by Greg Bear
| Vote for Mr. Blank, Martin said.
| The people’s choice, Carol agreed.
They walked for blocks through the outer neighborhoods, seeing no occupants of any description. Carol compared the scene to a war zone; territory deserted in fear of a nuclear strike.
| Maybe the economy’s in a downturn, Martin suggested. I’ve never seen anything so void.
| Wonder why it’s here at all. Memento mori.
Above all the dreary empty brick buildings, the glowing skyscrapers of the central city beckoned, but they seemed to get no closer. After seeming hours of effortless but irritating walking Martin stopped and pulled down his toolkit.
| Going to jootz? Carol asked. Jootz was a borrowed word they used to describe moving manually from channel to channel. He hadn’t heard the word in years; he smiled at the memories it invoked of lighter investigations with more immediate results.
| Just looking at the time. Another thirty seconds.
He pondered that. We should be in the center of Country by now. If the skyscrapers are the center we’re not getting any closer. If we jootz we could lose this completely…
| I’m all for that, Carol said.
| I don’t think we should. There’s a significance here.
| Let’s call a cab.
She was only half joking. They could make certain features manifest; but under the present circumstances Martin was reluctant to impose their imaging on the Country unless it was strictly necessary. It might be possible to compromise, however; to find a feature they could coax into usefulness.
| Find a subway, he said.
They looked around; the streets had no apparent subway station entrances.
The drums persisted like staccato heartbeats.
| And he said he was a Brooklyn boy, Carol said, frowning.
| Hasn’t lived there in a long time. Maybe we can explore the buildings again…go into the basements. Suggest that there’s some method of transportation.
They walked over to what might have been an empty grocery on the first floor of a two story stone building that ran the length of the block. The inside of the grocery was more detailed; aisles and shelves, a cash register made of something that resembled slate—more of a sculpture than a machine. Carol reached over to touch the stone keys.
| There’s a door, Martin said. They walked through the middle aisle to the rear, pushed through a double swinging door and found themselves looking into an immense garbage pit buried deep in a cavern. A railed parapet beyond the door overlooked the pit.
| God, Carol said. It’s not just garbage. It’s bodies. More bones.
Martin again saw piles of shattered crockery faces rather than bones. He had never observed anything like this in a Country; on the edge of nightmare, these signs seemed to point to some internal warfare, internal genocide.
| We’re not getting anywhere—not seeing much Goldsmith, Martin said. We’re just seeing a shell.
| Maybe we’re in a trap, Carol said.
| I’ve never observed anything deceptive in the Country.
| We’ve never observed anything like this, either.
Martin thought about the possibility of a maze. Could Goldsmith’s mental resources have put up barricades against their probe? Goldsmith wouldn’t know what to expect from a probe but his various organons could conceivably set up resistance to avoid painful self-revelations.
| You might have specked it. Maybe we’re looking at a deliberate coverup, Martin said. A maze with misleading details…Not lies or deceptions but detours and decoys.
Carol grimaced at the pit. If this is petty detail, what’s the hard stuff like?
| We’re not going to find anything useful here.
Back on the street Martin reached down to touch the apparent asphalt. The pebbled texture at first was unresolved but almost immediately became rough and totally convincing. He glanced up at Carol. She wavered for the merest moment before becoming solid.
| I think it’s time to exercise some authority, he said.
| About time. What first?
| We need a street that leads directly to the heart of the city. Let’s say—over there.
He pointed to the next street crossing, frowned melodramatically to show intense concentration and gestured with a wave of his hand for her to do likewise. Nothing visibly changed but such authority was best exercised on objects or situations out of sight. There was less to overtly restyle that way. All right. Let’s try it.
They walked to the corner and stood facing the distant skyline. Straight as an arrow the new street pointed toward the city. The drumming sound had stopped; now all they heard was a distant rustling sound like taffeta skirts or wind through palm leaves.
| Maybe we haven’t changed anything; maybe this street just happened to go that way, Carol said.
Martin concentrated again, deciding he would try the next restyling alone. An engine roared behind them. They turned to see an old diesel bus smoking noisily toward them. Martin put his hand out and grasped a bus stop post that he had not noticed before.
| I’m starting to get the touch again, he said.
The bus pulled up beside the curb and opened its door. The design was late twentieth century but there was no driver or driver’s seat. | All aboard, Martin suggested.
The bus moved off with a convincing shove of acceleration. Carol sat on a vinyl covered seat; Martin stood holding an age polished pole.
| Looks like something Goldsmith might have seen as a child, she said. Are you sure this was your idea?
| It’s a collaboration, Martin said.
The view outside the windows blurred. Objects outsped their afterimages, again leaving ghosts of black. The bus was traveling faster than the refresh rate of sensory creation.
| When do we pull the cord? Carol asked. She pointed to a dark plastic covered rope threaded through metal loops above the windows.
| Maybe we don’t have to, Martin said. He raised his voice and addressed the driverless front of the bus: | We’d like to be left off in city center.
Outside the bus the scenery went black, flickered violently and twisted back into place. The dreary empty avenues between dark deserted tenements were replaced by broad well lighted thoroughfares, scurrying crowds, tall, clean, prosperous-looking buildings, a light sprinkling of snow, Christmas decorations. The bus slowed to a stop and the door opened, letting in a windborne swirl of snowflakes. The temperature suggested a ghost of chill. They descended the bus steps and stood on the broad avenue amid the passing inhabitants of Goldsmith’s central cityscape.
In their movement and bustle, the inhabitants had very little real individuality. Their images conveyed a blur of color, a flash of indistinct limb or clothing, an instant of expression like a hastily applied cutout from a photo gallery of faces. The effect was more than impressionistic; Martin and Carol truly felt themselves alone in this crowd. The whirl of fabrications continued without disturbance.
| I don’t like this at all, Martin said.
| Do you think all the message characters are this blank? Carol asked.
He shook his head, grimacing with distaste. | They might as well not be here at all. What function do they serve?
In all their previous ventures into the Country they had encountered a vivid population of message characters as well as the stored impressions or models of the people the subject had known or simply seen. Here, if these fabrications had ever had individuality or convincing detail it had been leached out of them like color from cloth.
| Is this new, or has Goldsmith been this empty all along? Carol asked.
| I won’t even hazard a guess. Whichever, it means there’s been a major disaster here…Major dysfunction. There can’t be any other explanation.
| What sort of dysfunction would the tests miss?
| Let’s find out.
The crowds parted for them with ghostly whispers of sound, distant repetitive tape recordings in an echoing hallway. At no time was any contact made.
They made their way across the street to what might have been a large domed municipal building, perhaps a train station. The signs continued to be unreadable.
| What are we looking for?
| A phone booth, Martin said.
| Excellent idea. Whom are we going to call?
| The boss. A boss. Anybody with some authority.
| The mayor, perhaps, or the President.
Martin shrugged. I’d be satisfied with a convincing janitor.
The entrance to the municipal building flowed with a river of nonentity. They passed through the flow down several flights of stone steps into a high ceilinged chamber at least a hundred meters in apparent diameter.
| Grand Central Station, Carol said. Martin tried to find a phone booth through the crowds. Carol gawked at the architectural detail high above them. He felt a wave of surprise and fright from her and leaned his head back to look up into the dome. He, too, felt a tremor of shock.
The dome’s distorted perspective ballooned it several hundred meters overhead. Milky light poured through ports around the middle circumference. A thick web of black wires crisscrossed the dome’s volume with no apparent purpose, mystifying Martin until he noticed a series of doors and parapets near the top. Every few seconds, tiny figures leaped through these openings and fell voicelessly, spread eagled, to catch on the haphazard net of wires. They jerked, struggled like flies, became still.
The wires were filled with snagged corpses.
With that kind of visual acuity possible only in dreams or in the Country Martin saw these snagged corpses as if they were only a few meters away. Their faces had far more character than any of the ghosts bustling around the city; decaying expressions of futility and death, pitiable shards of faces, so many they could not be counted. And no single victim, once let loose from the focus of Martin’s attention, could be found again; instead, the corpses came in endless variety, never the same.
Carol screamed and stepped aside. A decayed arm broke away from some body high in the dome and fell to the tile floor with a hideous whack. Martin walked around the severed limb and grabbed Carol, hugging her tightly.
| This is a nightmare, she said. We’ve never seen anything like this in Country!
He nodded, his chin bumping the top of her head. Dispassionately, he observed that he had no ulterior motives in hugging Carol’s image; he had simply gone to her to protect her and to alleviate some of his own sense of horror by at least the simulation of physical contact.
In their previous journeys up Country the territory had been surreal, dreamlike, but never nightmarish. The horror and panic of genuine nightmare came from misinterpretations and misplacements of psychological contents just below personal awareness; memories and phobic impressions mixed haphazardly with many layers of retrieved deep imagery. The Country in its pure form had never before been a place of horror…
| Maybe we’re seeing a crossover to another level, higher than the Country, Martin suggested.
| I don’t think so, Carol countered. On what level would this make sense? This is here and now. The boneyard in the cavern, the bones or crockery or whatever on the outskirts…This is consistent, Martin.
He had to agree that it was. | Tell me what you think it means.
Carol shook her head. She pushed him away gently. Another piece of anonymous decayed flesh dropped and hit with nauseating conviction a few meters away. The wraiths opened up and passed around the tiles where the detritus had landed.
| Find the phone or whatever we’re looking for and let’s get on with this, Carol said. Martin agreed. He did not want to spend any more time here than necessary.
They walked through the wraiths, meeting no resistance, and tried to locate phone booths or anything that might give direct communication to some center of authority. Martin and Carol had found such strategic arrangements in their previous explorations: whether they had had a hand in creating them or not, neither could be sure, but they had proven useful.
Now, nothing of the kind was apparent. They returned to the foot of the crowded steps. | This may be a façade, all of it, Carol said. We’re getting nowhere.
Martin shared her frustration. He pulled down his toolkit and observed the time. They had spent ten minutes in Country and had learned nothing significant, beyond the fact that Goldsmith’s deep mentality was unlike any they had toured before.
| We’ll try a channel leap, then, he said. But we might jootz out of the Country completely.
| I’m willing to take that risk.
Martin grabbed the red box and pulled it lower to look at the displays. Channel coordinates they had already passed through scrolled by at a touch of his illusory finger. He locked them off, started a search for a new but contiguous channel, found several likely candidates and was about to press the switch for their transfer when Carol touched his arm and told him to wait.
| There’s something at the top of the stairs, she said, pointing. He looked. Visible even through the rushing ghosts, a person shaped smudge of black with a white face stood watching. Martin tried to see it more clearly—to exercise the prerogative of visual acuity in this place where space was a true fiction—but failed.
| That’s something new, Carol said. Before we jootz let’s find out what it is.
They climbed the stairs slowly, approaching the smudge. It did not move nor did it exhibit any of the nervous, restless triviality of the wraiths. It seemed to have a continuous presence, a concrete character; although Martin did not find its nature positive. If anything, the closer they came the more he felt a sensation of cold negativity just the opposite of what one expected from any character in the Country.
They reached the top of the stairs. It’s wearing a mask, Carol said.
The figure faced them with casual slowness, its body a shadow or cloud of smoke given fixed shape; over its facelessness it wore a chipped ceramic mask much like those junked on the outskirts and heaped in the garbage cavern. This mask conveyed little but the efforts of some pitiable past artisan; it tried to mimic a fixed smile and failed. Its eyes were empty holes. Its only color was pale pink on cheeks conspicuous in the general dead silicate whiteness.
| What are you? Martin challenged. Never having met this kind of inhabitant before he could hardly know whether it was capable of speech.
The shadow lifted its arm and pointed at them, one extended finger a curl of black soot. It made a hollow mumble of wordlessness like water dripping in an empty pail. The shadow approached them, its outlines smearing, only the mask retaining its apparent solidity. Carol backed away; Martin held his ground.
Its sootfinger touched him and took away his hand and arm. They simply vanished. He felt no pain.
| Arm and hand, come back, Martin said, with a calmness that he realized he should not be feeling. The limb returned and he was whole again. The shadow backed away, bowing with an air of false obsequiousness.
| What is it? Carol asked. (Fear, strong but controlled.) What did it do to you?
| Took a chunk out of my image, Martin said.
| That’s not possible here.
| Apparently it is.
| But what does it mean? Messing with our images…what’s the purpose?
The shadow approached Carol, again growing larger and less defined. She backed away. Martin stepped between them and held out his arms as if to embrace it. The shadow retreated.
| This is too much, much too much, Carol said. (Fear gaining control.)
| Hold on to my hand, Martin suggested. She gripped it tightly.
| There are others, she said, pointing with her free hand. Beyond the doors the flow of wraiths parted, the river of activity ebbed. More shadows with ceramic masks entered the station, casual, sinister and observant.
Martin searched his memory for some clue as to what they were facing. The sense of negation was strong; these shadow figures were contrary to all the usual functions of the deep mentality. He wondered for a moment if they had stumbled onto something truly supernatural but
dismissed that with a disgusted shudder.
| It may be time to pull out and regroup, he said. He did not know what would happen if these figures were able to dissolve their images completely. He did not want to find out.
They pulled down their toolkits.
| Let’s see if we can leave them behind, Martin said. He was very reluctant to abandon the probe in defeat. That had never happened before. How would he explain it to Albigoni?
He reached up to adjust the channel coordinates. The entire scene around them jerked, wavered, but they had not yet touched the controls.
Martin was instantly aware how much trouble they were in. He tried to grab for the ripcord the hell with decorum and with the probe but the shadows washed over them like a tide of lampblack, masks whirling and shattering against the stone steps.
He saw Carol absorbed in the tide. Her image sparkled and vanished. He felt himself go. The toolkit just centimeters from his fingertips displayed a wildly flickering channel coordinate and frequency and then the red box dissolved. His image dissolved along with it.
Martin’s personal subjectivity discharged into something vaster and very different. Carol was still near; he could feel her panic almost as strongly as his own. But the nature of her presence changed. He felt her as something large and other blended with his self and all that lay beneath that self; and together, that combination mixing yet again into a larger ocean of otherness.
He could not subvocalize. He could not recover the toolkit or any portion of it. He could not will himself out.
With an even greater sensation of loss and terror Martin realized his last defense—awareness of circumstance—was fading. He would not even know what had happened; all memory and all judgment fleeing in the face of this universal solvent.
One last word hung like a custom neon sign and flashed several times before winking out.
Underestimate
Margery walked between the still forms of Burke and Neuman, fastidiously examining the connections, the displays. She noticed that a massive jootz across channels had occurred and wondered what the team was up to. Out of curiosity, she charted the extent of the jootz and realized that the probe locus had been moved out of the hypothalamus completely, to the farthest radius of her premapped points in the hippocampus.
