by Linda Nagata
“I don’t know,” Ela answered, quietly astounded. “Maybe. At the crash site, I filled a packet with spilled LOVs, but most of them escaped.”
“You’re right of course. We should separate.” Her gaze settled on the package in Ela’s hand.
Ela tore it open. Inside were four plastic bottles. She gave one to Oanh. “If there are LOVs in the pond, I’ll need more.”
“I understand.”
On her farsights, the red dot that marked her position had reached its closest approach to the target shrimp pond. Ela tapped the truck’s rear window, motioning the driver to stop. Ninh must have gotten an update from Mother Tiger. He was ready to go, following Ela over the side of the truck as the vehicle slowed. As soon as they were clear the truck sped away. The German boys looked back at them with startled faces, but Oanh did not look back. She did not raise a hand to wave good-bye. With Thu she watched the road ahead, while the truck dwindled in the vast, monotonous land.
Ela turned away, feeling oddly disoriented by the sudden, uncelebrated separation. She told herself the Roi Nuoc were like that. Fluid. Connected through their farsights as much as through their flesh.
She dug out her own Roi Nuoc farsights and slipped them on. Mother Tiger was there, a ghost image in the shape of a prowling tiger, pleased to see her, pleased at her cleverness in preserving (possibly) an extra stock of LOVs. She presented Ela with a new map that drew a path between the paddies, leading her directly to the pond.
Ninh sighed. “That looks like an hour’s walk. Do you have any food?”
Ela pulled out two nutrient bars. Ninh made a face, but he took one. They ate as they walked, and they talked about the LOVs. Ninh wanted to know what they were good for; even Mother Tiger had not answered him satisfactorily on that. “Will they make you smarter? Are you smarter now?”
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t feel exactly smarter, just … sharper. As if her native intelligence was working without the impediments, the distractions she usually stumbled over: the incessant worries, the self-doubt, the boredom … the loneliness. Everything she did seemed interesting, worth doing. Except sometimes it went too far. In Soc Trang she had let herself become too afraid. “Maybe they exaggerate emotions?”
He glanced up sharply. She ducked, cowering beneath a shadow drifting in the late-afternoon sky. It was only a bird.
Ninh started walking again. “This is an interesting experiment,” he said. “I hope it survives a while.”
“Me too.” But Ninh was right: That could not be assumed.
THEY reached the pond just after sunset. Ela crouched on the steep bank amid the sweet-smelling weeds. Midges peppered the air. A few eager frogs croaked. Nothing seemed changed since her previous visit. She could even see her old footprints at the water’s edge, but she could see no sign of LOVs.
Virgil had said the LOVs might survive in this environment. They were hardy and adaptable, but had Ela asked too much of them?
She walked carefully down the spongy bank and waded in, feeling the tiny bodies of juvenile shrimp bumping against her legs in their panic to get away.
A reflection of the deep blue twilight sky floated on the black water. Dancing in the ripples was a fainter reflection: a little circle of dusk-tinged blue-green.
Ela glanced up, expecting to see a patch of cloud aglow in the last high rays of the sun, but the sky was clear. She gazed again into the water, while midges buzzed about her head. The evening’s last light was fading quickly … not so the second, inexplicable reflection. It grew brighter, more substantial with every passing second until she was sure it was an object, and not a reflection at all. A little blue-green sphere, smaller than a Ping-Pong ball, submerged in the water but rising, rising nearer to the surface as she watched.
She felt a flush of recognition; at the same time, from the corner of her eye, she saw the dazzle of her own patch of LOVs gleaming just the same blue-green against the falling night.
From the shore Ninh called softly, “Ela? What is that thing?”
She remembered then that she still wore the Roi Nuoc farsights; Ninh could see what she saw. “I think it’s the LOVs.”
She reached for the little sphere with trembling hands. It did not evade her grasp. It responded not at all. She cupped her hands around its scintillating blue-green glow. It felt like a crumpled necklace chain: hard yet supple, shot through with deep folds and convolutions. She raised it to within a quarter inch of the surface, and felt an intense curiosity flow through her, a profound sense of newness, and discovery.
“It’s a colony of LOVs,” she whispered. She turned to look at Ninh. “The LOV colonies on the EquaSys module were supposed to be like … like living computers.”
Ninh said, “This one is small.”
She nodded. It was young—but it was thriving! The LOVs that had escaped from her packet had reproduced; they had organized without any outside guidance. “I’m going to break it into pieces.”
Ninh took a startled step forward, his sandaled foot splashing in the water at the pond’s edge. “Why? It is beautiful. Why break it?”
“So more will grow. I’ll leave part of it here. The other parts I’ll put in other ponds. If they’re scattered, they’ll be harder to wipe out.”
He was silent a moment. Then he chuckled softly. “That’s why you sent Oanh away.”
She floated the little colony to shore, careful to keep it always in the water. In her hand it felt as light as an aluminum can. Ninh made a mud corral along the bank to keep it from floating away.
Now they faced the problem of transporting the LOVs.
“Do we have plastic?” Ela asked.
They searched their meager possessions, but all they had were the foil wrappers from the nutrient bars. Then Ela had an idea. Borrowing a knife from Ninh, she cut her hand towel into long strips. She soaked them in the pond water. Then she opened a bottle of no-oct tablets and crumbled several of them over the strips, massaging the dry powder until it dissolved into a pasty gray mud that clung to the fibers of the cloth.
She returned to the water. The LOV colony floated like a gleaming jellyfish in Ninh’s mud corral. Gently, Ela lifted it out of the water. Like a jellyfish, it collapsed into a shapeless blob. But even in that reduced state it looked beautiful, tremulously alive. Aware? She refused to believe it, and yet once again she felt a sense of recognition come over her, a joy of emotional connection.
That was not important now. They must work quickly, and move on, before someone noticed them here.
“We have to tear it apart,” she whispered to Ninh, as he crouched beside her, yet she hesitated.
“Do you want me to do it?”
To her own surprise, she nodded.
She watched his graceful hands as he touched the colony, exploring its strength and structure. Then he pinched it. He pulled it apart. Ela felt a sudden, taut sense of expectation, and curiosity. She bit her lip, but she did not move.
Ninh took a pinch of the LOVs and smeared them along one cloth strip. They gleamed faintly in the wet no-oct paste. He smeared another pinch along the next strip, and the next. By the time he had finished, the LOV colony was smaller than a jambolan plum that had been smashed in the road and turned to jelly.
Ela cupped it in one hand as she retrieved several more no-oct tablets from the bottle. Then she waded back into the water, releasing the remnant colony and the tablets with it. The lightless water swallowed them up. When she returned to the bank, Ninh was rolling up the cloth strips, tucking them neatly into the foil wrappers. “They should be transplanted tonight,” Ela said.
Mother Tiger chose that moment to whisper, “Do not be alarmed.”
The admonition had the opposite effect. Ela’s chin rose in instant dread. In the deepening twilight she heard the approach of fast tires on a dirt road. There was no audible hum of engine noise, which meant it was a fuel-cell engine, a modern car. She turned to look for Ninh, but he was gone—vanished—along with the packets of LOVs.
Only his footprints remained in the mud.
“Ninh!” she whispered frantically.
“Do not be alarmed,” Mother Tiger repeated.
“Where is Ninh?” she squeaked.
“He has gone to plant the LOVs.”
He had taken the no-oct with him; all of it. Only the shipping container remained.
Ela stomped her foot. “I don’t like the way they keep leaving!”
“It is hard,” Mother Tiger agreed, sounding, for the first time, like it was using a stock response. That lapse reminded Ela that it was a ROSA, and no true entity at all. She realized then how much she had come to depend on its advice, how she had been manipulated into dependence. Understanding made her angry. She had been on her own too long to give up her independence to a stupid ROSA playing goddess in a farsight cult.
“Tell me who’s coming,” Ela commanded, her voice cold.
“That one you call Ky Xuan Nguyen.”
Nguyen. She had told him there were no other LOVs. By now he would know she had lied.
The car appeared on the levee road, advancing without headlights. Quickly Ela pulled the Roi Nuoc farsights off, replacing them with her own. Kathang’s moist skin shimmered as its head bobbed a greeting. It whispered to her that a message from Virgil had come in; Ela shook her head slightly. No time to hear it now.
The levee road was several feet higher than the pond. The car drew even with her, then stopped. Down by the pond it was dark, but up on the road, in the open, twilight still lingered, enough to see Nguyen as he stepped out of the car. He looked down on her with a bemused expression.
“You are more than you seem, dear Ela.”
Ela decided an active offense was her best strategy. “What I am is a fugitive. You promised to help me, but where have you been?”
His farsights gleamed faint green against his shadowed skin, suggesting a negative image of a human face. “I have been in Hanoi, lying my ass off and sucking up to government officials whom I in fact despise, all to persuade them to order an end to the IBC’s search for you. It is because of my efforts, by the way, that you are still a fugitive and not a prisoner. Did you notice the absence of surveillance drones since your return?”
Ela turned away, blushing, grateful for the dark. “I did notice,” she said hoarsely.
“A thank-you might be in order. After all, it was not my idea to remove LOVs from the impact site.”
“You’re angry because I lied to you about the LOVs. But how could I know to trust you?”
“I have far more to lose in this venture then you do, Ela. Do you want my help or not?”
“I need your help.”
“Yes. You do. I’m glad you understand that. I’ve brought someone to see you.”
A man had emerged from the passenger side of the car. Now he walked to the edge of the road, where he stood silhouetted against the dark-steel sky. He was taller than Nguyen, though not by much. “Ela?”
Her eyes went wide as she recognized his voice, made familiar by a dozen conversations. “Virgil?” She stepped forward, her bare feet splashing in the shallow water at the pond’s edge. “You made it! Is it you?”
“Yes. I’m here. Thanks to Ky.”
“He came in on Cameron Quang’s boat,” Nguyen added. “Just past noon.”
Ela did not like the challenge she heard in his voice. “And do you own the Marathon now, Mr. Nguyen?”
“It’s at one of the fish farms,” Virgil said absently. “Ela, why didn’t you say anything about these other Lovs … ?” The sentence trailed off as he tilted his head back, looking up into the star-pricked sky.
Ela followed his gaze to see a shower of huge raindrops drifting out of the evening gloom, falling so slowly they looked as if they had renegotiated the usual contract with gravity. The deep blue of the western sky slid in oily reflection across their spherical faces.
Peeper balls, Ela realized, as the spheres came to rest several feet above the ground. She looked at Nguyen, her heart tripping in a fast, watery beat. Her voice squeaked: “They are yours … right?”
Nguyen stood on the edge of the road, the hem of his beige jacket fluttering in a faint evening breeze. Peeper balls glinted all around him like subtle party lights. “No, Ela,” he said, his voice low, and thick with anger. “They’re not mine. Rather, it seems that you were followed.”
She backed a step away. “It might have been you.”
He laughed shortly. Then he swore in a long, soft tirade. Virgil edged toward the car.
The unexpected motion panicked Ela. She stumbled back, away from the pond, away from the road. Nguyen though, made no move to go. “Did you stop somewhere, Ela, on your way up from Ca Mau?” It sounded like a casual question, so calm it made her tremble.
Her gaze cut to the Elegant Courier package discarded on the ground.
“Ah,” Nguyen said. “A brief rendezvous in Soc Trang … where you picked up … an order of no-oct? What is that?”
Virgil spoke softly out of the darkness. “It’s a nutrient the LOVs require.”
Nguyen turned to him. He did not ask a question; that demand came from his posture alone.
“I ordered it for her,” Virgil admitted.
“Is there any other use for this chemical, in this form?”
Virgil shrugged. “It’s pretty specialized.”
“Let me guess. You went through your usual source?”
“I guess I did.”
Nguyen’s anger at last slipped free. “Why not just take out an advertisement announcing ‘We’re here!’?” he shouted. “Is this the kind of smarts the LOVs bequeath? If so, then why have I wasted my time on you?”
Dead silence rang in the darkness. Then Ela said softly, “Dr. Copeland’s LOVs are an early generation.”
Nguyen crossed his arms. “Are you accusing Dr. Copeland of being guided by primitive and stupid LOVs, Ela?”
Virgil said, “We should go.”
“No.” Nguyen turned, raising his hands as if to address the flock of peeper balls. “In fact, we will stay right here in the delta. This land has become the last refuge of LOVs. They exist here now with the permission, and under the protection, of the government. We did not ask for this distinction. We did not ask for them to be scattered in wild colonies across our land, but they are here. They are our responsibility. The official announcement will be made tonight: This land has become a LOV protectorate.”
Ela stared at him in disbelief. Had he lost his mind?
Or … was he running a bluff?
After all, he was in advertising.
Surely though, if it was a bluff, it could work only if the world were convinced the LOVs were benign and already widespread—too populous to be controlled without disrupting thousands of innocent lives.
So she jumped in to back him up. “Hundreds of people have already been accidentally infected by the LOVs,” she declared, in the sincerest voice she could muster. “I have seen LOVs thriving in ponds all along the coast.”
It was bullshit, but wasn’t that what advertising was all about?
Nguyen cast her an admiring glance. “The IBC expected to experiment on our people, but we have turned their biohazard into a blessing—and we will protect it.”
Bullshit, Ela thought. But it was the only chance they had.
chapter
18
“WHAT THE HELL does he mean by a ‘LOV protectorate’?” Daniel Simkin shouted, turning away from the video feed gathered by a fleet of peeper balls half a world away. It was two in the morning, he was wired on coffee and speed, and he wanted an explanation now. “Browning, have we got anything new out of Hanoi?”
Alyce Browning was serving as senior shift officer at the IBC’s temporary headquarters in a rented office suite on Bishop Street. Her brown eyes flashed beneath a tomboy haircut. “Hanoi hasn’t even hinted at anything like that,” she growled. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Simkin did not believe it. The foul whiff of national politics was too strong.
The ROSAs had identified Ky Xuan Nguyen as a wealthy advertising executive, influential in local government, and known for his humanitarian projects. Why would a man like that risk everything to traffic in an outlawed technology with no obvious use? It made no sense … unless something more was going on.
Browning had roused him at midnight, to let him know that the tagged package of no-oct had just left the office of Elegant Courier. She wanted permission to follow it. “Go,” Simkin had growled. “Get on it now.”
By the time he washed and changed and walked from his overnight suite down the hall, a single high-flying drone had been launched over Soc Trang. Its surveillance mechanism was focused on a specific law-enforcement incident, so its presence did not violate the government’s ban on general-surveillance missions.
“Do you want me to inform Hanoi?” Browning had asked as he joined her in front of the central flowscreen.
“Are you feeling friendly?” Simkin replied.
Browning’s lip curled in an expression that had nothing to do with a smile. Hanoi had ordered the surveillance ban.
They had watched in rapt attention as the drone tracked a courier through Soc Trang’s crowded streets. From a quarter mile up it recorded the transfer of the package to an individual quickly identified as freelance producer Ela Suvanatat.
Simkin felt the arousal of the hunt. He wished he could be there. But that duty went to the three officers making up the IBC’s ground contingent—all that were permitted, thanks to a compromise settlement with Hanoi.
They prepared to move in.
But Simkin forbade an immediate arrest. He wanted to know where Suvanatat had been, whom she knew, and most importantly, where she would go.
So the officers hung back, allowing the drone to track her into the countryside, where Virgil Copeland had appeared like an apparition in the dusk.
“No way!” Browning had shouted when she recognized him. “That can’t be Copeland. It’s a fake. And this is a setup, a distraction.”
The ROSA on oversight disagreed, basing its decision on opinions gleaned from three subsidiary ROSAs specialized in line-of-sight identification. This was Copeland. The case had solved itself—yet Simkin felt a sour suspicion settle in his gut. Too easy.
