Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  He had never used the ripcord. In the present probe immediate exit from the Country would be difficult, perhaps impossible; with no buffer a pulled ripcord would simply cut the connections between subject and investigator. Whatever latent experiences were yet to be interpreted would still continue to be processed in both the investigators and the subject.

  On the ambiguous time-scale of the Country latency might be measured in seconds or in minutes; very occasionally, in hours.

  This time the exterior level of Goldsmith’s Country was a warm grayness, a feed of processed knowledge to conscious awareness, not currently active. Goldsmith was in a state of controlled neutral sleep with no dream activity.

  Martin felt Carol’s presence as a greater warmth within the grayness. As he tested the toolkit, manually moving them in slaved combo across the map of this particular level, he practiced speech communication with her.

  | Can you hear me?

  | Something something.

  | Try again.

  | Hum.

  | Not hearing you clearly.

  | Can you hear me now?

  | Got you. Let’s try emotional transfer, Martin suggested.

  She sent him what he interpreted as professional affection and eagerness to get going. They were both eager; after a long night’s sleep Martin had never felt so ready to explore a Country.

  | I’m picking up your excitement, Martin said. I think you like working with me here.

  | That’s close enough. From you I’m receiving a more than professional warmth tempered by the distraction of the job at hand.

  | Close enough, Martin agreed ruefully. They had a tremendous freedom and openness here; in a short time neither would be able to conceal emotions from each other any more than the subject could conceal his deeper psychological processes.

  | I’m going to move us into an active level and look for a point of entry. Then I’ll release your own toolkit and we can work separately if need be.

  | Understood. I think I see a forest ahead. Are we at entry yet? No, wait a moment…no forest. I see potentials for a lot of different images. What is this, Martin?

  | Still getting visual smear from the occipital lobe, perhaps.

  | Not having the buffer makes this much sharper, more immediate, doesn’t it? Carol asked.

  | It seems to. But we’re not really seeing anything yet. I’m changing locus and channel now. To the prearranged entry…point two seven on Margery’s map. We saw—

  The suddenness of their entry was stunning. One moment they experienced only neutral grayness without beginning or end, perfect and undisturbed potentiality like a vast pool of precreation; the next, torrid blue sky and endless desert crossed by three infinite highways.

  | Oof, Carol said. Pardon me but that wasn’t subtle.

  | My apologies. (Chagrin.) We’re in Country.

  | Look how sharp. Wow. Martin, I see you perfectly!

  Martin stood on the desert sand, feeling it crunch beneath his feet. He saw Carol walking on the closest highway an apparent ten or fifteen meters away. She wore a knee length sleeveless white dress and white pumps. Perfect for the climate, which might have been searingly hot except that extremes of temperature did not occur in the Country. He felt only a warm breeze.

  | You’re wearing denim jeans and a black short sleeve shirt, Carol reported. And boots.

  He looked down at himself. That was indeed how his mind had clothed this self image. How old do I look?

  | Maybe twenty five. No more than thirty. What am I wearing?

  He described what he saw.

  | Well, we differ. I think I’m wearing a blue longsuit and black slippers, Carol said. Ah, well. How old am I?

  | You seem your proper age. You really look beautiful.

  | Where are the seven league boots? Carol asked, pointing across the endless sand. We won’t walk, I hope.

  | We’ll fly. From here in we’re a part of Goldsmith’s Country. It’ll adapt to us.

  | Right. (Dogged determination; mental preparation.) I’m girding my loins. Feel that?

  | Very attractive, girded loins, Martin said.

  She ignored that. I remember how to fly. The neck muscle…right?

  | See if you’re in practice.

  He regarded Carol’s self image as she took two steps across the road and lifted above the apparent asphalt. With a look of intense concentration she rose a meter. Like a dream, she said. I was never able to get any higher than this.

  | I could go higher sometimes, Martin said. But we’ll stick close for a while.

  He concentrated on a nonexistent neck muscle/organ of flight, discovery of which in his dreams had always preceded wonderful episodes of soaring, rising above his school and classmates (such dreams returning him to childhood or adolescence); brief times of endless freedom, filled with the wonder of why he had never thought of doing this before.

  He ascended to one meter, spread his arms, crossed the sand to the highway and floated beside Carol. May I say you look angelic?

  Carol laughed. May I say you look like a mech sod in an amusement park?

  | Don’t get personal.

  | Can’t avoid it in here.

  He rotated to stare straight down the three endless highways. | All roads lead to Rome.

  In most of their previous incursions into the Country the central symbol of the mind had been a city; in some cases a city in size and complexity only, shaped more like a castle or a fortress or even a mountain honeycombed with warrens; but always a huge habitation filled with activity.

  | Hi ho, Carol said, drifting ahead of him. He caught up with her and they flew over the black ribbon road toward the far horizon. As their apparent speed increased Martin noticed the beginning of visual separation. Sky and sand and asphalt seemed to glitter. All shapes were outlined with velvety shadow on the side opposite Martin’s direction of motion. They had witnessed this a few times before; it signified the rapid transfer of their probe from one neuron cluster to another.

  | See any separation? he asked Carol.

  | Quite a bit. What does it mean?

  | It could mean we’re crossing a large number of clusters. Covering a lot of mental territory. The Country has contracted. Goldsmith may be marshaling all his symbols, consolidating. I can’t imagine why…But an awful lot of available landscape is being taken up by empty desert.

  | Is he fortifying? Carol suggested.

  | I don’t know.

  They crossed desert for an unprecedented length of subjective time. The experience of time in Country depended on the amount of sensory detail in any given territory. With nothing but repetition, as in this endless desert, time could stretch almost endlessly. In the external world or by the clock on the toolkit seconds or fractions of seconds might pass as hours.

  | Boring, Carol said.

  | Excruciating, Martin agreed. We might have to shift clusters or channels manually.

  | Give it a while. We’re learning something—aren’t we?

  | We’re learning that Goldsmith has contracted incredibly, Martin said. All this emptiness.

  | What if this is all there is? Carol suggested, turning to look at him. Black afterimages fled behind her. Carol’s eyes were intensely blue. He imagined and then saw her eyes become part of a shallow lagoon. The lagoon spilled around her image until he could barely see her through the rippling water. He fought back the fantasy and it broke up into dust that fell behind with her afterimages.

  | Nobody is completely empty.

  | Not even a mass murderer? Carol suggested.

  | Not even. Take it from me. Mentally impossible.

  | But we could be on the wrong level. Not an entry level.

  Martin disagreed with that, too. Be patient.

  | Patience, patience, Carol said. On past incursions Carol had become childishly enthused, almost frenetic, before their real work began. He saw her as a spirit of fire, a feminine Ariel or afreet of the desert. He quelled that fantasy before it could manifest.


  | Use the time to get accustomed to the rules, Martin suggested.

  | You’re the one who’s eating me up with your eyes, Carol said. I saw that lagoon. You almost got me wet.

  | I wish, Martin said.

  She scowled. | I feel a change coming on—do you?

  | Yes. He pulled down his toolkit and looked at the timer. Thirty seconds. They could have fully crossed half of the points Margery had mapped, scanning Goldsmith’s entire hypothalamic loci in that time. Perhaps they had to make several circuits of all the channels to come across what they wanted…But the central city had never been elusive in past subjects.

  | There’s something, Martin said, pointing ahead. The sky changed color above the vertex of endless highways, from dusty blue to black undertinted with gray orange.

  | Looks like a storm, Carol said.

  To Martin it resembled furnace glow from a factory or a city on fire seen at night. It did not look at all hospitable. The blue sky faded with a distinct whining sound into darkness as if distant machinery had lowered a curtain over floodlights. Still, the region above the highway, and they in their flight, seemed cast in the same daylight as before. Ahead the furnace glow pulsed and shifted as if reflecting red lightning.

  Martin had never found occasion to fear the Country; but seeing this he began to have his doubts. In all previous subjects the city had been a lively if not a pretty place, never dreadful; this might have been a gate to hell itself.

  | We’ll go in together, Carol suggested.

  | Might as well, at first, Martin agreed.

  | Are you worried? she asked.

  | You know damned well what I’m feeling, Martin said. You’re worried, too.

  | No buffer, she said with a sigh. She flipped over like an airborne ballet dancer and pointed her finger to the ground. We might all have nightmares here.

  Everything in Martin’s experience led him to believe that no harm could come to them in the Country; on the other hand, being in direct connection with Goldsmith’s mental symbology could conceivably disturb their own interior landscapes. The effect would almost certainly not be permanent—but it would not be pleasant, either, if the present scene was any indication.

  The living glow filled the sky all around them. The outermost highways branched off to each side of a vast canyon, of which they could see only the near edge and the far side. They remained on the straight center road. Sound surrounded them—a continuous booming as of drums or machines, so tangible they could see the waves rippling through them and through the road’s asphalt.

  | We’re going right over the edge, Martin observed.

  They slowed and drifted beyond a rugged tumble of smooth boulders, over the lip of the canyon.

  | That must be it, Carol said. The canyon was a crystal lined pit, the crystals resolving into buildings of all sizes and descriptions, rising from the bottom of the canyon into a ridge of Manhattan skyline. The city might have stretched for hundreds of kilometers, alive with endless invention and detail, a masterpiece of mental architecture.

  | I’ve never seen anything like this, Martin said. From Carol came the same stunned confusion mixed with awe.

  The buildings sparkled with a heartbeat of light that pulsed from the central ridge out to the farthest buildings clustered below the rims. One, two, three, pulse; the glow shooting from a myriad pinprick windows into the darkness above: coals in a dying fire; stars in a galaxy linked by some impossible living rhythm. It’s magnificent, Carol said. How could this be deranged?

  | That’s what we’re here to learn.

  The experience was sharper than life itself; the quality of seeing and sensing was hallucinatory, and well it should be; they were not seeing a filtered, censored, shaped and trimmed product of thinking/perception; they were seeing the base material of all thought and being.

  Martin was suddenly filled with joy; joy arising out of the dread he had felt earlier, joy that there was no buffer, joy at being with Carol on the edge of something mysterious and wonderful and completely unexplored. Nobody, not even Goldsmith, knew this existed but them.

  | I’ll give you your own toolkit now, Martin said. But we should explore together for a while, until we know what we’re in for.

  Carol reached up and pulled down her kit. (Satisfaction, self discipline, focusing.) | This is perfect. It’s all here.

  Martin held out his hand. She took it and together they descended into Goldsmith’s city. Below them the road became cracked and neglected, finally disintegrating into lumps of asphalt and dirt. Scattered among the lumps lay white fragments half buried in black moist dirt. Martin descended to see what they might be. Carol followed. They brought their faces close to the tumbled surface.

  | Bones, she said.

  | I see bits of crockery—crockery heads, faces.

  | I see skulls and bones. Give it a try.

  Martin concentrated on the white shards, tried to shift to what Carol was interpreting. | Okay. Now I see a thigh bone…femur. A skull. I keep switching back to crockery faces like Toby mugs. Sad Toby mugs.

  | These skulls don’t grin, Carol observed. They’re sad skulls.

  They rose again but did not advance. | Any clue what they represent? Carol asked.

  | None.

  They flew forward until a heaviness assaulted them and they felt themselves dragged down. With a slight stumble they landed on a straight street between tall dark brick buildings with shattered windows. Faded designs had been scrawled over every centimeter of brickwork as if drawn in flour or some other white powder: serpents with lightning jagged tongues, big headed birds, splayed dogs and cats with #’s for eyes. The designs flowed from the buildings onto the sidewalks. Martin and Carol looked at the drawings beneath their feet as they walked down the empty street; more animals, bats and paper-doll twins, hopscotch squares, each square a window to some scrawled staring face almost alive with its wrinkles and expressions; observing, frowning, laughing, staring, sulking.

  | They might have looked out of those windows once, Carol said. Now they’re trapped in the sidewalk and street. Could they be message characters?

  Martin looked up at the shattered glass panes in the empty windows. | Could be, he said.

  In the Countries they had investigated, persistent thoughts and memories had sometimes assumed the nature of realized figures; Martin had labeled them message characters. They tended to be ephemeral but generally positive and full of a tenuous vitality.

  Martin stepped around the faces and squares. Between the designs incomprehensible words had been scribbled like the practice of a child; misshapen letters, no discernible spelling, meaningless. Only the figures symbolizing Goldsmith’s subper-sonalities, his major mental organons, would use speech; they served as gobetweens leaping from one level of mental activity to another. Until they were encountered, nothing in the way of words or sounds from this Country would be comprehensible as written or spoken language.

  The booming sound continued, more drum than machine now. Martin walked slightly ahead of Carol, taking this part of the exploration very slowly in case they missed something important.

  | No action here, Carol observed.

  | Do you think there was a war, some struggle?

  | Disturbance, Carol agreed. Nothing moving. Maybe there’s been further contraction into the city center—the skyline ridge.

  | We’ve never seen this much concentration or desolation, Martin said.

  | Then it’s significant. A pathology like the shrinking of tissue.

  | I can’t think of a better explanation. But the symbol hard structure is still here—even to the outskirts, the desert roads. Action could take place, the landscape will still support it.

  | Like a wire with no current, Carol said.

  | Good comparison.

  He moved farther down the street. Carol broke away momentarily to walk up a flight of steps and peer into the dark buildings. He waited for her, a dull unease suffusing his thoughts. Tincture of Goldsmith. The dark canyon,
fluxion of lights, neighborhood without inhabitants…

  If a war had not already occurred then perhaps they were marching over scorched earth—preparation for a battle yet to come.

  | Take a look, Carol suggested, waving for him to join her. He retraced a few steps and climbed the stairs. Beyond an ill defined door stretched an incomplete hallway, changing character every few moments, with every shift of their attention.

  | Breakdown, he said.

  | This far in. The Country must be fading here, the focus going somewhere else.

  | Let’s get to the center and not waste time out here, Martin suggested. If there’s breakdown this part of the landscape is no longer significant…

  | Except as archaeology, Carol said.

  | Maybe not even that.

  His unease deepened. Desolation and decay; message characters imprisoned in the sidewalks. Rejection of all existing structures and patterns. What could cause this? The Country supported more than its own imagery—it provided a base of sign and symbology for much of the high level activity of the primary personality and other major organons. Corruption or depletion of the symbology implied major mental dysfunction—yet the therapists had detected no major dysfunction in Goldsmith.

  Ahead, at the end of the street, concrete steps with steel rails dropped to another street dozens of meters lower. Martin took Carol’s hand again and they continued the descent.

  | Maybe we can find a cab, Carol suggested.

  The street below filled with pieces of paper drifting and swirling in eddies of illusory air. Martin bent to grab one as they walked but it eluded him as if alive. Carol tried and failed as well; by the time they reached the end of the street and turned in the direction of the skyscraper ridge the papers had caught fire and vanished in twists of black ash. Martin looked up and touched Carol, pointing to an immense poster covering the windowless side of one dark five story building. Unfocused and everchanging, meaningless letters covered the bottom of the poster. The subject of the poster was the bust of a human-like figure with a perfectly smooth ovoid head.