Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  “The evidence is clear. LOVs were developed as a medical prosthetic, a biological tool. They were never intended for a colonial existence. They were never conceived as thinking machines. In fact, they are a tool that has been badly misused. A dangerous tool. Not a new life-form. They cannot sue for protection any more than a carcinogenic chemical can sue for protection.

  “And clearly, the potential hazard posed by these LOVs is far worse than any case of cancer. There is nothing more dangerous to our own, human, existence than a thinking machine. The human mind is complex and inefficient, but it has remade this world. We would be foolish to knowingly foster another kind of mind in competition with us, fully capable of remaking this world again. Such an act must be insane.”

  “You don’t know that,” Virgil whispered. Oh sure, it could be true, this shared nightmare of the computer age. But it didn’t have to be true. He touched the glassy bumps on his forehead. Intelligence was enhanced when it linked with other forms of intelligence. It was possible for different entities to live together.

  He believed it was possible.

  But the LOVs aboard the module were dead and gone. The thirty-six he carried were all that remained.

  He listened for Panwar’s ghost, but heard only the hum of the air-conditioning.

  “Iris, close the news link. Bring in the antenna. Recover our cruising speed.”

  There was no point anymore in heading for the crash site. Virgil saw now that it had been a stupid hope all along; Panwar should have known the IBC would scour the wreckage clean.

  Panwar had made some very stupid decisions.

  He told Iris to change course. He would make for South America instead.

  He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep, so he scrounged a bottle of sedatives from the medicine cabinet. He took one. He took another. He shook a third out onto his hand.

  But after a few minutes reflection, he tipped it back into the bottle.

  Enough stupid decisions had already been made.

  He put the sedatives back in their place. Then he noticed a large bottle of amino acid supplements just behind. No-oct tablets—nopaline and octopine, the two rare nutrients required by the LOVs to survive and reproduce. He smiled. Trust Panwar to remember the details. He picked out a tablet, laid it on his tongue, then sat back in the chair, chewing slowly on the chalky pill as the sedative’s relaxing spell crawled over him like a warm, confusing fog.

  THE next time Virgil awoke it was midmorning. He opened his eyes, feeling oddly refreshed and in a positive mood. Calm and hopeful, his depression all gone. His father remarked on it when Virgil finally linked. “You look good, son. You’re not thinking of going into this fugitive business permanently … are you?” Jeff Copeland tried to make it sound like a joke, lighthearted patter to belie his haggard eyes, but the effect failed when his voice cracked, grief slipping through.

  Virgil groped for an answer. “I should feel worse, I know. It’s not that I don’t care …” But anguish and despair could serve no purpose now. Maybe the LOVs had calculated that fact and responded accordingly. Or maybe his own mind had run the equation.

  Jeff Copeland did not ask where Virgil was; he did not advise him to turn himself in. Neither did the lawyer Copeland had hired. To Virgil, that was a more telling evaluation of his case than all the back-and-forth questions of an hour-long interview.

  He spent much of the day plotting strategies to make himself disappear.

  Late in the afternoon he raised the antenna again. Another flood of messages fell into the queue, having used offers of money, old acquaintance, or tantalizing subjects to get past Iris’s filters. Virgil sighed, thinking he should tighten the parameters. Then again, he had plenty of time to read.

  The initial deluge passed, but the flow never quite stopped. Words continued to drip into the queue like rain through a slowly leaking roof, a new message every twenty or thirty seconds. Virgil found himself captured by the hypnotic pace, tempted over and over again to wait for the next, and the next (just one more), scanning the sender and subject matter as they splashed past his awareness:

  NetFlash News: Ten Million $ First Interview

  Josh Duchamp: Much Admire your work.

  Pierie Ling: A New Design for LOVs

  Jeff Copeland: Call your mother.

  Renatta X: Evolution and the fate of the human race

  Ela Suvanatat: I have LOVs

  Lope Ancog: Your responsibility for disaster

  James Santiago: More questions from your lawyer

  He blinked and sat up a little straighter, his gaze backtracking to the odd subject line: >I have LOVS<

  Iris was supposed to filter the gutter notes, the hate mail, the religious come-ons, the sales and investment opportunities … and the hoaxes.

  >I have LOVs<

  That was certainly a hoax. So why had it been passed?

  “Iris? Display the Suvanatat message.”

  The file opened with a graphic that caused Virgil to catch his breath. It was an image of a blue-green patch of LOVs gleaming against cinnamon skin. He knew it was skin because he could see every pore, every slight, colorless hair. He knew the luminous patch was LOVs because he could see the outline of their diatom-like shells, each tiny disk speckled with dark pores and striated with the outlines of minute, interlocking limbs that held the shells tight against each other as if this attenuated sample (a hundred individuals? two hundred?) had instinctively re-formed into a colonial architecture, a seed crystal for a new Epsilon-3.

  He told himself the image was faked.

  Anything could be faked.

  But surely a fake would imitate the arrangement of LOVs in the Hammer’s colonies, or the much-publicized scatter of glittering symbionts that Virgil, Panwar, and Gabrielle had all used? No one had ever—Ever—used LOVs as symbionts in a tightly packed, colonial patch. No one had ever implanted so many LOVs. Virgil had thirty-six. There were maybe 150 in this image.

  His heart beat in slow, deep, deafening strokes. If this image was a hoax, then it was a most excellent one. A creative, clever, very thoughtful hoax.

  He noticed something more: On the perimeter of the patch a few LOVs had lost their color. They had the empty, faded gray look of a tossed soda bottle scoured by wind and time. Virgil had seen such an effect once before, early in the LOV project, when the nutritional flow to a new tank had been too little to support the growing colony. Clearly, this patch of LOVs had begun to die.

  chapter

  14

  KATHANG’S ORANGE-AND-brown salamander icon stirred, stretching and twitching its tail to draw Ela’s attention. “Link request,” the ROSA whispered, as a strange icon appeared beside it on the screen: a tiny woman in ancient dress, her dark hair touched with rainbow highlights. The new icon was accompanied by a note in white text:

  →Dr. Virgil Copeland, regarding your message >I have Lovs<

  An answer! Ela could hardly believe it. And this was no simple message, either. It was a real-time link. “Kathang. Accept—

  “No, wait.”

  Ela closed her eyes, thinking hard. She had to protect herself. She didn’t know anything about Copeland; she didn’t even know if he was still free. “Kathang, make this an anonymous link. Blur the background. Suppress all outside noises. Transmit no information on this environment. Only my active portrait.”

  The ROSA responded by posting a tiny image of Ela in the screen’s lower corner, showing her head and shoulders against a blank beige field. “That’s good,” Ela said. Then she drew a deep breath, taking a moment to compose herself. “Okay. Accept the link.”

  The American researcher appeared before her in a head-and-shoulders portrait employing the same privacy screens Ela had used, except his background was gray. He was younger than she had expected, beardless and lightly tanned, his chin-length honey brown hair corded like a doll’s. He leaned forward, wary amber eyes studying her from behind the faint white veil of his farsights. On his forehead, she could just make out the glitte
r of LOVs between his corded hair. “You are Ela Suvanatat?”

  Ela nodded, listening to Kathang’s whispered assessment, generated by the fortune-telling program: This one does not wear a mask; he rides his emotions like well-trained horses, toward an unseen goal. “You have not been arrested?” she asked him in a low voice, conscious of the two Roi Nuoc boys on the porch.

  “No. This is not a hoax, is it?”

  “No,” Ela said softly. “It’s real. I was on the coast when the module came down. I wanted to be the first to image the crash site, so I got out there fast. Too fast. I was underwater when it was made off-limits. I’ll be arrested if they find me.”

  “Where are the LOVs?”

  She tapped her temple. Then she shifted her farsights to the side to capture the image.

  “They’re dying,” he said. “Do you see how the LOVs on the edge of the cluster are turning light gray? It’s worse now than in the image you sent me.”

  “That’s why I sent a message. I must know how to get nopaline. That’s what the LOVs need to survive. All the literature says so.”

  He hesitated. The wariness in his eyes deepened. She could guess his thoughts. “I told you already I’m a fugitive, Dr. Copeland. Like you. I’m not the bait in a trap to capture you. I’m not asking you to meet me. I’m not asking where you are. I just want to know how to keep the LOVs alive.”

  “Why?”

  Ela looked away, feeling a rush of shame. But why should she be ashamed? She had lost everything but her farsights when this man’s work came crashing into her life. “These LOVs are worth something,” she said. “I have nothing else to sell.”

  “But LOVs can’t be sold. They’re an artificial life-form. They’re not approved—”

  “Approved? Are you serious?”

  This time it was his turn to look away. A rosy flush touched his tan cheeks as he mumbled, “Sorry.” In an absentminded gesture he touched his forehead, running his fingers over the half-hidden LOVs. “All right. Sell them. But sell them to me.”

  “Dr. Copeland, you don’t understand. That’s not why I contacted you—”

  “I’ll buy them,” he insisted. “How much do you want?” His gaze darted to the side. The link’s audio component cut out and his image blurred as he whispered to someone, or something off-screen. A companion? Or a ROSA?

  When his portrait refocused, his gaze was firm. He looked quite confident of her cooperation. “I have command of several anonymous accounts. Let me know how much—”

  “I can’t.” Ela glanced toward the screen door. The Roi Nuoc were outside, and Ky Xuan Nguyen could not be far away. She lowered her voice even further. “There is already a buyer, Dr. Copeland.”

  He looked stunned, almost … panicked, but the expression vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I’ll pay more.”

  “That is not the problem. He’s here. You’re not.”

  She watched him think about this. Then she said, “Do you want the LOVs to die?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me, where do I get nopaline? How do I provide it to my LOVs?”

  “It comes from tablets.” He chewed absently on a fingernail. “It’s a special order product from a chemical company in California—”

  “I am not in California.”

  “I know, but you could place an order—”

  “That would take days, wouldn’t it?”

  “I guess it would, considering where you are … You are still near the crash site? No. Never mind. Don’t answer that.” He sighed. “I have a supply of no-oct tablets—that’s nopaline mixed with octopine, a combination that will allow the LOVs to live, and to reproduce. But it would take me days to get them to you, if you’re still …”

  His voice trailed off under the withering force of her glare.

  “I’m trying to help, Ela.”

  “These LOVs are dying.”

  “I understand that. Let me think.” He turned half-away, leaning his head back against nothing. Probably seated in a chair, she thought. So he was comfortable … wherever he was. He raised his hand, brushing his corded hair away from his forehead, clearly revealing his LOVs for the first time. They were scattered, she noticed, not clustered like hers.

  After a moment, he nodded. “There is a natural source. Are you in a city, or a rural area?”

  She hesitated, not wanting to give anything away.

  He sighed. “All right. Don’t tell me. I’ll just hope you’re in a rural area. No-oct is produced by a bacterium called Agrobacterium tumefasciens—” He hesitated, studying her uncertainly.

  “I know what bacteria are, Dr. Copeland.”

  “Of course. Sorry. You’d be surprised how many people don’t. Agrobacterium is a plant disease. It produces crown galls. Have you seen them? They’re tumors, or swellings in plant tissue. Agrobacterium subverts these plant cells, forcing them to produce opines, which it metabolizes. If you can find unpigmented calluses, it should be possible to harvest opaline from the tissue. Green, photosynthetic shooty calluses will have nopaline.”

  Ela stared at him, wondering how often he talked to real people. Maybe she should not have been quite so condescending about the bacteria? “I understand about half of that,” she said.

  “Oh. Well, it’s simple really. If you can find crown galls growing naturally on diseased plants, they should have at least a small quantity of nopaline or octopine in them. Either one will keep your LOVs alive until you can get an order of supplements.” His gaze cut to the right. He nodded. Again Ela wondered if he was with someone. “There,” he said. “I’ve made an order of no-oct for you, and I’ve attached the funds. I’m transferring the form to you now. Fill in a name and address. I’ll have no way to check where it’s to be delivered.”

  The document arrived. Kathang tucked it away in a corner of the screen. Ela sensed the interview was about to end. “Wait,” she said. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. My ROSA can show me what crown galls are, but how do I use them? Do I eat these plant tumors, like I would eat a tablet?”

  “I have no idea.” His brow furrowed; his eyes took on a faraway look. Again his gaze cut to the side. Again, he nodded. Definitely a ROSA, Ela decided.

  He said: “The tablets are highly concentrated of course. I don’t think ingestion would be efficient at natural concentrations, and you wouldn’t want to eat plant galls anyway. But all LOVs have membranous pores. Look for the dark spots in the image you sent me. In a fluid environment, LOVs will absorb nutrients across those membranes.” He hesitated. “Try liquefying the galls, then dripping the brew directly onto the LOVs. It might work.” He did not look terribly confident. “Send in the order form,” he added. “It’s your only real hope.”

  AFTER the link closed, Kathang fetched several images of crown galls for Ela to examine. She stared at the swollen, lumpy spheres, at the grotesquely malformed shoots of infected tissue, wondering what she would have done if Copeland had ordered her to eat them. Would she have just let the LOVs die? Maybe.

  Were crown galls common? She thought she might have seen such things before, though she couldn’t say where, or when.

  The screen door opened, its corroded spring creaking a natural alarm. A girl in darkened farsights slipped into the room. She looked to be maybe fourteen years old and not quite five feet tall. She wore a knee-length, pale green gauze jacket over charcoal pants, with a white T-shirt and rubber sandals. None of it looked new. She turned to flash a quick hand signal at the boys outside, and as she did her hair swung like a heavy skirt, revealing colorful silken threads woven in with her own thin black tresses. She was not a pretty girl. Her features were too coarse, her legs too short; but as her farsights lightened in the room’s dim interior, Ela could see an alert intelligence sparkling in her eyes. “You must come with me please,” she said, startling Ela with her excellent English. How had she learned to speak so well? And with an Australian accent Ela would have killed for …

  She scowled, feeling a sudden, perverse di
slike for this teenage girl. Anyway, Nguyen had said to stay here … wherever here was—that was something she needed to figure out. She couldn’t submit Copeland’s order until she had an address, or found someplace where a delivery could be accepted.

  Mrs. Dao appeared in the kitchen doorway. She took a look at the intruder, nodded, then disappeared again into the ginger-scented depths of her home territory.

  “You do understand English?” the girl demanded.

  Ela snorted. “I do most of my work in English.”

  “Then why are you just sitting there? Hurry, hurry. There’s no time to hesitate.” Then, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world, she added, “You do know there’s a house-to-house search under way?”

  Ela’s eyes widened. She stood and crossed to the screen door. Three ducks waddled in the dusty yard, while the two Roi Nuoc continued to lounge on the porch. A farm road ran between the rice paddies, but it carried no traffic. “I see no one,” she said, looking back at the young intruder.

  “By the time you see someone, it will be too late. Anyway, I’m going.” She moved toward the back door, as if it hardly mattered to her whether Ela cooperated or not.

  Ela followed uncertainly, but she stopped again halfway across the room. “Who are you? Who sent you here? And why?” She glanced again out the front door, but the road remained empty.

  “My name is Oanh.”

  “That’s only one name.” And a very common name too. It meant nothing.

  “It’s enough name for me, Ms. Ela Su-van-a-tat,” she sneered, dragging out every syllable. “We aren’t greedy for names like Thai people who could make rap songs out of theirs.”

  “That just shows Thai people have good memories.”

  “Or big egos.” Oanh grabbed the back door and pulled it open, admitting a flood of light to the dim, old room. Dust motes stirred, blurring her face as she looked back at Ela.

  “Aren’t you going?” Ela asked.

  “Is it that you don’t believe the police are coming?”

  Ela took another step closer, not at all sure what she believed. “Why should I?”