Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  And she does. Brave little Delphi (insane P. Burke). Saying, “No, please, I promised, Paul.”

  They try some more, still gently.

  “Paul, Mr. Hopkins told me the reason they don’t want us to be together so much. It’s because of who you are, your father.”

  She thinks his father is like Mr. Cantle, maybe.

  “Oh, great. Hopkins. I’ll fix him. Listen, I can’t think about Hopkins now. Ken came back today, he found out something.”

  They are lying on the high Andes meadow watching his friends dive their singing kites.

  “Would you believe, on the coast the police have electrodes in their heads?”

  She stiffens in his arms.

  “Yeah, weird. I thought they only used PP on criminals and the army. Don’t you see, Dee—something has to be going on. Some movement. Maybe somebody’s organizing. How can we find out?” He pounds the ground behind her: “We should make contact! If we could only find out.”

  “The, the news?” she asks distractedly.

  “The news.” He laughs. “There’s nothing in the news except what they want people to know. Half the country could burn up, and nobody would know it if they didn’t want. Dee, can’t you take what I’m explaining to you? They’ve got the whole world programmed! Total control of communication. They’ve got everybody’s minds wired in to think what they show them and want what they give them and they give them what they’re programmed to want—you can’t break in or out of it, you can’t get hold of it anywhere. I don’t think they even have a plan except to keep things going round and round—and god knows what’s happening to the people or the Earth or the other planets, maybe. One great big vortex of lies and garbage pouring round and round, getting bigger and bigger, and nothing can ever change. If people don’t wake up soon we’re through!”

  He pounds her stomach softly.

  “You have to break out, Dee.”

  “I’ll try, Paul, I will—”

  “You’re mine. They can’t have you.”

  And he goes to see Hopkins, who is indeed cowed.

  But that night up under Carbondale the fatherly Mr. Cantle goes to see P. Burke.

  P. Burke? On a cot in a utility robe like a dead camel in a tent, she cannot at first comprehend that he is telling her to break it off with Paul. P. Burke has never seen Paul. Delphi sees Paul. The fact is, P. Burke can no longer clearly recall that she exists apart from Delphi.

  Mr. Cantle can scarcely believe it either, but he tries.

  He points out the futility, the potential embarrassment, for Paul. That gets a dim stare from the bulk on the bed. Then he goes into her duty to GTX, her job, isn’t she grateful for the opportunity, etcetera. He’s very persuasive.

  The cobwebby mouth of P. Burke opens and croaks.

  “No.”

  Nothing more seems to be forthcoming.

  Mr. Cantle isn’t dense, he knows an immovable obstacle when he bumps one. He also knows an irresistible force: GTX. The simple solution is to lock the waldo-cabinet until Paul gets tired of waiting for Delphi to wake up. But the cost, the schedules! And there’s something odd here . . . he eyes the corporate asset hulking on the bed and his hunch-sense prickles.

  You see, Remotes don’t love. They don’t have real sex, the circuits designed that out from the start. So it’s been assumed that it’s Paul who is diverting himself or something with the pretty little body in Chile. P. Burke can only be doing what comes natural to any ambitious gutter-meat. It hasn’t occurred to anyone that they’re dealing with the real hairy thing whose shadow is blasting out of every holoshow on Earth.

  Love?

  Mr. Cantle frowns. The idea is grotesque. But his instinct for the fuzzy line is strong; he will recommend flexibility. And so, in Chile:

  “Darling, I don’t have to work tonight! And Friday too—isn’t that right, Mr. Hopkins?”

  “Oh, great. When does she come up for parole?”

  “Mr. Isham, please be reasonable. Our schedule—surely your own production people must be needing you?”

  This happens to be true. Paul goes away. Hopkins stares after him, wondering distastefully why an Isham wants to ball a waldo. How sound are those boardroom belly-fears—garble creeps, creeps in! It never occurs to Hopkins that an Isham might not know what Delphi is.

  Especially with Davy crying because Paul has kicked him out of Delphi’s bed.

  Delphi’s bed is under a real window.

  “Stars,” Paul says sleepily. He rolls over, pulling Delphi on top. “Are you aware that this is one of the last places on Earth where people can see the stars? Tibet, too, maybe.”

  “Paul . . . “

  “Go to sleep. I want to see you sleep.”

  “Paul, I . . . I sleep so hard, I mean, it’s a joke how hard I am to wake up. Do you mind?”

  “Yes.”

  But finally, fearfully, she must let go. So that five thousand miles north a crazy spent creature can crawl out to gulp concentrates and fall on her cot. But not for long. It’s pink dawn when Delphi’s eyes open to find Paul’s arms around her, his voice saying rude, tender things. He’s been kept awake. The nerveless little statue that was her Delphi-body nuzzled him in the night.

  Insane hope rises, is fed a couple of nights later when he tells her she called his name in her sleep.

  And that day Paul’s arms keep her from work and Hopkins’s wails go up to headquarters where the weasel-faced lad is working his sharp tailbone off packing Delphi’s program. Mr. Cantle defuses that one. But next week it happens again, to a major client. And ferret-face has connections on the technical side.

  Now you can see that when you have a field of complexly heterodyned energy modulations tuned to a demand-point like Delphi, there are many problems of standwaves and lashback and skiffle of all sorts which are normally balanced out with ease by the technology of the future. By the same token they can be delicately unbalanced too, in ways that feed back into the waldo operator with striking results.

  “Darling—what the hell! What’s wrong? DELPHI!”

  Helpless shrieks, writhings. Then the Rima-bird is lying wet and limp in his arms, her eyes enormous.

  “I . . . I wasn’t supposed to . . .” she gasps faintly. “They told me not to. . . .”

  “Oh, my god—Delphi.”

  And his hard fingers are digging in her thick yellow hair. Electronically knowledgeable fingers. They freeze.

  “You’re a doll! You’re one of those PP implants. They control you. I should have known. Oh, god, I should have known.”

  “No, Paul,” she’s sobbing. “No, no, no—”

  “Damn them. Damn them, what they’ve done—you’re not you—”

  He’s shaking her, crouching over her in the bed and jerking her back and forth, glaring at the pitiful beauty.

  “No!” she pleads (it’s not true, that dark bad dream back there). “I’m Delphi!”

  “My father. Filth, pigs—damn them, damn them, damn them.”

  “No, no,” she babbles. “They were good to me—” P. Burke underground mouthing, “They were good to me—AAH-AAAAH!”

  Another agony skewers her. Up north the sharp young man wants to make sure this so-tiny interference works. Paul can scarcely hang on to her, he’s crying too. “I’ll kill them.”

  His Delphi, a wired-up slave! Spikes in her brain, electronic shackles in his bird’s heart. Remember when those savages burned Rima alive?

  “I’ll kill the man that’s doing this to you.”

  He’s still saying it afterward, but she doesn’t hear. She’s sure he hates her now, all she wants is to die. When she finally understands that the fierceness is tenderness, she thinks it’s a miracle. He knows—and he still loves!

  How can she guess that he’s got it a little bit wrong?

  You can’t blame Paul. Give him credit that he’s even heard about pleasure-pain implants and snoops, which by their nature aren’t mentioned much by those who know them most intimately. That’s what he
thinks is being used on Delphi, something to control her. And to listen—he burns at the unknown ears in their bed.

  Of waldo-bodies and objects like P. Burke he has heard nothing.

  So it never crosses his mind as he looks down at his violated bird, sick with fury and love, that he isn’t holding all of her. Do you need to be told the mad resolve jelling in him now?

  To free Delphi.

  How? Well, he is, after all, Paul Isham III. And he even has an idea where the GTX neurolab is. In Carbondale.

  But first things have to be done for Delphi, and for his own stomach. So he gives her back to Hopkins and departs in a restrained and discreet way. And the Chile staff is grateful and do not understand that his teeth don’t normally show so much.

  And a week passes in which Delphi is a very good, docile little ghost. They let her have the load of wildflowers Paul sends and the bland loving notes. (He’s playing it coony.) And up in headquarters weasel boy feels that his destiny has clicked a notch onward and floats the word up that he’s handy with little problems.

  And no one knows what P. Burke thinks in any way whatever, except that Miss Fleming catches her flushing her food down the can and next night she faints in the pool. They haul her out and stick her with IVs. Miss Fleming frets, she’s seen expressions like that before. But she wasn’t around when crazies who called themselves Followers of the Fish looked through flames to life everlasting. P. Burke is seeing Heaven on the far side of death, too. Heaven is spelled P-a-u-l, but the idea’s the same. I will die and be born again in Delphi.

  Garbage, electronically speaking. No way.

  Another week and Paul’s madness has become a plan. (Remember, he does have friends.) He smolders, watching his love paraded by her masters. He turns out a scorching sequence for his own show. And finally, politely, he requests from Hopkins a morsel of his bird’s free time, which duly arrives.

  “I thought you didn’t want me anymore,” she’s repeating as they wing over mountain flanks in Paul’s suncar. “Now you know—”

  “Look at me!”

  His hand covers her mouth, and he’s showing her a lettered card.

  DON’T TALK THEY CAN HEAR EVERYTHING WE SAY.

  I’M TAKING YOU AWAY NOW.

  She kisses his hand. He nods urgently, flipping the card.

  DON’T BE AFRAID. I CAN STOP THE PAIN IF THEY TRY TO HURT YOU.

  With his free hand he shakes out a silvery scrambler-mesh on a power pack. She is dumbfounded.

  THIS WILL CUT THE SIGNALS AND PROTECT YOU DARLING.

  She’s staring at him, her head going vaguely from side to side, No.

  “Yes!” He grins triumphantly. “Yes!”

  For a moment she wonders. That powered mesh will cut off the field, all right. It will also cut off Delphi. But he is Paul. Paul is kissing her, she can only seek him hungrily as he sweeps the suncar through a pass.

  Ahead is an old jet ramp with a shiny bullet waiting to go. (Paul also has credits and a Name.) The little GTX patrol courier is built for nothing but speed. Paul and Delphi wedge in behind the pilot’s extra fuel tank, and there’s no more talking when the torches start to scream.

  They’re screaming high over Quito before Hopkins starts to worry. He wastes another hour tracking the beeper on Paul’s suncar. The suncar is sailing a pattern out to sea. By the time they’re sure it’s empty and Hopkins gets on the hot flue to headquarters, the fugitives are a sourceless howl above Carib West.

  Up at headquarters weasel boy gets the squeal. His first impulse is to repeat his previous play, but then his brain snaps to. This one is too hot. Because, see, although in the long run they can make P. Burke do anything at all except maybe live, instant emergencies can be tricky. And—Paul Isham III.

  “Can’t you order her back?”

  They’re all in the GTX tower monitor station, Mr. Cantle and ferret-face and Joe and a very neat man who is Mr. Isham senior’s personal eyes and ears.

  “No, sir,” Joe says doggedly. “We can read channels, particularly speech, but we can’t interpolate organized pattern. It takes the waldo op to send one-to-one—”

  “What are they saying?”

  “Nothing at the moment, sir.” The console jockey’s eyes are closed. “I believe they are, ah, embracing.”

  “They’re not answering,” a traffic monitor says. “Still heading zero zero three zero—due north, sir.”

  “You’re certain Kennedy is alerted not to fire on them?” the neat man asks anxiously.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can’t you just turn her off?” The sharp-faced lad is angry. “Pull that pig out of the controls!”

  “If you cut the transmission cold you’ll kill the Remote,” Joe explains for the third time. “Withdrawal has to be phased right, you have to fade over to the Remote’s own autonomics. Heart, breathing, cerebellum, would go blooey. If you pull Burke out you’ll probably finish her too. It’s a fantastic cybersystem, you don’t want to do that.”

  “The investment.” Mr. Cantle shudders.

  Weasel boy puts his hand on the console jock’s shoulder, it’s the contact who arranged the no-no effect for him.

  “We can at least give them a warning signal, sir.” He licks his lips, gives the neat man his sweet ferret smile. “We know that does no damage.”

  Joe frowns, Mr. Cantle sighs. The neat man is murmuring into his wrist. He looks up. “I am authorized,” he says reverently, “I am authorized to, ah, direct a signal. If this is the only course. But minimal, minimal.”

  Sharp-face squeezes his man’s shoulder.

  In the silver bullet shrieking over Charleston Paul feels Delphi arch in his arms. He reaches for the mesh, hot for action. She thrashes, pushing at his hands, her eyes roll. She’s afraid of that mesh despite the agony. (And she’s right.) Frantically Paul fights her in the cramped space, gets it over her head. As he turns the power up she burrows free under his arm and the spasm fades.

  “They’re calling you again, Mr. Isham!” the pilot yells.

  “Don’t answer. Darling, keep this over your head damn it how can I—”

  An AX90 barrels over their nose, there’s a flash.

  “Mr. Isham! Those are Air Force jets!”

  “Forget it,” Paul shouts back. “They won’t fire. Darling, don’t be afraid.”

  Another AX90 rocks them.

  “Would you mind pointing your pistol at my head where they can see it, sir?” the pilot howls.

  Paul does so. The AX90s take up escort formation around them. The pilot goes back to figuring how he can collect from GTX too, and after Goldsboro AB the escort peels away.

  “Holding the same course.” Traffic is reporting to the group around the monitor. “Apparently they’ve taken on enough fuel to bring them to towerport here.”

  “In that case it’s just a question of waiting for them to dock.” Mr. Cantle’s fatherly manner revives a bit.

  “Why can’t they cut off that damn freak’s life-support,” the sharp young man fumes. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “They’re working on it,” Cantle assures him.

  What they’re doing, down under Carbondale, is arguing. Miss Fleming’s watchdog has summoned the bushy man to the waldo room.

  “Miss Fleming, you will obey orders.”

  “You’ll kill her if you try that, sir. I can’t believe you meant it, that’s why I didn’t. We’ve already fed her enough sedative to affect heart action; if you cut any more oxygen she’ll die in there.”

  The bushy man grimaces. “Get Dr. Quine here fast.”

  They wait, staring at the cabinet in which a drugged, ugly madwoman fights for consciousness, fights to hold Delphi’s eyes open.

  High over Richmond the silver pod starts a turn. Delphi is sagged into Paul’s arm, her eyes swim up to him.

  “Starting down now, baby. It’ll be over soon, all you have to do is stay alive, Dee.”

  “. . . stay alive . . .”

  The traffic monitor has caught them. �
��Sir! They’ve turned off for Carbondale—Control has contact—”

  “Let’s go.”

  But the headquarters posse is too late to intercept the courier wailing into Carbondale. And Paul’s friends have come through again. The fugitives are out through the freight dock and into the neurolab admin port before the guard gets organized. At the elevator Paul’s face plus his handgun get them in.

  “I want Doctor—what’s his name, Dee? Dee!”

  “. . . Tesla . . .” She’s reeling on her feet.

  “Dr. Tesla. Take me down to Tesla, fast.”

  Intercoms are squalling around them as they whoosh down, Paul’s pistol in the guard’s back. When the door slides open the bushy man is there.

  “I’m Tesla.”

  “I’m Paul Isham. Isham. You’re going to take your flaming implants out of this girl—now. Move!”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Where’s your operating room? Go!”

  “But—”

  “Move! Do I have to burn somebody?”

  Paul waves the weapon at Dr. Quine, who has just appeared.

  “No, no,” says Tesla hurriedly. “But I can’t, you know. It’s impossible, there’ll be nothing left.”

  “You screaming well can, right now. You mess up and I’ll kill you,” says Paul murderously. “Where is it, there? And wipe the feke that’s on her circuits now.”

  He’s backing them down the hall, Delphi heavy on his arm.

  “Is this the place, baby? Where they did it to you?”

  “Yes,” she whispers, blinking at a door. “Yes . . .”

  Because it is, see. Behind that door is the very suite where she was born.

  Paul herds them through it into a gleaming hall. An inner door opens, and a nurse and a gray man rush out. And freeze.

  Paul sees there’s something special about that inner door. He crowds them past it and pushes it open and looks in.

  Inside is a big mean-looking cabinet with its front door panels ajar.

  And inside that cabinet is a poisoned carcass to whom something wonderful, unspeakable, is happening. Inside is P. Burke, the real living woman who knows that HE is there, coming closer—Paul whom she had fought to reach through forty thousand miles of ice—PAUL is here!—is yanking at the waldo doors—