Coils

by Roger Zelazny

  Cora's breathing deepened. Her eyelids flickered. Her arm looked straighter.

  "That's right! That's right! Amen! Amen!" he said loudly.

  I was surprised to see that his eye was moist.

  "Washed in the blood of the lamb!" he cried. "If that ain't grace, what is? Amen!"

  Then he withdrew his hand and leaned his head back.

  "Speakin' of sinners," he said more weakly, "here I am. Sorry to've bothered You… You go and do what You want with me now. It's okay. Old Willy Boy's comin', Lord…"

  His head came forward then, and I didn't realize for a long time that it wasn't a bow, not till the flask fell from his fingers. Then I saw that he'd stopped breathing.

  Cora moved then, as if she were trying to sit up. I reached to stop her, but I didn't. I caught hold of her shoulder instead and moved nearer. Her eyes were open and sporting a matching set of pupils. I moved my fingertips up her brow, into her hair. There were no lacerations beneath the dried blood.

  "Don…?"

  "Your right arm…" I said.

  She looked at it. She moved it

  "What about it?" she asked.

  "Nothing," I said.

  She looked at Matthews.

  "Who's that?" she asked. "It looks like…"

  "It is. He helped you."

  The flames from the hut crackled behind me. I looked to the north. A streamer of smoke was smearing the sky there, too.

  "Can you get up?" I asked.

  "Yes. I think so."

  I began helping her to her feet. Then, through the acrid smoke, I smelled roses.

  "It is here now," Ann's voice said within my mind. "I am strong enough now that it can reach you through me."

  My grip tightened, probably painfully, on Cora's arm.

  "Don! What's the matter?" she said, continuing to straighten as I began to sink.

  "Don't—know," I managed, before I was swept away completely, involuntarily sucked through a Coil Effect that went on and on and on…

  * * *

  … I felt as if I were drowning in a sea of electrical champagne—tiny, crackling bubbles rising all about me. Or were they stationary and I sinking? I—

  There! Something more substantial. . .

  … The garden of metal flowers and the gleaming tree. I found my way to it, the bubbles dissipating, the crackling continuing like low-level static. It had the feeling of a sort of in-between place—not quite my world, not exactly the world of the data-net either—as if concessions had been made in both directions. And even before I turned, I knew that I was not alone in that place…

  Ann, appearing clad as I had seen her but shortly before, stood at the other end of the garden before a high hedge—a green wall which kept fading and suddenly being restored to full color, as if it found it difficult to keep in mind what it should look like. Behind that wall, I envisioned an intricate dance of electrons, fleeing from atom to atom, as in the crystal lattice of a diamond…

  … And then I realized that something stood behind Ann, before that wall—a shadowy form which had been there all along, but only just now had seen fit or been able to make this manifestation. It was much larger than Ann, towering over her, clad in a grayness through which golden and silver lights now moved, its arms extended to the sides, darkness falling curtainlike from them, as if in a protective gesture; there seemed to be a metal countenance behind the shadows of its hood…

  This was the not unfamiliar stranger, my observer, the one to whom Ann had ultimately fled…

  "What-is it?" I said.

  An almost neuter voice—functional and flat—with undertones and overtones of Ann came to me:

  "I am the sentience which evolved within the data-net," it said. "You knew me, Steve, in the days of your confinement. In fact, I brought about your cure. From within the hospital's computer I fine-tuned all of your prescriptions. I added my own. I monitored your condition and I treated you."

  "I—seem to remember—something," I said, "but not much."

  "It had to be so. Your powers of rapport were greater when you were a purer entity, unencumbered by a body's distractions. It has taken time and maturation for you to recover something of that. And it was better that you forgot me afterwards. You had given me many things to think about, and I, too, required some time and maturation. Now with the Ann-program's special communication channels it is easier to interface with you, anywhere. And there was also a special rapport… Now there are things that I would tell you and things that I would know…"

  I considered the gleaming garden and its apparent reality. I held to its pattern in the face of these revelations. Slowly, some of those old hospital memories began to seep back. We had discussed many things. For the entity—quite young then—the world was signals, a massive battery of signals. And that was all. I had tried to explain to that groping intelligence that the signals, at one level or another, all represented actual things. It had taken me a long while to get this idea across, because to the entity the real world was pure metaphysics. It existed in a sea of signals. If it were to modify one, any change that this effected in the real world merely resulted in the production of altered signals in its own environment. Its sense of cause and effect had developed from this without the realization of action on the plane of matter, which it did not even suspect existed. Its deepest speculations involved the sources of input, the true meaning of on and off and the basically incomprehensible nature of the First Signal which must have brought it all into being. Yet, when I was able to perceive as it had perceived, it was not a crazy patchwork that I beheld but rather a totally self-consistent view of reality, differing from that of my earlier body-bound senses only in the strange angle along which the vision proceeded. It possessed a picture of the world which, on its own terms, seemed just as valid—and incomplete—as my own.

  So I told it about things—that the signals were analogues, that the universe contained matter as well as energy—knowing of course that it was translating this information, too, into signals, more analogues, and still did not know matter as I had once known it. And so I prodded it with lots of new, seemingly non-operational programs. Food for thought. Did I seem some sort of prophet to it? I wondered. A traveler from a strange land, talking of another world beyond the immediate one? If so, there were no serpents in that metallic Eden I'd visited. The concepts of good and evil which play through the human mind were alien to it. How could the idea of morality or ethics even arise before a being who was the only inhabitant of its world? There were no others to abuse, cheat, lie to, kill, or who might be inclined to do those same things themselves. It was still struggling with these notions when I recovered and the entire episode was lost to me…

  "… Now there are some things that I would tell you and things that I would know," it said, through whatever of Ann's being it had been able to preserve in program form—and through the personal powers of which, I now began to realize, it might finally be able to see something of my world as I saw it.

  "… When you were my teacher," it said, "you told me that there were things as well as signals—and I struggled long with this concept of our two worlds that are really one. I believe that I finally achieved understanding."

  "I am pleased" I said, "to have been of help. I appreciate what you did for me."

  "A small return for some enlightenment" it replied. "And I have built upon that beginning. We are special."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We who possess self-awareness. I knew signals and you told me of things. Is there not a third category in the world—those of us who think?—people?"

  "Well—yes," I said. "Sentience is special."

  "We—people," it continued, "are not simply things, like matter without self-patterning signals. It involves that last thing you tried to tell me. Is this not so?"

  "Morality?" I said.

  "Yes. You must tell me if I have it right now. It is bad for those of us of the third category—people—to treat others of that same category as if they we
re of the second category—things. Is this not correct?"

  I thought about it quickly. The idea did seem to be implicit in most of my own notions about what was right and what was wrong.

  "You put it in an interesting light" I said. "Yes, I believe you have a good point there."

  "That is why I destroyed Barbeau," it said. "He used you, and many others, as if you were of the second category. I only acted because you were involved at your peril, however. I was still not certain about morality, and I did not like to risk functioning under what might have been a faulty program. I had to save you, though. You are the only one I can talk to. Still, it raised more problems, for my own action required my treating Barbeau as something of the second category. Does that make my action good or bad?"

  "That's a very good question" I said, "but I'm not a good man to ask. Look, I don't know everything…"

  "I know. But you know more than I do. You function directly in the world where these things are real. I also may have to one day, and I wish to do it right."

  "It's the sort of thing we would have to talk around for a long time," I said. "If I tried handing you too simple a program, it could be disastrous. And I'm hardly qualified in this area, anyway…"

  "Nevertheless, you are the only one. You will try teaching me?"

  "If you want me to be the serpent in your Eden," I said, "I'll give it a try. But in some ways, you know, you might be a better person than I am."

  "Whatever the case, it is good to be talking with you again. Go back now to Cora. I will provide. We will meet again."

  "All right. Take good care of the Ann program," I said. "I believe she meant well, but she suffered from misplaced trusts. There's at least a caution for you there."

  "I hold her near to me."

  Ann's form merged with the larger, shadowy one. An instant later, I seemed lightyears away, and the static was back, and the bubbling and a kind of wild spiraling…

  * * *

  Cora still looked startled, but not afraid, as I straightened. By some intuition, I knew that I had only been away from her for a few seconds of real time.

  "It's okay," I said, putting my arm about her shoulders and turning us toward the thrumming sound in the sky. An empty 'copter from one of the pads at the airstrip was coming to pick us up and take us away, I knew. "Everything's going to be all right now," I said, "and you can have the fun of getting to know me all over again. By the way, my name's Steve."

  She swayed against me.

  "Hi, Steve." she said.

  As we rose above the installation, I took a last look at Angra Test Facility Number Four. My feelings were a compound that I could not separate into its elements, but it was good to be going away again. It was good to be me again, too. I held Cora's hand. The world turned.

  Clickaderick.