafter-as the Man Who Cornered the Future or the Man Who Stole the World. Born some time before the turn of the millennium, vanished some time after."

"But he'd be more than two hundred years old," Diana objected. "The oldest man alive only passed a hundred and sixty a year or two back-the news tapes are always harping on about the record being broken."

"The record only applies to those alive and kicking and kicking," Madoc told her. "Back in the twentieth century, people who wanted to live forever knew they weren't going to make it to the foot of the escalator. Some elected to be put in the freezer as soon as they were dead, looking forward to the day when it would be possible to resurrect them and give them back their youth. Multimillionaires who couldn't take it with them sometimes spent their dotage pouring money into longevity research, stone-age rejuve technologies and susan-that's short for suspended animation. Long-term freezing did a lot of damage, you see-very difficult to thaw out tissues without mangling all or most of the cells. The tale they tell is that Zimmerman tried to ride a susan escalator to the foot of the emortality escalator, commissioning the foundation he established to keep him alive and ageless by whatever means they could, until the time becomes ripe for him to wake up and drink from the fount of youth. Now that's that's bold buccaneering, wouldn't you say." bold buccaneering, wouldn't you say."

"And you think Conrad Helier went to Ahasuerus in search of a similar deal?" Diana said, picking up the point which he shouldn't have let fall. "You think he might might be still alive, and that if he is, that's where Ahasuerus comes in." be still alive, and that if he is, that's where Ahasuerus comes in."

"I don't think anything," Madoc said, wishing that he could sound more convincing, "but if there's some kind of interesting link between Ahasuerus and Helier, that would be a candidate. It's impossible to say-Ahasuerus is stitched up very tight indeed. They're very very keen on privacy. It's partly a hangover from the days when they faced a lot of hostility because of their founder's reputation, but it's more than just a habit. Who knows how many famous men might be lurking in the vaults, sleeping their way to immortality because they were born too early to make it while awake? I'd be willing to bet that there wouldn't be one in ten that the Eliminators would consider keen on privacy. It's partly a hangover from the days when they faced a lot of hostility because of their founder's reputation, but it's more than just a habit. Who knows how many famous men might be lurking in the vaults, sleeping their way to immortality because they were born too early to make it while awake? I'd be willing to bet that there wouldn't be one in ten that the Eliminators would consider worthy of immortality worthy of immortality."

For once, Diana had no reply ready. She seemed to be thinking over the implications of this intriguing item of urban folklore, which obviously hadn't come her way before. It hadn't come Madoc's way either, but the Old Lady had a long memory.

It was perhaps as well, Madoc thought, that Diana had finally fallen silent. There was work to be done, and if she intended to play her part she'd need to keep her head.

Madoc stopped the car, then checked the deserted street and its glassless windows very carefully, searching for signs of movement or occupation. There was no sign that anything was amiss. At night there would have been rats, cats, and dogs roaming around, but at noonday those kinds of scavengers stayed out of sight.

He reached under his seat to pick up the bag he'd brought from the apartment, opening it briefly to pull out a couple of the items he'd stashed within it.

"Are we here?" Diana asked-and then, without waiting for an answer, added: "Is that a crowbar? crowbar?" Obviously she'd had her mind on higher things while he'd been getting the stuff together.

"No," he said, "and yes. That is, no, we still have a couple of blocks to walk, on tiptoe-and yes, it's a crowbar. Sometimes scanners and slashcards are second best to brute force. You do do know how to tiptoe, don't you?" know how to tiptoe, don't you?"

"I can be as quiet as you," she assured him, "but it seems silly to tiptoe in broad daylight."

"Just go carefully," Madoc said, with a slight sigh, "and carry this." He gave her a flamecutter, refusing to listen to her protest that it was at least three times as heavy as the crowbar and twice as heavy as whatever remained in the bag.

Madoc got out of the car and closed the door quietly. Diana did likewise. He set off along the rubble-littered pavement, treading as carefully as he could. She followed, matching his studied quietness.

When they got to the particular ruin that he was looking for, Madoc set about examining its interior with scrupulous patience. There were no obvious signs of recent gantzing on the crumbling walls, but a host of tiny details inside the shell revealed to Madoc's forewarned eye that this was not the rubble heap it pretended to be. In a corner of the room that was furthest away from the street he found the head of a flight of stone steps leading down into what had been a cellar, and once he'd eased aside the charred planks that were blocking the way down it was easy enough to see that the door at the bottom was perfectly solid. When he'd tiptoed down to it he found that it had two locks, one of which was electronic and one of which was crudely mechanical. Madoc put the crowbar aside for the moment and set to work with a scanner.

It took two minutes of wizardry to release the electronic lock, and five of patient leverage to dislodge the screws holding the mechanical lock. Madoc eased the door open and stepped gingerly inside, checking the corridor within before letting Diana in behind him. No attempt had been made to conceal the fact that the walls had been recently gantzed.

When Diana had pulled the door closed behind her Madoc plucked a flashlight from his satchel and switched it on. The flashlight showed him that the corridor was at least twenty meters long, and that it had another door at the further end. There were several alcoves let into the walls, which might or might not hide further doors. Fixing the field of illumination on the floor ahead of him, Madoc began to move deeper into what now seemed to him to be an unexpectedly complex network of cellars. He figured that all the inner doors would be locked at least as securely as the one through which they'd come, and that it might require considerable effort to locate the one behind which the excavation's real treasures were concealed. As things turned out, however, the first shadowy covert let into the corridor wall turned out to have no door within it-it was simply a portal giving uninterrupted access to a room about three meters by four.

The floor of the room was even more glittery than the sand-gantzed exterior of the PicoCon building; it looked almost as if it had been compounded out of broken glass. Stretched out on the gleaming surface, with both arms awkwardly outstretched, was a blackened humanoid shape which Madoc mistook at first for some kind of weird sculpture. It was, in fact, Diana who first leaped to the more ominous conclusion, which Madoc deduced when her sharp intake of breath hissed in his right ear.

"Oh shit," he said. He had seen dead bodies before-he had even seen burned bodies before-but he had never seen human remains as badly charred as these. A little of the ash that had once been flesh had dusted onto the floor, as if the pitch-dipped skeleton had shed an eerie shadow. On the corpse's tarry breast, however, was something innocent of any fire damage: a VE pak, placed atop the dead man's heart. If it had been resting on a tabletop, Madoc would have whisked it away into an inside pocket without a moment's delay, but he hesitated to take it from where it had been so carefully set. It looked uncomfortably like bait in a trap.

"Do you think that's Silas Arnett?" Diana asked. Her voice fractured as she spoke the words, so that the whisper became louder than she had intended.

"I hope not," Madoc said-but he had no idea who to hope it might be instead. He might have hoped that it was an ancient corpse which had lain undiscovered for years, but his nose would have told him otherwise even if the floor on which it lay and the object set upon it had not been products of contemporary technology.

They were both still hovering in the doorless entrance, uncertain as to whether they dared to approach and crouch down to examine the body, when the door at the far end of the corridor opened with a considerable crash. Madoc instantly stepped back, using the flashlight to see what was happening.

Two men had come through the door: men with guns in their hands.

By the time he heard their warnings and recognized the weapons they were holding out before them, Madoc's panic had already been leavened by a certain relief. It could have been worse. It could could have been the people who had killed the poor bastard stretched out on the floor and torched his corpse. Compared with men capable of such an act as that, the police could only seem gentle. Madoc had been under arrest a dozen times before, and had survived every time. have been the people who had killed the poor bastard stretched out on the floor and torched his corpse. Compared with men capable of such an act as that, the police could only seem gentle. Madoc had been under arrest a dozen times before, and had survived every time.

Obediently, he dropped the flashlight on the floor of the corridor, and the tool kit too. He even raised his hands before stepping back into the room from which he'd just emerged.

"Well," he muttered to Diana, who was trying to see over his shoulder, "you wanted in, and you're in. I only hope you can talk your way out again."

The two cops moved confidently forward to complete the arrest. As soon as they had relaxed, Madoc grabbed Diana, maneuvered her through the empty doorway, and shoved her with all the force he could muster along the corridor toward the on-coming cops. She had raised her own arms, and her hands grappled for purchase as she cannoned into the two men and tried to stop herself falling.

While the cops tried to catch her, and to save themselves from being bowled over, Madoc plucked the VE pak off the chest of the blackened corpse with his left hand while the right groped for the crowbar. Once he had both items securely within his grip he moved forward with a ruthless determination befitting the trainer and master of the best streetfighters in the city.

As he had told Diana, gentler methods were sometimes second best to simple brute force. He hoped that this would prove to be one of those times.

Fifteen.

D.

uring the hours when the last vestiges of his internal technology had tried their damnedest to maintain some semblance of function Silas Arnett had felt like a turtle floating beneath the surface of a stagnant pond. It was as if his self-consciousness had been immersed in murky, cloying depths which lay upon him like a horrid dead weight, compacting his bodily mass.

In the meantime, his weary and leaden eyes had looked out into a very different world: a world that was all light and color and action where there seemed to be no weight at all.

Now, he felt that he was the same turtle rudely stripped of its shell. His frontier with the outer world was exposed to all manner of assaults and horribly sensitive. He could hardly believe that thousands of generations of human beings had lived their entire lives becalmed in flesh as awkward and as vulnerable as this. The novelty of the experience had already worn off-and the process of psychological readaptation was neither as radical nor as difficult as he had feared-but the sensitivity remained.

No matter how still Silas sat, simple existence had become a torrent of discomforts. The straps at his wrists and ankles chafed his skin, but that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was that he could not scratch his itches, although the fact that he could not alter his position save by imperceptible shifts of weight and strain was almost as bad.

It was torture of a kind, but the wonder of it was that it was not real real torture. No pincers had been applied to his nipples, no electric shocks to his genitals, no hot irons to his belly, no slivers of bamboo to his fingernails. It was as if he had been prepared for the operating theater only to discover that the surgeon had been called away . . . and had left no word as to the likely time of his return. He had been thoroughly insulted, in body and in mind, but no dire injury had as yet been added to the insult. torture. No pincers had been applied to his nipples, no electric shocks to his genitals, no hot irons to his belly, no slivers of bamboo to his fingernails. It was as if he had been prepared for the operating theater only to discover that the surgeon had been called away . . . and had left no word as to the likely time of his return. He had been thoroughly insulted, in body and in mind, but no dire injury had as yet been added to the insult.

What made this all the more puzzling was the tape he had been shown of his "trial," whose maker had taken the trouble to include one very audible-and rather realistic-scream, and had made some effort to imply that others had been edited out of the package.

The trial scene was gone now, and Silas was in a very different virtual environment-one which mimicked the texture of visual reality reasonably faithfully. The room in which his prison chair now seemed to be standing was also mostly white. It had white walls and a cream carpet, and its ceiling was uniformly lit by a gentle artificial bioluminescence which had very little color in it.

Silas knew that the universe of virtual reality was overabundantly well-equipped with white rooms. Far too many of the people who specialized in VE design cultivated a thorough understanding of the hardware and software they were using while neglecting the development of their own creative imagination and aesthetic sensitivity. It was becoming routine for software engineers and "interior decorators" to form up into "renaissance teams," although youngsters like Damon Hart always figured that they could do everything themselves. Silas did not assume, however, that this particular white room was a convenient fiction. Life always imitated art, and he could easily believe that the place of his confinement had been decorated in imitation of an elementary VE.

The man who stood before Silas in the white room was not a judge. He was wearing Conrad Helier's face, but any halfway competent VE engineer could have contrived that-there was a vast reservoir of archive film which could be plundered for the purpose of making a template. "Conrad" was wearing a white lab coat, but that seemed blatantly incongruous to Silas. Conrad had never been a man for white coats.

"I don't understand," Silas said. "The trial tape even looks looks like a fake. You didn't need me at all. You could have put that farce together without any of the snippets of actual speech that you borrowed. If you already knew what you were going to put in my so-called confession, why did you bother throwing all those questions at me?" like a fake. You didn't need me at all. You could have put that farce together without any of the snippets of actual speech that you borrowed. If you already knew what you were going to put in my so-called confession, why did you bother throwing all those questions at me?"

He knew, even as he made this speech, that it was ridiculously optimistic to suppose that the fact that he had not been hurt yet yet meant that he was not going to be hurt at all, but he was telling the simple truth when he said that he didn't understand. meant that he was not going to be hurt at all, but he was telling the simple truth when he said that he didn't understand.

"It's useful to have some authentic footage on which to build," said the man in the Conrad Helier mask, in Conrad Helier's voice, "but the only thing I really really needed from you was your absence from the world for the three days which it would take to flush out your IT and reduce you to the common clay of unaugmented human flesh." needed from you was your absence from the world for the three days which it would take to flush out your IT and reduce you to the common clay of unaugmented human flesh."

"Why have you bothered to do that," Silas wanted to know, "if you didn't intend to use real screams in your little melodrama? Do Do you intend to interrogate me under torture, or are you just making the point that you could have if you'd wanted to?" you intend to interrogate me under torture, or are you just making the point that you could have if you'd wanted to?"

"There you are," said the man who was not Conrad Helier. "You are are beginning to understand. I knew you could. If only you'd been able to understand a little earlier, all this might not have been necessary. The world has changed, you see-a whole century has passed since 2093. It may have been unlike any other century in history, by virtue of the fact that many of the people who really beginning to understand. I knew you could. If only you'd been able to understand a little earlier, all this might not have been necessary. The world has changed, you see-a whole century has passed since 2093. It may have been unlike any other century in history, by virtue of the fact that many of the people who really mattered mattered in 2093 are still alive in 2193, but it still packed in more extravagant changes than any previous century. Whatever the future brings, it will never produce such sweeping changes again. in 2093 are still alive in 2193, but it still packed in more extravagant changes than any previous century. Whatever the future brings, it will never produce such sweeping changes again. You've You've changed too, Silas. You probably seem to yourself to be exactly the same person you were at twenty-six, but that's an understandable illusion. If you could only look at yourself from a detached viewpoint, the changes would be obvious." changed too, Silas. You probably seem to yourself to be exactly the same person you were at twenty-six, but that's an understandable illusion. If you could only look at yourself from a detached viewpoint, the changes would be obvious."

"So what?"

The fake Conrad Helier was already standing at ease, but now he put his hands into his pockets. In the sixty years that he had known him, Silas had never never seen Conrad Helier put his hands into his pockets. seen Conrad Helier put his hands into his pockets.

"It used to be reckoned that people inevitably became more conservative as they got older," the man in the white coat said, with only the faintest hint of irony in his earnest expression. "Young men with virile bodies and idealistic minds, it was said, easily embraced utopian schemes for the radical transformation of society. Old men, by contrast, only wanted to hang on to the things they already had; even those who hadn't made fortunes wanted to hang on to the things they were used to, because they were creatures of habit. The people who spoke out against technologies of longevity-and there were were people like that, as I'm sure you can remember-often argued that a world ruled by the very old would become stagnant and sterile, fearful of further change. They prophesied that a society of old people would be utterly lacking in potency and progressive zeal, devoid of any sense of adventure. people like that, as I'm sure you can remember-often argued that a world ruled by the very old would become stagnant and sterile, fearful of further change. They prophesied that a society of old people would be utterly lacking in potency and progressive zeal, devoid of any sense of adventure.

"They were wrong, of course. Their mistake was to equate getting older getting older with with nearing the end nearing the end. The old became conservative not because of the increasing number of the years they'd lived but because of the dwindling number of the years that still lay before them. The young, whose futures were still to be made, had a strong vested interest in trying to make the world better as quickly as was humanly possible; the old, who had little or no future left, only wanted to preserve what they could of their old and comfortable selves. Things are very different now. Now, the prospect of true emortality lies before us, like the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Not everyone will make it all the way to the light, but many of us will and we all all live in hope. The old, in fact, understand that far better than the young. live in hope. The old, in fact, understand that far better than the young.

"The young used to outnumber the old, but they don't now and never will again; the young are rare rare now, a protected species. Although the future which stretches before them seems limitless, it doesn't seem to them to be now, a protected species. Although the future which stretches before them seems limitless, it doesn't seem to them to be theirs theirs. Even if they can still envisage themselves as the inevitable inheritors of the earth, the age at which they will come into their inheritance seems a very long way off and likely to be subject to further delays. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that the young are more resentful now than they have ever been before. It is the old who now have the more enthusiastic and more constructive attitude to the future; they expect not only to live in it, but also to own own it, to be masters of its infinite estates." it, to be masters of its infinite estates."

"I know all this," Silas said sullenly, wishing that his itches were not so defiantly unscratchable.

"You know it," said the man masked as Conrad Helier, "but you haven't understood understood it. How, if you understood it, could you ever have thought of it. How, if you understood it, could you ever have thought of retirement? retirement? How, if you understood it, could you waste your time in pointless and undignified sexual encounters with the authentically young?" How, if you understood it, could you waste your time in pointless and undignified sexual encounters with the authentically young?"

"I can live my own life any way I choose," Silas told his accuser coldly. "I'm not just old-I'm also free."

"That's the point," said the ersatz Helier. "That's why you're here. You're not not free. Nobody is, who hopes and wants to live forever. Because, you see, if we're to live forever, we have to live free. Nobody is, who hopes and wants to live forever. Because, you see, if we're to live forever, we have to live together together. We're dependent on one another, not just in the vulgar sense that the division of labor makes it possible to produce all the necessities of life but in the higher sense that human human life consists primarily of communication with others, augmented, organized, and made artful by all the media we can devise. We're social beings, Silas-not because we have some kind of inbuilt gregarious instinct but because we simply can't do anything worthwhile or be anything worthwhile outside of society. That's why our one and only objective in life-all the more so for everyone who's a hundred and fifty going on a hundred and fifty thousand-ought to be the Herculean task of making a society as rich and as complex and as life consists primarily of communication with others, augmented, organized, and made artful by all the media we can devise. We're social beings, Silas-not because we have some kind of inbuilt gregarious instinct but because we simply can't do anything worthwhile or be anything worthwhile outside of society. That's why our one and only objective in life-all the more so for everyone who's a hundred and fifty going on a hundred and fifty thousand-ought to be the Herculean task of making a society as rich and as complex and as rewarding rewarding as we possibly can." as we possibly can."

"The only reason I'm not free," Silas replied tersely, "is that I've been strapped to a fucking chair by a fucking maniac."

Conrad Helier's face registered great disappointment. "Your attitude is as stupidly anachronistic as your language," he said-and went out like a switched-off light, along with the virtual environment of which he was a part. Silas was left entirely to himself.

Silas was stubbornly glad that he had had an effect on his interrogator, but the effect itself was far from rewarding. In the darkness and the silence he was alone with his discomforts, and his discomforts were further magnified by lack of distraction. He was also acutely aware of the fact that he had failed to obtain answers to any of the questions which confronted him-most urgently of all, what would happen to him now that Operator 101 had released his slanders onto the Web?

Mercifully-although mercy may not have been the motive-he was not left in the dark and the silence for long.

His senses of sight and hearing were now engaged by a kaleidoscopic patchwork of fragments excerpted from old and nearly new VE tapes, both documentary and drama. If there was any pattern of relevance in the order in which they were presented to him, he could not discern it-but he became interested in spite of that, not merely in the individual snatches that had been edited together but in the aesthetic experience of the sequence.

He "walked" on the surface of Mars, surveying the roseate desert and looking up into the tinted sky at the glaring daystars. He saw the rounded domes where the human Martians lived and watched the glass facets sparkle and glint as he changed his position. Then, on the horizon, he "saw" the crazy-tale castles of the Mars of obsolete dreams, the skycars riding the imagination-thickened air-and dramatic music crashed through the brief, golden silence. . . .

He saw earth-moving machines on the fringe of the Australian superdesert, laying out the great green starter plane which would begin the business of soil manufacture, bridging the desiccation gap which had deadened the land in spite of all life's earlier attempts to reclaim it. A sonorous voice-over pumped out relentless adspeak about the technical expertise behind the project: glory, glory, glory to the heroes of the genetic revolution . . ..

He saw a gang fight in the derelict suburban wasteland of a city he couldn't name: young men costumed and painted like crazy fetishists, wielding knives and razors, eyes wild with adrenalin and synthetic ecstasy, living on and by the edge. He watched the vivid blood spurt from wounds, and he winced with sympathy because he knew full well that these would-be savages must be equipped with relatively primitive internal technology, which provided elementary protection against permanent injury but left them horribly vulnerable to pain and the risk of death. He heard their bestial cries, their wordless celebration of their defiance of civilization and all its comforts, all its protective guarantees . . ..

It was as if the virtual aspect of the life of modern man were being condensed into a stream of images. Silas couldn't help but feel annoyed about the fact that his captors seemed hell-bent on educating educating him, but the process had a curious fascination of its own. Much of the imagery was, of course, "reality-based"-videotapes of actual events reformatted for VE playback, sometimes in 2-D, sometimes in 3-D-but even in the documentary material, reformatted footage was juxtaposed and mingled with synthesized material produced by programmers. Today's programmers were almost good enough to synthesize lifelike fictions, especially when they used templates borrowed from reality-based footage which could be mechanically animated and subtly changed without losing their photographic appearance. him, but the process had a curious fascination of its own. Much of the imagery was, of course, "reality-based"-videotapes of actual events reformatted for VE playback, sometimes in 2-D, sometimes in 3-D-but even in the documentary material, reformatted footage was juxtaposed and mingled with synthesized material produced by programmers. Today's programmers were almost good enough to synthesize lifelike fictions, especially when they used templates borrowed from reality-based footage which could be mechanically animated and subtly changed without losing their photographic appearance.

With only a hood at his disposal, Silas couldn't obtain the full benefit of such illusions, most of which were designed to provide tactile sensations with the aid of a full-body synthesis suit, but the detachment that was heir to limitation made it all the more difficult to tell the reformatted real from the ersatz.

Silas saw himself standing by Conrad Helier's side, listening to the older man saying: "We must regard this new plague not as a catastrophe but as a challenge. It is not, as the Gaian Mystics would have us believe, the vengeance of Mother Earth upon her rapists and polluters, and no matter how fast and how far it spreads it cannot and will not destroy the species. Its advent requires a monumental effort from us, but we are capable of making that effort. . . ."

He saw two women, naked and oiled, caressing one another sinuously, engaged in carefully choreographed mutual masturbation, first with fingers and then with tongues, moving ceaselessly, putting on an ingeniously artful and tantalizing display for voyeurs. The soundtrack was soft music, overlaid by heavy breathing and gasps of simulated ecstasy, and the flesh of the two women seemed to be taking on a life of its own, a strange glow. Their faces were changing, exchanging features; they seemed to flow and merge, as though the two were becoming one as the carefully faked climax approached. . . .

Silas recognized this as one of his foster son's compositions, as crudely and garishly libidinous as one might expect of a young young man's imagination. He was glad when it was replaced by scenes from a food factory, where tissue cultures were harvested and processed with mechanical efficiency and hygiene by robot knives and robot packagers. man's imagination. He was glad when it was replaced by scenes from a food factory, where tissue cultures were harvested and processed with mechanical efficiency and hygiene by robot knives and robot packagers.

After that there was more Conrad Helier, this time in closeup-which meant that it was probably faked. "We must be sure," the probably fake Conrad was saying, "that our motives are pure. We must do this not to secure an advantage for ourselves, but for the sake of the world. It is time to set aside, for the last time, the logic of the selfish gene, and to proclaim the triumph of altruistic self-awareness. The first children of the New Utopia must be not the children of an elite; they must be the children of everyman. If we ourselves are to have children we must allocate ourselves the lowest priority, not the highest."

The viewpoint swung around to bring Eveline Hywood's face into embarrassingly intimate focus. "It's the privilege of gods to move in mysterious ways," she said laconically. "Let's not tie ourselves down with self-administered commandments that we'll surely have occasion to break and break again."

Report error

If you found broken links, wrong episode or any other problems in a anime/cartoon, please tell us. We will try to solve them the first time.

Email:

SubmitCancel

Share